Am I the only one that sees a convergence vector here for Amazon. I mean they deliver things to your door. Heck they could even give incentives to Ring with free or discounted shipping. Anyway I think this has more to do with business convergence and a play to own the whole experience. Granted reading about your experience they may need to improve the concept a bit, however one has to think that that will become easier over time, and Amazon's deep coffers could certainly help that. Anyway I see it being built into their delivery system eventually with package notifications etc... It is a way for Amazon to get another foot hold within you home. Heck, I'd expect these things to be networked with Elexa which might also be leveraged for usage. I believe they were also talking about having direct access to homes to drop off packages, this would allow the user to facilitate that.
Just to put a damper on discussions... 1) "theoretical black holes", meaning they may not exist naturally. If they do, they could be rare. At any rate travelling to any of them in the near future is impossible.
2) If one were to say artificially construct one of these things, in order for it to be big enough to fit a human though, it would have to be at least a certain size. A casual search indicates that a 5m event horizon black hole will have the approximate mass of Jupiter. So if it is constructed anywhere near Earth it will probably destroy it. If done in the solar system, could potentially mess with orbits catastrophically if not very careful.
1) Any sort of language translation between us and Aliens I have to imagine to be incredibly hard. I mean it is hard to translation between us and us for Christ stakes. Additionally now add the complexity of some made up languages used to control "computers" to which may or may not exist in any sort of resembling form for aliens. At any rate of all the things to be "scared" about from aliens, them hacking our computers is probably way down the list.
2) But but, magical alien AI could totally figure all of that out! Ya well magical alien AI can probably figure just about anything out, which means it probably has much better things to do than worry about hacking pornhub...
Exactly the joke I was thinking, needs to be modded up!
That said, I think it is entirely reasonable that Russia did the hack. If only to spit in the eye of the organization that banned them as a nation from competing. I mean so far as I know in the end, all the hacking of "hundreds" of computers ended up doing was shutting down the Wifi for a brief period of time, which is just an annoyance really. Sounds like Russian hacking team practice, pick a target and have some lulzs.
That said, apart of "national" hacking, this very well could be the work of private hacking group for much the same reason (ban us from the games will you!)... As far as the political intrigue and North Korea goes, they seem to be the world wiping boy so if you're going to try and get someone else blamed, seems like the easiest route.
I don't think this is limited to Marvel. This is across the industry. CGI is "relatively" new, and as technology has increased has become increasing popular. However there are many examples of not only overuse, but misuse. I think like the title of my comment many have become either over dependent upon it or just lazy. However I think the trend is only now just starting to correct itself where perhaps movie makers are realizing that CGI like anything is just a tool, and like any tool it is good for somethings and not so good for others. Really good movies depending on the need are going to use a lot of tools in the toolbox. Some might just need a screw driver, while others might need extensive use of the hammer so to speak.
I think a perfect example of this was the latest Star Wars. The didn't use CGI on Yoda, but rather went back to the roots and used a puppet. I enjoyed it much better. The other side of that coin is I recall in one of the prequels an extensive lighsaber battle between Yoda and Count Dooku. I remember laughing out loud, but not in joy, but rather in the total ridiculousness of it. Perhaps they felt CGI was required to make that happen, when really someone should have just said "nooooo!".
Pretty much this. Stupid idea other than as a partial proof of concept in vacuum. Mass is mass.
Though I suppose if the 3D printer were designed in such a way as to use a dense mass as material, then inject gas to create essentially foam extrusions of such dimensions it would be unwieldy to launch. Anyway you'd still have to get the gas up there as there is literally nothing to work with.
Now if you could get a 3D printer to the moon, that is able to mine material, convert it to usable printing material, and then print things, and some robots able to move things around, well then you might have something... Again, a lot of missing pieces to that puzzle. However if seeing if you can reliably operate a 3D printer in vacuum (and gravity might be a bit odd to calibrate) is a first step, then it might be worth the efforty
I'm not sure if this is the same thing they are talking about, however it has to do with the general shift I think in how organizations hire.
