I agree that it is pretty unique from the point of pulling together so many things at once.
However, it was also a different time in engineering R&D. They routinely built and tested things that they didn't know for sure would work. Develop, build, test, develop, build, test, that was the way of the world. Their idea of a demo was usually a major test or unveiling that sometimes had about as much chance of really working as this demo. In that light, I'd think either the first fission or fusion bomb demos or one of the many rocket tests were of bigger import. In the same time frame, the Apollo missions were all very risky demos of great import.
Just saying, I don't know if you can call it the greatest demo ever. Perhaps the greatest demo ever done on a computer, but that's pretty limited in the world of demos.
I think that "ahead of its time" doesn't really mean that a product had more advanced hardware. What it means is that there was a later time during which the public was ready and primed for its features and thus, if it had been introduced in that later time instead of the earlier one, it would have been a success.
Regardless, I'd agree that it was ahead of its time because I believe a fully modernized offering with some of the same concepts could be a cool offering.
One of the things I remember is a friend who was an Amiga maestro producing a nearly indistinguishable synthesis of my voice on his Amiga in just a few minutes in about 1989. Of course, it didn't have the right inflections, but the tone reproduction was right on. He did that for several people at that party in less than 30 minutes total time. It was very cool for the day and would still be cool for today.
I have Spectrum, but don't use their DNS. Just an hour ago, the DNS I use was blocked again for about 30 minutes. This has been happening pretty regularly lately. If I switch to another DNS or go to a VPN, I'm back up on my desktop instantly but all of the other devices in my home stay down unless I change the DNS setting on my router. Setting up a combination of two different DNS providers also seems to help.
This is a recent phenomenon that didn't exist prior to net neutrality. I am also seeing 10-fold increases in streaming bandwidth when I use my VPN.
Smart move to keep other production in China versus here. Other countries are much more likely to place tariffs on us than China as Trump spreads his tariff wars. Moving it here would thus cause the same problem in reverse.
Exactly. GoPro is not the first. Most who are moving are moving to places like Cambodia and Vietnam. Mexico is nowhere near as cheap or reliable. They will likely look to improve their margins in the move versus what they had in China pre-tariff. Why wouldn't they?
The affect of all this will be to spread the wealth and thus bring other countries up to the point of us viewing them as a problem. We simply can't stand other countries using our same tactics.
But, it's too late. Once the countries cross a certain nutritional divide for enough years and no longer has their intelligence hampered by malnutrition in their early years, they will inevitably join the industrial world. Many our lining up to do so now as a result of nutritional improvements in previous decades.
That is where they are going isn't it? Google Messages is the personal one and Hangouts Chat is the enterprise one.
Google Phone is separate for voice calling as it should be because that is a completely different activity. Google Duo / Hangouts Meet is separate for video calling as it should be because that is a completely different activity.
The only anomaly seems to be the issue with Google Voice. I guess it just doesn't integrate well with the phone and has to have its own message client. Perhaps they'll fix that next. Why would it need its own?
If Duo / Meet are ever combined into anything, it should be Google Phone and only occur when there is a worldwide standard video calling method at the telecom level and video calling becomes more universally available. Such an app should be integrated so that it is trivial to switch to and from the universal voice call mode. Right now, Google Phone has some links to both Duo and Messages in that there is a place there to video call a contact instead of voice call them or to send a message. But, as is proper Android practice, those features just activate Duo or Messages. Integration should be between small apps doing one thing right instead of within bloatware.
In general, Google has no place making silos. They are the leader of the system and should be guiding the system to be able to interact with other people in general, not just other Google customers. I have always hated iPhone for their tendency to create proprietary products. Google needs to be the one resisting proprietary products.
As for things like being able to message while you're in a phone call or video call or doing anything else on your phone, that is a system issue, not an app issue. The system is broke if apps have to integrate in duplicates of every feature in order to achieve integration.
With the new picture-in-picture type capabilities, I've had no problems doing other activities like messaging while in a video call or using Google Maps for navigation. Duo and Maps just go into a little picture mode that I can move around the screen with ease so that I can always look under them. Of course, you can also send messages with ease by voice alone without even minimizing the apps too. The system is integrating separate functions very nicely these days.
In short, Duo and Messages work about as good as is possible with the current standards situation for me. Messages communicates with everyone I know without having to ask if they have a special program on their phone. Since RCS/CHAT is a universal standard that covers PCs, it will eventually even get to people who are at a PC and don't have their smartphones handy. Duo works on either Android or iPhone. Yes, you have to ask people if they have it whether they have an iPhone or Android, but at least you're not one of the iPhone jerks asking everyone if they can Facetime... "no, sir, like the vast majority of the world, I don't have an iPhone". As there is no fully interoperable standard, Duo is about the best we can do. I avoid Skype since they said they are live-scanning conversations for possibly illegal content using AI. That's a bit much.
