Rule #1 for the startup of any weed business.. Buy a pound.. No less. Otherwise you will be doomed to lose money.

>> ^Lendl:

Music is from Mass Effect 3. I now have to play it again...


Dude I was playing it and I thought it was fucking terrible not like the first 2 at all. Then after listening to this I went back and started it again...and I selected "Action" on the startup screen so it made it like fucking Halo. If I wanted Halo I'd play Halo, but I wanted an RPG. Started it again, much better.

We did this at my old job...

When someone is away from their desk, but logged into their computer, you change the startup sound to a recording from a porn. Only works if the person doesn't habitually have their headphones plugged in (although most people won't notice if you later unplug the headphones after they've left the office for the day ). When they boot up the computer next morning everyone in the office gets a laugh.

Of course, I don't recommend doing this unless you work in a very kick-back office with bosses who have a good sense of humor. Also be aware it'll make everyone in the office paranoid for the next month, so they'll log out of their system every time time they go to the bathroom or get up to grab a coffee.

No doubt ADSR would produce some great science, but it wouldn't address chemistry issues, or any other important issue any better than a LFTR project. It seems to me that it just introduces large amounts of extra complexity and cost. Particle accelerators are big unreliable machines, hence the need for 3 of them for redundancy and they could well reduce safety if something goes wrong. They are not even particularly suited to breeding, as they produce protons which as the name suggests are charged and so need to be very high energy to hit a nucleus and cause fission. The cynic in me says the whole idea was cooked up by the nuclear energy industry to ensure costs could be kept high, and so turn them and their friends in other energy industries a bigger profit (or even just a profit?). My understanding is also that between the various stockpiles of fissile we have, and high breeding ratios from early LFTRs startup fuel should not be a big issue.

I wish you all the best in your learning, I can think of few endeavors more worthy of changing your life's direction >> ^GeeSussFreeK:

>> ^Spacedog79:
The ADSR or "Accelerator Driven Sub-critical Reactor" is unfortunately a massive waste of time. Why not build a properly configured LFTR reactor and it does just the same thing and you don't need to build 3 large particle accelerators to do it.

I agree in one sense, but in another, the chemistry of the LFTR might prove impossible to solve (though this is hardly even a fear atm), so divesting in a "less" effective way to fission isn't a complete waste. Also, you could use this just to breed thorium which would be handy if you hand thousands of thorium generators to start up (you need a good deal of U233 to start the reaction as Thorium is only fertile, not fissionable). This also would be a good way to burn up waste before we get a highly functional LFTR's with the ability to siphon in fission products. In the end, no road should be left uncharted when the end result maybe the salvation of the energy crisis and a life like star trek
I play to dedicate most of my laymen efforts over the next couple of months in learning more about fission for use in determining if I want to drop my life for what is it now and pursue nuclear physics. Pretty sharp turn from where I am now, but I almost feel morally compelled to do so.

>> ^renatojj:

The usual excuse for space exploration being done by government is because the costs involved are too high.
However, doesn't the private sector tend to increase quality and lower costs with time? Maybe if we let the private sector grow and develop the necessary technologies, space exploration won't be as costly. Sure, it might take a lot more time, but at least it won't waste as much resources.
Right now, we don't have resources in the private or public sectors for this. Newt is a dumbass.


Private sector business can't take risks this big. They are responsible for ensuring profitability and you cannot ensure profitability in a venture like space exploration. Central government doesn't have the profit mandate and so they can invest in things that stimulate paradigm shifts in technology and industry.

An example; I worked for my local utility company several years back (recently privatized at the time). Wind energy was a big thing and they company was very active in promoting their wind energy program. But the truth that I found was they had actually spent more money on trying to push laws to seal government gathered data that would be necessary for the wind industry to grow. You see, they didn't want to develop wind energy just yet because the profit margin was too small but they also didn't want any energy startups who were willing to accept the thinner profit margins to get a leg up on them. Nearly a decade later and that large energy company still hasn't developed their wind power any further. And there haven't been any major challengers in the market....wonder why.

The largest industries are controlled by the largest corporations and these corporations are in the business of protecting their existing revenue streams. Innovation and exploration involve risk and corporations are risk averse by their very design. Private industry is not the machine that will push boundaries and stimulate technological paradigm shifts. That takes a large entity with no profit mandate. That takes a central government.

