BBC had a good article about the Aral Sea and what was done there in the Soviet days:
http://www.bbc.com/news/busine...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I think that you will find that, on the balance of it, *democratic* capitalist countries are the cleanest. And yes, they can improve and are improving slowly and surely because consumers put pressure to companies to clean up their act. You get what you want and [more importantly] what you are willing to pay for...
What is the actual performance of this new material for the job that it's meant to do, i.e. being a road? How is traction affected? What about at temperature extremes? What about rain and snow? What about when the road is salted or has gravel on it? Roads take a lot of abuse...
Also, how is the power production affected when the road inevitably develops some cracks? What about repair and maintenance cost?
What a lot of people fail to take into consideration about self-driving cars is that driving (in a city) is a deeply social activity (well, for good drivers at least). There are many signals that a person can read (vehicle type and condition, their occupants, the environment, time and day, pedestrians etc.) that do not fall into the standard list of signals you might associate with driving speed, turn signals etc. A lot of these can be very area-specific and require local knowledge. It will be difficult for software to ever match a human in these tasks. Having said that, computers excel in other areas, such as reaction time, so a hybrid approach where both the human and the computer are used should yield the best results. For really mind-numbing stop and go highway driving you can be on full auto. For city driving you switch to manual plus assist...
Besides, after a few years your on-board computer will stop receiving OTA updates and the required APIs will be discontinued so you will need that full-manual capability.
Yep. Ditching the steering wheel and the pedals would be really, really dumb. It would mean that if the car had a problem it would be stuck where it is.
Surprise! The very high end cars have already done this. Lexus, BMW, Rolls Royce, several others all have drive-by-wire systems, the steering wheel is controlled by individual electric motors(sometimes a single motor). And and electric motor on the pedal simulates the feel of hydraulic pressure.
Steering and brakes have mechanical fallback mechanisms.
Civilization depends on a lot of things. I'm sure that code makes it more efficient and makes it possible to do more things as the population increases but it's hardly a pillar upon which civilization is built.
Allowing external forces to decide what a healthy / acceptable profit margin can be is the surest way to destroy capital investment by businesses.
True but no business operates in a vacuum. External forces also include the rules, as setup by governments as well as public perception about how the product you are selling them is being made.
It would be no surprise that Foxcon is being a bit disingenuous about their assessment. The cost of manufacturing items in China will eventually to go up as the living standards of Chinese workers goes up and their labour and environmental laws tighten. This is good for everyone and should help balance the overall picture.
According to this article. The $649 iPhone 7 costs around $220 to make meaning that Apple gets roughly around $400 in profit. Lets imagine that the cost does double, they will still be getting ~$200 per phone. A very healthy profit with a lot of that money staying in the US rather than China or Ireland.
Also, the cost doubling calculation (done by Foxcon!) probably assumes that they would do things exactly the same in the US as they do in China. That is, hiring thousands of people for minimal pay to to a large part of the assembly by hand. However, if moved to the US they would probably automate more of the process and employ much less people. Think of the savings on suicide netting alone.
I'm glad they're employing smart people on pie in the sky stuff instead of making a profit. They'd eventually fail anyway, might as well do something interesting first.
I guess that's the silver lining. Maybe we'll see a bunch of new startups sprout up out of that Uber experience.
Uber is trying desperately to use up all that money they were given based on their (relatively simple) app. An app that they can't even make profitable. Apparently they lost around $1.2B in the first half of the year.
They have no clue what they're doing and this pie-in-the-sky stuff is just a bullshit distraction before the money runs out.
I don't know why companies aren't happy to just perfect and run an existing product profitably instead of looking for endless and everlasting growth? It's not sustainable. After all, why shouldn't they when there are investors willing to sign $1.5B cheques for a fucking app.
In the vast majority of cases an ambulance is faster (and safer) getting to you than you are getting to the hospital and they can give you some treatment on the spot.
Whoever wrote this is (willfully or otherwise) ignorant of the driving conditions on UK motorways. Driving at 60mph is basically impossible - you either have to get in the slow line behind the lorries and go slower, or get in the middle or fast lane and drive ~80mph. Yes, the speed limit is technically 70mph. In most part of the country, nobody gives a crap.
So the range is nearly irrelevant; the car is unsuitable for motorway driving so you won't be taking it any distance at all.
That's not true... I watch Top Gear and everyone in the UK drives a supercar (sideways) on empty roads in the Lake District. To be fair you have to watch out for constantly crashing caravans though.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't cause an accident by stopping in the middle of a turn at an intersection.
Huh? Of course you can. Try it.
These cancellations aren't necessarily bad for Tesla
By that logic if every single person cancelled they would have no problem meeting the demand!
people mellow out once they've got enough food/shelter/healthcare. It's not like we don't have plenty of evidence of this either. Look at Europe.
Yes, look at Europe:
...).
List of Active Separatist Movements in Europe
All of those places have "enough food/shelter/healthcare" and some were quite bloody (Basque, Bosnia, Northern Ireland,
BBC had a good article about the Aral Sea and what was done there in the Soviet days: http://www.bbc.com/news/busine... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... I think that you will find that, on the balance of it, *democratic* capitalist countries are the cleanest. And yes, they can improve and are improving slowly and surely because consumers put pressure to companies to clean up their act. You get what you want and [more importantly] what you are willing to pay for...
