Aerobraking and spacesuits are a small part of the equation. Probably the most relevant reason is the idea of people surviving off the 'grid', way off the grid for extended periods of time. Figuring out the mundane things like food, water, waste, breathable air. The moon, being much closer allows us to start figuring stuff out in this regards with a much more favorable plan B when things go wrong. . Also, and this is getting much farther down the timeline, but at some point it would make a lot more sense to use the moon as launch base for all things interplanetary. As all decent Sci-fi readers know the moon will become the industrial center of the solar system once we decide to start working in space for real.
Ideally the two things could be done in parallel, get people living on the moon at the same time advanced robotic missions to Mars are occurring. I for one would trade the $406 billion dollar F-35 boondoggle for a real space program. Maybe we can reduce the nuclear arsenal to a reasonable 1000 warheads (down from 4000), that's save some cash. Also foreign wars...we should stop participating/starting in wars that do not pose at least somewhat of an existential threat. That should save a ton of money...and lives, and arms and legs.
For those interested in nuts & bolts reasons behind the difference in prices of drugs, from the 'list' or cash price to the lower insurance price I would highly recomend this site
run by a person very knowledgeable in the industry. Short story is there is a gross to net bubble of about $150 billion which gets redistributed to every other entity (GPO, health insurer, wholesalers, manufacturers) except the consumer.
Marissa isn't the exception she's the rule. Look at Jeffrey Immelt of stalwart industrial giant GE. He let that company rot from the inside out, only now are they finding out how bad he left it.
But don't worry, not only he's got himself a $200 million golden parachute he has a new gig as CEO of Athenahealth. All that for being terrible at his job.
Good work to the pilot and co-pilot. Well trained and performed admirably under pressure.
Now to the passengers. What does it say about the priorities of us American's that when confronted with "literally these were my last moments on earth" the finality of our lives, that we just want to broadcast it through Zuck's website?
"I Facebook LIVED the entire experience. I literally thought these were my last moments on earth. It was so terrifying!!”"
No I don't want to sit and reflect, don't want to think of my family & friends, pray, reminisce, hell even hold the hand of the human being sitting next to you. Instead I want to shakily focus a cellphone camera on my face, so as to create a snuff tape for the masses. My surviving family will certainly enjoy that memento...What is wrong with people?
Came here to say the same thing. Google maps has always been solid for me, have no reason to change to anything else. The instructions on lane choice and merging have been spot on. If I am travelling somewhere without cell coverage, I download the offline maps and those work very well. Sorry up-and-coming-black-box company, but Google maps is a tough act to follow.
If you are an executive at FB you dug this hole on your own. You made the FB system work the way it did, you were fine with the low level of privacy protections you had in place, and were super fine with packaging, selling, re-selling and marketing people's digital lives. You are remunerated handsomely for those decisions and probably gave yourself lots of credit for being so strong, so independent, so smart in all those meetings.
But now that your decisions are viewed under a different light, you go crying for you parents (Zuck and Sharon). Yes, they also need to be held to account, but not much more than you FB execs.
Microsoft is the 3rd largest company by market capitalization, just after Apple and Alphabet. It's 42 years old. You may not like it, but MS is an unequivocal business success.
From Bloomberg article: "Three Equifax Inc. senior executives -- Chief Financial Officer John Gamble, and unit presidents Joseph Loughran and Rodolfo Ploder -- sold shares worth almost $1.8 million in the days after the company discovered the breach. Equifax has said those three executives had not been informed of the incident when they initiated the sales."
Seriously. Larry Page is apparently launching an autonomous helicopter/airplane hybrid, yet no one has figured out how to get automation on what is essentially a one-dimensional problem space? Every time I hear about a train operator going too fast around a curve and jumping the tracks, I cringe and cannot understand why the speed isn't just set by computer and adjusted per the trains location on the track condition.
Reality is that they have all the info they need on you already. Awhile back it was said that 81% of adult Americans who use the internet have a Facebook account Google, FB, Amazon, already have a data model on you which is pretty accurate, and likely will match pre-established trends as you get older, have a family, retire, whatever. Your credit card data, your geo-physical presence via cell phone (Google maps), your cell provider tracking your browsing, its all there
And yes, there are several clever, tin-foil hat, Slashdotters who have managed to evade this tracking...but on aggregate the marketers are fine with the percentages they have.
