I'm a software guy, and away from the auto industry for many, many years, so can only relate a famous "oops" that I'm aware of from consumer experience. (Actually, consumer near-miss, as I didn't own the specific BMW models with this "oops", just aware because I bought one used, and educated myself...)
BMW had a big problem with aluminum engine parts and the high sulfur levels in American gasoline. They don't have those high levels of sulfur in European gas, and didn't anticipate the problem. One little thing they failed to research cost them big bucks!
The fix, of course, was not a localization, though. They just changed the parts across the board to deal with the problem. (I believe it's some treatment to piston surfaces.)
Of course, there are obvious issues with regulations, particular on emissions, but I get the sense that those are well-researched and not many surprises there.
I suppose it's the "oops, we didn't know about what Lutefisk does to pleather" moments that trip them up!
I wonder if Tesla has failed to use variation simulation tools?
There is no need for precision 10 times greater than other car companies. That is just wasteful! They need to find out WHERE the precision is needed, and HOW MUCH precision is needed. Blindly improving precision "10 times" is ridiculous.
I worked on variation simulation technology in the 1980s. This is the current version of the product I worked on:
Hopefully, Tesla is using this or something similar.
I originally ported this code from code written by a university professor at Wayne Statue University in Detroit, and then designed a domain-specific language and implemented a compiler for it, to make models easier to write. (Probably the most important thing I did, though, was to strong-arm my boss into hiring a mathematician to help clean up what was some pretty awful and buggy statistical and geometric-transform code...) The product has changed hands a couple of times since then, before landing at it's current home at Siemens.
The original company that developed this (where I worked) both created the product, and worked with the Detroit automakers on several breakthrough projects that address just where Tesla should be applying this.
For example, the 1984 Corvette C4 was the first car out of Detroit to use BOLT HOLES instead of slots in hood hinges. This was made practical with VSA analysis.
There was a big push for lowered emissions at the time - VSA allowed auto companies to model variability between engines, and predict what percentage would be rejected with a given design.
An important re-design of the FA-18 used VSA modeling extensively, and solved many manufacturing problems with the airframe.
I recall MANY door clearance and other similar fit-and-finish projects.
You could not build today's disk drives at a practical cost without VSA. Every drive manufacturer uses it.
Before VSA, it was largely guesswork. Once you get past a liner stack, it is nearly impossible to work-out by hand. There was some prior use, during WWII. One of the first - if not the first - uses of VSA was in WWII when the technique was developed at Willow Run Labs to solve manufacturability problems with planes being built for WWII. It was done crudely, with a room full of workers on manual calculators...
Professor Greg Gruska at Wayne State dusted off the mothballs in the early 1980s, and wrote some Fortran code to implement it on their mainframe (the code I had to port to IBM PC...) and taught a class in variation simulation analysis. I was the first technical employee at the company that commercialized it.
I believe there was some parallel work in Japan at the time, and there are a couple of competing products.
Did Tesla somehow miss this important analysis technique?
It's not the same. And I wish they wouldn't call it a password.
Many banks offer an additional level of protection, by allowing you to add a "password" to your account that you will be required to recite when contacting them by phone or doing business in an office.
It has nothing to do with your online account password.
Obviously, in order for the teller to verify it, they have to be able to see it.
Maybe T-Mobile used the first 4 characters of your login password for this purpose. If they did, it is BIZARRE and stupid!
You might argue that the "teller password" is an even worse practice. But this is supposed to be used only after they've already verified picture ID (at least in branch). On the phone, there still will be the usual verification steps before they ask for the password.
Reading between the lines, it sounds like they store the entire password in plain text.
Hello Claudia! The customer service agents see the first four characters of your password. We store the whole password, because you need it for the login for http://mein.t-mobile.at/
Now, it might be that the agent doesn't understand that passwords aren't normally stored in plain text. You don't "need" to store passwords in order for users to log-in with their password. But that's hard for non-technical people to understand.
They had to go out of their way if they've stored the first four characters in plain text! They'd need an additional attribute in a database table just for that, and I just can't imagine this happening without every developer within shouting distance noticing and objecting. There would have to be a very good reason, and there would have to have been a great deal of discussion and justification.