I'll provide an example. I've been around a long enough time I guess you could call me pretty senior, at least insofar as I have knowledge no one else does as this point and am kept very busy because of that. One of the problems with many of my project is that I simply lack the time to dedicate to all of them as much as I should. One of the constant issues (and personal annoyances) I've seen over the years, is that every so often management will realize that I basically have too much work, and not enough time. They are also occasionally aware that if I get hit by a bus walking to work one day, apart from being a bit sad, they would have more than a bit of a problem with my sudden departure and the impact to our systems. So every now and again they assign a new hire, or backup, or some such junior position to try and mitigate some of those issues. I will then have to expend quite a considerable amount of my time (which is then impacting projects and my general sanity) to bring these people up to speed, train them, and get them the experience they need in order to have the knowledge necessary (which it would be less work for me to do it myself than handhold someone else to do it, which inevitably I am going to have to pick up the pieces anyway as I'll get into). However then what happens is because the organization doesn't do a good job to retain said individuals they eventually move on, usually to better positions, sometimes with little to do with what I got them up to speed on, leapfrogging up the corporate chain or elsewhere. Which to me is frustrating as after this happens over and over again I feel like I am just wasting my time which I could be spending elsewhere to basically help someone else's career options. Meanwhile we are left with the same problems, rinse repeat, over and over again. No one sticks around long enough that having that junior staff doesn't really help your future as they are gone. In the long ago past perhaps the corporate job market was such that they made a consented effort to retain and train staff. However now it seems that everyone simply just bounces around from position to position that it hardly seems worth it. In the end the organization is paying me to train someone who is going to leave anyway so why bother. Might be more effective to simply have me focus on my projects, and if in the unlikely event I get hit with a bus, just hire another senior guy and hope he can pick it up in a reasonable amount of time without too much disruption. Never mind the revolving door of management which can just play musical chairs with issues like this and hope the next guy gets it when the music eventually stops...
While I generally agree, a couple points both for and against.
#1: Fuel. Currently every conceivable method we have for propulsion requires some kind of fuel to be carried around with us. I believe even the ION drive require some sort of minute amount of fuel. I recall reading that using the most basic fuel source of Hydrogen, to reach some of the closest world, in order to get there in a reasonable amount of time, even with the considerations below, would require using an amount of Hydrogen equal to that contained within the Sun. Now consider also the impact of the extra mass and it's increased amount of inertia and all those types of factors. So even if we say in a thought experiment kind of way that we are somehow able to get up to a decent percentage of the speed of light, the practical applications of that in fuel usage and having to carry that fuel around with us, makes it even more daunting. #2: Speed. This one is pretty simple. Take whatever time you were thinking of in terms of the speed of light (or there abouts), and the distance to said planet.... Now more than double it. As unless you want to fly by said planet doing an incredible speed for little purpose you also have to slow down. That means at the midway point you have to stop accelerating, and start decelerating. So whatever time frames you were initially thinking about just got a lot longer, making a trip even more difficult. #3: Life. Unless you are going with self replicating/self repairing robots, most discussions involve slapping some humans into a ship of some kind. This means two things. First, your speed is going to be limited by what is reasonable to survive in acceleration and deceleration, which is further going to make the journey even longer. Second, when it comes down to it, unless you are talking about something akin to a generational type ship all of the above requirements would need to happen in a relatively short period of time given the normal human lifespan, with along with everything above is pretty hard to see happening.
#4: Magic Technology. So given our current technological capabilities, it is pretty clear that anything remotely like a human going to another solar system is pretty remote to the point of impossibility. That said, if you looked at technology we had 1000 years ago to what we have now, it is a pretty stark difference. It is hard to tell what technologies might be available to us in say another 1000 years. Now we can talk about how perhaps many technologies are plateauing, or being limited by physics (or at least our current understating of it), but again it was only several hundred years ago where many thought the earth was flat or that the Sun rotated around the earth and all sorts of other things. People thought if you sailed too far you might fall off the edge of the Earth, etc... Who knows what we'll come up with. We could get some Wrinkle in Time, wormhole kind of thing, cryogenics, or many number of things that might address the assortment of problems.
Some Problems with advancing technology: Two of my favorite issues with the advancements of technology to solves these problems come from two great works of science fiction (though in various forms exist in several).
