Xavier

Des cordes, pleine de cordes de toutes sorte et de toutes taille.

C'est tellement utile partout et dans n'importe quel situation qui peut survenir où une ou des cordes peuvent aider temporairement, le temps de trouver un solution plus permanente.

Excellent writeup! With constant updates to boot 🥳

I'm saving it for future reference.

Thank you for putting your time and effort on this.

The future I want to foresee is one where everybody runs and keeps their data locally (or their dedicated VPS):

• where everyone has access to at least 10Gbps symmetric fiber optic connection to the internet at their home/apartment at affordable price (doesn't have to be unlimited, but pricing per TB of bandwith usage needs to be less than USD $1 as it is the actual cost of operating & peerage)
• whereas net neutrality is a prerequisite to any corporation/organization/government/municipality getting network backbone peerage with other network operators
• whereas registering to a website or service actually creates a local secure database/bucket/pod where that website/service organizes/sort/manipulates our data and stores all generated modified data/metadata within our local personnal server, every time we interact with that same external website/service it gets access to the database/bucket previously created. Look into the Solid protocol specification to get a better idea (it doesn't have to be that specific protocol)
• whereas FIDO2 or WebAuth or their successor is widely accepted for passkey implementation or just multifactor authentication
• whereas all communications are direct peer-to-peer without transiting third party servers (as in not managed by either communicating party)

Moreover, even better would be to teach everyone from elementary school various concepts (from simpler to more complex gradually) of science, programming, critical thinking and empathy.

If I may dare to push even further, with technology (secure authentication, work from home familiarity, collaborative softwares, digital signing, distributed version control), give every citizen (from the age of 12 or earlier; because one has to start learning early to make mistakes, understand and form good habits) the ability to vote/abstain on every proposition, motion, new/modified law and decision regarding their own country. Have a publicly accessible historical account of every vote by everyone (excluding secret ballots obviously). Most importantly, every year end, 4 years, 10 years, 25 years, 60 years have a collective review/retrospective of past motions/decisions that were implemented and let everyone vote on if those were overall beneficial or harmful for the country/state/municipality. Empower those who tend to regularly vote and tend to historically vote beneficially (at least 70% of their votes after they reached 25 years old) for the country/state/municipality to become a local representative.

I know it's getting wordy and perhaps a bit complicated but keep up with me. Give accredited/qualified individual in very specific fields the retractable/overridable power to have their votes on certain very specific motion/law/decision be inherited by active delegation by any other citizens up to a limit of ~290 (Bernard–Killworth number) per qualified inviduals. For example, a citizen could separetely delegate his/her votes:

• relating to healthcare to their own family doctor if they like/respect their judgment or even a familly member who is licensed for medical practice, it doesn't matter who as long as they are qualified for the subject matter
• relating to renovating a specific bridge to their neighbor who is a general contractor or their nephew who is a civil engineer
• relating to military procurement to their veteran uncle still with a sharp mind and keenly informed with world event or even their weekly indoor hockey teammate who is a unstoppable adventurer exploring every part if the world but also a office worker and a reservist

All while always preserving the option to change their vote anytime for any reason; by delegating to someone else for specific issue/concerns or voting on their own (always takes priority over delegation).

Well… I am being too hopeful and probably pushed things far beyond what is realistic, but it is nice to make thought experiments on what may be possible with technology.

I want that‽ 😆

When I'm old and decrepit with an out of sync heart, I would like to go with a nuclear pacemaker.

I could then say that I am henceforth Plutonium powered 😎.

I like the concept but I want something I can run locally (and update by myself) in a docker container or a Virtual Machine. I'm tired of online service changing their products for the worse or increasing prices because they feel like it.

I don't know what you read and where you read from but:

The most recent triennial report by the Office of the Chief Actuary confirmed that the CPP is financially sustainable for at least 75 year [emphasis are mine]

That means, some 18 years old today could retire at 65 (in 47 years) and have guaranteed pension until at least he/she reaches 93 years old. That was limited to only as far as the report went (“at least”). You are certainly older than 18 if you already pay into the Canada Pension Plan. Therefore, you are guaranteed a pension until you are 93+. Complain to someone else if you know you will live to be 120 years old.

Moreover, a recent research comparing hundreds of pension, endowment, and sovereign wealth funds showed Canadian plans outperforming their international peers on all fronts over the past two decades. Source: The Canadian Pension Fund Model: A Quantitative Portrait — Alexander Beath, Sebastien Betermier, Chris Flynn, Quentin Spehner

Beyond that, I cannot help you if you wish to hold onto your falsehood as sacrosanct.

Can I get the reverse?

I know some-tiny-bit of history (enough to see we are repeating too many mistakes) and sure wish I was born way into the future after we've solved climate change (or simply just accepted it and therefore adapted/reduced everyday life to it) and also after the next potential world war as things seem to be getting more and more spicier geopolitically.

