--- Day changed Tue Aug 12 2008
01:06 < fenn> oblivierra seems like a half-cooked "millenial project" (LUF)
01:07 < bkero> Does it even have a domain anymore?
01:08 < fenn> uh, i mean the atacama desert colony, not the mmorpg
01:09 < bkero> I see.
01:10 < fenn> i'm reading logs from a couple days ago
01:10 < bkero> Google fails me.
01:10 < fenn> http://heybryan.org/chats/chats/agaboogamonger_Mar5th02005.html
01:10 < fenn> probably not all that interesting
01:11 < fenn> one problem with these self-sufficiency projects is they always consider the 'unit' to be geographically located, but the real world provides different environments that are conducive to different activities
01:12 < fenn> and so humanity has ended up with trade
01:12 < kanzure> plastic from silicon or something silly like that
01:12 < kanzure> actually it was from algae IIRC
01:12 < fenn> nothing wrong with that, but you have to consider the reasons behind it
01:13 < fenn> is it worth trying to make your own plastics?
01:13 < fenn> what is the cost in freedom vs the cost in labor
01:13 < bkero> Depends on what your goal of civilization is
01:13 < fenn> (freedom from mail order catalogs and UPS)
01:13 < bkero> If you're content with an agrarian society I'm sure it's not too difficult if you chose the right location.
01:14 < fenn> right now the US is finally taking a look at this sort of question re: oil
01:15 < bkero> The extreme left responds to "We're fucked" reports.  Everyone else tends to ignore them.
01:16 < bkero> Until it starts to very quickly change the country to third world status. ;)
01:16 < fenn> even george W bush says the US needs to break its dependence from foriegn oil, so i wouldnt say it's the extreme left
01:16 < bkero> Then everyone else tries to find some other reason for it happening, because "We told you so" is too embarrasing.
01:17  * kanzure glances at the screen to his immediate left ... still scrolling with papers.
01:17 < kanzure> :))
01:19 < bkero> "We have a problem with our dependency on foreign oil.  Clearly the problem isn't with our land yachts and lack of foresight retarding environmental regulation and > 6000lb vehicle 80% tax treaks.  It has to do with everyone else in the world using more, not us.  This problem has not existed until now, everyone else was just waving flag for the wrong culprit."
01:20 < kanzure> if I was more energetic at the moment I'd go into a spiell about recursive publics and fully surveying available resources before exponentially cancering yourself
01:21  * bkero is using no oil besides what it takes for my good to get to the grocery store
01:21 < kanzure> doesn't matter ... dependency loops.
01:21 < fenn> if i could, i would.. that's why i'm joining the raelians to get the first shot at cloning! :) </sarcasm>
01:21 < bkero> Yup
01:21 < kanzure> dependency-loops, not a statement that they do loop (of course they do, but no)
01:22 < kanzure> we've been able to clone for a while though
01:22 < kanzure> so why join them?
01:22 < fenn> who's we?
01:22  * bkero bicycles and drives an electric car. :)
01:22 < fenn> afaict even the raelians havent cloned anyone
01:22 < kanzure> we = everybody but me, in a lab
01:22 < kanzure> ah, well, people
01:22 < kanzure> ok
01:23 < kanzure> I'm assuming the SCNT diff between hu/sheep/ape is minimal
01:23 < kanzure> the technique has to be roughly the same
01:23 < kanzure> except perhaps chemical prep work
01:23 < fenn> has anyone succeeded in cloning sheep/ape that isnt all old and fucked up?
01:24 < kanzure> http://home.cfl.rr.com/chaosdriven/references.html
01:24 < kanzure> hm
01:24 < kanzure> mice?
01:24 < bkero> Least fucked up big cloned thing I've seen was probably a frog back in the 70s.
01:25 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/transhuman/cloning/
01:25 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/transhuman/cloning/RefSalSCNT.zip
01:25 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/transhuman/cloning/CRi%20SCNT%20Full%20Protocol%20Final.pdf
01:25 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/transhuman/cloning/Enucleation%20Rhesus%20Monkey%20MPEG4v2.avi
01:25 < kanzure> etc.
01:25 < fenn> but.. are they viable?
01:25 < fenn> dolly was as "old" as the original sheep
01:25 < kanzure> check out the zip file 
01:26 < kanzure> lots of awesome references with links to pubmedcentral
01:26 < kanzure> the dolly problem was largely because of tolemerase
01:27 < kanzure> 'Cloned creatures are cloned from diploid cells (2n) and when they divide (those diploid cells) they produce an organism exactly like the cells that they came from. In order to produce Dolly the sheep, it took over 4000 individual nuclear replacements of the cell - 
01:27 < kanzure> to get them all to divide the same. Insert references to the Alien movies. Don't see Alien versus Predator - horrible. The problem with cloning is that it is a very inexact science. In order to get one good Dolly sheep it takes many thousands of attempts.'
01:27 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/school/Biology/notes/output.html
01:27 < kanzure> 'Cholesterol-based hormones (steroid hormones) are rapidly absorbed in muscle cells and many other cells. The positive effect is that they turn on genes for proteins to be built, but the problem is that it wears out the division mechanisms like with Dolly that caused increased aging rate.'
