It is good to use 2FA but it isn't a security panacea. There are hacking teams that have broken it by calling up Verizon and claiming they're you, and then performing an sms password reset.
Which is a good reason not to use SMS-based 2FA. Use the Google Authenticator app, or a Yubikey... or even a printed list of pre-generated codes.
But 2FA is only one line of defense implemented by Google. There are a lot of behavioral signals as well, making Google accounts significantly harder to break into even without 2FA.
And those people are there because of all the businesses that are there. It's one big feedback loop that's going to keep building until it breaks
Or until the cities cave in and start allowing high-density housing to be constructed, building decent mass transit (which is easier with high-density housing), etc. The actual population density is quite low compared to truly urban environments. But while they insist on sticking with a suburban lifestyle they're going to be bursting at the seams.
Luckily, it does appear that Mountain View, at least, is finally starting to recognize this. After years of obstructionism, they have finally approved some high-density housing on the north bayshore. http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2.... With a lot more of that sort of thing, they could fix the problem. Of course, if they do too much of it, all of the people with million-dollar mortgages on $300,000 (at best) houses are going to be in trouble...
If OurMine really wants to show its capability, it should hack Google accounts (Gmail / YouTube / G+, etc.). Thanks to all of the additional signals Google uses (even without 2FA), those are much tougher to get into.
So far it just seems to be demonstrating that (a) accounts protected only by a password aren't very secure and (b) this is especially true of social media accounts, which most people don't see as important enough to justify using a particularly good password.
Being able to swap in a new battery and have the same battery life from when you first got the phone can put off that upgrade for another year or two.
That can be done pretty easily on all devices with "non-replaceable batteries" that I've used. It generally requires a screwdriver, but that's okay if you only do it once every couple of years (which means you do it maybe once during the life of the phone). Also, today's batteries have better life than those from a few years ago did, so the issue is declining in importance.
I'm convinced that Google, as an entity is absolutely insane and should probably be heavily medicated. They bougth Motorola to move into smartphones, but sold them, because they couldn't integrate them (IIRC there were culture issues) so when they move back into mobile, they hire a Moto guy as CEO? I'm at a loss.
Google bought Moto for the patent portfolio, and sold the rest off the Lenovo because it was too difficult for Google to deal with other Android OEMs as both a competitor and a partner. Presumably the same issue would arise with Google-made phones (assuming there's any substance to the rumor), but Moto was already a significant competitor in the space whereas Google would be starting from scratch and not a serious threat.
Google and Moto cultures were quite different, but I don't think there was ever a serious effort to integrate Moto because of the need to maintain a wall between Moto and Android development. And even if culture issues were relevant, bringing in tens of thousands of people in an existing organization and retraining them all into the new culture is a very, very different proposition from bringing in isolated individuals, however senior.
As far as I can tell, location doesn't matter for Google acquisitions except that if you aren't located near an appropriate Google office you may have to pack up and move post-acquisition. I suppose it *might* be a little easier to get someone to come look at you if you're in SV, but I doubt it makes much difference.
What really matters, I think, is being somewhere that you can get the talent and resources you need to build your business. SV is good because there are lots of talented people around, but those people are expensive, as is real estate, etc. The other major resource a startup requires is capital, and I think the perception has been that there is more capital available in SV than elsewhere, but that really doesn't make much sense. Capital is highly mobile.
Actually, insurance companies are not allowed to charge men more for motor insurance because it is discriminatory.
An argument could be made that this is discriminatory against women, requiring them to pay higher premiums than are justified by actuarial risk, subsidizing male drivers -- who already make more money than they do.
Also, any algorithm which ingests statistical and demographic data is bound to come up with unpalatable and/or spurious demographic correlations (since there is a causal link between poverty and crime and a historic link between race and poverty) which I wold rather have society refrain from codifying -- in law or in actual computer code).
As opposed to having the same bias encoded, consciously or unconsciously, in the minds of judges?
Doing this algorithmically at least raises the possibility of analysis and criticism (assuming it's transparent -- no argument there, transparency is critical), which means that if done with appropriate oversight and scrutiny, it may have significant advantages over human judgement. I would still want the human judge to be able to overrule the algorithm, though. And it would probably be good to add a review process that regularly evaluates the algorithm, both the cases where it gets overruled and a random sample of cases where it is not overruled.
