I bought a DJI Spark last year. It does not need an active internet connection to fly. It also does not upload your flight records, photos, or videos to DJI's servers without manual intervention. The pictures/videos are stored on a standard MicroSD card. Mozilla is also incorrect in claiming it has a microphone - it does not (if it had one, all it would record would be the noise from the motors/propellers).
Yes, the drone doesn't require you to change the default WiFi password, but that's because a unique password is already printed on each drone. While people have hacked control of these things under laboratory conditions, the extremely short battery life (approximately 14 minutes of actual time in the air) means you'll have landed and be long gone before anyone could "hack" your drone. All of that is assuming a malicious actor even knows your drone is in the air in the first place. At 400' up, the Spark is incredibly hard to see and nearly inaudible.
The real reasons you wouldn't want to buy one of these things is that they're banned almost everywhere you'd really want to use one, and they're still kind of pricey for what is essentially a flying cell phone camera with extremely short battery life. As far as privacy risks go, again, it's a (flying) camera that geotags your photos/footage, which can lead to exactly the same privacy concerns as the camera which is already built into your smartphone.
Which won't happen, because people like their echo chambers. Facebook makes it easy to unfollow/block opinions that run counter to your own, and feed you more of what you want to hear.
Racism, anti-semitism, and anti-immigrant hysteria just aren't getting the job done like they did in 2016.
I'm not sure if this is sarcasm or not, because here in Florida the don't monkey this up candidate got more votes (and likely will be the winner if they ever finish counting ballots). Of course, I'm sure the line of thinking with most voters was "I don't mind voting for the guy the racists think is racist, so long as it keeps taxes low."
Basically, a gene drive involves installing state-of-the-art genetic engineering tools that we stole from bacteria, and are only beginning to fully understand ourselves, into various organisms in a way in which we'll *never* be able to remove, short of driving the species to extinction (which we've thus far had very little success at doing on purpose).
The upside is we get rid of mosquitoes. The downside is a few non-target species might die slightly earlier than when the sun goes red giant and fries every living thing on the Earth.
Nissan Leafs have air cooled battery packs rather than liquid cooled and that's why their lifespan has been relatively short. Teslas and even Chevy Volts have much more sophisticated cooling systems and degradation so far is almost non-existant.
That's exactly the point: cheaper electric cars have batteries that don't last. I'm not saying the first or even second owners of an EV are going to have major issues with it. I'm saying the era of cheap buy-here-pay-here lot cars that still provide transportation so long as you keep 'em full of oil, might be coming to a close.
I can see that the 'poor', and even the middle-class, might find the cost of a private vehicle becomes uneconomic.
Here in the USA that'd be a tough sell. Collectively, we're not too big on the concept of the next generation having a lower standard of living than the previous, even though things certainly seem to be heading in that direction.
Bullcrap. The first Prius went on sale in 1997, and many of them have more than 300k miles. They are mostly still running fine.
The Prius is a gasoline-powered hybrid. If you want to see how EVs age, you should look at the Leaf. The early ones already are selling for far below what an I.C. car of the same vintage would go for, specifically because the battery wear has made them nearly unusable (due to loss of range).
Shocking story but powertrains in vehicles fail to. And most EVs seem to have warranties on batteries of 10 years
10 years seems like a good long warranty until you realize the average car on the road in the USA is already older than that. The average age of a vehicle in the USA is 11.6 years (yes, I realize TFA is about Israel).
Yes, the engine/transmission in an I.C. vehicle can crap out, but there's a lot of cheap(ish) ways to get a broken I.C. car back on the road.
The elephant in the room with EVs is that they become economically unfeasible to keep on the road once the battery pack sufficiently degrades. Unless there's a major breakthrough in battery longevity, we're looking at a future where those with a lower income will no longer have access to inexpensive used vehicles. I'm guessing that's why they're also hedging their bets with CNG vehicles, which will gracefully age into second-hand clunkers. But if the primary market gravitates mostly towards EVs, people looking for a cheap car are going to be totally out of luck. EVs are essentially scrap once the batteries crap out.
Don't get me wrong, helping the environment is a big deal. But giving the middle finger to the poor in the process seems like the wrong way to go about doing it.
nanny state regulation isn't the best option for either cigarettes or social media.
