The only financial safety net you need is competence.
Oh bullshit. I'm a highly competent person and I've had to rely on unemployment payments in the past to get by. My mother suffered from and eventually died from ALS. She was a high level director at one of the big accounting firm but guess what? The fact that she was highly competent didn't mean shit to ALS. Eventually she needed to rely on the social safety net including social security disability before she passed. Many people find themselves in difficult circumstances for reasons beyond their control and they need help. To say the reason for their status is that they lack competence is beyond insulting.
You have to be a special breed of idiot to think that you are so "competent" that you will never need help. Maybe you'll be lucky. Many others aren't.
We currently have move openings than people looking for work.
You think people are magically qualified for any available job? Just because my company needs a skilled machinist doesn't mean one is available. There ALWAYS are jobs that go unfilled because the skillsets of people looking for work never perfectly matches the skillsets needed by people doing the hiring.
All this America, America, America rhetoric everywhere makes me believe people forget this county is less than 250 years old -- still in diapers compared to much of the world
Let's compare shall we? This is a meme that the US is a "young" country but it really isn't. The US is actually rather old compared to most of the countries in the world. Don't confuse the age of a country with the amount of time people have been there. Italy has roots as far back as 700BC but the modern Italy we know today wasn't unified until around 1900 so saying Italy is older than the US is more than a little misleading. Having some old buildings built by ancestors doesn't equal being an old country.
The USofA is the oldest constitutional democracy in the world. The USA is the oldest country in the western hemisphere. It is older than most of the countries in Asia - only Saudi Arabia, Oman, Mongolia, China, and Japan have older governments and even then it's somewhat debatable depending on how you define the age of the country. China has been around a long time in various forms but the People's Republic of China hasn't - there are people alive today who predate the PRofC. The USA is older than most of the countries in Europe at least as they are currently organized. The people have been there a long time but the governments as they are currently constituted aren't generally very old.
These things always correct themselves eventually, it's just a question of how long and how much pain.
"Always"? No they do not always correct themselves. Countries can and do follow paths that they cannot recover from. I doubt we are there yet but making sure it stays that way is going to take a lot of effort and vigilance and it's not clear if the citizens of the US are up to the task. The mere fact that Trump actually got elected should provide prima facie evidence that we have an alarming number of people with little moral compass and less brains.
However you do it, either through Mueller or your Second Amendment rights, please just get him out of there...
A) Mueller cannot remove him from office. There are only two legal means to do that and both require Congress to act. Won't happen. B) As vile as Trump is, suggesting he be killed is obscene and you are an asshole for suggesting it. Yes I'm aware he said it first but don't sink to his level or lower. I just want him gone, we don't need him dead.
At least it looks as though Mueller might be on track for a classy impeachment setup soon enough after Manafort's lies negating that plea bargain.
While the democrats could impeach Trump since they control the House of Representatives, doing so will almost certainly not result in his removal from office without a 2/3 majority in the Senate which isn't going to happen. So we're stuck with Trump for another two years. The only saving grace is that now there is some viable opposition in the House to limit the amount of damage he can do. (which unfortunately is still substantial...)
My concern is that the democrats won't send up a good candidate and we'll end up with Trump for another 6 years like with did with W. I would have thought that impossible but apparently our country is over run by imbeciles who think Trump is the good guy.
Abuse of monopoly position doesn't require a specific percentage of some market (who would get to define the boundaries of a given market?), it simply requires the ability to use the position in one market to restrict competition in another market.
That is true but the fact remains that Apple does NOT have a monopoly under any reasonable definition of the term. Android smartphones collectively sell more units than Apple does by a pretty substantial margin. The market is for smartphones, not for products made by Apple.
The argument is that Apple uses its position as the hardware manufacturer to eliminate competition in the software sales/distribution (i.e. retail store) market and, to a lesser extent, the software creation market (since it's unreasonably difficult to sell any software that Apple doesn't approve of).
Several flaws in that argument. A) Apple is not just a hardware manufacturer and they don't have a monopoly on smartphone hardware. Saying they have a monopoly on Apple products is an idiotic argument. B) Nobody is compelled to sell software on Apple's platform and Apple's platform does not have enough market share or market power to be called a monopoly under any reasonable definition of the term. C) Apple created the market for software on their platform so it's pretty much impossible to argue that they leveraged their hardware to control a market that otherwise would not exist without their hardware. Furthermore they offered the 30% deal right from day one so obviously the market was robust in spite of the cut Apple took. D) Anti-trust arguments are predicated on harm to consumers and it's pretty hard to see how consumers are being deprived of choices or harmed here. There are perfectly viable and available substitute products which actually have greater market share than Apple's products.
Having more gears wouldn't change the efficiency of the electric motor, unlike an ICEV.
That's not true at all. EVs have motors that are relatively efficient across a broad RPM range (up to 20,000) so engineers can pick a gear that works well for most day to day driving. But make no mistake that this gear choice is a compromise. They do not have perfect efficiency across the whole band and there are limits to how fast you can spin them. My Bolt EV has a max speed of 91mph largely thanks to choice of gears and this does play a role in it's (relatively) crappy fuel economy at speeds above 70mph. At higher speeds they do use more energy spinning faster, especially towards the top end. It's why most EVs are electronically limited at the top end. There are EVs that have gear boxes and while they don't need 8 gears, 2 or 3 can have actual utility. Right now they don't use them because the added cost result in enough performance improvement to be worth the bother.
The original Tesla Roadster was designed to have a two speed gearbox. The Bolt EV I have probably would see a 10-20% gain in fuel economy at highway speeds with a 2 speed gearbox. Multiple gears will eventually be a thing for EVs, albeit far less important than for ICEs. A lot of EVs will probably stick with the single gear option because it works fine and is cheaper and more reliable.