Bottom line: Algorithmic sentencing offers opportunities to systematize and regularize something which in the past has been purely subjective. That's a good thing... if care is taken that it doesn't systematize injustice.
You didn't read my comment. I don't think it's dangerous, I think it works quite well. Reverse vs drive is a bit weird because of their placement, but the diagram makes it clear.
Removing tactile feedback in a safety-critical user-interface element is not a problem on the user's side. Even a competent user will get this wrong from time to time. This is a design-screwup of epic proportions. The morons that designed this must not even have the basic course on ergonomic and save design.
My Nissan LEAF also has a gear shifter with no tactile feedback... but it's fine because the car automatically goes into "Park" when you turn it off. In practice, this leads me to screw up in a different way: when I drive other cars -- especially other Nissan cars with an on/off button rather than the normal key-actuated ignition -- I tend to hit the "off button" and then expect to get out and go about my business, leaving the car in "Drive". But Nissan fixed that by making it obvious that the car didn't actually turn off; the dash stays lit up and a warning sounds, IIRC.
So there are options other than tactile feedback. Actually, I think the "auto-park" is the best solution of all. I really like not ever having to think about it on my LEAF. I suppose there may be some obscure circumstances in which I want to turn the car off and leave it in neutral (e.g. towing it), but overall I think it's an excellent approach.
There are a number of herbs that have been used to induce miscarriage since ancient times (slippery elm and black cohosh come to mind); perhaps that's what it's a reference to.
Nope. Go read it. No herbs involved. At most it's a little bit of ink from when the written curses are washed off in holy water.
There is exactly one reference to abortion in the bible. It's in Numbers 5, and it details the process for performing an abortion if you believe your wife has been unfaithful.
Only if you twist the text to fit a pro-abortion viewpoint.
What Numbers 5 actually says is that a man should take a wife suspected of adultery to a priest, who will perform a ritual called the "ordeal of the bitter water". If she is innocent, she'll be fine, but if she's guilty it will cause her belly to swell, her thigh to rot and she will become a curse among her people. Some interpret this to mean that she'll die. Some believe that because "thigh" is occasionally used as a euphemism for reproductive organs, it's the womb that will rot, making it something like an abortion, though making her permanently infertile which is how she'd be a "curse among her people".
So, if it's about abortion at all, it's a process for sterilization or execution.
But it's also not a "process", because it's not the priest's direct actions which cause the result. It's her innocence or guilt that determines the outcome. In other words, God decides, not the husband or the priest, so it's a religious rite not a medical procedure.
There's not a lot you can do with the automatic categorization. You should make a point of always moving any mis-categorized e-mail, because that's how the system learns, but it'll never be perfect. For Inbox to work as well for you as it does for me, you have to be able to define good filters, based on simple logical rules, not rely on the automatic categorization. In my case, the vast bulk of my email comes from various mailing lists and automated systems, so it's easy for me to define rules that sort mail based on sender or mailing list. I also use some rules based on content, for example any e-mail that mentions me by name (well, by username, which is my "name" at work) gets the "Me" label added to it.
So the real key is the filters and the labels that divide the email up into related sets that have a common context and related urgency level. Then you make those labels into bundles, with appropriate delay settings.
The answer is: Because it's a good idea to give up some control in exchange for better relations with your neighbors, and a neutral third party who can adjudicate disputes and define structures that pre-emptively eliminate them.
Having an un-elected third party doing those things is never a good idea.
You don't need to directly elect a representative to exercise control. The people don't vote on members of the Supreme Court, but their views definitely are represented in the selection and ratification process, for example. In the case of the WTO the representatives are selected by the member governments. In the case of the US, those doing the selecting are elected.
Voters rightfully want to control their country's own destiny without having to cater to some international rule-making body a thousand miles away. I feel the same about the World Trade Organization. Why are THEY making decisions for Americans?
People rightfully want to control their own destiny without having to cater to some rule-making body 10 miles away. Why is CITY HALL making decisions for me?
The answer is: Because it's a good idea to give up some control in exchange for better relations with your neighbors, and a neutral third party who can adjudicate disputes and define structures that pre-emptively eliminate them.
