I agree. Quitting a crap job or an abusive boss can be a deeply cathartic experience. If you're suffering from stress or burn-out, it is a great first step on the road to recovery. Don't miss out on such a deeply satisfying experience.
It’s not an easy problem to solve, as the article points out. Laziness has nothing to do with it. On the other hand, my last name has been flagged “offensive” for years... because it has an apostrophe in it which choked many websites, airline reservation systems, etc. That problem has been solved in the end, thanks to Bobby Tables.
Be glad. In the Netherlands a similar bill was just passed, and that one did include banning gas for heating and cooking, and includes existing buildings. All to be gas-free by 2030. For existing home, the cost of installing a heat pump and induction hob, beefing up insulation, replacing radiators and installing floor heating where needed, is estimated at 30k - 40k euro per household. Of course no one wants to touch the question of who is going to pay for all that.
I've seen those demos 20 years ago, it was pretty much lane keeping on highways or race tracks, adaptive cruise control as you say, and at the time there were some other demos showing self-parking cars, but none of it could even be called a prototype, they were proof-of-concepts unfit for public roads. Today, that technology can be had even on mid-range vehicles. Shrinking the hardware to the point where it can be offered in production vehicles is progress in itself.
The self-driving cars making the rounds today are way more capable than all that, and are already demonstrating dealing with the "real issues" such as recognizing street signs, traffic lights, other traffic and pedestrians, and using all that to navigate through city traffic. That's in no way comparable to those tech demos of 20 years ago, even though it's not ready for unsupervised driving just yet.
I believe self-driving cars will only end up being a really complicated train system
Even if that were the case - which I don't believe it will - there's advantages to be had. Imagine a fast train unimpeded by traffic jams, consisting of many tiny cars, each of which can detach from the train and drop its occupants off right where they need to be. From the standpoint of safety, speed and convenience this will beat both regular trains and cars, even if the occupants have to drive the car themselves part of the way, after it detaches from the "train".
I'm actually surprised about the progress that has been made already. I'm pretty optimistic about this stuff, but 5 years ago I would not have predicted that we would have come as far as we have, not just with experimental vehicles but with semi autonomous tech that is alerady available on high end consumer vehicles. Sure, there's false hopes and unrealistic expectations being raised, that's what Silicon Valley is all about after all, but this is not 5 decades out either. I think automakers like Tesla (if they're still around) will be offering this within 10 years. More importantly, I think insurance companies will start offering discounts to autonomous cars a few years after that. Because even now there's nothing to indicate that "many more will die" once these things hit the road, compared to the causalties caused by meat based drivers.
And getting these monstrosities on the same road as yourself turned out to be the right move. It's one thing to have a car drive itself around a test track - which is what most researchers have been doing until recently - and quite another to put one on an actual road. A large part of the progress of the last few years is made possible by the mountain of data gathered from test drives on public roads.
IIRC Oculus didn't have that much trouble getting funded, for both their initial product and subsequent developments. The article reads as a fair rundown of what Magic Leap is about and how it stacks up to the hype. Conclusion: it doesn't. Magic Leap had all the hallmarks of a classic Silicon Valley scam: incredibly impressive mock-ups coupled with impenetrable secrecy and no details on their actual product whatsoever, landing a few big fish in VC funding and dropping their names to convince other investors to attend their privileged, exclusive dog&pony shows. They promised a world-shaking game changer in AR technology, and turned out to be a mediocre also-ran with pretty much no new tech to offer. If I were one of the investors, I'd be cranky too.
So yeah, I'd rather have seen all that funding go to Oculus instead... except that they're now owned by Satan.
Of course you need identification systems. But surveillance isn't possible or meaningful without identification
You'd be surprised. Companies like Facebook are able to build detailed profiles of people who have never even had an account with them. They might even have the right name attached to it. Surveillance like that in the physical world has little to do with ID or biometric database in itself; it's about what is being scanned, stored and queried. If you show your ID to the store clerk at the off-license, he might remember your name but whatever, that's not surveillance. If he has to scan your ID and the info on it gets stored (probably attached to a list of your purchases) and shared with others, that's another matter. But if you're not asked to show ID because you're an old fuck like me, clearly over 18, the security camera will have a picture of your mug anyway; good enough for identification especially when cross referenced with other data points. Is the store camera footage shared with police or as security firm? Some of it is, and we've no idea what they do with it. You can be tracked without ID just fine.
