Over here accidents are considered to be alcohol-related if the driver is over the legal limit, and if the accident is deemed to be caused or exacerbated by the intoxication (in order words: not an accident that would have happened if the driver were sober). Of course the latter point isn't always clear, in which case they'll err on the side of it being DUI-related.
As for phone use while driving, statistics do show that hey have caused a massive increase in accidents, but the actual accidents in this case are almost all rear-enders and other more or less serious fender benders; deaths caused by driving while on a cellphone are rare. I see most distracted drivers on the highways rather than in areas with cyclists or pedestrians, so I wonder how they arrived at this figure.
The problem with Objective-C is not baggage, but what it lacks. Like easy to use constructs to handle asynchronous calls, e.g.: "Connect to this website, make this request when the connection is established, wait for an answer, and do this when it comes through, and in the meantime continue running the rest of the app", in other words the better part of control flow in typical apps. Doing this in a language like C# results in much cleaner code. Can't speak for Swift, though.
Data is their business. Presumably they have the raw data necessary to come up with this map, maybe they will even publish it as a freebie, but for them it'll probably just be a little exercise in machine learning, to see what else they can glean from the piles of other data they have. Maybe map this population data to affluence, sexual preference, age, political leaning, spending patterns... and that good stuff they can sell.
Netflix DRM is not the really issue here, it’s DRM in general and the industry’s insistence that it actually be used. And it’s been like this since DRM was invented: it always came with some downside for the honest consumer, who is effectively being punished for being honest. DRM is fine when it’s seamless, except for denying people their fair-use rights (making a copy/recording for personal use). But in practise it’s not always seamless. We should not have to deal with this crap, nor spend a few bucks “fixing our tool chain”. I spent enough, on media player devices, AV receivers, TVs... all fully HDMI compliant, including the cables, up to the right version. And judging from my time spent googling these issues, I’m not the only one having these gremlins. Stuff just works better without DRM
Their words: “user experience” is almost always a euphemism for tightening down DRM.
Hey Netflix, I’ll tell you what a piss-poor user experience really is: having a setup that used to work flawlessly but suddenly shows a big unfriendly HDCP error when trying to play Netflix content, leaving me to randomly unplug, power cycle, and reconnect all devices in the chain for 15 minutes until the message disappears. I’ll tell you one thing: I don’t get any of that crap when dealing with the Pirate Bay.
I’ve pirated content from Netflix on a few occasions. Why? Because I pay my sub same as everyone else, but the selection they offer here is rather limited compared to that in the US. And the content I was after was not available here through other channels either. No bad feelings about that: either take my money or shut up about “piracy”.
I believe it. But if it's Silicon Valley (i.e. big business) basically calling the shots, then they will be exactly as nice as they deem necessary to keep us from revolting, and not a sou more. In other words: if you are unemployed, off you go to your TerraFoam* tenement block where you will find the food, shelter and entertainment you need. Of course it will not be long until you will be told to ("asked") not to leave your social housing district, and once the robot guards are in place, they can slowly reduce your benefits, because what are you going to do about it. And perhaps at some point they'll slip a sterilizing agent into your food, because who the hell needs more deadbeats. If we are not careful, the poor will die out while the rich will inherit the Earth. If AI will indeed make the majority of workers redundant, then we will have to move to some form of UBI and socialism, although that does not necessarily mean we will have a planned economy instead of a free market.
*) Read "Manna" by Marshall Brain, a free short SF story on this very subject.
Now, if they can just get past those sticky issues of Tesla's crashing
It also wouldn't hurt to add a manually actuated emergency brake and manual door opening levers for those times when the electronics and/or software goes wrong [zerohedge.com]
Issues which have bugger all to do with the fact that it's an EV. Also, you should seriously consider to find better sources than Zerohedge. As for the burning Teslas, that's only a handful.
