And it focused on Uber which is going to get out of the human driving model as fast as it can due to all of the labor law difficulties they have. Becoming a TaaS service without drivers before about 2025 is their best chance of survival. Killing them through the vulnerabilities in their current driver-based model before that transformation is successful is about the only way the cab companies can delay the inevitable. Don't believe for a moment that this argument is all about what is going on today.
GPS is just one of the many components needed for autonomous vehicles. I'm glad to have millions of people testing these routing systems ahead of time and would hope the professional drivers would be doing so too. Their knowledge is too valuable to just drive pampered execs around. They should be getting paid by the engineering teams to help develop the product.
I struggle every day to automate as much of my job away as possible and dream of the day when nobody has to work. Equitable distribution of the wealth when that day comes is a social scientist's problem, not mine.
Do you not think that we don't bust our asses to create the best product we can for you? Millions of man-hours from people killing themselves with long hours have already gone into creating the self-driving systems that show promise for dramatically reducing traffic fatalities in another couple of decades and enabling many new industries. Millions more will be spent before the job is done.
The route algorithms mostly obey speed laws and avoid neighborhoods and roads that aren't really meant for thru-traffic.
If everyone were to use and obey them, I'd bet the traffic congestion would be reduced and everyone would get places faster. Lots of people taking creative routes trying to get there just a little faster increases the friction in the system and slows the overall system down.
Instead of having them memorize maps, they should ban creative routing altogether and make them stick to planned routes to reduce congestion.
And this will not be an argument against self-driven cars. In that case, the map is being learned by the driver.
Think of it as brainstorming, not arguing. And you seem to be using the word "exist" loosely as both have been deployed in limited numbers.
As to which is first to mass use, why would either need to be? A TaaS operator could use the same platform for delivery or transport and just throw the right container for the platform's current assignment onto the platform when it leaves the depot.
If you keep the batteries in the container, this solves the charging problem. And you'll need fewer motor platforms because you can dynamically reconfigure to carry more people during the day and packages while people sleep (the last pressures for daytime deliveries dissipate once you get to a quiet, driverless system).
This still looks too much like a vehicle instead of a delivery system. It even wastes money on glass - curved glass! At 35 mph, are aerodynamics that important?
My expectations for mass delivery are more along the lines of a platform that carries a couple of bots and a container that can be readily swapped.
The platform would be an ugly looking frame contraption that supports the wheels, motors, computers, sensors, lights, bumpers, a door delivery bot or two, etc., but not the battery or anything at all probably above the level of the lights.
The container would have the battery at the bottom and nestle down in the frame. The container would essentially form the upper body of the vehicle from front to back. It is unlikely to have many curves because curves make it difficult to fully pack it.
Bots might charge from the container's battery in between package deliveries so that they can't run out of juice on the route. Their batteries could be downsized with the more frequent charge expectations.
The packages would be packed in freshly charged containers at the depot in an order calculated at the same time as the traffic optimized route. When the vehicle arrives, containers are swapped by machine and off it goes again.
At delivery locations, a bot would pull the package from the container and take it to the door.
Each platform could operate 24 hours a day stopping only for scheduled maintenance. Assuming a robotic picking and loading system at the depot too, very few humans would need to be involved for normal operations. The staff's business would be to handle anomalies which will decrease over time.
In other words, I expect a system designed in conjunction with the depots from scratch around the task. This does not look like that system.
Wouldn't the energy cost of the portion of the obesity epidemic attributable to the sedimentary lifestyle subtract from this? I didn't see any consideration of that though it would be tough to untangle.
Perhaps you could start by estimating what portion of the million plus deaths directly and indirectly attributable to obesity could be prevented with a less sedimentary lifestyle, total up the entire health industry's energy bill, figure out what fraction of the health industry's business is attributable to those illnesses, and multiply the energy bill by that fraction.
Hard to know. I thought I heard they weren't supporting groups yet. Without proving the ability to synchronize play between rooms within the ability of the human ear to detect, a comparison can't be made to Sonos.
For the same price, you can purchase two Sonos speakers that integrate nicely with either Dots or Google Minis (in the near future) and deliver awesome sounds to two rooms with an assistant. If you prefer the single device approach JBL and others have excellent speakers with Google Assistant either on the market or coming shortly. This is what Apple should have done if they wanted to deliver a great speaker - license the Assistant.
