Yeahhhh, except guns are designed for the efficient killing of people. Sure, you can kill people with a shot glass full of water, but it's not like it's going to be easy. There are very few efficient killing machines to which we give people access, other than guns.
While the RPi is an amazing little device, it's not really an analogue to the idea of OLPC. OLPC wan't really about teaching how computers work / programming, it was about giving kids a portal to information. It was a teaching computer in the sense that it gave access to information, not that it taught about computers.
Plus, once you add a screen, battery, input source, and rugged case to an RPi I'm not sure you're going to it the $100 price point either.
Of course, this all is moot, because kids in third world countries probably don't need a computer of any type. They need nutrition, and sanitation, and a clean water supply.
So I live in Nova Scotia; i.e. this is happening in my backyard. This is absolutely about the provincial government trying to cover its a**. The mistake was discovered internally when a government employee did basically the same thing and accidentally put in a wrong URL... and instead of getting a 404 got documents that shouldn't have been public-facing (including docs with personal info, SINs and the like). Rather than owning up to the mistake and dealing with the consequences, the provincial government kept it quiet for 7 weeks, and are now using this kid as a scapegoat ("EVIL HACKERS, CLUTCH YOUR PEARLS!!!!"). It's absolutely disgusting, and I hope the court of public opinion judges them (the gov) harshly.
a lot of criminals are really lazy and would rather rob a guy nearby for $2 than go to the trouble of trying to find somebody who has more money.
I doubt it's laziness in most cases, but rather a risk calculation. Given the choice to rob Mr Moneybags or Johnny Crackhead, who ya gonna rob? The one who lives in a neighbourhood where you automatically stand out as a sketchy individual, who will be taken seriously by the police, and who is going to be believed by a judge? Or the one who nobody cares about and who probably has some culturally-enforced aversion to "being a rat"?
Support FM broadcast radio which has always been free (and I don't want to hear anyone say "oh but it's not free there are commercials!", stop whining and turn down the damned volume or switch to another station if you can't handle it).
Yeah, except in addition to commercials, I also have to endure all their "sound effects SOUND EFFECTS sOuNd EfFeCtS" and the ramblings of some obnoxious DJ telling me the "funny" story of how they were filling up their car this morning and SPILLED GAS ON MY NEW SHOES HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.
Nope, FM radio has got to be one of the most painful forms of media in the world. I'll take the free Spotify, thank you very much. And once my financial situation improves, I'll be getting the paid version.
Yeah, at this point what I really want to see is the PS4 line to take another price cut. It's getting to the point where there's a critical mass of games I want to play, but I'm not ready to pay $500 for the Pro, and it feels wrong to buy the Slim when the Pro exists...
Funny enough, my coworker just got the iMac as her work computer. The most recent version of the mouse that comes with it has a rechargeable battery instead of using AAs. Okay cool... except Apple didn't want to blemish the sleek design of the mouse, so the charge port is ON THE BOTTOM. I.e. if your mouse battery dies, you can't use it at the same time you're charging it up.
We don't even have the Concorde anymore. Airplanes still look, act, and sound the same as in 1969 when the 747 first flew. Cars, houses, clothes, buildings, roads, food, all more or less look the same.
They still look roughly the same because that's a pretty good geometric design. But that doesn't mean they are the same. There have been huge advances in aviation technology over the past 50 years. For example, the average fuel burn of new commercial jets fell 45% between 1968 and 2014. Modern jets have better engines and are made of modern materials (carbon fibre is becoming more and more common). This means cheaper prices and longer distances for direct flights.
Buildings certainly do not look the same. New homes in the '60s were usually 1100 SF or smaller (at least in my area). Compare that to new homes now that are 2000 SF, much more efficient, and have a lot more modern conveniences. Now they're not filled with asbestos and lead paint.
And I could go on and on with food, clothing, and the rest.