If you believe that profitability is the best measure of value and efficiency then you haven't thought really hard on the matter. A functioning and successful society requires a balance between capital driven entities and entities who measure their success in terms of the health and advancement of the community. This isn't a matter of capitalism versus socialism. It's contrasting motivations that work in synergy.

>> ^RadHazG:

Personally I don't see VS going down affecting much of anything beyond those of us who practically live here. Even so OWS was only a few people at some point and even 1 more person makes a larger crowd than before even if nobody notices them and all they do is add to the size of the group and thus the size of the message. So as much as I will miss this bastion of sanity and fun I call VS.... DO IT! It's one day now vs the distinct possibility of every day and always later on.


I was thinking, though, that perhaps going offline instead of providing some "education" or "food for thought" interaction misses out on an opportunity. For instance, a sit in only works because you are visible, yet passive. Turning yourself off, with no real educational factor, just looks like downtime or some technical fault. Like, for instance, when the Amazon server cloud "failed" causing massive startup level net stuff to go offline. And while it affected huge portions of the web, to the lay person, it just seemed like a few of the sites they visited weren't working. In other words, a black out or whatever it decided on happening needs to be something that talks to the layperson on his level, not our level.

What do you think @dag, would we be shooting ourselves in the foot with something like this? Like blowing up Yavin base ourselves in protest of the deathstar?

In my opinion your cynicism is misplaced.

This is an industry full of people who live for the thrill of discovery and the emotional excitement of helping individuals live longer and happier lives. That said, it is difficult to get approval for novel, invasive treatments... and for good reason; unforeseeable complications can have life-altering consequences.

This current system greatly favors established companies who have the resources to build and equip a team to successfully navigate the approval processes (and absorb the fallout of a failure). An industry partner is often times THE ONLY way for a University-affiliated biomedical researcher to see their discovery possibly implemented. Another option is a group of matriculating grad students devoting their early careers to hounding venture capitalists, angel investors, grant agencies and established companies to invest in their startup... typically this involves traveling till exhaustion, and constantly hearing how great ones idea is while receiving no call backs... only the best ideas with the most patient, stubborn and lucky supporters survive.

>> ^quantumushroom:

Like any "suppressed" invention, it's way easier for the established companies to simply buy the patent (while getting their 'friends' in government to thwart progess) and also way easier for the inventors to take a large buyout instead of spending possible decades getting a product to market, especially drugs.

@longde

As long as Whites are being underrepresented relative to their proportion of the population, and Asians and Indians are being overrepresented, that sounds like the most heavenly type of 'discrimination' in the world.

In practice, most startups find much greater access to capital and connections in Silicon Valley than anywhere else, and in any social interaction, we have about 15 seconds to convince someone we're an interesting person.

There are plenty of startups that have reasons to go abroad, but saying discrimination is one of them doesn't seem consistent with the numbers.

@longde

The last Silicon Valley event I went to was a startup demo day for an incubator, and about 1/3 of the startup founders were White.

The event before that was an industry event/mixer for which the speaker was non-White, the event manager was non-White, and about 1/3 of the audience was White.

The event before had 5 CEO speakers, and only 2 of them were White. About half of that audience was White.


Perhaps we need affirmative action for these White minorities who are being underrepresented relative to their proportion of the population.

There are endless high profile Chinese and Indian angel investors and venture capitalists, and all Silicon Valley investors regardless of ethnicity have 1 concern: are you or are you not going to achieve our investment objectives?

The first rule of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley is that there are no excuses, and if countless other people can solve whatever problem you believe you have, then you can solve it to.

Lefty voices don't think the Tea Party is Fox/Murdoch-sponsored: the belief if that Fox and the Tea Party itself are funded by corporations (that top 1% everyone's talking about.) The middle class wants a more responsible system that doesn't simply reward the rich by allowing them to get discounts based on their purchasing power, while the small startup or poor individual is forced into debt for not having the capital in the first place. Go watch Zeitgeist.

>> ^quantumushroom:

Now now, I believe there are many lefty voices who STILL accuse the Tea party of being Fox/Murdoch-sponsored.
Say what you will about Cain, but he's right on this: what do these people want? What do they want to achieve?
Sorry to poop in the punch bowl, but if you take any of these hippies and swap them with the guys in the skyscraper, they'll act exactly the same way and do the same exact things as the originals.

>> ^Sagemind:
This idiot thinks these protesters are organized as a scheme by a political party? - These protesters are a spontaneous uprising. They aren't uprising because they are jealous, they are protesting because they and the public were and are being shafted over and over by the elite wealthy without concern for those they step on.

