I can't believe you posted this. This problem and all others like it are unsolvable unless you make at least one not very logical assumption about the use of graphical symbols as variables and this guys solution makes an even worse assumption that side by side variables with no operand between them should be added rather than multiplied.

Crabs dont care. They lack the mechanism to understand their predicament. There is nothing inside a crab that could give informed consent.

Ducks are different, they might not be the cleverest dinosaur, but my guess is they would consciously avoid the slide if they had the choice. The crabs just apply chaos theory.

Informed consent in this case (the crab video) is the human consent that this is funny.

Bryce: Most humans like waterslides. Or pretend to like them (peer pressure). I hate waterslides. Unavoidable if you have kids though. All humans stop liking waterslides after a variable number of consecutive slides (in my case 0). Crabs dont care.

LOL I can't be a pig and Sarah Palin at the same time. Make up your mind

Those are all valid criticisms, but nobody apart from the flight engineers and test pilots truly know whether this plane is a lemon or not. If it does everything it's supposed to do, then it's exactly what the military asked for, just 10 years too late....

Any suitability and fit for purpose criticism that anyone has ever come up with for the F-35 also applies to just about any piece of military equipment that has been created in the last 70 years. Engineering is a balancing act, and an iterative process. Almost every aircraft, and vehicle in the military today was built to fight a soviet army. Luckily that never happened. But that means that most aircraft and vehicles in the military today have been grossly modified to make them fit for a different purpose. The F-35 will probably go through this as well over the next 30 years, because it's a normal part of the life-cycle of military equipment. Almost every plane dropping bombs now was previously designed as a fighter. But nobody ever calls them out for being mutants like they do with the F-35, they call it additional capability. The F-35 was born with these capabilities instead of being added over time.


Expensive: I'll agree. Could the money have been spent better else where? Definitely. You could argue that the cost is tiny compared to that of a full scale war, maybe F-35 is a good deterrent. Air superiority is the key to winning a war. If you're going to spend money then that's where it should be spent. When the oceans rise enough, is a country like Indonesia going to lash out and try to take land and resources for their civilians? Maybe. I doubt all 200 million of them will just stand there and starve. (Ok I'll concede, this does make me sound a bit like Palin. But hopefully not as dumb )
They could have probably made 3 different stealth planes for 1/2 the cost, but that has it's own strategic downsides. You have to have the right assets in the right places or you have to spread them quite thinly. With a multi-role plane you have all of the capabilities everywhere. Just a matter of a loading it with different weapons.

Not needed: Time will tell whether this is the right plane, but new planes are needed. And they absolutely must have stealth. Within 10 years, weapon systems will be so advanced that if you are spotted, you're as good as dead. We are currently dropping bombs on fairly unsophisticated enemies, but wars tend to escalate quickly. You just never know either way, and it's better to be prepared for the worst. There are plenty of countries with very good planes and pilots that could get sucked into a conflict. If you're really unlucky you could be fighting US made planes with pilots trained in the same way, and you don't want to be fighting a fair fight.
Further still, Russia, China and Japan are developing their own stealth planes, which pretty much forces everyone else to do the same thing.
Especially if Donald Trump gets elected. You never know who that crazy asshole is going to provoke into a war

Doesn't work: It's still in development and testing.

Overtasked: It does the same stuff the aging multi-role planes (that were originally built as fighters) do. With the addition of stealth, and better weapons/sensors/comms. Small performance variables don't win wars, superior tactics and situational awareness does.

Underpowered: Almost every plane ever built has had it's engines upgraded to give it more thrust through it's life. And engines on planes are almost a disposable item, they're constantly being replaced throughout the life-cycle of the plane. Like a formula one car.
The current engine, is already the most powerful engine ever in a jet fighter. It is good enough to fly super sonic without an afterburner, which none of the planes it's replacing are capable of.

Piloted: Agreed. But who knows, maybe a Boston Dynamics robot will be flying it soon

Test Failing: That's only a good thing. You want things to fail during tests, and not in the real world. Testing and finding flaws is a normal part of developing anything.

Fragile: That can be said for all US aircraft. They all need to have the runway checked for FOD, because one little rock can destroy even the best plane. Russian aircraft on the other hand are designed to be rugged though, because they're runways are in terrible condition. But in reality, all sophisticated equipment needs constant maintenance, especially when even a simple failure at 40,000 feet becomes an emergency.

Quickly Obsolete: Time will tell. Perhaps it would have been better to keep upgrading current planes with more technology like plasma stealth gas that make then partially stealthy, better sensors and more computing power. But by the time you've done that you've got a plane that's as heavy as F-35 anyway, and not as capable. Although it might have been cheaper in the long run.

