By definition a UBI program doesn't have any requirements to be eligible for the receipt of the money. It's Universal. Everyone would get a stipend, _everyone_. So getting a job or doing work wouldn't make a person ineligible for it. Now, would someone be able to live comfortably off of it alone? Almost assuredly not. But they wouldn't need to starve to death or live out of a cardboard box (although their living opportunities on UBI alone would probably amount more to some form of community house). But by being universal with no strings attached, they wouldn't be penalized by finding any employment that would supplement and make their lives more comfortable.
TFA is about a UK-based Synamedia firm that has developed this "AI software" to combat password sharing by geolocating account activity.
"The company said it is already carrying out trials with a number of pay-TV operators but did not reveal which ones."
It says nothing about an actual partnership with Netflix or any other provider other than that single statement near the end of the article.
Netflix account tiers already have different levels of simultaneous stream allowances (1, 2, and 4). As long as your levels never go above what you're paying for, there's no reason for them to give a damn if your "family" is in different locations. The writer of this article just shoved Netflix in the title line for clickbait.
Well, one thing to compensate for unemployed masses is something like Universal Basic Income. There's also other professions like the traditional trades (carpentry, plumbing, electricians, etc) that can't be easily automated away. Climate change is also creating an imperative to rapidly ramp up in things like the manufacturing and installation of solar panels and anything else that can be done to curtail and reverse greenhouse gas emissions.
When you deep discount merchandise to the point where you're taking a loss on it so that you can drive your competitor out of business, that's anti-competitive pricing.
They could do two things that would let them continue on their way (of removing the 3.5mm port) but would stand a good chance of satisfying consumers.
1) Add a second USB-C port. With two ports one can be used for an accessory while the other is used for charging. No expensive and often proprietary splitter required.
2) Instead of a straight simple dongle that just converts 3.5mm to USB-C, design a dongle that clips onto the 3.5mm jack and prevents it from easily falling off, but instead of just USB-C on the other side have it be both USB-C and 3.5mm (effectively a Y cable).
These rules actually seem rather sensible to me.
A) The prohibition against special discounts prevents either company from discounting their merchandise in an anti-competitive manner that would drive out local businesses.
B) The prohibition against selling exclusive products makes it so that if Amazon wants to sell Echo and Fire devices in India, then they have to allow Indian resellers to stock and sell the products as well. The same would apply to any of their other private labels (like Amazon Basics). This prevents them from having a monopoly on sales of anything carrying their brand in India. This is sensible separation that should exist between Amazon's manufacturing business and it's internet storefront business.
We've gotten so used to anti-monopolistic policies not being enforced in the US that we've forgotten what they even are. No company is supposed be allowed to become an Umbrella company that makes, sells and supplies everything.
How much has Amazon's manufacturing arm benefited from the huge exposure platform provided by their storefront? I couldn't tell you the last time I went to Amazon's front page and didn't have a giant Fire or Echo ad shoved in my face.
How many businesses has Walmart put under every time it moves into an area and used anti-competitive price structures built off of paying their employees the least amount possible along with the fewest benefits they can get away with?
Why do people who have no experience with VR feel the need to constantly chime in on its supposed failings?
Wrong supposition mate. I own both a PSVR and a Daydream headset. Just because you don't find it to be a nuisance, doesn't mean it's the same for everyone else.
If by absorbing it we convert it to electrical energy instead of heat energy, then it should be a net positive effect? Granted, as far as scale is concerned it's probably a negligible difference, but, still a difference.
Ideally, I think the device should be able to handle that problem internally, such that wearing it can be done without additional glasses. Whether that means the lenses of it need to be flexible in such a way that they can adjust to compensate for the user's eyes or whether that can be done by digitally adjusting the display image is something they'll have to figure out.
If they can manage that, then a device like this might even be able to replace prescription glasses someday. For instance, smart glasses that auto adjust their magnification based on your eyes trying to focus on something far away or right in front of you, or as replacement for bifocals so that you don't have to have one lens trying to improve both near and far vision.
