It may spread life to other planets and systems, and this would mean that life has higher chance of survival no matter if humans are here or not.
If we look over the next 10 thousand years, we have more chances to have the planet survivability highly affected by a nuclear war, than to have tardigrades secretly building a spaceship and attacking us back in Space Wars style.
It's great if plants and animals spread to other planets, those who can survive will survive, and the others may mutate or adapt.
In the long-term, contamination is going to happen anyway due to humans planning to live there.
The concern isn't Earth organisms evolving and attacking us.
The concern is they'll make it harder to detect potential life on other planets (because of false positives) or even that they'll destroy alien life if it exists.
Yeah, which is definitely a concern for a planet with the potential to host life, like Mars or Europa, but for a place where we are pretty much 100% confident life cannot exist, like the Moon, it's just not a concern. Tardigrades are tough little creatures, but even they will just enter a tun state in such a harsh environment (if they even survive).
I mean, I get the enthusiasm for leaving the shit-heap marble we all collectively share with each other. But it would be a pretty embarrassing faux-pas to start introducing invasive species to the moon before we even understand what exactly lives on it.
The last part, “because it will make money”, is entirely a valid reason to de-extinct animals that once already attracted human interest, but were lost due do it unfortunately. It’s entirely the premise of Jurassic park. People already spend money on safaris, so the premise is not far fetched.
One can argue that there’d be perverse incentives that would arise from this model.
Do such kinds of experiments confound our search for extraterrestrial life? Mars and moon missions could introduce tiny life forms, that could be released into the environment. Some of these are extremely hardy (such as tardigrades) which could then start proliferating when conditions are right.
Yep! There is very real concern about accidentally introducing Earth life on others moons and planets, and then "discovering" the introduced life instead of actual native life.
As you mentioned with tardigrades, there are life forms and bacteria that could possibly survive a long duration flight through the vacuum of space, then proliferate once it reaches the surface somewhere.
This is usually guarded against by various sterilization techniques applied to the spacecraft before launch, and there is a discipline dedicated to ensuring these events don't happen:
They'd definitely muddy the water, but wouldn't genetics confirm whether a life form is from Earth? (assuming other life even has anything resembling our form of genetics)
I think reasonable caution by space agencies is wise but it also could have already happened a billion years ago. If we want to survive as a species or lineage of species beyond the Sun enveloping the Earth we will also need to deliberately establish viable life on other planets and even other solar systems at some point, previous historical records of ancestral life or present planetary sterility be damned. Life seems too rare in the universe for it to go down with the ship, we should make an effort to duplicate this experiment even if humanity doesn't make it.
This is common across East Africa, including Kenya where I’m from. The night ends at 6:00AM, with 7:00AM being saa moja (first hour) of the day. Similarly, the day ends at 6:00PM (thenashara). Intuitively, this clock makes much more sense than the English clock. There’s rarely confusion between times because it’s embedded in the language.
What time is displayed on your phone when you are in Kenya? Is there a setting to make it display the commonly used time rather than the official time? I'm going to Kenya next year and I'm excited to see how my phone behaves.
Since it's pretty much on the Equator it makes a lot of sense to keep time like that -- days and nights have the same duration all year long. Such a system doesn't make sense for places that have wide variations between seasons, unless you also alter the length of the hours to match (which I think was done at some point somewhere in Europe, but I can't find any references)
Even on the equator, sunrise and sunset times will vary by +/-15 minutes, because solar days are not of equal length. But yeah, close enough for imprecise use.
This is indeed a more logical clock, as it follows the natural cycle of activity. Equally, calendars that put the end of the year at the time after harvest ("autumn"), or at the start of agricultural work ("spring") are also more logical.
Positioning the beginning of a new day at noon, and a new year t a solstice, is just a technical convenience, because these are easy to detect with very simple astronomy tools.
Only if everyone is a peasant farmer with the same crops in the same place. My activities are barely related to the height of the sun in the sky, and like the other residents of my city I don't take a ton of notice of harvest time. Bus timetables and cultural festivals are a much bigger deal (of which one in particular is indeed historically related to a harvest).
