Android despite the lack of upgrade BS is dominating.
"Dominating"? Android is moving a lot of units but they are doing so by selling them (many of questionable quality) basically at cost or below. Apple has the vast majority of the profit in the industry both in Apps and hardware sales. Except for Samsung, nobody involved in Android is making much profit except maybe app vendors. Part of this comes from not bothering to give a shit about Android user's post purchase. If you're fine with that then go for it. Obviously many people don't care and even more don't know that they should care. If that is what you want to call dominating then fine but Android isn't in any danger of pushing Apple out of the market so it's an odd definition of domination.
Apple despite constantly changing standards and connectors is going gangbusters.
Constantly changing standards? Apple has changed their iPhone connector basically once and that was long overdue. Apple has introduced a few unusual connections (Firewire, Thunderbolt) but they've kept the dominant standard ones (USB, etc) while doing it.
The reality is keeping it compatible doesn't boost sales
Your evidence for this is what exactly? Are you seriously claiming that the fact that Firewire sold like shit had nothing to do with it's incompatibility with USB? Are you seriously claiming that Sony's futile attempt to cram MemoryCard down our throats had no effect on sales of memory cards? Standards matter and generating unnecessary new ones is economically stupid in most cases. Having a single standard results in lower unit costs, higher unit volumes and (generally) reduced complexity. Most new standards prove to be expensive failures.
The way I (and I suspect many) people use SD and especially micro SD cards is kinda fire and forget. In other words, there's some device that needs one, so I decide what size I want and shove it in there. Mostly it remains there for the life of the device.
In some cases that is correct which of course raises the question of why you need to complexity of removable storage if you never plan to remove it. I see people complain about this in regards to certain smartphones (looking at you Apple) but I think Apple and you are correct that in 99% of the cases the removable storage adds complexity and cost for a feature that never gets used. Most of my staff at work has Android phones of one type or another and I can say confidently that none of them ever remove their removable storage cards even when they've bothered to install one.
The only piece of removable storage I use with any regularity is the SD card in my good camera. SD cards (and CF) are not going to be replaced in cameras any time soon so this new standard provides zero benefit to me. Occasionally I use a USB memory stick and similarly USB isn't going anywhere. I just don't see the point of this thing.
So again what is the point of developing yet another removable card hardware standard without making it compatible with what we already have? I'm excited about stuff like USB-C because it eliminates complexity (or will in due time). I want some really well designed standards that last a long time and that work gracefully with older hardware. I have zero use for an incompatible standards cash grab that doesn't work with any hardware I own or am likely to buy.
An avionics autopilot pretty much flies in a straight line and warns you if it notices something it doesn't know how to deal with, with the assumption that you have at least one or two pilots at the helm at all times monitoring for more complex problems.
This isn't an avionics system and the person behind the wheel is not trained with anywhere near the rigor that the FAA demands from pilots. Furthermore there is a LOT less risk of hitting anything while flying through the air. I think you are trying to make the point that calling this an autopilot system may confuse people into believing that the system is more capable than it actually is because they don't understand what autopilot actually means in a plane. If so then I agree.
The Tesla autopilot is far more competent that that.
The person behind the wheel almost certainly is not nearly so competent even if what you are saying is true.
Regardless of what you think the name implies though, releasing such half-baked semi-autonomous driving systems is completely irresponsible
I tend to agree. I work in the auto industry (not for any Tesla competitor) and I've worked at test tracks in the past. I am 100% certain that this system has not been tested to a degree that should reasonably be considered adequate by any responsible engineer. I'm not saying it's not a remarkable bit of engineering (it is) but good may not be good enough in this case. People ARE going to do stupid things. The system IS going to run into corner cases the engineers didn't foresee. People ARE going to die before this technology becomes as safe and reliable as we hope. The Navy has a saying that "the rules are written in blood" which means that people got hurt to learn how to do things right. There is no reason to think that autopilot technologies in cars will be any different.
What possible incentive is there for them to make it backwards compatible.
Selling cards to the owners of the millions of devices that already exist. Providing an upgrade path will keep people using your standard. By not making it backwards compatible there is a strong risk it will fail to be adopted.
They want to sell and obsolete as many devices as fast possible, one way to do that is with constantly changing and evolving the standards ensuring enough improvements to make a replacement desirable
If they want to sell more cards and hardware, keeping it compatible is the fastest way to do that. Even if I want this technology it is going to be years most likely before I have a device that can use it. So they are pushing any possible sale to me out by a long time. On the other hand if the card is compatible with what I have already, even with reduced performance, there is some chance I buy one immediately.
I don't agree with this strategy but it makes good business sense. Hell they don't even provide OS upgrades for most smartphones.
I don't think it is good business at all. It think it is a very short sighted strategy that has been tried before and usually fails.
And the lack of OS upgrades is one of the big reasons why I tend to shy away from most Android devices (with some notable exceptions). While there is a lot I like about Android better than iPhones, Apple at least continues to support their products after you buy them which matters to me at least. (Given what Apple charges they damn well should support them too...)
They also said Autopilot "is an assist feature that requires you to keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times."