I would love to hear the "why" if this is actually the case.
You don't need the password in plain-text to deal with lost passwords. You have a protocol for the customer to prove their identity, and then you provide a way to reset the password - whether directly by the customer or manually be a customer service rep.
Please, every T-Mobile customer: please change your password RIGHT NOW to f*** + 12 random characters!
If you care at all about security, you have no business connecting EITHER system to third-party WiFi (whether open at a coffee shop or closed at some other business) without employing a VPN.
The VPN should either terminate at your home/company router (hopefully you trust your own company's IT department to maintain a secure environment) or with a trusted third party. (i.e. your IT/security people should vet the company's security).
For your specific case (per your followup comment) that alone should have been sufficient.
But if - as you had stated originally - the Internet access was for personal stuff, and you want to avoid mixing business and personal uses, you could use a VM to keep the uses separate.
The two-computer system you used has a flaw, that could have been alleviated with a VPN. Somebody snooping on your second computer's connection might reasonably be able to determine what you were working on based on your searches and visited sites.
For your actual use case, use a single computer with a VPN. For your hypothetical use case (personal use as well) use one or two VMs and use separate VPNs to connect to the Internet from each.
"Martha? Would you ring up Woodrow 2-4-2 and ask the president of the bank to wire $10,000 to Sparky up in Reno out of my account? It's 5-4-7-9. Thanks!
The cars around you might as well be at infinity, compared to a close-in display. Your eyes are doing little/no focusing to look at different cars around you.
Of course we all look at the speedometer and other indicators. But not constantly. And every time we do, we have to shift focus, which means we are NOT getting a clear view of the outside. BOTH due to changed focus and changed direction of gaze.
When you glance at a mirror, you do not need to change focus if you were previously looking outside.
so Apps on non X-screens will effectively have a black notch at the top of the screen?
No. That's exactly what they want to avoid.
There are "safe zones" on each edge. You aren't supposed to put content in the safe zones. You can obtain the size of the safe zones using an SDK call. Or I presume if you use auto-layout, it's just taken care of for you.
I write hybrid apps that use a WKWebview for UI. UI/WKWebview provides CSS constants for the safe zones:
Apple already has iOS ported to X86 and has forever. It's used by developers when testing on the iOS simulator running on MacOS. The simulator doesn't run ARM code. It runs X86 code.
Apple would likely give developers the option of including X86 platform support in their build. Developers could OPT IN to releasing on macOS. You already build for two different ARM platforms.
There is nothing revolutionary here. Just a new build option and some new App Store/ITunesConnect functionality.
I'm a cross-platform developer. I write apps that run on iOS and Android. On Android, it uses the NDK (native development kit) and I build for both ARM and X86. (Because some Android tablets are X86). What Apple is proposing is likely not much different.
Apple wouldn't likely provide an ARM emulator, because the performance would suck.
Every time Apple comes out with a new XCode version, they say "jump", and developers respond with "how high?". Or... not agaaaaainnnnn!
I wonder if this is why Google is also blind to steam donkeys?
I can only find ONE picture of a steam donkey, and it is not of one in actual operation, loading or unloading a ship, but one that has been half buried in an outdoor exhibit.
The rest are just pictures of the lyrics to the sea shanty "Donkey Riding".
YMMV, as this might only be because I was, in fact, previously searching for audio files of the sea shanty "Donkey Riding". I wanted to see what a real steam donkey actually looks like. Google doesn't seem to have had much luck finding that, and "helpfully" gave me pictures of the lyrics to "Donkey Riding" which is not what I was looking for.
But we will never learn that a bubble is a bubble is a bubble.
Bitcoin is a bit of technology/algorithms that would be useful if it weren't so cumbersome. There are better, more recent, solutions for the same problem, and Bitcoin will fall by the wayside.
In the meantime, none of these things are actual currencies. It's just people playing chicken pretending there's something to back the "currency" and passing the hot-potato along until somebody gets stuck with it.
Some day, governments or others that can act as a store of wealth may use similar technology.
He is comparing apples and oranges, but at the same time makes a good point - if not very clearly.
