I would vastly rather have this than half hour waits. And what is the difference between this and hiring a few hundred thousand people from India or Africa to do the same job other than cost and the fact that most businesses would rather have this calling them because it is more understandable?
internet in general is the most complex, detailed conversation in most internet users' lives today. It is definitely being "listened to" and contains far more information than most realize - not just information pertaining to conversations you had but also your thoughts and opinions if they invoked a question in your mind that caused you to make a query. Simple information like what if any reviews you looked at while purchasing a product can speak volumes about the way you think.
Without legislation to ban all trackers and recording of requests by ISPs and others, that's pretty much just the way it is.
Eventually, AR will free us from these pocket displays, and we'll start the progression towards ubiquitous always-present AR. It won't peak until it is embedded in our eyeballs or wired to the optic nerve.
Yes, they will be employees of the small business, and they will have benefits. Amazon's site specifically says that they will require the companies to offer the employees paid time off.
But health insurance was not mentioned, and a company with less than 50 employees does not have to give health benefits much less health benefits meeting the minimum standards. So, as long as these companies stay under 50 employees, the small businesses are clear of the requirement. Amazon is clear too because they are not Amazon employees.
It is interesting then that Amazon's final goal for the companies was as much as 40 vans. So 40 drivers plus a few support people. Their minimum goal after the initial five vans is 20. That could also end up at 40 drivers if you push them to two shifts and be more cost effective. A lot lines up. These businesses would be foolhardy to expand beyond 49 unless they have found higher profit business to accompany the Amazon business.
The human eye can fully resolve a 6" 1080p display at about 9.5" assuming you don't have uncorrected presbyopia or farsightedness. This is about where most people I see watching video naturally place the phone and is equivalent to a 55" 1080p TV at the proper viewing distance of about 7 ft. Few hold it at arm's length while watching video. The display will also occupy a reasonable viewing angle at that point though you should pull it in to about 8" for a 30 degree field of view equivalent-to-theatre experience.
Wow. Ignoring the so-called HBO perk (I "cut the cord" precisely to stop paying for bundled media), this is a heavily limited plan. From the details of the $45/month "unlimited" level:
Data Restrictions: For all data usage, AT&T may temporarily slow data speeds during times of network congestion. Plan is not eligible for Stream Saver. For content we can identify as video, wireless streaming speed will be slowed to a max of 1.5Mbps, Standard Definition quality (about 480p). Video speed is capped at this amount, regardless of network device is on (for example 4G LTE). Ability to stream, video resolution, and other data usage (including speed) are not guaranteed, may vary, and be aected by a variety of other factors. Other restrictions apply. Tethering/mobile hotspot use prohibited (except Connected Cars).
So, basically, at any point in time they may lower speeds when some undefined level of "network congestion" has been met. What do you reckon the chances are that that won't be an almost always condition? But video from any known provider will be limited to 1.5Mbps and 480p at ALL times. And tethering is completely disabled.
Given that video and tethering are likely the two biggest reasons to get unlimited data on a phone, this seems like a pretty useless "unlimited" service. If you don't ever watch video or tether, you'll very likely stay within a 2GB or so limit on a cheaper plan with no problem, especially if you use WiFi for data where available.
This is just a creative attempt to avoid providing health benefits or paying the $2-3K per employee for not doing so. In the end, it moves the cost of the health of most of these employees to other tax payers - in effect, providing a huge government subsidy to Amazon in the form of health care for the employees they require.
As long as the (essentially) franchises keep their employee count under 50, none of them will have to provide insurance. At the same time, Amazon will probably brag at how they are promoting small business development.
Employers should be required to pay the cost of living for the employees they require to do business and health is a critical part of that. If they don't, their profits are coming from the fact that the government is partially paying for the employees necessary to make those profits.
Gilead just had a huge lesson in the area. Their blockbuster drug cured so much Hep-C that its sales have already plummeted. Cures are short hits. The boom-bust cycle can be more destructive to a company than just never having the boom.
Sports with robots as players have already arrived both physically and virtually.
The E-Sports industry is expected to surpass the $1 billion income mark next year. Though not autonomous or physical robots, this is still virtual robotics. And their viewership routinely surpasses professional sports.