The current tech behind VR makes the experience one that most people are not interested in. The headsets are bulky and heavy. The lenses constantly fog up and get dirty. The wires, external cameras, extra processing units are all absurd.
If the industry wants people adopt and enjoy VR they need to refine the tech to a point where it's seamless. A VR headset needs to be no bulkier than a pair of sunglasses with earbuds attached and a small wire down to a walkman sized device or smartphone (if necessary, an external processor can still be allowed as long as it transmits the data wirelessly to the walkman/smartphone with a good range.) I'd lean more to a separate device rather than a smart phone because then it could have a standardized swappable battery. The controller interface should be intuitive and intelligent. A pair of one size fits all thin gloves that go back to a bracelet/watch band sized battery & transmitter perhaps.
Ideally, the VR sunglasses should not be completely opaque. It should be possible to pause the experience and have the shades "turn off" so you can see the environment around you without having to remove them. Cameras also need to be included on them along with a visual feedback system to warn you if something is in the way. Personally, I don't think it's entirely necessary for them to be completely enclosed either (although the option can be allowed for with clip on side shades or something). Not sure if having the peripheral vision exposed will make people more likely to get motion sick or less though. Granted, it might cut down on the immersion level a bit by being able to see things in the periphery, but, given that the current offerings are like peering through a pair of binoculars all the time, I think the experience would be far superior. And given that the future is probably more AR than VR, having the periphery open wouldn't hurt much and it'd significantly cut down on the fogging.
TLDR: Was this stage of VR tech and deployment necessary? Yeah, probably. It revealed new problems that need solving. Was it the stage that was going to bring VR mainstream? Hell, no.
I expect that in the 32 years prior to 2050, if our supply of "rare earths" becomes an issue then we'll either find a way to create them artificially or find alternative elements or methods that don't require them.
The same is probably true of suddenly sucking up all that light energy which should be reflecting around and warming things over a huge portion of the Earth's surface.
Considering that too much of that light energy being trapped and reflected around thanks to greenhouse gases is the problem causing climate change, absorbing more of it should only benefit us in combating the problem.
I think it's more likely that they want to charge the originating companies extra fees for the ability to send text messages to their customers rather than charge the customers more themselves.
Hence my comments regarding taking a moment to plan for such a trip and a stop at a quick charger for a recharge. College towns - particularly if you're driving that far to get to one, probably have chargers available somewhere in the vicinity. A stopover at one of these locations long enough to eat lunch or dinner should charge up a vehicle enough for the drive home.
Failing that, a $50 a day car rental for a day a few times a year isn't going to break the bank when an EV is probably saving you that much or more every month in fuel costs. As for your theme park scenario, the same pretty much applies - if there's an extra parking fee to use a charger at the theme park, the cost is going to be far less than what you're already saving.
In the event that either of those scenarios are that distasteful to you, you have the option of buying a plug-in hybrid and getting the best of both worlds. Yes, you'll still pay a premium for the technology over a regular vehicle, but, you will save that money back in the long run. I had to run those numbers myself before I purchased a Prius many years ago. At the time investment in hybrid tech was about a $3000 premium over an equivalent non-hybrid vehicle (although mine isn't a plug-in version). But, getting ~45 mpg compared to ~32 mpg made up the price of that premium after about 4 years or so, even with gas prices coming back down.
Btw, it's not just fuel that you save on when purchasing an EV or Hybrid vehicle, they also require less maintenance in certain areas compared to an ICE vehicle. Both a hybrid and EV will rely less on brakes and more on regenerative braking, so you'll need to replace the brake pads far less often. For a hybrid the ICE is not used or stressed as heavily, so it can go longer between maintenance windows. An EV will require even less maintenance, since compared to a hybrid or even a regular ICE vehicle the power train on an EV is much simpler.
Would you have stopped the analog to digital cable tv switchover by refusing to let the government subsidize the population with free set-top boxes to decode the new digital signals?