Problem is, both sides whine that regulation is needed. The far-right nuts want their vitriol hosted on Facebook/Twitter's dime, and the far-left wants removal of anything that could possibly offend anyone who even remotely resembles an oppressed minority.
This wouldn't even be a problem if people weren't so stupid as to all congregate on the same social media sites.
Except it's not. When you piss off the establishment they pull your domain records, have your host shut down your VMs and ban you from the financial system.
Private businesses are under no obligation to provide a platform for something for speech which runs contrary to their beliefs. They don't have to bake your gay wedding cake, or host your alt-right blog. See how that works?
That's one approach to people with different ideas.
Free speech has never meant freedom from repercussions of social opinion resulting from saying something unpopular. Try holding up a sign saying "I am sexually aroused by children" in a public park, if you need some hands-on experience with how this concept works. (I'm not speaking from personal experience, obviously)
Import tariffs are necessary to protect US quality of life.
Quality of life improves when your money has more buying power, not less. Why don't you ask the people of Venezuela how they feel about the buying power of their currency?
Well, if you support tariffs against China for their poor regulations and human rights maybe you should vote for the candidate who won't undo those tariffs.
I'm going to say the same shit the Republicans say when it comes to healthcare: Remove the barriers to competition and let the free market sort it out. This isn't a something the government should be meddling with.
The obvious difference is that healthcare should be a basic human right. Being able to work a manufacturing job, is not. The Republicans have it ass backwards.
Putting tariffs on goods and services abroad will increase prices in the short term, but over the long term it will allow for local businesses to compete. This will pull manufacturing power back into the U.S. and away from other countries.
The next administration can press the "undo" button, which makes increasing domestic production a risky investment. All tariffs accomplish is reducing the buying power of the dollars in your wallet. It punishes China by punishing average, hard working Americans.
It's like right here in Florida, people voted to end greyhound racing, ostensibly because they care about the welfare of the dogs. Problem is, there won't be enough homes for all the retired dogs, so most of them will inevitably end up being put down. But the cause is just, so unforeseen consequences be damned.
It all makes sense now. Figures it would be Rick and Morty fans that created a real-life version of a method to smoke pot that is impractical, unsafe, and extremely overpriced. Real stoners would never bother with something this daft.
There ARE people identifying themselves as animals
Which is a strawman argument, because furry subculture has no relation whatsoever to transgenderism.
The subject at hand is the freedom of a person to choose their own gender identity. I can't believe I actually have to write this, but an animal is not a gender.
Most people use their smartphones for data/texting these days, rather than voice calls. You'd assume there'd be an increased incidence of hand cancer if modern cell phone radio emissions were carcinogenic.
Also good god these comments, is *everyone* on slashdot anti-trans?
It's human nature to fear things that make us feel uncomfortable, probably because it was a useful survival trait from back when our primate predecessors were still swinging from trees. Unusual behavior usually meant illness, which is best avoided if you wanted to continue to make sweet monkey lovin' and pass on your genes.
The problem is, some people haven't learned to tell their primal feelings "Shut up monkey brain, it's 2018."
How the fuck are you even supposed to put that on a form??
With a blank space and a writing instrument, obviously.
Unless they stop allowing people to identify as male or female, you have nothing to worry about. The secret gender agents are not going to land a black helicopter in your back yard and cut off your genitals while you sleep.
It's already happening. "Trans female" wrestlers are these big jacked up dudes who 'transition' and then go wrestle actual females and completely destroy them. Total sham.
If your favorite sports have suddenly ceased to provide entertainment, there's an amazing feature on your TV to solve this problem: The power button. Press it, and the un-entertaining program goes away, as if by magic.
It also works on NFL protests, fake news, and inane sitcom reboots. Try it sometime!
Slashdot Mirror
I bought a DJI Spark last year. It does not need an active internet connection to fly. It also does not upload your flight records, photos, or videos to DJI's servers without manual intervention. The pictures/videos are stored on a standard MicroSD card. Mozilla is also incorrect in claiming it has a microphone - it does not (if it had one, all it would record would be the noise from the motors/propellers).