I never understood Allo. It didn't seem to do anything important Messages didn't do. It appears that the vast majority agree. A tenant once asked if I could send her messages with Whatsapp. I was like, "does your phone not receive texts?". She was not sure. A test text later, it was pretty obvious that it did with no issue. Go figure.
Ya know, I'm fine with that. Virtually all of Musk's money is invested in and enabling ventures that I approve of. His money is in general spent much better than my tax dollars. Any tax dollars that go to his benefit are also well spent IMO.
In general, the fraction of the American mega-billionaires money wasted on personal extravagances is vastly lower than the same money in the hands of a much larger number of millionaires. I'd rather have it this way. Many of them are using their money to enable great works that the government no longer has the balls to pursue.
Of course, the whole tax dollar thing is radically overstated. The Tesla loans were repaid. The government made money on them. The SpaceX payments have been a bargain, providing services for far less than what the government would have paid for the same services otherwise. And the subsidies given to owners for purchasing EVs are a bargain. They have successfully jumpstarted an industry transition that would likely have taken another decade at minimum to occur without them. Personally, I don't think the industry would have changed gears for far longer than that without Tesla's influence.
With Tesla, I have a chance to own a car that will last far longer than Detroit wants to build for and can be powered with energy I can produce at home rather than buying from a utility. That is one heck of an empowering vehicle. Even better, in a few years I'll likely have an opportunity to just give up my vehicle ownership altogether and let them handle it for a fraction of what my mileage currently costs. Win, win, win.
Tesla makes more than cars, but they do not make more than what is necessary to become a MaaS fleet provider. They are putting together what it takes to provide the vehicles, power for the vehicles, storage for that power, software to guide the vehicles, etc.
Just as they hit the multiple millions of vehicles mark in a few years, they will flip the script and start trying to put themselves and others out of the business of selling vehicles by providing on-demand mileage at a substantially lower cost than the cost of providing it for yourself.
If you're looking for related business opportunities, I suspect converting unused garages to new rooms will be a great one - though I could imagine Tesla going through a period of providing free Powerwalls and power to homes in exchange for using their garages as remote staging / top-off locations.
I don't think my 2 year old has ever watched actual TV, pbskids.org, Netflix, etc. but no TV. I noticed the other day that she routinely uses her finger to move the timeline at the bottom to what she wants. She always chooses what she wants and the choice seems to naturally grow to older shows (within the limits of the service which is kids stuff only).
Interestingly, there is some pure entertainment content available, but she never chooses it. I've pulled it up and she seems bored with it.
I am an extremely self-driven learner though, so she may have just inherited that tendency. It will be interesting to see how that works. I was extremely hampered in my childhood by lack of access to the materials I was interested in learning when I wanted to learn it. When I got my hands on something advanced, magic happened - like when I picked up my Dad's old College Algebra book during the summer after 5th grade and finished it that summer. She won't have that issue.
It's news for the same reason so many other things are news today. Count up the number of sub-25 y/o people in Google, Tesla, Facebook, Apple, and other companies that people investigate every single iota of information escaping in hopes of finding something to put in the news and multiply that by the accumulated chance of every freak thing you can think of and you get numerous articles like this implying mountains where there aren't even molehills.
Truthfully, it doesn't even have to relate to a watched entity. It just has to be freaky. Virtually every story I see every day does not seem to rise to the level of probability that a reasonable person should be concerned about it. It is why we live in some of the safest times ever in our country and believe the opposite.
Oh, and yes, I mostly agreed. I just balked at the requirement for an "incredibly rapid natural selection". We are an adaptive system and our biology's programming includes both ROM and FLASH that are both passed on. We "genetically" adapt to all sorts of things within our lifetime.
Yes, our environment has changed. But that change has been driven by our genetic-based biological risk reward systems when over-enabled by wealth. If we lose the wealth, it could revert. Otherwise, we cannot successfully change the environment without first changing the drives that result in the environment when over-enabled by wealth.
I credit the current situation to wealth. The same phenomenon is being seen in many other countries as they gain wealth. In general, our biological risk/reward system is out of line with the availability of calories.
We have also altered virtually every thing we eat to add to the calories. Even the lowly potato has a been bred to have lot more calories in the form of 3x the sugars that it used to have. But it is wealth that has allowed us to do that also. In many cases, we've selected breeds of foods that do not grow as well for the sake of having something sweeter. When you're not beggars, you can be choosers.
Our government also took a misstep in the '60s in the form of the war against fat. If you reduce the fat content in food many people will naturally increase their intake until they get enough fat to trigger satiation. The result is equal fat calorie intake and increased carb calorie intake.