When it comes to the roll-out of a nationwide change to a new standard, ie electric vehicles, it is impossible to accomplish that change with the capitalist market alone. There is a giant chicken and egg scenario with electric vehicles. You can't encourage the develop nor the purchase of said vehicles if nowhere exists to charge them, and you can't convince anyone to install chargers when there are no electric vehicles for them to service.
Also, $4 billion dollars? You're quibbling about $4 billion dollars on a national scale? In the last couple years they increased the military budget from $580 billion in 2016 to $686 billion for 2019 - meanwhile the Pentagon failed it's audit without being able to account for $21 trillion dollars of it's assets.
A lot of the "subsidies" fossil fuel companies receive are tax based, ie they get significant discounts on their tax liability. While this may be comparable to other businesses, fossil fuel companies hold a somewhat unique position among corporations that do damage to the environment and pollute the air and water. This pollution harms the health of anyone and everyone living near it. So they should be taxed more harshly than other corporations that do not pollute the environment to either pay for the environmental cleanup or subsidize the treatment of the health issues that their pollution causes.
I would argue the same treatment be applied to any and every corporation that pollutes in a similar manner/scale.
Multiple investments in R&D are already working out alternative battery designs using more common materials with varying capacities. It's only a matter of time until these ventures provide the fruit needed to feed the increased demand for large capacity batteries.
Arguably few consumers need to be able to travel more than 300 miles in a given day, and with an EV you have the option of starting every day off with a full charge from your home charger. EV range, depending on configuration, can reach over this 300 mile mark now and will likely only continue to improve.
The larger difficulty is that quick charge stations are not available in all areas, so if you're making a longer trip you need to plan ahead on where you're going to stop to recharge along the way and for the time delay necessary to recharge (~30 minutes at a quick charge station).
The price of quick charging at a Tesla Super Charger still works out to be about half what you'd pay for a full tank of gas (though that may vary by region).
In my experience with HDDs you'll usually get some warning that your drive has issues before it completely calls it quits. Whether it's bad sectors turning up or noises from the drive itself. If you pay attention to that (and you're a little lucky), you can manage to salvage most of the drive's contents before it dies completely.
With an SSD one minute it's working completely fine and the next it's completely gone. While most of the data itself is probably still perfectly intact on the flash memory, getting at it is completely impossible (afaik) without going to a professional recovery service.
One could say that it's only 99% frivolous. Playing an FPS like Doom would test and build the player's ability to react to visual stimuli with small hand gestures as well as test a player's memory and exploration skills (where was the door this blue key goes to again?).
Not exactly skills that have significant application in the real world, unless you're remote piloting a drone and navigating with only it's camera for reference.
Fortnite being produced by Epic Games, which is 40% owned by Chinese Tencent, I'm a little surprised at the Fortnite ban. I guess "fantasy violence" they're ok with, but anything with "normal" guns must be a no-no.
Moving for a new job is an expensive proposition. Will someone benefit in the long run? Possibly, maybe even probably. But when most Americans can't even afford a $400 emergency they're not going to be able to afford moving to a different part of the country unless the new employer picks up the entire tab.
There are only so many people that want/need to buy smartphones just like there are only so many people that want/need to own cars. Once you've saturated the market the only new sales you get are those replacing older models and those reaching an age where they buy their first smartphone while losing the sales that would have gone to people that can no longer use a smartphone (whether that's due to age, health, or death).
If there are no new markets for manufacturers to sell to, then there's little new growth to be found. Realistically, there is zero wrong with this situation. It's only the capitalistic mindset, the mindset of greed, that demands to see profits grow every quarter. A stable annual profit in the billions of dollars is nothing to sneeze at. And in a market with a decent amount of non-colluding competitors, this situation is actually to a consumer's advantage since individual companies that can't acquire new markets to feed growth, will instead offer discounts and features to try and steal their competitors' market share.
The only thing they really have to worry about in this scenario, is for some product to come along that makes the smartphone obsolete. Not sure that product exists though, unless someone invents a neural link interface (not that Musk isn't trying).
