Why cannot the state mandate that each employee gets X days of holiday per year guaranteed, and is forced to take them? That's how it works in quite a few countries in Europe.
Forced employees to take them or forced the employers to allow employees to take them?
Employers would like the former. It removes the PTO from the books quickly and prevents employees from taking enough time off in one block to impact the work. And by making it law, there would be no risk of good employees jumping ship for a better deal.
"X" would also likely be compromised into something barely more than companies typically give now. Remember, this is the country that translated "healthcare for everyone" into "everyone must buy private health insurance"
"...Older than thought". Humans became a sentient species only recently, on the geological time scale. So a rock being older that thought itself, is not so surprising.
To be older than human thought it easy. However, to be older than thought would require that the rock be older than thought anywhere in the universe. We lack evidence to decide that one.
For the first few weeks it may be obnoxious. Then the chatterboxes will get their bills. There will be much screaming (not on the airplanes) and word will get around that using a cell phone on an airplane is really expensive and not something that one should actually do unless the matter is urgent.
You know, sort of like the air phones we have now.
If it doesn't have ion thrusters for towing, I will be thoroughly disappointed. Yes, they basically only work in a vacuum but still, they'd look really cool!
I'm not aware of a reason why ion thrusters would require vacuum but they are low thrust. Zero to sixty in nine days might not be a selling point. Pulling a trailler up hill filled with anything denser than balloons might be a problem too.
The Tesla Model S weighs more an 1000 pounds more than similar gas powered vehicles. Pickups (well, the ones that are actually used for work) are often driven on dirt. Even if it just an unfinished driveway at a work site rather than a field, it can still be muddy. The heavier the vehicle on a given set of tires, the more you sink and are likely to get stuck. You get work around this with bigger tires or more tires but that increases costs and reduces efficiency. Reducing efficiency means you carry even more expensive and heavy batteries.
Maybe the calories were not absorbed. He did say that "my stomach felt like a coil of knotty old rope, slowly tightening". His digestive system wasn't very happy and was likely dumping calories and nutrients out the other end without processing.
People's ability to digest food and absorb it's nutrients is highly variable even without considering major digestive disorders like lactose intolerance and Celiac Disease. Even if it worked for the inventor, that doesn't mean it will work for you.
Cyber Monday and Black Friday are driven by people buying Christmas gifts. I can see party supplies being purchased for Singles Day those don't seem like big enough purchases nor are they likely to be purchased online. Or is it completely arbitrary and just an excuse for enough shops to have big sales and enough people are willing to make unrelated purchases on that day if they can get a good deal?
"The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday proposed measures that would all but eliminate artificial trans fats, the artery clogging substance that is a major contributor to heart disease in the United States, from the food supply."
Keyword: artificial. But because that wasn't enough, the article goes on to say:
"Some trans fats occur naturally. The F.D.A. proposal only applies to those that are added to foods."
Given the controversy surrounding GMO labeling of foods, I'm rather shocked to find a hint of common sense leaking from the FDA.
It would appear someone there either has a brain, or has not been bought off yet.
The FDA doesn't operate on "common sense". It works with science. The science supports limiting intake of trans fats. Science can't say anything about the health risks or benefits of genetically modification because it is only a development method, not a food.
This signature is set to change dramatically in future. As the Sun begins to heat the planet, one of the counterintuitive effects will be a dramatic drop in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
This happens because more carbon dioxide dissolves in the oceans making them acidic and reacting with rocks to form clays. Essentially, the carbon becomes trapped in sediment on the ocean floors.
So, why would the oceans absorb more CO2? Other sources tell me that warming oceans would absorb less CO2. Why would this happen in reverse in the far future? That seems important since it sets up the rest of the process.
Commercial projects? If a company's budget is so tight that missing a launch deadline means people stop getting paid, then that company has already failed and is only waiting for the accountants to recognize it. Commercial 'deadlines' are a lot more like graduation deadline than research deadlines.
Think startups and consumer electronics. Miss the deadline and you don't get the orders for Christmas. Don't get the orders and you don't get another round of funding. Bye Bye
Er... what? The act of creating something - no matter what you do with it - assigns copyrights to the person who or group that creates it. If you run out with your smartphone, right now, and shoot some never-plan-to-"release it" footage, you own the copyright on what you create. Period.
