Snark aside, GM has been around longer than most./ers grandparents. You don't have that kind of longevity by being completely incompetent.
Also, this is notable because GM is one of the companies who sees where the future is going and positions themselves to make the most money they can on it. In the 30s and 40s that meant buying up local mass transit systems and killing them, today it means getting into the carsharing scene as an early supplier. They smell which way the wind is blowing, and realize when self driving cars are a thing, a lot of people who own a car today won't bother any more so if they want to be relevant they have to get ahead of the pack with the shift to shared ownerships.
Sure. If your bus comes to your house on demand when you call it with your smartphone instead of going to predefined stops on a schedule.
So yes, exactly like a bus. Except not at all.
What this will be very useful for is short trips TO transit hubs like subway stations, LRT stations and express bus stops. You call a self-driving car to your door, hop in and it drops you off 5-10 minutes later at the transit point of you choice then the car goes away and back into the shared pool. You complete your trip downtown on transit, possibly using a second car for a few minutes at the other end.
What hassle? Last time I went to Europe I was pretty much just waved through customs. When I visit the US, the most stressful part of the trip is going through customs, you never know if the border guard's having a crappy day and might just unload on you. Happened to me once - after questioning me for 10 minutes and then spending another 5 literally yelling at me, he lets me through but not before threatening to bar me from the US for 5 years for a minor paperwork error. Joke's on him though, that soured me so badly I voluntarily stopped going to the US and didn't need to go again for longer than 5 years.
You seem to think everyone on the planet that owns a shop is a rational actor, and that everyone a shopowner hires only has their best interests at heart. The amount of employees who get fired for skimming the till or causing inventory shrink alone would put lie to that.
Oh I think you're being a little alarmist here, or maybe your mail server isn't properly secured/configured and you're not on a static IP? I've had a mail server running on a VPS server in the US for years and it's doing just fine.
> Any shop can refuse to do business with you, and ban you from their premises.... No need to put you "on the list".
That's not the problem, the problem is the list covers LOTS of shops. Suppose you go to an auto shop who has done substandard work and the owner doesn't want to do the work over or refund you. So you sue, and in retaliation he adds you to this list as a problem customer. Suddenly you're barred from half the shops in town.
> If trivial crap like that gets you on the list then the list is worthless and won't be used.
Toddlers are on the No Fly List...
If 95% of the list is useful, it will be used. The problem is oversight. We've all seen the stories in the news where someone's receipt at a restaurant is printed and has "Asshole" or similar coded somewhere that the server didn't expect the end customer to see, I guarantee that unless there is a very stringent submission protocol for this crowdsourced watchlist for stores with some form of actual evidence tied to each person's file, vetted by a central authority of some sort, there will be the odd person on there who is the target of anger or a vendetta.
Because it can be used to "punish" people without any recourse. Like I said in another message, suppose the retailer takes a dislike to you for whatever petty reason and they add you to this system. Now you're going to be harassed and chased out of stores and what can you do about it?
It's a problem because of two things: One, it is a distributed system subscribed to by a large number of retailers. And more importantly, Two: If a store had my picture up for writing a bad cheque and was wrong about it, I could sue them for libel and have it removed. From this system it appears there isn't that level of accountability. Some register jockey might get their shorts in a knot over some interaction with you and "get you back" by putting you in the system and you will have a very difficult time fixing that, all the while you're barred from retail shops everywhere. What are you going to say "I didn't shoplift!" Sure, buddy that's what they all say...
True. However, the problem can come from a retailer deciding that you were too much of a pain in the ass when you were doing a return, or you wanted to use a coupon that they didn't want to honor or maybe you got a little loud when they promised to hold something for you and you got down there to find out it was sold anyway. So to get back at you, they put you on "the list" and now your life is a raging sea when you try to go shopping for anything around town.
> I say locals made their bed and now should lay in it.
Do you seriously think locals said "Hey let's elect these people so they can give us cheap tainted water!" Should a populace be held responsible to a person for the actions and effects of the decisions of their elected officials?
