I wonder how often the machinery will think you took something when you didn't. Perhaps the crowd was too big, and it wasn't obvious which customer took the item. I assume most people won't check the receipt while walking out to verify every item listed is actually in their cart. And if they do catch a mistake, what then? How do you prove you don't have something? What if you catch it the mistake the next day?
I love self checkout by the way. Mostly because there's no taking out and (re)bagging of groceries anymore; everything gets scanned and goes straight into the bag, which goes straight into the boot. Checkout is a 5 second process.
I'm curious where you shop. Stores near me with self checkout require me to scan each item, and then place them into the bagging area. There is a scale in the bagging area, so the machine yells at you if you place something unexpectedly heavy or light there. And if you want to bring your own bags, there's a problem: If you place them on the bagging area, you must call an attendant to OK the extra weight. Or, you must keep your bags on the floor, and after you scan each item, you must tell the computer that you wish to skip bagging, so you can place the item into your bag.
I was planning to be an average developer, but I guess I'll become one of the best bug hunters instead. Because as an average software engineer, I assume that I'd be way better than average at finding bugs than someone who's already made that their career.
I don't know about anyone else, but I've never thanked an ATM when it dispenses cash to me.
Unlike ATMs, having a pizza delivered by a self-driving car isn't a normal experience today, and customers expect there to be a person there. As far as I know, laws don't yet permit a self-driving car to do something like this without a person present. So I think it was fair that the people were thanking the person, whether they saw him or not.
UPS delivers packages to my apartment door, and then quickly walks to the next door. Occasionally, I open the door and get the package quickly enough that the USP guy is still in the building. I'll say "thank you" to him, even though I don't see him, or really know quite where he is. It's possible I'm talking to nobody, but I say it because there's a fair chance I'm not.
So what do their cars do now when they spot a gorilla crossing the road?
It's not about crossing the road. It's about hailing a ride from a self-driving taxi. Until google solves this problem, gorillas will be able go wherever they want by car, which will cause the other animals to get mad.
My dad has a side business, and he uses a dot matrix printer for the invoices. He's been using the same printer for over 25 years, and I believe he's on his second printer ribbon. The printing isn't very dark, but it's perfectly readable.
Apple claims that the odds of someone being able to unlock your phone with their face is 1 in 1,000,000. That sounds impressive, but with 7.6 billion people in the world, that means there are 7,600 people who can probably unlock your phone. But where do those people probably live? They most likely aren't randomly shuffled throughout the world. They are most likely the people with the same facial features as you - with similar ethnic backgrounds, and very likely, in similar geographic locations. I certainly look similar to the people around me. And I look particular similar to members of my family. I wonder if it would be very difficult for me to intentionally find someone who could unlock the same phone as me.
I've generally considered the term dirt road to include gravel.... but I suppose if you wanted to be more accurate, one could use the terms paved and unpaved roads.
I cannot think of anywhere where there are paved roads
We clearly have different definitions. In my American English, there are two kinds of roads: paved and dirt. Paved means any kind of hardened surface, including asphalt, concrete, etc.
Here, "pavement" means the path for pedestrians at the side of the road. "Pavement" is never used for a road surface. So, here, there is no ambiguity, and "pavement" is equally as specific as "sidewalk".
Different regions within countries speak quite differently. Homogenization comes from the cities, particularly as people move around, or one city interacts with another. This can happen across an ocean, but it won't be fast. Hearing different accents isn't enough -- if it was, Hollywood movies would have given everyone an American accent by now. People have to move from one place to another, and children have to be raised in areas where both dialects are common enough that they pick up some of each.
I've had a package go missing once at my current address. It was replaced at no cost to me. I have absolutely no motivation to have packages delivered inside my house since I know that if a package fails to show up, I can have it replaced without losing any money.
If packages were frequently disappearing from my house, giving someone (or some company) access to my house would definitely not be a step in the right direction to solving the problem.
I understand how the service will work, but I still wouldn't want it, even if it was free.
