In this context I believe 'computer' refers to only general purpose computing devices, not fixed function calculation machines.

In some sense, early player pianos (IIRC with holes in paper that controlled key presses) weren't computers, but were a related precursor technology / infrastructure.

I agree about nearly all of this, but in my fantasy I think the 'unsafe' library should be how to break the abstraction layer and adjust things directly when a good language model isn't provided.

JSON's just a nightmare though. The inane legacy of UCS2 / UTF16 got baked into Unicode 8, and UTF16 escapes into JSON.

I would like a revision to bitfields and structs to make them behave the way a programmer things, with the compiler free to suggest changes which optimize the layout. As well as some flag that indicates the compiler should not, it's a finalized structure.

Suckers Buckers seems safe enough for work to say on a text only Internet thread. Just don't read it aloud.

Cyclical markets are the sort of thing 'National Strategic Reserves' should address...

Am I crazy for wanting this to be in Full ECC RAM modules suitable for composition into many device factors with hope that we'll finally go to reliable memory for all markets as a result?

The problem is that the cycle time is about the same as the generation time. By the time the current cycle completes, we'll be on DDR6/HBM4.

ID should be something the government provides to everyone "for free" (for taxes already paid, by all taxpayers).

That way anyone and everyone should be expected to have an ID and depriving someone of that ID or their use of real ID could be made a crime similar to unlawful detainment.

Though it lacks in the headlines, my preference is to send the robots first to bootstrap local production. Unless we really screw up the worst case would be some extra garbage to clean up for future missions, and the best case is any sort of increase in local production capacity.

Why though? That’s the interesting part. Pioneers want to be there to experience the challenge of bootstrapping. It’s the whole point.

It’s like saying “why climb Everest? We can send a drone up instead.”

If you're climbing Everest, sure. If you're settling a new world, building a place to live with an economy, then the easier the better.

Right, and now that "climb Everest" is past the "pioneer" stage, what does it look like?

Trash, exploitation and littered with corpses.

So? People still want to climb, and if they want to risk their lives, they can.

Yeah, unlike you I'm not a fan of trash, exploitation and corpses littering the ground.

Fine as long as I don't have to pay for it in taxes.

Nobody is asking you to.

People are asking my elected representatives to, and if those reps say yes, then I have to help pay for it or risk going to jail.

The current Mars movement is NASA-independent. We only need FAA authorization to launch, that is all. It's 100% privately funded.

Then I'm fine with it. Thanks for your patience with my ignorance.

Yeah that makes sense, especially these days. Even Zubrin's original Mars Direct plan sent a methane factory ahead of the people.

Most future space exploration will probably be robotic, just as it is now.

Got any guesses about energy used for propulsion, cooling solutions (energy used for them as well as overall capacity), communications and how those might degrade over time in a real environment rather than just academic theory?

That's not even considering the increase in exposure to radiation outside of the Earth's atmosphere (absorbing materials) and weakened at distance protective EM field.

Yes, and my desktops utilize ECC too for that reason. I only lack ECC in the places it's really difficult to avoid that tremendous drawback.

E.G. a Steamdeck is or smartphone are both relegated as toy devices that are not for serious computing.

Same, but I also discovered a wonderful bonus in the difference between True ECC DDR5 and just the on chip BS stuff.

ECC DDR5 boots insanely fast since the BIOS can quickly verify the tune passes. This is even true when doing your initial adjustment / verification of manufacturer spec.