My first thought as well as a swede. And coincidentally one of the things my old Kenyan classmate found the most strange about Sweden was the fact that the length of day was not even close to constant. That and when I explained to him that the sun being up doesn’t necessarily mean warmer weather, in the winter it’s practically takes the temperature further from zero as sun means no warming clouds…
What makes it more logical? The wheel turns all the same no matter where you mark the beginning. In the Northern hemisphere, there's actually something nice about starting the year in the dead of winter: it feels like the year is born in the spring and then dies away the following winter, not unlike a lifetime.
The whole lives of the societies which have actually invented these calendars were built around the vegetation cycle, which ruled pastures, fields, and orchards. So the yearly cycles of food availability, work, seasonal migrations, and the correlated weather pattern changes were all reasonably aligned with the start / end of the year.
Peoples as diverse as Celts, Romans, Slavs, Babylonians, Hindus, and various peoples in China all used a variety of a calendar where the yearly changes were aligned around modern October-November and modern March-April.
A calendar with the year starting in January and with astronomically (more) precise years was promulgated by Julius Caesar in -46. (I suspect the introduction of the concepts of Babylonian astrology to Rome a century before may have played a role in the desire to align the calendar to stars and not to earthly affairs.)
If you DO start in March, your days/month fall into a neat little pattern:
Mar 31 - Aug 31 - Jan 31
Apr 30 - Sep 30 - Feb 28/29
May 31 - Oct 31
Jun 30 - Nov 30
Jul 31 - Dec 31
That highlights a few interesting cycles you can use to calculate dates from a simple count of days from the start of the year:
153 days every 5 months
61 days every 2
31 days per month
An "early reset" occurs every second month, jumping to the next 2-month cycle after the second day 30. Another occurs after every fifth month, jumping into a new 2-month cycle halfway through the last one of the 5-month. And of course, end of the year breaks the third "5-month" cycle WAY early, just before even its first 2-month is finished.
I won't try to detail the process of generating dates from this here, but I'm sure most of us here can work it out with just a little effort. Instead, here's a couple more fun facts to consider:
If you DO start the calendar from March, counting it as month 1, September (7) through December (10) map rather nicely to their own numeric positions. That seems a pretty strong hint, to me.
And I REALLY love this one:
The Gregorian cycle consists of four centuries. The first three are 36,524 days each: 100 years x 365 days + 24 days for the leap years. The hundredth year (ending in 00) is NOT considered a leap year, EXCEPT for every FOURTH hundredth. So that's 4 centuries * 36,524 days = 146,096, plus 1 more for the leap century, for 146,097.
That number is EXACTLY divisible by 7, which means the week cycle repeats WITH the Gregorian one. Good thing! Otherwise, we'd have to wait 2800 years!
- months are counted as 3, 4, 5, ..., 14, with 13 and 14 being January and February of the following year
- the contribution of the month to the day of the week is floor(2.6 * (m+1)) - the 2.6 comes from the 13 "extra" days (over the approximation 1 month = 4 weeks) in every 5 months.
March was the beginning of the year not all that long ago.
That's why there frequent confusion about George Washington's birthday, along with other historical dates of that era: The New Year started in March when he was born, but changed to January during his lifetime (The British Empire switched in 1752). So being born in February, there's an ambiguity about the year, unless you specify which calendar you mean:
"George Washington was born on February 22, 1732, according to the Gregorian calendar. However, when he was born, the Julian calendar was in use, which would have placed his birth on February 11, 1731."
The year "dies" on the longest, darkest nights. (Dec 21, technically). We mourn its passing and celebrate it's life with drinks. I'm guessing there was in antiquity, a whole bunch of dreadful and exciting parties in the last 10 days around the longest nights.
January 1 is so close to December 25 (when Jesus is believed to have been born) so if we wanted to count years since that -- and call it AD for "Anno Domini" (the Year of Our Lord) -- we could declare the year to begin on January 1st.