I don't want anybody entering my home without me being there. Camera or no camera. A camera makes it easier to prosecute someone who robbed me, but it doesn't prevent a robbery from happening. I don't want a wifi-controlled lock on my door. Any lock can be picked, but a wifi lock has the potential to be hacked from someone who is merely within wifi range. If I have a nefarious neighbor, he can spend as much time as necessary on a brute force attack on my door.
While I would expect (or at least hope) a large company like amazon would be certain to quickly patch any known exploits found in such a lock, this is not a guarantee, and considering we are talking about the lock between the world and everything of value that I own, I'm going to be overly cautious about this.
Though I don't own pets, I'm sure for anyone who does, they would be worried about them being accidentally let out.
You know them. The classics have punchlines like “Whiteout on the screen,” “Let me get this straight -- you’re having a power outage and you can’t understand why your PC won’t boot,” and “I told him to try reversing the plug on his printer... and it was a three-prong plug (snicker)!”
The good news is this trailer strongly implies the series is actually going to be made.
The bad news is, I'm not optimistic about its quality. (Well, the trailer itself did nothing to change my opinion there. I'll see what happens once the episodes are out.)
I'm just feeling nostalgic... I knew a little about programming when I was in school, so I wrote tons of programs on my TI calculator. Basically, in every lesson, when I learned a new math concept, I'd write a little program that could do most of the work for me. This meant that I was learning both math and programming. Naturally, I'd tend to forget a lot of those math concepts after I'd finished writing the program, but that pretty much describes my day job now.
Good point! The TI calculators could be slightly improved, but those would be very minor improvements, mostly centered around a better-quality screen.
I will say, a smartphone app is a great companion. If I had to do some serious calculations, I'd rather have real buttons. But I'd also like to have an equivalent app on my phone for those times when I don't have my calculator with me.
The Desmos calculator will be embedded directly into the assessments, meaning students will have access during tests with no need for an external device.
Back when I was in school, tests were done on paper, written with pencil. Is that no longer the case? The reason I ask is: partial credit. If a student did a good job, showing their work, but ultimately got the wrong answer, a teacher could still give credit for the portions that were correct. Is that sort of thing possible on modern tests? (Unfortunately, the article doesn't describe how they work - it just assumes I already know.)
Nintendo built an entirely unnecessary product, and now they're doing it again.
An unnecessary product that no store could keep on the shelves because it sold out too quickly. (Yes, one could argue that they didn't produce enough units, but it's clear that people wanted them.)
When the NES Classic was announced, I decided I was going to buy one. Sure, I could have thrown together some kind of emulator, but this was more like the real thing, with no questions of ROM legality.
After the NES Classic's discontinuation was announced, before it was possible for most people to buy one, I build a RetroPie. Now I have no reason to be excited about the SNES Mini.
Currently, I live in an apartment, with >12 visible WiFi networks. That means my WiFi connections are often quite poor due to overuse of the same frequencies. I can only imagine how poor my reception would become if these 12 WiFi routers were each acting as 2 WiFi hotspots.
Yup, same here. When the NES Classic was announced, I got excited. I knew I could get my own emulator cheaper (I didn't yet know about RetroPi), but would rather go the legal route, and felt it would be nice to support Nintendo for producing something like this.
I gave up on finding one, and threw together a RetroPi. So I can say that Nintendo caused me to build a RetroPi. Had they not made the NES Classic, I wouldn't have been reminded of the fun NES games of my youth, and wouldn't have felt the desire to play them again.
I wonder if during the ARPANET days, anyone pondered a use for such a communications tool to be able to send the digital equivalent of a middle school classroom note.
To your question about why people don't show up, I suspect part of that is also related to airline policies that either don't allow cancellation, or make it prohibitively expensive. I once had a flight that cost me something like $100 that I had to cancel. I called the airline, and they told me there'd be a $200 cancellation fee. Naturally, I chose not to cancel, and just didn't show up at the airport.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder how often the machinery will think you took something when you didn't. Perhaps the crowd was too big, and it wasn't obvious which customer took the item. I assume most people won't check the receipt while walking out to verify every item listed is actually in their cart. And if they do catch a mistake, what then? How do you prove you don't have something? What if you catch it the mistake the next day?