Sports have long been a reflection of military activities. If we developed new sports to reflect the current battlefield, wouldn't they have to use robotics? Drones are robots and critical on the modern battlefield. Guided missiles are robots. Homing missiles are more advanced robots. There is so much automation going on in planes (many of which can't be flown without a computer to stabilize them) and tanks these days that they should be considered manned robots. Even a landmine is an autonomous mechanism that kills without command.
Also, with the introduction of a few sensors in the equipment that we probably should have anyway for safety reasons, big gains in the judgement accuracy of the systems can be made. It isn't fair to artificially limit the system to work with video just because we have to use eyes and ears.
Just wondering if there is an expert here who can translate these levels.
It was recently reported that India's water supply in the Punjab region has concentrations of Uranium as high as 579 ug/l, well above permissible WHO limits of 30 ug/l. Measurements as high as 1440 ug/l have occurred elsewhere in India. As one point of reference, New York's water was reported to have a high of 0.1ug/l though the US as a whole was stated to have an average of 1.17 ug/l which means there are some places higher. Finland had the highest number with 6000 ug/l as their max.
But, given that a liter of seawater is about 1025 grams, seawater at 3.3 parts per billion uranium/seawater would seem to translate to 3.22 ug per liter of freshwater.
This would seem to indicate that many regions of the world have far higher concentrations of uranium in their groundwater than what is present in seawater.
The statement that their is 500 times more Uranium in seawater than on land could still be true because groundwater is a small portion of land and there is so much more seawater than groundwater. But it would seem that the best application of the technology due to higher concentrations available would be in cleaning the Uranium out of some of our groundwater supplies. That would help the people in those areas while providing a large portion of the Uranium to meet the world's needs. A region using a billion gallons of water a day (I don't think this is an unusual number for 10 million people or so,,, NYC is higher) is using over 8 billion pounds of water. If its uranium concentration is high enough that filters made of this material could extract a few hundred pounds per billion, you could reach tons per day.
Replacing the entire world demand of around 70,000 tons per year does not appear achievable without processing the much lower concentrations in seawater, but I guestimate by looking at tables of groundwater concentrations around the world that half of the world supply could be achievable and it could help pay for providing fresh water.
My question is whether I am translating ppm to ug/l correctly. If ppb is ppb of weight, I think it is correct. But if it is ppb of atoms, then it is way off because a Uranium atom weighs so much more than the average atom in seawater. Does anyone know?
God please no! The hardest exam I ever had was in a solid state electronics class that was open book, bring your calculator (this was in the 80s when that was unusual), and use however much time you could stay there without falling asleep or consuming food. I took about 30 books into the exam, was one of the first to leave at about six hours into the six problem exam, and received a 26 out of 100 for my efforts - the highest score in the class.
If I took that exam with full internet access today, I do not believe it would be of any help. The problems required showing work that was greater than ten tight-packed pages each.
In general, I always found open book tests to be the scariest.
This does point out that perhaps the problem they are trying to solve by eliminating internet access is one created by their laziness as reflected in a test designed for automatic grading and could be alleviated by bringing back written problem solving and essay questions rather than shutting down the country's internet.
I always viewed exams as a measurement of myself against perfection, not as a measurement of myself against others. The exam score is for me alone. If I cheat, I've done nothing except deny myself the knowledge of where I am at and where I need to improve. Even when I "knew" the answer on an exam, I felt it was wrong if I couldn't explain it. I have an instinct for the right answer that can get in the way of finding whether I really know the material. So, sometimes I find it difficult not to cheat. I have left answers blank at times when I knew them but couldn't explain them.
The loss is the student's loss and choice. They may get away with the fraud for a while, but their lack of skill will show. They have cheated themselves out of the life they could have had. Even if they manage to cheat their whole lives, I can't imagine that at some level they don't know how disgusting they are.
I feel no pity for people who cheat. But, far more critically, I do not believe that any amount of rules and structure will actually change the rot at their core if they are at high school levels and still cheating. Reaching your greatest potential is far more important than achieving a fake contest win.
Tests should be about doing things correctly and efficiently using every tool at your disposal. I grant you that asking someone else for the answer shouldn't be allowed. But using a calculator, dictionary, etc is a skill that should be encouraged. We give too much advantage to those with great memory, or fast calculation capability and little intelligence (because their memory is so great and they haven't been required to use their intelligence or their calculation ability is so fast that they haven't had to abstract the shorter means of getting to the solution).