If they had any interest in serving their customers, Version 2 could fix those problems in a few months by licensing Google Assistant - freeing Apple to concentrate on providing the glorious speaker and decor that Apple customers would want.
Google would probably be fine with allowing them to design integrations between the Assistant and their ecosystem that only work on their devices as long as Apple continues to use Google Search on all of their products and drops the requirement for the billions in payments.
I think we're already hearing it. But, if you get into the science of it, you'll find that it is what the mainstream user wants.
As the traditional music industry has lost control, music has been gradually becoming simpler, louder, and more homogenous. Why? Because there is no elitist industry determining what we get to hear for us. The mainstream users are finally getting the upper hand and they don't want to hear what more musically "gifted" people say is good.
There are many fields or aspects of culture that have gone through this transformation. The professionals always complain when they lose the subsidies they've been getting from the masses. The masses don't care. They never appreciated the work of the professional at the same depth. They couldn't as they hadn't the gifts or training/brainwashing to be able to. Eventually, it settles out and the professionals figure out how to support their own ecosystem without the subsidies. Or not, and that aspect of the field dies. A few lament it, but the mass moves on.
Eventually, yes, the mainstream music will all be generated. Perhaps you can stall that for a while by pulling the elitist content. But it will eventually happen. Eventually, most music will be generated on the fly precisely to match the listener's desires. And, frankly, I think even the elitists will find that their true desires were never what they thought.
So, you "lose" your stealth satellite and then suddenly find one that has been dead for over a decade...
It would likely cost very little more to add the functions of an old satellite to your new stealth satellite's capabilities and duplicate its signals. The real data could be getting sent by laser or other less detectable means. Just saying.
A surface reading indicates this is about import/export. I suspect that is the key. There are many legal things that are controlled in import/export.
I'm pretty sure that mortars are legal unless it has changed... during my freshman year of college, my dorm roommate brought is civil war era mortar to school for homecoming. I'll never forget because he fired it in front of the dorm using a mixture of flour and gunpowder to create a bigger flash. He then put it in our room for the week following homecoming while we were all out of town for Thanksgiving break. When we got back, the whole dorm was looking for the source of the smell that had ruined virtually every article of clothing in the dorm. The result of flour+gunpowder is apparently a large amount of sulfur dioxide. It really, really stunk. We had to toss everything from our room, including the mattresses.:)
Interestingly, the Wikipedia article does indicate that the answer is very different for the UK... up to ten years in the clink.
Wikipedia seems to disagree with you. Maybe you know the citations necessary to go correct the article? They cited a Washington Post story which is weaker than a reference to a law might be.
In the United States, private ownership of a flamethrower is not restricted by federal law. Flamethrowers are legal in 48 states and restricted in California and Maryland.
If they are a phone company, the headline is correct. If they are an intelligence collection company, their user has absolutely given consent. The "customers" are actually the product.
Sadly, this isn't unusual today. By looking the other way repeatedly, we have allowed ourselves to become the product for many, many businesses that we believe we are customers of. In our sickness, we believe ourselves to be the customers even when we don't pay.
Thinking about this more, it seems like a device so closely associated with the largest investor in Tesla should contain a Tesla coil to generate lightning bolts. Perhaps you could generate an ionized trail in some fashion for them to follow? If you simply blew a stream of ionized air out could you get a ball of lightning to mostly stay within it?
Why "flame"? This doesn't exactly work with the push against the carbon industries. Perhaps something like a plasma thrower would be more appropriate. You could generate that with electricity.
Maybe you could ionize the flame and accelerate it with an electric field as a compromise?
Those fighting net neutrality have been collectively bargaining and winning. This is fighting fire with fire. The government is the consumer in this case. They have a responsibility to protect their interests and, in the process, our tax dollars. The only thing missing here is all of the other consumers.
This is nothing more than consumers exercising their rights to walk away from bad products. If we all had the courage to do this, we'd have no need for government action to stop it.
Instead of the short-term boycotts used in the past to fight bad actors, what we need this time is something like an organized "national day of service termination". The importance of having it be a "day" instead of just a general campaign to quit bad actors and move to good ones is to highlight the reasons for the drops and publicize it so that they can't just launch discount campaigns to pull in new suckers.