"Restrictions: Because of high altitude this tour does not allow those with respiratory, heart, or circulatory conditions, people in generally poor health, or pregnant women. Scuba divers should be aware of altitude changes and avoid doing this tour shortly after diving. Minimum age for this tour is 16."
And a lovely picture of the white panel 4 wheel drive van they use to take 6-8 people up once a day. It's not a constant fleet of 50+ passenger tour buses, *and* they still don't actually tour the observatory. There are desolate country dirt roads in the middle of nowhere Saskatchewan that see more action.
"Trucks and tour buses up a mountain every day". I take it you have little to no idea what actually goes on at these observatories based on that statement. They don't do tours of the observatories, people are working there, and small crews that stay there for weeks on end at that. The most famous of them, Mauna Kea allows people to come up to the grounds if they like, but again, no tours. And based on their warnings on their site I don't expect they get that many sightseers coming up:
"At 14,000 feet, there is 40% less oxygen than at sea level, so visitors should acclimatize to the altitude before proceeding further up the mountain. Anyone in poor health should consult their physician before planning a visit to Maunakea. We do not recommend anyone who is pregnant to go further than the VIS. People under the age of 16 should not go any further because their bodies are still developing and they are affected more rapidly when going to a high altitude. If you plan to scuba dive, do not plan to go up to the summit within 24 hours after your dive. Furthermore, we do not recommend anyone with a heart or respiratory problem to travel above the VIS. View Maunakea Hazards and the Visiting Maunakea Video
We also highly recommend that only TRUE 4-wheel drive vehicles with LOW range travel beyond the VIS. About 200 yards beyond the station, the pavement ends and the next 4 and a half miles are a steep graded-gravel road."
Gee whiz, that sure sounds like a high draw attraction to me. Load up the grandparents!
Again, another time period where a civilian militia was similarly armed to the armed forces of the day. I'm talking about today. How many seconds do you think a militia armed with fully automatic rifles will last against a hellfire missile from a drone, or an Apache attack chopper's main gun?
> The balance of power between the state and the people is a fluid, delicate thing
Not any more it isn't. "The People" today have practically no power aside from choosing which band of jackals to vote into office. Any sort of direct action ends like Ruby Ridge or Waco. Unless they're mindbogglingly wealthy or connected, in which case they do have options that 99.99% of the rest of the population does not. But make no mistake. Having a gun today doesn't give you leverage over the government. But it does give the government a convenient justification if something does happen to you during a confrontation.
>If you're truly okay with the police in this country (I'm assuming you're in the U.S., if not, kindy disregard) having a monopoly of armed force,
First of all I am not in the US, I am north of you where we do have gun control and people still have guns. But please for my own knowledge can you post a link to an incident in the last 30 years where having a gun was the factor leading to a positive outcome versus police in the US? Because all I can find is the opposite.
The 2nd amendment is a quaint anachronism from a time when it was feasible for a civilian militia to credibly overthrow a corrupt government as the two had similar armament. Now? Not a chance. Anyone who seriously thinks their citizen army of today is going to overthrow a corrupt US government is dreaming in Technicolor.
> Are you really equating a terror attack by two avowed ISIS-loyalists to any of the usual psychotic-break style crazy person attacks?
Does it really matter in the end if your kid was killed by a (rare) terrorist fueled attack on US soil with a gun vs the far more common person loses their nut and goes on a shooting rampage? They're still dead in no small part due to the absurd simplicity of acquiring a firearm in the US.
>The president, who assured the world that we had ISIS "contained," right before they killed 130 in Paris, just said on Wednesday that the US is safe from ISIS-style attacks. Not counting the people that a local ISIS franchise just killed in California, of course. Other than them.
Oh get off the "terrorists are the real threat" kick. To look at it in the cold light of fact, they killed 130 in Paris and if the San Bernardino thing is terrorist related - which it appears to be, or at least inspired by - then we're talking about ~150 'first world' deaths in a month, which is an incredible anomaly compared to the last 15 years after 9/11. Meanwhile, there were 12,750 deaths from guns in the US in 2014 alone. That's a Paris attack's equivalent body count every 4 days all year long, and none of those were from terrorists.