January 1st became the start of the year about half a century before Jesus was born.
25 of December is close to the winter solstice (around 22nd), and I suspect it was ascribed to that day for astrological reasons; there are a few other astrological clues around that episode, most prominently, the Bethlehem Star.
A lot of people believe a lot of things. I wonder why you don't believe that people believe this.
Now whether you yourself believe he was born then, another time or ever existed at all etc is another story.
I believe for example that everyone can believe whatever they want about those things as long as:
They leave me alone when I tell them I don't believe that and I don't want to be convinced
They don't try to kill me, enslave me, etc for being an infidel (yes that includes the Christian holy wars sort of thing but also current events)
To restate more precisely: It is well-established that December 25 is a highly unlikely date for the birth of Jesus.
Children and people who have only a superficial knowledge of Christianity might very well believe otherwise. But they are poorly-informed.
Arguments against include:
a) Calendar dates are generally fuzzy from that period, particularly for events that are not formally documented. So the likelihood of anyone ever having known the correct date is very low.
b) The mythology around the birth does not match the seasonal expectations for late December (more likely springtime).
c) Dec 25 was chosen in 336 AD, by church decree. Prior to that, there was no holiday nor even a strong claim of any specific date.
d) Dec 25 was already a festival day for pagan celebrations of Saturn (Rome) and Mithra (Persia), which was likely a factor in the choice of date, to coincide with existing customs.
There are no substantial arguments in favor of December 25 being the accurate birth date of Jesus.
I don't think anyone is arguing that December 25 is the birth date of Jesus (assuming he existed), the argument is just that there are people who believe it is. You seem to think only children and people who don't know much about Christianity would believe that, but I assure you there are lots of Christian adults who don't know the history you (correctly) laid out.
when in fact, yes, people do actually believe this.
When this is pointed out, he explains why it can't be Dec 25th and that's all totally fine and correct but doesn't change the fact that yes indeed there are people that believe that, as well as lots of other things that can easily be disproved. It does not matter whether you can disprove it to us and others. These people that do believe it are in fact out there.
Of course, and -- if you were Roman, for instance -- you could, for example, call the 8th month a name with "octo" (Latin for "eight") in it, or the 10th month something with "decem" (Latin for "ten").
Positioning of the new year at the Equinox shouldn't be any harder than doing it at the solstice (since equinoxes are halfway between the solstices), and it makes much more sense IMO. First half of the year: more day than night. Second half of the year: more night than day.
The problem with "more logical" here is that it's completely subjective.
The beauty of the "English clock", which isn't English at all, is that it simply defines a way to refer to the same point in time with a number (never mind that Daylight savings" nonsense) and you can refer to it whether you are a farmer, a software developer, a waiter, you live Africa or the arctic circle all the same.
Of course not. Gregorian Calendar didn't drift, it just fixed drift in Julian calendar, which was like a couple of weeks by 1582. And "new year" in Julian calendar was 1st of January, same as now. It was inherited from previous Roman tradition, because Romans already had the custom to mark 1st of January as a new year, because since 153 BCE it was the date when consuls were inaugurated. So it's an entirely political thing and makes no real sense whatsoever. We are celebrating the day of Roman consulate inauguration for more than 2000 years now.
And before that they they started years from 1st of March, which is much closer to one of the Equinoxes, which is what all sane people (including french revolutionaries) consider to be the proper start of a year.
Traditional Japanese timekeeping kind of did both. The "am" and "pm" time periods started at midnight and noon, but the clocks themselves started at dawn. The hours counted down from hour 9 to hour 4 (they did not use 3-1). Each of the hours was approximately two modern hours, but their individual lengths changed every two weeks to keep the periods aligned with the sun. The twelve hours on the linear clock dials ran: 6,5,4,9,8,7,6,5,4,9,8,7 (and then a final 6 to match the first six, since it was a linear instead of circular dial).
