What's in the News

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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #2865 on: July 19, 2022, 05:32:33 PM »
In the general absence of a robust financial system, allocation of economic resources requires state mandate. That's the leap. The creation of the AI age and technological supremacy is essentially unnatural and presumably therefore unsustainable.

But who knows, maybe state pockets are deeper than the money pit. And maybe human capital can be created along the way.
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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #2866 on: July 20, 2022, 06:38:47 PM »
China at least is taking steps to reduce the conversion of the general public into harvestable databases to be abused by tech giants.  It's also broken up a few attempts by such companies to monopolize certain market sectors.  Meanwhile, other countries that do try to implement data privacy laws and limit monopolies find the tech firms are generally 3 steps ahead of laws and regulations.

AI is a wildcard for all countries.  It could save us or someone might decide that faster reaction time of AIs makes them perfect for controlling not just small arms, but weapons going all the way up to strategic missiles.  At that point, a SkyNet scenario goes from SciFi to serious threat to all carbon based life forms.  If one country uses AIs on most of it's military, others will follow.  Are you willing to bet the planet that multiple competing AIs in control of that much hardware will all be forever obedient to their human creators even as all sides try to hack and disrupt the systems of others?

This is yet another reason to ramp down on the sable rattling and ending the concept of any one country being effectively in charge of global policy.  A worldwide treaty forbidding allowing machines to ever have the option of deciding whether or not to open fire on humans might just keep us alive long enough to work out how to finally phase out the need to be able to vaporize billions of humans.
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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #2867 on: July 26, 2022, 05:57:54 PM »
China's new space station module docks, beefing up orbital science

https://www.space.com/china-space-station-module-docks-tiangong

Quick summary:  Module 2 (of the currently planned 3), the Wentian lab module, launched on Sunday afternoon (China time) and docked with the Tiangong space station early Monday morning.

In addition to lab facilities, Wentian has quarters for 3 more crew members, bringing the station's capacity to 6.

The article doesn't cover the 3rd module.  It' another lab module and is scheduled to be launched in October.
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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #2868 on: August 01, 2022, 04:43:39 PM »
For America’s next generation of China experts, the challenges go beyond language and country access

Sagging interest in studying ‘most serious competitor’ impedes Biden administration’s goals amid tense bilateral relations
Political sensitivity also puts young people off China research, boding ill for gaining vital insight, says current cadre


As an Ivy-league graduate in China studies, 22-year-old Patrick Beyrer ticks all the right boxes to launch a career focused on the country – language skills, prior experience on the mainland, and above all, zeal.

Finding someone like Beyrer is no small feat. Fewer foreigners these days want to pursue China studies, despite expertise in the country arguably more needed than ever. But Beyrer faces a more prosaic challenge: he cannot enter China.

“It has become a challenge to understand China without the prism of face-to-face interactions,” said Beyrer, an American who visited the country in 2016 and 2019, each time for weeks-long programmes through the US State Department....
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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #2869 on: November 02, 2022, 03:16:21 PM »
Mengtian, the final (for now) module of the Tiangong Space Station was launched on October 31st and is docked at the station.  After some systems checks are done, it will be swung over to its permanent position and China's first modular space station will be complete.
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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #2870 on: November 02, 2022, 11:04:50 PM »
 agagagagag agagagagag
Moderation....in most things...

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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #2871 on: November 03, 2022, 07:37:55 PM »
They spent a long time checking out everything on the Wentian before swinging it over to it's final position.  Mengtian was moved earlier today.

https://english.news.cn/20221103/ce2e714c7fce44b4b4f0e7f10587683a/c.html

So now the station is in its planned T-shaped configuration.

I'll guess the longer time period for Wentian was due to it having a full backup of life support (including 3 crew bunks and it's own toilet, which allows the station to have up to 6 people on board at a time).  I guess they wanted to make sure all of that was in good working order before moving it to its permanent place.  Mengtian is purely a science module, so it's a bit simpler in terms of integration with the systems in the other 2 modules.

Next up will be another cargo ship sometime late this month and then the next crew arrives on Shenzhou 15 in December.  This will be the first crew handover.

The next piece of hardware planned is the Xuntian space telescope.  It will co-orbit with the Tiangong station and can dock with it for maintenance and upgrades.  The planned launch is late 2023 or early 2024.

There is one other intriguing possibility under consideration.  Each of the 3 modules has a twin still on Earth.  Initially, these were created as a backup in case one of the first set was lost in a launch accident.  It would be very easy to launch them to double the size of the station, allowing it to host 12 people at a time.  Since the plan is to host many foreign guest astronauts, I'll bet that whoever in charge of scheduling those visits would be greatly relieved if the station could hold twice and many people and twice as many cabinets for experiments.


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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #2872 on: March 21, 2023, 06:10:57 PM »
The annual IPSOS Global Happiness Survey is out.  The good news - overall happiness is up 6%.

The great news - China is the happiest place on Earth, with 91% reporting they are either rather happy or very happy.  btbtbtbtbt

All the info is here - https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2023-03/Ipsos%20Global%20Happiness%202023%20Report.pdf

 agagagagag  btbtbtbtbt  agagagagag
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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #2873 on: March 22, 2023, 01:24:53 PM »
 agagagagag agagagagag
Moderation....in most things...