Yes, the drone doesn't require you to change the default WiFi password, but that's because a unique password is already printed on each drone. While people have hacked control of these things under laboratory conditions, the extremely short battery life (approximately 14 minutes of actual time in the air) means you'll have landed and be long gone before anyone could "hack" your drone. All of that is assuming a malicious actor even knows your drone is in the air in the first place. At 400' up, the Spark is incredibly hard to see and nearly inaudible.
The real reasons you wouldn't want to buy one of these things is that they're banned almost everywhere you'd really want to use one, and they're still kind of pricey for what is essentially a flying cell phone camera with extremely short battery life. As far as privacy risks go, again, it's a (flying) camera that geotags your photos/footage, which can lead to exactly the same privacy concerns as the camera which is already built into your smartphone.
Delete. Your. Accounts.
Which won't happen, because people like their echo chambers. Facebook makes it easy to unfollow/block opinions that run counter to your own, and feed you more of what you want to hear.
Racism, anti-semitism, and anti-immigrant hysteria just aren't getting the job done like they did in 2016.
I'm not sure if this is sarcasm or not, because here in Florida the don't monkey this up candidate got more votes (and likely will be the winner if they ever finish counting ballots). Of course, I'm sure the line of thinking with most voters was "I don't mind voting for the guy the racists think is racist, so long as it keeps taxes low."
It's also Florida being Florida, as usual.
Great! So soon I can get my Chinese takeout much faster, right?
I'm thinking a really fast pizza oven. Why settle for dirty old coal-fired pizza, when you can have fusion pizza!
People said the same thing when it was at $10k.
The sucker train has ended. Unless space aliens start buying Bitcoin, this ride is over.
Basically, a gene drive involves installing state-of-the-art genetic engineering tools that we stole from bacteria, and are only beginning to fully understand ourselves, into various organisms in a way in which we'll *never* be able to remove, short of driving the species to extinction (which we've thus far had very little success at doing on purpose).
The upside is we get rid of mosquitoes. The downside is a few non-target species might die slightly earlier than when the sun goes red giant and fries every living thing on the Earth.
Sounds like an acceptable risk, IMHO.
Nissan Leafs have air cooled battery packs rather than liquid cooled and that's why their lifespan has been relatively short. Teslas and even Chevy Volts have much more sophisticated cooling systems and degradation so far is almost non-existant.
That's exactly the point: cheaper electric cars have batteries that don't last. I'm not saying the first or even second owners of an EV are going to have major issues with it. I'm saying the era of cheap buy-here-pay-here lot cars that still provide transportation so long as you keep 'em full of oil, might be coming to a close.
I can see that the 'poor', and even the middle-class, might find the cost of a private vehicle becomes uneconomic.
Here in the USA that'd be a tough sell. Collectively, we're not too big on the concept of the next generation having a lower standard of living than the previous, even though things certainly seem to be heading in that direction.
Bullcrap. The first Prius went on sale in 1997, and many of them have more than 300k miles. They are mostly still running fine.
The Prius is a gasoline-powered hybrid. If you want to see how EVs age, you should look at the Leaf. The early ones already are selling for far below what an I.C. car of the same vintage would go for, specifically because the battery wear has made them nearly unusable (due to loss of range).
I suppose if you wanted to pull it with horses...
Shocking story but powertrains in vehicles fail to. And most EVs seem to have warranties on batteries of 10 years
10 years seems like a good long warranty until you realize the average car on the road in the USA is already older than that. The average age of a vehicle in the USA is 11.6 years (yes, I realize TFA is about Israel).
Yes, the engine/transmission in an I.C. vehicle can crap out, but there's a lot of cheap(ish) ways to get a broken I.C. car back on the road.
The elephant in the room with EVs is that they become economically unfeasible to keep on the road once the battery pack sufficiently degrades. Unless there's a major breakthrough in battery longevity, we're looking at a future where those with a lower income will no longer have access to inexpensive used vehicles. I'm guessing that's why they're also hedging their bets with CNG vehicles, which will gracefully age into second-hand clunkers. But if the primary market gravitates mostly towards EVs, people looking for a cheap car are going to be totally out of luck. EVs are essentially scrap once the batteries crap out.