Slashdot Mirror
By definition a UBI program doesn't have any requirements to be eligible for the receipt of the money. It's Universal. Everyone would get a stipend, _everyone_. So getting a job or doing work wouldn't make a person ineligible for it. Now, would someone be able to live comfortably off of it alone? Almost assuredly not. But they wouldn't need to starve to death or live out of a cardboard box (although their living opportunities on UBI alone would probably amount more to some form of community house). But by being universal with no strings attached, they wouldn't be penalized by finding any employment that would supplement and make their lives more comfortable.
TFA is about a UK-based Synamedia firm that has developed this "AI software" to combat password sharing by geolocating account activity.
It says nothing about an actual partnership with Netflix or any other provider other than that single statement near the end of the article.
Netflix account tiers already have different levels of simultaneous stream allowances (1, 2, and 4). As long as your levels never go above what you're paying for, there's no reason for them to give a damn if your "family" is in different locations. The writer of this article just shoved Netflix in the title line for clickbait.
Well, one thing to compensate for unemployed masses is something like Universal Basic Income. There's also other professions like the traditional trades (carpentry, plumbing, electricians, etc) that can't be easily automated away. Climate change is also creating an imperative to rapidly ramp up in things like the manufacturing and installation of solar panels and anything else that can be done to curtail and reverse greenhouse gas emissions.
When you deep discount merchandise to the point where you're taking a loss on it so that you can drive your competitor out of business, that's anti-competitive pricing.
They could do two things that would let them continue on their way (of removing the 3.5mm port) but would stand a good chance of satisfying consumers.
1) Add a second USB-C port. With two ports one can be used for an accessory while the other is used for charging. No expensive and often proprietary splitter required.
2) Instead of a straight simple dongle that just converts 3.5mm to USB-C, design a dongle that clips onto the 3.5mm jack and prevents it from easily falling off, but instead of just USB-C on the other side have it be both USB-C and 3.5mm (effectively a Y cable).
These rules actually seem rather sensible to me.
A) The prohibition against special discounts prevents either company from discounting their merchandise in an anti-competitive manner that would drive out local businesses.
B) The prohibition against selling exclusive products makes it so that if Amazon wants to sell Echo and Fire devices in India, then they have to allow Indian resellers to stock and sell the products as well. The same would apply to any of their other private labels (like Amazon Basics). This prevents them from having a monopoly on sales of anything carrying their brand in India. This is sensible separation that should exist between Amazon's manufacturing business and it's internet storefront business.
We've gotten so used to anti-monopolistic policies not being enforced in the US that we've forgotten what they even are. No company is supposed be allowed to become an Umbrella company that makes, sells and supplies everything.
How much has Amazon's manufacturing arm benefited from the huge exposure platform provided by their storefront? I couldn't tell you the last time I went to Amazon's front page and didn't have a giant Fire or Echo ad shoved in my face.
How many businesses has Walmart put under every time it moves into an area and used anti-competitive price structures built off of paying their employees the least amount possible along with the fewest benefits they can get away with?
Australia Pushes Citizens to Use VPN Services.
Next Week: Australia joins China in banning the use of VPNs that give Citizens access to prohibited resources outside the country.
Why do people who have no experience with VR feel the need to constantly chime in on its supposed failings?
Wrong supposition mate. I own both a PSVR and a Daydream headset. Just because you don't find it to be a nuisance, doesn't mean it's the same for everyone else.
If by absorbing it we convert it to electrical energy instead of heat energy, then it should be a net positive effect? Granted, as far as scale is concerned it's probably a negligible difference, but, still a difference.
Ideally, I think the device should be able to handle that problem internally, such that wearing it can be done without additional glasses. Whether that means the lenses of it need to be flexible in such a way that they can adjust to compensate for the user's eyes or whether that can be done by digitally adjusting the display image is something they'll have to figure out.
If they can manage that, then a device like this might even be able to replace prescription glasses someday. For instance, smart glasses that auto adjust their magnification based on your eyes trying to focus on something far away or right in front of you, or as replacement for bifocals so that you don't have to have one lens trying to improve both near and far vision.