Obviously, it's important that you have a say in the rule-making body, but the UK did have a say in the EU's operations, and Americans do have a say in the WTO. And clearly, if the association with the rulemaking body in question is doing you more harm than good, then leave. But leaving just because you want to feel empowered is stupid, as is arbitrarily drawing the necessary boundary of control at the national level.
the source code of android, albeit under an inappropriate license which encourages closed and proprietary behaviour, into which the linux kernel is "lumped" due to ignorance, is entirely and fully available. copyright law is simple: if the source has been released under a license, it may not be retracted (unless copyright law is changed and changed retroactively). therefore there *is* no way that the code can be "yanked".
No, the open code can't be taken away, but it is possible for Google to place additional constraints on manufacturers. Look at any slashdot topic that references the Android fragmentation and update problems, and you'll see a lot of calls for Google to tighten the screws and demand that manufacturers do things in a particular way.
However, the mechanism by which Google might "tighten the screws" is really completely unrelated to the sort of thing Huawei is described as doing here. Google's control is derived from access to the Google Apps (which is relatively minor; there are decent alternatives to all of them) and access to the Google Play Store. The Play Store is a valuable because of network effects. That's where all of the apps are, so that's where people get apps, so that's where all of the apps are. Google's work on making media available through the Play store also helps a bit.
So... an OEM who is preparing to go it alone needs to target building a replacement for Play, not mucking around with icon shapes. This could be done. In fact, the really obvious first step is to approach Amazon and discuss a deal to get access to their app store and media library. Their app store is a lot smaller than Google's, but if two or three major OEMs joined Amazon that could change in a hurry.
Of course, Google is perfectly well aware of just how easy it would be for a big player to remove itself from the Android ecosystem. Not trivial, but totally feasible.
(Disclosure/disclaimer: I work for Google, on Android, but the above is my own thoughts and opinions, which may not bear any resemblance at all to official company positions. Google pays me to write code, not to speak for them. In fact, policy discourages people like me from making posts like this one -- but recognizes that some of us will anyway.)
And in return, you let google read, index, and data mine all your email.
You gave up some privacy for a few minutes of convenience.
No thank you.
Well, that's the same with Gmail. I was presenting Inbox as a Gmail UI alternative. There are clearly other issues which may lead people to other decisions. Personally, I'll take the convenience (and did even before I started working for Google).
As a practical matter, what negative impact on your life would you expect from allowing Google to index your email? For me it's fewer ads for tampons and more ads for cameras and quadcopters, which works for me.
Are you joking? You fail to see how injecting a crap ton of chemicals below the water table can impact the water table? Really?
You know that just because you put it in the ground, does not mean they stay down there, right?
Given that the fracking fluids are, by design, very heavy, yes it's very difficult to see how they're going to migrate upward thousands of feet in anything less than geologic time scales. The arguments in the study you cite actually support my argument. They are theorizing shallow fractures and surface pit leakage as the mechanism for the contamination, not fracking fluid working its way up large distances.
BTW; the USGS website does say there are, though few, direct links between fracking and quakes.
Which in no way refutes my point. I granted that it makes perfect sense that fracking could cause earthquakes to happen sooner than they would otherwise... but that' s a good thing, not a bad one.
I don't have any particular reason for wanting to support fracking, and I'm very willing to be convinced by evidence, but what I see from fracking opponents is a lot of heat and noise and very little data. I also see a lot of overlap between fracking opponents and supporters of other forms of pseudoscience, such as homeopathy, anti-vaccine arguments, etc., which doesn't do much to convince me.
There are more issues than just energy efficiency, because there are a lot of costs in delivery operations other than energy. Also, while rolling is much more efficient than flying, routing a package car to every house, stopping and starting the multi-ton vehicle at each one, may actually be more energy-intensive than having said multi-ton vehicle carry a swarm of small drones into the subdivision and having them fly the last few hundred yards. And it may well make better use of the delivery system capital and operational expenses, delivering more packages per dollar because, as I said, energy isn't the only cost.
Drone delivery from the central distribution office seems unlikely to make sense, except for packages that are time-sensitive. But using drones for last-leg delivery may make a lot more sense than driving a truck to every house.
Autonomous vehicles will bring the packages/mail into a certain range and depending on location a drone or bot will get out of the autonomous vehicles to do the final delivery. I can see moving forward where places will have drone/bot delivery slots for mail, packages and food deliveries.