A toolmaker who doesn't know how to use their tools because they've been denied that learning process is not effective. You can have all the knowledge in the world and not be successful if you don't know how to efficiently apply it or haven't learned that all human knowledge is an abstraction of the full truth and thus to be taken with a grain of salt. People who "remember" instead of "understand" are the hardest to bring forward when science proves the old knowledge wrong and introduces a new one.
I have though I had not thought of that reference. It is really born from having a different memory. I am very bad at rote memorizing though I have great memory of what I would describe as the essence of things. It is both a gift and a handicap. Computers reduce the handicap side of it.
To truly equate my view to the story you have to twist the story a bit. The story posited a society condemned to sameness by reduction in variations we were born with. I think that we are committing a similar error in creating a society that limits our usage of the tools that are also our birthright - we are toolmakers.
In opposing augmentation we condemn humanity to what it is born with instead of what could be. I personally believe we should throw open the doors to whatever augmentation attempts people would like to try. It is ridiculous for our contests to prohibit the usage of the technology we have achieved. It is part of who we are and are becoming. Let whoever wants stay behind, but don't penalize the explorers.
Our lesser population density is no excuse for not having the best infrastructure in the world in our most populous cities or even states. California's population density is double that of France, slightly greater than Germany's, and nearly equal to Europe's population density as a whole. No excuse.
Sure, but a lot more do, and the application of people just wanting a "map" to view is not a market large enough to bother serving anymore.
Where you live and work is likely fully known by many people, businesses and the government. It isn't even controlled by you. I have my contact's addresses in my system so that I can just say "take me to [insert contact name]". I never have to state an address for a business. Google knows them all. You're also very likely to have tied your identity to your address through usage of your credit cards or phone number in getting deliveries. Not "telling" google does nothing but make it pretend it doesn't know for your sake.
This isn't even anything new. 50 years ago the phone books contained accurate addresses for everybody. It wasn't until later that people started asking that their addresses not be published in any meaningful numbers. We hadn't yet developed these weird antisocial fears of where we live being known.
I use google maps to go everywhere despite knowing fully well how to get everywhere that I go. It has redirected me around accidents that just occurred, avoided roads that were closed that I didn't know about, and taught me ways that are faster at certain times of the day on many occasions. Looking at traffic before leaving doesn't accomplish that. That methodology would just harm me for the sake of maintaining a fantasy that the system can't track me.
As to the privacy concerns, I don't do anything that I need to hide and feel that it is more likely to help provide an alibi in case of false accusation than anything. My wife and I share our locations 24/7, and I use the features that give my ETA when visiting people.
As to the subject of this article, no open data mapping system that does not provide the functionality necessary for applications of autonomous vehicle and drone guidance and AR will have any real chance of providing alternatives to the commercial systems for developing the open source applications of the future. In a relatively short time in development terms (if not today), the bulk of online map usage will be by systems, not people - hopefully, at least some open source systems. These systems need a lot more than lines on a map. A street layer without up to date knowledge of detours, construction, etc. is no longer even close to being enough. It is a single digit percentage of the problem space.
It seems that Google holds the data center requirements for Google Maps close to the belt. The only clue I could find is that in 2012 Google Maps had over 20 Petabytes of data. It's surely at least several times that by now and likely growing geometrically. That's a lot of expense. In 2014, their vehicles had scanned over 7 million miles. That's a hell of a lot of imagery to handle but it's what you have to do to map the world.
They likely handle peak loads on the order of millions of complex GIS operations per minute to maintain traffic data. And they perform and reperform (when they improve the AI they reprocess all stored imagery) super complex AI operations across the petabytes of imagery to keep all the street sign and other info up to date.
Of course I don't think there is a room full of humans doing this. All the billions of humans on Earth could not do what this system does. The users just feed mass amounts of data. The 24/7 processing of that data, much of it in realtime, to digest it into something useful in the moment is "in fact" not "cheap".
Wait till they add in the real time data harvest from all of the Waymo vehicles as the fleets hit the road. On the plus side for them, the Waymo feeds will likely be heavily preprocessed with signs and other elements already recognized. They'll be able to easily do things like real time mapping available parking spots using the passing Waymo vehicles in those areas.
