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Do you have any evidence -- at all -- that these devices scan for something other than the configured hotword?

Note that since the companies that make them are publicly-traded, there's a legally-enforceable expectation that when those companies say that the devices don't search for any other phrases, they're telling the truth. If anyone could prove that they weren't it would get the companies in significant trouble with the FTC and SEC. This is especially true for Google, which is operating under the terms of an FTC consent decree put into effect after the Google Buzz incident.

Have you not seen this? In today's world, just because The Big Company doesn't tell you about a thing that their product does, doesn't mean that they told you that it doesn't do that. And that's the logic that we're dealing with. The mentality that you perceive from Silicon Valley seems outdated.

Meh. That was clearly a simple mistake. They added the mic because they intended to use it later, then failed to include it in the spec sheet. There is also no evidence whatsoever that it was ever used at all until after it was actually announced.

This is actually an important point, though: Most of the tinfoil-hat crowd who is certain that companies are constantly maliciously lying have to attribute impossibly-high levels of competence and planning to them. In the real world, companies are made up of fallible people, and this not only means that mistakes like the one you linked happen... it also means that the sort of conspiracies of silence required to carry out the theorized malicious acts are just impossible.

Do you have any evidence -- at all -- that these devices scan for something other than the configured hotword?

Note that since the companies that make them are publicly-traded, there's a legally-enforceable expectation that when those companies say that the devices don't search for any other phrases, they're telling the truth. If anyone could prove that they weren't it would get the companies in significant trouble with the FTC and SEC. This is especially true for Google, which is operating under the terms of an FTC consent decree put into effect after the Google Buzz incident.

Have you not seen this?
In today's world, just because The Big Company doesn't tell you about a thing that their product does, doesn't mean that they told you that it doesn't do that. And that's the logic that we're dealing with. The mentality that you perceive from Silicon Valley seems outdated.

One good reason to have a different name is to do away with the space-based-arms-race-provoking nature of "Space Force," which likely contributed to India being emboldened to carry out this test.

If any country feels that they absolutely must have a space-based weapons program despite all the good reasons not to, they should keep it top secret. The Soviets were smart enough to know that:

https://www.popularmechanics.c...

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

Today's Russians are still smart enough to know this:

https://space.skyrocket.de/doc...

And before Trump, the US was too:

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

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

"An incandescent bulb achieves its temperature by emitting light over a smooth curve, with the balance tilted toward yellow and red. A CFL, and to a lesser extent an LED, mimics incandescents using a different mixture of light, with spikes and troughs of power strategically positioned across the spectrum to create a correlatedâ"or averagedâ"color temperature." https://www.popularmechanics.c...

Self landing rockets isn't any better than the alternative, which is why no one else continued making them since they were first introduced 40 years ago.

I guess somebody better tell the ESA they are wasting their money, then. https://www.popularmechanics.c...

The US invented a clever (and super-secret) technique during the Cold War. This was to spy on the Soviet Union. They used a "cradle" to implement the tapping system. The cradle only passively held the cable from the bottom; it never pierced the cable, nor did it restrict movement of the cable up and down.

Why? Well undersea communications cables are not-uncommonly raised to the surface for maintenance and troubleshooting. The US wanted a system that could not be detected when this routine maintenance was happening. Even a full cable replacement would, if the spooks were lucky, drop right back into the cradle and surveillance would continue uninterrupted. And this system worked!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a25857/operation-ivy-bells-underwater-wiretapping/

Google "Operation Ivy Bells" for more.

Popular Mechanics, apparently:

https://www.popularmechanics.c...

Just marketing words to make uninformed people feel better.

Everything costs to make and making things out of "green" things is not automatically greener. I had the same complaint about Incandescent vs LED bulbs. What is involved in each one? Most people just talk about the run time. Check out the worlds longest burning bulb.
https://www.popularmechanics.c...

LED's are made of plastic and plastic is a hydrocarbon, and they break down and expire and will go into land fills too. Most of them are engineered to only barely meet the very weak regulatory requirements to be energy efficient. Apple is no more green or honest than De Beers and blood diamonds.