Yes, this is what I expect as well. I think there will probably be a human on board to manage the drones, sort packages and deal with any problems that crop up, and there will probably be a human staff at a central office with control links to manage drones that can't work out delivery locations, or run into other problems, but I think the notion of an autonomous drone carrier makes a lot of sense. This is particularly true in suburban areas which are sufficiently dispersed that driving up and down every street, stopping at a large number of houses and having a human jump out to run up and down every driveway is less efficient than pulling into a central location and sending drones on straight-line flights to doorsteps.
Drone flights from the central office to homes is clearly energy-inefficient, given that flying is so much more expensive than rolling. But the savings in routing several tons of vehicle to every stop, plus the reduction in human effort (which is the really expensive part of most operations) will offset the energy cost of flying the last few hundred yards. In rural areas like the one where I live, which are dense enough to justify driving around, but not dense enough to get much benefit from last-leg drone deliveries, it probably wouldn't be of value. Perhaps if the drones were fast enough that they could launch from and recover to a carrier that keeps rolling at 40 mph, the time efficiency and energy savings of not having to repeatedly stop and start the truck could tip the balance. In truly remote areas long-range drones may make sense, especially if they can operate in an airplane mode for high-speed long-distance travel and switch to copter mode at the ends (like the Google "Project Wing" drones). In dense urban areas pulling an autonomous truck up to an apartment complex loading bay will likely be the best option.
Another possibility for the last few hundred yards is small rolling/walking robots, capable of zipping down streets at near-automobile speeds, rolling up driveways and walking up onto porches to make deliveries. They'd have to travel further than flying drones and they'd be larger and heavier than flying drones, but they'd be on the ground and would be far less massive (and therefore far more efficient) than the package cars that transport them. I'm thinking of something the size of a child's wagon, with similar carrying capacity.
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It is good to use 2FA but it isn't a security panacea. There are hacking teams that have broken it by calling up Verizon and claiming they're you, and then performing an sms password reset.
Which is a good reason not to use SMS-based 2FA. Use the Google Authenticator app, or a Yubikey... or even a printed list of pre-generated codes.
But 2FA is only one line of defense implemented by Google. There are a lot of behavioral signals as well, making Google accounts significantly harder to break into even without 2FA.
Nexus 4, 5 and 6 are pretty easy to replace the batteries in. Dunno about the 6P or 5X (haven't looked).
And those people are there because of all the businesses that are there. It's one big feedback loop that's going to keep building until it breaks
Or until the cities cave in and start allowing high-density housing to be constructed, building decent mass transit (which is easier with high-density housing), etc. The actual population density is quite low compared to truly urban environments. But while they insist on sticking with a suburban lifestyle they're going to be bursting at the seams.
Luckily, it does appear that Mountain View, at least, is finally starting to recognize this. After years of obstructionism, they have finally approved some high-density housing on the north bayshore. http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2.... With a lot more of that sort of thing, they could fix the problem. Of course, if they do too much of it, all of the people with million-dollar mortgages on $300,000 (at best) houses are going to be in trouble...
If OurMine really wants to show its capability, it should hack Google accounts (Gmail / YouTube / G+, etc.). Thanks to all of the additional signals Google uses (even without 2FA), those are much tougher to get into.
So far it just seems to be demonstrating that (a) accounts protected only by a password aren't very secure and (b) this is especially true of social media accounts, which most people don't see as important enough to justify using a particularly good password.
Being able to swap in a new battery and have the same battery life from when you first got the phone can put off that upgrade for another year or two.
That can be done pretty easily on all devices with "non-replaceable batteries" that I've used. It generally requires a screwdriver, but that's okay if you only do it once every couple of years (which means you do it maybe once during the life of the phone). Also, today's batteries have better life than those from a few years ago did, so the issue is declining in importance.
I'm convinced that Google, as an entity is absolutely insane and should probably be heavily medicated. They bougth Motorola to move into smartphones, but sold them, because they couldn't integrate them (IIRC there were culture issues) so when they move back into mobile, they hire a Moto guy as CEO? I'm at a loss.
Google bought Moto for the patent portfolio, and sold the rest off the Lenovo because it was too difficult for Google to deal with other Android OEMs as both a competitor and a partner. Presumably the same issue would arise with Google-made phones (assuming there's any substance to the rumor), but Moto was already a significant competitor in the space whereas Google would be starting from scratch and not a serious threat.