Like I said in my previous comment. All of this doesn't make an interesting story so you'll only ever hear the two extremes which are "the plane sux" vs "it's invicible!!11" depending on your media source.

it's probably worth noting that 'broken back' isn't a medical diagnosis. There are a whole range of injuries that could potentially fall into that category with damage to the spinal coord being the most serious. A fractured vertebra/pedicle or a popped disc can have complications including sciatica and variable paralysis of a nerve root which may fully resolve with time and or surgery.

In this case, you can see in the preview she is sitting on the side of the pool with her spine taking the whole weight of her torso/head - so i'm not sure what the 'reduces forces on her bones' means.
While this type of exercise offers fantastic rehabilitation I wouldn't want people to think that you could dump Christopher reeves in there and cure his ailments!

Australia has a pretty variable climate too. The best wines are often from years that the vines were stressed, so yields are lower but the resulting wine has more character. There also seems to be an odd year/even year variation here.

Another way stressed vines make more interesting wines is if they are infected with Botrytis fungus. This reduces the yield, and as it tends to kill yeast it makes wine making harder, but the result is a more intensely flavoured sweet dessert wine.

I think it would be hard to find a control group of modern people who *don't* get the "proper daily amount" of most vitamins; or at least the "proper daily amount" times 7 each week. Ie., maybe there are people who live off of hot pockets and potato chips for a few days at a time, but eventually they are going to go out and eat something that coincidentally contains plenty of the vitamins to cover for the days that they were eating the modern equivalent of hardtack.

Not that it couldn't be done, and not that the results wouldn't be interesting -- maybe getting trace amounts of vitamins daily really would have better long-term health effects than getting larger amounts of vitamins every few days or once a week. But it would be *really* hard to accurately pare down a study to that single variable.

On a side note not dealing with the particulars that started the conversation.

Whats a choice and what's a need can be argued forever depending on many variables and from whose perspective. When is something a need and not a choice, and need for who. Where is the line drawn.

I wouldn't be surprised if everyone here actually feels pretty much the same, but the words just got in the way

While the camera wouldn't get that kind of sound recording, you can easily record a piano like that with close micing. You stick the microphones inside the lid, down near the strings. It gives a very wide, expansive, soundstage. Here is an example of one kind of setup like that.

However it has a downside: It picks up more of the piano's noise, in particular hammer and pedal noise, as well as key noise. Those are the noises you hear, particularly when he starts working the pedals hard.

In terms of his key movements being sync'd to the music, they look sync'd to me. That kind of thing isn't that useful for evaluation because there are too many variables that can affect it:

1) The sync of your system. Your sound system and monitor have a delay to them. Depending on the difference in the delays, things can be a bit out of sync, perhaps noticeably so. Unless you have your system calibrated for it, which isn't likely on a computer.

2) Problems in the A/V sync in production. Something like this would probably be recorded with two devices: A hand held camera, and a dedicated recorder. The audio from the recorder would then need to be sync'd manually with the video. Depending on how accurate that is done, there can be some desync.

3) Sync issues in the video. I'm sure you've seen plenty of videos online with sync issues, various problems in encoding and streaming can cause them.


Not saying that this is real for sure, I don't know, just that I don't see or hear anything inconsistent.

Certainly variable friction there. I've no idea if it would be in the range we'd need for something like this.

Sadly, it doesn't sound like something a home hobbyist could do much with...yet. Give 3D printers a few more years, and we might be able to try this out.

You know what would be less stupid, and (I think) quite a bit of fun? Variable friction wheels! I've no idea if there's a technology to do it, but imagine something like a throttle control that increased or decreased the friction as desired. Then you could track just as little as you needed to drift around that corner.

Agreed on most points. This one is pretty variable though.

For the next decade or two, prosthetics will continue to be sub-optimal replacements for human limbs and only used in cases of extreme trauma. I think these will continue to be the preserve of the rich (they pretty much already are in terms of 1st vs 3rd world).

Eventually, we will get to a point where prosthetics are actually better than the equivalent human limb. That's several decades away IMO (accurate control is doable, but getting to the point of have a prosthetic that relay sensory information is a Really Hard Problem).

At that point, I think we'll very quickly see adoption of prosthetics become mainstream, but it will still be geared towards the relatively wealthy (see present day adoption of smartphones).

But once you get to that point, even the most basic model prosthetic will outperform a human limb. I believe it's almost certain that these kinds of limbs will be "smart", i.e. instead of accepting simple commands from the brain of "contract tricep", "grip fingers", etc, you'll see an arm that draw a perfect circle. And they'll be stronger than a human arm almost by default (not picking up cars strong, support structures aren't there for that, but certainly stronger than an olympic athlete)

So either way, I still don't think we'll see a "prosthetic underclass".