The quality, style, and presentation of coffee does not matter to him. He just wants a basic cup o'Joe. He can make that at home for a few pennies, and it's actually more convenient than going to the coffee shop.
I suspect that the vast majority of sheeples that go to Starbucks also care not a bit about the quality, style, or presentation of coffee either. Otherwise, they would be at a good independent coffee shop, and not at Starbucks!
It's not valid, though, to compare a cup of Chock-Full-of-Nuts made in the drip machine at home with an artisan cup of espresso, latte', cappuccino, etc.
The capital cost of doing this (WELL) at home, is fairly high. Sorry, no, that $10 or $20 blade grinder from Amazon will not do the same job as the high-end burr grinder they use at the shop. No, your drip machine will not make anything approaching a good espresso machine.
A few years ago, I invested $400 in a good burr grinder (Mazzer Mini) and $800 on a piston-lever style espresso machine (Elektra Micro Casa a'Leva). Aside, I think the only consumer purchase I've ever made that has actually appreciated. (The Micro Casa has doubled in price in the mean time... my late 2012 Mac Mini comes close, having retained it value... it's a much-sought Unicorn).
I jokingly calculated the cost-per-cup for a short time after I bought this rig. My first cup was the $1200 cup of espresso!
OK, so 10 years later, it has more than paid for itself.
Rough back of envelope: every two weeks or so I walk across the street to the artisan coffee roaster, and pay $15 for a bag of covfefe beans. I also drop $3 on a properly-made Macchiato. (Which you will not find at Starbucks.) But I will ignore that one cup, and just call it $15. I make one cappuccino every morning, so that's about 30 cups. 45 - 15, I have saved $30. * 24 I could have saved $720/year, if it weren't for my extravagant habit of one shop-made coffee every two weeks. I could have saved $7200 over the 10 years, so my capital cost was sunk a long time ago. (Oops, one $400 trip the repair shop...)
But, you can see, even so, this is not a.20 cup of coffee. It's a 0.50 cup of coffee in beans alone. Add a naive $5 for the share of the capital cost (ignoring opportunity cost), now you are at $20 / 30 = 0.66. If you add opportunity cost (I could have invested that $1200 10 years ago) we're well over $1/cup.
Now add what can be a very expensive retail lease in well-trafficked locations, cost of equipment, furnishings, leasehold improvements, employee cost, other costs of operations (utilities, disposables, etc. etc.) $2.50 isn't an unreasonable cost at all.
With the recent craze for "cold brew" coffee, there is a new wrinkle: inventory management and waste. Always been an issue for beans (having beans in stock that are not too new and not too old, and kept from oxidation). Customers expect cold brew to be made over-night and be fresh. A good place will toss what is left at the end of the day. They have to predict every day how much cold brew they will need. They will either have waste at the end of the day, or unhappy customers who cannot buy the cold brew they wanted.
I will occasionally make a cup of French Press, in an insulated stainless steel Freling press. It's a hassle, though, since I have to adjust the grind and then adjust it back for espresso. If French Press is your thing, you can avoid most of the capital cost.
If it MATTERS to you, seek out a good local artisanal shop, buy your own equipment and find a good source of beans (NOT Trader Joe!. Please NOT bagged Starbucks!). Skip Starbucks, but you already knew that if it matters to you. Find something else that you over-spend on every day and cut THAT.
If it doesn't matter, stop spending the money on garbage over-roasted coffee at a cost that is unreasonable for your wants. At the same time, stop blaming Starbucks for the cost. It's not the huge margin business you've been imagining it is.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a software guy, and away from the auto industry for many, many years, so can only relate a famous "oops" that I'm aware of from consumer experience. (Actually, consumer near-miss, as I didn't own the specific BMW models with this "oops", just aware because I bought one used, and educated myself...)
BMW had a big problem with aluminum engine parts and the high sulfur levels in American gasoline. They don't have those high levels of sulfur in European gas, and didn't anticipate the problem. One little thing they failed to research cost them big bucks!
The fix, of course, was not a localization, though. They just changed the parts across the board to deal with the problem. (I believe it's some treatment to piston surfaces.)
