Peter Todd @pete@petertodd.org

Pro-tip: we have dug far more gold out of the ground than we have use for. The intrinsic value of gold is a tiny fraction of it's current value.

@doktorzhivago@liberdon.com by definition, yes: relative to Earth being on Mars is extremely high, so collecting them in person gets you extraordinarily high. So does martian soil.

@mithrandir They're very small, and they have been noticed for awhile. Scientists have been arguing about what they might be for some time, with many thinking they were just mineral deposits (there's no equipment on any of the Mara rovers that can directly measure the composition of these 2mm balls iiuc).

https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon-mars/a36356445/mushrooms-on-mars-nasa-photos-life-on-mars/

There's a small chance this is one of the biggest findings in scientific history: turns out there's things that look surprisingly like tiny fungal puffballs on Mars, and they seem to grow.

Also, there seems to be something that looks like fungal growths on on rovers. Which as the authors' point out, could easily be contamination from earth. Even that would be a finding with huge implications: life growing on another planet. Sure, life we introduced. But still!
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351252619_Fungi_on_Mars_Evidence_of_Growth_and_Behavior_From_Sequential_Images

The Babylon Bee Fact-Checks 10 Controversial Statements From President Biden | The Babylon Bee
https://babylonbee.com/news/the-babylon-bee-fact-checks-these-key-statements-from-president-biden

Fact check: the statements are all real. 😱

@verretor @flvc @s8n Not quite true: Newsome is probably going to be recalled. Though he might win that election.

@mir_btc When the #bitcoin price goes down, but you smile because you don't care 😎

Prediction: once they start forcing healthy children to get vaccinated against covid, the inevitable deaths from the vaccines get excused as acceptable in the name of health equity.

About 25% of black, and hispanic, children in the US are obese, vs 16% of white children, and 9% of asian children.

https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html

...and yes, I think the development of custom storage just for Chia would be a ridiculous joke in terms of environmental friendliness. Trading off energy consumption for energy consumption in disguise, plus a lot of e-waste, would not be a good thing.

Food for thought: since Chia's farming is a one time event, it may make sense to start building high density write once ROMs again.

You can buy 1TB microsd cards these days. That's far more volumetric density than a hard drive platter. IIUC part of why that's achievable is because these days flash chips have almost 200 layers on a single die; stacked dies have even more layers.

They're about an order of magnitude more expensive than hard drives. But maybe that can be reduced if write once.

https://youtu.be/Jh0tRdnXVDM

"Even though tuberculosis is believed to be the leading infectious disease killer cited by global authorities ... this South Africa’s study found 63 percent of decedents who were autopsied after receiving a tuberculosis diagnosis on their death certificate didn’t even test positive for TB by smear or culture. Whichever disease or situation that is killing the people falsely diagnosed with TB is not getting the research funding it deserves."

Just like covid...

https://americanmind.org/salvo/a-covid-death-the-bureaucracy-decides/

@lucash_dev I won't be surprised if viral vector tech gets banned after someone creates a deadly disease with it by accident.

Specifically, the particular strains used. Some strains of adenoviruses are common in humans. Others are not.

Remember that these carrier viruses are _not_ common in humans. Astra Zeneca even uses one that only infects chimpanzees naturally, and iiuc, the other adenoviruses used by other vaccines mostly infect non-human primates.

You have to use something uncommon, or otherwise the vaccine wouldn't work reliably due to people already having antibodies to it. Sputnik V actually uses two different ones, to make it less likely for the 2nd dose to be defeated by antibodies developed in the 1st dose.

https://zenodo.org/record/1229348

"Experimental infection with Ad5, Ad36, and Ad37 produced excess adiposity or weight gain in animals."

Good riddance. That's the type of carrier virus that almost all the non-mRNA covid vaccines are using. Ad5 specifically is used by the Sputnik vaccine for the 2nd dose. The same vaccine that Brazilian authorities found to replicate and possibly infect others.

Obesity is not something that would be easily caught in the short trials that have been done to date...

"Chia plotting relies on fast storage that can soak up almost exclusively intensive write activity. SATA SSDs aren’t really designed for this, but as we’ll see, they can handle this work. But it matters what drives are used, Chia plotting will destroy low-endurance, low-quality consumer SSDs."

Sounds like their "environmentally friendly" proof of work is a scam. Consuming energy is much cleaner than destroying hardware.

https://www.storagereview.com/review/best-budget-chia-plotting-rig