gurneyHaleck

Yes. A recent one. Prior to 2003, people were less interested in non-sentient autonomous machines. Drones.

As technology advances, autonomous machines may very likely grow beyond the definition/parlance of a "drone" (machinery designed and dedicated only to perform specific tasks) into more powerful forms of intelligence.

At that point, such machinery graduates beyond the definition of an artifact (a possession held in the ownership of higher-order life), and one might speculate whether it represents a form of life unto itself, or where one might draw such a boundary.

Either way, such sentient machinery (read: not drones) might not be bound by geological/astronomical timescales, outlasting its inventors possibly permanently, but still represents a component of the Fermi Paradox. If such things are possible, where are they?

The Fermi Paradox posits the premise of ANY artifact indicative of intelligent origins.

It doesn't have to be "self replicating drones." It could be inert bullets, arrow heads, sharp sticks, carefully arranged electromagnetic retro-reflectors.

Drones are a fad. The paradox doesn't require an alien implementation of drone technology, self replicating, autonomous, or what have you.

Just because you like the idea, doesn't mean it gets adopted.

If that's the case then we definitely do not want to face the universe as primitive indiginous people unceremoniously discovered by technologically mature explorers.

I, uh, don't happen to understand where... precisely, that real people paid with their lives, due to these leaks.

From where I stand, he released Power Point slides to journalists, outlining the broad strokes of some programs and projects.

He did so in a way that proved there were deep flaws to be found in the manner in which the NSA secured itself. Had he not proven these flaws by demonstration, those flaws would likely have persisted until, instead of merely having its pants pulled down in the middle of the street, the NSA might have been stabbed to death for its wallet.

Why listen to me though? This very document even says they still live with the hazard of another Snowden coming along and pulling another Snowden. It is, in fact, the conclusion of the document we are discussing right now.

  "Do you realise the astronauts 
   will run out of nitrogen on day 
   59 and die?" 

  So Mars One isn't really funny, it 
  has probably set back the credibility 
  of the movement by a decade. 

I realize it's not meant to be a truly quantifiable statement, but I'm always curious why people regard incidents like this as producing serious damage to progress.

There are definitely crucial moments in political science, when an absurd gaff completely botches a carefully crafted image, completely imploding the efforts of hundreds of people, and sinking an entire team permanently. Cringey things that seem to matter to the echo chamber of a 24 hour news cycle.

But I don't feel like hard science works that way. When it comes to real engineering feats, if one company tries to trade on faulty calculations, and their charade is laid bare, the smoke and mirrors disappear only to reveal the same bald truth that had always been there from the start: hard problems defy shenanigans.

A political failure doesn't deflate an engineering problem. Not in the same way it deflates a PR campaign. If the hard science was not respected, then there was no investment in a decade of progress to begin with.

So, these swindlers then maybe blew a decade of real funding, only to burn their investors with bogus project plans and proposals, ripping off charity and fomenting skepticism and suspicion? I think skepticism in this sphere is actually healthy, and separates the children from the adults.

Waste is a bad thing, and maybe real money disappears, but maybe that kind money came from the kinds of people who might have just as soon blown their cash on personal assistants, vacations and clothes. Clearly such investors were not "buying science," or they'd have known better.

So, then the only thing left is that maybe there's the premise that admirers of the charade would not have loitered on the sidelines, simply yearning to lend their support to the parlour trick they were true believers in. That they would have stepped up to the task, had they known progress was stalled. I don't buy that.

No matter what, I don't think there has even been a decade of effort spent on crewing a mission to Mars. It's all been so much conjecture. It's never seemed to be an easier idea than an underground moon base, and no one seems to be giving lunar round-trips or installations much more consideration than mars.

Space shuttle accidents and launchpad explosions cast the true hazards in a much more severe relief, but knowing that people are even trying and failing feels like much more significant progress than a lot of talk and faulty plans.

So was there really any "damage" done by some of these PR goof ups?

Very true. The Mac Pro is eternally reminiscent of a trash can, and it feels hazardous leaving it out in the open, because maybe someone might actually mistake it for one and drop an empty coffee cup in it.

The lack of expandability makes it feel like a doomed purchase, and costing more than $2,000 means spending on something that might prove obsolete in a year (or possibly less) feels extremely frivolous.