The only objective with announcements like this are to win brownie points and nothing else. Apple can require whatever they want, their suppliers will just put on enough of a facade to look green so Apple can say they are green because there is a shiny new badge saying its green... green or not. Kinda like how Monsanto keeps staying in business under different names despite the destruction they have wrought aided entirely by regulatory agencies that claim to be there to protect us.

Any yes, people are dumb enough to believe it, you can most definitely fool most of the people most of the time. If you use the internet and do not see that one basic truth then you are part of that unfortunate majority.

I was on the fence before, but I think this article has the best stats and arguments for keeping DST. Or implementing it for all 12 months, not just 8.

https://www.popularmechanics.c...

The hidden microphones Nest / Google installed in people's homes, have no doubt collected far more dirt on kids. https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a26448907/google-nest-hidden-microphone/

https://www.popularmechanics.c...

Make sure you note the date on that article. This has been going on a long time! Another anecdote, company I knew manufactured DVD and CD, one of the contracts they bid on was to do the service manuals for the DOD but they kept getting underbid. They knew damn well there were VERY few US companies left that could do this and couldn't figure out how they were being underbid. They finally figured it out - a Chinese company was being used to make the media with a front company setup in the US. It took them ages to get the DOD to wake up and figure out they were sending the repair manuals for a ton of our shit over to China to have the damn DVD made. Good grief, why not have them produce our missiles too? Sheesh! Obviously years ago but man we've done some stupid stuff

Nuclear power?

Read this article, it seems to make a lot of sense and explains why nuclear power is not likely in the immediate or foreseeable future"

https://www.popularmechanics.c...

TLDR: Costs way too much, takes far too long to build. And NIMBY. Then there is that pesky unsolved waste issue...

China plans to build a new collider 5 times more powerful than the LHC - https://www.popularmechanics.c...

If CERN's new 10-time-more-powerful it will definitely shitfuck the Chinese to the end of the universe !

Whaddya mean the US doesn't have flying cars? If you rear-end a Ford Pinto, it has a rocket engine for a split second.

What is really news here? A worker with a forklift could do this just as easily and readily as a robot.

The news here is that Amazon didn't hesitate in calling 911 and getting 7 ambulances for their workers.

Lucky for them they weren't at a Tesla plant. Tesla prohibits its employees from calling 911, even for much more serious incidents than bear spray.

See?!! Orin Hatch retires and this happens!

Building a similar telescope in space is far, far more expensive. Advances in adaptive optics mitigate some of the advantages of space-based optical-wavelength telescopes. On a Weekly Space Hangout podcast the other day they said the ratio of requests for telescope time to actual available time for Hubble is 10 to 1 (even before the recent temporary shutdown). Thus it can be argued that for astronomers it may be preferable to have multiple massive ground-based telescopes for the price of one space-based telescope. The one advantage space-based will always retain is for certain wavelengths of light that are absorbed by the atmosphere (gamma rays, xrays, UV, much of the infrared range).

The resulting images are nearly as crisp as if the telescope were in space, and given that the VLT telescopes are more than three times the size of Hubble, the space pictures are even more fantastic. The new adaptive optics technology was used to image Neptune, as well as star clusters and other objects.

The solar may be helpful in some respects (like providing the power for the life-support systems on the ship), but I'm talking about a return to classic sail cargo ships like used for all shipping before motorized ships became popular.

I did a quick search and was glad to find some articles confirming that many people are indeed thinking about exactly these things:

https://www.machinedesign.com/...
https://www.popularmechanics.c...
https://www.theguardian.com/en...

Uh, Tesla's "autopilot" is a driver assist, not a self-driving vehicle

Semantics and legalities.

It wasn't "semantics and legalities" when "autopilot" steered a vehicle into a highway divider.

It wasn't "semantics and legalities" when "autopilot" drove into the side of a tractor trailer.

Then it was the stupid driver who mistakenly used autopilot as a substitute for paying and attention because "autopilot" is not a self-driving vehicle system. Now, when it's convenient for you to argue so, it suddenly is equivalent to one.

You post in just about every Tesla-related article on Slashdot. Shall I look for your comments at the time to see if you made precisely the opposite argument then to the one that you're making now?

While those are all problems to be contended with they all have engineering solutions which have resulted in images surpassing the quality of Hubble's results. The remaining issue is access time due to the sun being up for a portion of the day, and weather ruining some nights.

https://www.popularmechanics.c...