Red Button Issue: Slaughterhouse-Five. I won't go into all the details of the book, however the basic principle is that by the time a civilization discovers a technology that is powerful enough to basically address all the issues above of and the physics as we know it, it would have to be so powerful and so dangerous, that the first civilization that tries to develop it has a pretty good chance of destroying the entire universe/time/everything in the attempt. That essentially in testing such a device and pressing the "red button" basically breaks everything. The lesser version of this, is that on the way to that ultimate conclusion, they test a much less powerful version, and once the "red button" is pressed, ends up wiping our their own civilization meaning that civilization as a thing has a progression limit unt
Lev Andropov: "Components? American components, Russian components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!"
Uh, they do know that all phones, not just Huawei are made in China right? If they are determined to install malicious stuff they have the physical contact to enable them to do so presumably to any brand of phone. Unless of course someone from Apple or others do deep inspection audits of the phones when they arrive in America... (no they are not)
Selling off infrastructure to balance the budget has so been done before, this is hardly news. Typically it is by Conservatives with the whole "Private is better" approach. One of the more recent examples was the 407 highway in Ontario. The Conservatives didn't sell it however, instead they did a 99 year lease... Totally different.
Um isn't Amazon looking to move it's HQ soon? Makes sense to go through a few boxes to get rid of what you don't need before you drag it to the new pad...
I'd guess this is all part of the same corporate process.
Razer sells "gaming machines" to people who don't want to or can't build their own.
People who use Linux generally build their own, or are re-purposing an old machine to be useful as something else.
Either way not a lot of market overlap for Razer, so justifiably they don't care. Also while Linux has made some inroads into the gaming scene over the years, it has been and continues to be dominated by the Windows OS, so futher reason not to care.
Some Razer Laptops might be a bit of an outlier (as you can't build one really), but again the cross over between the Linux savvy and Razer laptop owner is probably minutely small. I suppose you could multi-boot but why load Linux on a 3-4000$ gaming laptop, just doesn't make a lot of sense.
An interesting article. Most I've seen don't go back that far.
I think the take away is that modern politicians have looked back and figured out that if you want to spend a lot of money, having a war is a good way to justify it.
Although I don't think it was George W Bush's legacy of military spending or tax cuts that screwed Obama. Sure it was a lot, but no more than (relatively speaking) a lot of other instances. What screwed Obama was either deregulation or a lack of policy to create needed regulation in the financial markets around derivative trading and mortgage lending. It was the mortgage crisis, bank failures, and consequently the bailouts that were the issue. By the time Obama got the reigns he pretty much didn't have much choice in the matter.
Indeed, looking back at the "non-war" spending years, Reagan is one of the worst offenders. Though one might argue about "cold-war" being the same excuse for increase spending as the rest.
Almost more importantly, with the amount of money being thrown around it is a lot of good paying domestic jobs for many years. Politically that is how it is sold.
More oddly for Canada is that I believe we committed to "ice hardened" frigates, I guess for Arctic combat, which of course is pretty ridiculous. I can only imagine that it would add considerable weight, which would of course destroy whatever speed advantage a frigate might have.
I've always been of the mind that we should have just gotten some new ice breakers, as typically the only "missions" you're going to be doing in the arctic is either rescue or research. If need to replace aging frigates, get normal updated ones. Probably won't be all that much more that trying for the "all in one" solution that seems to be a bad idea lately.
Been around much longer than GPS, still have paper maps in my car. Been using GPS since it became available. Work in GIS so really have had more experience in the field with this sort of thing before it was really all that commercially available.
My observation at least so far as current technology goes is that GPS is really good at getting you someplace you haven't been before or do not know the way. It is also sometimes nice to have on just so you don't miss your important exist if you don't happen to be paying attention. However, for the most part it will take you VIA the most main route, which is a good thing, but usually not always the fastest or most optimal. A human "knowledgeable" of the area/route will do a better job, I have no doubt about that.
Two recent plus/minus anecdotes on GPS.
The minus is that GPS, is only so good as the data it consumes, which comes from a variety of sources. This is way taking a main route for GPS is often a safer bet, as it can't always account for changes, particularly with old route. That said in this particular instance, rather than take the route I normally take, I let the GPS guide my way blindly, which turned out to be a mistake. It was winter, and the roads got more rural, and worse, until I was eventually on what amounts to a cottage road, which terminated to an entrance to a forest road. For those that don't know what a forest road is, in summer it might be good for ATV's, trucks and offroad type SUV's at best.... In winter it wouldn't be plowed, and would be suitable for a snowmobile and that's about it. After listening to my girlfriend yell at me for a good 45min, I had to backtrack about another 30min to find another way out of where I was. In this case that road was in the GPS and classified as a highway. It was obviously bad data, as in no way shape or form was it ever a highway.
