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Makes you wonder what will come first:

- energy-efficient, long-lasting, mechanically optimized robotic "birds"

- good-enough understanding of the avian brain connectome & operation, such that all you need is a bunch of fine wires stuck in it, and a small CPU sending commands (local and remote operation, etc.)


I wonder if Elon Musk is of the Red or the Green mindset.


He is a Green. Has talked about detonating nuclear weapons over the poles to melt ice.


On a related note: for a more realistic portrayal of VX-like-agent-in-a-terror-plot, see Michael Crichton's novel "Binary".


Yeah just watched the Rock a few nights ago (on my new giant TV) and the movie holds up, but the VX gas does not make you blister up like they show in the movie, nor does it just naturally vaporize into a deadly gas. One of its strong points is actually that it is sticky and is hard to get off of you once it makes contact. It will still kill you though.


I like Inkscape very much and use it for all my (usually quite simple) vector drawing needs. From the get go, it was quite intuitive to use - my first vector editor experience was with CorelDRAW 3 in the early 90s.


Surely a 1.21-GW datacenter would suffice!


Similarly, you normally don't see any imperfections/dust specks on your cornea - but you will if you look into a very narrow (0.1-0.2 mm) beam of light (e.g., when using a telescope pushed to a very high magnification = very small exit pupil [1]).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_pupil


One could wear a paper mask/visor to only show the eyes. (Though the eye extraction feature might malfunction then?)


On a related note:

C. Limb, R. Limb, C. Limb, D. Limb "Nominative determinism in hospital medicine: Can our surnames influence our choice of career, and even specialty?"

https://publishing.rcseng.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1308/147363515X14...


This reminds me that I went to nautical school with someone whose last name was Schiff (German for ship) and he said that was exactly the reason he chose to go to sea. Also remember someone a year ahead of us whose name was Dory (a small rowboat).


In the small rural county where I grew up, the 1/2-time job of county prosecuting attorney was named Lynch. I am not making this up.


I personally know a "Doctor Coffin" (coughing & coffin) as well as a Doctor Payne.


I normally rebuild my workstation every ~4 years (recently more for fun than out of actual need for more processing power), might finally do it again (preferably a recent 8-/12-core Ryzen). My most recent major upgrade was in 2017 (Core i5 3570K -> Ryzen 7 1700X), with a minor fix in 2019 (Ryzen 7 2700, since 1700X was suffering from the random-segfaults-during-parallel-builds issue).


Same. I'm on a 10700k and thinking on an upgrade. I'll wait for X3D parts to come out (assuming they're doing that this gen, not sure if we've got confirmation), and compare vs 15th gen Intel once it's out in like September-ish.


Might be worth considering a Ryzen 9 5900XT (just launched as well) for a drop in upgrade. Been running a 5950X since close to launch and still pretty happy with it.


Would it really be smart to build an AM4 desktop at this point though?


I said as a "drop in upgrade"... Not sure that I'd build AM4 today, unless I had some parts used and cheap/free.


Wait, but in "Independence Day" they uploaded human-made computer virus into alien computer and it just worked™!


Sure, and that makes perfect sense, since earth tech was based on the alien tech they found in the Roswell crash.

Shame they deleted the scene explaining all that. It's still easy to find though.


> Shame they deleted the scene explaining all that. It's still easy to find though.

Huh! I always thought the logic was that since the aliens used earth satellite systems they had already interfaced with human computer systems and the infection was made via the satellite system, which I believe the main character was knowledgable about.


That doesn't entirely follow, though. Just because you could talk to the alien computers doesn't mean you could execute a program on them. IMO the deleted scene is the only way it can make sense.


Put differently: you can’t run a windows/linux exploit on a Linux/windows machine just because they can both connect to the Internet.


This. But everyones focused on languages lol.

Actually lol, who says the aliens were not running a emulator of our own systems and in their hubris ran it on elevated privs.

ok ok, considering the Aliens allowed their own ship, which was visually compromised AND could have been easily scanned for non-alien life(?)... clearly not a culture of security.


Yah, but worked because the aliens used the humans satelite network against them, to comunicate with their fleet.

Since they where interfacing with out tech, makes sense to use this against them.


That's like saying a C64 virus could work against a Linux box, because a C64 modem was used to control the C64.

And as the virus author, you've never seen Linux, have no idea about anything past the C64, including bioses, CPU structure, APIs, PCI/etc architecture, and all other computing hardware, and?

That's being friendly, because they'd be interfacing with computing systems hundreds, thousands, or millions of years more advanced, written by aliens, which view the universe entirely differently due to different brain structures, with an unknown number or type of senses, with an unknown way those senses work or are perceived, with "code" not necessarily in binary, or using silicon based chips, or even transistors, or.. well, this part never ends.

The premise is immensely absurd.

Of course it is a movie, but this sort of canon puts it into soft scifi, if not fantasy.



If you go with the logic of the deleted scene, it's like asking if an 80s programmer with no knowledge of modern hardware or software could still make a virus that would infect modern systems, which makes it significantly easier to swallow.


NO but a virus made for a linux box that was programed in a c64 could work.


And in War of the Worlds they uploaded a human-compatible virus into aliens and It Just Worked(TM) :P


That was more the aliens being arrogant than humans doing anything.


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