Google and Moto cultures were quite different, but I don't think there was ever a serious effort to integrate Moto because of the need to maintain a wall between Moto and Android development. And even if culture issues were relevant, bringing in tens of thousands of people in an existing organization and retraining them all into the new culture is a very, very different proposition from bringing in isolated individuals, however senior.
As far as I can tell, location doesn't matter for Google acquisitions except that if you aren't located near an appropriate Google office you may have to pack up and move post-acquisition. I suppose it *might* be a little easier to get someone to come look at you if you're in SV, but I doubt it makes much difference.
What really matters, I think, is being somewhere that you can get the talent and resources you need to build your business. SV is good because there are lots of talented people around, but those people are expensive, as is real estate, etc. The other major resource a startup requires is capital, and I think the perception has been that there is more capital available in SV than elsewhere, but that really doesn't make much sense. Capital is highly mobile.
Actually, insurance companies are not allowed to charge men more for motor insurance because it is discriminatory.
An argument could be made that this is discriminatory against women, requiring them to pay higher premiums than are justified by actuarial risk, subsidizing male drivers -- who already make more money than they do.
Also, any algorithm which ingests statistical and demographic data is bound to come up with unpalatable and/or spurious demographic correlations (since there is a causal link between poverty and crime and a historic link between race and poverty) which I wold rather have society refrain from codifying -- in law or in actual computer code).
As opposed to having the same bias encoded, consciously or unconsciously, in the minds of judges?
Doing this algorithmically at least raises the possibility of analysis and criticism (assuming it's transparent -- no argument there, transparency is critical), which means that if done with appropriate oversight and scrutiny, it may have significant advantages over human judgement. I would still want the human judge to be able to overrule the algorithm, though. And it would probably be good to add a review process that regularly evaluates the algorithm, both the cases where it gets overruled and a random sample of cases where it is not overruled.
Bottom line: Algorithmic sentencing offers opportunities to systematize and regularize something which in the past has been purely subjective. That's a good thing... if care is taken that it doesn't systematize injustice.
You didn't read my comment. I don't think it's dangerous, I think it works quite well. Reverse vs drive is a bit weird because of their placement, but the diagram makes it clear.
Removing tactile feedback in a safety-critical user-interface element is not a problem on the user's side. Even a competent user will get this wrong from time to time. This is a design-screwup of epic proportions. The morons that designed this must not even have the basic course on ergonomic and save design.
My Nissan LEAF also has a gear shifter with no tactile feedback... but it's fine because the car automatically goes into "Park" when you turn it off. In practice, this leads me to screw up in a different way: when I drive other cars -- especially other Nissan cars with an on/off button rather than the normal key-actuated ignition -- I tend to hit the "off button" and then expect to get out and go about my business, leaving the car in "Drive". But Nissan fixed that by making it obvious that the car didn't actually turn off; the dash stays lit up and a warning sounds, IIRC.
So there are options other than tactile feedback. Actually, I think the "auto-park" is the best solution of all. I really like not ever having to think about it on my LEAF. I suppose there may be some obscure circumstances in which I want to turn the car off and leave it in neutral (e.g. towing it), but overall I think it's an excellent approach.
If you want badly enough to see it that way, you certainly can. But that's not how scholars see it, either today or in the past.
"ordeal of the bitter water".
There are a number of herbs that have been used to induce miscarriage since ancient times (slippery elm and black cohosh come to mind); perhaps that's what it's a reference to.
Nope. Go read it. No herbs involved. At most it's a little bit of ink from when the written curses are washed off in holy water.
There is exactly one reference to abortion in the bible. It's in Numbers 5, and it details the process for performing an abortion if you believe your wife has been unfaithful.
Only if you twist the text to fit a pro-abortion viewpoint.
What Numbers 5 actually says is that a man should take a wife suspected of adultery to a priest, who will perform a ritual called the "ordeal of the bitter water". If she is innocent, she'll be fine, but if she's guilty it will cause her belly to swell, her thigh to rot and she will become a curse among her people. Some interpret this to mean that she'll die. Some believe that because "thigh" is occasionally used as a euphemism for reproductive organs, it's the womb that will rot, making it something like an abortion, though making her permanently infertile which is how she'd be a "curse among her people".