We know this to be tried and true Slashdot click-bait. Damn I miss actual technology & science articles.
There's some subset of people who want SV to implode, others to defend it. Some predict the whole place will fall into the ocean ("A View to a Kill" style) or that SV is just at the cusp of a 1000 year AI-induced dominance.
But you get the same talk about other places like NYC, London, etc. It's too expensive, traffic is terrible, its crowded. But those places and their respective industries still thrive despite some firms leaving, and others setting up shop. Nothing is forever, but for our respective generations things won't change that dramatically. Heck, even Hong Kong was supposed to empty out after China took over, but it's as strong as ever. Just that those people now have vacation homes in Vancouver too.
People should just be content with where they want to live and work not worry about everyone else. It's exhausting. You want to live in the countryside and telecommute, kudos to you. You want a three car garage in the burbs, good for you. Wanna spend $3k/mo for a 1 BR in SF, why not.
The previous poster pointed out the salient fact, which is most municipal governments are terrible at mass transit. San Francisco is in the midst of their boondoggle:
Digging a multi-billion dollar tunnel for a few thousand daily riders that would have easily been served on improved buss service. It is of course delayed and massively over budget. In the meantime the real need was for transit up and down the peninsula. The tech companies you seem to harbor ill will against quickly put together their own mass transit, bus service in a few months had thousands of daily riders on a relatively fast, efficient, clean and safe service.
Likewise Uber/Lyft and others filled the gap when municipal taxi commissions and municipal mass transit failed at their jobs. I'm no fan of the ridehailing apps, but they exist based on government's failures.
Watch out for Infosys to start buying Univ of Phoenix PhD's for their contractors.
SAP implementation? Sure we have 6 Astrophysicists that can customize those idocs for you.
The city of San Francisco, population ~850,000, receives about 4000 911 calls every day. I've called 911 twice in my entire life, both were legit emergencies for other people.
A person living on the street ended up dying, possibly because people calling 911 on his behalf couldn't get through. So the city finally started adding more operators, changing procedures so they could transfer non-emergency calls to a different department, etc. Apparently 1/3 of calls are accidental, butt dialing, dialing 91 from your office, etc.
A large percentage of the rest are people calling about non-emergency stuff. There's a homeless camp outside my house, someone broke into my car last night, my car was towed, and the like. Since you have these folks numbers how about a three strike policy. You get three strikes over two years, then you get fined $200.
Boom, you've saved money on hiring new operators and made the system faster.
The cost is not that prohibitive, the technology is already there. It's just what society deems important. In the US we deem 1.) entitlements - $1.5 trillion and 2.) war $600 billion) as our two biggest priorities. Perhaps followed by 3.) spending beyond our means - $310 billion in interest.
The AC means SSI and is likely correct. All the welfare reform that Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich patted themselves on the back for, just got transferred to a different department...Social Security disability.
Newt, Bill, and their cronies didn't care that the money was still being spent, they just checked the box with their 'base' and went on, enjoying the very, very, shortlived economic cycle that gave them breathing room.
Effing Republicans are lying sacks of crap when it comes to budgets. They will happily roll over for any corporate interest to explode the deficit/debt while still crying about PBS and the EPA. See for instance Dubya and Medicare Part D, an entitlement which has cost $727.3 billion and counting. Look at Trump who is doubling and tripling down on the disaster that was the Obama budget. More planes, more bombs, more ships (for Lockeed/Northrup/Boeing) more infrastructure for cronies.
As pretty much everyone has known for years, the major problem surrounds checked baggage. First that airlines charge you for checked bags, so everyone tries to bring only carry-on, and second because with some degree of frequency collecting your checked bag can take anywhere from 30 minutes to eternity.
I have always wondered why the airlines and plane manufacturers didn't get together to create a standard checked bag form factor. A plastic hardshell case such is currently popular, with both embedded RFID and barcodes. Normal conveniences such as 4 wheels, extending handle, etc. Designed in such a way that loading and unloading can be nearly fully automated, similar to what you see used on cargo jets. If you use one of their cases, your bags are guaranteed to be at the carousel 15 minutes after the passenger door is opened upon landing. If you so desperately need to use your calvin klein designer luggage you wait.