The current tech behind VR makes the experience one that most people are not interested in. The headsets are bulky and heavy. The lenses constantly fog up and get dirty. The wires, external cameras, extra processing units are all absurd.
If the industry wants people adopt and enjoy VR they need to refine the tech to a point where it's seamless. A VR headset needs to be no bulkier than a pair of sunglasses with earbuds attached and a small wire down to a walkman sized device or smartphone (if necessary, an external processor can still be allowed as long as it transmits the data wirelessly to the walkman/smartphone with a good range.) I'd lean more to a separate device rather than a smart phone because then it could have a standardized swappable battery. The controller interface should be intuitive and intelligent. A pair of one size fits all thin gloves that go back to a bracelet/watch band sized battery & transmitter perhaps.
Ideally, the VR sunglasses should not be completely opaque. It should be possible to pause the experience and have the shades "turn off" so you can see the environment around you without having to remove them. Cameras also need to be included on them along with a visual feedback system to warn you if something is in the way. Personally, I don't think it's entirely necessary for them to be completely enclosed either (although the option can be allowed for with clip on side shades or something). Not sure if having the peripheral vision exposed will make people more likely to get motion sick or less though. Granted, it might cut down on the immersion level a bit by being able to see things in the periphery, but, given that the current offerings are like peering through a pair of binoculars all the time, I think the experience would be far superior. And given that the future is probably more AR than VR, having the periphery open wouldn't hurt much and it'd significantly cut down on the fogging.
TLDR: Was this stage of VR tech and deployment necessary? Yeah, probably. It revealed new problems that need solving. Was it the stage that was going to bring VR mainstream? Hell, no.
I expect that in the 32 years prior to 2050, if our supply of "rare earths" becomes an issue then we'll either find a way to create them artificially or find alternative elements or methods that don't require them.
The same is probably true of suddenly sucking up all that light energy which should be reflecting around and warming things over a huge portion of the Earth's surface.
Considering that too much of that light energy being trapped and reflected around thanks to greenhouse gases is the problem causing climate change, absorbing more of it should only benefit us in combating the problem.
I think it's more likely that they want to charge the originating companies extra fees for the ability to send text messages to their customers rather than charge the customers more themselves.
Hence my comments regarding taking a moment to plan for such a trip and a stop at a quick charger for a recharge. College towns - particularly if you're driving that far to get to one, probably have chargers available somewhere in the vicinity. A stopover at one of these locations long enough to eat lunch or dinner should charge up a vehicle enough for the drive home.
Failing that, a $50 a day car rental for a day a few times a year isn't going to break the bank when an EV is probably saving you that much or more every month in fuel costs. As for your theme park scenario, the same pretty much applies - if there's an extra parking fee to use a charger at the theme park, the cost is going to be far less than what you're already saving.
In the event that either of those scenarios are that distasteful to you, you have the option of buying a plug-in hybrid and getting the best of both worlds. Yes, you'll still pay a premium for the technology over a regular vehicle, but, you will save that money back in the long run. I had to run those numbers myself before I purchased a Prius many years ago. At the time investment in hybrid tech was about a $3000 premium over an equivalent non-hybrid vehicle (although mine isn't a plug-in version). But, getting ~45 mpg compared to ~32 mpg made up the price of that premium after about 4 years or so, even with gas prices coming back down.
Btw, it's not just fuel that you save on when purchasing an EV or Hybrid vehicle, they also require less maintenance in certain areas compared to an ICE vehicle. Both a hybrid and EV will rely less on brakes and more on regenerative braking, so you'll need to replace the brake pads far less often. For a hybrid the ICE is not used or stressed as heavily, so it can go longer between maintenance windows. An EV will require even less maintenance, since compared to a hybrid or even a regular ICE vehicle the power train on an EV is much simpler.
Would you have stopped the analog to digital cable tv switchover by refusing to let the government subsidize the population with free set-top boxes to decode the new digital signals?