So, if it's about abortion at all, it's a process for sterilization or execution.
But it's also not a "process", because it's not the priest's direct actions which cause the result. It's her innocence or guilt that determines the outcome. In other words, God decides, not the husband or the priest, so it's a religious rite not a medical procedure.
the third-worlder isn't all that much better off than before
Utter nonsense. Go look at some statistics on standards of living in various third world nations.
Oh, wait, that would require listening to experts. Never mind, go back to your echo chamber.
The British should simply accept the Mohammedist invasion that Merkel, Albright and Soros have agreed upon. NOT.
There are so many erroneous assumptions implied by this that I don't even know where to begin to unpick them all. So I won't bother.
There's not a lot you can do with the automatic categorization. You should make a point of always moving any mis-categorized e-mail, because that's how the system learns, but it'll never be perfect. For Inbox to work as well for you as it does for me, you have to be able to define good filters, based on simple logical rules, not rely on the automatic categorization. In my case, the vast bulk of my email comes from various mailing lists and automated systems, so it's easy for me to define rules that sort mail based on sender or mailing list. I also use some rules based on content, for example any e-mail that mentions me by name (well, by username, which is my "name" at work) gets the "Me" label added to it.
So the real key is the filters and the labels that divide the email up into related sets that have a common context and related urgency level. Then you make those labels into bundles, with appropriate delay settings.
The answer is: Because it's a good idea to give up some control in exchange for better relations with your neighbors, and a neutral third party who can adjudicate disputes and define structures that pre-emptively eliminate them.
Having an un-elected third party doing those things is never a good idea.
You don't need to directly elect a representative to exercise control. The people don't vote on members of the Supreme Court, but their views definitely are represented in the selection and ratification process, for example. In the case of the WTO the representatives are selected by the member governments. In the case of the US, those doing the selecting are elected.
Voters rightfully want to control their country's own destiny without having to cater to some international rule-making body a thousand miles away. I feel the same about the World Trade Organization. Why are THEY making decisions for Americans?
People rightfully want to control their own destiny without having to cater to some rule-making body 10 miles away. Why is CITY HALL making decisions for me?
The answer is: Because it's a good idea to give up some control in exchange for better relations with your neighbors, and a neutral third party who can adjudicate disputes and define structures that pre-emptively eliminate them.
Obviously, it's important that you have a say in the rule-making body, but the UK did have a say in the EU's operations, and Americans do have a say in the WTO. And clearly, if the association with the rulemaking body in question is doing you more harm than good, then leave. But leaving just because you want to feel empowered is stupid, as is arbitrarily drawing the necessary boundary of control at the national level.
the source code of android, albeit under an inappropriate license which encourages closed and proprietary behaviour, into which the linux kernel is "lumped" due to ignorance, is entirely and fully available. copyright law is simple: if the source has been released under a license, it may not be retracted (unless copyright law is changed and changed retroactively). therefore there *is* no way that the code can be "yanked".
No, the open code can't be taken away, but it is possible for Google to place additional constraints on manufacturers. Look at any slashdot topic that references the Android fragmentation and update problems, and you'll see a lot of calls for Google to tighten the screws and demand that manufacturers do things in a particular way.
However, the mechanism by which Google might "tighten the screws" is really completely unrelated to the sort of thing Huawei is described as doing here. Google's control is derived from access to the Google Apps (which is relatively minor; there are decent alternatives to all of them) and access to the Google Play Store. The Play Store is a valuable because of network effects. That's where all of the apps are, so that's where people get apps, so that's where all of the apps are. Google's work on making media available through the Play store also helps a bit.
So... an OEM who is preparing to go it alone needs to target building a replacement for Play, not mucking around with icon shapes. This could be done. In fact, the really obvious first step is to approach Amazon and discuss a deal to get access to their app store and media library. Their app store is a lot smaller than Google's, but if two or three major OEMs joined Amazon that could change in a hurry.
Of course, Google is perfectly well aware of just how easy it would be for a big player to remove itself from the Android ecosystem. Not trivial, but totally feasible.
(Disclosure/disclaimer: I work for Google, on Android, but the above is my own thoughts and opinions, which may not bear any resemblance at all to official company positions. Google pays me to write code, not to speak for them. In fact, policy discourages people like me from making posts like this one -- but recognizes that some of us will anyway.)