01:28 < fenn> sometimes you really do behave like a HMM robot
01:29 < kanzure> Dolly related:
01:29 < kanzure> http://www.mblwhoilibrary.org/services/lecture_series/campbell/bibliography.html
01:29 < kanzure> http://www.ncseonline.org/nle/crsreports/03Apr/RL31211.pdf
01:29 < kanzure> Who to blame for Dolly: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/biosciences/anphy/lookup/lookup_role.php?id=NjA0MjI0&page_var=publications&pubs=all&unit_id=
01:29 < kanzure> (his email address and such)
01:29 < kanzure> Wasn't there that dog cloning organization from the early 90s?
01:30 < kanzure> Some rich guy's dog was going to die, so he hired a team of 10 men to clone the bitch.
01:30 < kanzure> quite literally.
01:30 < bkero> haha
01:30 < bkero> There are a lot of businesses out there that preserve dogs DNA to be cloned when it's economically viable.
01:30 < fenn> can i get my dog's brain frozen?
01:31 < kanzure> there was an article on this in the toolkit
01:31 < bkero> It's not the freezing that kills the cells, it's the thawing out :P
01:31 < kanzure> oh, wait
01:31 < kanzure> no
01:31 < fenn> uh, no it's the freezing
01:31 < kanzure> omg omg omg
01:31 < bkero> o?
01:31 < fenn> it's the crystals, man!
01:31 < fenn> oooo
01:31 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/docs/cache-index.txt
01:31 < kanzure> Bioelectric discharges of isolated cat brain after revival from seven years of frozen storage.pdf
01:31 < kanzure> ok, found it
01:31  * kanzure feels better.
01:33 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/~bbishop/docs/Bioelectric%20discharges%20of%20isolated%20cat%20brain%20after%20revival%20from%20years%20of%20frozen%20storage.pdf
01:33 < bkero> SCIENCE!
01:33 < kanzure> :)
01:34 < kanzure> hm, pdx.edu
01:34 < kanzure> that's where nchaimov is
01:34 < kanzure> why isn't he in here?
01:34 < kanzure> oh, heh. he's the one who retrieved the file for me. :)
01:35  * bkero is in portland too
01:39  * kanzure is more worried about the artificial wombs .. cloning seems ok so far, but these damn tanks seem to mutate the cargo
01:40 < bkero> Why not just use real wombs?
01:40 < bkero> Seems optimal for nutrient delivery. :P
01:40 < kanzure> bkero: Suppose you were using a von Neumann probe and flying across the galaxy.
01:40 < kanzure> Assume cryonics isn't working out too well (oops)
01:40 < kanzure> you'd have to have live supplies of women and their "real" wombs
01:41 < fenn> artificial womb needs an artificial heart, glandular system, kidneys, etc etc
01:41 < kanzure> as if the fact that it's attached to women makes them any more real, except in that we currently have them I suppose
01:41 < kanzure> artificial womb is just a tank sort of
01:41 < kanzure> let me get the Kuwabara refs
01:41 < kanzure> close but not it: http://www.uni.edu/~maclino/cl/skinner_baby_in_a_box.pdf
01:41 < kanzure> http://www.amazon.com/Ectogenesis-Artificial-Technology-Reproduction-Inquiry/dp/9042020814
01:41 < fenn> they dont have to be 'real' kidneys, just something that performs the same function. but kidneys seem like an efficient use of space and energy to me
01:41 < bkero> fenn: You merely need to produce the outputs of those. :P
01:42 < kanzure> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13418180.400-japanese-pioneers-raise-kid-in-rubber-womb-.html
01:42 < kanzure> there we go
01:42 < kanzure> http://www.amazon.com/Ectogenesis-Artificial-Technology-Reproduction-Inquiry/dp/9042020814
01:42 < kanzure> http://www.babytron.com/
01:42 < kanzure> http://www.geocities.com/placenta_rb/Biblio.html
01:42 < kanzure> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/22/neggs122.xml
01:42 < kanzure> http://www.aec.at/festival2000/texte/nobuya_unno_e.htm
01:42 < kanzure> http://www.mindfully.org/Technology/2005/Faking-Babies-Reproduction19may05.htm
01:42 < kanzure> http://www.eshre.com/CM.NET.WebUI/CM.NET.webUI.SCPR/SCPRfunctiondetail.aspx?confID=05000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000029&sesID=05000000-0000-0000-0000-000000002074&absID=07000000-0000-0000-0000-000000014605
01:42 < kanzure> http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19526146.200&feedId=online-news_rss20
01:42 < kanzure> for bonus points, the second one is the raelians :)
01:42 < kanzure> (babytron)
01:42 < kanzure> More: http://www.nrlc.org/Killing_Embryos/ArtificialWombs.html
01:42 < kanzure> http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/eBook1011.htm
01:43 < fenn> i find it curious that the only people publically advocating human cloning are UFO kooks
01:43 < fenn> why is this a taboo?
01:43 < kanzure> hm
01:43 < bkero> Can't we just have organ sacs for the purpose of feeding the fetus?
01:43 < kanzure> bkero: What?
01:44 < bkero> Autonomous sacs of organs for an artificial womb. :P
01:44 < kanzure> fenn: maybe it's because nobody has actually seriously proposed some projects or something ... something nonprofit would be needed methinks
01:44 < kanzure> bkero: Maybe. There's the tissue engineers that we could go abduct and have them make those 'sacs' you're talking about.
01:45 < bkero> fenn: It's taboo because it raises all sorts of ethical questions by people who don't understand science, but question what kind of rights it should have, and if it has a 'soul'.