While fuel is taxed, it doesn't come close to covering all road costs (at least in the jurisdictions where I know the details). Most road construction and maintenance funds come out of general funds raised by property and income taxes. So while the EV driver (an the cyclist) do pay less in taxes towards the road, it's certainly not accurate to say they don't share at least some of the burden.
Which is why TFS mentions that they are 3D printing nine
parts. I.e. the parts that don't have extreme strength requirements, don't need to be uber precise, and don't need to be made of an alloy that 3D printers don't use...
If the mantra is "redundancy is always good" then SpaceX should probably start launching rockets with 2,000 engines, and I should add 13 more power supplies to my desktop computer.
Yeah, that isn't how it works, of course. This is how it works:
How many engines do I need to be working at the end of the mission? How many engines with a failure rate of (n failures)/(unit of time) do I need to ensure with a probability of (minimum acceptable probability of success) that I have enough engines working at the end of the mission?
And beyond that:
Is the cost of providing those additional engines lower than (cost of losing the rocket)*(probability of failure)?
All of which is a far cry from "redundancy is always good".
At least they get something in the water. Canada issued contracts for new ships years ago and the shipyards still haven't started welding metal yet.
Huh? They haven't missed deadlines yet. They're not supposed to cut steel on the new combat ships until early 2020s. They've had to build up the shipyard capacity, and are now building the new arctic patrol vessels as "practice". The first arctic patrol vessel modules are coming together as we speak; I drive by it on the regular.
Of course, that doesn't mean they won't miss deadlines. I gather there is a lot of uncertainty on the design of the combat ships and that certainty needs to come really soon or they'll miss deadlines.
Well, redundancy has to be balanced with other operational requirements. Redundancy has costs--both to pay for the redundant equipment, and to accommodate it (e.g. find a space for it, provide power to move it, etc.). Additionally, the value of redundancy is dependant on the cost of failure.
If the mantra is "redundancy is always good" then SpaceX should probably start launching rockets with 2,000 engines, and I should add 13 more power supplies to my desktop computer.
Plus, "we" often fall into the flawed thinking that AI/robots/automated systems/whatever-you-want-to-call-it has to figure out how to do activities as humans do them. Much more likely, I see a world where we adapt the way work is done to better meet the strengths of these automated systems. You see this, for example, in food production. Instead of inventing processing machines that can deal with all the variation in "natural" vegetables, processors started demanding that farmers grow vegetables that are relatively uniform in shape and size and don't buy the vegetables that don't fit the tolerances of their machines. In many cases it's much easier to control the structure of work inputs than to develop a "work machine" that can deal with all sorts of edge cases.
People in the state of mind or enough pain, to want to kill themselves, should be allowed to do so - it's their life. Also given the state of over-population in some countries, suicide should even be encouraged and assisted. Don't act offended or point your finger at me - you are thinking it too.
Of course people should be allowed to, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem or we shouldn't try to stop it. Very often the desire and will to kill yourself is temporary. My brother climbed over the side of the bridge this summer and only at the last minute pulled himself back from the edge. And I think he's glad now he didn't jump. He's getting help now. It takes a special kind of heartless asshole to suggest suicide should be encouraged and assisted*.
*I'll make exceptions for assisted suicide of terminally-ill patients who have zero quality of life.
I think that the real problem for tablets is that there's no compelling reason to upgrade them as often as phones. The iPad Air 2 that I bought when it first came out is over 3 years old at this point and isn't showing any particular signs of aging. The browser is still plenty speedy and even if that started to suck, I can't see the Netflix app being too slow for it to be usable for that.
I'd say this is a big part of the "PC is dying" thing too. Used to be you needed a new PC every 3 years. Then 5. And now my PC is going on 6 years (other than an upgrade from HDD to SDD) and is still way more than enough for absolutely everything other than VR (which would be doable with a video card upgrade). I fully expect it to be good for another 2 or 3 years.
