• 0 Posts
  • 43 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 1st, 2023

help-circle












  • True on the digit by digit code decryption. That I can forgive in the name of building tension and “counting down” in a visible way for the movie viewer. “When will it have the launch code?!” “In either 7 nano seconds or 12 years…”

    If they had been more accurate, it would have looked like the Bender xmas execution scene from Futurama:

    https://www.youtube.com/v/aRdRZ6TKo4s?t=25s

    I did like the fact that they showed war-dialing and doing research to find a way into the system. It’s also interesting that they showed some secure practices, like the fact there was no banner identifying the system or OS, giving less info to a would be hacker. Granted, now a days it would have the official DoD banner identifying it as a DoD system.

    I remember with Windows 95, LAN Manager passwords were hashed in two 7 digit sections which made extracting user password from the password hash file trivial:

    https://techgenix.com/how-cracked-windows-password-part1/

    Looks like it was worse than I remember. The passwords were first converted to all upper case first!




  • First off, the water would need to be desalinated or you would ensure the land would be unsuitable for farming (and really growing anything) for generations.

    Also, sand doesn’t hold water. In fact, when planting trees and other bushes, if you want more drainage, you typically add rocks and sand.

    Second, most plants need non-sandy soil to grow on (palm trees and other beach bushes and plants aside) though those grow in areas that have lots of rain already.

    Thirdly, the soil will need bacteria to aid the plants in obtaining nutrients and breaking down waste (dead leaves, dead plantlife, etc).

    The way to do it is to look at a couple of projects that are fighting against desertification in Africa:

    1. The Great Green Wall https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/great-green-wall/

    2. Using compostable waste to fertilize soil https://jstories.media/article/greening-the-desert-with-trash

    You’ll notice that many of these projects start at the edges of deserts. Instead of relying on pumping water onto sandy soil (which would just suck up the water as sand doesn’t hold water that well) they focus on extending the non desert ecosystem onto the desert so that the new soil will absorb water better, the weather over the newly terraformed area will be less dry, and it will eventually be self sustaining.


  • As a layperson reading through this it seems to me the biomarker is related to the metabolic activity of a specific brain region called the subcallosal cyngulate gyrus. They used imaging techniques vs say blood tests, or depression questionnaires to identify the changes from the treatments.

    It’s confusing because the study linked above is first talking about the deep brain stimulation which was the main focus of the study (and how they effected the anti-depressant changes).

    This other link I found is more to the point:

    The subcallosal cingulate gyrus (SCG), including Brodmann area 25 and parts of 24 and 32, is the portion of the cingulum that lies ventral to the corpus callosum. It constitutes an important node in a network that includes cortical structures, the limbic system, thalamus, hypothalamus, and brainstem nuclei. Imaging studies have shown abnormal SCG metabolic activity in patients with depression, a pattern that is reversed by various antidepressant therapies.

    https://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-3223(10)01003-6/fulltext

    If the imaging is easy to do and interpret, then it would allow for a more objective way to measure the effectiveness of other depression treatments.

    As a roadmap of sorts, the corpus callosum is the part of the brain that connects the two hemispheres. Knowing that look at:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cingulate_cortex

    Edit 2:

    This highlits the specific areas (side view) that the paper in the OP is referring to:

    https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-anterior-cingulate-cortex-ACC-consists-of-subgenual-sgACC-perigenual-pgACC-and_fig1_351484383

    Depth wise, the regions you see are basically in the middle of the brain (not left or right) where the two hemispheres touch, towards the front of your head, and right above the corpus callosum (the bundle that connect the two hemispheres).

    Basically, put the tip of your index finger above your eyebrows centered above your nose and you’re pointing the the right region though it looks like it’s buried an inch or two deep.