There has been much organization and lobbying to fight net neutrality. Consumers, not just government consumers, need to start penalizing those seeking to take advantage of them with sharp organization that targets what counts, bottom lines.
Unlike most of the obscenely rich, I think Musk has plans to spend most of his money. That in my mind sets him apart from the majority of his peers.
The cost of actually establishing a self-sustaining colony on Mars that he could someday go to is not just that of developing the technology and buying his own ticket. You also need thousands of people who are willing and able to work very hard, both mentally and physically. Because our society undervalues physical labor, the majority of the people needed for the colony to be functional are very unlikely to be able to afford their own tickets.
Musk will need to pay for a fleet of transport ships, all materials and supplies to be taken from Earth for construction and survival, his ticket, and the tickets of another 10,000 people or so who can't afford the trip on their own to make his dream reality. He'll need many times more funding to fund his dream.
And do so repeatedly. To achieve coverage of an average Apple fan's home, they'll need at least five of these and probably more - $1745 + tax ~= $1850.
For prices much less than this (under $200 total actually), you can already pick up a Sonos+Echo Dot combination and Sonos+Home Mini is just around the bend. I'm sure Bose isn't far behind since they already have headphones with Google Assistant. Sony has a $200 device with the assistant built in and the JBL Link can be had for $149. They are jumping into a very crowded marketplace already populated by companies with speaker expertise. Good luck.
Exactly. Not only that, he doesn't get anything unless he hits goals that are outlandish.
Of course, what isn't said here is that this portion of his pay is just token pocket change.
His true pay is the increase in value of his 27% stake in the company. Tesla's market cap today is $59.29B. So, Musk's portion of that is about $16B. If the market cap hits $100B, his 27% will be $11B more valuable. A $1B award on top of that $11B gain hardly even qualifies as icing on the cake.
Slashdot Mirror
And it focused on Uber which is going to get out of the human driving model as fast as it can due to all of the labor law difficulties they have. Becoming a TaaS service without drivers before about 2025 is their best chance of survival. Killing them through the vulnerabilities in their current driver-based model before that transformation is successful is about the only way the cab companies can delay the inevitable. Don't believe for a moment that this argument is all about what is going on today.
GPS is just one of the many components needed for autonomous vehicles. I'm glad to have millions of people testing these routing systems ahead of time and would hope the professional drivers would be doing so too. Their knowledge is too valuable to just drive pampered execs around. They should be getting paid by the engineering teams to help develop the product.
I struggle every day to automate as much of my job away as possible and dream of the day when nobody has to work. Equitable distribution of the wealth when that day comes is a social scientist's problem, not mine.
Do you not think that we don't bust our asses to create the best product we can for you? Millions of man-hours from people killing themselves with long hours have already gone into creating the self-driving systems that show promise for dramatically reducing traffic fatalities in another couple of decades and enabling many new industries. Millions more will be spent before the job is done.
The route algorithms mostly obey speed laws and avoid neighborhoods and roads that aren't really meant for thru-traffic.
If everyone were to use and obey them, I'd bet the traffic congestion would be reduced and everyone would get places faster. Lots of people taking creative routes trying to get there just a little faster increases the friction in the system and slows the overall system down.
Instead of having them memorize maps, they should ban creative routing altogether and make them stick to planned routes to reduce congestion.
And this will not be an argument against self-driven cars. In that case, the map is being learned by the driver.
Think of it as brainstorming, not arguing. And you seem to be using the word "exist" loosely as both have been deployed in limited numbers.
As to which is first to mass use, why would either need to be? A TaaS operator could use the same platform for delivery or transport and just throw the right container for the platform's current assignment onto the platform when it leaves the depot.
If you keep the batteries in the container, this solves the charging problem. And you'll need fewer motor platforms because you can dynamically reconfigure to carry more people during the day and packages while people sleep (the last pressures for daytime deliveries dissipate once you get to a quiet, driverless system).
This still looks too much like a vehicle instead of a delivery system. It even wastes money on glass - curved glass! At 35 mph, are aerodynamics that important?
My expectations for mass delivery are more along the lines of a platform that carries a couple of bots and a container that can be readily swapped.