And then you get this little jobby.

The Soviets/Russians have the ability to find subs without sonar at all.

You must be one of these bright young engineers surfing a bit of Slashdot on company time.

Those bright young Lockheed engineers fall under the leadership of Rick Ambrose, who recently said, "Lockheed Martin's business model is to bill federally contracted hours". I'd put that in a block quote, but I can't find a link to Rick's speech where he made that statement in an attempt to mitigate the near riotous discontent inside Lockheed shortly after the Falcon Heavy test flight, featuring Starman in a Tesla Roadster. One of those bright, young Lockheed engineers that heard that speech in person conveyed that the room full of engineers he was in became visibly angry at Rick's overall speech, because like the rest of Lockheed's senior leadership, he's completely out of touch. That bright young engineer recently abandoned Lockheed for greener pastures. And overall, Lockheed is having a very hard time attracting and keeping new talent. They've bumped up their pay to try to compete, but their stodgy, bureaucratic and inefficient culture is a bit much to take for someone that is actually motivated and intelligent. There are simply too many more rewarding places to work.

Lockheed pays a lot of money and works hard to polish their public image. Look at all the positive publicity around the Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter.

In reality, Lockheed dropped the ball on integrating and testing other vendor supplied components, and they nearly lost this spacecraft. It was saved by some bright folks at JPL, not by Lockheed.

In order to make up for the propulsion system failure and the unintended orbit that this spacecraft is now in, the mission has been extended, and guess who's paying for it? Yep, the US taxpayers! Thanks Lockheed! The press releases have all been polished very nicely. Lockheed really really wants those government checks to keep flowing.

Lockheed definitely has a lot of success in space, but with their costs and whitewashed inefficiencies, and the recent success of a more market driven competitive approach to funding and awarding contracts, why keep throwing good money after bad?

Of course the CEO was not involved. He was too busy trying to blame people for the rocket that exploded on the launchpad---even though it exploded because of a design flaw. http://fortune.com/2016/10/01/... https://www.popularmechanics.c...

He isn’t; you are just entirely clueless. Trains are sneaky. https://www.popularmechanics.c...

These weapon systems are so expensive they try to not expose them.

F-35 = $103 million a copy CH-53E = $136 million a copy

The US armed forces tries to not use CH-53E in hostile territory because of cost.

How about F-35s that will never be combat ready. https://www.popularmechanics.c...

Why do we buy these systems?

We should be building planes with longer ranges or evaluate the need / effectiveness of carriers when weapons like the DF-21 stonefish exist.

If it's any consolation, the Chinese Chengdu J-20 is thought to cost in the vicinity of $120 million per unit. I rather like the Chinese concept behind the Chengdu J-31 better, it is estimated to costs only about $60-70 million per unit. It may not be quite as sophisticated as the F-35 but if you can build it in larger numbers that won't matter too much and if the Chinese can achieve the kind of cost lowering the F-35A has achieved as production of it ramped up, the price tag on a J-31 could drop into the $50 million range or lower. In an all out war my money is always going to be on the guy who can make adequate tanks/guns/planes in huge numbers and not on the guy who goes beyond the point of diminishing returns to include lots of engineering excellence in their designs or wastes resources on bleeding edge projects like the Nazis did (and they did both those things).

Glenn Curtiss built the first flying car over a hundred years ago. There have been many others since.

There has never been a technical obstacle to flying cars. The obstacles are

1) Cost, since airplanes must be built to much higher safety and reliability standards because when they break down, you don't pull over to the shoulder to wait for a tow truck so much as fall out of the sky and explode.

2) To have flying cars, you have to have pilots, and a pilot's license is much more demanding to get, and needs to be, because again, if something goes wrong, you don't pull over to the shoulder to wait for a tow truck so much as fall out of the sky and explode.

3) Traffic control in three dimensions rather than two is at least an order of magnitude more complicated.

Yeah, in theory, self piloting flying cars will eliminate 2 and 3 (while making 1 that much worse), but the technology doesn't exist and no one alive today will live long enough to see it. We can't build a ground car that can drive itself in the rain, at night, on an unfamiliar road, past a construction crew. Again, adding a third dimension adds an order of magnitude more complication. To both driving the thing and traffic control.