Here's the problem with that. The folks at Tesla HAVE to know that at least some of the people who use the technology are going to take their hands off the wheel. If they don't then they are weapons grade stupid and that seems unlikely. IANAL but it may not matter that Tesla warned people to keep their hands on the wheel given that it is reasonably foreseeable that some portion of the drivers would ignore those instructions. After all, they called it Autopilot for crying out loud... If strict liability is applied there is no need to prove fault, negligence, or intention. See Escola v Coca-Cola Bottling. Now maybe strict liability doesn't apply here but the point remains that manufacturers tend to be responsible for reasonably foreseeable consequences of the features of their products. I have a feeling that the autopilot features may have been released prematurely regardless of the claims of Tesla to the contrary. I love that Tesla is pushing boundaries but they need to tread carefully when it comes to safety.
Samsung has unveiled the world's first UFS card that could one day replace microSD cards in devices.
Great. Another incompatible storage card standard... Just what everybody was asking for.
UFS cards will be able to fit into a wide range of devices like smartphones, tablets, cameras, and drones, but the devices will need a specific UFS card slot, which could take some time.
Of course if can fit into a lot of devices if those devices are designed for it. Would it have killed them to make it backwards compatible with the hardware that already exists? I'm sure it has all sorts of lovely features but is it really too much to ask for the designers of this shit to think about future proofing their designs as well as backwards compatibility?
There is a big difference between IT consulting work and being a security guard, so yeah, the multiplier would be higher for skilled work.
Don't confuse price with cost. The cost of an employee has effectively zero relationship to the amount charged to customer for his/her services. Price charged is a negotiated amount. While it is typically a profitable multiple of the cost, it isn't required to be. It could be any number from 0 to infinity in principle. The actual, fully burdened cost of a typical employee is somewhere around 1.5X their gross salary in most cases. If a consultant is able to charge 3-4X the cost for their services then good for them but that's a separate consideration.
You are correct that the multiplier can be higher for skilled work though in general the costs are higher for skilled work as well for reasons that should be obvious.
You might work for different employers than me. I was regularly charged out at 2-3x my actual rate doing IT consulting.
The price you charge as a consultant has zero relationship the actual cost of an employee. It's not even required to be higher than the actual cost though it normally is. Price is a negotiated amount. What I said was correct. The fully burdened COST of an employee in general is roughly 1.5X their gross salary. If a firm decides to bill out their talent at a higher multiple, that is fine but it is a separate issue.
A "small amount of money to replace a broken sideview mirror"? Where is your body shop because I've never seen one that I would consider cheap and I've had to replace several of them. Cheapest one was $550 and that was 25 years ago.
Not to mention that side mirrors look terrible, suck fuel, don't perform super well, and can't see in all sorts of conditions not to mention the blind spots. It's amazing how many people think we should stop technological progress because we have something they are already used to in spite of the fact that it's flaws are legion.
Accountant here. No the burden rate for an hourly employee is NOT "3-4X" their take home pay. Generally speaking it is around a 50% markup of their gross (pre tax) salary. So if you pay someone $10/hour their real cost is probably $13-18 depending on the benefits offered and insurance costs.
I intersected these various ideas and concluded we could preserve natural habitats by engineering the no-car type cities to maximize walkability and bicyclability, while providing a maximization of modern conveniences such as subway transit to a city edge garage, and minimizing the additional costs of maintaining such an urban center.
Excellent ideas but the real obstacle is supplanting existing infrastructure and finding some way to force it to happen on a wide scale as you seem to indicate. I'm not sure how you turn a city with a car based infrastructure like LA or Detroit into a pedestrian paradise as a practical matter no matter how sensible the plans.
It will at least make for good scifi; although eliminating both yard work
I'm a huge fan of anything that does away with grass yards. They aren't super attractive and maintaining them wastes VAST amounts of power and water and generates a huge amount of noise and pollution doing it. What's so bad about letting trees grow around your house for crying out loud? I've let much of my yard go to forest and the small bit that I do maintain (to exercise my dogs mostly) I now do with electric powered lawn tools. They finally have some excellent 40V lawn tools that work as well as gas powered ones while consuming less energy and being quieter. Two stroke engines are the devil's work...
A roof is a lot more complex than "flat thing at the top of the house....
Well said. I think we're mostly talking about the outermost bit of the roof (shingles, etc) but you are quite right that a roof is a complicated structure which is much deeper than just the bit you can see from the outside. Far more complicated than many people realize.
I hope one day we figure out how to make it economically practical to turn the outer layer of the roof into solar panels or other useful things. Right now so many roofs are really just wasted space that could be put to better use much of the time. Solar panels, rooftop gardens, etc. Barriers to reclaiming that space are mostly economic at present. Commercial rooftops are particularly wasteful since they don't even have much aesthetic value. Places like grocery stores would (in principle) be ideal for solar arrays since their energy needs tend to correlate strongly with peak daylight. I figure once the payback gets to under 5 years or so we will probably see a tipping point. Right now payback tends to be 10-15 years which is just too long for many.
Good call. I'm in Seattle, and after five years, my panels no longer put out enough power to even charge my batteries.
Then you have defective panels or possibly defective batteries. There is nothing specific to the climate in Seattle that would cause solar panels to degrade that fast.
