This would massively disenfranchise small inventors, and force all inventive work into large companies. There is no reason that the person who does the inventing should also be the person developing and selling a product.
It is weird and unfortunate that the longstanding deficiencies with patent law (chiefly: issuing patents for things that are too obvious or numerous) are being blamed on transferability of property rights. It’s the same broken intuition as over regulating housing construction and then blaming high housing costs on ownership by Chinese nationals.
> The material comes in the form of a thin layer, just 1 micrometer (1μm) thick – about one hundredth the thickness of human hair – positioned between the cathode layer and the current collector (an aluminum foil that acts as the electron pathway). When the battery’s temperature rises beyond the normal range, between 90°C and 130°C, the material reacts to the heat, altering its molecular structure and effectively suppressing the flow of current, LG Chem said.
> The material is decribed as highly responsive to temperature, with its electrical resistance increasing by 5,000 ohms (Ω) for every 1°C rise in temperature. The material’s maximum resistance is over 1,000 times higher than at normal temperatures, and it also features reversibility, meaning the resistance decreases and returns to its original state, allowing the current to flow normally again once the temperature drops.
To the best of my searching, a typical lithium ion battery has roughly 20-30 cathode-and-current-conductor layers. So naively this would add less than 50 microns to the battery thickness.
This, and possibly more importantly: how well does it retain effectiveness under wear/adverse circumstances?
It seems really promising, but if we up the cost of battery production and hence make them more expensive, then it would be nice to know it will still work after extended use.
That's importantly different, unless the existence and authenticity of the scrolls is public and only the contents are secret (which is not what I understood the commenter to be suggesting).
Harvard admits 2,000 students every year, so it isn't all that different. The reputation is always built/sustained by the outliers rather than the average graduate.
That's still selective compared to the volume of applicants though and the output isn't universally stellar but generally regarded as pretty high. Compared to YC's recent batches with a large number of ChatGPT and other gen AI model wrappers.
Harvard admits 2,000 undergraduates every year, but it's actually a very large school, granting just about 10,000 degrees per year. The annual commencement ceremony in Harvard Yard only goes through the graduates school-by-school; once dismissed all the graduates decamp to school-specific ceremonies all around campus, where they get their names called and walk across the stage to receive the handshake and (empty) envelope. Perhaps more like YC than you think?
legister is claiming this essentially threatens the existence of Stanford in something like it’s current form. Whether that’s true can certainly be debated, but it seems glib to say “if Stanford has to be crushed or radically transformed, so be it; nothing is more important than government-style admission procedures”. I think one needs to actually argue that it won’t be that damaging.
> On 10 June, with all their initial Starliner testing completed, the CFT crew started working on general ISS maintenance and research activities. They started their day by measuring their temperature, blood pressure, pulse, and respiratory rate. Later, Wilmore worked on the maintenance of a computer connected to the Microgravity Science Glovebox, while Williams installed hardware to support a space fire investigation. On 11 June, the astronauts spent their time on biomedical activities, with Wilmore organizing the inventory of the Human Research Facility, and Williams working on procedures to collect microbe samples and sequence their genes. On 12 June, Wilmore checked cargo in the Harmony module and worked on maintenance of the station's bathroom, while Williams continued her gene sequencing work from the day before.[65]
> On 17 June, Williams worked on maintenance tasks and prepared the Advanced Plant Habitat for future experiments, and on 18 June she continued working on the gene sequencing study from the prior week. Meanwhile, Wilmore spent the two days working on a study of the behavior of flowing liquids in space.[69][70]
> NASA said that since their arrival on 6 June, Wilmore and Williams have been tasked with completing half of all hands-on research time conducted aboard the ISS, giving their crewmates more time to prepare for the departure of Northrop Grumman's Cygnus NG-20 spacecraft.[71]
(As you probably know, it's a bit misleading to say that Astronauts are doing science on the ISS. For the most part they are brilliant, expensive, and highly trained lab technicians who prep and repair equipment and then hit the "go" button for experiments that were designed by, and will be analyzed by, scientists on Earth.)
> they are brilliant, expensive, and highly trained lab technicians who prep and repair equipment and then hit the "go" button for experiments that were designed by, and will be analyzed by, scientists on Earth
True. I was just curious if having two extra pairs of hands was letting new experiments be done, or existing ones be done more thoroughly.
Gotcha. Yea, my impression is that they always have a pretty deep backlog of maintenance tasks that can be done any time there is downtime or extra hands. That might also be true for science, e.g., repeat some experiment with different settings/conditions. (Certainly, in case of unexpected problems/delays they already have a triage plan for which experiments are performed and which are sacrificed.)