01:45 < kanzure> I've always wanted to try 'exploded organism emulation' via having mostly biological components except separated by long distances with networking hardware of some sort or another in between, just so that it could all be modular and stuff. ;-)
01:45 < kanzure> why are 'rights' even a question ?
01:45 < kanzure> is that the right question to be asking?
01:45 < fenn> why would DNA makeup have anything to do with whether it has a soul?
01:45 < bkero> Could I clone myself for a housemaid?
01:45 < kanzure> I dunno, could you ?
01:45 < fenn> your clone would grow up just like any other baby
01:45 < kanzure> wrong question ;-)
01:46 < fenn> you can name your kid 'ben' but that doesnt make him the same as you
01:46 < kanzure> hint of angst there ?
01:46 < bkero> True, but could you breed 'subhumans' with less rights?
01:46 < kanzure> there's a scale of rights ?
01:46 < bkero> There used to be.
01:46 < bkero> And there still is in a portion of the world.
01:47 < kanzure> And how do you map genome to this scale ?
01:47 < fenn> they already did that in america in the 1800's
01:47 < fenn> no cloning needed
01:47 < kanzure> I don't know what 'subhuman' means :-/
01:47 < bkero> Subhuman is more of a social distinction than a biological one.
01:48 < bkero> See: Eunechs
01:48 < fenn> what do you call a human with less performance, ie the opposite of transhuman
01:48 < kanzure> "Control, an illusion, and order our comforting lie; Through chaos, from chaos, into chaos we fly."
01:48 < kanzure> human with less performance
01:48 < kanzure> but you see, that's kind of assuming there's a performance thingy
01:48 < kanzure> erm
01:48 < bkero> Could it be a human with less value?
01:48 < kanzure> "better human" and "worse human" just doesn't make sense to me. It's the same reason why GPA doesn't make sense.
01:49 < kanzure> value to *who*? 
01:49 < kanzure> It's context-dependent, remember.
01:49 < kanzure> *you're* the one making the value judgment
01:49 < kanzure> (or somebody else yelling at you)
01:49 < fenn> quality of subjective experience?
01:49 < kanzure> ?
01:49 < fenn> say i'm blind and deaf and numb and hate my life, obviously my subjective experience is of a lesser quality
01:49 < fenn> OR IS IT!
01:50 < kanzure> I don't understand.
01:50 < kanzure> are you asking me to tell you that I'd kill you or something ?
01:50 < fenn> i'm slightly undecided, but i think it's OK to argue that lesser subjective experience means that your life is inherently worth less 
01:50 < bkero> kanzure: If he were that disfunctional, he would be of little value to society, however his quality as a human could be great.
01:51 < fenn> i dont mean value as in what sort of contributions i can make
01:51 < kanzure> this problem space is confusing and sucks
01:51  * kanzure ignores it.
01:51 < bkero> Heh
01:51 < fenn> because eventually we will all be obsoleted by AI
01:51 < bkero> As soon as singularity bootstraps itself.
01:51 < bkero> I'm waiting it any day now.
01:51  * kanzure points out that we're probably the bootstrappers sort of
01:52 < kanzure> if you looked at exp.html for instance.. it's one of the lazy projects we've been kicking around for a few months
01:52 < fenn> kanzure: i got in an argument with an economist once
01:52 < kanzure> how'd you survive?
01:52 < fenn> er, something like that
01:52 < fenn> not a real economist, just someone who thought he was one
01:53 < fenn> anyway
01:53 < fenn> the argument was about how much your life is worth
01:53 < fenn> he said that you could determine what monetary value the person placed on their life by measuring risks and the amount of money put into reducing those risks
01:54 < bkero> You know you're right that my eyes sort of glazed over when reading that
01:54 < bkero> Er, I'm not entirely sure that's accurate.
01:54 < bkero> That's assuming risk reduction is the primary goal
01:54 < fenn> say you are a thug, with 50% chance of getting killed tomorrow
01:55  * kanzure hates the concept of 'risk'
01:55 < kanzure> procto knows :)
01:55 < kanzure> and probability
01:55 < fenn> you could buy a gun for $100 that would reduce your risk of dying by 50%
01:56 < fenn> you could buy another gun for $1000 that would reduce your risk by 99%
01:56 < fenn> so, assuming you have $1000 and dont buy the fancy gun, you can estimate the value you put on your life at somewhere between $50 and $1000 right?
01:57 < fenn> blah
01:57 < bkero> That's not even fallacious, that's just dumb.
01:58 < fenn> it's dumb because people have an invincibility bias, they dont believe they can die
01:58 < bkero> fenn: I don't know about you, but I'm not going to die.
01:58 < fenn> well, i'm not dead yet am i?
01:58 < bkero> But do you think you will?
01:58 < fenn> i dont know, i'm death-agnostic
01:59 < bkero> http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging.html
01:59 < fenn> yeah yeahh your're preaching to the choir
01:59 < bkero> :P
01:59 < fenn> anyway the whole point of this was that weiwe should value human life insttrinissically
02:00 < fenn> intrinsically*
02:01 < fenn> but then saying "human life" is sort of arbitrary, so i've generalized it to subjective experience
02:01 < fenn> for all the fuzzy bunnies and whales and dolphins and robots
02:01 < bkero> Although I have to say that in an appropriately welfared society, we wouldn't have to put any surmountable amount of money into life extension.