A national ID system does not constitute a surveillance state, and it is not an essential ingredient of one either. It can help, and I agree that we should absolutely resist the tendency to ask for ID at every opportunity, because of "security", or convenience, or because "what do you have to hide?", but attacking national ID itself like the article does is missing the point.
What is a "competitive price" in this case? If you - as an indie writer - offer a full length novel at around $5, I'd consider that a low price. If $5 isn't competitive and too expensive for most, then you're right: prices are too low. But if you don't get to keep around $3 of every $5 e-book sale (before taxes), then the problem is entirely something else.
Software that is sold/licensed involves a complex licensing system that requires tracking and monitoring of software licenses to prevent the end-user from exploiting free copies.
That... sounds an awful lot like having to pay for the ammo used in your own execution. "We could distribute this software - almost - for free, but we incur enormous costs enforcing these licenses. And lawyers ain't exactly free, you know". That doesn't sound right.
These days it also seems to involve a persistent long-term effort to provide bug fixes and security updates for software that's already been produced.
That's fair enough. You could also charge for updates though. As for the companies' profits, of course they seem to want to maximize them so the next step is that you'll have to pay a monthly rent for that piece of software that has a near zero marginal cost to produce...
The Dutch tax is still just for company car drivers
47% of all new cars sold here are lease cars, and 87% of that on corporate leases. Not an insignificant market.
Yes, the Kona is already overbooked by years in some markets. Estimates in Norway are that a new order now won't be filled until late 2020
We'll see. It's rumoured that Hyundai is giving some priority to the Netherlands because of the change in taxation. Delivery time for the Ionic is listed as 6 months, the Kona estimated at 6-9 months, the Model 3, 6-12 months.
If you're fine with "econoboxy" interiors
Actual buttons > wood trim. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the interior. But who knows, I might go for a Model 3 once I've actually seen one.
The increase in tax for Dutch company car drivers is pretty dramatic. It’s not a 4% tax you have to pay once, it’s 4% of of value of the car that is added to your income every year. And in the highest tax bracket of around 50% - which all upper middle class people are in - that adds up: 3000 euro a year out of your net income (the cars are more expensive here: we pay 21% VAT)
Where on earth did you get the idea that Hyundai is only going to make around 15000 Kona Electric cars a year? They’ve got orders for 3000 of them already in the Netherlands alone, and that’s before the thing even hit the showrooms. I’m in the market for an EV myself and looked at the e-Golf, Ionic and Leaf: not enough range. But the Kona is an attractive alternative to the Model 3 and has a more attractive interior (I hate the “one touchscreen to rule them all” in the 3). It should also do better on the charging front though for my use case that’s not really an issue: I want the extra range so I can drive to work and back with power to spare for detours or other contingencies, while having to charge only at home, ever.
That’s just his definition. Other definitions of “indecent” that others have actually tried to enshrine into censorship include pornography (both vanilla and deviant), critique of Islam, calls for LGBT rights, “cultural appropriation” and so on. Indecency should never be sufficient to censor something; if you do, you are giving up free speech. Because pretty much every expression of culture or opinion offends someone’s idea of decency.
Free speech draws the line at explicit inciting of violence, the proverbial cry of “fire” in a theatre. But we should be free to insult and offend. And they way things are going it might not be a bad idea to actually put that explicitly in our respective constitutions.
[Kentley-Klay] has touted Zoox's strategy of building its own vehicles for full autonomy as wiser than the standard approach of retrofitting existing cars that Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo and others are taking
Why is that wiser? The problem with today's autonomous cars isn't getting the (retrofitted) car to do what it needs to do, it is figuring out what it needs to do based on available data from its sensors. That problem doesn't really change if you build a vehicle with autonomy in mind; it'll have to navigate the same roads as retrofitted cars and deal with the same conditions.
Besides discovery, the App store offers some additional value. They host the app, let users download (and pay!) for it with 1 click, handle VAT in all countries, and provide a platform where apps are vetted to some degree thus boosting buyer confidence in your app. For small time developers like me, that's worth something, maybe even 30% of the take. But at larger volumes the balance tips in favour of running your own distribution, except that Apple won't let you.
Please read the original post: "the people who did nothing once they found out". Those are the ones who failed. Not the people warning about the issues with that bridge, but the people ignoring those warnings.
it's the people who estimated the strength loss factor, not the people who did nothing once they found out.
They both failed at their jobs resulting in loss of life, by the sound of it. And maybe both will see jail time; after all Italy prosecuted a couple of geologists for failing to predict an earthquake.