We've been creating autonomous killers for millenia. Yes, they've been mostly static but they do kill in an unattended, automatic fashion. I guess the first were traps. Modern land mines are far more deadly.
Why would anyone believe that we're going to stop?
Agree. An up to the minute map with cm level accuracy, precise definition of lanes, heights of curbs, locations of potholes, weight limits, speed limits, sidewalk locations, crosswalk locations, etc. should be considered a safety critical part of a modern road just like the pavement.
Sure. Google spends billions, literally, on gathering and processing the data for Google Maps. Doing things like auto-detecting detours, auto-detecting construction zone changes, knowing where every lane in the road is, figuring out where the entrances to buildings are when users aren't telling you, and gathering realtime traffic data isn't cheap. Just how much do you intend to donate?
Certainly. If they made an app that just collected movement and location related data and stored it, I'd be in despite the privacy concerns. Many would balk at the privacy issues though even though they routinely allow google to collect their position data.
But, like your other responder said, that is just the tip of the iceberg of what is required to use the data.
First, you must have a high density of users. For example consider the problem of detecting bus stops. One user getting onto a bus, riding it to a stop, and getting off tells you nothing. You could tell that they transitioned from walking to riding at a point and back to walking at another point. But they could be getting into a car. Many users transitioning from walking to riding at the same point in close proximity to others who were riding, stop, and then continue riding tends to indicate a bus stop - especially if it happens many times a day. To determine traffic conditions, you need users traveling all of the major roads at all times. To determine that a road might be closed for construction with a detour, you need many regular travelers suddenly changing routine. etc. etc.
Then you need to have the processing power to process all of that all of the time. Despite the cost of the developers, this is your real cost. It is hefty enough that you might consider going beyond FPGAs and taping custom silicon to CUT COSTS! The storage isn't going to be cheap either. Much of the data will need to be kept to enable future observations as evidence accumulates.
Google literally spends billions on producing and maintaining their map data. That is not because they have so much money that they have no problem with throwing it away. That is what it takes.
I personally believe that much of this dataset should fall under the government umbrella as necessary basic infrastructure. It seems wrong that anyone might ever be harmed in an accident because their vehicle provider's data was out of date when another's wasn't. The data is rapidly reaching the point of becoming safety critical. A roadway, sidewalk, or trail is no longer a completely functional unit without a public dataset that precisely defines it and is kept up to date with its condition.
Exactly. Anthropological studies have also been generally pointing toward a continual drop in intelligence as civilization has advanced over the past few thousand years.
The brain is like a muscle. Use it or lose it or, in this case, never develop it.
It would be interesting to look at changes in expression of those genes that we have identified as having IQ contributions across the age groups. The question that might answer is how much of the difference is just related to lesser training of the neural networks during the appropriate growth stages or the reduced usage of IQ related skills caused epigenetic changes (perhaps to waste less energy).
Hand editing data will never achieve something to compete with google maps which is far more than just a streetmap. Google also has real-time traffic data, streetview, and sidewalk / path data sufficient to help me get to a destination's door. I use all of this on a near-daily basis and would love to see open source applications that compete with this functionality. I agree that the open data is critical to that but...
Without fleets of vehicles and massive amounts of data center processing to convert images to information, how do we get there?
The best possibility I can think of for getting much of it would be to attract large numbers of people to run an app that tracks them at high resolution and donate the data. But there are problems.
How do you attract users to run the app? Google does it with their real-time driving directions app, but that presents a chicken - egg problem because you've got to get within reach of their capabilities to attract users to get the data necessary to get within reach of their capabilities.
How do you pay for the compute time to process the live data into useful information such as realtime traffic flow, most used entrances, sidewalk paths, locations that must be missing a road on the map (many users crossed at driving speed from point A to point B where no road exists), etc.
Assuming you could crack collecting the data, how would you pay for server space for street view data?
Realistically, the only way I can see getting open data of this size and complexity is for governments or large groups of companies to pay for it and choose to make it open data.
Disney is the eventual Netflix competitor. They've already announced pulling their content deals from Netflix to go it on their own. Comcast has already tried to buy Disney, perhaps in anticipation of the end of net neutrality. Now would be a very good time to revive that discussion. They could go from positioning to be a strong Netflix competitor to a position of dominance overnight.