The directions we're taking with the wealth are determined by our biology. For whatever reason, evolution has driven us to prize sweetness. I guess it could be to drive us to get some vitamin C from fruit. Before, it was so hard to attain that that the drive had to be high. Now, that drive is too high.
In addition, our bodies seem to react very badly to the sugar. Longterm exposure alters body systems and creates an addiction that seems to be passed to children. Children biologically parented by overweight people and raised by people of a healthy weight have been shown to have the same weight issues. Also, if you go back in the ancestral tree, it is obvious that the genetic disposition wasn't there in earlier generations. So it is likely an epigenetic change though they are just now understanding the signaling mechanisms well enough to start testing for it.
Sugar also triggers us to store our fat intake and even give up the ability to easily process fat so that a sudden lack of sugar (which is shortlived in our system) cannot be compensated for by processing the fat that has been stored. It is obvious that we've never encountered plentiful sugar and developed the proper responses for the situation.
So, yeh, wealth, food that we've altered with our wealth, and perhaps a smidgen of government interference in the form of the advised 30% ceiling on fat intake. That's what I blame it on.
Regardless of the blame, the solution is in correcting our biological reward system. If we bring that in-line with the new environment created by our wealth, it will fix the problem.
I am in full agreement that this approach is the wrong way to solve the problem, but believe that science needs to figure out ways to allow people to ingest less calories, not the "people" in general.
If a medicinal regimen was so hard to stick to that less than 10% managed to do so, the FDA wouldn't even consider approving it. They routinely deny approval in those situations. The same should apply to doctor's advice. No doctor should be able to prescribe a course of therapy doomed to failure in most situations and set people up to be lambasted for not succeeding in a battle that most don't succeed in. Those that do likely have genetic or epigenetic adaptations that allow it.
For example, I know people who seem to get their chemical satisfaction fix from successfully exercising their will to do something really hard and that fix lasts for the long haul. They are the ones who never say it is easy but smile all the time when they are talking about the struggle as if there is something arousing about it. They are credited with having willpower, and the rest of us are encouraged to follow their example as if those of us who don't have the advantage of the same reward system have the same chance at success. Poppycock. If we're really lucky, some trauma may push us into an epigenetic change to get that ability, but otherwise, no chance.
Finding a way to effect the same changes this gene does would set us on a course to increasing our calorie burn for no productivity gain. We would likely adapt to consume even more calories and need further changes to burn even hotter. It would spiral, increasing our consumption at a time when the world really needs to be reducing consumption.
Instead, we need to continue looking for the genetic or epigenetic keys that drive the desires. It would be awesome if we could find ways to break the reward system that the body has in place for sugar intake. But we must be careful - I have seen the results of anorexia which is just the result of a system of rewards for not eating being activated - likely at an epigenetically reinforced level in many of those that have it persistently.
We might also find ways to get sugar intake to more reliably trigger the satiation response at low levels.
I am one who does not get a full feeling from being physically stuffed. It seems to only come from a consumption of fat. So, when I get on a carb and/or sugar kick, I can eat huge quantities and never feel satiated even when in pain from being physically stuffed. When I go back to a very low carb diet I feel satiated with much less and also feel much more energetic. I perceive that as two problems. First, there is a carb reward that causes me to break out of the diet that makes me skinny and energetic and I'd love to have that reward system changed. Second, I don't have a satiation response to carbs of any type. Fixing that could reinforce or replace a fix to the first problem. Neither of these changes would increase my usage of resources.
But you are using an outdated view of genetics. Epigenetics is changing all of our assumptions. Because of epigenetics, a person's genetic program can be adapted to their environment in their lifetime. We've shown that experiences can cause a semi-permanent change in an individual's genetic expression and that change can be passed on to their children. This is not a rare phenomenon but one that likely occurs across many systems in every individual.
It does seem to show up most obviously in extreme environmental impacts. For example, PTSD symptoms have been shown to be epigenetically transmitted to offspring. It may very well be that extensive exposure to added sugar or other environmental factors triggers epigenetic adaptations that are transmitted to our children.
To summarize, extreme environmental differences cause epigenetic changes that are persistent across generations and not immediately reversible with simple removal of those environmental changes.
I sometimes wonder if the seven generations thing results from informal observation of a near maximum of how long it takes for epigenetic changes resulting from extreme life events / choices to fully disappear from descendents.
And I imagine that someone developing an AI for the purpose of committing murder would be held accountable.
So, in a parallel fashion, if we make it illegal for us to recognize a face or someone's emotions, then we can make it illegal for an AI to do it.
Whatever I can legally do myself, I should be able to legally use a tool to do. Using tools to make it easier to do things that we already do manually is an important part of the essence of being human.
This situation is a deeper example of what that usually implies. It is more than a case of just seeing those that are after you and knowing they are there. Having been a part of the conspiracy, these people know what they are up against.