The RFID tags also allow them to weigh the bags and charge the passenger accordingly. If my case only weighs 20 lbs and Aunt Bee's bag weighs in at 49.9 lbs, she pays more.
Personally I would actually pay the extra $10-$25 tax for a checked bag if I knew I could get it back quickly at baggage claim,
I was somewhat skeptical on the plastic bag ban when it was introduced, but I will say I definitely noticed the reduction in litter. Prior to the ban you would see plastic bags blowing in the wind like urban tumbleweed. After the ban, almost non-existent.
Similar to composting (by the city, not your back yard). Initially it feels like you are being put upon, to sort yet another thing, have another bin, etc etc. But really you get used to it pretty quickly and the benefits far outweigh the perceived hassles.
This Khosrowshahi guy really is trying hard to get into the Bezos/Musk club. Problem is outside of the current Uber implementation they are all vaporware. The 'for real' self driving cars, the ones you can put your kids into alone to go to school, are several years away, too far in the future to be able to save the Uber business model which is bleeding $4 billion in losses a year. With about $12 billion in cash including Softbank money they are running out of runway faster than the tech is moving.
As far as flying taxis, yes there are proofs of concept on this, one person super lightweight vehicles, that can fly short distances. But the energy it takes to power these is quite high. The noise is ridiculous, the areas available for take-off/landing are unavailable in the cities where this is supposed to make sense. And I assume the tech will need to be much better in the 3D environment than the 2D one. It will not ever be mass transportation.
The narcissism around Twitter and basically all social media is astounding. Every Tom, Dick, and Stacy thinks they are Elon Musk and changing the world because they have 5000 likes from ad-bots. Under what reason would any company let individuals tweet on their behalf about anything ever. And so-called executives, which based on their salary, should know better do it anyway until they eventually pull a 'Goldman.'
Wired summed it up best:
"At its core, Goldman’s mistake was a familiar one for Silicon Valley: An executive really smart at one thing seemed to think he was really smart at another thing. " --Wired 2/19/2018
Same thing here...some years ago they offshored all dev for our SAP and related systems. Ended up ditching the first firm they hired after the initial 3 year contract was up because, unsurprisingly they were terrible. Hired a different offshore provider, did the whole knowledge transfer thing, and now it's a few years later and people are finally starting to realize that they are terrible.
Management shake-up...which is that the PHB's in charge left/were pushed to roles at other companies (to screw them over) and the new guys in charge are trying to claw back dev in-house. But that is it's own big challenge.
I have always said that a team of say 10, highly experienced, highly paid, technically proficient devs are always more effective than 10x that many in offshored positions. However I don't think that the VP's can wrap their heads around the idea that a report of their's can (and should) be paid more than them, nor the idea that someone with experience might challenge some of the more ridiculous asks. So we get stuck with mediocrity in the ranks of Fortune 100 IT. You know, except for me.
The CDC chart of mortality for flu is pretty much as you expect (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr65/nvsr65_04.pdf)
Inflection point upwards at the 65-74 age bracket then straight up as you age further. Interestingly even little kids 1 - 14 seem to be in great shape in this regards. Would have thought the bodies defenses would take time to build up, peaking at say 25 y.o. But the little 1-14 y.o.'s are apparently quite resilient.
Your asking someone who is probably in their 20's to go outside without a cellphone?!! You might as well ask them to leave their right arm at home. What are they supposed to look at while crossing the street or riding their bike?
Slashdot Mirror
Ideally the two things could be done in parallel, get people living on the moon at the same time advanced robotic missions to Mars are occurring. I for one would trade the $406 billion dollar F-35 boondoggle for a real space program. Maybe we can reduce the nuclear arsenal to a reasonable 1000 warheads (down from 4000), that's save some cash. Also foreign wars...we should stop participating/starting in wars that do not pose at least somewhat of an existential threat. That should save a ton of money...and lives, and arms and legs.
http://www.drugchannels.net/
run by a person very knowledgeable in the industry. Short story is there is a gross to net bubble of about $150 billion which gets redistributed to every other entity (GPO, health insurer, wholesalers, manufacturers) except the consumer.