Slashdot Mirror
I would vastly rather have this than half hour waits. And what is the difference between this and hiring a few hundred thousand people from India or Africa to do the same job other than cost and the fact that most businesses would rather have this calling them because it is more understandable?
internet in general is the most complex, detailed conversation in most internet users' lives today. It is definitely being "listened to" and contains far more information than most realize - not just information pertaining to conversations you had but also your thoughts and opinions if they invoked a question in your mind that caused you to make a query. Simple information like what if any reviews you looked at while purchasing a product can speak volumes about the way you think.
Without legislation to ban all trackers and recording of requests by ISPs and others, that's pretty much just the way it is.
Eventually, AR will free us from these pocket displays, and we'll start the progression towards ubiquitous always-present AR. It won't peak until it is embedded in our eyeballs or wired to the optic nerve.
Yes, they will be employees of the small business, and they will have benefits. Amazon's site specifically says that they will require the companies to offer the employees paid time off.
But health insurance was not mentioned, and a company with less than 50 employees does not have to give health benefits much less health benefits meeting the minimum standards. So, as long as these companies stay under 50 employees, the small businesses are clear of the requirement. Amazon is clear too because they are not Amazon employees.
It is interesting then that Amazon's final goal for the companies was as much as 40 vans. So 40 drivers plus a few support people. Their minimum goal after the initial five vans is 20. That could also end up at 40 drivers if you push them to two shifts and be more cost effective. A lot lines up. These businesses would be foolhardy to expand beyond 49 unless they have found higher profit business to accompany the Amazon business.
The human eye can fully resolve a 6" 1080p display at about 9.5" assuming you don't have uncorrected presbyopia or farsightedness. This is about where most people I see watching video naturally place the phone and is equivalent to a 55" 1080p TV at the proper viewing distance of about 7 ft. Few hold it at arm's length while watching video. The display will also occupy a reasonable viewing angle at that point though you should pull it in to about 8" for a 30 degree field of view equivalent-to-theatre experience.
Wow. Ignoring the so-called HBO perk (I "cut the cord" precisely to stop paying for bundled media), this is a heavily limited plan. From the details of the $45/month "unlimited" level:
Data Restrictions: For all data usage, AT&T may temporarily slow data speeds during times of network congestion. Plan is not eligible for Stream Saver. For content we can identify as video, wireless streaming speed will be slowed to a max of 1.5Mbps, Standard Definition quality (about 480p). Video speed is capped at this amount, regardless of network device is on (for example 4G LTE). Ability to stream, video resolution, and other data usage (including speed) are not guaranteed, may vary, and be aected by a variety of other factors. Other restrictions apply. Tethering/mobile hotspot use prohibited (except Connected Cars).
So, basically, at any point in time they may lower speeds when some undefined level of "network congestion" has been met. What do you reckon the chances are that that won't be an almost always condition? But video from any known provider will be limited to 1.5Mbps and 480p at ALL times. And tethering is completely disabled.
Given that video and tethering are likely the two biggest reasons to get unlimited data on a phone, this seems like a pretty useless "unlimited" service. If you don't ever watch video or tether, you'll very likely stay within a 2GB or so limit on a cheaper plan with no problem, especially if you use WiFi for data where available.
This is just a creative attempt to avoid providing health benefits or paying the $2-3K per employee for not doing so. In the end, it moves the cost of the health of most of these employees to other tax payers - in effect, providing a huge government subsidy to Amazon in the form of health care for the employees they require.
As long as the (essentially) franchises keep their employee count under 50, none of them will have to provide insurance. At the same time, Amazon will probably brag at how they are promoting small business development.
Employers should be required to pay the cost of living for the employees they require to do business and health is a critical part of that. If they don't, their profits are coming from the fact that the government is partially paying for the employees necessary to make those profits.
Gilead just had a huge lesson in the area. Their blockbuster drug cured so much Hep-C that its sales have already plummeted. Cures are short hits. The boom-bust cycle can be more destructive to a company than just never having the boom.
Sports with robots as players have already arrived both physically and virtually. The E-Sports industry is expected to surpass the $1 billion income mark next year. Though not autonomous or physical robots, this is still virtual robotics. And their viewership routinely surpasses professional sports.