Tangential: As an American, one of the things I liked most about London pubs when I first started visiting in the ‘00s was the lack of screens, which were hard to escape in American bars. Unfortunately this was only temporary, as the majority of the London pubs I’ve seen on recent visits are covered with screens like home.
Sounds like you'd enjoy visiting a pub owned by Samuel Smith.
> Our pubs are havens from the digital world – there are no TVs or background music. The use of mobile phones, laptops and other tech is not allowed in our pubs.
In the 80s, Sam Smith pubs had a ‘25 pubs in London’ challenge. Get a drink in each of the 25 and get a T-shirt. It took me and a friend several weeks. There was a story of some guys doing it in a weekend. Hard because of travel AND opening times of some of the financial centre ones.
Good Times! And of course, no screens and no-one had phones (except in the financial centre and those came with an external battery)
As others say, Londoners/brits make a distinction between “pub” and “sports pub”, the former don’t usually have any TV (or it’s off, only used for big England games when every pub becomes a sports pub).
Contrary to your experience, I’m pretty sure that most pubs are not sports pubs in London
They do though. The old guard keeping the depressing pubholes alive do so by watching their football there. It's usually just one or two screens, granted, but they're there. Thankfully they can be easy ignored.
I'm not into them myself, but a lot of the ones that are struggling these days are the (non-chain) old man, football, working-class pubs in struggling towns.
I'm back visiting for the first extended period of time in a decade, and the bifurcation of the drinking/eating sector is striking. So many new fancy, up-market places with food, craft beer and eye-watering prices; so many shuttered old-school pubs.
go to smaller pubs. They don’t have the footfall to justify the exorbitant commercial sports license fees and so don’t have screens. Fancier pubs and gastropubs also tend not to have screens
> every few years there are articles of pubs shutting down and it being a crisis. Happened as long as I’ve lived.
This is very consistent with there being a steady decline. (Likewise, some mock the perennial complaint that "people don't work as hard as they use to", but in fact hours worked per week has been steadily falling for 150 years.)
> You don’t have to go far precisely because your local craft beer haunt, gastropub, sports bar and boozer all serve different clientele.
I don't know what this is supposed to mean. If a country's is dominated by a certain establishment type I like, and then that type loses lots of market share to different types, I am worse off.
As a scientist, I agree, although for not quite the reason you gave. Scientists are given tremendous freedom and resources by society (public dollars, but also private dollars like at my industry research lab). I think scientists have a corresponding higher duty for honesty.
Jobs at top institutions are worth much more than their nominal salary, as evidenced by how much those people could be making in the private sector. (They are compensated mostly in freedom and intellectual stimulation.) Unambiguously faking data, which is the sort of thing a bad actor might do to get a top job, should be considered at least as bad a moral transgression as stealing hundreds of thousands or perhaps a few million dollars.
(What is the downside? I have never once heard a researcher express feeling threatened or wary of being falsely/unjustly accused of fraud.)
That you are getting a kickback does not mean they aren’t extracting monopoly rent. The rents, and your kickback, is in fact supported by slightly higher prices, which for you will roughly cancel out, but which are paid in full by people not using credit cards.
One can certainly argue that this system is net positive due, e.g., to greater credit availability for people who need it, chargeback discipline, etc. It’s a very complicated system that impacts a bunch of stuff. But it being merely a ~3% surcharge (on most retail transactions nationwide!) does not deflect the monopoly charge.
It’s easier to deploy in the weightless environment of orbit than on the moon with gravity. Consistent with this, the largest off-Earth structure ever built (the ISS) is in orbit, not on a heavenly body.
"Consistent with this..." I read as "this cause has significant part in justification that...". ISS obviously is on orbit not because it's easier to build in space than on the surface of a natural satellite - if Earth would have a Deimos orbiting it at height of 1000 km, I see it quite possible that ISS would be on the surface of such satellite, with all ifs and buts - but because ISS is roughly in the closest location to Earth which is still "space" and doesn't require continuous re-launching (like New Shepard).
Coming back to the topic, I'd like to see the reasons why both approaches could be beneficial. I see, for example, that for space-based constructions we don't - mostly - have interference from the surface of anything, while for surface-based constructions we have support and resources. Do we have a full analysis which would allow us to say "surface always sux, in-space forewa" or "only l00mers build in space, real men are firmly grounded"? Or, talking about a finer point, deployment only - do we have full justification?
It is weird and unfortunate that the longstanding deficiencies with patent law (chiefly: issuing patents for things that are too obvious or numerous) are being blamed on transferability of property rights. It’s the same broken intuition as over regulating housing construction and then blaming high housing costs on ownership by Chinese nationals.
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