In my experience, as you increase the quality level of a jpeg, the compression level drops significantly, much more than with some other formats, notably PNG. I’d be curious to see comparisons with png and gif. I wouldn’t be surprised if the new jpeg compresses better at some resolutions, but not all, or with only some kind of images.

Again, the argument I’m trying to make is that, by the time one can settle Mars without supplies from Earth

Well, that’s not exactly the goal. No nation is really self-sufficient in modern society. Everyone engages in trade. So the question is really, when will a space colony become profitable or maintainable? And that’s trickier to answer, because it isn’t “not for hundreds of years”, but it also isn’t now, it’s somewhere in between.

Cheaper access to space would change the equation immensely. Being cheaper to resupply would mean the colony wouldn’t have to be as profitable to be sustainable. In-situ resource utilisation (using water found off of earth for drinking, oxygen and fuel) will also make an enormous difference as it would reduce the amount of supplies needed from earth. (This is incidentally one of the main goals of NASA’s Artemis program, to figure out how to utilize water resources on the moon)

It was the same situation when Europeans settled the Americas, at first it was just a money suck. Entire colonies were lost, lots of people died, they weren’t really prepared. But then they started to figure out what crops worked there, how to survive harsh winters, etc. Once they figured out how to make the most of this new land, they thrived. Unfortunately, the way they treated the locals was pretty horrific. Fortunately, we’re pretty certain there aren’t any locals on the moon or Mars.

Truth be told, I think a Mars colony won’t happen for quite some time, but I believe a moon colony will certainly happen before 2100. And if we’re lucky, maybe since orbital colonies. That’s where the future really lies, orbital colonies.

An easy copout, I could have predicted that…

Well I’m happy to be done with this exchange.

Oh my God… In that whole post, you’ve said absolutely nothing of substance! That was astonishing! I mean, actually impressive in a way…

In my post I had essentially only asked one question (and that question was “what are you actually suggesting?”) and you managed to not even address it. Instead, you went on a meandering tangent about Dr Strangelove. You continue to make assertions about military doctrine, that actual decisions about actual, tangible weapons are incorrect, but instead of explaining how they were incorrect or suggesting what specific alternative choices should have been made, you instead talk about vague philosophical misunderstandings… That’s bullshit.

Honestly, as useless as it is, I feel like I have to ask at this point, are you an LLM? (I can’t really expect any useful response to this whether you are an LLM or not, but it still feels right to ask)

That’s a great description!

So again, to be clear, is your argument that the US should be using lower cost off-the-shelf or lower tech weapons? Presumably, with the ability to field more of these much lower cost weapons for superior ultimate effectiveness?

I mean, the example you have with the f-16 vs f-35, is a bit of a false dichotomy. The f-35 isn’t intended to totally replace the f-16. The two planes have a different set of capabilities and can be used in different ways. Ideally, they should be used in tandem, with the 35’s stealth, superior electronics, and sensor suite, it can fly deeper into contested territory and designate targets for other planes to safely engage from further away. So maximizing the value of weapons like the f-35 is in fact dependent on combining them with other (usually much cheaper) weapons already on the field. But when done this way, adding just a few of these new top of the line planes can increase the effectiveness of entire fighter groups.

All that is to say, the f-35 is in fact a bit of a complicated case to use as an example.

Also, this is sort of how the entire US military is designed to work, with each element making other elements around it more effective. For example an aircraft carrier alone is extremely vulnerable, so it has a whole “carrier group” with destroyers, cruisers, and subs all supporting each other against different threats. As a group each part is more powerful that it would have been alone.

I brought all that up to point out that providing “X” weapon to a foreign nation is always likely to be an inefficient use of that weapon. By providing just one specific weapon, it makes it likely that those forces won’t have all the supporting tools to make it most effective.

The tech you’d need to make living on Mars independent of Earth, like consciousness uploading, self sufficient friendly AI, extensive human/plant bioengineering, terraforming… Well, they’re better at solving our problems on Earth anyway.

That sounds like an argument for a Mars colony, not against it.

Not that I think continuousness uploading or AI have anything to do with a Mars colony… Even terraforming is totally unnecessary.

Honestly, I don’t think Mars is a great candidate for a space colony, though probably not for the same reasons you’re thinking. But I think it is in fact vital that we start colonizing space soon, and I think the technologies developed in pursuit of that goal will absolutely aid us here on earth.

You’re not being terribly specific about what you think America is doing wrong. So, we can’t derive what “doing it right” might look like. This is great for you, because it makes your statements difficult to refute, it’s not great because it makes your statements mostly meaningless.

So, what should America be doing differently?

Yes, they have some secure communications systems, but none that are safe to use on a mobile device. Signal is literally more advanced than what they’re using. It’s far from insane.

Yeah, this article was truly a fascinating read! The one thing that surprised me from Goldberg though, was that he continually questioned their use of signal. I mean, why wouldn’t they use it?

They could try to develop their own secure messaging app, but what would be the point of that when another already exists and they can verify the code is air tight because it’s open source. And, developing their own app would mean the possibility of relying on software that could contain unknown bugs or vulnerabilities.

The only safe cryptographic systems are open source ones.

It seems to me that nothing in life is free, including browsers. Yeah, free software exists, and that works fine for many kinds of software, but not browsers. Browsers are a living thing, they have to change constantly to adapt to the changing environment. Maintaining a browser takes effort, to an extent that far exceeds that of other programs, word processing, games, image editing, etc. A browser is a primary attack surface for all manner of malware and exploits. It’s web facing and it executes code provided by external sources. That last sentence should give you chills.

So all that is to say, that it is very much non trivial to maintain a browser. So it only stands to reason that maintaining it consistently won’t actually happen without some amount of compensation.

So how do you pay for a browser? Well everyone seems to agree, with ads. This method is apparently quite viable as a business. But I probably don’t have to tell you that there are a bunch of problematic aspects to it. User data collection (and resale) is probably top on the list of problems. It’s a pretty serious breach of privacy, I hope I didn’t have to convince anyone of that.

To get to my point though, Brave is the only browser I know of attempting to use a different model to support their project. They’re trying to allow people to just pay for the web themselves, rather than let advertisers pay for the web while users give up all their data. It may not be a perfect implementation, but from where I’m standing I don’t see anyone else even trying…

Correct me if I’m wrong though, i’d love to see other viable models.