American "gun control" laws are the equivalent of dumping a coffee cup on a forest fire. An actual gun control law is what was passed in Australia, which worked pretty much as intended. Which even suggesting in the US would probably cause another civil war. And there is a huge part of the problem.
I've met software engineers - as in they went through EE degrees and have the ring to prove it - so do tell, what "accountability" do they have over and above any regular software developer? Because I sure as heck have never seen it. I've never seen them sign off on a gold master with their engineer stamp or suffer any sort of additional accountability in the event of a massive software screwup they were responsible for.
Why did it make lots of sense two months ago? Those "reports" of PS4 chat being used to coordinate the attacks have never been corroborated with a shred of evidence. For all we know, they used EVE Online to coordinate, or Teamspeak or a thousand other things.
14 million tonnes of proven reserves - 36,000 tonnes per year used. That's not as much as you think it is. The reserves are all of the lithium both easy to get at and refine and not so easy. Then there is our usage. 36Ktons today. What happens if electric cars really take off and in 5 years we're using 360K tons per year? That means we'll have 40 years of lithium at that rate of use. And that assumes "only" a 10 fold increase in use from electric cars taking off and making up 20% of the market. What happens if e-cars are 50% of sales in 10 years? And those Tesla Powerwalls get traction and knockoffs do as well? We could be out of lithium in 20 years or less.
How is this newsworthy at all? I learned programming as a kid from a book in the last 70s, before even BBSs were a common thing. LOTS of people learn that way. Hell it's actually better in many ways as you don't get distracted and can focus.
It's all about application. Will amphetamine make you better at writing a boring ass TPS report? Probably. Will it make you better at driving a 20 ton death machine down the highway? No.
Slashdot Mirror
Snark aside, GM has been around longer than most ./ers grandparents. You don't have that kind of longevity by being completely incompetent.
Also, this is notable because GM is one of the companies who sees where the future is going and positions themselves to make the most money they can on it. In the 30s and 40s that meant buying up local mass transit systems and killing them, today it means getting into the carsharing scene as an early supplier. They smell which way the wind is blowing, and realize when self driving cars are a thing, a lot of people who own a car today won't bother any more so if they want to be relevant they have to get ahead of the pack with the shift to shared ownerships.
Sure. If your bus comes to your house on demand when you call it with your smartphone instead of going to predefined stops on a schedule.
So yes, exactly like a bus. Except not at all.
What this will be very useful for is short trips TO transit hubs like subway stations, LRT stations and express bus stops. You call a self-driving car to your door, hop in and it drops you off 5-10 minutes later at the transit point of you choice then the car goes away and back into the shared pool. You complete your trip downtown on transit, possibly using a second car for a few minutes at the other end.
What hassle? Last time I went to Europe I was pretty much just waved through customs. When I visit the US, the most stressful part of the trip is going through customs, you never know if the border guard's having a crappy day and might just unload on you. Happened to me once - after questioning me for 10 minutes and then spending another 5 literally yelling at me, he lets me through but not before threatening to bar me from the US for 5 years for a minor paperwork error. Joke's on him though, that soured me so badly I voluntarily stopped going to the US and didn't need to go again for longer than 5 years.
You seem to think everyone on the planet that owns a shop is a rational actor, and that everyone a shopowner hires only has their best interests at heart. The amount of employees who get fired for skimming the till or causing inventory shrink alone would put lie to that.
Oh I think you're being a little alarmist here, or maybe your mail server isn't properly secured/configured and you're not on a static IP? I've had a mail server running on a VPS server in the US for years and it's doing just fine.
> Any shop can refuse to do business with you, and ban you from their premises.... No need to put you "on the list".
That's not the problem, the problem is the list covers LOTS of shops. Suppose you go to an auto shop who has done substandard work and the owner doesn't want to do the work over or refund you. So you sue, and in retaliation he adds you to this list as a problem customer. Suddenly you're barred from half the shops in town.