I've spent more in Windex and paper towels than I've gotten back in power.
Solar might work in Arizona, but it certainly doesn't around here.
Strange. Solarcity could not make a penny if solar power didn't work in Washington and yet they do business there all the same... Thanks but I'm going to trust the profit motive of Elon Musk over they unsubstantiated ravings of an Anonymous Coward.
So one witness in court claiming he saw the murderer is not proof but an anecdote?
Unless the testimony of that witness can be corroborated in some way then that is correct. By itself it is rarely sufficient because shockingly, people lie and are routinely wrong even when well intentioned. When it comes to science and engineering, eyewitness testimony is close to worthless and anecdotal evidence is generally considered dubious for good reason.
You americans are really quite dumb. Or your school system... or what ever.
Really? You don't understand the difference between data and anecdotes and we are the dumb ones? Curious bit of logic you have there...
BTW: solar panels, as in photovoltaics, exist since over 50 years. We have a pretty good idea how long they last and degrade.
You do realize the panels we produced 20+ years ago are not identical to the panels we produce today, right? That's like claiming an 8086 chip from Intel should have the same failure modalities and rates as a modern Pentium chip. Your point is correct that we have a fairly good idea how they degrade but the reasons why are a lot more complicated than the fact that solar panels have been made for a long time.
They're still not putting their panels on my roof and charging me money for the electricity they generate. They can lease the space from me, but if they retain full ownership interest in the panels, I'm not giving them anything for free, much less paying them for the privilege.
You seem to completely misunderstand the deal SolarCity (and others like them) offer. It's basically a lease on a solar array. They install a solar array on your roof and sell the power generated to the power company. In return they sell you power at a discounted rate (fixed by contract) for the service life of the array. In essence they split the savings from the array with you. So you get all the benefits of a solar array without having to front the (substantial) cost of purchasing one and maintaining it. You're not giving them anything for free. You could buy and install the array yourself but you would be taking a much larger financial risk up front - for many people the cost of the array is prohibitive. But by leasing you give back some of the savings but don't have any up front costs or ongoing maintenance costs.
Leasing a solar array doesn't make sense for everyone but in the right circumstance it can be an excellent deal. You don't have to spend tens of thousands of dollars installing an array and dealing with the issues of maintaining it. You get a discounted rate on your electricity. Solarcity makes a profit selling the power. I've thought about doing this at my house someday.
If the panels last anything like the estimates, it seems likely that a roof replacement would be likely at least once during the PV system lifetime, perhaps more if the roof wasn't brand new.
Depends on the type of roof. Metal roofs can last 30-50 years. It also depends on the particulars of the roof. Color, pitch, orientation, installation, material quality, local climate, etc. If I was having solar panels put on I would have the roof done at the same time if possible. You can get a roof that should outlast the panels but it won't be the cheapest option. Of course if you can afford solar panels today, chances are that the cost of a new roof probably isn't a huge deal to you. Plus the panels will probably extend the life of whatever roof they are over if properly designed and installed.
What probably needs to happen is to make it so the solar panels ARE the roof. Yes this has issues with angle of the sun and all that but the upside is that installation is a snap, replacement is easy and it looks better too. No need to worry about redoing your roof unless you are replacing a bunch of panels. On new construction you can orient the house to optimize sunlight capture.
Hard to power an AC system solely from solar (needs a lot of panels) economically but it can pretty readily offset the cost and amount of grid energy needed even with just a few. Even better it tends to provide the most power precisely when it is hottest. A lot of places already use solar for hot water tanks and I suspect as the price of solar continues to fall you'll start to see it more for AC and other household power needs. There are some businesses like grocery stores which have put solar panels on the roof to offset the refrigeration costs.
Areas of the world that couldn't really be habitable for the summers are now usable.
In some cases. In others that has more to do with hydro engineering than air conditioning. You could have all the air conditioning in the world and without vast water projects Las Vegas and Phoenix couldn't exist (and arguably shouldn't).
The more tropical latitudes tend to not have issues with snow piles closing roads, potholes, and such
I live in the north and we don't have problems with roads getting closed by snow. Not ever. Some mountainous areas do but they know how to deal with it. Potholes are genuinely not a big deal except in rare cases. Once in a while one causes a flat tire and even that is not super common. Biggest issue they cause is some expense for road maintenance.
as opposed to northern climates that might have to shut down due to whiteout conditions for days at a time.
You've never actually been to the north have you? Businesses in the north almost never shut down for any reason related to weather. I've lived in the Midwest much of my life and we just know how to deal with snow. We have the equipment and experience to deal with it. In fact we tend to think of those in the south as a bunch of pansies when it comes to dealing with bad weather. When I lived a bit further south they would shut the city down for a 1/4 inch of snowfall, or as those of us further north refer to it, no snow.
This is why businesses tend to move to more southern areas.
Manufacturing businesses have moved to southern climates for various reasons but weather is rarely one of them. Unions and labor costs are the biggest reason in most cases. Tax incentives can be another big one. Southern states have been aggressively courting manufacturing businesses. Weather doesn't really play into it.