Don't get me wrong, helping the environment is a big deal. But giving the middle finger to the poor in the process seems like the wrong way to go about doing it.
nanny state regulation isn't the best option for either cigarettes or social media.
Problem is, both sides whine that regulation is needed. The far-right nuts want their vitriol hosted on Facebook/Twitter's dime, and the far-left wants removal of anything that could possibly offend anyone who even remotely resembles an oppressed minority.
This wouldn't even be a problem if people weren't so stupid as to all congregate on the same social media sites.
Facebook censored
Nobody is forcing you to use Facebook.
Except it's not. When you piss off the establishment they pull your domain records, have your host shut down your VMs and ban you from the financial system.
Private businesses are under no obligation to provide a platform for something for speech which runs contrary to their beliefs. They don't have to bake your gay wedding cake, or host your alt-right blog. See how that works?
That's one approach to people with different ideas.
Free speech has never meant freedom from repercussions of social opinion resulting from saying something unpopular. Try holding up a sign saying "I am sexually aroused by children" in a public park, if you need some hands-on experience with how this concept works. (I'm not speaking from personal experience, obviously)
Import tariffs are necessary to protect US quality of life.
Quality of life improves when your money has more buying power, not less. Why don't you ask the people of Venezuela how they feel about the buying power of their currency?
Well, if you support tariffs against China for their poor regulations and human rights maybe you should vote for the candidate who won't undo those tariffs.
I'm going to say the same shit the Republicans say when it comes to healthcare: Remove the barriers to competition and let the free market sort it out. This isn't a something the government should be meddling with.
The obvious difference is that healthcare should be a basic human right. Being able to work a manufacturing job, is not. The Republicans have it ass backwards.
Putting tariffs on goods and services abroad will increase prices in the short term, but over the long term it will allow for local businesses to compete. This will pull manufacturing power back into the U.S. and away from other countries.
The next administration can press the "undo" button, which makes increasing domestic production a risky investment. All tariffs accomplish is reducing the buying power of the dollars in your wallet. It punishes China by punishing average, hard working Americans.
It's like right here in Florida, people voted to end greyhound racing, ostensibly because they care about the welfare of the dogs. Problem is, there won't be enough homes for all the retired dogs, so most of them will inevitably end up being put down. But the cause is just, so unforeseen consequences be damned.
Fuck this timeline.
Laser Hookah
It all makes sense now. Figures it would be Rick and Morty fans that created a real-life version of a method to smoke pot that is impractical, unsafe, and extremely overpriced. Real stoners would never bother with something this daft.
There ARE people identifying themselves as animals
Which is a strawman argument, because furry subculture has no relation whatsoever to transgenderism.
The subject at hand is the freedom of a person to choose their own gender identity. I can't believe I actually have to write this, but an animal is not a gender.
Most people use their smartphones for data/texting these days, rather than voice calls. You'd assume there'd be an increased incidence of hand cancer if modern cell phone radio emissions were carcinogenic.
Of course he's pandering to his base. A "blue wave" would bruise his fragile ego.
Also good god these comments, is *everyone* on slashdot anti-trans?
It's human nature to fear things that make us feel uncomfortable, probably because it was a useful survival trait from back when our primate predecessors were still swinging from trees. Unusual behavior usually meant illness, which is best avoided if you wanted to continue to make sweet monkey lovin' and pass on your genes.
The problem is, some people haven't learned to tell their primal feelings "Shut up monkey brain, it's 2018."
How the fuck are you even supposed to put that on a form??
With a blank space and a writing instrument, obviously.
Unless they stop allowing people to identify as male or female, you have nothing to worry about. The secret gender agents are not going to land a black helicopter in your back yard and cut off your genitals while you sleep.
It's already happening. "Trans female" wrestlers are these big jacked up dudes who 'transition' and then go wrestle actual females and completely destroy them. Total sham.
If your favorite sports have suddenly ceased to provide entertainment, there's an amazing feature on your TV to solve this problem: The power button. Press it, and the un-entertaining program goes away, as if by magic.
It also works on NFL protests, fake news, and inane sitcom reboots. Try it sometime!