It's cool and all, but isn't also a factor of hardware and what is in the "startup?" I feel like my pc booted hella fast when I first got it, but as you use it and add applications (skype, steam, etc) that start up automatically, the machine isn't really usable for a bit longer than it was when you first got it...

Wait, did he say the Mac II startup sound is a tri-tone interval? Sounds like a perfect fifth to me, i.e. C with G as opposed to a tri-tone interval of C with Gb.

Did I misunderstand him? I worked on the Mac II and IIfx for years and heard that tone a thousand times. I recall a discordant sound if you tried to boot the Mac with no memory or an incorrect memory configuration but that's the closest to a tri-tone that I can recall.

@visionep I come from a farm family in Kansas, so I'm a bit biased, but I tend to disagree with you on a few things. So upvote for your comment starting the discussion but here's my rebuttal --

1. "Not much" has the potential to be pretty good, considering that sources of ethanol are much more renewable than oil. Plus, a lot of the energy balance reviews of ethanol that I've seen or heard of talk about the input cost to produce the first gallon of fuel, ie. they include construction, fermentation tanks, etc. etc. That is fair, but it is worth noting that over the long term those startup input costs become less and less of a factor because the infrastructure already exists. The cost to refine the first gallon of crude oil into gasoline was higher than the bazillionth, also.

2. Some of the food production competition will remain long-term, and some is temporary. Right now in the US, we mostly use corn (field corn) to produce ethanol. Field corn can be ground into corn flour, but at least where I come from the majority of it went to feed lots to be used as food for beef cows prior to introduction of ethanol plants. Now, the produced corn is split between going to beef production or into ethanol.

Competition between beef vs. ethanol industries raised the price of corn some (both industries want that corn) which makes farmers happy. That in turn raised the price of beef a bit, but it didn't do much to prices for human-consumption food other than that, because field corn isn't used for that very much.

The reason that we use corn for ethanol now is that corn is plentiful; it is the major crop in my neck of the woods with wheat being the second but lagging far behind. Ethanol producers need something that ferments, corn fits the bill and is available. Minor crops like milo work basically just as well as corn, so if some weather event damages a corn field and it can be replanted with milo later in the season that is great for farmers because they now have a buyer that is willing to take milo.

In the future, we could use non-food cellulose crops like switchgrass for ethanol production, and the processing will only be slightly different. Switchgrass could be grown and harvested on land that is unsuitable for corn (corn does best with a lot of water), but there isn't a large supply of it right now because there hasn't been any demand for it historically.

So yes, there will always be some competition between what crop people decide to produce on a given piece of farmland, and that can affect food prices. But I think that over the long term, ethanol production could provide useful fuel that has positive benefits that outweigh impacts from potentially slightly higher food prices. Maybe. But then again, I am a biased source!

>> ^chilaxe:

I'm actually not in the corporate world but in Silicon Valley startups, which seems to me to be humankind's global capital for innovation. I think most people's dreams for what humankind can become will be possible, but only through technology.
Overall, it seems fair to say I'll probably contribute more than 100x to humankind than each of the experientialist friends I grew up with, who seek to follow their instincts for pleasure rather than reshape their instincts for productivity (contribution to humankind).


Setting aside the rather gross display of immodesty, you're making the pro-market argument that appeals most to a utilitarian like me -- it provides people incentives to channel their activities into work that is of benefit to everyone. The whole "invisible hand" argument.

My problem with that is that those incentives don't work, and are often too severe. Your "lazy liberal" friends still exist despite our largely Randian society (not to mention, I suspect they don't share your dim view of the state and quality of their life).

Markets provide much greater rewards to people who establish monopolies, defraud customers, and squeeze labor forces than it does to the professionals who develop the technologies that shape and reshape our world. It makes the concentration of wealth by any means necessary the highest cause of our society, and attempts to moralize all sorts of actions that would be considered grossly immoral in other contexts.

Like, say, soliciting young women to become prostitutes.

@longde @jwray @NetRunner

I'm actually not in the corporate world but in Silicon Valley startups, which seems to me to be humankind's global capital for innovation. I think most people's dreams for what humankind can become will be possible, but only through technology.

Overall, it seems fair to say I'll probably contribute more than 100x to humankind than each of the experientialist friends I grew up with, who seek to follow their instincts for pleasure rather than reshape their instincts for productivity (contribution to humankind).