Many cars are retired because of expensive issues related to the (petrol) engine or drive train. Though there are some other issues common to both types of cars: rust, suspension issues, broken climate control, or electric gremlins that are hard to catch and expensive to fix. And some parts are unique to EVs, such as the drive battery which should last a long long time. There's the battery conditioning stuff (heater/cooler) that could be a magnet for trouble, as well as the charger and drive circuits. The motors themselves generally aren't that expensive to replace. Hard to say what will give out first, as there aren't many older high milage EVs on the road yet. But perhaps EVs will actually last longer.
The way things are going with EVs, we're seeing prices come down and range coming up, to the point where these cars become affordable and serve 99% of drivers' needs. You wouldn't get a range extender for that 1% of edge cases, in those cases you'd just rent a long range car.
Removing weight and cost by removing batteries and reducing the range from, say, 500km to 150km, and adding a range extender might make for an interesting business case. In that case the battery range might cover only 80% of your trips, but the range extender would cover the full remaining 20%. The question is: will such a car be around the same price and weight as a full EV one?
Several studies put the useful life of Tesla batteries at around 500k miles, at which point it'll have 80% of its original capacity. There are quite a few Teslas here with 150-300k km on the clock, and the batteries in those cars confirm those numbers. Some are a bit worse: taxi vehicles that are mostly charged on fast chargers which affects battery life, but in general it appears that battery life is hardly going to be an issue. Not before the car racks up the kind of mileage at which regular ICE cars will long be retired.
The few people driving EVs I know all love 'em. And their next cars will also be EVs.
They don't have to talk them down. If refusing to pander to advertisers would open them up to shareholder lawsuits, so would pushing their biggest earners off the site and letting viewership (and with it ad revenue) dwindle. In other words, they are free to follow their strategy for the site as long as it does not obviously harm long term revenue (which it doesn't in either case)
It would make for an interesting part in a talk on diversity of opinion. I'd say that the paradox of tolerance has been misused a lot lately, in fact "don't tolerate intolerance" has become a rallying cry for those who aim to censor not just intolerant speech, but any opposing viewpoint as well simply by labeling it as "intolerant", and the progenitor as well, in order to forever brand him as unworthy of any public platform.
That doesn't mean that the paradox isn't real. But inviting a diversity of opinion does not necessarily mean inviting all opinions including the truly intolerant ones; it is mostly an invitation to get out of your own echo chamber and try to break open the echo chambers of others: there is no clash between the paradox of tolerance and diversity of opinion. There might be a line of tolerance we have to draw somewhere, but that's more interesting to address in a debate than a TED talk.
"maybe we don't need" and "we don't have to" are weasel words that are the hallmark of censorship czars. We don't "need" violent videos, but by the same token we do not "need" hate speech, nor do we "need" right-wing conspiracies nor left-wing agitprop. We don't "need" to see any argument between opposing viewpoints at all, nor unsettling images of natural disasters or chemical spills, or anything else at all that might upset the precious snowflakes we have created by "thinking of the children" in everything we do. In fact why show anything on TV at all except videos of kittens?
The common good? Freedom of speech is one of the most important common goods that we have. Cherish it.
Sensationalism became the norm, and outrage the response
Kind of exactly what happened to the History channel and similar channels, that moved from documentaries and educational content to Pawn Stars and Storage Wars. And just like on TV, there is plenty of good stuff on YT as well, sensationalist rubbish notwithstanding, and it isn't always the rubbish that is most popular either
Why would you use ugly word like word "entitled"? It seems only fair that popular content creators get paid part of the advertising dollars they helped generate. If a TV network decided not to pay the creators of a TV show for a certain "controversial" episode after airing it, and as a result the writers, actors, sound guys, stage hands and everyone else on that show would go unpaid for their work as a result, would you call them "entitled whiners" as well? Especially if the network continues to air that episode in reruns?