Sports have long been a reflection of military activities. If we developed new sports to reflect the current battlefield, wouldn't they have to use robotics? Drones are robots and critical on the modern battlefield. Guided missiles are robots. Homing missiles are more advanced robots. There is so much automation going on in planes (many of which can't be flown without a computer to stabilize them) and tanks these days that they should be considered manned robots. Even a landmine is an autonomous mechanism that kills without command.
Also, with the introduction of a few sensors in the equipment that we probably should have anyway for safety reasons, big gains in the judgement accuracy of the systems can be made. It isn't fair to artificially limit the system to work with video just because we have to use eyes and ears.
Just wondering if there is an expert here who can translate these levels.
It was recently reported that India's water supply in the Punjab region has concentrations of Uranium as high as 579 ug/l, well above permissible WHO limits of 30 ug/l. Measurements as high as 1440 ug/l have occurred elsewhere in India. As one point of reference, New York's water was reported to have a high of 0.1ug/l though the US as a whole was stated to have an average of 1.17 ug/l which means there are some places higher. Finland had the highest number with 6000 ug/l as their max.
But, given that a liter of seawater is about 1025 grams, seawater at 3.3 parts per billion uranium/seawater would seem to translate to 3.22 ug per liter of freshwater.
This would seem to indicate that many regions of the world have far higher concentrations of uranium in their groundwater than what is present in seawater.
The statement that their is 500 times more Uranium in seawater than on land could still be true because groundwater is a small portion of land and there is so much more seawater than groundwater. But it would seem that the best application of the technology due to higher concentrations available would be in cleaning the Uranium out of some of our groundwater supplies. That would help the people in those areas while providing a large portion of the Uranium to meet the world's needs. A region using a billion gallons of water a day (I don't think this is an unusual number for 10 million people or so,,, NYC is higher) is using over 8 billion pounds of water. If its uranium concentration is high enough that filters made of this material could extract a few hundred pounds per billion, you could reach tons per day.
Replacing the entire world demand of around 70,000 tons per year does not appear achievable without processing the much lower concentrations in seawater, but I guestimate by looking at tables of groundwater concentrations around the world that half of the world supply could be achievable and it could help pay for providing fresh water.
My question is whether I am translating ppm to ug/l correctly. If ppb is ppb of weight, I think it is correct. But if it is ppb of atoms, then it is way off because a Uranium atom weighs so much more than the average atom in seawater. Does anyone know?
God please no! The hardest exam I ever had was in a solid state electronics class that was open book, bring your calculator (this was in the 80s when that was unusual), and use however much time you could stay there without falling asleep or consuming food. I took about 30 books into the exam, was one of the first to leave at about six hours into the six problem exam, and received a 26 out of 100 for my efforts - the highest score in the class.
If I took that exam with full internet access today, I do not believe it would be of any help. The problems required showing work that was greater than ten tight-packed pages each.
In general, I always found open book tests to be the scariest.
This does point out that perhaps the problem they are trying to solve by eliminating internet access is one created by their laziness as reflected in a test designed for automatic grading and could be alleviated by bringing back written problem solving and essay questions rather than shutting down the country's internet.
I always viewed exams as a measurement of myself against perfection, not as a measurement of myself against others. The exam score is for me alone. If I cheat, I've done nothing except deny myself the knowledge of where I am at and where I need to improve. Even when I "knew" the answer on an exam, I felt it was wrong if I couldn't explain it. I have an instinct for the right answer that can get in the way of finding whether I really know the material. So, sometimes I find it difficult not to cheat. I have left answers blank at times when I knew them but couldn't explain them.
The loss is the student's loss and choice. They may get away with the fraud for a while, but their lack of skill will show. They have cheated themselves out of the life they could have had. Even if they manage to cheat their whole lives, I can't imagine that at some level they don't know how disgusting they are.
I feel no pity for people who cheat. But, far more critically, I do not believe that any amount of rules and structure will actually change the rot at their core if they are at high school levels and still cheating. Reaching your greatest potential is far more important than achieving a fake contest win.
Tests should be about doing things correctly and efficiently using every tool at your disposal. I grant you that asking someone else for the answer shouldn't be allowed. But using a calculator, dictionary, etc is a skill that should be encouraged. We give too much advantage to those with great memory, or fast calculation capability and little intelligence (because their memory is so great and they haven't been required to use their intelligence or their calculation ability is so fast that they haven't had to abstract the shorter means of getting to the solution).