That's true for works created today but the US did join the Berne Convention until 1989. Works created before this time, including Return of the Jedi, needed to be registered or at least be published with a copyright notice. This material was not published, at least not in a conventional sense.
It's not like he can just take off from the road, he still needs an airport. Doesn't that defeat the entire purpose of a flying car?
A drivable airplane still has it's uses. It means that you don't have to pay to park at the airport. It also means you don't have to pay to park your airplane at the destination airport (which is a bigger deal) or rent a car at destination airport. The last becomes more than just an expense if you are flying into a small airport that does not have rental cars.
actually the BBC's story reports correctly - "The BBC understands that during an experiment in late September, the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel - the first time this had been achieved at any fusion facility in the world.
I don't know why anyone is upset about this. It shouldn't be a surprise. Tech history is littered with the remains of corporate entities who once partnered with Microsoft. What part of "Embrace, Extend and Extinguish" did Nokia think did not apply to them?
At least the embrace and extend parts, perhaps all three.
"Embrace, Extend and Extinguish" refers to Microsoft adopting an externally developed cross platform technology (Embrace), adding proprietary features incompatible with the original (Extend), moving their own efforts and inciting/pressuring third parties to use the Microsoft extensions therefore wiping out the cross platform utility of the technology and any interest in the original form (Extinguish)
How does this apply to Nokia? As far as I can see, it doesn't. Nokia did not provide any technology for Microsoft to embrace, extend, or extinguish.
No, this is much less devious. More akin to "Nobody every got fired for buying IBM" than "Embrace, Extend and Extinguish". Microsoft honestly wanted to win in mobile. They (perhaps dishonestly) convinced Nokia that they would would win and Nokia would share in the winnings if they bet everything. Nokia came through. Microsoft just failed. It is pretty hard to imagine how Microsoft could prefer owning all of failing Nokia running a failing Windows Phone, over owning part of successful Nokia running a successful Windows Phone. The only one who gained is Elop himself.
Wow. Ten years. And here I am still dealing with 64 bit incompatability issues every six months or so.
Out of curiosity, how long did 16bit library problems linger after the 32 bit move?
16 to 32 was a much more radical change. Segments to flat. In the Unix line, this happened in the early 80's (late 70's?) when few systems were deployed.
In the Wintel line, it was also cooperative to preemptive. Very painful. Very manual. It took 10 years just to let go of 16 bit device drivers and many were never ported.
Classic Mac, Amiga, and Atari ST had an easier time since their "16-bit" systems were already 32-bit internally. Even then you had a few years of dealing with geniuses who stored data the upper 8 bits of pointers and some significant software (like AmigaBasic) were never ported.
I must be missing something about this concept. If you're getting paid (with a net profit) to drive people around, why is it called ride sharing? How is it not a taxi service?
A taxi takes you where you want to go. A ride share takes you where you want to go providing it isn't too far out of the way from where the driver was going anyway. Think of it more like paid hitch hiking. That's the idea as Lyft presented to New Tech Meetup a few months ago.
It gets less clear when drivers use the service to make trips they would not otherwise have done, just to collect the fare. As I understand it, "professionals" doing just that for trips to and from SFO.
I imagine it is because of the shielding required.
Pu-238 decays to uranium-234 via an alpha particle emission uranium-234 decays very slowly to thorium-230 via an another alpha particle emission
Alpha emissions are really easy to shield against because they are charged particles. They don't even penetrate skin.
Fission, on the other hand produces abundant neutrons and gamma rays. The only way to stop them is with a lot of mass.
Still, it shouldn't be all that bad. A yet to be started reactor doesn't produce that much radiation, unlike an RTG, which is producing maximum output while still on the ground. Just wait until the probe is in space, extend an arm holding the reactor a good distance from the probe and then light it up. Inverse square law goes a long way toward reducing the required shielding. The main thing it needs is engineering and testing. A space worthy reactor is quite a bit more complex than an RTG, quite different from the heavy, human handled machines we have on Earth and there hasn't been much willingness to invest the resources to make it happen.
Also, if we go to war and GPS gets compromised, we would be SO vulnerable, its not even funny thinking about it.
If we go to war with an adversary capable of disrupting GPS then we will likely have others problems, like the roadway disappearing in a mushroom cloud.