Advertisers are always moaning about their precious image, and are always pushing to exert control over the content shown around their ads. Google could have just told them to advertise on YT on Google's terms, or kindly leave. And while they might have lost a few advertisers who are genuinely concerned about portraying a "family friendly" image, the bulk of them would think twice before abandoning such a rich treasure trove of eyeballs. Unless there's a good alternative, which there isn't; YT is the undisputed king in this space. Instead, Google decided to open this particular can of worms, and they will now have to deal with ever stricter norms from advertisers to clean up the channels. And the more YT turns into a regular TV channel, the more viewers and content creators alike will turn away. Maybe we'll soon see some competition in this space...
Here's one: "Why diversity of opinion is vital". Or a more sensationalist variant: "How the decline in tolerance of opposing viewpoints is killing us and our kittens"
So you'd want to ban antivaxxer propaganda. But think: not that long ago it would have been your opinion on the matter that would have been banned, not theirs. Free speech and censorship work both ways.
Not sure about VW, but on many vehicles you can fill the tank yourself. Many petrol stations sell AdBlue right at the pump. Still, not having to worry about filling it would be a selling point I suppose.
This time it's not about the environment or deceiving pollution tests, but about collusion between 3 major market players, which goes against antitrust regulation.
Anyone can apply for a TLD as long as you own any applicable copyright. In case the TLD covers a geographic region, the ICANN panel determines if the domain should be under governmental control: apparently there is a sub-board that looks at this stuff. That is clearly the case for national TLDs, might also be the case for TLDs covering states or provinces that have their own governments. It is much less clear in this case, with the TLD covering a somewhat arbitrary geographic region that spans 8 countries. Does their case have more merit than of a large, established corporation with clear copyright on the name, when the name itself comes from ancient Greece? I think the panel made the right decision to see if both parties could come to some sort of agreement. But if no agreement is reached, it seems fairer to award the TLD to the company with a clear plan and clear business case for using the name, as opposed to these disjoint government whose "claim" amounts to something something tourism sovereignty.
However I love how Amazon tried to buy off those countries with a couple of free Kindles...
Slashdot Mirror
You don't have to be "in the zone", just keep your eyes on the road where they belong.
Over here accidents are considered to be alcohol-related if the driver is over the legal limit, and if the accident is deemed to be caused or exacerbated by the intoxication (in order words: not an accident that would have happened if the driver were sober). Of course the latter point isn't always clear, in which case they'll err on the side of it being DUI-related.
As for phone use while driving, statistics do show that hey have caused a massive increase in accidents, but the actual accidents in this case are almost all rear-enders and other more or less serious fender benders; deaths caused by driving while on a cellphone are rare. I see most distracted drivers on the highways rather than in areas with cyclists or pedestrians, so I wonder how they arrived at this figure.
The problem with Objective-C is not baggage, but what it lacks. Like easy to use constructs to handle asynchronous calls, e.g.: "Connect to this website, make this request when the connection is established, wait for an answer, and do this when it comes through, and in the meantime continue running the rest of the app", in other words the better part of control flow in typical apps. Doing this in a language like C# results in much cleaner code. Can't speak for Swift, though.
Conducting criminal transactions on a website.
Why facebook?
Data is their business. Presumably they have the raw data necessary to come up with this map, maybe they will even publish it as a freebie, but for them it'll probably just be a little exercise in machine learning, to see what else they can glean from the piles of other data they have. Maybe map this population data to affluence, sexual preference, age, political leaning, spending patterns... and that good stuff they can sell.
Netflix DRM is not the really issue here, it’s DRM in general and the industry’s insistence that it actually be used. And it’s been like this since DRM was invented: it always came with some downside for the honest consumer, who is effectively being punished for being honest. DRM is fine when it’s seamless, except for denying people their fair-use rights (making a copy/recording for personal use). But in practise it’s not always seamless. We should not have to deal with this crap, nor spend a few bucks “fixing our tool chain”. I spent enough, on media player devices, AV receivers, TVs... all fully HDMI compliant, including the cables, up to the right version. And judging from my time spent googling these issues, I’m not the only one having these gremlins. Stuff just works better without DRM
Fair enough!
Their words: “user experience” is almost always a euphemism for tightening down DRM.
