When all these technologies are in place, what will we need the people for?
We are already seeing serious issues for low-skilled labor. And of course, the official “unemployment rate” is a lie.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
The Sunk-Cost Fallacy
…in love, and automobile manufacturing.
This is a big problem for space enthusiasts. “Oh, we can’t cancel SLS/Orion! We’ve already spent so much on them, all that money would just go to waste!”
Well, since the purpose was really never anything except to maintain the work force, it wouldn’t really have gone to waste, and continuing them would waste even more, if our actual goal is to do useful things in space. We need to cut our losses as soon as politically possible.
New Computer Question
She kind of likes the Linux set up, but she really doesn’t want to give up things like (and this is an immediate issue), Turbotax. From what I find in searches, it doesn’t seem to play well with Wine, but it might be OK if I ran it in a virtual Windows machine. But don’t I still need to buy Windows in order to set one of those up? And is there an advantage to running it in a VM, other than not having to reboot into the OS?
Chelyabinsk
Two years later, how much progress have we made? Not enough, I think.
Computer Problems
Welp, Windows (7) isn’t happy with the computer upgrade. It keeps running start-up repair, but it never boots.
[Update a while later]
It occurred to me that Windows might not have liked the BIOS settings. So I went into it, and found something under “Advanced” that enabled it for Windows 8 (which I was planning to upgrade to, anyway). When I did that, it told me that the graphics card was incompatible with that setting. So I pulled the card, and am running directly off the mother board. But now when I try to boot, it dumps me into an EFI shell…
[Update a few minutes later]
Well, this doesn’t seem to be an unusual problem…
I tried moving the SATA port of the hard drive, but no joy.
[Evening update]
Well, isn’t this wonderful. I now have a computer that wantonly destroys USB drives.
[Update a minute after I typed that]
OK, it didn’t destroy the drive. It just made it take a couple minutes to recognize it. I guess that’s not quite as bad, but it still isn’t bootable.
[Late-evening update]
OK, now seriously, it is wrecking flash drives. That’s the second one today. I copy a bootable ISO to a drive, it doesn’t boot, then no other computer can even see the drive. That’s two. Today.
A Space-Themed Amusement Park
…in Israel?
No First-Stage Landing Today
The weather at the landing site isn’t acceptable. Look like only chance of demo’ing the landing on this mission is if it gets delayed to February 20th or beyond.
[Update shortly after launch]
All seems to be nominal so far, a few minutes after a beautiful sunset launch.
[Update a couple hours after launch]
SpaceX reports that the rocket came down vertical within ten meters of the virtual target. IOW, the landing probably would have worked if not for sea state.
Computer Upgrade
I just went from a 3.8 MGHz to 4.1 MGHz processor (A10-6800K), and doubled memory, from 8 GB of 1366 to 16 GB of 2133. The difference in performance is amazing. Mostly due to memory, I suspect (the only difference in CPU is the slight percentage increase in speed). Now to go put the old CPU and memory in her machine, which will be an upgrade for her Windows system.
[Update a few minutes later]
I’m sure the fact that the OS is on an SSD doesn’t hurt, either.
[Update late afternoon]
Oh, goody. In order to give her computer the new CPU/memory, I have to change the motherboard out, too, but the HP Pavilion case doesn’t seem to have cables marked. Sigh.
Wolves
How they change rivers.
The Stratolaunch Hangar
A first look.