And right now, traffic control is still run by human judgement, with a few thousand planes in the air at any given time. Increase the number of vehicles by three orders of magnitude, with a minimum of a thousand feet required between them at all times, and remember, most of them will be piloted by someone shaving their armpits and eating breakfast at the same time, and you have a good pitch for a sit-com, or a prospectus with which to fleece investors, but not something we'll see any time soon.

The 2016 explosion didn't rip the fairing apart. There's the entire service module (trunk) as a buffer between the launcher and the capsule. The engines are on the sloped sides, not beneath the capsule. And in the end, after analyzing the incident, Musk announced "Dragon would have been fine"

Anyone with a milling machine can already build a gun. Besides, the cat is already out of the fucking bag, you retarded government motherfuckers. No, really, WAY the fuck out of the bag. Ignoring all that, the First and Second Amendments do not allow any wiggle room for restrictions, so all laws restricting firearm ownership and speech (this touches both) are unconstitutional, full stop.

Gorilla glass seems so uninteresting after https://www.popularmechanics.c...

With Firefox Quantum and uBlock Origin add-on I am able to view https://www.popularmechanics.c..., including the linked article, without seeing any ads. What browser and adblocker are you using?

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...

In addition to the excellent point you make, it was thought the ice shelves were melting (they would truly be the main cause of ocean levels rising if they were to melt and let a lot of Continental ice free) but instead they seem to be freezing, against expectations (and as you say also against the alarmist message being spread by the NYT). If the ice shelves are not melting there's not much to be concerned about in regards to sea level rise from Antartica.

When autonomously changing lanes to obtain preset cruising speed (set by driver in excess of posted limit), do not pull out where there is no lane, accelerate and crash into barrier to kill the driver as punishment for asking the car to do 75 in a 65 zone.

https://www.popularmechanics.c...

Really, Really Random Number Generator

Why a Wall Full of Lava Lamps Is a Terrific Random Number Generator

I don't think China would hesitate... https://www.popularmechanics.c... Unless Google is helping China, such waste of talent in the US would just be a repeat of... https://youtu.be/pKiqsJ7VUAs

Oh and it's not a fuel either. It's just a storage medium, like a battery except more dangerous, unreliable, and expensive.

If you think it's a fuel, link me to a hydrogen well or hydrogen mine.

https://www.popularmechanics.c...
https://www.triplepundit.com/2...
http://collegeofcuriosity.com/...
https://www.technologyreview.c...
https://phys.org/news/2006-12-...

Yeah, sorry, the party is over. The cheap energy blowout of the post-WWII techno-bonanza is coming to a close. Your children are already expected to have a shorter life span than you and will likely face a 19th century existence, but without cheap coal.

Even flat earthers annoy me less, at least they try!

That, they do! https://www.popularmechanics.c...

An SUV has to weigh over 8,500 pounds to be exempt - that's hummer/excursion-sized.

https://www.popularmechanics.c...

dude, some people live 1000 miles from an apple repair shop, or some countries dont even have them at all (enemies of usa)

Let me remind you of the 90s, Apple sold DRAM modules at 3x retail prices as it was 'genuine'.

This is why they are making their own LCD factory so no one will be able to fix it then... https://www.popularmechanics.c...

Meanwhile, Tesla produced its first 10k Model 3s in the time it took GM to produce its first 1000 Bolts. I guess that's that "decades to tune their processes and supply chains" they had going for them, eh? And it costs Tesla $10k less per vehicle.

I wouldn't put too much faith in that. Tesla 25% margin is not plausible even for their higher-end cars except perhaps the Performance trims. As for the Bolt, a car that I wouldn't buy unless it were 1/2 the MSRP, GM is mostly selling them for the EV credits. But they do have the facilities, manpower and skillsets to turn up the production as needed. Ford, for example, converted their largest NorthAm truck factory to aluminum production of their flagship F-150 in only 8-10 weeks and by mid-November were producing 1400 per DAY at the new plant. https://www.popularmechanics.c...

That's a "machine-that-builds-the-machine" that Tesla can still only dream of building.

The Bolt comes off a line that also produces the Sonic. They produce two Sonics for every Bolt, so the production of that line is three times Bolt production. CM has a different model.

