Looks like an interesting software project, bringing powerful and cool libraries to the arduino ecosystem.
Too bad they chose the "let's make a redundant copy of the pi zero-w (or another 10k boards out there) without any actual application specific hardware" model of monetization.
This is really a software project, and the people doing it are looking to sell hardware to fund the development?
Hey exoesquitur, thanks for your comments. This is imake from the Elk team.
We did actually think of building Elk as a pure software project, but we opted not to because we didn't find hardware that we could use that would provide the 10x better embedded blockchain development experience that we want to deliver.
We wanted something that's breadboard compatible, 3.3v and 5v tolerant, integrated emmc preloaded with our OS, plug-and-play as a regular micro controller board not a single board computer, an RGB LED for indicating status, and no irrelevant and unneeded ports (HDMI, Audio, Ethernet, camera, etc).
Additionally, building out our own hardware paves the way for us to add hardware security in future iterations of the board.
We'll be adding more details and shedding more light into our development experience in upcoming blog posts. Please subscribe at https://elk.cc to learn more.
Happy to address any other concerns you might have.
Yeah, so much more powerful..... And sooooooo much more challenging to secure. At least with microcontrollers, you (can) lock down execution of arbitrary code almost entirely, because Harvard architecture.
I think the magnitude of the difference between the opposing parties is a lot greater when it comes to comparing humans to an alien civilization capable of projecting some force light years away from their home in a reasonable amount of time.
It's more like neolithic man meets nuclear submarine... but worse. We have 0 tools at our disposal to fight anything that's farther away than the edge of the atmosphere. "They" can take a few decades to accelerate a really massive "civilization ending" object and slam it into us. It's not like we can go anywhere to avoid it.
Why do you assume these UFOs reached the Earth in a "reasonable" amount of time? The possibility that they were roaming the space for hundreds or even thousands of years before reaching our planet is as reasonable as any other.
Even if an alien civilization finds our planet, I don't see why that would imply we are inside their logistic operational range.
To me, many worlds + time (as an inviolate observed vector) being merely a consequence of our inability to observe without moving foreward in time based on our entropic process driven cociousness, seems by far the most comprehensive explanation of observable phenomenon.
That observational uncertainty increases as the probability of direct interaction decreases (distance, time) strongly supports the hypothesis that observable phenomena are dictated strongly by the presentation and characteristic relationship of the observer to the phenomenon.
We know on the micro scale that all possible states exist simultaneously.
It seems logical, even axiomatic then that on the macro scale the same applies, but that we can only observe the bandwidth of states in which it is possible for us to exist to make the observation.
To claim that this state uncertainty is magically resolved in all cases and coherently for all possible observers into a single set of states seems an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence.
Depending on the magazine dimensions (single stack is hard) Reliable magazines can be largely 3d printed, as can the follower and the jigs used to bend piano wire into proper springs. The 3d.printed.mag will usually have less capacity than a metal one though.
Hybrid motors using solid fuels (plastic, rubber, cardboard, even sausage) and liquid oxidizer (typically nitrous oxide) are pretty common in hobby rocketry. These can be trivially made throttleable within a range by metering the NO2 flow. With the proper fuel core, they can be kept "smoldering" for shutdown / relight by maintaining a trickle of oxidizer to keep the fuel surface at combustion temperature.
Liquid electrode batteries transcend the "unfortunate tetrahedron" paradigm in many ways. By isolating the reactants from the reactor, "unlimited" storage and near-instant "recharging" (exchange of discharged for charged electrode solution) are possible.
This seems to be the most promising paradigm for achieving the needed energy / power density without making a more than mediocre bomb in the process.... Unfortunately, the process is best suited to larger installations due to the inherent complexity, and scales poorly to portable applications.... So still tradeoffs, of course.
Obviously, this is very sticky moral ground, and I don't claim to absolutely have the answers....
But I think there is merit to the idea of personage. Types of dolphins have been declared non-human persons, as have some primates, by several governments. There is some significant evidence that elephants may also belong in this grouping.
I think that at some point, an individuals awareness and potential for moral autonomy becomes significant enough that it deserves recognition as such by others with similar capabilities.
I don't pretend to know exactly how to judge this, but I think it is possible as we gain knowledge about the nature of intelligence to make judgements on this criteria.
I think that all animals (and plants) should be treated humanely within the practical possibility of doing so (I subscribe to the "if you can't fix it, try not to break it" philosophy) but I think it is farsical to attempt to equivilize the moral significance of dogs and pigs with that of humans and primates.
Too bad they chose the "let's make a redundant copy of the pi zero-w (or another 10k boards out there) without any actual application specific hardware" model of monetization.
This is really a software project, and the people doing it are looking to sell hardware to fund the development?