When it comes to the roll-out of a nationwide change to a new standard, ie electric vehicles, it is impossible to accomplish that change with the capitalist market alone. There is a giant chicken and egg scenario with electric vehicles. You can't encourage the develop nor the purchase of said vehicles if nowhere exists to charge them, and you can't convince anyone to install chargers when there are no electric vehicles for them to service.
Also, $4 billion dollars? You're quibbling about $4 billion dollars on a national scale? In the last couple years they increased the military budget from $580 billion in 2016 to $686 billion for 2019 - meanwhile the Pentagon failed it's audit without being able to account for $21 trillion dollars of it's assets.
A lot of the "subsidies" fossil fuel companies receive are tax based, ie they get significant discounts on their tax liability. While this may be comparable to other businesses, fossil fuel companies hold a somewhat unique position among corporations that do damage to the environment and pollute the air and water. This pollution harms the health of anyone and everyone living near it. So they should be taxed more harshly than other corporations that do not pollute the environment to either pay for the environmental cleanup or subsidize the treatment of the health issues that their pollution causes.
I would argue the same treatment be applied to any and every corporation that pollutes in a similar manner/scale.
Multiple investments in R&D are already working out alternative battery designs using more common materials with varying capacities. It's only a matter of time until these ventures provide the fruit needed to feed the increased demand for large capacity batteries.
Arguably few consumers need to be able to travel more than 300 miles in a given day, and with an EV you have the option of starting every day off with a full charge from your home charger. EV range, depending on configuration, can reach over this 300 mile mark now and will likely only continue to improve.
The larger difficulty is that quick charge stations are not available in all areas, so if you're making a longer trip you need to plan ahead on where you're going to stop to recharge along the way and for the time delay necessary to recharge (~30 minutes at a quick charge station).
The price of quick charging at a Tesla Super Charger still works out to be about half what you'd pay for a full tank of gas (though that may vary by region).
In my experience with HDDs you'll usually get some warning that your drive has issues before it completely calls it quits. Whether it's bad sectors turning up or noises from the drive itself. If you pay attention to that (and you're a little lucky), you can manage to salvage most of the drive's contents before it dies completely.
With an SSD one minute it's working completely fine and the next it's completely gone. While most of the data itself is probably still perfectly intact on the flash memory, getting at it is completely impossible (afaik) without going to a professional recovery service.
One could say that it's only 99% frivolous. Playing an FPS like Doom would test and build the player's ability to react to visual stimuli with small hand gestures as well as test a player's memory and exploration skills (where was the door this blue key goes to again?).
Not exactly skills that have significant application in the real world, unless you're remote piloting a drone and navigating with only it's camera for reference.
Fortnite being produced by Epic Games, which is 40% owned by Chinese Tencent, I'm a little surprised at the Fortnite ban. I guess "fantasy violence" they're ok with, but anything with "normal" guns must be a no-no.
Moving for a new job is an expensive proposition. Will someone benefit in the long run? Possibly, maybe even probably. But when most Americans can't even afford a $400 emergency they're not going to be able to afford moving to a different part of the country unless the new employer picks up the entire tab.
Assuming you can snag a job that lets you afford to live in either place.
There are only so many people that want/need to buy smartphones just like there are only so many people that want/need to own cars. Once you've saturated the market the only new sales you get are those replacing older models and those reaching an age where they buy their first smartphone while losing the sales that would have gone to people that can no longer use a smartphone (whether that's due to age, health, or death).
If there are no new markets for manufacturers to sell to, then there's little new growth to be found. Realistically, there is zero wrong with this situation. It's only the capitalistic mindset, the mindset of greed, that demands to see profits grow every quarter. A stable annual profit in the billions of dollars is nothing to sneeze at. And in a market with a decent amount of non-colluding competitors, this situation is actually to a consumer's advantage since individual companies that can't acquire new markets to feed growth, will instead offer discounts and features to try and steal their competitors' market share.
The only thing they really have to worry about in this scenario, is for some product to come along that makes the smartphone obsolete. Not sure that product exists though, unless someone invents a neural link interface (not that Musk isn't trying).