My Tesla Model S, on the other hand, loses very little range at highway speeds.
Unless you have highways with low speed limits, that isn't true. Highway speeds where I live are between 70-80mph and that has a notable effect on fuel economy even for Tesla. You are correct that the Tesla is more streamlined so the effect is smaller but the effect is still there and still notable.
It also has only one "gear".
You don't need the quotes. It does have a single gear so that statement is quite correct.
MS got blasted in the 90's for trying to force people to use IE.
That's because Microsoft WAS a monopoly. They had over 90% market share in desktop operating systems. There literally weren't any viable alternatives. Apple has something like 30% market share in smartphones. In what universe is that a monopoly.?
Apple has no right to dictate how I use my hardware- they represent a majority share of the mobile market.
Entitled much? First off Apple does NOT have a majority share of the mobile market. Second, Apple isn't telling you how to use your hardware. You can do whatever you want with it and they cannot say shit about it. But the flipside is that Apple isn't under any obligation to cooperate with you regarding the software or services or what hardware they sell you if it isn't in their interest. What benefit does Apple get from allowing sideloading and other hacks? It's not going to make them one additional penny. You want to connect to Apple's ecosystem then you'll play by Apple's rules. If you don't, that's fine - go buy something else. You seem to be under the delusion that Apple should have to cater to your particular interests and that's not how it works nor should it be.
The ability to sideload and have additional app stores is one of the reasons why I left Apple.
Which is how it is supposed to work. If Apple doesn't offer you what you want you go elsewhere. If Apple had 90% market share then maybe there is an argument against them as a monopoly but the fact is they don't and probably never will.
Not sure about that. Manufacturers are starting to build vehicles that have been designed as EVs from the ground up.
Not really. Not seriously anyway. If they were serious about it they would be investing heavily in battery companies and securing supplies. The only company I've seen working on making an EV that doesn't look idiotic recently is Porsche. The new Leaf looks better than the old one but that's not saying much - the old one was terrible looking. The Kona is just another boring and fairly ugly hatchback. I own a Bolt and while I like the styling for a hatchback, it isn't exactly sexy either.
The big automakers are just dipping their toes in the water and waiting. They don't want to take the risk and possibly be wrong.
This is not just a shakeup in car design, but in their production lines and logistics as well, and such things take some time and effort (as Tesla found out).
Of course but I work in the industry and they aren't really putting in the effort or money. They're all claiming they are going to introduce electrified cars but none of the big autos are really pushing their chips onto the table and those promises haven't materialized into real products for the most part.
My understanding is that a couple of these companies are simply having a real hard time sourcing the batteries.
They're having a hard time of it because it's a critical technology they wouldn't be outsourcing if they were serious about it. Tesla seems to be the only ones that grok the fact that they need to vertically integrate to get the economies of scale and a competitive advantage. Unless Tesla's competitors have a lead on some mysterious battery tech that will supplant Li-Ion in the near future and are willing to dump tons of money on it then they are playing a dangerous game.
The lawsuit said Apple violated federal antitrust laws by requiring apps to be sold through the company's App Store and then taking a 30 percent commission from the purchases.
I don't get how this is a monopoly without contorting the definition of the word into something utterly useless. If it was such a terrible deal for software vendors then why do they persist in using Apple's platform? There are alternatives which are actually considerably more popular by unit volume and more open to third parties. I don't see the public interest here.
And if the argument is that Apple is taking too big a cut then the argument is de-facto that the government should engage in price fixing which is almost always a terrible idea. What is the "right" amount? 5%? 20%? 50%? For any number greater than zero they are asking the government to determine a market price and the government is terrible at doing that especially when there is no compelling public interest in doing so.
Many of us spent a long time learning to do something a certain way, and are unwilling to just throw all that time and effort away because somebody decided they had a better way that really is no better, just different.
First off please educate yourself about the sunk cost fallacy. Second, just because you think it isn't any better does not mean your opinion is correct or widely shared. Digital payments have clear, measurable, and easily understood advantages. Yes they have disadvantages too. Your comfort with a different way of doing something is a good approximation of irrelevant if the majority of people see advantage in using a new technology.
Maybe your cousin didn't WANT to use the social media crap, and was basically saying: call me, text me, or fuck the fuck off.
My cousin's complaints had nothing to do with me. She was complaining because she had to learn something new so she could follow her children's exploits on Facebook and elsewhere. She was pretending incompetence when in fact the reality was that she lacked interest.
You do know that the ability to learn and retain new information slowly fades as you get older and the brain gets more and more set in its ways, right?
Certainly. That doesn't mean people become blithering idiots the moment they turn 60. Just because they aren't at the peak of their mental abilities doesn't mean they are incapable of learning anything new.
That's why it's a lot easier for kids to learn a second language than it is for adults.
Learning how to send an email or use a digital payment system is a FAR cry from learning an entire new language. Adults are routinely better at absorbing new material than children are. I defy you to find a 10 year old who could handle the many and various responsibilities and unexpected problems that come with my job.
At some point the difficulty of learning something over the perceived benefit of having learned it leads to an equation where people go, "Fuck it, I'm too old for this shit."
That's a fancy way of saying exactly my point. They can't be bothered to learn so they don't try. It has NOTHING to do with their actual capacity to learn in the vast majority of cases.
Some old people find it difficult to keep up with technology. Many retirees have poor eyesight, and struggle to see the screen, or have a poor memory and keep forgetting how to use the apps
Most of them don't have a poor memory and are perfectly capable of learning new technology. Most of them just don't want to learn something new and are comfortable with old ways of doing things. As such I tend to react skeptically when older folks claim they can't handle the technology. Sometimes it's true but more often it's just laziness or disinterest.