Extensible hardware allows us to rationalize a big purchase with the mindset that there's an intent to future-proof with an investment that allocates room for growth.

That concept does not exist with the Mac Pro form factor at all. The purchase is not even slightly user-servicable. Only a subscription to a service/maintenance agreement (read: applecare) provides nigh-full-replacement insurance. And basically, you're just paying for the privilege to gamble. You'll never get to change your old toy into a new toy.

Oh, definitely true. Apple is always a higher price in general, just as a brand name. It's their intended marketing strategy.

Even within Apple's own product line though, compare what you get with the cylindrical desktop Mac Pro for the price, and stand it next to one of their own laptops.

Then stand the Mac Mini next to them. It's a lower price, but it's uncharismatic.

A game changer for the mac mini might be improved methods of environmental integration. Most of the time I think about better ways to hide it, out of sight, out of mind.

The only thing I want within immediate reach is a power button, and a wall switch (any variety of toggle) would be ideal. Hard wired. An actual button. I press button, it goes on. I press button, it goes off. Not an animated skeuomorphic 16 million color display depicting one. No wi-fi tether. No analytics. No GPS. No chipset. No thunderbolt. No USB. No IP address. No internet of things. Just a god damned switch. On/off. The end.

An iPad with a keyboard. God help us all.

And looking back on ye olden MacOS 9, prior to OSX, there were things that just felt nice about the interface that no longer hold sway.

Clicking on an icon gave an immediate response. The mouse cursor felt more precise. Compare to these nightmarish touchpad/button slabs (and worse still, touchscreens), mouse movement and pointer precision were lightyears beyond the way things seem to work lately.

I have to retry things a solid 1/3 of the time, because some kind of gesture or taptic garbage tripped me up, and pushed me into an unintended outcome. I have to focus, and concentrate on finessing my hand motions and pressure or I am punished by mistakes that need an undo. When I'm in a rush, life is hell. This makes me hate life.

No zealously decorative animations meant (on an unstressed system with low CPU/RAM load) the menus flashed before you like lightning. Text was crisp, unshaded pixels, with no font smoothing. There were no transparency overlays, and so everything was high contrast. Nothing was EVER lagged by network traffic except browser images and FTP/SMB shares. (and doom deathmatches)

Most of this was also true of Windows 2000 at the time.

Had operating systems stood frozen (particularly GUIs), while terabytes of disk space, gigabytes of RAM and dozens of CPU cores had inflated our hardware resources, I've often held the belief that we'd like our computers more, and fewer people would be as obnoxiously incompetant with computers as we see. I'm probably wrong, but the idea feels right.

But don't actually LIKE the mac mini. It's not something I particularly want.

I do kind of want the huge cinema displays. But they're expensive.

I do kind of want the cylindrical mac pro. But it's expensive.

Apple's laptops are the sweet spot. I want them. The price is right. And they have performed. Tablets and touchscreens suck compared to a solid laptop.

Mac minis are borderline indistinguishable from any other mac during use. But they've always been coasters. Lazy susans. Arm rests. Furniture.

The only time you think about it being a mac mini is when you cycle power, or when you imagine opening it up, and adding more power because multi-tasking.

Providing the mac pro at closer to mini prices would be cool. The polished metal cyclinder is kind of cool. But it's hard to find fetish items that endure six months these days. The death march of cell phone upgrades has seen to that.

Once they started soldering and epoxying internals, well... I start to feel guilty about polluting the environment with electronics waste, and I start googling recycling programs.

Sometimes I get the feeling that those who control industries that profit from climate-altering human behavior believe that it's okay to alter the climate, because whatever they have caused, they will assuredly be able to override, and undo, through similar force of will.

Too hot? Cooling something is easy! Block out the sun, somehow, until things cool off!

Too cold? Simple! Pump up those greenhouse gases again! Earth has a thermostat, and it's easy to mess with!

I think this is why there's so much willful ignorance and obfuscation, deliberately muddying the waters. They want control, and no one else must tamper or meddle with such grand designs.

Of course, the world is larger than they are. And what if they aren't around to help fix what they've ruined.

It seems their answer is:

  If *WE'RE* dead, who fucking cares about the rest?