To be honest, I think we'll be seeing similar trends with phones soon. They're at the point where they're "good enough" for much longer. Unless you smash your screen (which is getting rarer with better glass), there is little incentive to upgrade these days.
It's all fine and good to make an efficient IC engine car, but that in no way staves off its demise. Because no one wants even the most efficient ICE car if the infrastructure isn't around to support it. There is a currently huge network of gas stations, oil change shops, and engine repair shops. As EVs hit critical mass, those businesses are going to start shutting down, further accelerating the shift to EVs. At some point, the few people who have held on to ICE cars will be traveling far out of their way to find a "boutique" gasoline and oil change supplier.
I'm trying to understand this concern over energy use. If the real concern is on carbon then measure the carbon. If the concern is on the money spent then measure the money spent. Perhaps I'm missing something? Why should I care about energy used?
Because right now, most everyday residents don't have control over where their energy comes from; "energy used" is the best proxy you and I have for environmental impact.
Plus, in many areas, low-impact energy is a limited resource. So even if the electrons YOU are using are from the wind turbines down the road, by using them you are preventing* someone else from using them and potentially offsetting higher-impact sources.
*Yes, I know grid dynamics are a little more complicated than this. But again, this is something beyond which we have control, and beyond the understanding of everyday residents. Again, "energy used" works as a good order-of-magnitude proxy for reducing your impact. If you, in your personal situation, are able to be more accurate and precise with your energy impacts, by all means do so!
They telegraphed that fact the moment they mentioned mere mortals can't touch the wands without dying. Unless of course you mean I spoiled the fact that he's a Bright being completely inconsequential. Because that was definitely a plot twist I didn't see coming...
Slashdot Mirror
Yeahhhh, except guns are designed for the efficient killing of people. Sure, you can kill people with a shot glass full of water, but it's not like it's going to be easy. There are very few efficient killing machines to which we give people access, other than guns.
While the RPi is an amazing little device, it's not really an analogue to the idea of OLPC. OLPC wan't really about teaching how computers work / programming, it was about giving kids a portal to information. It was a teaching computer in the sense that it gave access to information, not that it taught about computers.
Plus, once you add a screen, battery, input source, and rugged case to an RPi I'm not sure you're going to it the $100 price point either.
Of course, this all is moot, because kids in third world countries probably don't need a computer of any type. They need nutrition, and sanitation, and a clean water supply.
So I live in Nova Scotia; i.e. this is happening in my backyard. This is absolutely about the provincial government trying to cover its a**. The mistake was discovered internally when a government employee did basically the same thing and accidentally put in a wrong URL... and instead of getting a 404 got documents that shouldn't have been public-facing (including docs with personal info, SINs and the like). Rather than owning up to the mistake and dealing with the consequences, the provincial government kept it quiet for 7 weeks, and are now using this kid as a scapegoat ("EVIL HACKERS, CLUTCH YOUR PEARLS!!!!"). It's absolutely disgusting, and I hope the court of public opinion judges them (the gov) harshly.
a lot of criminals are really lazy and would rather rob a guy nearby for $2 than go to the trouble of trying to find somebody who has more money.
I doubt it's laziness in most cases, but rather a risk calculation. Given the choice to rob Mr Moneybags or Johnny Crackhead, who ya gonna rob? The one who lives in a neighbourhood where you automatically stand out as a sketchy individual, who will be taken seriously by the police, and who is going to be believed by a judge? Or the one who nobody cares about and who probably has some culturally-enforced aversion to "being a rat"?
Support FM broadcast radio which has always been free (and I don't want to hear anyone say "oh but it's not free there are commercials!", stop whining and turn down the damned volume or switch to another station if you can't handle it).
Yeah, except in addition to commercials, I also have to endure all their "sound effects SOUND EFFECTS sOuNd EfFeCtS" and the ramblings of some obnoxious DJ telling me the "funny" story of how they were filling up their car this morning and SPILLED GAS ON MY NEW SHOES HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.