I love self checkout by the way. Mostly because there's no taking out and (re)bagging of groceries anymore; everything gets scanned and goes straight into the bag, which goes straight into the boot. Checkout is a 5 second process.
I'm curious where you shop. Stores near me with self checkout require me to scan each item, and then place them into the bagging area. There is a scale in the bagging area, so the machine yells at you if you place something unexpectedly heavy or light there. And if you want to bring your own bags, there's a problem: If you place them on the bagging area, you must call an attendant to OK the extra weight. Or, you must keep your bags on the floor, and after you scan each item, you must tell the computer that you wish to skip bagging, so you can place the item into your bag.
I was planning to be an average developer, but I guess I'll become one of the best bug hunters instead. Because as an average software engineer, I assume that I'd be way better than average at finding bugs than someone who's already made that their career.
I don't know about anyone else, but I've never thanked an ATM when it dispenses cash to me.
Unlike ATMs, having a pizza delivered by a self-driving car isn't a normal experience today, and customers expect there to be a person there. As far as I know, laws don't yet permit a self-driving car to do something like this without a person present. So I think it was fair that the people were thanking the person, whether they saw him or not.
UPS delivers packages to my apartment door, and then quickly walks to the next door. Occasionally, I open the door and get the package quickly enough that the USP guy is still in the building. I'll say "thank you" to him, even though I don't see him, or really know quite where he is. It's possible I'm talking to nobody, but I say it because there's a fair chance I'm not.
So what do their cars do now when they spot a gorilla crossing the road?
It's not about crossing the road. It's about hailing a ride from a self-driving taxi. Until google solves this problem, gorillas will be able go wherever they want by car, which will cause the other animals to get mad.
My dad has a side business, and he uses a dot matrix printer for the invoices. He's been using the same printer for over 25 years, and I believe he's on his second printer ribbon. The printing isn't very dark, but it's perfectly readable.
...As if I didn't already know.
Apple claims that the odds of someone being able to unlock your phone with their face is 1 in 1,000,000. That sounds impressive, but with 7.6 billion people in the world, that means there are 7,600 people who can probably unlock your phone. But where do those people probably live? They most likely aren't randomly shuffled throughout the world. They are most likely the people with the same facial features as you - with similar ethnic backgrounds, and very likely, in similar geographic locations. I certainly look similar to the people around me. And I look particular similar to members of my family. I wonder if it would be very difficult for me to intentionally find someone who could unlock the same phone as me.
You forgot gravel roads and the rare cobblestone.
I've generally considered the term dirt road to include gravel.... but I suppose if you wanted to be more accurate, one could use the terms paved and unpaved roads.
Cobblestone is a form of paving.
I cannot think of anywhere where there are paved roads
We clearly have different definitions. In my American English, there are two kinds of roads: paved and dirt. Paved means any kind of hardened surface, including asphalt, concrete, etc.
Here, "pavement" means the path for pedestrians at the side of the road. "Pavement" is never used for a road surface. So, here, there is no ambiguity, and "pavement" is equally as specific as "sidewalk".
Are your streets not paved there?
Different regions within countries speak quite differently. Homogenization comes from the cities, particularly as people move around, or one city interacts with another. This can happen across an ocean, but it won't be fast. Hearing different accents isn't enough -- if it was, Hollywood movies would have given everyone an American accent by now. People have to move from one place to another, and children have to be raised in areas where both dialects are common enough that they pick up some of each.
I've had a package go missing once at my current address. It was replaced at no cost to me. I have absolutely no motivation to have packages delivered inside my house since I know that if a package fails to show up, I can have it replaced without losing any money.
If packages were frequently disappearing from my house, giving someone (or some company) access to my house would definitely not be a step in the right direction to solving the problem.
I understand how the service will work, but I still wouldn't want it, even if it was free.