My father is old enough to collect social security. He's a smart man and worked as an engineer and machinist for 30 years. But he's intimidated by computers and in many cases isn't willing to put in the work necessary to learn about how to do something on his laptop or smartphone. I've explained simple tasks to him repeatedly that he is more than smart enough and capable enough to learn and retain. The only explanation for why is that he isn't really interested in learning and it's easier to just ask me.
Around 2008, one of my cousins who is roughly my age was whining that she couldn't keep up with all this social networking technology because "we didn't grow up with this". I pointed out that A) she has multiple degrees and is more than capable enough of figuring it out, B) Facebook had only been around a short time so nobody had grown up with it and yet millions had figured it out and C) one does not need to grow up with a technology to understand and master it - to claim otherwise is the most pathetic of excuses.
Which is good, there aren't that many options on the market with comparable range (around 400km), price and specs. You have the Hyundai Kona and the Kia e-Niro, and not much else.
The Chevy Bolt EV has range that is comparable to the standard and mid-range Model 3. Honestly except for long distance trips on the highway, anything north of 350km range is more than adequate. I have a Bolt EV and I've never had to use a third party charging station yet in nearly 10,000 miles of driving in the last 6 months. The only real range issue I see with it for local driving is that at highway speeds the range goes to shit because it only has the one gear. I think a highway gear would help a lot though definitely not a deal breaker since the battery pack is more than big enough to deal with any reasonable trip in our metro area. I have exceeded the range of a Nissan Leaf but
After living with an EV for most of the last year, I'm convinced the majority of range and fast charging issues are important but also overblown. I have a gas powered truck for the occasional longer trip or could easily rent one if I didn't have it. Unless your daily drive is something stupidly long with a LOT of highway miles, the range on any of the vehicles mentioned above is more than adequate provided you have some means of doing Level 2 charging at your primary residence and/or place of work. I don't think I've gotten to less than 50 miles of range yet and I've been doing the opposite of hyper-miling much of the time. (EVs are fun to drive)
Huyndai expects to make 30.000 EVs a year... less than Tesla makes in a month.
That's because they still aren't taking EVs seriously. Just like almost every other car company. I own a Chevy Bolt EV and it's a good car and good value but it is obvious how much of it is borrowed from other Chevy vehicles. Hell it goes down the same assembly line as the Chevy Sonic which should give you some idea how similar those cars are. Like them or hate them, Tesla is really the only significant company selling no compromise EVs as of this writing. Even dedicated EVs like the Nissan Leaf are just chock full of compromises and ugly/bad design. It's not clear to me why they think every EV owner wants an ugly hatchback compliance car. (seriously, SO many EVs are just hideous to look at) I think my Bolt EV is decent looking but I certainly don't think it's a pretty vehicle and I'm not convinced GM has gone all-in on EVs. I think they made the Bolt and are resting on their laurels rather than pushing hard to scale up EV production and sales.
The funny thing is, if you're shooting with an SLR at f5 or something getting nice bokeh and you decide to take a selfie, you probably go to f22 to get the background.
There is a lot more to image quality than the aperture. Those big lenses aren't just about letting in a lot of light. They correct for all sorts of optical problems. If aperture were the only concern, photography and lens design would be a lot easier than it is.
And there are lots of reasons you might want a blurred background in a selfie. Many selfies are more about the person in the shot than the location where they are. When I take one with my daughter the point is usually to show us together - not to show where we are. Sure, sometimes it's about the location but not always.
Computational photography while interesting isn't the panacea that people think it is.
I don't think anyone is claiming it to be the cure to all maladies - certainly not me. But it isn't really a question that it can do a lot of very interesting and useful things and do so in a compact form factor. As such there is a lot of utility in that. At some level of course there is no replacement for bigger/better optics but you can get pretty far along the diminishing returns curve without needing what amounts to a hand held telescope.
Honestly I think most of the really interesting stuff going on in photography is in the computational photography space and the devices (mostly smartphones) that are making heavy use of it. Smartphones really can't use bulky glass so they have to innovate in other ways and I think that restriction has freed them in a lot of ways. The "traditional" cameras (think Canon, Nikon, Sony, etc interchangeable lens cameras) have some really great lenses and sensors but the ergonomics, digital user interfaces and on device image processing have lost the fucking plot. There are more than a few types of images using my smartphone that I can get easier and sometimes better results without a huge amount of faffing around and it is FAR easier to share and distribute. I haven't seen a dedicated "real" camera yet that isn't complete shit at transferring images off the camera to other devices or networks (much less social networking) - they still think of SD cards as bleeding edge technology instead of the miniaturized anachronistic floppy disks they really are. I think the "real" cameras could use a lot more of the computational photography tech but they're too busy catering to enthusiasts who get a hard on thinking about film cameras from the 1970s or "pros" who have a far too rigid idea about what a camera is supposed to be and how it should work.
Don't get me wrong, I have a fancy "real" camera with some embarrassingly expensive lenses and I enjoy using it. I definitely could be described as a photography enthusiast. But it's migraine inducing clear to me that it could be SOOOO much better than it is with some attention to the user interface and file sharing and image processing. The menu on my Sony is complete shit. Seriously it will make your eyes bleed. The location of most of the buttons seems to have been picked by someone wearing a blindfold. Sending an image to my smartphone should be a single button press at most (maybe even automatic transfer) but I have to jump through a ridiculously complicated process to make it happen via wifi - seriously it involves about 10 discrete steps. My camera has an ethernet port but the only thing I can do with it is ftp files! WTF? And it's not even particularly easy to set up or configure. I can't make settings presets or share them between cameras. I don't have complaints about the optics but I could see so much more that could be done in camera for image processing and cooperating with laptops/tablets. Sure I can get better image quality than I can with my smartphone if I care to bother but they've made it such a pain in the ass that I can see why most people won't bother - especially given the overhead of carrying around a bulky expensive single purpose camera.