Wondering if waiting/delaying the eventual purchase of F-35 ended up being more expensive for Canada overall? Or did it become less expensive per "plane" (including servicing/maintenance contract, training, etc.) considering the manufacturing processes have been streamlined since then?

It is sad to see important, if not critical, environmental regulations and climate change mitigation be traded/bargained off due to the inconvenience of the few. There was so many other ways to help them transition to better efficient heating system (namely heat pumps + good isolation) instead of a “temporary” tax suspension.

Unfortunately, I am more and more inclined to think our specie will probably be not make it past 3 more centuries, let alone another millennia if there we continue to argue over facts and fight each other over pride, imaginary points and religious/financial/paranoid dogmatism.

It is fairly easy to differenciate DNA samples from different species and exclude them. Since it has always been an issue to have contamination by foreign DNA (bacterias, fungus, virus, plancton, fauna and flora of all sorts, etc.), tools/methods/protocols are specifically made to quickly separate out (amplify the DNA we are interested in) from whatever is not to focus of the current study.

Moreover, a random anonymous sample without associated information can quickly be analysed and compared against large libraries of genome datasets/maps to ascertain and corroborate what it is from, closest species, even family trees of related inviduals and most importantly get an overview of multiple phenotype of interest.

From the day the full human genome map had been declared complete in 2003 (at 85% of the genome), research has only accelerated in improving the map while understanding the various functions of many different parts of our DNA.

You may have misunderstood my focus, I agree that current nuclear reactors are designed with utmost safety and redundancy on top of redundancy. However, all those safety measures multiply feasibility, development and operating costs while also increasing the surface area of things that may be mismanaged/ignored/forgotten and not be immediately detected by external auditor/inspector if there is any at all.

As I have written previously:

Theorically, we all know and understand that following all the baseline protocols and maintenance schedules rigorously will keep a nuclear fission power plant working without environmental/health/safety issues for its entire entended life cycle.

Obviously, I absolutly hope and want nuclear technology to develop further. However, I do not think currently available options are cost effective and durably suitable for a world of increasing climate change perturbations. Governments, institutions and organizations will be stretched thin and thinner by multiple factors while increasing demands and sequences of societal and climatic events will test their ever changing priorities.

Nevertheless, one fission technology that may show promise in an increasingly turbulent world are small self-contained reactors. From my understanding, they are deployed in situ and buried providing energy to a nearby facility until its fuel has reached a predetermined end-of-life cycle. The self-contained reactor is then dug out and replaced by a new one while the EOL reactor is returned to be "recycled" and redeployed elsewhere. It seems simpler, hopefully also cost effective and a smaller safety concern overall.

As you have also pointed out with Fukushima having been slated to be decommissioned, political prerogative pushes thing far beyond what was intended. Be it old bridges collapsing way beyond their lifespan, or old submarines killing their crew from a fire onboard, or old fleet of gas guzzling trucks still belching a mix of burnt and unburned fuel particles, the list goes on forever. Even if we built the safest, most redundant, almost completely automated nuclear power plant that could last a hundred or two hundred years, how future governments deals with the decommission is entirety subject to their whims and changing political context.

And we can already witness hiccups of various degrees in every single countries since even before the pandemic, with changing political situation due to several interconnected factors in which climate change is a threat multiplier.

Nuclear fission based reactors should be left for beyond Earth's orbit; for space exploration, space mining, etc.

On earth, it's more of a liability with multiple security/safety concerns that engineers, architects, scientists and risk management specialists have to contend with, thus making any project exponentially and unnecessarily more expensive. Theorically, we all know and understand that following all the baseline protocols and maintenance schedules rigorously will keep a nuclear fission power plant working without environmental/health/safety issues for its entire entended life cycle.

However, we live in an imperfect world where important things gets postponed, rescheduled, ignored out of inconvenience, forgotten due to changing priorities or changes in personnel/chain of command, or mismanaged simply due to political interference/apathy/nepotism/ignorance. All this is internal to its regular operation.

Externally, we have to constantly/actively monitor and react to natural disasters, accidents, terrorism, climate change (e.g. input water temperature), etc. So as to ensure operational integrity at all time.

In contrast, nuclear fusion based reactors have the potential to solve alone all our energy needs for the foreseeable future in a carbon neutral (even carbon negative) manner. However, the resources assigned to make a scientific breakthrough in that field is largely insufficient if not scrawny/famished. It is indeed several magnitudes more expensive, supply chain constrained (special custom equipments and parts), rife with delays, constantly over budget all while still trying to understand the fundamental science with experiments and scientists spread throughout the four corners of the planet.

We could accelerate the progress towards nuclear fusion power plants similarly to how we accelerated COVID-19 vaccine research & production, but it will require several times more financing into each potential fusion reactors designs and each of their successive prototypes (tokamak, stellarator, spherical tokamak, inertial confinement, liquid metal mediated magnetized target fusion, magneto-inertial fusion, etc…)