Actually, there's no reason why a self driving car could not continue onward in the absence of GPS. Inaccuracy in the maps means that is already has to recognize intersections visually. Traveling to a new destination might be tricky without an Internet connection or a manual mode of operation.
Wouldn't having a fun to drive car that you don't drive be a little bit pointless?
Only if you only drive for fun. Stop and go traffic is tedious and dull in every car that I have driven. I imagine it is pretty dull and even more tedious in a Ferrari or Lamborghini.
Call me old fashioned but to me, cars are meant to be driven. If I want to "be driven" I'll take a taxi, a bus or some other public transportation.
On the contrary. Cars are "meant" to be used as their owners want to use them. There are lot of times I would prefer to be driven but:
1) Buses are slow, inconvenient, and often don't go where and when I want to go. 2) Taxis are expensive and can also be inconvenient depending on where your end points are. 3) Chauffeurs can be very convenient but not many can afford to keep one on staff. Think of self driving cars as chauffeurs for the rest of us. (or maybe the 5% since Teslas pretty expensive)
Given that Intel wants so badly to push into mobile and their biggest weakness has been the relatively high power consumption of previous Atoms compared to the incumbent Arm offerings, it seems odd that their big re-design improves performance but not power. Have they given up on the phone market?
Meanwhile, Haswell improved power consumption greatly but gives meager improvements in performance over the previous generation of Core.
So, instead of broadening to cover new markets, it looks like Intel's line is actually converging. They are even offering Bay Trail based "Pentiums" and "Celerons". Seems like a poor use of R&D investment unless they plan on dumping one or the other.
My understanding is that the 2.4Ghz band was assigned for unlicensed use because it was already cluttered with things like microwave ovens and was, therefore, undesirable for licensed use.
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Why cannot the state mandate that each employee gets X days of holiday per year guaranteed, and is forced to take them? That's how it works in quite a few countries in Europe.
Forced employees to take them or forced the employers to allow employees to take them?
Employers would like the former. It removes the PTO from the books quickly and prevents employees from taking enough time off in one block to impact the work. And by making it law, there would be no risk of good employees jumping ship for a better deal.
"X" would also likely be compromised into something barely more than companies typically give now. Remember, this is the country that translated "healthcare for everyone" into "everyone must buy private health insurance"
"...Older than thought".
Humans became a sentient species only recently, on the geological time scale.
So a rock being older that thought itself, is not so surprising.
To be older than human thought it easy. However, to be older than thought would require that the rock be older than thought anywhere in the universe. We lack evidence to decide that one.
For the first few weeks it may be obnoxious. Then the chatterboxes will get their bills. There will be much screaming (not on the airplanes) and word will get around that using a cell phone on an airplane is really expensive and not something that one should actually do unless the matter is urgent.
You know, sort of like the air phones we have now.
If it doesn't have ion thrusters for towing, I will be thoroughly disappointed. Yes, they basically only work in a vacuum but still, they'd look really cool!
I'm not aware of a reason why ion thrusters would require vacuum but they are low thrust. Zero to sixty in nine days might not be a selling point. Pulling a trailler up hill filled with anything denser than balloons might be a problem too.
The Tesla Model S weighs more an 1000 pounds more than similar gas powered vehicles. Pickups (well, the ones that are actually used for work) are often driven on dirt. Even if it just an unfinished driveway at a work site rather than a field, it can still be muddy. The heavier the vehicle on a given set of tires, the more you sink and are likely to get stuck. You get work around this with bigger tires or more tires but that increases costs and reduces efficiency. Reducing efficiency means you carry even more expensive and heavy batteries.
Maybe the calories were not absorbed. He did say that "my stomach felt like a coil of knotty old rope, slowly tightening". His digestive system wasn't very happy and was likely dumping calories and nutrients out the other end without processing.
People's ability to digest food and absorb it's nutrients is highly variable even without considering major digestive disorders like lactose intolerance and Celiac Disease. Even if it worked for the inventor, that doesn't mean it will work for you.
Cyber Monday and Black Friday are driven by people buying Christmas gifts. I can see party supplies being purchased for Singles Day those don't seem like big enough purchases nor are they likely to be purchased online. Or is it completely arbitrary and just an excuse for enough shops to have big sales and enough people are willing to make unrelated purchases on that day if they can get a good deal?