How often are you going to use it? It makes the thing more expensive
Personally? I use my phone camera constantly and to good effect and so do millions of other people. I very much would welcome any improvements in camera quality on my phone and I'm certain I'm not alone in that. Just because you don't see the use case for you doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I don't use Facebook but I get why other people do.
Most of the time my big fancy mirrorless dedicated camera is WAY too bulky to carry around as well as redundant. The improved image quality it is capable of is more than offset 99% of the time by the inconvenience, bulk, and weight. Smartphone cameras have literally killed the point-and-shoot camera market so obviously for a lot of uses they are more than good enough. The only reason my expensive interchangeable lens camera still makes any sense is that it can do some tricks that no smartphone is going to be able to manage thanks to the physics of optics. But you generally have to be either a professional or hard core photo enthusiast to really give a shit. 99% of people are going to be just fine with just a phone and the better it performs the more it will capture that remaining 1%
Basically I have my phone with me almost all the time. My dedicated camera I might get out a few times a week at most for a few hours. The best camera is the one you have with you and the better my smartphone camera gets the less reason I have to go to the trouble of dealing with a dedicated camera. I don't carry around a dedicated iPod or a watch anymore either for similar reasons.
There might be people who desperately need that feature.
It's not about need. It's about want versus what's economically possible. Nobody "needs" a smartphone in general but clearly a lot of people find a lot of value in them and have the means to afford an expensive one. (see Apple)
Anyway, it will be up to the people to choose between better images and keeping their money.
Always has been and to date the people have voted for the better images.
The Pixel 3 currently has the best camera of any phone, and it only has one.
That depends on what you are measuring and how you are measuring it. There is no single answer to which camera is best for all uses, conditions, and circumstances. Saying the Pixel 3 has "the best camera" is a false statement unless you provide the use case and measurement technique. Other smartphone cameras will outperform it depending on the conditions and what is being photographed. I have a very nice Sony A9 mirrorless camera. It's arguably the best available currently for many use cases but not for all uses. It depends on the sort of image you are trying to generate and the conditions and skill of the user. There is no single best camera for all uses.
So more accurately you could say that there are multiple ways to improve the quality of photos taken on a phone, and most manufacturers seem to be opting for the multiple camera solution.
Correct because the multiple camera solution has a lot going for it. It's a good idea for the same reasons people use interchangeable lens cameras. No single lens is ideal for all circumstances and there is a LOT to be gained from being able to combine multiple images taken from multiple focal lengths simultaneously.
In essence you can do things, like a panorama, in one shot without the need to move your phone.
Its a LOT more than that. You can take multiple pictures simultaneously of the same object and digitally combine them into a better image. It lets you do things that would normally take some really expensive and bulky glass. In fact it lets you do some stuff you cannot do (easily) with conventional cameras. Computational photography is a BIG deal and it's really interesting if you have any interest in imaging technology.
I would rather go for a real camera.
It IS a "real" camera. I don't get why people look down their nose at the camera's on phones. And I say that as someone who has about $20K in camera bodies and expensive lenses. People are too wrapped up in thinking that a classic SLR is the end-all-be-all of camera technology and it isn't. A lot of the most interesting stuff happening in cameras is technology you probably aren't paying much attention to in phones.
Anyway, I still would trade more battery life over another camera.
And others would make a different choice. Personally that's why I think they need to move some of this stuff to the case so that people can pick/choose the bits that are most useful to them.
Given a certain price-target, the more you, as an OEM, spend on cameras, the less you have to spend of the entire rest of the product.
That's true for every component so I'm not sure what your point is. Furthermore the cost of digital components is continually falling. I'm pretty sure the engineers and bean counters at Samsung are aware of this "issue".
Pearls before swine. 99.9% of mobile phone photos are taken and never viewed again.
Get off your high horse. Most photos taken with film were stuck in albums or boxes and never viewed again. That's nothing new and it used to be a lot more expensive. But what's wrong with making it possible to take better pictures for the ones that are kept and looked at?
People spend too much time taking photos, not enough time enjoying the world around them.
For some of us, taking pictures is how we enjoy the world around us. If it's not your brand of vodka that's fine but I'm pretty sure you have hobbies that I would consider a waste of time too. Go do something you enjoy and stop worrying about what other people are doing.
The use of three cameras is already strange for many reasons, but let say you need 3D images, then two cameras might be helpful.
The main purpose of multiple sensors isn't 3D but to do computational photography. It allows you to get better quality images as well as have multiple focal lengths and have them work together. If you have an iPhone it already does this with two cameras working in tandem on the back. But more camera sensors let's you take it even further. There are camera available which are designed around this idea explicitly with as many as 16 individual camera sensors. This appears to be the best way to get better image quality without having to attach bulky optics like those on an SLR camera.
How many cameras do you actually want or need? for me, 2 seems to be more than enough.
If you want better pictures without having the sort of gigantic optics you see on an SLR, the answer is "more than 2". Having a lot of cameras allows you to do some pretty nifty computational photography. Many phones are already doing this since they have two cameras on the rear which work together to get better images than either could alone.
And we don't need a whole bunch of crappy cameras, just one good one.
1) The cameras in modern phones are pretty good. Adding additional ones won't make them worse. 2) Having multiple cameras actually makes them better because you can do all sorts of cool computational photography which can get great results without huge optics. 3) Having multiple lenses means you can have multiple focal lengths. Many phones already have two. 4) If cost is an issue I'm sure there will me phones with fewer cameras that you can buy for less money.
"A low sonic boom" is still a noise event that may exceed urban noise limits
I'll buy that argument when urban areas start actively banning Harley Davidson motorcycles and other more mundane sources of unnecessary noise pollution.
In any case if this aircraft does what they hope then it will be FAR quieter than any noise restrictions in most communities at around 75dB perceived.