Their use of a burner may very well be driven by knowledge of the systems and tactics they've been involved in creating. That makes finding that they are using burners a confirmation of sorts of our fears of what those systems are capable of and have actually been used for.
Given that there is no indication of an increase in theft and that thieves using methodologies like this are very likely professionals, the thieves have just found a less damaging way to steal your car. They can steal any car they decide they want - even if they have to haul it away on a car hauler. If it is stolen in this fashion and perchance recovered, you likely won't have to deal with as much of a repair job.
So go ahead and worry about making it more difficult with Faraday cages and other silliness. If your car shows up as one that they want for parts, you'll just get a busted window for your efforts assuming they recover it.
Virtually nobody buys the most cost-effective vehicle. We mostly follow the crowd. This makes change, no matter how positive, difficult.
Even if we did buy the most cost-effective vehicle from an individual's POV, there is no logical reason that that would be the most cost-effective vehicle for society. Society has a stake in the game that pure capitalism does not represent. Infrastructure costs, employment of workers, disposal costs, international relations costs, medical costs, etc. do not come into play when purchasing a vehicle on the basis of optimizing personal costs.
There is also no consideration as to which vehicle purchase will lead to the most cost-effective trend for all vehicles over time. A vehicle that costs more now might reduce the cost of another vehicle later to such an extent that the combination of vehicle purchases over time will be less than is achievable with an alternative. One of the most promising aspects of EVs is that they appear to open doors to a lower cost of production over time than ICEs can achieve through simplification as well as longer life.
As to the fairing recovery... I gathered from Musk's statement that reuse is imminent but catching it has become a nicety. I guess they've been simultaneously working on making sure it lands softly and making it reusable after a soft landing in seawater.
I can't think of another innovator who has managed to follow through on nearly as high percentage of their ideas as Musk has. Personally, I don't think that particular tunnel dig is "canceled" in Musk's mind. He just realized that he's not doing things in the best order and temporarily shelved it. It wasn't the best battle to fight today. He'll get back to it in the natural order of filling out the honeycomb of tunnels under LA years from now.
The analysts I've read reports from seem to be putting the probability of Starlink successfully deploying at between 70 and 85% depending on which one you pick. I'd put it higher because it is critical to SpaceX's mission in two ways. The space traffic volume that it provides - about 2,000 satellites per year forever to sustain it due to the 5-7 year lifetime of these low orbit satellites - is absolutely critical to lowering the cost of space access. Also, the cash flow stream from providing a large fraction of the world's internet access should be enormous - the kind of numbers that can contribute to funding Mars colonies, not just rocket development.
Satellite TV is absolutely necessary for many rural areas. I have lived in a location that had no cell signal despite a cell tower within 2 miles and no TV despite multiple towers within 20 miles. A bit of AM radio made it in and that was about it - other than phone and satellite which required running a cable a few hundred feet and up a carefully placed pole to achieve. The only internet possibility was satellite internet with a telephone modem for the uplink.
The loss of satellite TV would leave many Americans with no TV service of any type. We tend to forget that even 1% of 330ish million people is over 3 million people. That is a bit number.
Thankfully, AT&T Direct TV is dying because they know they won't survive the upcoming competition in their sphere. They are not dying because of a lack of need for the service. Americans are transitioning to receiving the majority of their TV over the internet. AT&T knows that, if not Musk's Starnet, at least one of the upcoming internet constellations will succeed. Time to cut their losses and take another direction.
Full autonomy would require following all of the laws... including those that require drivers to give way to emergency vehicles and pull over for police cars flashing their lights. They aren't going to wait for every emergency vehicle in the nation to be equipped with some communications system, so they will train their networks to respond in the same way humans are supposed to.
I doubt this has been a priority for Tesla with the current requirement that a fully aware licensed driver be at the wheel. When it becomes a priority, they'll use the same cameras they use for everything else.
I believe the self-driving Waymos will all be monitored remotely in the early stages. So, if pulled, the remote operator would handle the situation.
A more interesting current-news-inspired question might be how they will handle and react to things like the 7.0 earthquake in Anchorage. What would a Tesla or Waymo do if the road they were on collapsed and a wall of dirt suddenly appeared in front of it? Would it brake or ignore the input as impossible and strike the "wall"?
The sick thing you're missing is that they see it as improvement - repair instead of damage.
Driving down the road with someone of that mindset I've heard comments like "why don't they mow that mess" when passing grassland and "when are they going to get those dead trees out" when passing forests containing damaged trees here and there. At the same time, every new forest area developed to commercial buildings and asphalt gets accolades for improvement.
Basically, this person cannot comprehend why we can't develop every square inch of the Earth. Anything left natural is unkempt and waste in their eyes.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that it is pretty unique from the point of pulling together so many things at once.