A toolmaker who doesn't know how to use their tools because they've been denied that learning process is not effective. You can have all the knowledge in the world and not be successful if you don't know how to efficiently apply it or haven't learned that all human knowledge is an abstraction of the full truth and thus to be taken with a grain of salt. People who "remember" instead of "understand" are the hardest to bring forward when science proves the old knowledge wrong and introduces a new one.
I have though I had not thought of that reference. It is really born from having a different memory. I am very bad at rote memorizing though I have great memory of what I would describe as the essence of things. It is both a gift and a handicap. Computers reduce the handicap side of it.
To truly equate my view to the story you have to twist the story a bit. The story posited a society condemned to sameness by reduction in variations we were born with. I think that we are committing a similar error in creating a society that limits our usage of the tools that are also our birthright - we are toolmakers.
In opposing augmentation we condemn humanity to what it is born with instead of what could be. I personally believe we should throw open the doors to whatever augmentation attempts people would like to try. It is ridiculous for our contests to prohibit the usage of the technology we have achieved. It is part of who we are and are becoming. Let whoever wants stay behind, but don't penalize the explorers.
... that way those that happen to have great memories can't cheat by accessing them.
Our lesser population density is no excuse for not having the best infrastructure in the world in our most populous cities or even states. California's population density is double that of France, slightly greater than Germany's, and nearly equal to Europe's population density as a whole. No excuse.
Sure, but a lot more do, and the application of people just wanting a "map" to view is not a market large enough to bother serving anymore.
Where you live and work is likely fully known by many people, businesses and the government. It isn't even controlled by you. I have my contact's addresses in my system so that I can just say "take me to [insert contact name]". I never have to state an address for a business. Google knows them all. You're also very likely to have tied your identity to your address through usage of your credit cards or phone number in getting deliveries. Not "telling" google does nothing but make it pretend it doesn't know for your sake.
This isn't even anything new. 50 years ago the phone books contained accurate addresses for everybody. It wasn't until later that people started asking that their addresses not be published in any meaningful numbers. We hadn't yet developed these weird antisocial fears of where we live being known.
I use google maps to go everywhere despite knowing fully well how to get everywhere that I go. It has redirected me around accidents that just occurred, avoided roads that were closed that I didn't know about, and taught me ways that are faster at certain times of the day on many occasions. Looking at traffic before leaving doesn't accomplish that. That methodology would just harm me for the sake of maintaining a fantasy that the system can't track me.
As to the privacy concerns, I don't do anything that I need to hide and feel that it is more likely to help provide an alibi in case of false accusation than anything. My wife and I share our locations 24/7, and I use the features that give my ETA when visiting people.
As to the subject of this article, no open data mapping system that does not provide the functionality necessary for applications of autonomous vehicle and drone guidance and AR will have any real chance of providing alternatives to the commercial systems for developing the open source applications of the future. In a relatively short time in development terms (if not today), the bulk of online map usage will be by systems, not people - hopefully, at least some open source systems. These systems need a lot more than lines on a map. A street layer without up to date knowledge of detours, construction, etc. is no longer even close to being enough. It is a single digit percentage of the problem space.
It seems that Google holds the data center requirements for Google Maps close to the belt. The only clue I could find is that in 2012 Google Maps had over 20 Petabytes of data. It's surely at least several times that by now and likely growing geometrically. That's a lot of expense. In 2014, their vehicles had scanned over 7 million miles. That's a hell of a lot of imagery to handle but it's what you have to do to map the world.
They likely handle peak loads on the order of millions of complex GIS operations per minute to maintain traffic data. And they perform and reperform (when they improve the AI they reprocess all stored imagery) super complex AI operations across the petabytes of imagery to keep all the street sign and other info up to date.
Of course I don't think there is a room full of humans doing this. All the billions of humans on Earth could not do what this system does. The users just feed mass amounts of data. The 24/7 processing of that data, much of it in realtime, to digest it into something useful in the moment is "in fact" not "cheap".
Wait till they add in the real time data harvest from all of the Waymo vehicles as the fleets hit the road. On the plus side for them, the Waymo feeds will likely be heavily preprocessed with signs and other elements already recognized. They'll be able to easily do things like real time mapping available parking spots using the passing Waymo vehicles in those areas.