The platform would be an ugly looking frame contraption that supports the wheels, motors, computers, sensors, lights, bumpers, a door delivery bot or two, etc., but not the battery or anything at all probably above the level of the lights.
The container would have the battery at the bottom and nestle down in the frame. The container would essentially form the upper body of the vehicle from front to back. It is unlikely to have many curves because curves make it difficult to fully pack it.
Bots might charge from the container's battery in between package deliveries so that they can't run out of juice on the route. Their batteries could be downsized with the more frequent charge expectations.
The packages would be packed in freshly charged containers at the depot in an order calculated at the same time as the traffic optimized route. When the vehicle arrives, containers are swapped by machine and off it goes again.
At delivery locations, a bot would pull the package from the container and take it to the door.
Each platform could operate 24 hours a day stopping only for scheduled maintenance. Assuming a robotic picking and loading system at the depot too, very few humans would need to be involved for normal operations. The staff's business would be to handle anomalies which will decrease over time.
In other words, I expect a system designed in conjunction with the depots from scratch around the task. This does not look like that system.
Wouldn't the energy cost of the portion of the obesity epidemic attributable to the sedimentary lifestyle subtract from this? I didn't see any consideration of that though it would be tough to untangle.
Perhaps you could start by estimating what portion of the million plus deaths directly and indirectly attributable to obesity could be prevented with a less sedimentary lifestyle, total up the entire health industry's energy bill, figure out what fraction of the health industry's business is attributable to those illnesses, and multiply the energy bill by that fraction.
Hard to know. I thought I heard they weren't supporting groups yet. Without proving the ability to synchronize play between rooms within the ability of the human ear to detect, a comparison can't be made to Sonos.
For the same price, you can purchase two Sonos speakers that integrate nicely with either Dots or Google Minis (in the near future) and deliver awesome sounds to two rooms with an assistant. If you prefer the single device approach JBL and others have excellent speakers with Google Assistant either on the market or coming shortly. This is what Apple should have done if they wanted to deliver a great speaker - license the Assistant.
With Google Assistant available on the iPhone, is Siri still getting use? Most I know are happily using Google Assistant.
Can a company be narcissistic?
If they had any interest in serving their customers, Version 2 could fix those problems in a few months by licensing Google Assistant - freeing Apple to concentrate on providing the glorious speaker and decor that Apple customers would want.
Google would probably be fine with allowing them to design integrations between the Assistant and their ecosystem that only work on their devices as long as Apple continues to use Google Search on all of their products and drops the requirement for the billions in payments.
I think we're already hearing it. But, if you get into the science of it, you'll find that it is what the mainstream user wants.
As the traditional music industry has lost control, music has been gradually becoming simpler, louder, and more homogenous. Why? Because there is no elitist industry determining what we get to hear for us. The mainstream users are finally getting the upper hand and they don't want to hear what more musically "gifted" people say is good.
There are many fields or aspects of culture that have gone through this transformation. The professionals always complain when they lose the subsidies they've been getting from the masses. The masses don't care. They never appreciated the work of the professional at the same depth. They couldn't as they hadn't the gifts or training/brainwashing to be able to. Eventually, it settles out and the professionals figure out how to support their own ecosystem without the subsidies. Or not, and that aspect of the field dies. A few lament it, but the mass moves on.
Eventually, yes, the mainstream music will all be generated. Perhaps you can stall that for a while by pulling the elitist content. But it will eventually happen. Eventually, most music will be generated on the fly precisely to match the listener's desires. And, frankly, I think even the elitists will find that their true desires were never what they thought.
You should choose your sources in life with greater care. Someone is using you.
So, you "lose" your stealth satellite and then suddenly find one that has been dead for over a decade...
It would likely cost very little more to add the functions of an old satellite to your new stealth satellite's capabilities and duplicate its signals. The real data could be getting sent by laser or other less detectable means. Just saying.
A surface reading indicates this is about import/export. I suspect that is the key. There are many legal things that are controlled in import/export.
