pontifier

looks like a high voltage generator using capacitor plates similar to a Wimhurst machine.

It's a very real possibility. I believe this is the gunfire I heard: https://katv.com/news/local/pine-bluff-police-searching-for-...

This is one block east of my new warehouse.

I am making progress though. It may not be visible to users yet, but I'm actually starting to get the infrastructure set up to begin processing media at the new location, and am running for mayor with some ideas that should eliminate all crime here... If successful, I think it could bode well for the elimination of crime everywhere.

I looked to nature for solutions to predators. Predators and criminals need constant sources of food/targets, but Cicadas emerge periodically and overwhelm the predator population. During lean times, the predator population shrinks.

By periodically clamping down HARD, criminals will be forced to target riskier and riskier targets. Then the key is our ability to hunt. There is nothing humans are better at than hunting. We can hunt things to extinction, and criminal activity is no different.

Criminals that can't crime, will have to find other sources of income. If we set up easy sources of lawful income, they will move in that direction.

The choice for a criminal becomes starve, or change.

I truly believe that technology and fast responses can make the difference.

This is fantastic! I have been thinking about building something like this myself. I'm definitely going to deploy this in my area. I hear gunshots almost every weekend. Heard 2 sets of gunfire about an hour ago.

I lost a court case several years ago in Utah because the judge decided I was not a person. I was merely an individual.

Read this a long time ago, then re-read it a couple of years ago. They called the pods "stoners" and it made me laugh. Can't remember the name though. It must have been in a collection of short stories.

Edit... Found it for you:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sliced-Crosswise_Only-On...

I've been flying a lot recently, and have been thinking about why it is so slow to get off of a plane sometimes.

The majority of the slowdown seems to be from people who aren't ready to move down the aisle blocking those who are trying to go down the aisle.

If people would wait until a gap to enter the aisle to grab their bags the whole thing would go a lot faster.

In an emergency you're not supposed to grab your bags, but somehow I imagine this behavior to still play a role.

I started Crossies to solve this problem. My plan was to store physical media for people, and give them remote access. When I heard about Murfie shutting down 4 years ago, I couldn't let it happen and had to get involved.

I'm passionate about media ownership. When people question what I'm doing, wonder why anybody would want CDs, or tell me I should just give up, I think about all the transient services and missing media. I'm in this for the long haul, and I'm not going to give up. Media ownership means something, and I'm fighting to make it a reality.

Perhaps with that time dilation and the slow evaporation of the black hole, nothing ever enters the event horizon. The horizon would seem to retract away from you as you approached it until it was gone.

Side note, I watched this almost B movie called "time trap" and I feel like falling into a black hole would be just like the end of that movie. It really made me want to jump in a black hole.

That was about how much data Murfie had. Surprise Google cloud storage and egress costs were the final straw that broke the company 4 years ago. It wasn't economical to save the data when I took over, and Murfie still hasn't fully recovered (for multiple reasons).

Interestingly, I just found out a week ago that applications for new low power FM stations will be open from the 6th to the 13th of december. I'm thinking about applying as it's something I've been interested in forever, but never seen the window open.

https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/lpfm

I've bought at least five brother laser printers because I wanted one everywhere I go. They've all worked great except for the last one (HL-L2390DW). That sleep problem has caused me to consider other brands instead of just buying my default.

I'm betting lots of people haven't experienced this, because their old printers are still working great.

During an overnight power outage several years ago in Provo Utah, I was able to read a book near a window solely via light pollution from Orem Utah reflecting off of snow and low lying clouds. I wrote at the time that we might be able to solve the light pollution problem by showing that increased light pollution corresponds with lowered church attendance due to a decreased sense of wonder. Perhaps we can convince religious fanatics to rally against light pollution with the same sort of fervor that they use against abortion now.

I remember contacting them about 10 years ago... Can confirm it was way out of my price range.

I've been interested in book scanning for a while. I think I remember seeing your software! I built one of the early versions that I saw on the site, and then happened to meet Jonathon Duerig and do some waterjet cutting for him a few years ago.

When I saw the linear bookscanner the first time, I realized it was upside down. If it were suspended, and able to move itself, then all the issues about not knowing the mass of the book, and dealing with friction could be avoided. Counterweights could keep the force constant, and it would be moving a known mass when scanning any book.

Thanks, it's been incredibly frustrating dealing with this place. Pine Bluff is one of, if not the most crime ridden, corrupt town in the US. Some of the things they do just seem unreal, but there's a sort of learned helplessness going on. I didn't grow up here so the corruption rubs me the wrong way. I've had a lot of problems because I'm annoyed enough by the blatant thievery that I can't keep my mouth shut.

This is a topic close to my heart. As I fight to restart Murfie, my goal is to make physical media ownership the basis for legal digital access that can't be taken away by the whims of copyright holders.

I truly believe in this solution, and I'm not giving up on it yet, even though it's taken a LOT longer than I ever thought it could... by several orders of magnitude...

Back in around 2008 at the University of Utah I participated in a study someone was doing about detecting touches on any surface using a camera. When you touch a surface, the blood under your fingernails moves, and that movement can be detected with a camera and turned into a usable signal. I think they were even able to get force and direction as well. It was very interesting, but I haven't seen or heard anything about that method since.