02:05 < fenn> "I don't worry about the ethical problems. I just want to rescue the fetus where it is impossible to be rescued by present treatment"
02:05 < fenn> sad state of affairs
02:06 < fenn> hey kanzure we could lobby conservative anti-abortionists to develop artificial wombs, the rationale being that unwilling mothers wouldnt have to kill their fetuses
02:07 < bkero> Is the state going to pick up the bill for them? :P
02:08 < kanzure> not bad
02:08 < fenn> no, the rich religious nutjobs would
02:08  * kanzure recently met Aubrey in person :)
02:08 < bkero> You can't get rich religious nutjobs to pay for anything besides their 44,000 sqft creationist museum in kansas.
02:09 < fenn> bkero: then they could see the reality of the cost of bearing a child, and the guilt would be on them for not contributing, see?
02:09 < bkero> Guilting rich republicans, I like it.
02:09 < fenn> "you murderer, sending this innocent fetus to its death!"
02:09 < bkero> Of course they're simply going to claim 'its not a child'
02:09 < fenn> now if only i could figure out how to apply this to space development
02:09 < fenn> but they can't claim it's not a child
02:10  * bkero met burt rutan 3 years ago. :)
02:10 < bkero> fenn: They could claim it's not human because it lacks a soul(somehow)
02:10 < kanzure> who's burt?
02:10 < kanzure> the mothers would argue otherwise
02:10 < fenn> bkero: its not a cloned fetus, just a regular aborted (or would-be aborted) fetus
02:10 < bkero> He designs ultralight aircraft, and spaceshipone
02:10 < fenn> raised in an artificial womb
02:11 < kanzure> bkero: ultralight, like scramjets? http://heybryan.org/mediawiki/index.php/Scramjets
02:11 < fenn> not ultralights, homebuilt small airplanes
02:11 < fenn> you need a pilot's license of some sort to fly the *EZ
02:11 < bkero> fenn: I get that, but they could claim that it has neither a nurturing mother or father, it's a humunculous
02:12 < fenn> wtf the whole point of pro-life is that the fetus is worth saving
02:12 < fenn> the mother wants to kill it
02:12 < bkero> My ex girlfriends father has an ultralight in his garage.  I helped him cut the styrofoam, vacuum bag it, and assemble it.
02:13 < bkero> We built one of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-EZ
02:14 < fenn> cool, that's my favorite homebuilt design i think
02:14 < bkero> Hehe, it's what john denver died in
02:14 < bkero> Burt Rutan basically wrote ALL the books on experimental aircraft.
02:14 < fenn> yeah i read the report, it was stupid
02:14 < bkero> I'm a member of 2 EAAs.  The Electric Auto Association, and the Experimental Aircraft Association
02:17 < kanzure> bkero: I'll be over in 10 hours
02:17 < bkero> The aerodynamics of the Long-EZ are such that it's the same as pushing a 2sqft block through the air
02:17  * kanzure wants to see.
02:17 < bkero> haha
02:18 < bkero> I don't actually own the plane.  I'm way too fucking poor.  I'm still getting a pilots license.
02:18 < fenn> i have a hard time understanding why planes cost so much
02:18 < fenn> they're very simple
02:19 < bkero> Because they're made of composites, which don't have cheap manufacturing processes.
02:19 < bkero> You can roll steel and stamp aluminum
02:19 < fenn> that's not true, cessna's are made of stamped aluminum and are just as expensive
02:19 < bkero> You have to mold styrofoam then lay fiberglass on both sides of that, then epoxy it, then seal it in a bag, and run a vacuum to remove excess epoxy.
02:20 < bkero> Cessnas also demand a price premium, you pay for their product marketing.
02:20 < bkero> They're also not 'experimental'.
02:20 < fenn> experimental or not, airplanes are expensive
02:21 < bkero> Yea, those long-ez's are $35000 :/
02:21 < bkero> Because they require a substantial bit of engineering? :P
02:22 < bkero> A piece of shit will roll, but a piece of shit won't fly.  That's why engineering on planes is infinitely better than cars.
02:22 < fenn> $35k isnt too bad, that's about what someone would pay for a car
02:22 < bkero> Finished in 1985
02:22 < bkero> Then again, nobody has built substantially better planes since then. :/
02:22 < bkero> For fuel mileage, the Vari-EZ still holds the record.
02:23 < fenn> but i'm talking to these aero-engineers who make $100k/yr and can't afford to fly
02:23 < bkero> They use fucking air-cooled Beetle engines.
02:23 < bkero> (and get better mileage than the beetle)
02:24  * fenn ponders a turbo diesel homebuilt
02:24 < bkero> airplane or car?
02:24 < fenn> airplane
02:24 < fenn> i'm interested in using a turbo diesel as the generator for a serial hybrid car tho
02:25 < bkero> http://www.deltahawkengines.com/journa00.shtml
02:25 < bkero> Already been done
02:25 < fenn> hard to find small high efficiency diesel engines for cheap-ish though
02:25 < bkero> http://www.evxteam.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2&Itemid=25
02:25 < bkero> Not if you tear them out of old VWs. ;)
02:26 < bkero> Electric motors are up to 98% efficient.  Gasoline/diesel motors are up to 26%
02:26  * kanzure sleeps
02:26 < fenn> VW engine is too big
02:26 < fenn> big engine == car bullshit
02:26 < fenn> you end up designing the car around the engine
02:26 < bkero> Riding lawn mower?
02:28 < fenn> hmm that "hybrid supercar".. what were they thinking? couldnt afford supercapacitors so they tried to use lead acids instead?