I'm pretty sure that mortars are legal unless it has changed... during my freshman year of college, my dorm roommate brought is civil war era mortar to school for homecoming. I'll never forget because he fired it in front of the dorm using a mixture of flour and gunpowder to create a bigger flash. He then put it in our room for the week following homecoming while we were all out of town for Thanksgiving break. When we got back, the whole dorm was looking for the source of the smell that had ruined virtually every article of clothing in the dorm. The result of flour+gunpowder is apparently a large amount of sulfur dioxide. It really, really stunk. We had to toss everything from our room, including the mattresses. :)
Interestingly, the Wikipedia article does indicate that the answer is very different for the UK... up to ten years in the clink.
Wikipedia seems to disagree with you. Maybe you know the citations necessary to go correct the article? They cited a Washington Post story which is weaker than a reference to a law might be.
In the United States, private ownership of a flamethrower is not restricted by federal law. Flamethrowers are legal in 48 states and restricted in California and Maryland.
If they are a phone company, the headline is correct. If they are an intelligence collection company, their user has absolutely given consent. The "customers" are actually the product.
Sadly, this isn't unusual today. By looking the other way repeatedly, we have allowed ourselves to become the product for many, many businesses that we believe we are customers of. In our sickness, we believe ourselves to be the customers even when we don't pay.
Thinking about this more, it seems like a device so closely associated with the largest investor in Tesla should contain a Tesla coil to generate lightning bolts. Perhaps you could generate an ionized trail in some fashion for them to follow? If you simply blew a stream of ionized air out could you get a ball of lightning to mostly stay within it?
Why "flame"? This doesn't exactly work with the push against the carbon industries. Perhaps something like a plasma thrower would be more appropriate. You could generate that with electricity.
Maybe you could ionize the flame and accelerate it with an electric field as a compromise?
Those fighting net neutrality have been collectively bargaining and winning. This is fighting fire with fire. The government is the consumer in this case. They have a responsibility to protect their interests and, in the process, our tax dollars. The only thing missing here is all of the other consumers.
This is nothing more than consumers exercising their rights to walk away from bad products. If we all had the courage to do this, we'd have no need for government action to stop it.
Instead of the short-term boycotts used in the past to fight bad actors, what we need this time is something like an organized "national day of service termination". The importance of having it be a "day" instead of just a general campaign to quit bad actors and move to good ones is to highlight the reasons for the drops and publicize it so that they can't just launch discount campaigns to pull in new suckers.
There has been much organization and lobbying to fight net neutrality. Consumers, not just government consumers, need to start penalizing those seeking to take advantage of them with sharp organization that targets what counts, bottom lines.
Or what about smoke screens? Human eyes are analog sensors too.
This article basically describes every attempt to avoid or deceive an observer - human, animal, or otherwise - since time began.
Unlike most of the obscenely rich, I think Musk has plans to spend most of his money. That in my mind sets him apart from the majority of his peers.
The cost of actually establishing a self-sustaining colony on Mars that he could someday go to is not just that of developing the technology and buying his own ticket. You also need thousands of people who are willing and able to work very hard, both mentally and physically. Because our society undervalues physical labor, the majority of the people needed for the colony to be functional are very unlikely to be able to afford their own tickets.
Musk will need to pay for a fleet of transport ships, all materials and supplies to be taken from Earth for construction and survival, his ticket, and the tickets of another 10,000 people or so who can't afford the trip on their own to make his dream reality. He'll need many times more funding to fund his dream.
And do so repeatedly. To achieve coverage of an average Apple fan's home, they'll need at least five of these and probably more - $1745 + tax ~= $1850.
For prices much less than this (under $200 total actually), you can already pick up a Sonos+Echo Dot combination and Sonos+Home Mini is just around the bend. I'm sure Bose isn't far behind since they already have headphones with Google Assistant. Sony has a $200 device with the assistant built in and the JBL Link can be had for $149. They are jumping into a very crowded marketplace already populated by companies with speaker expertise. Good luck.
Exactly. Not only that, he doesn't get anything unless he hits goals that are outlandish.
Of course, what isn't said here is that this portion of his pay is just token pocket change.
His true pay is the increase in value of his 27% stake in the company. Tesla's market cap today is $59.29B. So, Musk's portion of that is about $16B. If the market cap hits $100B, his 27% will be $11B more valuable. A $1B award on top of that $11B gain hardly even qualifies as icing on the cake.
I mean, $349 is a joke, right?