So if someone is gonna make a simulation of the universe..

It would likely be some Fermi Lab scientist who wanted to study the Big Bang.

They would reverse engineer the expansion of the universe as much as possible..

[ a thing that's already been done and being tweaked to get even better Planck length "resolution", as it were ]

And once they got the best estimations..

Would dump all those rules and variables into a quantum computer and run sim after sim, checking to see WHAT HAPPENS AT THE END!

Much like The Game of Life sim developed by mathematician John Conway.

@robdot

You're either trollin' or just real thick.

Yes, the simulation could in start an arbitrary place.
Yes, the devs could pre-programmed our knowledge of historical events.

That's besides the point, you're missing the point.

One philosophical tool we humans use to analyze the world is called - Occam's Razor.

Meaning, hypotheses that are overly complex should be simplified to their bare minimum in order to draw the best conclusions.

You COULD make a simulation with pre-programmed historical events.. and procedurally generated galaxies..

but that's even complex than simply setting up a few simple rules and variables.. and letting that simulation play out.

THE EVEN MORE GLARINGLY POINT THAT YOU KEEP GLOSSING OVER is..

It's much more likely that any civilization advance enough to create such simulations...

Would probably be extinct or too busy living in utopia to do so.

AGAIN, a point the author of the video concede MANY times.

Yes, you did say all that, but you also said none of that is a problem, at least not one to be really worried about. To me, that sounds a lot like climate change denial 3.0, where 1.0 was 'it's not happening at all, don't panic', 2.0 was 'it's happening, but it's natural and normal, don't panic' and 3.0 is 'it's human caused, but no problem, don't panic'. All of those are arguments designed to stall, not to be correct. If I'm reading you wrong, I apologize, but I've heard that argument before from those definitely in that camp.

If the IPCC says it won't be disastrous, yes, we would disagree, because I say it already is, and so have they in their summaries of their last few reports. Just abnormal drought alone is disastrous in many places worldwide already, as is increased flooding in some areas. I did not read the entire PDF's, only what you quoted because they were only linked as downloads/files, and I don't download files from sites I don't recognize.

I linked the first google search pages that came up with water/glacial data, not the other dozen that said the same, or near the same thing, not the NOVA on glacial retreat that said the same thing, not the movie on the same topic with photographic proof of the retreats-Chasing Ice. You ignored that they did list their source for the 2/3 of Chinese cities low on water and the 50% loss of glacial mass per decade as the Chinese military and claimed they were source less so easily dismissed.
As for the diatoms and shellfish, I've seen numerous studies on them, and again just grabbed the first one that came up in a search with data. You seemed to dismiss it as well, but it's not alone. In one snail study I saw, the woman said the last few years it had become nearly impossible to get measurements because the snail shells literally turn to paste in her fingers and weighed nearly nothing! I'm glad to read now that you don't disagree that it's an issue, you only think it's not severe?

I'm not holding my breath on fusion or fission, we've heard the 'we're only 5 years away from fission/fusion' line before about as often as 'Iran is only 2 years away from having a nuclear bomb', but we can agree on wind and solar, except I say it is great for base load, you just need to pair it with micro hydro storage (pump water uphill with surplus solar/wind, then run micro hydro at night). Small solar/wind also decentralizes production, safeguarding from terrorism, and is quite cost effective. Mine paid for itself in well under 10 years.

My issue with your position is that what we do today just with CO2 production reduction won't really effect the atmosphere for 20-200 years (the accepted lifespan of 65-85% of atmospheric CO2, the remaining 15-35% takes thousands of years to be trapped) and that's only IF the ocean CO2 sink continues functioning, so we're already well past the point of avoiding moderate climate change. Without quick action, feedback loops like methane and/or ice sheets melting make the problem exponentially larger and difficult/impossible to manage at all. It may already be too late even if we cut to zero CO2 tomorrow, but it's certainly too late to avoid more, massive, unsolvable global issues if we don't even mitigate them before 2050.

Let's not get into the quagmire of global dimming from sulfur in coal actually mitigating a large part of expected global warming by reflecting sunlight. I've yet to hear a plan or study involving that variable.

This is why I love Trader Joe's... they have a lot of decent wines in the $5-10 range. I've definitely had really good bottles of wine I've bought directly from wineries in Napa or Napa #2 - Paso Robles... but if I'm buying off a shelf in a store there really is no reason to shell out that sort of cash, too many variables.