Nope, FM radio has got to be one of the most painful forms of media in the world. I'll take the free Spotify, thank you very much. And once my financial situation improves, I'll be getting the paid version.
Yeah, at this point what I really want to see is the PS4 line to take another price cut. It's getting to the point where there's a critical mass of games I want to play, but I'm not ready to pay $500 for the Pro, and it feels wrong to buy the Slim when the Pro exists...
Adults understand that life is about risk management.
If only that were true.
Funny enough, my coworker just got the iMac as her work computer. The most recent version of the mouse that comes with it has a rechargeable battery instead of using AAs. Okay cool... except Apple didn't want to blemish the sleek design of the mouse, so the charge port is ON THE BOTTOM. I.e. if your mouse battery dies, you can't use it at the same time you're charging it up.
My Mazda 3 costs half as much so no Tesla for me
And the Chevy Spark costs half of the Mazda 3. So what?
We don't even have the Concorde anymore. Airplanes still look, act, and sound the same as in 1969 when the 747 first flew. Cars, houses, clothes, buildings, roads, food, all more or less look the same.
They still look roughly the same because that's a pretty good geometric design. But that doesn't mean they are the same. There have been huge advances in aviation technology over the past 50 years. For example, the average fuel burn of new commercial jets fell 45% between 1968 and 2014. Modern jets have better engines and are made of modern materials (carbon fibre is becoming more and more common). This means cheaper prices and longer distances for direct flights.
Buildings certainly do not look the same. New homes in the '60s were usually 1100 SF or smaller (at least in my area). Compare that to new homes now that are 2000 SF, much more efficient, and have a lot more modern conveniences. Now they're not filled with asbestos and lead paint.
And I could go on and on with food, clothing, and the rest.
Okay? But I do.
While fuel is taxed, it doesn't come close to covering all road costs (at least in the jurisdictions where I know the details). Most road construction and maintenance funds come out of general funds raised by property and income taxes. So while the EV driver (an the cyclist) do pay less in taxes towards the road, it's certainly not accurate to say they don't share at least some of the burden.
Now replace the guns with trucks and do Europe.
There will likely always be crazy people who do bad things. We should go after the people, not the tactics.
By that logic we should make dirty bombs available to all. I mean, if we go after the people, what does it matter if the tactics are freely available?
parts. I.e. the parts that don't have extreme strength requirements, don't need to be uber precise, and don't need to be made of an alloy that 3D printers don't use...
If the mantra is "redundancy is always good" then SpaceX should probably start launching rockets with 2,000 engines, and I should add 13 more power supplies to my desktop computer.
Yeah, that isn't how it works, of course. This is how it works:
How many engines do I need to be working at the end of the mission? How many engines with a failure rate of (n failures)/(unit of time) do I need to ensure with a probability of (minimum acceptable probability of success) that I have enough engines working at the end of the mission?
And beyond that:
Is the cost of providing those additional engines lower than (cost of losing the rocket)*(probability of failure)?
All of which is a far cry from "redundancy is always good".
Euclid v. Ambler
At least they get something in the water. Canada issued contracts for new ships years ago and the shipyards still haven't started welding metal yet.
Huh? They haven't missed deadlines yet. They're not supposed to cut steel on the new combat ships until early 2020s. They've had to build up the shipyard capacity, and are now building the new arctic patrol vessels as "practice". The first arctic patrol vessel modules are coming together as we speak; I drive by it on the regular.
Of course, that doesn't mean they won't miss deadlines. I gather there is a lot of uncertainty on the design of the combat ships and that certainty needs to come really soon or they'll miss deadlines.
Well, redundancy has to be balanced with other operational requirements. Redundancy has costs--both to pay for the redundant equipment, and to accommodate it (e.g. find a space for it, provide power to move it, etc.). Additionally, the value of redundancy is dependant on the cost of failure.
If the mantra is "redundancy is always good" then SpaceX should probably start launching rockets with 2,000 engines, and I should add 13 more power supplies to my desktop computer.