"The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday proposed measures that would all but eliminate artificial trans fats, the artery clogging substance that is a major contributor to heart disease in the United States, from the food supply."
Keyword: artificial. But because that wasn't enough, the article goes on to say:
"Some trans fats occur naturally. The F.D.A. proposal only applies to those that are added to foods."
Given the controversy surrounding GMO labeling of foods, I'm rather shocked to find a hint of common sense leaking from the FDA.
It would appear someone there either has a brain, or has not been bought off yet.
The FDA doesn't operate on "common sense". It works with science. The science supports limiting intake of trans fats. Science can't say anything about the health risks or benefits of genetically modification because it is only a development method, not a food.
if everything goes well, it would make India the first country to send a payload to Mars in its first attempt
"Challenge accepted."
Still needs more comparative analysis though. Venus is much hotter than Earth. Why hasn't the CO2 in Venus's atmosphere been sucked into carbonates?
This signature is set to change dramatically in future. As the Sun begins to heat the planet, one of the counterintuitive effects will be a dramatic drop in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
This happens because more carbon dioxide dissolves in the oceans making them acidic and reacting with rocks to form clays. Essentially, the carbon becomes trapped in sediment on the ocean floors.
So, why would the oceans absorb more CO2? Other sources tell me that warming oceans would absorb less CO2. Why would this happen in reverse in the far future? That seems important since it sets up the rest of the process.
Commercial projects? If a company's budget is so tight that missing a launch deadline means people stop getting paid, then that company has already failed and is only waiting for the accountants to recognize it. Commercial 'deadlines' are a lot more like graduation deadline than research deadlines.
Think startups and consumer electronics. Miss the deadline and you don't get the orders for Christmas. Don't get the orders and you don't get another round of funding. Bye Bye
Er... what? The act of creating something - no matter what you do with it - assigns copyrights to the person who or group that creates it. If you run out with your smartphone, right now, and shoot some never-plan-to-"release it" footage, you own the copyright on what you create. Period.
That's true for works created today but the US did join the Berne Convention until 1989. Works created before this time, including Return of the Jedi, needed to be registered or at least be published with a copyright notice. This material was not published, at least not in a conventional sense.
It's not like he can just take off from the road, he still needs an airport. Doesn't that defeat the entire purpose of a flying car?
A drivable airplane still has it's uses. It means that you don't have to pay to park at the airport. It also means you don't have to pay to park your airplane at the destination airport (which is a bigger deal) or rent a car at destination airport. The last becomes more than just an expense if you are flying into a small airport that does not have rental cars.
actually the BBC's story reports correctly -
"The BBC understands that during an experiment in late September, the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel - the first time this had been achieved at any fusion facility in the world.
Actually, no. It still isn't correct.
In 1995, scientists at Princeton’s TFTR achieved scientific break even, whereby their tokamak briefly produced as much energy as it consumed.
So, not only is it not the breakthrough we were looking for, at best it replicated a feat achieved with a different technology nearly 20 years ago.
I don't know why anyone is upset about this. It shouldn't be a surprise. Tech history is littered with the remains of corporate entities who once partnered with Microsoft. What part of "Embrace, Extend and Extinguish" did Nokia think did not apply to them?
At least the embrace and extend parts, perhaps all three.
"Embrace, Extend and Extinguish" refers to Microsoft adopting an externally developed cross platform technology (Embrace), adding proprietary features incompatible with the original (Extend), moving their own efforts and inciting/pressuring third parties to use the Microsoft extensions therefore wiping out the cross platform utility of the technology and any interest in the original form (Extinguish)
How does this apply to Nokia? As far as I can see, it doesn't. Nokia did not provide any technology for Microsoft to embrace, extend, or extinguish.
No, this is much less devious. More akin to "Nobody every got fired for buying IBM" than "Embrace, Extend and Extinguish". Microsoft honestly wanted to win in mobile. They (perhaps dishonestly) convinced Nokia that they would would win and Nokia would share in the winnings if they bet everything. Nokia came through. Microsoft just failed. It is pretty hard to imagine how Microsoft could prefer owning all of failing Nokia running a failing Windows Phone, over owning part of successful Nokia running a successful Windows Phone. The only one who gained is Elop himself.
Wow. Ten years. And here I am still dealing with 64 bit incompatability issues every six months or so.
Out of curiosity, how long did 16bit library problems linger after the 32 bit move?