We've been creating autonomous killers for millenia. Yes, they've been mostly static but they do kill in an unattended, automatic fashion. I guess the first were traps. Modern land mines are far more deadly.
Why would anyone believe that we're going to stop?
Agree. An up to the minute map with cm level accuracy, precise definition of lanes, heights of curbs, locations of potholes, weight limits, speed limits, sidewalk locations, crosswalk locations, etc. should be considered a safety critical part of a modern road just like the pavement.
Sure. Google spends billions, literally, on gathering and processing the data for Google Maps. Doing things like auto-detecting detours, auto-detecting construction zone changes, knowing where every lane in the road is, figuring out where the entrances to buildings are when users aren't telling you, and gathering realtime traffic data isn't cheap. Just how much do you intend to donate?
Certainly. If they made an app that just collected movement and location related data and stored it, I'd be in despite the privacy concerns. Many would balk at the privacy issues though even though they routinely allow google to collect their position data.
But, like your other responder said, that is just the tip of the iceberg of what is required to use the data.
First, you must have a high density of users. For example consider the problem of detecting bus stops. One user getting onto a bus, riding it to a stop, and getting off tells you nothing. You could tell that they transitioned from walking to riding at a point and back to walking at another point. But they could be getting into a car. Many users transitioning from walking to riding at the same point in close proximity to others who were riding, stop, and then continue riding tends to indicate a bus stop - especially if it happens many times a day. To determine traffic conditions, you need users traveling all of the major roads at all times. To determine that a road might be closed for construction with a detour, you need many regular travelers suddenly changing routine. etc. etc.
Then you need to have the processing power to process all of that all of the time. Despite the cost of the developers, this is your real cost. It is hefty enough that you might consider going beyond FPGAs and taping custom silicon to CUT COSTS! The storage isn't going to be cheap either. Much of the data will need to be kept to enable future observations as evidence accumulates.
Google literally spends billions on producing and maintaining their map data. That is not because they have so much money that they have no problem with throwing it away. That is what it takes.
I personally believe that much of this dataset should fall under the government umbrella as necessary basic infrastructure. It seems wrong that anyone might ever be harmed in an accident because their vehicle provider's data was out of date when another's wasn't. The data is rapidly reaching the point of becoming safety critical. A roadway, sidewalk, or trail is no longer a completely functional unit without a public dataset that precisely defines it and is kept up to date with its condition.
Exactly. Anthropological studies have also been generally pointing toward a continual drop in intelligence as civilization has advanced over the past few thousand years.
The brain is like a muscle. Use it or lose it or, in this case, never develop it.
It would be interesting to look at changes in expression of those genes that we have identified as having IQ contributions across the age groups. The question that might answer is how much of the difference is just related to lesser training of the neural networks during the appropriate growth stages or the reduced usage of IQ related skills caused epigenetic changes (perhaps to waste less energy).
Hand editing data will never achieve something to compete with google maps which is far more than just a streetmap. Google also has real-time traffic data, streetview, and sidewalk / path data sufficient to help me get to a destination's door. I use all of this on a near-daily basis and would love to see open source applications that compete with this functionality. I agree that the open data is critical to that but...
Without fleets of vehicles and massive amounts of data center processing to convert images to information, how do we get there?
The best possibility I can think of for getting much of it would be to attract large numbers of people to run an app that tracks them at high resolution and donate the data. But there are problems.
How do you attract users to run the app? Google does it with their real-time driving directions app, but that presents a chicken - egg problem because you've got to get within reach of their capabilities to attract users to get the data necessary to get within reach of their capabilities.
How do you pay for the compute time to process the live data into useful information such as realtime traffic flow, most used entrances, sidewalk paths, locations that must be missing a road on the map (many users crossed at driving speed from point A to point B where no road exists), etc.
Assuming you could crack collecting the data, how would you pay for server space for street view data?
Realistically, the only way I can see getting open data of this size and complexity is for governments or large groups of companies to pay for it and choose to make it open data.
Disney is the eventual Netflix competitor. They've already announced pulling their content deals from Netflix to go it on their own. Comcast has already tried to buy Disney, perhaps in anticipation of the end of net neutrality. Now would be a very good time to revive that discussion. They could go from positioning to be a strong Netflix competitor to a position of dominance overnight.