I did, and still do, think it's a great idea.

This is similar to the vanity address generation for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency addresses.

This is the entire system including the facility, hundreds of miles of pipeline, helium rights for many helium producing wells, existing storage and delivery contracts, and 800 million cubic feet of helium.

A stockpile of 1 billion cubic feet of helium only is for sale as a separate lot: https://disposal.gsa.gov/s/property/a0Xt0000005z684EAA/feder...

The whole point is that if it's securely contained the alphas wouldn't penetrate the shielding around it. As long as that shielding is intact you're not getting any radiation dose.

A cookie would be bad because you're actually digesting it.

Beta or gammas are harder to shield.

For a long time I have had this idea of finding a radioactive decay chain that produces mostly alpha particles, then encapsulating it fully in an inert pill. My thought is that you could swallow these pills when climbing Everest, and these pills would just provide a little bit of heat continually, reducing calorie requirements on the mountain, and reducing a little of the strain on your body from having to produce that heat.

I don't know if this is feasible at all, but the idea keeps coming back to me.

There are so many people in things for a quick buck that people that truly care keep their treasures hidden.

Some meth head probably took the shelves to the scrap yard for a couple bucks after dumping the slides illegally by the side of the road somewhere.

This sounds like an amazing project, and the first 2 minutes of your stream had me hooked: "...I'm going to do it, because I said I was going to do it, and I have to!"

That's the spirit of perseverance in action!

Might take me a few days to watch the whole thing though, because I can tell I'm going to be trying this stuff myself as I go, and it's a pretty long stream.

The philosophy of identity is quite interesting to me. I've been thinking about it for a long time.

I like the idea of proof of personhood, and proof of location. These are both concepts that I have explored extensively. I looked at retina scans, and found it they're both not unique enough, and not secure enough to act as a basis for a currency.

My proof of location was based on the 500 mile email story. Many millions of round trips between two devices could allow someone to prove on a blockchain that two secret keys were stored arbitrarily close to one another for some amount of time.

The paper mentions key signing parties which I believe must be part of any web of trust that proves personhood. Proving uniqueness is more difficult. There's nothing that would stop me from having several different identities verified at different key signing parties, then using those to generate even more.

Using genealogy seems to be the only way to truly verify a unique identity if the system becomes widespread enough that parents often verify their children at birth. Then the age of the identity matches the age of the individual.

Farther into the future, the possibility of creating multiple copies of myself makes it much more difficult to tie an identity to a particular group of cells. There's nothing truly unique about a copy, especially if we have the ability to change our DNA.

Philosophically, I started to wonder if there's anything particularly special about any arrangement of cells. Maybe we should all just do our best, share resources, and create a society where abundance makes keeping track of all this stuff unnecessary.

Many years ago I hypothesized that foamed metal with a high pressure inside the cells might be useful as a strong but lightweight building material.

We really need to allow people to build their own houses again.

When I drink alcohol, I've found that it disrupts more recently evolved cognitive function before the older, more core regions.

I now use alcohol as a way to "call upon my ancient ancestors to guide my actions".

There's a pattern I've noticed of outsourcing code requirements. Most municipalities seem to adopt the international building code, and then because that code book is updated all the time, and none of the local officials actually understand it, they start to require that applicants prove that they meet the code. Planning commissions start to believe that they need to control everything that everybody does, but they shouldn't. Because everything is a shifting target, and proof is almost impossible, everything gets road blocked.

For the most part, I agree with building codes. They serve a purpose by ensuring that unsafe buildings aren't created. But they've become so esoteric, that meeting them is an exercise in futility.

I can't wait for the day that a "safe building" AI just watches everything, and tells people what to do. That way even unskilled labor can do work, and the work will be up to a safe standard.

Code officials are the worst sort of power tripping bureaucrats. I can't wait for them to be eliminated.

Location Location Location is not everything it's cracked up to be... or maybe it is. I moved to one of the cheapest places in the country a few years ago and I've been buying real estate like mad. Granted, the crime is horrific and most of the houses I've bought are dumps, but the price was so low!? I just don't understand what's going on here, and elsewhere. I literally bought a small house for less than $400. Not a great house by any means, but still... I feel like either I'm missing something, or everyone else is.

I'm doubling down too. If prices equalize even a little I'll make millions.

I have a cleaning technique I call ant mode. A colony of ants can accomplish a lot. They can move immense amounts of materials, and create well organized groupings of things.

In ant mode, I pick up one thing, and then I put it in a place it belongs.

If I don't know where it belongs, I put it down with something else of the same type. I'm only ever picking up one thing, I'm only ever putting it down in one spot. I envision myself becoming a colony of ants.

It's very helpful when moving lots of things from one spot to another, and I pretend that I am one of multiple ants making the same trip back and forth. It's surprising how effective it is because there's no thought required. No second guessing. There's no wondering what to do next, it's just pick up something out of place and move where it belongs.

The best thing about ant mode, is that I can stop anytime, and I've accomplished something. Things are better than I found them.