Of course, there are obvious issues with regulations, particular on emissions, but I get the sense that those are well-researched and not many surprises there.
I suppose it's the "oops, we didn't know about what Lutefisk does to pleather" moments that trip them up!
I wonder if Tesla has failed to use variation simulation tools?
There is no need for precision 10 times greater than other car companies. That is just wasteful! They need to find out WHERE the precision is needed, and HOW MUCH precision is needed. Blindly improving precision "10 times" is ridiculous.
I worked on variation simulation technology in the 1980s. This is the current version of the product I worked on:
https://www.plm.automation.sie...
Hopefully, Tesla is using this or something similar.
I originally ported this code from code written by a university professor at Wayne Statue University in Detroit, and then designed a domain-specific language and implemented a compiler for it, to make models easier to write. (Probably the most important thing I did, though, was to strong-arm my boss into hiring a mathematician to help clean up what was some pretty awful and buggy statistical and geometric-transform code...) The product has changed hands a couple of times since then, before landing at it's current home at Siemens.
The original company that developed this (where I worked) both created the product, and worked with the Detroit automakers on several breakthrough projects that address just where Tesla should be applying this.
For example, the 1984 Corvette C4 was the first car out of Detroit to use BOLT HOLES instead of slots in hood hinges. This was made practical with VSA analysis.
There was a big push for lowered emissions at the time - VSA allowed auto companies to model variability between engines, and predict what percentage would be rejected with a given design.
An important re-design of the FA-18 used VSA modeling extensively, and solved many manufacturing problems with the airframe.
I recall MANY door clearance and other similar fit-and-finish projects.
You could not build today's disk drives at a practical cost without VSA. Every drive manufacturer uses it.
Before VSA, it was largely guesswork. Once you get past a liner stack, it is nearly impossible to work-out by hand. There was some prior use, during WWII. One of the first - if not the first - uses of VSA was in WWII when the technique was developed at Willow Run Labs to solve manufacturability problems with planes being built for WWII. It was done crudely, with a room full of workers on manual calculators...
Professor Greg Gruska at Wayne State dusted off the mothballs in the early 1980s, and wrote some Fortran code to implement it on their mainframe (the code I had to port to IBM PC...) and taught a class in variation simulation analysis. I was the first technical employee at the company that commercialized it.
I believe there was some parallel work in Japan at the time, and there are a couple of competing products.
Did Tesla somehow miss this important analysis technique?
You're WAY down on the totem pole.
FBI SURVEILLANCE VAN #1 is right down the street from me!
No, YOU change your name!
It's not the same. And I wish they wouldn't call it a password.
Many banks offer an additional level of protection, by allowing you to add a "password" to your account that you will be required to recite when contacting them by phone or doing business in an office.
It has nothing to do with your online account password.
Obviously, in order for the teller to verify it, they have to be able to see it.
Maybe T-Mobile used the first 4 characters of your login password for this purpose. If they did, it is BIZARRE and stupid!
You might argue that the "teller password" is an even worse practice. But this is supposed to be used only after they've already verified picture ID (at least in branch). On the phone, there still will be the usual verification steps before they ask for the password.
Reading between the lines, it sounds like they store the entire password in plain text.
Now, it might be that the agent doesn't understand that passwords aren't normally stored in plain text. You don't "need" to store passwords in order for users to log-in with their password. But that's hard for non-technical people to understand.
They had to go out of their way if they've stored the first four characters in plain text! They'd need an additional attribute in a database table just for that, and I just can't imagine this happening without every developer within shouting distance noticing and objecting. There would have to be a very good reason, and there would have to have been a great deal of discussion and justification.
I would love to hear the "why" if this is actually the case.
You don't need the password in plain-text to deal with lost passwords. You have a protocol for the customer to prove their identity, and then you provide a way to reset the password - whether directly by the customer or manually be a customer service rep.
Please, every T-Mobile customer: please change your password RIGHT NOW to f*** + 12 random characters!
Strange that nobody suggested using a VPN.
If you care at all about security, you have no business connecting EITHER system to third-party WiFi (whether open at a coffee shop or closed at some other business) without employing a VPN.