02:28 < bkero> Supercapacitors don't story energy for very long. :/
02:28 < bkero> They dissapate really fast.
02:29 < fenn> it says their batteries didnt provide enough power
02:29 < bkero> lol
02:29 < procto> kanzure: I don't hate concepts :> though there are concepts that I hate seeing implemented
02:29 < bkero> Lead acid batteries are really good at discharging TONS of amps at once.
02:30 < fenn> but not enough for this supercar, apparently
02:30 < bkero> The only thing that's gotten close is LiFePO3, and that's about 12x as expensive.
02:30 < fenn> what about NiCd?
02:30 < bkero> Nope
02:30 < fenn> seems to me that batteries shouldn't be used for power buffering
02:31 < bkero> NiCads discharge at about 0.75C.  That means if it's a 12v 2000mAh battery, it the maximum that it can discharge is 24W
02:31 < bkero> Er, 24 * 0.75
02:31 < bkero> Batteries are used for power storage, capacitors are used for energy storage.
02:32 < bkero> Capacitors discharge on their own significantly faster though.
02:32 < fenn> uh, express that in SI units please
02:32 < fenn> "Batteries are used for power storage, capacitors are used for energy storage."
02:33 < bkero> Capacitors are great at being charged very fast with a lot of electricity.  They can also discharge equally quickly, but they don't store it that well.  Think of how you're supposed to wait 5 seconds after you shut your computer off to turn it back on.  That's the caps discharging themselves.
02:34 < bkero> Batteries are the exact opposite.
02:34 < fenn> that's a resistor across the capacitor terminals dissipating the energy stored in the capacitor, it's a safety feature
02:34 < fenn> the capacitor doesn't have any internal leakage (not nearly as much as a battery anyway)
02:35 < bkero> But if I go and charge a capacitor to however many farads it's going to hold, and measure the wattage in there after 1 second, it's going to be significantly higher than 1 minute.
02:35 < fenn> not true
02:36 < fenn> and your units are all wrong
02:36 < bkero> Which unit?
02:36 < bkero> (s)
02:36 < fenn> if you charge a 1 farad capacitor to 12V it will stay at 12V for a very long time
02:37 < bkero> But if you put a known load on it, it can sustain the load longer if it was just charged
02:38 < fenn> if it was charged recently you mean?
02:38 < bkero> yes
02:38 < fenn> basically you are arguing that the equivalent parallel resistance of a battery is higher than a capacitor
02:39 < fenn> why oh why is this data so hard to find
02:42  * bkero shrugs.  I've had this conversation before with people asking about superconductors as a remedy to the problem of charging electric cars.
02:43 < fenn> "The self-discharge of the supercapacitor is substantially higher than that of the electro-chemical battery. Typically, the voltage of the supercapacitor with an organic electrolyte drops from full charge to the 30 percent level in as little as 10 hours.
02:43 < fenn> Other supercapacitors can retain the charged energy longer. With these designs, the capacity drops from full charge to 85 percent in 10 days. In 30 days, the voltage drops to roughly 65 percent and to 40 percent after 60 days."
02:43 < fenn> so, i was wrong. sorry 
02:43 < bkero> S'no problem
02:43 < bkero> I'm surprised to see it that high though.
02:43 < bkero> THey'd be really good in electric dragsters. :)
02:44 < bkero> "Look how many amps i can dump!"
02:44 < bkero> I've thought of picking up some supercapacitors, they're about $200 on digikey iirc
02:46 < bkero> 100F 2.7V are $15.
02:46 < bkero> I'd need 14 of them to power my bicycle
02:47 < fenn> ESR is a critical parameter
02:47 < bkero> 10 mOhm
02:48 < bkero> Is that the rate of dischareg?
02:48 < bkero> *discharge
02:48 < bkero> (or internal resistance)
02:48 < fenn> its resistance
02:49 < fenn> hmm that could work
02:53 < bkero> F=(A*sec)/V
02:53 < fenn> at 8kW total you'd dissipate 400W in the capacitor
02:54 < fenn> but 8kW isn't a steady state condition so it's sorta hard to estimate heat sinking requirements
02:54 < bkero> It disappates as heat, and 400w is a shitton of heat
02:54 < fenn> and also you have to consider the thermal conductivity of the insides of the capacitor
02:54 < bkero> 400w would be doable by a really big heat sink.  My processor does about 210w
02:55 < fenn> also, you'd only get 20 sec of "thrust"
02:56 < bkero> Which is plenty for a dragster, but not so much a car. :P
02:56 < fenn> ya
02:56 < fenn> but you said bicycle so i assume there's some kind of regenerative braking
02:56 < bkero> Nah, I'm using a cheap motor.
02:56 < bkero> I'm using 2 36v 15Ah batteries, an ebay 750w motor, and a MY1020 750w motor
02:57 < bkero> *ebay controller
02:57 < fenn> then why use supercaps at all?
02:57 < bkero> I hadn't looked into that very much
02:57 < bkero> To put a really fat back tire on the bike and do burnouts
02:57 < bkero> Although supercapacitors would be excellent for taking regenerative braking
02:58 < fenn> well 750W isnt enough to do burnouts :0
02:58 < bkero> Priuses should use it for regen. :/
02:58 < bkero> It is on a tiny skinny bike tire. 8)
02:58 < bkero> 745 watts = 1 horsepower
02:58 < bkero> 1 horsepower and < 100lbs
02:59 < fenn> i think i've seen remote controlled cars with >1hp
02:59 < bkero> 1 horsepower will get me up to around 22-30mph depending on if it's completely full or half empty
03:00 < bkero> Voltage drop on lead-acid batteries is aboslute shit.