Any computer without moving parts shouldn't wear out.
The might not "wear" out but they do fail. Moving parts are just one failure mode among many.
Hell, most PC's with some moving parts don't fail for the first 20 years or so.
Since very few PCs remain in service for 20 years I'm not really sure where you are getting this data. Yes there are some out there but the average age of a PC is supposedly around 5 years. Laptops tend to wear out sooner than desktops. Even if the machine could remain alive for 20 years the software in most cases would be obsolete and unsupported long before you reached 20 years of service. A Windows PC from 20 years ago would have been running Windows 95 or NT. Tell me how many of those you've run into in the last 5 years.
It's a damn shame other manufacturers don't follow this model.. In fact all makers of all items don't follow this model. It's an old one... If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it.
Why would a company continue to produce a product if there is no way to make any money doing so? The ONLY reason this router is still made is because people are willing to buy it at a price higher than it costs to make it. Has nothing to do with it being broken or not.
Don't confuse broken with obsolete. Sometimes people find economic utility in something that isn't state of the art. My company uses some presses that are older than I am and they will probably still be working after I'm dead. They aren't state of the art but they work fine for specific uses. But they also cannot be sold as new profitably because they lack features that customers want and new presses have and there is a large secondary market for them so used ones can be bought cheaply. It's not broken - it's obsolete. No company could make money making new ones.
People still buy the old WRT router because it still has some utility and because it can be made cheaply enough to still make a profit. Eventually that will go away but there is a modest market in the mean time. The tail might be long but it won't last forever.
Is it really too much to ask for you to read all the words in my post before responding?
Is it really too much to return the favor? I understood what you said just fine. You failed to comprehend the argument.
What you haven't shown is anything to back up your original vacuous statement: "more people are going to die before autopilot features become truly safe."
Exhibit A on your failure to read what I wrote. The argument is that EVERY transportation technology we have ever developed has resulted in fatalities. All of them. There is no reason to believe self driving cars will be any different especially since they have already have a fatality on the ledger. If you think that is "vacuous" then you have failed to understand the argument.
Apparently you missed the second half of my post, you can't claim that there is insufficient data while making such confident predictions about the future.
Sure I can. Every single major transportation technology we have ever developed has had some number of fatalities during its development. Every single one. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that self driving cars will be any different in that respect and we already apparently have one fatality already. I couldn't begin to tell you how or when or how frequently they will happen, merely that they will. One hopes that the number will be a tiny one.
If autopilot is safer than human driving already then what is this nonsense about the number of lives that will be lost in making it 'truly' safe?
It's not nonsense because those are separate issues. There WILL be lives lost developing autopilot and I would confidently bet large sums of money on that. This is a separate issue from whether or not is is safer than the current alternatives. Dont' conflate the two. Self driving cars could prove to be immediately safer from day one than human driven cars. (we just don't know for sure if they are yet) Separately there will be some indeterminate number of fatalities during the development of self driving cars until the technology matures and it is likely the number will never go to zero. Hopefully this will be a small number but I'm (sadly) entirely confident that it will be greater than zero. What we need to see is that fatalities from self driving or auto-piloted cars is less than fatalities from human driven cars. That would be a success.
The data is insufficient to show that autopilot is safer than humans, but is sufficient to show that it is less safe than humans? Seems like a double standard.
Who said it is less safe? Certainly not me. We don't really know either way at this point. We SUSPECT it will eventually save lives and the early data seems to be pointing that way but we are just at the early stages of fully robotic driving. We have some data but the technology simply hasn't gotten into the public's hands to see what will happen on a large scale. We just don't know how it will play out yet. Any statements about its safety or lack thereof at this point are mostly pure conjecture.
Cruise control only keeps your speed constant, you still have to pay attention to the road or will drive into a ditch when the road turns.
And autopilot will steer the vehicle but like cruise control it is not sufficiently robust to permit you to stop paying attention at this point. People will forget that fact at their peril.
My car has a spring loaded accelerator pedal, where (maybe by coincidence, maybe by design), the spring can support the wight of my foot at any position of the throttle, I can essentially rest my foot there.
You still have to leave your leg in a fixed position so it doesn't really solve the problem. My father has had knee surgery so keeping his leg in one position for more than 60 minutes or so is quite uncomfortable for him. It's not about pressing the pedal, it's about moving the joints even if only slightly. My knees are fine but after 8 hours of driving my joints will start to ache too. Cruise control relieves this problem. I could see other autopilot features doing the same in different ways. It would be nice to one day be able to change seat position or recline or even lay down.
However, once you turn cruise control on, where do you place your foot?
Somewhere on the floor where I can reach the accelerator or the brake quickly if needed. Haven't you ever used cruise control?
If you needed to suddenly brake (moose on the road etc), will it take more or less time to slam the brake compared to if you kept your foot on the accelerator?
Roughly the same. It's not like you put your foot on the dashboard. It's still close by. In fact you actually can position your foot to be closer to the brake than if you had your foot on the accelerator pedal if you want.
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Android despite the lack of upgrade BS is dominating.