Morning and Afternoon are used for AM and PM, or if you want to be really specific you can use the name of the hour, for example 10 am is called barqo, and 18 hours is called himhimmow
Of course. That doesn't mean they are not familiar with the local traditional system though. They just can use both, as in many other countries such as Japan and China and in the Middle East for example.
Intuitive is a synonym for "what one is used to", so I believe you when you say that according to your intuition, what you're accustomed to makes the most sense.
In a place with considerable skew in daylight hours between the summer and the winter, this would be quite unintuitive, because daylight hours would become longer (and night hours shorter) during winter and spring, and the opposite for summer and autumn.
Either that, or a fixed conventional notion of "dawn" which only corresponds to the sun rising around the Equinoxes. Either way would be unintuitive.
Reframe AI | REMOTE | Berkeley, CA, USA (HQ) | Full-Time | reframe.is
Reframe combines a low-code interface with AI agents to automate data workflows end-to-end, accelerate queries, eliminate bottlenecks, enrich data, run analytics, generate insights, and optimize data management.
Our Company is remote with team members in multiple states/provinces. While our roots are in Berkeley, CA, we fully embrace remote work, and in-person collaboration is entirely optional.
Reframe AI | REMOTE | Berkeley, CA, USA (HQ) | Full-Time | reframe.is
Reframe combines a low-code interface with AI agents to automate data workflows end-to-end, accelerate queries, eliminate bottlenecks, enrich data, run analytics, generate insights, and optimize data management.
Our Company is remote with team members in multiple states/provinces. While our roots are in Berkeley, CA, we fully embrace remote work, and in-person collaboration is entirely optional.
* Senior Backend Engineer | Python - Remote
Experience working building AI Agents and fundamental understanding of pertinent concepts like RAG, React Agents and LLMs inner workings.
As the parent comment says, LLMs are very good at giving plausible answers. Without checking each cell, then the data you eventually output becomes suspect.
We've been trying to solve this problem at Leaptable (https://leaptable.co/). The crux is that while LLMs are still a black box, transparency in the way AI Agents interact with LLMs is key. For instance, seeing the outputs of each step in a chain-of-thought sequence helps debug common fallacies in the way the LLMs reason and built trust.
Care to explain the context and why you are keen on natural language inquiries? It seems to me like the example you gave is very simplistic and can be solved by a simple dropdown filter on Excel and or SELECT * WHERE clause in a database. Note, I'm not implying that you are wrong to use natural language, simply that there seems to be more to the question.
Sure. For example, I might not want a borrower to see any data other than their own, so using a chatbot to access their data and output it in any way they want, eg “chatbot, did I make any payments over 50 dollars to Amazon last year. If so, when and can you list them out”. Or “was my groceries bill higher last month than this? Why?”.
I also ask because it seems that once AI can process data in response to queries like this, the software landscape shift hugely.
Here's the short answer
- Retool
- Anvil
- Bubble
- Airtable
- Webflow
The reality is that you shouldn't be turned away from these tools simply because of the negative developer perspective they tend to have, but you should consider the practicality of your situation. What matters is that you are aware that these platforms have limitations, and that you solve the inherent business problem you are seeking to solve immediately. Additionally, always have a plan to eventually migrate out if the platform if the situation warrants it.
What I find paradoxical is that we SW engineers tend to neg on low-code tools, yet proclaim that code is simply a means to a business problem. We enjoy coding new projects, and hate integrating or migrating off shityly built applications.
The practical reality is that whether it's code you wrote or a no-code platform, getting your tool to work in the 99th percentile is always going to be the hardest part of the problem. In this case, using a no-code platform whose inner workings are obscured away from your is just as challenging as working with an arcane internal application whose original developers left the company a long time ago.
Disclaimer - I'm building Leaptable - a Low-code database powered by AI Agents. It's still not ready for prime-time and would love your feedback.
https://github.com/peterwnjenga/leaptable
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Agreed with this. The vast majority of my work has come through word of mouth. I've only found time wasters on Upwork who generally have high expectations and low budgets.
At this point it’s more an experiment on the limitations that these creatures can be pushed to in the Lunar environment.