And in return, you let google read, index, and data mine all your email. You gave up some privacy for a few minutes of convenience. No thank you.
Well, that's the same with Gmail. I was presenting Inbox as a Gmail UI alternative. There are clearly other issues which may lead people to other decisions. Personally, I'll take the convenience (and did even before I started working for Google).
As a practical matter, what negative impact on your life would you expect from allowing Google to index your email? For me it's fewer ads for tampons and more ads for cameras and quadcopters, which works for me.
Drink more kool-aid.
Got nothing of substance to say, I see.
Are you joking? You fail to see how injecting a crap ton of chemicals below the water table can impact the water table? Really? You know that just because you put it in the ground, does not mean they stay down there, right?
Given that the fracking fluids are, by design, very heavy, yes it's very difficult to see how they're going to migrate upward thousands of feet in anything less than geologic time scales. The arguments in the study you cite actually support my argument. They are theorizing shallow fractures and surface pit leakage as the mechanism for the contamination, not fracking fluid working its way up large distances.
BTW; the USGS website does say there are, though few, direct links between fracking and quakes.
Which in no way refutes my point. I granted that it makes perfect sense that fracking could cause earthquakes to happen sooner than they would otherwise... but that' s a good thing, not a bad one.
I don't have any particular reason for wanting to support fracking, and I'm very willing to be convinced by evidence, but what I see from fracking opponents is a lot of heat and noise and very little data. I also see a lot of overlap between fracking opponents and supporters of other forms of pseudoscience, such as homeopathy, anti-vaccine arguments, etc., which doesn't do much to convince me.
Do people just not understand physics? Do they honestly really think drones could take over package delivery?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There are more issues than just energy efficiency, because there are a lot of costs in delivery operations other than energy. Also, while rolling is much more efficient than flying, routing a package car to every house, stopping and starting the multi-ton vehicle at each one, may actually be more energy-intensive than having said multi-ton vehicle carry a swarm of small drones into the subdivision and having them fly the last few hundred yards. And it may well make better use of the delivery system capital and operational expenses, delivering more packages per dollar because, as I said, energy isn't the only cost.
Drone delivery from the central distribution office seems unlikely to make sense, except for packages that are time-sensitive. But using drones for last-leg delivery may make a lot more sense than driving a truck to every house.
Autonomous vehicles will bring the packages/mail into a certain range and depending on location a drone or bot will get out of the autonomous vehicles to do the final delivery. I can see moving forward where places will have drone/bot delivery slots for mail, packages and food deliveries.
Yes, this is what I expect as well. I think there will probably be a human on board to manage the drones, sort packages and deal with any problems that crop up, and there will probably be a human staff at a central office with control links to manage drones that can't work out delivery locations, or run into other problems, but I think the notion of an autonomous drone carrier makes a lot of sense. This is particularly true in suburban areas which are sufficiently dispersed that driving up and down every street, stopping at a large number of houses and having a human jump out to run up and down every driveway is less efficient than pulling into a central location and sending drones on straight-line flights to doorsteps.
Drone flights from the central office to homes is clearly energy-inefficient, given that flying is so much more expensive than rolling. But the savings in routing several tons of vehicle to every stop, plus the reduction in human effort (which is the really expensive part of most operations) will offset the energy cost of flying the last few hundred yards. In rural areas like the one where I live, which are dense enough to justify driving around, but not dense enough to get much benefit from last-leg drone deliveries, it probably wouldn't be of value. Perhaps if the drones were fast enough that they could launch from and recover to a carrier that keeps rolling at 40 mph, the time efficiency and energy savings of not having to repeatedly stop and start the truck could tip the balance. In truly remote areas long-range drones may make sense, especially if they can operate in an airplane mode for high-speed long-distance travel and switch to copter mode at the ends (like the Google "Project Wing" drones). In dense urban areas pulling an autonomous truck up to an apartment complex loading bay will likely be the best option.
Another possibility for the last few hundred yards is small rolling/walking robots, capable of zipping down streets at near-automobile speeds, rolling up driveways and walking up onto porches to make deliveries. They'd have to travel further than flying drones and they'd be larger and heavier than flying drones, but they'd be on the ground and would be far less massive (and therefore far more efficient) than the package cars that transport them. I'm thinking of something the size of a child's wagon, with similar carrying capacity.