However, it was also a different time in engineering R&D. They routinely built and tested things that they didn't know for sure would work. Develop, build, test, develop, build, test, that was the way of the world. Their idea of a demo was usually a major test or unveiling that sometimes had about as much chance of really working as this demo. In that light, I'd think either the first fission or fusion bomb demos or one of the many rocket tests were of bigger import. In the same time frame, the Apollo missions were all very risky demos of great import.
Just saying, I don't know if you can call it the greatest demo ever. Perhaps the greatest demo ever done on a computer, but that's pretty limited in the world of demos.
go figure. ho hum.
I think that "ahead of its time" doesn't really mean that a product had more advanced hardware. What it means is that there was a later time during which the public was ready and primed for its features and thus, if it had been introduced in that later time instead of the earlier one, it would have been a success.
Regardless, I'd agree that it was ahead of its time because I believe a fully modernized offering with some of the same concepts could be a cool offering.
One of the things I remember is a friend who was an Amiga maestro producing a nearly indistinguishable synthesis of my voice on his Amiga in just a few minutes in about 1989. Of course, it didn't have the right inflections, but the tone reproduction was right on. He did that for several people at that party in less than 30 minutes total time. It was very cool for the day and would still be cool for today.
Exactly.
I have Spectrum, but don't use their DNS. Just an hour ago, the DNS I use was blocked again for about 30 minutes. This has been happening pretty regularly lately. If I switch to another DNS or go to a VPN, I'm back up on my desktop instantly but all of the other devices in my home stay down unless I change the DNS setting on my router. Setting up a combination of two different DNS providers also seems to help.
This is a recent phenomenon that didn't exist prior to net neutrality. I am also seeing 10-fold increases in streaming bandwidth when I use my VPN.
Smart move to keep other production in China versus here. Other countries are much more likely to place tariffs on us than China as Trump spreads his tariff wars. Moving it here would thus cause the same problem in reverse.
Exactly. GoPro is not the first. Most who are moving are moving to places like Cambodia and Vietnam. Mexico is nowhere near as cheap or reliable. They will likely look to improve their margins in the move versus what they had in China pre-tariff. Why wouldn't they?
The affect of all this will be to spread the wealth and thus bring other countries up to the point of us viewing them as a problem. We simply can't stand other countries using our same tactics.
But, it's too late. Once the countries cross a certain nutritional divide for enough years and no longer has their intelligence hampered by malnutrition in their early years, they will inevitably join the industrial world. Many our lining up to do so now as a result of nutritional improvements in previous decades.
That is where they are going isn't it? Google Messages is the personal one and Hangouts Chat is the enterprise one.
Google Phone is separate for voice calling as it should be because that is a completely different activity. Google Duo / Hangouts Meet is separate for video calling as it should be because that is a completely different activity.
The only anomaly seems to be the issue with Google Voice. I guess it just doesn't integrate well with the phone and has to have its own message client. Perhaps they'll fix that next. Why would it need its own?
If Duo / Meet are ever combined into anything, it should be Google Phone and only occur when there is a worldwide standard video calling method at the telecom level and video calling becomes more universally available. Such an app should be integrated so that it is trivial to switch to and from the universal voice call mode. Right now, Google Phone has some links to both Duo and Messages in that there is a place there to video call a contact instead of voice call them or to send a message. But, as is proper Android practice, those features just activate Duo or Messages. Integration should be between small apps doing one thing right instead of within bloatware.
In general, Google has no place making silos. They are the leader of the system and should be guiding the system to be able to interact with other people in general, not just other Google customers. I have always hated iPhone for their tendency to create proprietary products. Google needs to be the one resisting proprietary products.
As for things like being able to message while you're in a phone call or video call or doing anything else on your phone, that is a system issue, not an app issue. The system is broke if apps have to integrate in duplicates of every feature in order to achieve integration.
With the new picture-in-picture type capabilities, I've had no problems doing other activities like messaging while in a video call or using Google Maps for navigation. Duo and Maps just go into a little picture mode that I can move around the screen with ease so that I can always look under them. Of course, you can also send messages with ease by voice alone without even minimizing the apps too. The system is integrating separate functions very nicely these days.
In short, Duo and Messages work about as good as is possible with the current standards situation for me. Messages communicates with everyone I know without having to ask if they have a special program on their phone. Since RCS/CHAT is a universal standard that covers PCs, it will eventually even get to people who are at a PC and don't have their smartphones handy. Duo works on either Android or iPhone. Yes, you have to ask people if they have it whether they have an iPhone or Android, but at least you're not one of the iPhone jerks asking everyone if they can Facetime... "no, sir, like the vast majority of the world, I don't have an iPhone". As there is no fully interoperable standard, Duo is about the best we can do. I avoid Skype since they said they are live-scanning conversations for possibly illegal content using AI. That's a bit much.