What is the actual performance of this new material for the job that it's meant to do, i.e. being a road? How is traction affected? What about at temperature extremes? What about rain and snow? What about when the road is salted or has gravel on it? Roads take a lot of abuse...
Also, how is the power production affected when the road inevitably develops some cracks? What about repair and maintenance cost?
What a lot of people fail to take into consideration about self-driving cars is that driving (in a city) is a deeply social activity (well, for good drivers at least). There are many signals that a person can read (vehicle type and condition, their occupants, the environment, time and day, pedestrians etc.) that do not fall into the standard list of signals you might associate with driving speed, turn signals etc. A lot of these can be very area-specific and require local knowledge. It will be difficult for software to ever match a human in these tasks. Having said that, computers excel in other areas, such as reaction time, so a hybrid approach where both the human and the computer are used should yield the best results. For really mind-numbing stop and go highway driving you can be on full auto. For city driving you switch to manual plus assist...
Besides, after a few years your on-board computer will stop receiving OTA updates and the required APIs will be discontinued so you will need that full-manual capability.
Yep. Ditching the steering wheel and the pedals would be really, really dumb. It would mean that if the car had a problem it would be stuck where it is.
Surprise! The very high end cars have already done this. Lexus, BMW, Rolls Royce, several others all have drive-by-wire systems, the steering wheel is controlled by individual electric motors(sometimes a single motor). And and electric motor on the pedal simulates the feel of hydraulic pressure.
Steering and brakes have mechanical fallback mechanisms.
Combine the locked car that you cannot escape from with self-driving, both controlled remotely by someone else, and you have a lot of scary scenarios.
Civilization depends on a lot of things. I'm sure that code makes it more efficient and makes it possible to do more things as the population increases but it's hardly a pillar upon which civilization is built.
Allowing external forces to decide what a healthy / acceptable profit margin can be is the surest way to destroy capital investment by businesses.
True but no business operates in a vacuum. External forces also include the rules, as setup by governments as well as public perception about how the product you are selling them is being made.
It would be no surprise that Foxcon is being a bit disingenuous about their assessment. The cost of manufacturing items in China will eventually to go up as the living standards of Chinese workers goes up and their labour and environmental laws tighten. This is good for everyone and should help balance the overall picture.
Sigh... there is so much more to a sports car than pure 0-60 time. Would you like to know more? Drive a Miata or Boxster on a windy road.
According to this article. The $649 iPhone 7 costs around $220 to make meaning that Apple gets roughly around $400 in profit. Lets imagine that the cost does double, they will still be getting ~$200 per phone. A very healthy profit with a lot of that money staying in the US rather than China or Ireland.
Also, the cost doubling calculation (done by Foxcon!) probably assumes that they would do things exactly the same in the US as they do in China. That is, hiring thousands of people for minimal pay to to a large part of the assembly by hand. However, if moved to the US they would probably automate more of the process and employ much less people. Think of the savings on suicide netting alone.
Hahaha! Is it April Fools Day already?! I really needed that laugh, thanks guys!
I'm glad they're employing smart people on pie in the sky stuff instead of making a profit. They'd eventually fail anyway, might as well do something interesting first.
I guess that's the silver lining. Maybe we'll see a bunch of new startups sprout up out of that Uber experience.
Uber is trying desperately to use up all that money they were given based on their (relatively simple) app. An app that they can't even make profitable. Apparently they lost around $1.2B in the first half of the year.
They have no clue what they're doing and this pie-in-the-sky stuff is just a bullshit distraction before the money runs out.
I don't know why companies aren't happy to just perfect and run an existing product profitably instead of looking for endless and everlasting growth? It's not sustainable. After all, why shouldn't they when there are investors willing to sign $1.5B cheques for a fucking app.
Make GNOME great again! /ducks
Why don't they employ someone, i.e. pay them to do it.
autonomous Ubers are an unwelcome threat to her livelihood
They didn't bat an eyelash when it came to screwing over the cabbies and now... where's my violin?
I genuinely wonder exactly how much Apple cares about the creative segment anymore.
Apple? Care? Ha! No, they don't care. You only have to look at the Xserve fiasco for that.
In the vast majority of cases an ambulance is faster (and safer) getting to you than you are getting to the hospital and they can give you some treatment on the spot.
Yes, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
Everything is a cloud of probability with regards to its exact position.
Everything's got to be in The Cloud these days... :-/
April fools was 4 days ago guys...
Whoever wrote this is (willfully or otherwise) ignorant of the driving conditions on UK motorways. Driving at 60mph is basically impossible - you either have to get in the slow line behind the lorries and go slower, or get in the middle or fast lane and drive ~80mph. Yes, the speed limit is technically 70mph. In most part of the country, nobody gives a crap.
So the range is nearly irrelevant; the car is unsuitable for motorway driving so you won't be taking it any distance at all.
That's not true... I watch Top Gear and everyone in the UK drives a supercar (sideways) on empty roads in the Lake District. To be fair you have to watch out for constantly crashing caravans though.
Goldman Sachs already lives in a virtual reality of their own.
Maybe we'll see three small nuclear tests, followed by three large nuclear tests and, again, three small ones...---...