16 to 32 was a much more radical change. Segments to flat. In the Unix line, this happened in the early 80's (late 70's?) when few systems were deployed.
In the Wintel line, it was also cooperative to preemptive. Very painful. Very manual. It took 10 years just to let go of 16 bit device drivers and many were never ported.
Classic Mac, Amiga, and Atari ST had an easier time since their "16-bit" systems were already 32-bit internally. Even then you had a few years of dealing with geniuses who stored data the upper 8 bits of pointers and some significant software (like AmigaBasic) were never ported.
Yay! We're being regulated!
That's a "boost"?
Certainly. The state regulates them a limited fashion and prohibits municipalities from regulating them out business.
I must be missing something about this concept. If you're getting paid (with a net profit) to drive people around, why is it called ride sharing? How is it not a taxi service?
A taxi takes you where you want to go. A ride share takes you where you want to go providing it isn't too far out of the way from where the driver was going anyway. Think of it more like paid hitch hiking. That's the idea as Lyft presented to New Tech Meetup a few months ago.
It gets less clear when drivers use the service to make trips they would not otherwise have done, just to collect the fare. As I understand it, "professionals" doing just that for trips to and from SFO.
I imagine it is because of the shielding required.
Pu-238 decays to uranium-234 via an alpha particle emission
uranium-234 decays very slowly to thorium-230 via an another alpha particle emission
Alpha emissions are really easy to shield against because they are charged particles. They don't even penetrate skin.
Fission, on the other hand produces abundant neutrons and gamma rays. The only way to stop them is with a lot of mass.
Still, it shouldn't be all that bad. A yet to be started reactor doesn't produce that much radiation, unlike an RTG, which is producing maximum output while still on the ground. Just wait until the probe is in space, extend an arm holding the reactor a good distance from the probe and then light it up. Inverse square law goes a long way toward reducing the required shielding. The main thing it needs is engineering and testing. A space worthy reactor is quite a bit more complex than an RTG, quite different from the heavy, human handled machines we have on Earth and there hasn't been much willingness to invest the resources to make it happen.
Also, if we go to war and GPS gets compromised, we would be SO vulnerable, its not even funny thinking about it.
If we go to war with an adversary capable of disrupting GPS then we will likely have others problems, like the roadway disappearing in a mushroom cloud.
Actually, there's no reason why a self driving car could not continue onward in the absence of GPS. Inaccuracy in the maps means that is already has to recognize intersections visually. Traveling to a new destination might be tricky without an Internet connection or a manual mode of operation.
Wouldn't having a fun to drive car that you don't drive be a little bit pointless?
Only if you only drive for fun. Stop and go traffic is tedious and dull in every car that I have driven. I imagine it is pretty dull and even more tedious in a Ferrari or Lamborghini.
Call me old fashioned but to me, cars are meant to be driven. If I want to "be driven" I'll take a taxi, a bus or some other public transportation.
On the contrary. Cars are "meant" to be used as their owners want to use them. There are lot of times I would prefer to be driven but:
1) Buses are slow, inconvenient, and often don't go where and when I want to go.
2) Taxis are expensive and can also be inconvenient depending on where your end points are.
3) Chauffeurs can be very convenient but not many can afford to keep one on staff. Think of self driving cars as chauffeurs for the rest of us. (or maybe the 5% since Teslas pretty expensive)
Given that Intel wants so badly to push into mobile and their biggest weakness has been the relatively high power consumption of previous Atoms compared to the incumbent Arm offerings, it seems odd that their big re-design improves performance but not power. Have they given up on the phone market?
Meanwhile, Haswell improved power consumption greatly but gives meager improvements in performance over the previous generation of Core.
So, instead of broadening to cover new markets, it looks like Intel's line is actually converging. They are even offering Bay Trail based "Pentiums" and "Celerons". Seems like a poor use of R&D investment unless they plan on dumping one or the other.
It may not be technically the resonant frequency of water, but there is something special about it:
The 2.45 GHz is a kind of useful average frequency. If the frequency was much higher then the waves would penetrate less well, lower frequencies would penetrate better but are absorbed only weakly and so once again the food would not absorb enough energy to cook well.
My understanding is that the 2.4Ghz band was assigned for unlicensed use because it was already cluttered with things like microwave ovens and was, therefore, undesirable for licensed use.