> If trivial crap like that gets you on the list then the list is worthless and won't be used.
Toddlers are on the No Fly List...
If 95% of the list is useful, it will be used. The problem is oversight. We've all seen the stories in the news where someone's receipt at a restaurant is printed and has "Asshole" or similar coded somewhere that the server didn't expect the end customer to see, I guarantee that unless there is a very stringent submission protocol for this crowdsourced watchlist for stores with some form of actual evidence tied to each person's file, vetted by a central authority of some sort, there will be the odd person on there who is the target of anger or a vendetta.
Because it can be used to "punish" people without any recourse. Like I said in another message, suppose the retailer takes a dislike to you for whatever petty reason and they add you to this system. Now you're going to be harassed and chased out of stores and what can you do about it?
It's a problem because of two things: One, it is a distributed system subscribed to by a large number of retailers. And more importantly, Two: If a store had my picture up for writing a bad cheque and was wrong about it, I could sue them for libel and have it removed. From this system it appears there isn't that level of accountability. Some register jockey might get their shorts in a knot over some interaction with you and "get you back" by putting you in the system and you will have a very difficult time fixing that, all the while you're barred from retail shops everywhere. What are you going to say "I didn't shoplift!" Sure, buddy that's what they all say...
True. However, the problem can come from a retailer deciding that you were too much of a pain in the ass when you were doing a return, or you wanted to use a coupon that they didn't want to honor or maybe you got a little loud when they promised to hold something for you and you got down there to find out it was sold anyway. So to get back at you, they put you on "the list" and now your life is a raging sea when you try to go shopping for anything around town.
> I say locals made their bed and now should lay in it.
Do you seriously think locals said "Hey let's elect these people so they can give us cheap tainted water!" Should a populace be held responsible to a person for the actions and effects of the decisions of their elected officials?
I did not speak out for the social media networks because I didn't like social media networks....
What exactly makes you think they'll stop there?
And nothing, repeat NOTHING of value was lost. Except, you know, freedom to do as you choose.
Pick up that can, citizen.
From your own link:
"Restrictions: Because of high altitude this tour does not allow those with respiratory, heart, or circulatory conditions, people in generally poor health, or pregnant women. Scuba divers should be aware of altitude changes and avoid doing this tour shortly after diving. Minimum age for this tour is 16."
And a lovely picture of the white panel 4 wheel drive van they use to take 6-8 people up once a day. It's not a constant fleet of 50+ passenger tour buses, *and* they still don't actually tour the observatory. There are desolate country dirt roads in the middle of nowhere Saskatchewan that see more action.
"Trucks and tour buses up a mountain every day". I take it you have little to no idea what actually goes on at these observatories based on that statement. They don't do tours of the observatories, people are working there, and small crews that stay there for weeks on end at that. The most famous of them, Mauna Kea allows people to come up to the grounds if they like, but again, no tours. And based on their warnings on their site I don't expect they get that many sightseers coming up:
"At 14,000 feet, there is 40% less oxygen than at sea level, so visitors should acclimatize to the altitude before proceeding further up the mountain. Anyone in poor health should consult their physician before planning a visit to Maunakea. We do not recommend anyone who is pregnant to go further than the VIS. People under the age of 16 should not go any further because their bodies are still developing and they are affected more rapidly when going to a high altitude. If you plan to scuba dive, do not plan to go up to the summit within 24 hours after your dive. Furthermore, we do not recommend anyone with a heart or respiratory problem to travel above the VIS. View Maunakea Hazards and the Visiting Maunakea Video
We also highly recommend that only TRUE 4-wheel drive vehicles with LOW range travel beyond the VIS. About 200 yards beyond the station, the pavement ends and the next 4 and a half miles are a steep graded-gravel road."
Gee whiz, that sure sounds like a high draw attraction to me. Load up the grandparents!
> after the Civil War
Again, another time period where a civilian militia was similarly armed to the armed forces of the day. I'm talking about today. How many seconds do you think a militia armed with fully automatic rifles will last against a hellfire missile from a drone, or an Apache attack chopper's main gun?
