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An Indian site, YourStory, has an unusually broad ranging interview with Richard Stallman. While much of the background and goals will already be familiar to SN readers, the interview is interesting not only for its scope but also that India is starting to take an interest in these matters.
To know Richard Stallman is to know the true meaning of freedom. He's the man behind the GNU project and the free software movement, and the subject of our Techie Tuesdays this week.
This is not a usual story. After multiple attempts to get in touch for an interaction with Richard Stallman, I got a response which prepared me well for what's coming next. I'm sharing the same with you to prepare you for what's coming next.
I'm willing to do the interview — if you can put yourself into philosophical and political mindset that is totally different from the one that the other articles are rooted in.
The general mindset of your articles is to admire success. Both business success, and engineering success. My values disagree fundamentally with that. In my view, proprietary software is an injustice; it is wrongdoing. People should be _ashamed_ of making proprietary software, _especially_ if it is successful. (If nobody uses the proprietary program, at least it has not really wronged anyone.) Thus, most of the projects you consider good, I consider bad.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 31 2017, @12:20AM (1 child)
Nope, it's a real need. Not a survival level one, I could do it with 30% concentration (instead of glacial), but it is a need.
Granted, I can obtain it by other means than "replication", but since you so kindly offered to 3d print it, I thought I'd oblige...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday August 31 2017, @12:39AM
Chemical/drug "printing" is in the works.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a14528/the-chemistry-3d-printer-can-craft-rare-medicinal-molecules-from-scratch/ [popularmechanics.com]
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6227/1190 [sciencemag.org]
It will be interesting to see how far we can get with this technology and how low the barrier to entry can be made (since whiners at the DEA, FBI, and DHS will be trying to clamp down on it).
Note: Acetic acid [wikipedia.org] is one of the molecules that has been detected in outer space. I couldn't find any resources about starting acetic acid or vinegar production on Mars, but I'm sure it will come up eventually once Musk wants some A-1 sauce for his human steak.
Back to the chemical printer concept. There are multiple approaches that can be used to get the chemicals you need. For example, bioengineered yeast could output certain chemicals (morphine!). A recent article about "cyborg bacteria" [soylentnews.org] had them producing acetic acid. You could automate and miniaturize [theguardian.com] the mixing of chemicals on a small scale that is not done by the chemical industry. For a space ship or Mars or Lunar base, you want a box, hopefully smaller than a car, that can produce as many possible chemicals as you might need, autonomously, with little to no chemistry knowledge required. And this is just to create vials of liquid, not replicate any object you desire.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]