03:00 < fenn> use a boost converter? eh nevermind
03:00 < bkero> I'd like to replace this pack with lithium ion cells, but that's expensive AND NOBODY MAKES BATTERY HOLDERS FOR THEM!!!!
03:01  * bkero ordered a 10 pack of 18650s on ebay last week to replace the ones in his aging iBook.
03:02 < fenn> i just never unplug my laptop
03:02 < bkero> That's pretty bad for the battery.  I've ruined 2 in my powerbook that way
03:02 < bkero> If you never unplug it, I'd recommend taking the battery out.
03:03 < fenn> why?
03:03 < bkero> Battery chargers(even smart ones) maintain float voltage on the batteries.
03:03 < bkero> They burn off the top electrolyte
03:08 < bkero> The battery on my macbook is 9 months old, and the battery holds 5091mAh.  The battery was originally rated for 5020mAh.
03:08 < bkero> It has 300 load cycles on it
03:09 < fenn> remaining capacity:      299 mAh
03:09 < fenn> it seems to cut that number in half each time i run on battery power
03:09 < fenn> that's "fully charged"
03:10 < bkero> errr
03:10 < bkero> What's 'original capacity'?
03:10 < bkero>  / design capacity
03:10 < fenn> i think 2000-3000, not sure how to find out
03:10 < bkero> cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state
03:11 < fenn> present:                 yes
03:11 < fenn> capacity state:          ok
03:11 < fenn> charging state:          discharging
03:11 < fenn> present rate:            800 mA
03:11 < fenn> remaining capacity:      299 mAh
03:11 < fenn> present voltage:         12330 mV
03:11 < bkero> Hum, strange.
03:11 < bkero> Look up your model laptop on google. :P
03:11 < bkero> 300mAh is staggeringly bad though.  My 2005 iBook is at 72% original capacity, and goes up to 3100mAh.
03:12 < fenn> i'm sorta wondering how it comes up with that number
03:13 < fenn> looks like it was probably 3600mAh
03:13 < bkero> The ACPI controller on your motherboard shows it to the bios
03:16 < fenn> i want a laptop that takes AA batteries, is that so hard
03:16 < bkero> It's entirely doable.
03:17 < bkero> You'd need 16 AAs to get a decent sized laptop battery
03:18 < fenn> that's about the same as what's there now
03:18 < bkero> The Li-ions in there now are 3.7V * 2000mAh
03:18 < bkero> That's what's been used in laptops for the last 5 years or so
03:19 < bkero> AAs can't be recharged that many times. :/
03:19 < bkero> Sorry, rechargables are 1.2V.  You'd need 20 to get a decent sized battery
03:20 < fenn> what do you mean 'decent'?
03:20 < bkero> Would last more than 1.5 hours
03:20 < bkero> At 1.2V you'd need 10 to get up to 12V.  Then you have 12V * capacitory of a single cell
03:21 < bkero> Put 2 of those strings in parallel and you have 12V * double the capacity of a single cell
03:21 < fenn> ok, so NiMH AA batteries are like 2600mAh = 3.25hr
03:21 < fenn> at the 800mA which i'm currently using
03:22 < bkero> NiCAD AA's are 650-800mAh
03:22 < fenn> but i dont need nicad
03:22 < bkero> If you use NiMHs you can get them 1300-2850mAh
03:23 < bkero> Good laptops will typically draw around 18W
03:23 < bkero> So if you have 2850mAh * 12V, that's 34.2 Wh
03:23 < fenn> i guess my laptop sucks then because it's using 10W?
03:23 < bkero> Are you sure it's using 10W?
03:23 < fenn> no
03:24 < fenn> that's just what acpi tells me
03:24 < bkero> 10W is pretty good
03:24 < bkero> Then theoretically a single string of the highest capacity AAs you can find would make it last for 10/34.2 hours
03:25 < fenn> uh, what?
03:25 < bkero> Your laptop is consuming 10 watts per hour
03:25 < bkero> If the battery is 34.2 Wh, that's 10/34.2 hours it'll last
03:25 < fenn> 34.2 watt*hr/10watt = 3.42hours
03:25 < bkero> Sorry, yea
03:25 < bkero> Other way around
03:26 < bkero> Hooray checking for feasability.
03:26 < bkero> 4 hours on 10 AA's isn't too bad
03:26 < bkero> My laptop is using 1487mA at 12.371mV
03:27 < bkero> 18.4 watts :/
03:29 < bkero> 20 AA's would be a nice auxilery battery pack though. :)
03:48 < bkero> What do you think of Human completion?
04:10 < fenn> human completion?
04:11 < fenn> "Human Completion Project" can be considered as the main theme of Neon Genesis Evangelion.  <-?
04:12 < bkero> There's that interpretation
04:12 < bkero> NGE was actually the human instrumentality project
04:12 < bkero> But it seems the idea is sort of the same.
04:12 < bkero> What do we do when we complete what it is we're supposed to do
04:13 < fenn> i've never seen NGE so it don't mean much. i know they diddled with genetic engineered humans some
04:13 < fenn> bkero: then logically we're "supposed" to "become complete"
04:14 < bkero> What does that entail though?
04:14 < fenn> you tell me
04:14 < bkero> I'm asking :P
04:14 < fenn> you want me to tell you what to do?