"Dominating"? Android is moving a lot of units but they are doing so by selling them (many of questionable quality) basically at cost or below. Apple has the vast majority of the profit in the industry both in Apps and hardware sales. Except for Samsung, nobody involved in Android is making much profit except maybe app vendors. Part of this comes from not bothering to give a shit about Android user's post purchase. If you're fine with that then go for it. Obviously many people don't care and even more don't know that they should care. If that is what you want to call dominating then fine but Android isn't in any danger of pushing Apple out of the market so it's an odd definition of domination.
Apple despite constantly changing standards and connectors is going gangbusters.
Constantly changing standards? Apple has changed their iPhone connector basically once and that was long overdue. Apple has introduced a few unusual connections (Firewire, Thunderbolt) but they've kept the dominant standard ones (USB, etc) while doing it.
The reality is keeping it compatible doesn't boost sales
Your evidence for this is what exactly? Are you seriously claiming that the fact that Firewire sold like shit had nothing to do with it's incompatibility with USB? Are you seriously claiming that Sony's futile attempt to cram MemoryCard down our throats had no effect on sales of memory cards? Standards matter and generating unnecessary new ones is economically stupid in most cases. Having a single standard results in lower unit costs, higher unit volumes and (generally) reduced complexity. Most new standards prove to be expensive failures.
The way I (and I suspect many) people use SD and especially micro SD cards is kinda fire and forget. In other words, there's some device that needs one, so I decide what size I want and shove it in there. Mostly it remains there for the life of the device.
In some cases that is correct which of course raises the question of why you need to complexity of removable storage if you never plan to remove it. I see people complain about this in regards to certain smartphones (looking at you Apple) but I think Apple and you are correct that in 99% of the cases the removable storage adds complexity and cost for a feature that never gets used. Most of my staff at work has Android phones of one type or another and I can say confidently that none of them ever remove their removable storage cards even when they've bothered to install one.
The only piece of removable storage I use with any regularity is the SD card in my good camera. SD cards (and CF) are not going to be replaced in cameras any time soon so this new standard provides zero benefit to me. Occasionally I use a USB memory stick and similarly USB isn't going anywhere. I just don't see the point of this thing.
So again what is the point of developing yet another removable card hardware standard without making it compatible with what we already have? I'm excited about stuff like USB-C because it eliminates complexity (or will in due time). I want some really well designed standards that last a long time and that work gracefully with older hardware. I have zero use for an incompatible standards cash grab that doesn't work with any hardware I own or am likely to buy.
An avionics autopilot pretty much flies in a straight line and warns you if it notices something it doesn't know how to deal with, with the assumption that you have at least one or two pilots at the helm at all times monitoring for more complex problems.
This isn't an avionics system and the person behind the wheel is not trained with anywhere near the rigor that the FAA demands from pilots. Furthermore there is a LOT less risk of hitting anything while flying through the air. I think you are trying to make the point that calling this an autopilot system may confuse people into believing that the system is more capable than it actually is because they don't understand what autopilot actually means in a plane. If so then I agree.
The Tesla autopilot is far more competent that that.
The person behind the wheel almost certainly is not nearly so competent even if what you are saying is true.
Regardless of what you think the name implies though, releasing such half-baked semi-autonomous driving systems is completely irresponsible
I tend to agree. I work in the auto industry (not for any Tesla competitor) and I've worked at test tracks in the past. I am 100% certain that this system has not been tested to a degree that should reasonably be considered adequate by any responsible engineer. I'm not saying it's not a remarkable bit of engineering (it is) but good may not be good enough in this case. People ARE going to do stupid things. The system IS going to run into corner cases the engineers didn't foresee. People ARE going to die before this technology becomes as safe and reliable as we hope. The Navy has a saying that "the rules are written in blood" which means that people got hurt to learn how to do things right. There is no reason to think that autopilot technologies in cars will be any different.
What possible incentive is there for them to make it backwards compatible.
Selling cards to the owners of the millions of devices that already exist. Providing an upgrade path will keep people using your standard. By not making it backwards compatible there is a strong risk it will fail to be adopted.
They want to sell and obsolete as many devices as fast possible, one way to do that is with constantly changing and evolving the standards ensuring enough improvements to make a replacement desirable
If they want to sell more cards and hardware, keeping it compatible is the fastest way to do that. Even if I want this technology it is going to be years most likely before I have a device that can use it. So they are pushing any possible sale to me out by a long time. On the other hand if the card is compatible with what I have already, even with reduced performance, there is some chance I buy one immediately.
I don't agree with this strategy but it makes good business sense. Hell they don't even provide OS upgrades for most smartphones.
I don't think it is good business at all. It think it is a very short sighted strategy that has been tried before and usually fails.
And the lack of OS upgrades is one of the big reasons why I tend to shy away from most Android devices (with some notable exceptions). While there is a lot I like about Android better than iPhones, Apple at least continues to support their products after you buy them which matters to me at least. (Given what Apple charges they damn well should support them too...)
They also said Autopilot "is an assist feature that requires you to keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times."