Slashdot Mirror
The only financial safety net you need is competence.
Oh bullshit. I'm a highly competent person and I've had to rely on unemployment payments in the past to get by. My mother suffered from and eventually died from ALS. She was a high level director at one of the big accounting firm but guess what? The fact that she was highly competent didn't mean shit to ALS. Eventually she needed to rely on the social safety net including social security disability before she passed. Many people find themselves in difficult circumstances for reasons beyond their control and they need help. To say the reason for their status is that they lack competence is beyond insulting.
You have to be a special breed of idiot to think that you are so "competent" that you will never need help. Maybe you'll be lucky. Many others aren't.
We currently have move openings than people looking for work.
You think people are magically qualified for any available job? Just because my company needs a skilled machinist doesn't mean one is available. There ALWAYS are jobs that go unfilled because the skillsets of people looking for work never perfectly matches the skillsets needed by people doing the hiring.
All this America, America, America rhetoric everywhere makes me believe people forget this county is less than 250 years old -- still in diapers compared to much of the world
Let's compare shall we? This is a meme that the US is a "young" country but it really isn't. The US is actually rather old compared to most of the countries in the world. Don't confuse the age of a country with the amount of time people have been there. Italy has roots as far back as 700BC but the modern Italy we know today wasn't unified until around 1900 so saying Italy is older than the US is more than a little misleading. Having some old buildings built by ancestors doesn't equal being an old country.
The USofA is the oldest constitutional democracy in the world. The USA is the oldest country in the western hemisphere. It is older than most of the countries in Asia - only Saudi Arabia, Oman, Mongolia, China, and Japan have older governments and even then it's somewhat debatable depending on how you define the age of the country. China has been around a long time in various forms but the People's Republic of China hasn't - there are people alive today who predate the PRofC. The USA is older than most of the countries in Europe at least as they are currently organized. The people have been there a long time but the governments as they are currently constituted aren't generally very old.
These things always correct themselves eventually, it's just a question of how long and how much pain.
"Always"? No they do not always correct themselves. Countries can and do follow paths that they cannot recover from. I doubt we are there yet but making sure it stays that way is going to take a lot of effort and vigilance and it's not clear if the citizens of the US are up to the task. The mere fact that Trump actually got elected should provide prima facie evidence that we have an alarming number of people with little moral compass and less brains.
However you do it, either through Mueller or your Second Amendment rights, please just get him out of there...
A) Mueller cannot remove him from office. There are only two legal means to do that and both require Congress to act. Won't happen.
B) As vile as Trump is, suggesting he be killed is obscene and you are an asshole for suggesting it. Yes I'm aware he said it first but don't sink to his level or lower. I just want him gone, we don't need him dead.
At least it looks as though Mueller might be on track for a classy impeachment setup soon enough after Manafort's lies negating that plea bargain.
While the democrats could impeach Trump since they control the House of Representatives, doing so will almost certainly not result in his removal from office without a 2/3 majority in the Senate which isn't going to happen. So we're stuck with Trump for another two years. The only saving grace is that now there is some viable opposition in the House to limit the amount of damage he can do. (which unfortunately is still substantial...)
My concern is that the democrats won't send up a good candidate and we'll end up with Trump for another 6 years like with did with W. I would have thought that impossible but apparently our country is over run by imbeciles who think Trump is the good guy.
Abuse of monopoly position doesn't require a specific percentage of some market (who would get to define the boundaries of a given market?), it simply requires the ability to use the position in one market to restrict competition in another market.
That is true but the fact remains that Apple does NOT have a monopoly under any reasonable definition of the term. Android smartphones collectively sell more units than Apple does by a pretty substantial margin. The market is for smartphones, not for products made by Apple.
The argument is that Apple uses its position as the hardware manufacturer to eliminate competition in the software sales/distribution (i.e. retail store) market and, to a lesser extent, the software creation market (since it's unreasonably difficult to sell any software that Apple doesn't approve of).
Several flaws in that argument. A) Apple is not just a hardware manufacturer and they don't have a monopoly on smartphone hardware. Saying they have a monopoly on Apple products is an idiotic argument. B) Nobody is compelled to sell software on Apple's platform and Apple's platform does not have enough market share or market power to be called a monopoly under any reasonable definition of the term. C) Apple created the market for software on their platform so it's pretty much impossible to argue that they leveraged their hardware to control a market that otherwise would not exist without their hardware. Furthermore they offered the 30% deal right from day one so obviously the market was robust in spite of the cut Apple took. D) Anti-trust arguments are predicated on harm to consumers and it's pretty hard to see how consumers are being deprived of choices or harmed here. There are perfectly viable and available substitute products which actually have greater market share than Apple's products.
Having more gears wouldn't change the efficiency of the electric motor, unlike an ICEV.
That's not true at all. EVs have motors that are relatively efficient across a broad RPM range (up to 20,000) so engineers can pick a gear that works well for most day to day driving. But make no mistake that this gear choice is a compromise. They do not have perfect efficiency across the whole band and there are limits to how fast you can spin them. My Bolt EV has a max speed of 91mph largely thanks to choice of gears and this does play a role in it's (relatively) crappy fuel economy at speeds above 70mph. At higher speeds they do use more energy spinning faster, especially towards the top end. It's why most EVs are electronically limited at the top end. There are EVs that have gear boxes and while they don't need 8 gears, 2 or 3 can have actual utility. Right now they don't use them because the added cost result in enough performance improvement to be worth the bother.
The original Tesla Roadster was designed to have a two speed gearbox. The Bolt EV I have probably would see a 10-20% gain in fuel economy at highway speeds with a 2 speed gearbox. Multiple gears will eventually be a thing for EVs, albeit far less important than for ICEs. A lot of EVs will probably stick with the single gear option because it works fine and is cheaper and more reliable.