Marissa isn't the exception she's the rule. Look at Jeffrey Immelt of stalwart industrial giant GE. He let that company rot from the inside out, only now are they finding out how bad he left it. But don't worry, not only he's got himself a $200 million golden parachute he has a new gig as CEO of Athenahealth. All that for being terrible at his job.
Seriously, that is the key to this. Find that telco and make them pay $120 million too. Problem solved.
Now to the passengers. What does it say about the priorities of us American's that when confronted with "literally these were my last moments on earth" the finality of our lives, that we just want to broadcast it through Zuck's website?
"I Facebook LIVED the entire experience. I literally thought these were my last moments on earth. It was so terrifying!!”"
No I don't want to sit and reflect, don't want to think of my family & friends, pray, reminisce, hell even hold the hand of the human being sitting next to you. Instead I want to shakily focus a cellphone camera on my face, so as to create a snuff tape for the masses. My surviving family will certainly enjoy that memento...What is wrong with people?
Came here to say the same thing. Google maps has always been solid for me, have no reason to change to anything else. The instructions on lane choice and merging have been spot on. If I am travelling somewhere without cell coverage, I download the offline maps and those work very well. Sorry up-and-coming-black-box company, but Google maps is a tough act to follow.
If you are an executive at FB you dug this hole on your own. You made the FB system work the way it did, you were fine with the low level of privacy protections you had in place, and were super fine with packaging, selling, re-selling and marketing people's digital lives. You are remunerated handsomely for those decisions and probably gave yourself lots of credit for being so strong, so independent, so smart in all those meetings. But now that your decisions are viewed under a different light, you go crying for you parents (Zuck and Sharon). Yes, they also need to be held to account, but not much more than you FB execs.
Microsoft is the 3rd largest company by market capitalization, just after Apple and Alphabet. It's 42 years old. You may not like it, but MS is an unequivocal business success.
I assume there will be some spectacular deals on high capacity USB drives from less-than-honorable merchants on Amazon in the next couple weeks.
Sounds like his bosses found themselves a patsy.
Seriously. Larry Page is apparently launching an autonomous helicopter/airplane hybrid, yet no one has figured out how to get automation on what is essentially a one-dimensional problem space? Every time I hear about a train operator going too fast around a curve and jumping the tracks, I cringe and cannot understand why the speed isn't just set by computer and adjusted per the trains location on the track condition.
And yes, there are several clever, tin-foil hat, Slashdotters who have managed to evade this tracking...but on aggregate the marketers are fine with the percentages they have.
But you get the same talk about other places like NYC, London, etc. It's too expensive, traffic is terrible, its crowded. But those places and their respective industries still thrive despite some firms leaving, and others setting up shop. Nothing is forever, but for our respective generations things won't change that dramatically. Heck, even Hong Kong was supposed to empty out after China took over, but it's as strong as ever. Just that those people now have vacation homes in Vancouver too.
People should just be content with where they want to live and work not worry about everyone else. It's exhausting. You want to live in the countryside and telecommute, kudos to you. You want a three car garage in the burbs, good for you. Wanna spend $3k/mo for a 1 BR in SF, why not.
https://sf.streetsblog.org/201... https://www.sfchronicle.com/ba...
Digging a multi-billion dollar tunnel for a few thousand daily riders that would have easily been served on improved buss service. It is of course delayed and massively over budget. In the meantime the real need was for transit up and down the peninsula. The tech companies you seem to harbor ill will against quickly put together their own mass transit, bus service in a few months had thousands of daily riders on a relatively fast, efficient, clean and safe service.
Likewise Uber/Lyft and others filled the gap when municipal taxi commissions and municipal mass transit failed at their jobs. I'm no fan of the ridehailing apps, but they exist based on government's failures.
Watch out for Infosys to start buying Univ of Phoenix PhD's for their contractors. SAP implementation? Sure we have 6 Astrophysicists that can customize those idocs for you.