I never understood Allo. It didn't seem to do anything important Messages didn't do. It appears that the vast majority agree. A tenant once asked if I could send her messages with Whatsapp. I was like, "does your phone not receive texts?". She was not sure. A test text later, it was pretty obvious that it did with no issue. Go figure.
Ya know, I'm fine with that. Virtually all of Musk's money is invested in and enabling ventures that I approve of. His money is in general spent much better than my tax dollars. Any tax dollars that go to his benefit are also well spent IMO.
In general, the fraction of the American mega-billionaires money wasted on personal extravagances is vastly lower than the same money in the hands of a much larger number of millionaires. I'd rather have it this way. Many of them are using their money to enable great works that the government no longer has the balls to pursue.
Of course, the whole tax dollar thing is radically overstated. The Tesla loans were repaid. The government made money on them. The SpaceX payments have been a bargain, providing services for far less than what the government would have paid for the same services otherwise. And the subsidies given to owners for purchasing EVs are a bargain. They have successfully jumpstarted an industry transition that would likely have taken another decade at minimum to occur without them. Personally, I don't think the industry would have changed gears for far longer than that without Tesla's influence.
With Tesla, I have a chance to own a car that will last far longer than Detroit wants to build for and can be powered with energy I can produce at home rather than buying from a utility. That is one heck of an empowering vehicle. Even better, in a few years I'll likely have an opportunity to just give up my vehicle ownership altogether and let them handle it for a fraction of what my mileage currently costs. Win, win, win.
Tesla makes more than cars, but they do not make more than what is necessary to become a MaaS fleet provider. They are putting together what it takes to provide the vehicles, power for the vehicles, storage for that power, software to guide the vehicles, etc.
Just as they hit the multiple millions of vehicles mark in a few years, they will flip the script and start trying to put themselves and others out of the business of selling vehicles by providing on-demand mileage at a substantially lower cost than the cost of providing it for yourself.
If you're looking for related business opportunities, I suspect converting unused garages to new rooms will be a great one - though I could imagine Tesla going through a period of providing free Powerwalls and power to homes in exchange for using their garages as remote staging / top-off locations.
I don't think my 2 year old has ever watched actual TV, pbskids.org, Netflix, etc. but no TV. I noticed the other day that she routinely uses her finger to move the timeline at the bottom to what she wants. She always chooses what she wants and the choice seems to naturally grow to older shows (within the limits of the service which is kids stuff only).
Interestingly, there is some pure entertainment content available, but she never chooses it. I've pulled it up and she seems bored with it.
I am an extremely self-driven learner though, so she may have just inherited that tendency. It will be interesting to see how that works. I was extremely hampered in my childhood by lack of access to the materials I was interested in learning when I wanted to learn it. When I got my hands on something advanced, magic happened - like when I picked up my Dad's old College Algebra book during the summer after 5th grade and finished it that summer. She won't have that issue.
It's news for the same reason so many other things are news today. Count up the number of sub-25 y/o people in Google, Tesla, Facebook, Apple, and other companies that people investigate every single iota of information escaping in hopes of finding something to put in the news and multiply that by the accumulated chance of every freak thing you can think of and you get numerous articles like this implying mountains where there aren't even molehills.
Truthfully, it doesn't even have to relate to a watched entity. It just has to be freaky. Virtually every story I see every day does not seem to rise to the level of probability that a reasonable person should be concerned about it. It is why we live in some of the safest times ever in our country and believe the opposite.
Oh, and yes, I mostly agreed. I just balked at the requirement for an "incredibly rapid natural selection". We are an adaptive system and our biology's programming includes both ROM and FLASH that are both passed on. We "genetically" adapt to all sorts of things within our lifetime.
Yes, our environment has changed. But that change has been driven by our genetic-based biological risk reward systems when over-enabled by wealth. If we lose the wealth, it could revert. Otherwise, we cannot successfully change the environment without first changing the drives that result in the environment when over-enabled by wealth.
I credit the current situation to wealth. The same phenomenon is being seen in many other countries as they gain wealth. In general, our biological risk/reward system is out of line with the availability of calories.
We have also altered virtually every thing we eat to add to the calories. Even the lowly potato has a been bred to have lot more calories in the form of 3x the sugars that it used to have. But it is wealth that has allowed us to do that also. In many cases, we've selected breeds of foods that do not grow as well for the sake of having something sweeter. When you're not beggars, you can be choosers.
Our government also took a misstep in the '60s in the form of the war against fat. If you reduce the fat content in food many people will naturally increase their intake until they get enough fat to trigger satiation. The result is equal fat calorie intake and increased carb calorie intake.
The directions we're taking with the wealth are determined by our biology. For whatever reason, evolution has driven us to prize sweetness. I guess it could be to drive us to get some vitamin C from fruit. Before, it was so hard to attain that that the drive had to be high. Now, that drive is too high.