Hey Netflix, I’ll tell you what a piss-poor user experience really is: having a setup that used to work flawlessly but suddenly shows a big unfriendly HDCP error when trying to play Netflix content, leaving me to randomly unplug, power cycle, and reconnect all devices in the chain for 15 minutes until the message disappears. I’ll tell you one thing: I don’t get any of that crap when dealing with the Pirate Bay.
I’ve pirated content from Netflix on a few occasions. Why? Because I pay my sub same as everyone else, but the selection they offer here is rather limited compared to that in the US. And the content I was after was not available here through other channels either. No bad feelings about that: either take my money or shut up about “piracy”.
I believe it. But if it's Silicon Valley (i.e. big business) basically calling the shots, then they will be exactly as nice as they deem necessary to keep us from revolting, and not a sou more. In other words: if you are unemployed, off you go to your TerraFoam* tenement block where you will find the food, shelter and entertainment you need. Of course it will not be long until you will be told to ("asked") not to leave your social housing district, and once the robot guards are in place, they can slowly reduce your benefits, because what are you going to do about it. And perhaps at some point they'll slip a sterilizing agent into your food, because who the hell needs more deadbeats. If we are not careful, the poor will die out while the rich will inherit the Earth. If AI will indeed make the majority of workers redundant, then we will have to move to some form of UBI and socialism, although that does not necessarily mean we will have a planned economy instead of a free market.
*) Read "Manna" by Marshall Brain, a free short SF story on this very subject.
Now, if they can just get past those sticky issues of Tesla's crashing
It also wouldn't hurt to add a manually actuated emergency brake and manual door opening levers for those times when the electronics and/or software goes wrong [zerohedge.com]
Issues which have bugger all to do with the fact that it's an EV. Also, you should seriously consider to find better sources than Zerohedge. As for the burning Teslas, that's only a handful.
Many cars are retired because of expensive issues related to the (petrol) engine or drive train. Though there are some other issues common to both types of cars: rust, suspension issues, broken climate control, or electric gremlins that are hard to catch and expensive to fix. And some parts are unique to EVs, such as the drive battery which should last a long long time. There's the battery conditioning stuff (heater/cooler) that could be a magnet for trouble, as well as the charger and drive circuits. The motors themselves generally aren't that expensive to replace. Hard to say what will give out first, as there aren't many older high milage EVs on the road yet. But perhaps EVs will actually last longer.
The way things are going with EVs, we're seeing prices come down and range coming up, to the point where these cars become affordable and serve 99% of drivers' needs. You wouldn't get a range extender for that 1% of edge cases, in those cases you'd just rent a long range car.
Removing weight and cost by removing batteries and reducing the range from, say, 500km to 150km, and adding a range extender might make for an interesting business case. In that case the battery range might cover only 80% of your trips, but the range extender would cover the full remaining 20%. The question is: will such a car be around the same price and weight as a full EV one?
Several studies put the useful life of Tesla batteries at around 500k miles, at which point it'll have 80% of its original capacity. There are quite a few Teslas here with 150-300k km on the clock, and the batteries in those cars confirm those numbers. Some are a bit worse: taxi vehicles that are mostly charged on fast chargers which affects battery life, but in general it appears that battery life is hardly going to be an issue. Not before the car racks up the kind of mileage at which regular ICE cars will long be retired.
The few people driving EVs I know all love 'em. And their next cars will also be EVs.
Especially if it can only be serviced by "qualified mechanics", i.e. at the dealership. Sounds like more lock-in.
They don't have to talk them down. If refusing to pander to advertisers would open them up to shareholder lawsuits, so would pushing their biggest earners off the site and letting viewership (and with it ad revenue) dwindle. In other words, they are free to follow their strategy for the site as long as it does not obviously harm long term revenue (which it doesn't in either case)
It would make for an interesting part in a talk on diversity of opinion. I'd say that the paradox of tolerance has been misused a lot lately, in fact "don't tolerate intolerance" has become a rallying cry for those who aim to censor not just intolerant speech, but any opposing viewpoint as well simply by labeling it as "intolerant", and the progenitor as well, in order to forever brand him as unworthy of any public platform.