It's not about applying for a job and not getting past the filter or the first round of selection, it is about applying for a job where none of the applicants will be hired; the company already picked someone but they are just going through the motions, for whatever reasons. It's fine to reject me if I'm not a good fit for the job, but don't waste my time inviting me to apply for a nonexistent opening.
I am willing to bet no one has ever gotten to the interview stage only to hear no correspondence anymore. Neither side has invested much effort in the resume stage,
I’ve looked at a few job postings where someone on the inside said “don’t bother applying for that one; it’s been filled already”. Which is good advice since in a lot of cases it’s plenty of work to submit a resume: you want to research the company a bit, tailor your resume to the position (and get it into their damn HR front end), write a good cover letter, etc. By the time the interview rolls around, the hard work has already been done, after that it’s just travel and a chat. So yeah, I’d be really pissed if I found out I submitted a resume for nothing, even if I wouldn’t go so far as to retaliate against a different random company.
That's another thing: why are they dropping the older stuff? And in more general terms: why are streaming services, in this age of digital abundance, finding it so hard to serve the "long tail", i.e. people looking for old series or classic movies? Why is it not profitable to serve one particular classic movie to perhaps 10 people a year, when having such movies available in vast numbers would translate to quite a bit of views and quite a good number of subscribers looking for just that sort of thing?
Very clever. That's 10 years in clink for you. You'll be in there with rapists, robbers, pedophiles... who are very likely to have received a lighter sentence than you.
the Netflix featured show that appears when you enter the app (on the Apple TV anyway) is probably the best way to get exposure for something
I'd think so to. And it's something that I have actually "interacted with" as they put it. But ads between episodes will just get skipped. If they can't be skipped... I will vote with my feet. If the ads are solely for my benefit and only to discover other shows, how about adding a setting that lets me turn off these ads in case I prefer to discover new shows another way?
I get so little exposure to ads these days that every one that slips through feels like a personal insult (the content of those ads also has something to do with that...). Youtube has ads; they are not easily blocked on Android TV devices, and they annoy the piss out of me even if they can be skipped with one tap after a few secs. Usually they are way too loud too. If they can't be skipped, I'll switch to watching something else.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. Quitting a crap job or an abusive boss can be a deeply cathartic experience. If you're suffering from stress or burn-out, it is a great first step on the road to recovery. Don't miss out on such a deeply satisfying experience.
It’s not an easy problem to solve, as the article points out. Laziness has nothing to do with it. On the other hand, my last name has been flagged “offensive” for years... because it has an apostrophe in it which choked many websites, airline reservation systems, etc. That problem has been solved in the end, thanks to Bobby Tables.
Be glad. In the Netherlands a similar bill was just passed, and that one did include banning gas for heating and cooking, and includes existing buildings. All to be gas-free by 2030. For existing home, the cost of installing a heat pump and induction hob, beefing up insulation, replacing radiators and installing floor heating where needed, is estimated at 30k - 40k euro per household. Of course no one wants to touch the question of who is going to pay for all that.
I've seen those demos 20 years ago, it was pretty much lane keeping on highways or race tracks, adaptive cruise control as you say, and at the time there were some other demos showing self-parking cars, but none of it could even be called a prototype, they were proof-of-concepts unfit for public roads. Today, that technology can be had even on mid-range vehicles. Shrinking the hardware to the point where it can be offered in production vehicles is progress in itself.
The self-driving cars making the rounds today are way more capable than all that, and are already demonstrating dealing with the "real issues" such as recognizing street signs, traffic lights, other traffic and pedestrians, and using all that to navigate through city traffic. That's in no way comparable to those tech demos of 20 years ago, even though it's not ready for unsupervised driving just yet.
I believe self-driving cars will only end up being a really complicated train system
Even if that were the case - which I don't believe it will - there's advantages to be had. Imagine a fast train unimpeded by traffic jams, consisting of many tiny cars, each of which can detach from the train and drop its occupants off right where they need to be. From the standpoint of safety, speed and convenience this will beat both regular trains and cars, even if the occupants have to drive the car themselves part of the way, after it detaches from the "train".
I'm actually surprised about the progress that has been made already. I'm pretty optimistic about this stuff, but 5 years ago I would not have predicted that we would have come as far as we have, not just with experimental vehicles but with semi autonomous tech that is alerady available on high end consumer vehicles. Sure, there's false hopes and unrealistic expectations being raised, that's what Silicon Valley is all about after all, but this is not 5 decades out either. I think automakers like Tesla (if they're still around) will be offering this within 10 years. More importantly, I think insurance companies will start offering discounts to autonomous cars a few years after that. Because even now there's nothing to indicate that "many more will die" once these things hit the road, compared to the causalties caused by meat based drivers.