I don't want anybody entering my home without me being there. Camera or no camera. A camera makes it easier to prosecute someone who robbed me, but it doesn't prevent a robbery from happening.
I don't want a wifi-controlled lock on my door. Any lock can be picked, but a wifi lock has the potential to be hacked from someone who is merely within wifi range. If I have a nefarious neighbor, he can spend as much time as necessary on a brute force attack on my door.
While I would expect (or at least hope) a large company like amazon would be certain to quickly patch any known exploits found in such a lock, this is not a guarantee, and considering we are talking about the lock between the world and everything of value that I own, I'm going to be overly cautious about this.
Though I don't own pets, I'm sure for anyone who does, they would be worried about them being accidentally let out.
3. Tell dumb-user stories
You know them. The classics have punchlines like “Whiteout on the screen,” “Let me get this straight -- you’re having a power outage and you can’t understand why your PC won’t boot,” and “I told him to try reversing the plug on his printer ... and it was a three-prong plug (snicker)!”
On what planet is any of that a "best practice"?
The good news is this trailer strongly implies the series is actually going to be made.
The bad news is, I'm not optimistic about its quality. (Well, the trailer itself did nothing to change my opinion there. I'll see what happens once the episodes are out.)
I'm just feeling nostalgic... I knew a little about programming when I was in school, so I wrote tons of programs on my TI calculator. Basically, in every lesson, when I learned a new math concept, I'd write a little program that could do most of the work for me. This meant that I was learning both math and programming. Naturally, I'd tend to forget a lot of those math concepts after I'd finished writing the program, but that pretty much describes my day job now.
Good point! The TI calculators could be slightly improved, but those would be very minor improvements, mostly centered around a better-quality screen.
I will say, a smartphone app is a great companion. If I had to do some serious calculations, I'd rather have real buttons. But I'd also like to have an equivalent app on my phone for those times when I don't have my calculator with me.
The Desmos calculator will be embedded directly into the assessments, meaning students will have access during tests with no need for an external device.
Back when I was in school, tests were done on paper, written with pencil. Is that no longer the case? The reason I ask is: partial credit. If a student did a good job, showing their work, but ultimately got the wrong answer, a teacher could still give credit for the portions that were correct. Is that sort of thing possible on modern tests? (Unfortunately, the article doesn't describe how they work - it just assumes I already know.)
Nintendo built an entirely unnecessary product, and now they're doing it again.
An unnecessary product that no store could keep on the shelves because it sold out too quickly. (Yes, one could argue that they didn't produce enough units, but it's clear that people wanted them.)
When the NES Classic was announced, I decided I was going to buy one. Sure, I could have thrown together some kind of emulator, but this was more like the real thing, with no questions of ROM legality.
After the NES Classic's discontinuation was announced, before it was possible for most people to buy one, I build a RetroPie. Now I have no reason to be excited about the SNES Mini.
Currently, I live in an apartment, with >12 visible WiFi networks. That means my WiFi connections are often quite poor due to overuse of the same frequencies. I can only imagine how poor my reception would become if these 12 WiFi routers were each acting as 2 WiFi hotspots.
Yup, same here. When the NES Classic was announced, I got excited. I knew I could get my own emulator cheaper (I didn't yet know about RetroPi), but would rather go the legal route, and felt it would be nice to support Nintendo for producing something like this.
I gave up on finding one, and threw together a RetroPi. So I can say that Nintendo caused me to build a RetroPi. Had they not made the NES Classic, I wouldn't have been reminded of the fun NES games of my youth, and wouldn't have felt the desire to play them again.
I wonder if during the ARPANET days, anyone pondered a use for such a communications tool to be able to send the digital equivalent of a middle school classroom note.
You mean the "write" command?
To your question about why people don't show up, I suspect part of that is also related to airline policies that either don't allow cancellation, or make it prohibitively expensive. I once had a flight that cost me something like $100 that I had to cancel. I called the airline, and they told me there'd be a $200 cancellation fee. Naturally, I chose not to cancel, and just didn't show up at the airport.