Here's the problem with that. The folks at Tesla HAVE to know that at least some of the people who use the technology are going to take their hands off the wheel. If they don't then they are weapons grade stupid and that seems unlikely. IANAL but it may not matter that Tesla warned people to keep their hands on the wheel given that it is reasonably foreseeable that some portion of the drivers would ignore those instructions. After all, they called it Autopilot for crying out loud... If strict liability is applied there is no need to prove fault, negligence, or intention. See Escola v Coca-Cola Bottling. Now maybe strict liability doesn't apply here but the point remains that manufacturers tend to be responsible for reasonably foreseeable consequences of the features of their products. I have a feeling that the autopilot features may have been released prematurely regardless of the claims of Tesla to the contrary. I love that Tesla is pushing boundaries but they need to tread carefully when it comes to safety.
Samsung has unveiled the world's first UFS card that could one day replace microSD cards in devices.
Great. Another incompatible storage card standard... Just what everybody was asking for.
UFS cards will be able to fit into a wide range of devices like smartphones, tablets, cameras, and drones, but the devices will need a specific UFS card slot, which could take some time.
Of course if can fit into a lot of devices if those devices are designed for it. Would it have killed them to make it backwards compatible with the hardware that already exists? I'm sure it has all sorts of lovely features but is it really too much to ask for the designers of this shit to think about future proofing their designs as well as backwards compatibility?
There is a big difference between IT consulting work and being a security guard, so yeah, the multiplier would be higher for skilled work.
Don't confuse price with cost. The cost of an employee has effectively zero relationship to the amount charged to customer for his/her services. Price charged is a negotiated amount. While it is typically a profitable multiple of the cost, it isn't required to be. It could be any number from 0 to infinity in principle. The actual, fully burdened cost of a typical employee is somewhere around 1.5X their gross salary in most cases. If a consultant is able to charge 3-4X the cost for their services then good for them but that's a separate consideration.
You are correct that the multiplier can be higher for skilled work though in general the costs are higher for skilled work as well for reasons that should be obvious.
You might work for different employers than me. I was regularly charged out at 2-3x my actual rate doing IT consulting.
The price you charge as a consultant has zero relationship the actual cost of an employee. It's not even required to be higher than the actual cost though it normally is. Price is a negotiated amount. What I said was correct. The fully burdened COST of an employee in general is roughly 1.5X their gross salary. If a firm decides to bill out their talent at a higher multiple, that is fine but it is a separate issue.
A "small amount of money to replace a broken sideview mirror"? Where is your body shop because I've never seen one that I would consider cheap and I've had to replace several of them. Cheapest one was $550 and that was 25 years ago.
Not to mention that side mirrors look terrible, suck fuel, don't perform super well, and can't see in all sorts of conditions not to mention the blind spots. It's amazing how many people think we should stop technological progress because we have something they are already used to in spite of the fact that it's flaws are legion.
Accountant here. No the burden rate for an hourly employee is NOT "3-4X" their take home pay. Generally speaking it is around a 50% markup of their gross (pre tax) salary. So if you pay someone $10/hour their real cost is probably $13-18 depending on the benefits offered and insurance costs.
I intersected these various ideas and concluded we could preserve natural habitats by engineering the no-car type cities to maximize walkability and bicyclability, while providing a maximization of modern conveniences such as subway transit to a city edge garage, and minimizing the additional costs of maintaining such an urban center.
Excellent ideas but the real obstacle is supplanting existing infrastructure and finding some way to force it to happen on a wide scale as you seem to indicate. I'm not sure how you turn a city with a car based infrastructure like LA or Detroit into a pedestrian paradise as a practical matter no matter how sensible the plans.
It will at least make for good scifi; although eliminating both yard work
I'm a huge fan of anything that does away with grass yards. They aren't super attractive and maintaining them wastes VAST amounts of power and water and generates a huge amount of noise and pollution doing it. What's so bad about letting trees grow around your house for crying out loud? I've let much of my yard go to forest and the small bit that I do maintain (to exercise my dogs mostly) I now do with electric powered lawn tools. They finally have some excellent 40V lawn tools that work as well as gas powered ones while consuming less energy and being quieter. Two stroke engines are the devil's work...
A roof is a lot more complex than "flat thing at the top of the house....
Well said. I think we're mostly talking about the outermost bit of the roof (shingles, etc) but you are quite right that a roof is a complicated structure which is much deeper than just the bit you can see from the outside. Far more complicated than many people realize.
I hope one day we figure out how to make it economically practical to turn the outer layer of the roof into solar panels or other useful things. Right now so many roofs are really just wasted space that could be put to better use much of the time. Solar panels, rooftop gardens, etc. Barriers to reclaiming that space are mostly economic at present. Commercial rooftops are particularly wasteful since they don't even have much aesthetic value. Places like grocery stores would (in principle) be ideal for solar arrays since their energy needs tend to correlate strongly with peak daylight. I figure once the payback gets to under 5 years or so we will probably see a tipping point. Right now payback tends to be 10-15 years which is just too long for many.
Good call. I'm in Seattle, and after five years, my panels no longer put out enough power to even charge my batteries.
Then you have defective panels or possibly defective batteries. There is nothing specific to the climate in Seattle that would cause solar panels to degrade that fast.
I've spent more in Windex and paper towels than I've gotten back in power.