04:14 < bkero> I'm just asking what do you think that humanity will do once it's completed it's goal.
04:14 < bkero> Or once it's reached completion.
04:15 < fenn> well, that's making a lot of assumptions that i dont agree with
04:15 < fenn> 1) there is a goal
04:15 < fenn> 2) humanity is a unit
04:15 < fenn> 3) we will become complete at some future time
04:16 < bkero> It might be trascendence.
04:16 < fenn> according to the gaia hypothesis we're seeds
04:16 < fenn> but i think living on planets is stupid, so where does that leave me?
04:17 < bkero> The ISS?
04:17 < bkero> Metaphysical planes?
04:17 < fenn> heh
04:17 < bkero> Not living?
04:17 < fenn> ever heard of an o'neill cylinder?
04:18 < bkero> nope
04:18 < fenn> not living is another option, but doesn't mean much until we can define 'life'
04:18 < fenn> well, there are many different designs for space habitats, o'neill just happened to have the right sense of grand scale and aesthetics
04:19 < bkero> organic objects that grow through metabolism and reproduction :P
04:19 < fenn> nonsense
04:19 < fenn> life is DNA based cells, until further notice :)
04:21 < bkero> Life is a condition. :P
08:06 < bkero> Went to this talk this year: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7595610388533039169&hl=en
08:15 < nsh> hmmm
08:15 < nsh> i has apparantly missed a lot of teh talks
08:15 < nsh> too tired to read buffer though
08:15 < nsh> summaries?
08:17 < bkero> Used an EKG to pause space invaders when their heart rate got too high.
08:18 < nsh> biofeedback-assisted dissociation, hmmm
08:19 < bkero> It was a pretty basic demo, but it got the point across.
13:05 < elias`> kanzure: what do you use for reading RSS feeds? I find RSSOwl pretty nice, except it takes a noticeable amount of time to switch between feed items (about one second on average it seems)
13:18 < nsh> what rss feeds you subscribe to?
13:18  * nsh has never gotten around to using rss
13:24 < elias`> me? I'll get a few random samples..
13:26 < elias`> 'Onionesque reality', xkcd, slashdot, overcoming bias, some machine learning related things, biosingularity, etc.
13:27 < elias`> I never got around to using mailing lists though, although I'm slowly trying to get into using some.
13:30  * nsh nods
13:31  * nsh has a kanzure-bot to discover and categorise pertainent and interesting informations :-)
15:40 < kanzure> elias`: akregator
15:43 < kanzure> the people I was staying with in California compulsively checked overcomingbias.
15:43 < kanzure> overcomingbias is Eliezer's filter for brilliant teenagers to work on his FAI problems
15:43 < kanzure> (he said so to me)
15:48 < nsh> meh
15:48 < nsh> Eliezer wouldn't know brilliant.. etc.
15:51 < kanzure> sensei asked me whether or not Eli was as far gone as we had feared, and I answered, "No, Eli is just fine; it's the people around him that are lost." (seriously - these guys are addicted to his adhoc morality stuff)
16:00  * bkero uses Mail.app, or some command-line rss readers. :)
17:51 < kanzure> oh, from biobarcamp
17:51 < kanzure> somebody suggested the idea of using biocatalyzed motors
17:51 < kanzure> secretion of some sort of sticky locking mechanism 
17:51 < kanzure> it was just an idle, undeveloped thought of course
17:54 < kanzure> also, Joseph Jackson and Guido were suggesting the use of ATP left over from PCR to indicate whether or not the reaction worked - in situations where you can't quite run an entire gel.
17:56 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/~bbishop/docs/David%20Yu%20Zhang%20-%20Engineering%20entropy-drive%20nreactions%20and%20networks%20catalyzed%20by%20DNA%20-%20Entropy_2007-1.pdf_%5bR4iNbb%5d.pdf
17:56 < kanzure> everybody-but@ellingtonlab.org just sent that out
17:56 < kanzure> David's apparently giving a talk later this month at the lab
17:56 < kanzure> seems to be from Winfree's lab.
19:02 < ybit> kanzure, did you ever decide to join the startup focusing on web software for futuristic scenario prediction?
19:03 < kanzure> they haven't decided to do a startup
19:08 < kanzure> haha
19:08 < kanzure> the longevity research guys want to know what my "motivation" is
19:08 < kanzure> "uh, not dying?"
19:08 < kanzure> anyway, anybody have some ideas on image processing libraries? imagemagick seems to be conversion-centered
19:09 < kanzure> I was thinking of writing my own bitmap array of sorts and just doing some calculations as to the distance between two nonwhitespace pixels or something
19:09 < kanzure> but I'm sure somebody has a better way of abstracting components of images or something ..
19:09  * kanzure leaves for a bit
19:26 < bkero> gd
19:26 < bkero> imagemagick and gd are the image processing applications for linux
19:27 < bkero> It really depends on what sort of processing you want to do.
21:57 < kanzure> bkero: I want to extract figures and tables from PDFs.
21:58 < kanzure> especially in the case where they are just images
21:58 < bkero> kanzure: pdf2ps, and you can probably grab them from the PS's easier.
21:58 < kanzure> yeah, but the whole page is a damn image
21:58 < kanzure> I need to separate the blocks by whitespace
21:59 < kanzure> or something
21:59 < bkero> oh my
21:59 < bkero> I don't know if any OCR software is gonna help you there
21:59 < bkero> Whoever turned it into the PDF must have done something strange.
