VCV Rack is a titan in the FOSS eurorack modular world. nothing else comes close. I have a physical eurorack as well but i use Rack all the time to sketch out ideas and to explore new kinds of modules before i buy something physical.
protip. small piece of scotch tape and a small piece of paper. when you need camera, just fold the paper open. when it gets worn out, new paper and scotch tape.
TipTop is a bad actor / goes against the ethos of many others in the eurorack space IMO. I have their mantis case, was my first eurorack case, and while it's good I do dislike that i use theirs.
the modularity and interoperability (and the implied open source culture) of eurorack philosophy should extend to the companies that make these products. so often they dont. makes me think of unix philosophy and how tech companies dont follow that philosophy either.
Not tryna be flippant here but probably not. See comment history for other arguments ive made on this.
I am incredibly skeptical that the engineering ethics / practices of any organization currently in existence adequately surpass the requirement for large scale genetic editing.
Im not against the idea in the abstract, but we live in a world full of fragile, profit-motivated institutions that are oft to skimp on engineering best practice and ethics in the pursuit of profit.
Something like NASA circa 1970 maybe could but they arguably had their own problems with ethics re: Wernher von Braun, aerospace engineer responsible for great contributions to the US Atlas V rocket system and the Nazi V2.
In regards to all that and the content of the article using malaria and mosquito editing as a potential argument to do this, consider also that mosqutios are a critical base source of food for many species. Unintended long term consequences are the name of the game when it comes to thinking about if we should do this.
Please don't make the mistake of assuming that pursuit of profit is the only reason for an institution to skimp on best practices. Or rather, please don't assume that non-profit institutions (and governments) can automatically be trusted to follow best practices because their motives are pure. They're no more immune to bureaucratic infighting, external pressure, and general human weakness than any company. (And remember, while NASA does incredible work, the actual hardware is mostly built by for-profit defense contractors... for better and for worse.)
That said, is anyone actually suggesting that for-profit companies should undertake gene drives on their own? Because my assumption was that any such decision would have to be made by governments, regardless of who actually does the work.
Im curious about that too. If you were a skilled programmer who studied common bugs, you could introduce those bugs intentionally but with plausible deniability if caught. Then again, in a smaller system that would be easier to detect. But in a multi page web app or something with a big back end, def could slip those in
I think that there are significant incentives for financial institutions to create financial products (derivatives, etc.) that contain (and magnify) the systemic risk that is part of their inputs.
Systemic risk is very costly to hedge against, and to do so requires keeping capital idle that could otherwise be productive.
Also, esoteric financial instruments are always going to be less liquid than simple securities, yet the incentive of financial firms is to create them and find markets for them. This is analogous to any industrial input (raw materials) and output (finished product).
Complex financial products are desirable for use as underwriting capital because they can have specific characteristics that make them preferable to cash. But in fact the actual desirable characteristic is that their usefulness as a hedge against systemic risk has been sold off, leaving something that is legal as risk capital but ineffective against systemic risk.
Hence, the financial system has an incentive to create complex, entangled, webs of risk capital, none of which is cash, and all of which looks fantastic if you just look at its core (non systemic) risk characteristics.
When there has not been a systemic risk event in a while, such systems appear to be ingenious and clever. Regulators "understand" them well enough to deem them suitable as risk capital in good times (due to their non-systemic risk characteristics) and in bad (due to their lower cost).
The issue in 2008 was that the derivatives had baked in resilience to some systemic risk. If you design it with resilience to any systemic risk, it ceases to be useful.
So the game is simply baking in enough resilience to comply with regulations, collect quarterly bonuses, and repeat.
When you think about it there is really no regulatory framework for minimizing systemic risk exposure except for a handful of limits on firm size and some nuances of underwriting capital, created after the great depression.
Lowering meat consumption writ large, even just more people only having one meat meal a day, would be huge too. Meat production is super resource intensive. Have to grow grain for them to eat, water that grain, transport it, provide water for the livestock, etc.
> According to calculations of the United Nations Environment Programme, the calories that are lost by feeding cereals to animals, instead of using them directly as human food, could theoretically feed an extra 3.5 billion people.
> Feed conversion rates from plant-based calories into animal-based calories vary; in the ideal case it takes two kilograms of grain to produce one kilo of chicken, four kilos for one kilogram of pork and seven kilos for one kilogram of beef.
- Global Agriculture[1]
Your point re: human living space density in cities is totally spot on. Urbanism is much more efficient than suburban sprawl. Rigorous public transit makes having a car optional / disadvantageous if you live in a city. It's no wonder the automobile industry has always sought to stifle transit.
Look at the successes of the Houston light rail system METRORail. Opened in 2004 and has cut back traffic and lead to high-density apartments, shops, and offices near stations.
All that is evidence of why population growth isn't a real root issue. It could be problematic, depending on what other systems are at play to mitigate increasing resource needs of people. Even so, our current food production is enough to feed the projected 2050 population of 9.7 billion[2].