> The balance of power between the state and the people is a fluid, delicate thing
Not any more it isn't. "The People" today have practically no power aside from choosing which band of jackals to vote into office. Any sort of direct action ends like Ruby Ridge or Waco. Unless they're mindbogglingly wealthy or connected, in which case they do have options that 99.99% of the rest of the population does not. But make no mistake. Having a gun today doesn't give you leverage over the government. But it does give the government a convenient justification if something does happen to you during a confrontation.
>If you're truly okay with the police in this country (I'm assuming you're in the U.S., if not, kindy disregard) having a monopoly of armed force,
First of all I am not in the US, I am north of you where we do have gun control and people still have guns. But please for my own knowledge can you post a link to an incident in the last 30 years where having a gun was the factor leading to a positive outcome versus police in the US? Because all I can find is the opposite.
The 2nd amendment is a quaint anachronism from a time when it was feasible for a civilian militia to credibly overthrow a corrupt government as the two had similar armament. Now? Not a chance. Anyone who seriously thinks their citizen army of today is going to overthrow a corrupt US government is dreaming in Technicolor.
> Are you really equating a terror attack by two avowed ISIS-loyalists to any of the usual psychotic-break style crazy person attacks?
Does it really matter in the end if your kid was killed by a (rare) terrorist fueled attack on US soil with a gun vs the far more common person loses their nut and goes on a shooting rampage? They're still dead in no small part due to the absurd simplicity of acquiring a firearm in the US.
>The president, who assured the world that we had ISIS "contained," right before they killed 130 in Paris, just said on Wednesday that the US is safe from ISIS-style attacks. Not counting the people that a local ISIS franchise just killed in California, of course. Other than them.
Oh get off the "terrorists are the real threat" kick. To look at it in the cold light of fact, they killed 130 in Paris and if the San Bernardino thing is terrorist related - which it appears to be, or at least inspired by - then we're talking about ~150 'first world' deaths in a month, which is an incredible anomaly compared to the last 15 years after 9/11. Meanwhile, there were 12,750 deaths from guns in the US in 2014 alone. That's a Paris attack's equivalent body count every 4 days all year long, and none of those were from terrorists.
And we're back to why it will never fly in the US. So, what's the over/under on the number of days until the next mass shooting?
American "gun control" laws are the equivalent of dumping a coffee cup on a forest fire. An actual gun control law is what was passed in Australia, which worked pretty much as intended. Which even suggesting in the US would probably cause another civil war. And there is a huge part of the problem.
I've met software engineers - as in they went through EE degrees and have the ring to prove it - so do tell, what "accountability" do they have over and above any regular software developer? Because I sure as heck have never seen it. I've never seen them sign off on a gold master with their engineer stamp or suffer any sort of additional accountability in the event of a massive software screwup they were responsible for.
Why did it make lots of sense two months ago? Those "reports" of PS4 chat being used to coordinate the attacks have never been corroborated with a shred of evidence. For all we know, they used EVE Online to coordinate, or Teamspeak or a thousand other things.
14 million tonnes of proven reserves - 36,000 tonnes per year used. That's not as much as you think it is. The reserves are all of the lithium both easy to get at and refine and not so easy. Then there is our usage. 36Ktons today. What happens if electric cars really take off and in 5 years we're using 360K tons per year? That means we'll have 40 years of lithium at that rate of use. And that assumes "only" a 10 fold increase in use from electric cars taking off and making up 20% of the market. What happens if e-cars are 50% of sales in 10 years? And those Tesla Powerwalls get traction and knockoffs do as well? We could be out of lithium in 20 years or less.
How is this newsworthy at all? I learned programming as a kid from a book in the last 70s, before even BBSs were a common thing. LOTS of people learn that way. Hell it's actually better in many ways as you don't get distracted and can focus.
It's all about application. Will amphetamine make you better at writing a boring ass TPS report? Probably. Will it make you better at driving a 20 ton death machine down the highway? No.
So explain Adderall. It's a drug and known to increase productivity.