That doesn't mean that the paradox isn't real. But inviting a diversity of opinion does not necessarily mean inviting all opinions including the truly intolerant ones; it is mostly an invitation to get out of your own echo chamber and try to break open the echo chambers of others: there is no clash between the paradox of tolerance and diversity of opinion. There might be a line of tolerance we have to draw somewhere, but that's more interesting to address in a debate than a TED talk.
"maybe we don't need" and "we don't have to" are weasel words that are the hallmark of censorship czars. We don't "need" violent videos, but by the same token we do not "need" hate speech, nor do we "need" right-wing conspiracies nor left-wing agitprop. We don't "need" to see any argument between opposing viewpoints at all, nor unsettling images of natural disasters or chemical spills, or anything else at all that might upset the precious snowflakes we have created by "thinking of the children" in everything we do. In fact why show anything on TV at all except videos of kittens?
The common good? Freedom of speech is one of the most important common goods that we have. Cherish it.
Sensationalism became the norm, and outrage the response
Kind of exactly what happened to the History channel and similar channels, that moved from documentaries and educational content to Pawn Stars and Storage Wars. And just like on TV, there is plenty of good stuff on YT as well, sensationalist rubbish notwithstanding, and it isn't always the rubbish that is most popular either
Why would you use ugly word like word "entitled"? It seems only fair that popular content creators get paid part of the advertising dollars they helped generate. If a TV network decided not to pay the creators of a TV show for a certain "controversial" episode after airing it, and as a result the writers, actors, sound guys, stage hands and everyone else on that show would go unpaid for their work as a result, would you call them "entitled whiners" as well? Especially if the network continues to air that episode in reruns?
Advertisers are always moaning about their precious image, and are always pushing to exert control over the content shown around their ads. Google could have just told them to advertise on YT on Google's terms, or kindly leave. And while they might have lost a few advertisers who are genuinely concerned about portraying a "family friendly" image, the bulk of them would think twice before abandoning such a rich treasure trove of eyeballs. Unless there's a good alternative, which there isn't; YT is the undisputed king in this space. Instead, Google decided to open this particular can of worms, and they will now have to deal with ever stricter norms from advertisers to clean up the channels. And the more YT turns into a regular TV channel, the more viewers and content creators alike will turn away. Maybe we'll soon see some competition in this space...
Here's one: "Why diversity of opinion is vital". Or a more sensationalist variant: "How the decline in tolerance of opposing viewpoints is killing us and our kittens"
That "variety of reasons" does not include being a conservative. They also don't get to define what exactly constitutes "abuse".
So you'd want to ban antivaxxer propaganda. But think: not that long ago it would have been your opinion on the matter that would have been banned, not theirs. Free speech and censorship work both ways.
Not sure about VW, but on many vehicles you can fill the tank yourself. Many petrol stations sell AdBlue right at the pump. Still, not having to worry about filling it would be a selling point I suppose.
This time it's not about the environment or deceiving pollution tests, but about collusion between 3 major market players, which goes against antitrust regulation.
Anyone can apply for a TLD as long as you own any applicable copyright. In case the TLD covers a geographic region, the ICANN panel determines if the domain should be under governmental control: apparently there is a sub-board that looks at this stuff. That is clearly the case for national TLDs, might also be the case for TLDs covering states or provinces that have their own governments. It is much less clear in this case, with the TLD covering a somewhat arbitrary geographic region that spans 8 countries. Does their case have more merit than of a large, established corporation with clear copyright on the name, when the name itself comes from ancient Greece? I think the panel made the right decision to see if both parties could come to some sort of agreement. But if no agreement is reached, it seems fairer to award the TLD to the company with a clear plan and clear business case for using the name, as opposed to these disjoint government whose "claim" amounts to something something tourism sovereignty.
However I love how Amazon tried to buy off those countries with a couple of free Kindles...
You already have it.