And getting these monstrosities on the same road as yourself turned out to be the right move. It's one thing to have a car drive itself around a test track - which is what most researchers have been doing until recently - and quite another to put one on an actual road. A large part of the progress of the last few years is made possible by the mountain of data gathered from test drives on public roads.
IIRC Oculus didn't have that much trouble getting funded, for both their initial product and subsequent developments. The article reads as a fair rundown of what Magic Leap is about and how it stacks up to the hype. Conclusion: it doesn't. Magic Leap had all the hallmarks of a classic Silicon Valley scam: incredibly impressive mock-ups coupled with impenetrable secrecy and no details on their actual product whatsoever, landing a few big fish in VC funding and dropping their names to convince other investors to attend their privileged, exclusive dog&pony shows. They promised a world-shaking game changer in AR technology, and turned out to be a mediocre also-ran with pretty much no new tech to offer. If I were one of the investors, I'd be cranky too.
So yeah, I'd rather have seen all that funding go to Oculus instead... except that they're now owned by Satan.
Of course you need identification systems. But surveillance isn't possible or meaningful without identification
You'd be surprised. Companies like Facebook are able to build detailed profiles of people who have never even had an account with them. They might even have the right name attached to it. Surveillance like that in the physical world has little to do with ID or biometric database in itself; it's about what is being scanned, stored and queried. If you show your ID to the store clerk at the off-license, he might remember your name but whatever, that's not surveillance. If he has to scan your ID and the info on it gets stored (probably attached to a list of your purchases) and shared with others, that's another matter. But if you're not asked to show ID because you're an old fuck like me, clearly over 18, the security camera will have a picture of your mug anyway; good enough for identification especially when cross referenced with other data points. Is the store camera footage shared with police or as security firm? Some of it is, and we've no idea what they do with it. You can be tracked without ID just fine.
A national ID system does not constitute a surveillance state, and it is not an essential ingredient of one either. It can help, and I agree that we should absolutely resist the tendency to ask for ID at every opportunity, because of "security", or convenience, or because "what do you have to hide?", but attacking national ID itself like the article does is missing the point.
Only until you are asked to provide one at every opportunity: at the border, for credit card transactions, etc...
What is a "competitive price" in this case? If you - as an indie writer - offer a full length novel at around $5, I'd consider that a low price. If $5 isn't competitive and too expensive for most, then you're right: prices are too low. But if you don't get to keep around $3 of every $5 e-book sale (before taxes), then the problem is entirely something else.
Software that is sold/licensed involves a complex licensing system that requires tracking and monitoring of software licenses to prevent the end-user from exploiting free copies.
That... sounds an awful lot like having to pay for the ammo used in your own execution. "We could distribute this software - almost - for free, but we incur enormous costs enforcing these licenses. And lawyers ain't exactly free, you know". That doesn't sound right.
These days it also seems to involve a persistent long-term effort to provide bug fixes and security updates for software that's already been produced.
That's fair enough. You could also charge for updates though. As for the companies' profits, of course they seem to want to maximize them so the next step is that you'll have to pay a monthly rent for that piece of software that has a near zero marginal cost to produce...
The Dutch tax is still just for company car drivers
47% of all new cars sold here are lease cars, and 87% of that on corporate leases. Not an insignificant market.
Yes, the Kona is already overbooked by years in some markets. Estimates in Norway are that a new order now won't be filled until late 2020
We'll see. It's rumoured that Hyundai is giving some priority to the Netherlands because of the change in taxation. Delivery time for the Ionic is listed as 6 months, the Kona estimated at 6-9 months, the Model 3, 6-12 months.
If you're fine with "econoboxy" interiors
Actual buttons > wood trim. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the interior. But who knows, I might go for a Model 3 once I've actually seen one.
The increase in tax for Dutch company car drivers is pretty dramatic. It’s not a 4% tax you have to pay once, it’s 4% of of value of the car that is added to your income every year. And in the highest tax bracket of around 50% - which all upper middle class people are in - that adds up: 3000 euro a year out of your net income (the cars are more expensive here: we pay 21% VAT)
Where on earth did you get the idea that Hyundai is only going to make around 15000 Kona Electric cars a year? They’ve got orders for 3000 of them already in the Netherlands alone, and that’s before the thing even hit the showrooms. I’m in the market for an EV myself and looked at the e-Golf, Ionic and Leaf: not enough range. But the Kona is an attractive alternative to the Model 3 and has a more attractive interior (I hate the “one touchscreen to rule them all” in the 3). It should also do better on the charging front though for my use case that’s not really an issue: I want the extra range so I can drive to work and back with power to spare for detours or other contingencies, while having to charge only at home, ever.