Meanwhile, Tesla produced its first 10k Model 3s in the time it took GM to produce its first 1000 Bolts. I guess that's that "decades to tune their processes and supply chains" they had going for them, eh? And it costs Tesla $10k less per vehicle.

I wouldn't put too much faith in that. Tesla 25% margin is not plausible even for their higher-end cars except perhaps the Performance trims. As for the Bolt, a car that I wouldn't buy unless it were 1/2 the MSRP, GM is mostly selling them for the EV credits. But they do have the facilities, manpower and skillsets to turn up the production as needed.
Ford, for example, converted their largest NorthAm truck factory to aluminum production of their flagship F-150 in only 8-10 weeks and by mid-November were producing 1400 per DAY at the new plant.
https://www.popularmechanics.c...

That's a "machine-that-builds-the-machine" that Tesla can still only dream of building.

Fluid flow simulation is what one might call a military grade problem - efficient and accurate ways of doing it are either protected by commercial secretcy (because CAD software to design multimillion dollar yachts and aircraft is expensive) or actual military secrecy - because the problem you're solving is the same sort of problem that's being solved (for example) when designing SSBN propellers and hulls to minimize cavitation and make the ships run silent.

Beyond tourism, there are private companies making plans to do manufacturing in orbit. ( https://www.popularmechanics.c... ) They may need a permanent station to a support equipment, crew, computers, etc., and may welcome a functional pre-fab option, so they can focus more of their efforts on their manufacturing.

Like this?
Chemistry's own version of the 3D printer—a machine that can systematically synthesize thousands of different molecules from a handful of starting chemicals. https://www.popularmechanics.c...

My first thought on seeing the headline was about using technology to read ancient manuscripts which may be too fragile to open or may have even been written on recycled even older manuscripts. They use x-rays and computer imaging to read that which cannot be read by the human eye.

I've seen a few stories about this over the years.

Scientists read ancient sealed documents without opening them

MIT and Georgia Tech develop technology to read books without opening them

Scientists Read Ancient Hebrew Scroll Without Opening It

Scanning an Ancient Biblical Text That Humans Fear to Open

There's lots more out there and note those aren't just 4 different links to the same story.

But this story is still interesting to me too. I'm sure that the people doing the work in the linked article might be tasked with transcribing or translating the images of pages they can't actually touch.

Watching the successful launch, the landing of the booster rockets, and the view of the car from space has left an indelible mark on me and my son. It was so thrilling to watch and filled me with optimism that someone like Elon Musk and his team can make something this cool and remarkable happen. Kudos!
On a side note, working at SpaceX would be a dream but unfortunately only Americans are allowed due to some regulation. Maybe they'll expand to Canada (although we don't launch our own rockets).

The pictures show a car mounted in rather emtpy space.
https://www.popularmechanics.c...

I was under impression that a rocket launch is a lot of shake, vibration and gforces. How is a car like that going to survive it and more importantly, would it break apart and cause damage to the launch vehicule? Not to mention the batteries (likely they will discharge them?)

What can go wrong with this idea?

"Ethanol, like methanol and Isopropyl alcohol are all drying agents"

And how do you think that drying action happens?

https://www.popularmechanics.c...

Come back when you've got an SAE certification, because you sure have no clue what you're talking about.

...with Ford's new CRYPTO door opener and starter mechanism!

Given the Pinto's safety record you might want to drop the 'O'.

The government spends money on wars, prisons, corporate welfare, and subsidies for a bloated and wasteful healthcare system.

Also infrastructure, education, public safety, human welfare, law enforcement, and unprofitable scientific research, but who needs that stuff right?

Google really needs that money, after all. CEOs' megayachts have to fly now.

All of those things are still paid for. The employees all pay taxes, and google is able to pay higher salaries because they dodge taxes. Local government and local taxes are generally better run, less wasteful, and able to fail and adapt; therefore distributing taxes to the employees and where they choose to shop, live, eat, etc... is a better model than dumping it in the massive federal level of a mess.

The government spends money on wars, prisons, corporate welfare, and subsidies for a bloated and wasteful healthcare system.

Also infrastructure, education, public safety, human welfare, law enforcement, and unprofitable scientific research, but who needs that stuff right?

Google really needs that money, after all. CEOs' megayachts have to fly now.