Material science and manufacturing are two that have always seemed interesting to me, particularly monocrystalline stuff like semiconductors, optics, and metallurgy.
Don't think Varda (or anyone else) has ever sold any space produced drug? It's all very much experimental small scale. Realistically, something has to be super potent and super expensive to even consider it (that rules out anything mainstream).
Not that anything is really produced in space either, more like passively transformed into some crystal form from a liquid state or whatever. Environmental assistance more than anything else.
This is an old idea, dating back to at least the 1940s. Many experiments have already been done in microgravity environments.
In the 1960s, they used sounding rockets to do experiments on how molten metals solidify in microgravity, with manufacturing applications in mind.
In the 1970s, they ran experiments, also on sounding rockets, on melting and solidifying materials without letting them touch a container: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19840059952
More recently, many microgravity experiments have been performed on the International Space Station. Experiments were done on protein crystal growth aboard the ISS in 2000, just a couple of years after it was launched. (I think it took some time to get the experimental facilities up and running.)
Here’s an assortment of links on the subject, starting with a good overview:
There's a lot of fundamental science to be done in space; some forms of crystal are much easier to grow, chemical reactions and biological interactions etc. etc. For reference, it wasn't long ago NASA was trying to figure out if spiders could form webs in space.
"When gravity is involved, the golden orb spiders will happily build their asymmetrical webs, and sit facing downwards waiting for prey. In space, their webs were more symmetrical, however when there was light, the spiders used it as a reference point and built their webs as if the light was the opposite to 'downwards'."
The primary one I've been sold on is types of crystal growth is just better up there. But due to the excess expense, the only thing that fits the bill is experimental edge case pharmaceuticals that have massive price tags that insurance mostly covers.
If the automation improves far beyond what we currently have available, maybe this means microchip manufacturing in the future, but we aren't at all there yet from the fab side of the equation.
So, I read the article, downloaded JOSM and start making edits on my neighborhood (including adding new poligons, buildings, etc).
Soon I thought "This would be easily done by an AI" and searched for it and found META's Rapid (https://rapideditor.org/) which does an ok job finding buildings, but really could go further and suggest the tags as well.
I am a long-time OSM contributor and I will just point out that much of the OSM mapping community have very strong opinions on automated/AI mapping. I mostly stay out of those discussions but be aware that automated edits will likely get reverted if you aren't very careful to follow the guidelines. No idea if Rapid enforces "proper" AI mapping or not.
Automated building tracing is okay sometimes, but actively harmful other times. I know that at least in my region, Rapid footprints are all meters offset from the real location, because when they were building their dataset they weren't checking the satellite imagery offset.
In general it's probably better to see if you can find an official map, and check if its license terms are compatible[1] with OSM.
People who didn't follow up their post-launch recovery still have the impression made at the launch (first impressions matter a lot). I didn't play the game (yet) but I have followed their recovery path. It is an incredible story and it seems that the game has evolved a lot.
I wonder if they won't add generative AI to create infinite stories/missions inside it, that would get rid of the 10K bowls effect.
This low cost -> artist -> rich people movement of neighborhoods is something I observed happening in some cities I’ve lived in and it amazes me that there isn’t much lecture/research on the theme.
From what I’ve observed is that artists will search for cheaper neighborhoods where they can rent space for their art, this attracts young people (students) usually the progressive type, then comes the bars and restaurants after these people, then artists became more known, the bars/restaurants became better (as the young/students start the gain buying power) and finally the rich arrive and with them, the real state speculation that ultimately makes the land price too expensive for anything other than art galleries. The artist scene then moves to another neighborhood starting the cycle again….
There is a lot of material on this theme. One place to start is a book like "The Last Bohemia" or a general search for books about Williamsburg (the Brooklyn neighbourhood) at the library. Lots of first-hand stories about how that pattern of gentrification plays out.
I believe soon we will have a language made exclusively for coding agents that will be highly token efficient and difficult for humans to read, as human-in-the-loop will be ditched entirely.
Yet, there are still people who think that all the scientists are part of a great conspiracy and that video they received from an uncle on whatsapp is the real source of truth...
Currently we have a measles outbreak in Brazil brought from the US, so everybody is getting vaccinated (even those who already were, like me) to try to stop the spreading and protect those who can’t get vaccinated.
Really would love for US social and media networks to get their shit together and stop spreading misinformation in the name of profit…
In Brazil no one uses common phone lines anymore because, in part, of the telemarketers and scams calls. Most people I know enable “silence unknown callers” and use almost exclusively Whatsapp for communication.
The government tried to control this with an official (no call list) that is usually ignored by companies who use third parties and disposable mobile numbers to do their dirty work.
Telcos have the power to control that but they are usually an internal mess and this is low in their priority list as they consider the voice calls a lost battleground.
ANATEL says we will have authenticated numbers by 2028. After that, it's a matter of pressuring the government to punish the people doing the undesired calls.
The second implementation (AFAIK, we are in the 3rd now) of that no-call list was quite successful in pressuring companies. It can be done.
You can custom filter this with uBlock origin but sometimes linkedin changes the content blocks (e.g. from “x commented” to “x left a comment”) so you’ll need to do some maintenance.
Also, if you filter all the junk linkedin throws you’ll get some delay as ublock filters everything out.
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