22:06 < kanzure> don't need OCR
22:06 < kanzure> just need the block 
22:07 < bkero> post it online?  Lemme try my tools
22:08 < nsh> what's the sitch?
22:24 < kanzure> bkero: post what online?
22:24 < kanzure> any typical paper
22:24 < kanzure> :)
22:24 < kanzure> so try something from http://heybryan.org/docs/neuro/
22:24 < kanzure> or http://heybryan.org/~bbishop/docs/
22:24 < kanzure> or http://heybryan.org/gitweb.cgi and browse the tree for a few seconds
22:25 < bkero> lolgit
22:25  * bkero downloaded the first doc in /docs/neuro
22:30 < kanzure> bkero: Any ideas?
22:30 < kanzure> I was thinking of doing it via searching for blocks that have 20 px of white space between it and some nonwhitespace.
22:30 < bkero> It seems the full version of acrobat can extract iamges
22:30 < bkero> File->Export->Extract Images as
22:31 < kanzure> sigh
22:31 < kanzure> some PDFs have the entire page as an image though
22:31 < bkero> I haven't got much else though, sorry
22:31 < kanzure> as a baseline we just assume the entire page is PNG or JPEG or something
22:31 < kanzure> and if it isn't, we just convert it into it via pdf2ps and then some 'convert' line or something
22:31 < bkero> Then you are going to have to do some image analysis, and I've never done that before.
22:32 < kanzure> Hm.
22:32 < kanzure> any libraries?
22:33 < kanzure> or any search queries, rather? I keep running into imagemagick :)
22:33 < bkero> gd
22:34 < kanzure> sure, I remember using gd to construct images in php
22:34 < kanzure> back in the day.
22:34 < bkero> Indeed
22:40 < nsh> what you trying to do?
22:42 < bkero> Extract graphics from PDF files
22:43 < kanzure> actually
22:43 < kanzure> the whole page is assumed to be a graphic
22:44 < kanzure> so just "chunks" of the file that are clearly not connected
22:44 < kanzure> i.e. 20 px separation
22:48 < kanzure> I guess I can just go use the 'fill' features or something
22:48 < kanzure> from paintbucket
22:48 < bkero> Sounds like huag hack
22:48 < kanzure> I just need to figure out a way to isolate sections of images that are surrounded by a certain number of a certain color of pixels
22:48 < kanzure> yep
22:56 < kanzure> grr, nature is still being a whore
22:56 < kanzure> Can anybody tell me how long it takes to get http://www.nature.com//nature/journal/v206/n4987/pdf/206865a0.pdf and then http://www.nature.com//nature/journal/v206/n4987/pdf/206874d0.pdf ?
22:57 < bkero> Nature's hosting sucks balls.  They should be open source, then we can host them.
22:59 < kanzure> heh :)
22:59 < kanzure> so you get the same results?
23:00 < kanzure> I mean, an obviously way too long time in between the downloads?
23:00 < kanzure> Earlier it was one paper per second.
23:00 < bkero> wget is timing out
23:01 < kanzure> hahah
23:01 < kanzure> yep
23:01 < kanzure> 501 Gateway Time-out errors
23:01 < kanzure> so they've just decided to shoo us all I guess
23:02 < elias`> I received them almost instantly, although I only probably got some pages telling to log in.
23:02 < kanzure> hm
23:04 < kanzure> so then is it just me?
23:04 < kanzure> bkero ?
23:04 < bkero> nature dns round robins to 69.22.138.40 and 69.22.138.74
23:04 < bkero> Nope, wget is still tmiing out
23:04 < kanzure> nature dnses to 170.224.106.77, 74.203.241.34 and 74.203.241.10
23:04 < kanzure> so why is it different for both of us?
23:05 < bkero> Because we're coming from different places?
23:06 < elias`> Resolving www.nature.com... 213.155.158.32, 213.155.158.58
23:06 < kanzure> wtf
23:13 < kanzure> so uh
23:13 < kanzure> suggestions?
23:14 < bkero> Tell nature their shit si broken
23:14 < bkero> I'm leaving in 15 minutes to hit the fitness center here.  My fatty ass is going to ride a fake bike for a while.
23:15 < kanzure> but if I call them then they might know it's me
23:15 < kanzure> I mean, the massive download happening 5 minutes after a call goes through telling them that they are broke?
23:15 < kanzure> eh
23:15 < kanzure> heh
23:15 < kanzure> I need to call Nature from a pay phone
23:15 < kanzure> bwahah
23:21 < bkero> Tell them you're mirroring it FOR SCIENCE
23:21 < kanzure> Hahah.
23:21 < kanzure> "What, our competitors?"
23:21 < kanzure> (Science Magazine)
23:22 < bkero> yea
23:25 < kanzure> I'm sort of surprised they caught me
23:25 < bkero> They probably didn't
23:26 < bkero> Their shitty server probably just broke
23:33 < kanzure> Hm.
23:33 < kanzure> I guess.
23:33 < kanzure> since it's the same for you or something
23:33 < bkero> Yup
23:33  * bkero goes to the fitness center, then home.
23:38 < kanzure> How could it be their servers? Every 2 min I'm getting a paper. That looks like rate limiting to me .. or something.
23:38 < kanzure> maybe they did this for everyone ?
23:38 < kanzure> I've never seen this sort of server behavior before.
23:44 < kanzure> odd seeing so many papers about the USSR
23:44 < kanzure> in Nature.