In addition, our bodies seem to react very badly to the sugar. Longterm exposure alters body systems and creates an addiction that seems to be passed to children. Children biologically parented by overweight people and raised by people of a healthy weight have been shown to have the same weight issues. Also, if you go back in the ancestral tree, it is obvious that the genetic disposition wasn't there in earlier generations. So it is likely an epigenetic change though they are just now understanding the signaling mechanisms well enough to start testing for it.
Sugar also triggers us to store our fat intake and even give up the ability to easily process fat so that a sudden lack of sugar (which is shortlived in our system) cannot be compensated for by processing the fat that has been stored. It is obvious that we've never encountered plentiful sugar and developed the proper responses for the situation.
So, yeh, wealth, food that we've altered with our wealth, and perhaps a smidgen of government interference in the form of the advised 30% ceiling on fat intake. That's what I blame it on.
Regardless of the blame, the solution is in correcting our biological reward system. If we bring that in-line with the new environment created by our wealth, it will fix the problem.
I am in full agreement that this approach is the wrong way to solve the problem, but believe that science needs to figure out ways to allow people to ingest less calories, not the "people" in general.
If a medicinal regimen was so hard to stick to that less than 10% managed to do so, the FDA wouldn't even consider approving it. They routinely deny approval in those situations. The same should apply to doctor's advice. No doctor should be able to prescribe a course of therapy doomed to failure in most situations and set people up to be lambasted for not succeeding in a battle that most don't succeed in. Those that do likely have genetic or epigenetic adaptations that allow it.
For example, I know people who seem to get their chemical satisfaction fix from successfully exercising their will to do something really hard and that fix lasts for the long haul. They are the ones who never say it is easy but smile all the time when they are talking about the struggle as if there is something arousing about it. They are credited with having willpower, and the rest of us are encouraged to follow their example as if those of us who don't have the advantage of the same reward system have the same chance at success. Poppycock. If we're really lucky, some trauma may push us into an epigenetic change to get that ability, but otherwise, no chance.
Finding a way to effect the same changes this gene does would set us on a course to increasing our calorie burn for no productivity gain. We would likely adapt to consume even more calories and need further changes to burn even hotter. It would spiral, increasing our consumption at a time when the world really needs to be reducing consumption.
Instead, we need to continue looking for the genetic or epigenetic keys that drive the desires. It would be awesome if we could find ways to break the reward system that the body has in place for sugar intake. But we must be careful - I have seen the results of anorexia which is just the result of a system of rewards for not eating being activated - likely at an epigenetically reinforced level in many of those that have it persistently.
We might also find ways to get sugar intake to more reliably trigger the satiation response at low levels.
I am one who does not get a full feeling from being physically stuffed. It seems to only come from a consumption of fat. So, when I get on a carb and/or sugar kick, I can eat huge quantities and never feel satiated even when in pain from being physically stuffed. When I go back to a very low carb diet I feel satiated with much less and also feel much more energetic. I perceive that as two problems. First, there is a carb reward that causes me to break out of the diet that makes me skinny and energetic and I'd love to have that reward system changed. Second, I don't have a satiation response to carbs of any type. Fixing that could reinforce or replace a fix to the first problem. Neither of these changes would increase my usage of resources.
But you are using an outdated view of genetics. Epigenetics is changing all of our assumptions. Because of epigenetics, a person's genetic program can be adapted to their environment in their lifetime. We've shown that experiences can cause a semi-permanent change in an individual's genetic expression and that change can be passed on to their children. This is not a rare phenomenon but one that likely occurs across many systems in every individual.
It does seem to show up most obviously in extreme environmental impacts. For example, PTSD symptoms have been shown to be epigenetically transmitted to offspring. It may very well be that extensive exposure to added sugar or other environmental factors triggers epigenetic adaptations that are transmitted to our children.
To summarize, extreme environmental differences cause epigenetic changes that are persistent across generations and not immediately reversible with simple removal of those environmental changes.
I sometimes wonder if the seven generations thing results from informal observation of a near maximum of how long it takes for epigenetic changes resulting from extreme life events / choices to fully disappear from descendents.
And I imagine that someone developing an AI for the purpose of committing murder would be held accountable.
So, in a parallel fashion, if we make it illegal for us to recognize a face or someone's emotions, then we can make it illegal for an AI to do it.
Whatever I can legally do myself, I should be able to legally use a tool to do. Using tools to make it easier to do things that we already do manually is an important part of the essence of being human.
This situation is a deeper example of what that usually implies. It is more than a case of just seeing those that are after you and knowing they are there. Having been a part of the conspiracy, these people know what they are up against.