A person living on the street ended up dying, possibly because people calling 911 on his behalf couldn't get through. So the city finally started adding more operators, changing procedures so they could transfer non-emergency calls to a different department, etc. Apparently 1/3 of calls are accidental, butt dialing, dialing 91 from your office, etc.
A large percentage of the rest are people calling about non-emergency stuff. There's a homeless camp outside my house, someone broke into my car last night, my car was towed, and the like. Since you have these folks numbers how about a three strike policy. You get three strikes over two years, then you get fined $200.
Boom, you've saved money on hiring new operators and made the system faster.
NASA's budget is $20 billion.
Newt, Bill, and their cronies didn't care that the money was still being spent, they just checked the box with their 'base' and went on, enjoying the very, very, shortlived economic cycle that gave them breathing room.
Effing Republicans are lying sacks of crap when it comes to budgets. They will happily roll over for any corporate interest to explode the deficit/debt while still crying about PBS and the EPA. See for instance Dubya and Medicare Part D, an entitlement which has cost $727.3 billion and counting. Look at Trump who is doubling and tripling down on the disaster that was the Obama budget. More planes, more bombs, more ships (for Lockeed/Northrup/Boeing) more infrastructure for cronies.
I have always wondered why the airlines and plane manufacturers didn't get together to create a standard checked bag form factor. A plastic hardshell case such is currently popular, with both embedded RFID and barcodes. Normal conveniences such as 4 wheels, extending handle, etc. Designed in such a way that loading and unloading can be nearly fully automated, similar to what you see used on cargo jets. If you use one of their cases, your bags are guaranteed to be at the carousel 15 minutes after the passenger door is opened upon landing. If you so desperately need to use your calvin klein designer luggage you wait.
The RFID tags also allow them to weigh the bags and charge the passenger accordingly. If my case only weighs 20 lbs and Aunt Bee's bag weighs in at 49.9 lbs, she pays more. Personally I would actually pay the extra $10-$25 tax for a checked bag if I knew I could get it back quickly at baggage claim,
I was somewhat skeptical on the plastic bag ban when it was introduced, but I will say I definitely noticed the reduction in litter. Prior to the ban you would see plastic bags blowing in the wind like urban tumbleweed. After the ban, almost non-existent. Similar to composting (by the city, not your back yard). Initially it feels like you are being put upon, to sort yet another thing, have another bin, etc etc. But really you get used to it pretty quickly and the benefits far outweigh the perceived hassles.
As far as flying taxis, yes there are proofs of concept on this, one person super lightweight vehicles, that can fly short distances. But the energy it takes to power these is quite high. The noise is ridiculous, the areas available for take-off/landing are unavailable in the cities where this is supposed to make sense. And I assume the tech will need to be much better in the 3D environment than the 2D one. It will not ever be mass transportation.
Also, it only takes one of these https://www.youtube.com/watch?... to set the whole process back decades.
Wired summed it up best:
"At its core, Goldman’s mistake was a familiar one for Silicon Valley: An executive really smart at one thing seemed to think he was really smart at another thing. " --Wired 2/19/2018
Management shake-up...which is that the PHB's in charge left/were pushed to roles at other companies (to screw them over) and the new guys in charge are trying to claw back dev in-house. But that is it's own big challenge.
I have always said that a team of say 10, highly experienced, highly paid, technically proficient devs are always more effective than 10x that many in offshored positions. However I don't think that the VP's can wrap their heads around the idea that a report of their's can (and should) be paid more than them, nor the idea that someone with experience might challenge some of the more ridiculous asks. So we get stuck with mediocrity in the ranks of Fortune 100 IT. You know, except for me.
The CDC chart of mortality for flu is pretty much as you expect (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr65/nvsr65_04.pdf)
Inflection point upwards at the 65-74 age bracket then straight up as you age further. Interestingly even little kids 1 - 14 seem to be in great shape in this regards. Would have thought the bodies defenses would take time to build up, peaking at say 25 y.o. But the little 1-14 y.o.'s are apparently quite resilient.
Your asking someone who is probably in their 20's to go outside without a cellphone?!! You might as well ask them to leave their right arm at home. What are they supposed to look at while crossing the street or riding their bike?