People dont want feature x (AI). They want problem(s) solved.

"they spun out a brand new intelligence agency, classified its very existence, and spun out operations on that side for years before CBO caught on." - Do you have any details on this? Super interested in this.

“ factor. People had babies when they didn't have fresh food, running water, or even homes. Certainly far worse lives than we have today.”

And cheap, reliable, birth control.

Thats enough to put a fully loaded Abrahams tank (with crew) into orbit…

Being a fan of railways, I tend to compare to electric locomotives. The heaviest Vectrons are about 90 tons, and they would fit into the payload bay:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectron_(locomotive)

Now that would be high-speed rail.

I think a steam locomotive would be even cooler - first steps to Galaxy Express. ;-)

For example 2 of the legendary JGR Class 8620 (nicknamed hachiroku) Japanese steam locomotives could be comfortably launched to orbit in 90 tons. :)

Why not a whale to make the Douglas Adams trope a reality?

Not again...

It's an Abrams tank.

An Abrahams tank would be one designed to carry the Holy Hand Grenade.

:)

Looking at the recent world developments, we seem to be in the stage of Abrahamic missiles already.

Matt is such an interesting character; he once had a foot issue that he fixed with a wooden insole.

Fun fact about Matt, he built a great compression algo as well.

Maybe that's what I enjoyed about the old-school ultra crowd -- they were a bunch of unpretentious geeks with day jobs, doing outdoor stuff as a serious hobby rather than a calculated bid for attention and sponsorship. You can still find them, but you have to look harder.

I'd like to second the request to be able to manually set your max heart rate. I do a lot of zone two training, but my max heart rate is much higher than the allowable calculations.

Hi I updated the app now there is a "Manual option for max heart rate" and even "Manual zone bound settings" feature now. Hope that gives you the setting flexibly you need. Thanks

I wonder if this explains why Prometheus Fuels decided to do methane…

Probably. Methane is easier to synthesize than fuel alcohols, and has better synergy with existing infrastructure (dead simple, highly responsive gas plants don't care where their fuel comes from, after all - they'll just take the cheapest option.)

I still don't understand why ore dug up out of the ground and made into steel is more effected by this than this steel. (Edit, made into steel, not iron)

Steelmaking is the combination of iron ore and carbon (from coked coal) with huge amounts of forced air or direct oxygen to form the alloy of carbon and iron we call steel.

One notable form of radioactive contamination is Carbon-14, which is what makes radiocarbon dating after ~1950 unreliable. Though of course since the carbon in coal is itself primordial, that isn't the principle route of steel contamination.

Best I can make out it's radioactive isotopes in the air itself which increase the radiation background of post-WWII steel, with several sites mentioning Cobalt-60. Substances used in the post-smelting processing of steel (welding rods and the like) may also introduce contamination.

Given the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty which has halted most atmostpheric nuclear testing, radiation levels have fallen to the point that current steel is largely similar to pre-WWII "low-emissivity" steel in terms of background radiation.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel>

When you turn iron ore into steel with blast furnaces and steel making (e.g. basic oxygen process) you blast it with atmospheric air (or oxygen made from atmospheric air), and tiny amounts of impurities in the air (such as fallout from atmospheric nuclear testing) get embedded in the steel.

Yes, this is the same air you're breathing. No, the levels are not high enough to be a health issue. But it's an issue for very sensitive scientific instruments and such.

Also to note that, in theory, you could use purified oxygen for the forging and create new steel similar to low-background radiation steel, but it would be ridiculously expensive given how much oxygen is used.

It's because the smelting process introduces a lot of isotopes into steel when you make it.

I assume that they find big pieces of already smelted steel in the ocean and just grind away the rust / mill it into the shape they want.

mostly because steel is used for things like particle accelerators that are understandably very sensitive to contamination - as a sibling comment noted this is not much of an issue anymore.

That's the why, not the how.

The how is impurities from the air are introduced during the forging process (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessemer_process / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_oxygen_steelmaking), not the mining process.

The real question here for the author is: What are the three banks that you now use? We use high availability and redundancy for everything else, why not business?

Mercury, Meow Schwab chase (remaining personal account)