My Tesla Model S, on the other hand, loses very little range at highway speeds.
Unless you have highways with low speed limits, that isn't true. Highway speeds where I live are between 70-80mph and that has a notable effect on fuel economy even for Tesla. You are correct that the Tesla is more streamlined so the effect is smaller but the effect is still there and still notable.
It also has only one "gear".
You don't need the quotes. It does have a single gear so that statement is quite correct.
MS got blasted in the 90's for trying to force people to use IE.
That's because Microsoft WAS a monopoly. They had over 90% market share in desktop operating systems. There literally weren't any viable alternatives. Apple has something like 30% market share in smartphones. In what universe is that a monopoly.?
Apple has no right to dictate how I use my hardware- they represent a majority share of the mobile market.
Entitled much? First off Apple does NOT have a majority share of the mobile market. Second, Apple isn't telling you how to use your hardware. You can do whatever you want with it and they cannot say shit about it. But the flipside is that Apple isn't under any obligation to cooperate with you regarding the software or services or what hardware they sell you if it isn't in their interest. What benefit does Apple get from allowing sideloading and other hacks? It's not going to make them one additional penny. You want to connect to Apple's ecosystem then you'll play by Apple's rules. If you don't, that's fine - go buy something else. You seem to be under the delusion that Apple should have to cater to your particular interests and that's not how it works nor should it be.
The ability to sideload and have additional app stores is one of the reasons why I left Apple.
Which is how it is supposed to work. If Apple doesn't offer you what you want you go elsewhere. If Apple had 90% market share then maybe there is an argument against them as a monopoly but the fact is they don't and probably never will.
Not sure about that. Manufacturers are starting to build vehicles that have been designed as EVs from the ground up.
Not really. Not seriously anyway. If they were serious about it they would be investing heavily in battery companies and securing supplies. The only company I've seen working on making an EV that doesn't look idiotic recently is Porsche. The new Leaf looks better than the old one but that's not saying much - the old one was terrible looking. The Kona is just another boring and fairly ugly hatchback. I own a Bolt and while I like the styling for a hatchback, it isn't exactly sexy either.
The big automakers are just dipping their toes in the water and waiting. They don't want to take the risk and possibly be wrong.
This is not just a shakeup in car design, but in their production lines and logistics as well, and such things take some time and effort (as Tesla found out).
Of course but I work in the industry and they aren't really putting in the effort or money. They're all claiming they are going to introduce electrified cars but none of the big autos are really pushing their chips onto the table and those promises haven't materialized into real products for the most part.
My understanding is that a couple of these companies are simply having a real hard time sourcing the batteries.
They're having a hard time of it because it's a critical technology they wouldn't be outsourcing if they were serious about it. Tesla seems to be the only ones that grok the fact that they need to vertically integrate to get the economies of scale and a competitive advantage. Unless Tesla's competitors have a lead on some mysterious battery tech that will supplant Li-Ion in the near future and are willing to dump tons of money on it then they are playing a dangerous game.
The lawsuit said Apple violated federal antitrust laws by requiring apps to be sold through the company's App Store and then taking a 30 percent commission from the purchases.
I don't get how this is a monopoly without contorting the definition of the word into something utterly useless. If it was such a terrible deal for software vendors then why do they persist in using Apple's platform? There are alternatives which are actually considerably more popular by unit volume and more open to third parties. I don't see the public interest here.
And if the argument is that Apple is taking too big a cut then the argument is de-facto that the government should engage in price fixing which is almost always a terrible idea. What is the "right" amount? 5%? 20%? 50%? For any number greater than zero they are asking the government to determine a market price and the government is terrible at doing that especially when there is no compelling public interest in doing so.
Many of us spent a long time learning to do something a certain way, and are unwilling to just throw all that time and effort away because somebody decided they had a better way that really is no better, just different.
First off please educate yourself about the sunk cost fallacy. Second, just because you think it isn't any better does not mean your opinion is correct or widely shared. Digital payments have clear, measurable, and easily understood advantages. Yes they have disadvantages too. Your comfort with a different way of doing something is a good approximation of irrelevant if the majority of people see advantage in using a new technology.
Maybe your cousin didn't WANT to use the social media crap, and was basically saying: call me, text me, or fuck the fuck off.
My cousin's complaints had nothing to do with me. She was complaining because she had to learn something new so she could follow her children's exploits on Facebook and elsewhere. She was pretending incompetence when in fact the reality was that she lacked interest.
You do know that the ability to learn and retain new information slowly fades as you get older and the brain gets more and more set in its ways, right?
Certainly. That doesn't mean people become blithering idiots the moment they turn 60. Just because they aren't at the peak of their mental abilities doesn't mean they are incapable of learning anything new.
That's why it's a lot easier for kids to learn a second language than it is for adults.
Learning how to send an email or use a digital payment system is a FAR cry from learning an entire new language. Adults are routinely better at absorbing new material than children are. I defy you to find a 10 year old who could handle the many and various responsibilities and unexpected problems that come with my job.
At some point the difficulty of learning something over the perceived benefit of having learned it leads to an equation where people go, "Fuck it, I'm too old for this shit."
That's a fancy way of saying exactly my point. They can't be bothered to learn so they don't try. It has NOTHING to do with their actual capacity to learn in the vast majority of cases.
Some old people find it difficult to keep up with technology. Many retirees have poor eyesight, and struggle to see the screen, or have a poor memory and keep forgetting how to use the apps
Most of them don't have a poor memory and are perfectly capable of learning new technology. Most of them just don't want to learn something new and are comfortable with old ways of doing things. As such I tend to react skeptically when older folks claim they can't handle the technology. Sometimes it's true but more often it's just laziness or disinterest.