You don't clean solar panels with Windex and paper towels. If you are on the roof with Windex and paper towels then you are Doing It Wrong.
Solar might work in Arizona, but it certainly doesn't around here.
Strange. Solarcity could not make a penny if solar power didn't work in Washington and yet they do business there all the same... Thanks but I'm going to trust the profit motive of Elon Musk over they unsubstantiated ravings of an Anonymous Coward.
So one witness in court claiming he saw the murderer is not proof but an anecdote?
Unless the testimony of that witness can be corroborated in some way then that is correct. By itself it is rarely sufficient because shockingly, people lie and are routinely wrong even when well intentioned. When it comes to science and engineering, eyewitness testimony is close to worthless and anecdotal evidence is generally considered dubious for good reason.
You americans are really quite dumb. Or your school system ... or what ever.
Really? You don't understand the difference between data and anecdotes and we are the dumb ones? Curious bit of logic you have there...
BTW: solar panels, as in photovoltaics, exist since over 50 years. We have a pretty good idea how long they last and degrade.
You do realize the panels we produced 20+ years ago are not identical to the panels we produce today, right? That's like claiming an 8086 chip from Intel should have the same failure modalities and rates as a modern Pentium chip. Your point is correct that we have a fairly good idea how they degrade but the reasons why are a lot more complicated than the fact that solar panels have been made for a long time.
They're still not putting their panels on my roof and charging me money for the electricity they generate. They can lease the space from me, but if they retain full ownership interest in the panels, I'm not giving them anything for free, much less paying them for the privilege.
You seem to completely misunderstand the deal SolarCity (and others like them) offer. It's basically a lease on a solar array. They install a solar array on your roof and sell the power generated to the power company. In return they sell you power at a discounted rate (fixed by contract) for the service life of the array. In essence they split the savings from the array with you. So you get all the benefits of a solar array without having to front the (substantial) cost of purchasing one and maintaining it. You're not giving them anything for free. You could buy and install the array yourself but you would be taking a much larger financial risk up front - for many people the cost of the array is prohibitive. But by leasing you give back some of the savings but don't have any up front costs or ongoing maintenance costs.
Leasing a solar array doesn't make sense for everyone but in the right circumstance it can be an excellent deal. You don't have to spend tens of thousands of dollars installing an array and dealing with the issues of maintaining it. You get a discounted rate on your electricity. Solarcity makes a profit selling the power. I've thought about doing this at my house someday.
If the panels last anything like the estimates, it seems likely that a roof replacement would be likely at least once during the PV system lifetime, perhaps more if the roof wasn't brand new.
Depends on the type of roof. Metal roofs can last 30-50 years. It also depends on the particulars of the roof. Color, pitch, orientation, installation, material quality, local climate, etc. If I was having solar panels put on I would have the roof done at the same time if possible. You can get a roof that should outlast the panels but it won't be the cheapest option. Of course if you can afford solar panels today, chances are that the cost of a new roof probably isn't a huge deal to you. Plus the panels will probably extend the life of whatever roof they are over if properly designed and installed.
What probably needs to happen is to make it so the solar panels ARE the roof. Yes this has issues with angle of the sun and all that but the upside is that installation is a snap, replacement is easy and it looks better too. No need to worry about redoing your roof unless you are replacing a bunch of panels. On new construction you can orient the house to optimize sunlight capture.
How viable is solar powered air conditioning?
Hard to power an AC system solely from solar (needs a lot of panels) economically but it can pretty readily offset the cost and amount of grid energy needed even with just a few. Even better it tends to provide the most power precisely when it is hottest. A lot of places already use solar for hot water tanks and I suspect as the price of solar continues to fall you'll start to see it more for AC and other household power needs. There are some businesses like grocery stores which have put solar panels on the roof to offset the refrigeration costs.
Areas of the world that couldn't really be habitable for the summers are now usable.
In some cases. In others that has more to do with hydro engineering than air conditioning. You could have all the air conditioning in the world and without vast water projects Las Vegas and Phoenix couldn't exist (and arguably shouldn't).
The more tropical latitudes tend to not have issues with snow piles closing roads, potholes, and such
I live in the north and we don't have problems with roads getting closed by snow. Not ever. Some mountainous areas do but they know how to deal with it. Potholes are genuinely not a big deal except in rare cases. Once in a while one causes a flat tire and even that is not super common. Biggest issue they cause is some expense for road maintenance.
as opposed to northern climates that might have to shut down due to whiteout conditions for days at a time.
You've never actually been to the north have you? Businesses in the north almost never shut down for any reason related to weather. I've lived in the Midwest much of my life and we just know how to deal with snow. We have the equipment and experience to deal with it. In fact we tend to think of those in the south as a bunch of pansies when it comes to dealing with bad weather. When I lived a bit further south they would shut the city down for a 1/4 inch of snowfall, or as those of us further north refer to it, no snow.
This is why businesses tend to move to more southern areas.
Manufacturing businesses have moved to southern climates for various reasons but weather is rarely one of them. Unions and labor costs are the biggest reason in most cases. Tax incentives can be another big one. Southern states have been aggressively courting manufacturing businesses. Weather doesn't really play into it.