You can have my car when you pry my cold dead fingers out of the wreckage.
That’s just his definition. Other definitions of “indecent” that others have actually tried to enshrine into censorship include pornography (both vanilla and deviant), critique of Islam, calls for LGBT rights, “cultural appropriation” and so on. Indecency should never be sufficient to censor something; if you do, you are giving up free speech. Because pretty much every expression of culture or opinion offends someone’s idea of decency.
Free speech draws the line at explicit inciting of violence, the proverbial cry of “fire” in a theatre. But we should be free to insult and offend. And they way things are going it might not be a bad idea to actually put that explicitly in our respective constitutions.
[Kentley-Klay] has touted Zoox's strategy of building its own vehicles for full autonomy as wiser than the standard approach of retrofitting existing cars that Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo and others are taking
Why is that wiser? The problem with today's autonomous cars isn't getting the (retrofitted) car to do what it needs to do, it is figuring out what it needs to do based on available data from its sensors. That problem doesn't really change if you build a vehicle with autonomy in mind; it'll have to navigate the same roads as retrofitted cars and deal with the same conditions.
In any case I really wish FB would stay the f*ck away from MRIs or anything medical, really.
Besides discovery, the App store offers some additional value. They host the app, let users download (and pay!) for it with 1 click, handle VAT in all countries, and provide a platform where apps are vetted to some degree thus boosting buyer confidence in your app. For small time developers like me, that's worth something, maybe even 30% of the take. But at larger volumes the balance tips in favour of running your own distribution, except that Apple won't let you.
Please read the original post: "the people who did nothing once they found out". Those are the ones who failed. Not the people warning about the issues with that bridge, but the people ignoring those warnings.
it's the people who estimated the strength loss factor, not the people who did nothing once they found out.
They both failed at their jobs resulting in loss of life, by the sound of it. And maybe both will see jail time; after all Italy prosecuted a couple of geologists for failing to predict an earthquake.
It's not about applying for a job and not getting past the filter or the first round of selection, it is about applying for a job where none of the applicants will be hired; the company already picked someone but they are just going through the motions, for whatever reasons. It's fine to reject me if I'm not a good fit for the job, but don't waste my time inviting me to apply for a nonexistent opening.
I am willing to bet no one has ever gotten to the interview stage only to hear no correspondence anymore. Neither side has invested much effort in the resume stage,
I’ve looked at a few job postings where someone on the inside said “don’t bother applying for that one; it’s been filled already”. Which is good advice since in a lot of cases it’s plenty of work to submit a resume: you want to research the company a bit, tailor your resume to the position (and get it into their damn HR front end), write a good cover letter, etc. By the time the interview rolls around, the hard work has already been done, after that it’s just travel and a chat. So yeah, I’d be really pissed if I found out I submitted a resume for nothing, even if I wouldn’t go so far as to retaliate against a different random company.
That's another thing: why are they dropping the older stuff? And in more general terms: why are streaming services, in this age of digital abundance, finding it so hard to serve the "long tail", i.e. people looking for old series or classic movies? Why is it not profitable to serve one particular classic movie to perhaps 10 people a year, when having such movies available in vast numbers would translate to quite a bit of views and quite a good number of subscribers looking for just that sort of thing?
Very clever. That's 10 years in clink for you. You'll be in there with rapists, robbers, pedophiles... who are very likely to have received a lighter sentence than you.
the Netflix featured show that appears when you enter the app (on the Apple TV anyway) is probably the best way to get exposure for something
I'd think so to. And it's something that I have actually "interacted with" as they put it. But ads between episodes will just get skipped. If they can't be skipped... I will vote with my feet. If the ads are solely for my benefit and only to discover other shows, how about adding a setting that lets me turn off these ads in case I prefer to discover new shows another way?
I get so little exposure to ads these days that every one that slips through feels like a personal insult (the content of those ads also has something to do with that...). Youtube has ads; they are not easily blocked on Android TV devices, and they annoy the piss out of me even if they can be skipped with one tap after a few secs. Usually they are way too loud too. If they can't be skipped, I'll switch to watching something else.