My father is old enough to collect social security. He's a smart man and worked as an engineer and machinist for 30 years. But he's intimidated by computers and in many cases isn't willing to put in the work necessary to learn about how to do something on his laptop or smartphone. I've explained simple tasks to him repeatedly that he is more than smart enough and capable enough to learn and retain. The only explanation for why is that he isn't really interested in learning and it's easier to just ask me.
Around 2008, one of my cousins who is roughly my age was whining that she couldn't keep up with all this social networking technology because "we didn't grow up with this". I pointed out that A) she has multiple degrees and is more than capable enough of figuring it out, B) Facebook had only been around a short time so nobody had grown up with it and yet millions had figured it out and C) one does not need to grow up with a technology to understand and master it - to claim otherwise is the most pathetic of excuses.
Which is good, there aren't that many options on the market with comparable range (around 400km), price and specs. You have the Hyundai Kona and the Kia e-Niro, and not much else.
The Chevy Bolt EV has range that is comparable to the standard and mid-range Model 3. Honestly except for long distance trips on the highway, anything north of 350km range is more than adequate. I have a Bolt EV and I've never had to use a third party charging station yet in nearly 10,000 miles of driving in the last 6 months. The only real range issue I see with it for local driving is that at highway speeds the range goes to shit because it only has the one gear. I think a highway gear would help a lot though definitely not a deal breaker since the battery pack is more than big enough to deal with any reasonable trip in our metro area. I have exceeded the range of a Nissan Leaf but
After living with an EV for most of the last year, I'm convinced the majority of range and fast charging issues are important but also overblown. I have a gas powered truck for the occasional longer trip or could easily rent one if I didn't have it. Unless your daily drive is something stupidly long with a LOT of highway miles, the range on any of the vehicles mentioned above is more than adequate provided you have some means of doing Level 2 charging at your primary residence and/or place of work. I don't think I've gotten to less than 50 miles of range yet and I've been doing the opposite of hyper-miling much of the time. (EVs are fun to drive)
Huyndai expects to make 30.000 EVs a year... less than Tesla makes in a month.
That's because they still aren't taking EVs seriously. Just like almost every other car company. I own a Chevy Bolt EV and it's a good car and good value but it is obvious how much of it is borrowed from other Chevy vehicles. Hell it goes down the same assembly line as the Chevy Sonic which should give you some idea how similar those cars are. Like them or hate them, Tesla is really the only significant company selling no compromise EVs as of this writing. Even dedicated EVs like the Nissan Leaf are just chock full of compromises and ugly/bad design. It's not clear to me why they think every EV owner wants an ugly hatchback compliance car. (seriously, SO many EVs are just hideous to look at) I think my Bolt EV is decent looking but I certainly don't think it's a pretty vehicle and I'm not convinced GM has gone all-in on EVs. I think they made the Bolt and are resting on their laurels rather than pushing hard to scale up EV production and sales.
The funny thing is, if you're shooting with an SLR at f5 or something getting nice bokeh and you decide to take a selfie, you probably go to f22 to get the background.
There is a lot more to image quality than the aperture. Those big lenses aren't just about letting in a lot of light. They correct for all sorts of optical problems. If aperture were the only concern, photography and lens design would be a lot easier than it is.
And there are lots of reasons you might want a blurred background in a selfie. Many selfies are more about the person in the shot than the location where they are. When I take one with my daughter the point is usually to show us together - not to show where we are. Sure, sometimes it's about the location but not always.
Computational photography while interesting isn't the panacea that people think it is.
I don't think anyone is claiming it to be the cure to all maladies - certainly not me. But it isn't really a question that it can do a lot of very interesting and useful things and do so in a compact form factor. As such there is a lot of utility in that. At some level of course there is no replacement for bigger/better optics but you can get pretty far along the diminishing returns curve without needing what amounts to a hand held telescope.
Honestly I think most of the really interesting stuff going on in photography is in the computational photography space and the devices (mostly smartphones) that are making heavy use of it. Smartphones really can't use bulky glass so they have to innovate in other ways and I think that restriction has freed them in a lot of ways. The "traditional" cameras (think Canon, Nikon, Sony, etc interchangeable lens cameras) have some really great lenses and sensors but the ergonomics, digital user interfaces and on device image processing have lost the fucking plot. There are more than a few types of images using my smartphone that I can get easier and sometimes better results without a huge amount of faffing around and it is FAR easier to share and distribute. I haven't seen a dedicated "real" camera yet that isn't complete shit at transferring images off the camera to other devices or networks (much less social networking) - they still think of SD cards as bleeding edge technology instead of the miniaturized anachronistic floppy disks they really are. I think the "real" cameras could use a lot more of the computational photography tech but they're too busy catering to enthusiasts who get a hard on thinking about film cameras from the 1970s or "pros" who have a far too rigid idea about what a camera is supposed to be and how it should work.
Don't get me wrong, I have a fancy "real" camera with some embarrassingly expensive lenses and I enjoy using it. I definitely could be described as a photography enthusiast. But it's migraine inducing clear to me that it could be SOOOO much better than it is with some attention to the user interface and file sharing and image processing. The menu on my Sony is complete shit. Seriously it will make your eyes bleed. The location of most of the buttons seems to have been picked by someone wearing a blindfold. Sending an image to my smartphone should be a single button press at most (maybe even automatic transfer) but I have to jump through a ridiculously complicated process to make it happen via wifi - seriously it involves about 10 discrete steps. My camera has an ethernet port but the only thing I can do with it is ftp files! WTF? And it's not even particularly easy to set up or configure. I can't make settings presets or share them between cameras. I don't have complaints about the optics but I could see so much more that could be done in camera for image processing and cooperating with laptops/tablets. Sure I can get better image quality than I can with my smartphone if I care to bother but they've made it such a pain in the ass that I can see why most people won't bother - especially given the overhead of carrying around a bulky expensive single purpose camera.