Their use of a burner may very well be driven by knowledge of the systems and tactics they've been involved in creating. That makes finding that they are using burners a confirmation of sorts of our fears of what those systems are capable of and have actually been used for.
I agree. Seems like this is the perfect app for RFID. I believe there are some that could even rotate codes using just the energy broadcast to it.
Given that there is no indication of an increase in theft and that thieves using methodologies like this are very likely professionals, the thieves have just found a less damaging way to steal your car. They can steal any car they decide they want - even if they have to haul it away on a car hauler. If it is stolen in this fashion and perchance recovered, you likely won't have to deal with as much of a repair job.
So go ahead and worry about making it more difficult with Faraday cages and other silliness. If your car shows up as one that they want for parts, you'll just get a busted window for your efforts assuming they recover it.
Certainly. Also the least achievable.
Virtually nobody buys the most cost-effective vehicle. We mostly follow the crowd. This makes change, no matter how positive, difficult.
Even if we did buy the most cost-effective vehicle from an individual's POV, there is no logical reason that that would be the most cost-effective vehicle for society. Society has a stake in the game that pure capitalism does not represent. Infrastructure costs, employment of workers, disposal costs, international relations costs, medical costs, etc. do not come into play when purchasing a vehicle on the basis of optimizing personal costs.
There is also no consideration as to which vehicle purchase will lead to the most cost-effective trend for all vehicles over time. A vehicle that costs more now might reduce the cost of another vehicle later to such an extent that the combination of vehicle purchases over time will be less than is achievable with an alternative. One of the most promising aspects of EVs is that they appear to open doors to a lower cost of production over time than ICEs can achieve through simplification as well as longer life.
As to the fairing recovery... I gathered from Musk's statement that reuse is imminent but catching it has become a nicety. I guess they've been simultaneously working on making sure it lands softly and making it reusable after a soft landing in seawater.
I can't think of another innovator who has managed to follow through on nearly as high percentage of their ideas as Musk has. Personally, I don't think that particular tunnel dig is "canceled" in Musk's mind. He just realized that he's not doing things in the best order and temporarily shelved it. It wasn't the best battle to fight today. He'll get back to it in the natural order of filling out the honeycomb of tunnels under LA years from now.
The analysts I've read reports from seem to be putting the probability of Starlink successfully deploying at between 70 and 85% depending on which one you pick. I'd put it higher because it is critical to SpaceX's mission in two ways. The space traffic volume that it provides - about 2,000 satellites per year forever to sustain it due to the 5-7 year lifetime of these low orbit satellites - is absolutely critical to lowering the cost of space access. Also, the cash flow stream from providing a large fraction of the world's internet access should be enormous - the kind of numbers that can contribute to funding Mars colonies, not just rocket development.
Satellite TV is absolutely necessary for many rural areas. I have lived in a location that had no cell signal despite a cell tower within 2 miles and no TV despite multiple towers within 20 miles. A bit of AM radio made it in and that was about it - other than phone and satellite which required running a cable a few hundred feet and up a carefully placed pole to achieve. The only internet possibility was satellite internet with a telephone modem for the uplink.
The loss of satellite TV would leave many Americans with no TV service of any type. We tend to forget that even 1% of 330ish million people is over 3 million people. That is a bit number.
Thankfully, AT&T Direct TV is dying because they know they won't survive the upcoming competition in their sphere. They are not dying because of a lack of need for the service. Americans are transitioning to receiving the majority of their TV over the internet. AT&T knows that, if not Musk's Starnet, at least one of the upcoming internet constellations will succeed. Time to cut their losses and take another direction.
Full autonomy would require following all of the laws... including those that require drivers to give way to emergency vehicles and pull over for police cars flashing their lights. They aren't going to wait for every emergency vehicle in the nation to be equipped with some communications system, so they will train their networks to respond in the same way humans are supposed to.
I doubt this has been a priority for Tesla with the current requirement that a fully aware licensed driver be at the wheel. When it becomes a priority, they'll use the same cameras they use for everything else.
I believe the self-driving Waymos will all be monitored remotely in the early stages. So, if pulled, the remote operator would handle the situation.
A more interesting current-news-inspired question might be how they will handle and react to things like the 7.0 earthquake in Anchorage. What would a Tesla or Waymo do if the road they were on collapsed and a wall of dirt suddenly appeared in front of it? Would it brake or ignore the input as impossible and strike the "wall"?
The sick thing you're missing is that they see it as improvement - repair instead of damage.
Driving down the road with someone of that mindset I've heard comments like "why don't they mow that mess" when passing grassland and "when are they going to get those dead trees out" when passing forests containing damaged trees here and there. At the same time, every new forest area developed to commercial buildings and asphalt gets accolades for improvement.
Basically, this person cannot comprehend why we can't develop every square inch of the Earth. Anything left natural is unkempt and waste in their eyes.