The VPN should either terminate at your home/company router (hopefully you trust your own company's IT department to maintain a secure environment) or with a trusted third party. (i.e. your IT/security people should vet the company's security).
For your specific case (per your followup comment) that alone should have been sufficient.
But if - as you had stated originally - the Internet access was for personal stuff, and you want to avoid mixing business and personal uses, you could use a VM to keep the uses separate.
The two-computer system you used has a flaw, that could have been alleviated with a VPN. Somebody snooping on your second computer's connection might reasonably be able to determine what you were working on based on your searches and visited sites.
For your actual use case, use a single computer with a VPN. For your hypothetical use case (personal use as well) use one or two VMs and use separate VPNs to connect to the Internet from each.
Can somebody send some English teachers up to Redmond?
Oh? And what kind of illicit business is that?
"Martha? Would you ring up Woodrow 2-4-2 and ask the president of the bank to wire $10,000 to Sparky up in Reno out of my account? It's 5-4-7-9. Thanks!
So, you're looking for Tools to micro-manage your HOA?
Isn't that who you elected?!
The cars around you might as well be at infinity, compared to a close-in display. Your eyes are doing little/no focusing to look at different cars around you.
Of course we all look at the speedometer and other indicators. But not constantly. And every time we do, we have to shift focus, which means we are NOT getting a clear view of the outside. BOTH due to changed focus and changed direction of gaze.
When you glance at a mirror, you do not need to change focus if you were previously looking outside.
No. That's exactly what they want to avoid.
There are "safe zones" on each edge. You aren't supposed to put content in the safe zones. You can obtain the size of the safe zones using an SDK call. Or I presume if you use auto-layout, it's just taken care of for you.
I write hybrid apps that use a WKWebview for UI. UI/WKWebview provides CSS constants for the safe zones:
safe-area-inset-top
safe-area-inset-bottom
safe-area-inset-left
safe-area-inset-right
The values will be appropriate for the device the app is running on.
Presumably this is usable by web sites so that they look nice on iPhone X as well.
It gets curiouser and curiouser...
The first hint of incompetence was the repeated referral to a non-existent "button".
It was (apparently) a drop-down.
That smacks of a made-up excuse by some superior who was not familiar with the actual procedure.
I would bet it will not be an ARM emulator.
Apple already has iOS ported to X86 and has forever. It's used by developers when testing on the iOS simulator running on MacOS. The simulator doesn't run ARM code. It runs X86 code.
Apple would likely give developers the option of including X86 platform support in their build. Developers could OPT IN to releasing on macOS. You already build for two different ARM platforms.
There is nothing revolutionary here. Just a new build option and some new App Store/ITunesConnect functionality.
I'm a cross-platform developer. I write apps that run on iOS and Android. On Android, it uses the NDK (native development kit) and I build for both ARM and X86. (Because some Android tablets are X86). What Apple is proposing is likely not much different.
Apple wouldn't likely provide an ARM emulator, because the performance would suck.
Every time Apple comes out with a new XCode version, they say "jump", and developers respond with "how high?". Or... not agaaaaainnnnn!
1. Go outside
2. Look up
3. You will see the moon, unless it is very cloudy
You do know what "outside" is, right?
I wonder if this is why Google is also blind to steam donkeys?
I can only find ONE picture of a steam donkey, and it is not of one in actual operation, loading or unloading a ship, but one that has been half buried in an outdoor exhibit.
The rest are just pictures of the lyrics to the sea shanty "Donkey Riding".
YMMV, as this might only be because I was, in fact, previously searching for audio files of the sea shanty "Donkey Riding". I wanted to see what a real steam donkey actually looks like. Google doesn't seem to have had much luck finding that, and "helpfully" gave me pictures of the lyrics to "Donkey Riding" which is not what I was looking for.
So, is this going to tell us why we don't fall off?
This is the best proof yet that the U.S. possesses time-travel technology!
How else does the Library of Congress know which tweets will be of historic significance?
The reason has been known for hundreds of years.
But we will never learn that a bubble is a bubble is a bubble.
Bitcoin is a bit of technology/algorithms that would be useful if it weren't so cumbersome. There are better, more recent, solutions for the same problem, and Bitcoin will fall by the wayside.