Exactly.
Plus, "we" often fall into the flawed thinking that AI/robots/automated systems/whatever-you-want-to-call-it has to figure out how to do activities as humans do them. Much more likely, I see a world where we adapt the way work is done to better meet the strengths of these automated systems. You see this, for example, in food production. Instead of inventing processing machines that can deal with all the variation in "natural" vegetables, processors started demanding that farmers grow vegetables that are relatively uniform in shape and size and don't buy the vegetables that don't fit the tolerances of their machines. In many cases it's much easier to control the structure of work inputs than to develop a "work machine" that can deal with all sorts of edge cases.
People in the state of mind or enough pain, to want to kill themselves, should be allowed to do so - it's their life. Also given the state of over-population in some countries, suicide should even be encouraged and assisted. Don't act offended or point your finger at me - you are thinking it too.
Of course people should be allowed to, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem or we shouldn't try to stop it. Very often the desire and will to kill yourself is temporary. My brother climbed over the side of the bridge this summer and only at the last minute pulled himself back from the edge. And I think he's glad now he didn't jump. He's getting help now. It takes a special kind of heartless asshole to suggest suicide should be encouraged and assisted*.
*I'll make exceptions for assisted suicide of terminally-ill patients who have zero quality of life.
I think that the real problem for tablets is that there's no compelling reason to upgrade them as often as phones. The iPad Air 2 that I bought when it first came out is over 3 years old at this point and isn't showing any particular signs of aging. The browser is still plenty speedy and even if that started to suck, I can't see the Netflix app being too slow for it to be usable for that.
I'd say this is a big part of the "PC is dying" thing too. Used to be you needed a new PC every 3 years. Then 5. And now my PC is going on 6 years (other than an upgrade from HDD to SDD) and is still way more than enough for absolutely everything other than VR (which would be doable with a video card upgrade). I fully expect it to be good for another 2 or 3 years.
To be honest, I think we'll be seeing similar trends with phones soon. They're at the point where they're "good enough" for much longer. Unless you smash your screen (which is getting rarer with better glass), there is little incentive to upgrade these days.
Here is the problem, truck drivers make a descent middle class wage.
And yet, not enough people want to do this job: https://www.npr.org/2018/01/09/576752327/trucking-industry-struggles-with-growing-driver-shortage
It's all fine and good to make an efficient IC engine car, but that in no way staves off its demise. Because no one wants even the most efficient ICE car if the infrastructure isn't around to support it. There is a currently huge network of gas stations, oil change shops, and engine repair shops. As EVs hit critical mass, those businesses are going to start shutting down, further accelerating the shift to EVs. At some point, the few people who have held on to ICE cars will be traveling far out of their way to find a "boutique" gasoline and oil change supplier.
Not all energy is equal on environmental impact.
I'm trying to understand this concern over energy use. If the real concern is on carbon then measure the carbon. If the concern is on the money spent then measure the money spent. Perhaps I'm missing something? Why should I care about energy used?
Because right now, most everyday residents don't have control over where their energy comes from; "energy used" is the best proxy you and I have for environmental impact.
Plus, in many areas, low-impact energy is a limited resource. So even if the electrons YOU are using are from the wind turbines down the road, by using them you are preventing* someone else from using them and potentially offsetting higher-impact sources.
*Yes, I know grid dynamics are a little more complicated than this. But again, this is something beyond which we have control, and beyond the understanding of everyday residents. Again, "energy used" works as a good order-of-magnitude proxy for reducing your impact. If you, in your personal situation, are able to be more accurate and precise with your energy impacts, by all means do so!
Dude. You know this thing about spoiler alerts?
They telegraphed that fact the moment they mentioned mere mortals can't touch the wands without dying. Unless of course you mean I spoiled the fact that he's a Bright being completely inconsequential. Because that was definitely a plot twist I didn't see coming...