Any computer without moving parts shouldn't wear out.
The might not "wear" out but they do fail. Moving parts are just one failure mode among many.
Hell, most PC's with some moving parts don't fail for the first 20 years or so.
Since very few PCs remain in service for 20 years I'm not really sure where you are getting this data. Yes there are some out there but the average age of a PC is supposedly around 5 years. Laptops tend to wear out sooner than desktops. Even if the machine could remain alive for 20 years the software in most cases would be obsolete and unsupported long before you reached 20 years of service. A Windows PC from 20 years ago would have been running Windows 95 or NT. Tell me how many of those you've run into in the last 5 years.
Perhaps the differentiator is that they set up and manage the devices too?
Still a lease. Might have a service contract attached to the lease but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
It's a damn shame other manufacturers don't follow this model.. In fact all makers of all items don't follow this model. It's an old one... If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it.
Why would a company continue to produce a product if there is no way to make any money doing so? The ONLY reason this router is still made is because people are willing to buy it at a price higher than it costs to make it. Has nothing to do with it being broken or not.
Don't confuse broken with obsolete. Sometimes people find economic utility in something that isn't state of the art. My company uses some presses that are older than I am and they will probably still be working after I'm dead. They aren't state of the art but they work fine for specific uses. But they also cannot be sold as new profitably because they lack features that customers want and new presses have and there is a large secondary market for them so used ones can be bought cheaply. It's not broken - it's obsolete. No company could make money making new ones.
People still buy the old WRT router because it still has some utility and because it can be made cheaply enough to still make a profit. Eventually that will go away but there is a modest market in the mean time. The tail might be long but it won't last forever.
Is it really too much to ask for you to read all the words in my post before responding?
Is it really too much to return the favor? I understood what you said just fine. You failed to comprehend the argument.
What you haven't shown is anything to back up your original vacuous statement: "more people are going to die before autopilot features become truly safe."
Exhibit A on your failure to read what I wrote. The argument is that EVERY transportation technology we have ever developed has resulted in fatalities. All of them. There is no reason to believe self driving cars will be any different especially since they have already have a fatality on the ledger. If you think that is "vacuous" then you have failed to understand the argument.
Think more, write less.
Comprehend more. Post less. We're done here.
Apparently you missed the second half of my post, you can't claim that there is insufficient data while making such confident predictions about the future.
Sure I can. Every single major transportation technology we have ever developed has had some number of fatalities during its development. Every single one. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that self driving cars will be any different in that respect and we already apparently have one fatality already. I couldn't begin to tell you how or when or how frequently they will happen, merely that they will. One hopes that the number will be a tiny one.
If autopilot is safer than human driving already then what is this nonsense about the number of lives that will be lost in making it 'truly' safe?
It's not nonsense because those are separate issues. There WILL be lives lost developing autopilot and I would confidently bet large sums of money on that. This is a separate issue from whether or not is is safer than the current alternatives. Dont' conflate the two. Self driving cars could prove to be immediately safer from day one than human driven cars. (we just don't know for sure if they are yet) Separately there will be some indeterminate number of fatalities during the development of self driving cars until the technology matures and it is likely the number will never go to zero. Hopefully this will be a small number but I'm (sadly) entirely confident that it will be greater than zero. What we need to see is that fatalities from self driving or auto-piloted cars is less than fatalities from human driven cars. That would be a success.
The data is insufficient to show that autopilot is safer than humans, but is sufficient to show that it is less safe than humans? Seems like a double standard.
Who said it is less safe? Certainly not me. We don't really know either way at this point. We SUSPECT it will eventually save lives and the early data seems to be pointing that way but we are just at the early stages of fully robotic driving. We have some data but the technology simply hasn't gotten into the public's hands to see what will happen on a large scale. We just don't know how it will play out yet. Any statements about its safety or lack thereof at this point are mostly pure conjecture.
Cruise control only keeps your speed constant, you still have to pay attention to the road or will drive into a ditch when the road turns.
And autopilot will steer the vehicle but like cruise control it is not sufficiently robust to permit you to stop paying attention at this point. People will forget that fact at their peril.
My car has a spring loaded accelerator pedal, where (maybe by coincidence, maybe by design), the spring can support the wight of my foot at any position of the throttle, I can essentially rest my foot there.
You still have to leave your leg in a fixed position so it doesn't really solve the problem. My father has had knee surgery so keeping his leg in one position for more than 60 minutes or so is quite uncomfortable for him. It's not about pressing the pedal, it's about moving the joints even if only slightly. My knees are fine but after 8 hours of driving my joints will start to ache too. Cruise control relieves this problem. I could see other autopilot features doing the same in different ways. It would be nice to one day be able to change seat position or recline or even lay down.
However, once you turn cruise control on, where do you place your foot?
Somewhere on the floor where I can reach the accelerator or the brake quickly if needed. Haven't you ever used cruise control?
If you needed to suddenly brake (moose on the road etc), will it take more or less time to slam the brake compared to if you kept your foot on the accelerator?
Roughly the same. It's not like you put your foot on the dashboard. It's still close by. In fact you actually can position your foot to be closer to the brake than if you had your foot on the accelerator pedal if you want.