In the meantime, none of these things are actual currencies. It's just people playing chicken pretending there's something to back the "currency" and passing the hot-potato along until somebody gets stuck with it.
Some day, governments or others that can act as a store of wealth may use similar technology.
Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (PDF)
No, not sneaking around. These guys:
https://stealth.net/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Local, and they've been putting their own fiber in the ground.
They should consider partnering, if this is more than a publicity stunt.
Disclosure: I have done business with Stealth in the past.
See subject.
He is comparing apples and oranges, but at the same time makes a good point - if not very clearly.
The quality, style, and presentation of coffee does not matter to him. He just wants a basic cup o'Joe. He can make that at home for a few pennies, and it's actually more convenient than going to the coffee shop.
I suspect that the vast majority of sheeples that go to Starbucks also care not a bit about the quality, style, or presentation of coffee either. Otherwise, they would be at a good independent coffee shop, and not at Starbucks!
It's not valid, though, to compare a cup of Chock-Full-of-Nuts made in the drip machine at home with an artisan cup of espresso, latte', cappuccino, etc.
The capital cost of doing this (WELL) at home, is fairly high. Sorry, no, that $10 or $20 blade grinder from Amazon will not do the same job as the high-end burr grinder they use at the shop. No, your drip machine will not make anything approaching a good espresso machine.
A few years ago, I invested $400 in a good burr grinder (Mazzer Mini) and $800 on a piston-lever style espresso machine (Elektra Micro Casa a'Leva). Aside, I think the only consumer purchase I've ever made that has actually appreciated. (The Micro Casa has doubled in price in the mean time... my late 2012 Mac Mini comes close, having retained it value... it's a much-sought Unicorn).
I jokingly calculated the cost-per-cup for a short time after I bought this rig. My first cup was the $1200 cup of espresso!
OK, so 10 years later, it has more than paid for itself.
Rough back of envelope: every two weeks or so I walk across the street to the artisan coffee roaster, and pay $15 for a bag of covfefe beans. I also drop $3 on a properly-made Macchiato. (Which you will not find at Starbucks.) But I will ignore that one cup, and just call it $15. I make one cappuccino every morning, so that's about 30 cups. 45 - 15, I have saved $30. * 24 I could have saved $720/year, if it weren't for my extravagant habit of one shop-made coffee every two weeks. I could have saved $7200 over the 10 years, so my capital cost was sunk a long time ago. (Oops, one $400 trip the repair shop...)
But, you can see, even so, this is not a .20 cup of coffee. It's a 0.50 cup of coffee in beans alone. Add a naive $5 for the share of the capital cost (ignoring opportunity cost), now you are at $20 / 30 = 0.66. If you add opportunity cost (I could have invested that $1200 10 years ago) we're well over $1/cup.
Now add what can be a very expensive retail lease in well-trafficked locations, cost of equipment, furnishings, leasehold improvements, employee cost, other costs of operations (utilities, disposables, etc. etc.) $2.50 isn't an unreasonable cost at all.
With the recent craze for "cold brew" coffee, there is a new wrinkle: inventory management and waste. Always been an issue for beans (having beans in stock that are not too new and not too old, and kept from oxidation). Customers expect cold brew to be made over-night and be fresh. A good place will toss what is left at the end of the day. They have to predict every day how much cold brew they will need. They will either have waste at the end of the day, or unhappy customers who cannot buy the cold brew they wanted.
I will occasionally make a cup of French Press, in an insulated stainless steel Freling press. It's a hassle, though, since I have to adjust the grind and then adjust it back for espresso. If French Press is your thing, you can avoid most of the capital cost.
If it MATTERS to you, seek out a good local artisanal shop, buy your own equipment and find a good source of beans (NOT Trader Joe!. Please NOT bagged Starbucks!). Skip Starbucks, but you already knew that if it matters to you. Find something else that you over-spend on every day and cut THAT.
If it doesn't matter, stop spending the money on garbage over-roasted coffee at a cost that is unreasonable for your wants. At the same time, stop blaming Starbucks for the cost. It's not the huge margin business you've been imagining it is.
... said tinfoil hat wearers everywhere.