How often are you going to use it? It makes the thing more expensive
Personally? I use my phone camera constantly and to good effect and so do millions of other people. I very much would welcome any improvements in camera quality on my phone and I'm certain I'm not alone in that. Just because you don't see the use case for you doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I don't use Facebook but I get why other people do.
Most of the time my big fancy mirrorless dedicated camera is WAY too bulky to carry around as well as redundant. The improved image quality it is capable of is more than offset 99% of the time by the inconvenience, bulk, and weight. Smartphone cameras have literally killed the point-and-shoot camera market so obviously for a lot of uses they are more than good enough. The only reason my expensive interchangeable lens camera still makes any sense is that it can do some tricks that no smartphone is going to be able to manage thanks to the physics of optics. But you generally have to be either a professional or hard core photo enthusiast to really give a shit. 99% of people are going to be just fine with just a phone and the better it performs the more it will capture that remaining 1%
Basically I have my phone with me almost all the time. My dedicated camera I might get out a few times a week at most for a few hours. The best camera is the one you have with you and the better my smartphone camera gets the less reason I have to go to the trouble of dealing with a dedicated camera. I don't carry around a dedicated iPod or a watch anymore either for similar reasons.
There might be people who desperately need that feature.
It's not about need. It's about want versus what's economically possible. Nobody "needs" a smartphone in general but clearly a lot of people find a lot of value in them and have the means to afford an expensive one. (see Apple)
Anyway, it will be up to the people to choose between better images and keeping their money.
Always has been and to date the people have voted for the better images.
The Pixel 3 currently has the best camera of any phone, and it only has one.
That depends on what you are measuring and how you are measuring it. There is no single answer to which camera is best for all uses, conditions, and circumstances. Saying the Pixel 3 has "the best camera" is a false statement unless you provide the use case and measurement technique. Other smartphone cameras will outperform it depending on the conditions and what is being photographed. I have a very nice Sony A9 mirrorless camera. It's arguably the best available currently for many use cases but not for all uses. It depends on the sort of image you are trying to generate and the conditions and skill of the user. There is no single best camera for all uses.
So more accurately you could say that there are multiple ways to improve the quality of photos taken on a phone, and most manufacturers seem to be opting for the multiple camera solution.
Correct because the multiple camera solution has a lot going for it. It's a good idea for the same reasons people use interchangeable lens cameras. No single lens is ideal for all circumstances and there is a LOT to be gained from being able to combine multiple images taken from multiple focal lengths simultaneously.
In essence you can do things, like a panorama, in one shot without the need to move your phone.
Its a LOT more than that. You can take multiple pictures simultaneously of the same object and digitally combine them into a better image. It lets you do things that would normally take some really expensive and bulky glass. In fact it lets you do some stuff you cannot do (easily) with conventional cameras. Computational photography is a BIG deal and it's really interesting if you have any interest in imaging technology.
I would rather go for a real camera.
It IS a "real" camera. I don't get why people look down their nose at the camera's on phones. And I say that as someone who has about $20K in camera bodies and expensive lenses. People are too wrapped up in thinking that a classic SLR is the end-all-be-all of camera technology and it isn't. A lot of the most interesting stuff happening in cameras is technology you probably aren't paying much attention to in phones.
Anyway, I still would trade more battery life over another camera.
And others would make a different choice. Personally that's why I think they need to move some of this stuff to the case so that people can pick/choose the bits that are most useful to them.
Given a certain price-target, the more you, as an OEM, spend on cameras, the less you have to spend of the entire rest of the product.
That's true for every component so I'm not sure what your point is. Furthermore the cost of digital components is continually falling. I'm pretty sure the engineers and bean counters at Samsung are aware of this "issue".
Pearls before swine. 99.9% of mobile phone photos are taken and never viewed again.
Get off your high horse. Most photos taken with film were stuck in albums or boxes and never viewed again. That's nothing new and it used to be a lot more expensive. But what's wrong with making it possible to take better pictures for the ones that are kept and looked at?
People spend too much time taking photos, not enough time enjoying the world around them.
For some of us, taking pictures is how we enjoy the world around us. If it's not your brand of vodka that's fine but I'm pretty sure you have hobbies that I would consider a waste of time too. Go do something you enjoy and stop worrying about what other people are doing.
The use of three cameras is already strange for many reasons, but let say you need 3D images, then two cameras might be helpful.
The main purpose of multiple sensors isn't 3D but to do computational photography. It allows you to get better quality images as well as have multiple focal lengths and have them work together. If you have an iPhone it already does this with two cameras working in tandem on the back. But more camera sensors let's you take it even further. There are camera available which are designed around this idea explicitly with as many as 16 individual camera sensors. This appears to be the best way to get better image quality without having to attach bulky optics like those on an SLR camera.
How many cameras do you actually want or need? for me, 2 seems to be more than enough.
If you want better pictures without having the sort of gigantic optics you see on an SLR, the answer is "more than 2". Having a lot of cameras allows you to do some pretty nifty computational photography. Many phones are already doing this since they have two cameras on the rear which work together to get better images than either could alone.
And we don't need a whole bunch of crappy cameras, just one good one.
1) The cameras in modern phones are pretty good. Adding additional ones won't make them worse.
2) Having multiple cameras actually makes them better because you can do all sorts of cool computational photography which can get great results without huge optics.
3) Having multiple lenses means you can have multiple focal lengths. Many phones already have two.
4) If cost is an issue I'm sure there will me phones with fewer cameras that you can buy for less money.
"A low sonic boom" is still a noise event that may exceed urban noise limits
I'll buy that argument when urban areas start actively banning Harley Davidson motorcycles and other more mundane sources of unnecessary noise pollution.
In any case if this aircraft does what they hope then it will be FAR quieter than any noise restrictions in most communities at around 75dB perceived.