To the plus, I was on a rather long road trip, which unrelated to GPS started out rocky where my battery died within the first 2 hours and required a tow truck to service station, turning what might have been a 12 hour drive into a 14 hour drive. Which should have been a 10 hour drive, but on the main highway, to which there is little way around there was a massive accident shutting it down for many exits. What was interesting is that my GPS was aware of this, and got me off the highway on rural back roads before I got stuck in traffic. One thing that was funny about the experience was there was a convoy of like 8 or 10 of us all on the same back roads to which none of us had any right to be on normally, so I knew that every single one of those cars were also using a GPS. When we came out the other side, we still got stuck in traffic but only because the small rural cottage road couldn't handle the overflow. I recall a police officer chatting with me as he stopped me to let some people off the highway exit I was passing to get around. Apparently some people had been stuck for 3+ hours, so at least in this case my GPS certainly did well. I had never had a GPS do that before, it just piped up about a large delay ahead and if I wanted to detour around it, I was unsure about it, but was curious so said what the hell lets try it, glad i did.
Anyway GPS has it's pros and cons, and it has certainly gotten better over the years, and I suspect it will continue to do so. However I think things like the algorithms, interface, and routing is largely mature, it is more about the data, it being complete and kept up to date which is the continual challenge. Crowd sourcing the data collection maybe with a pinch of AI is likely the future. If you recall the inception of Apple Maps and how that initially went, it really is all about the fundamental data.
I don't think it has to do with education, but it likely is a contributor. Similarly some have mentioned IQ, but perhaps more aptly generically stated "intelligence" (to which education itself could be called a factor), is also likely a contributor. That said neither of those things explain it thoroughly. I've seen people who've I'd thought were educated and/or pretty smart parrot a lot of pretty far right bs.
I think it has more to do with personality. I also notice the same (causal or not) folks are usually religious, perhaps for the same reasons. They seem to have the ability to hear what they want to hear, and to be able to discount anything that might threaten that no matter what it is. This may also be attributed to perhaps (and I don't know for sure), understanding, but just not caring as it doesn't match your world view. As to why they share it so often, it is almost certainly propaganda. Repetition is key. It is hard to say if this is done intentionally because they are looking to further their cause, or unintentionally in that it reinforces their own beliefs so gives a kind of credence to their own world view. Kind of like proving to someone something by citing 8 papers, all of which you wrote yourself... Though in this case it is more like being able to site papers written by other people simply parroting the same thing.
I mean I have a couple people I know from high school, that post so much right wing stuff that I find myself actually wondering if they are seriously considering running for public office sometime in the near future.... That said I rarely post any retorts to this kind of stuff though I occasionally get galled into something. I know as soon as I do, all I am doing is adding more people that are able to see it because posted on it, and so on and so forth until it snowballs into something viral which is the ultimate end game of these stupid posts in the first place to get the widest audience as possible for their soapbox. They don't necessarily care if all people agree, because some of them will, and will start the whole insidious process all over again. It is very self perpetuating. In fact, the more ludicrous and crazy it is, the more left wing folks will also comment, which will only further help propel it into prominence. Which is funny in a depressing way, as those leftists are the same ones calling into question the right wing IQ, and then by their own actions helping them to perpetuate their propaganda. I've had the conversion with people about not engaging them, that I agree with your arguments, but by feeling your need to speak your mind, you are only helping them further.
Slashdot Mirror
Am I the only one that sees a convergence vector here for Amazon. I mean they deliver things to your door. Heck they could even give incentives to Ring with free or discounted shipping. Anyway I think this has more to do with business convergence and a play to own the whole experience. Granted reading about your experience they may need to improve the concept a bit, however one has to think that that will become easier over time, and Amazon's deep coffers could certainly help that. Anyway I see it being built into their delivery system eventually with package notifications etc... It is a way for Amazon to get another foot hold within you home. Heck, I'd expect these things to be networked with Elexa which might also be leveraged for usage. I believe they were also talking about having direct access to homes to drop off packages, this would allow the user to facilitate that.
Just to put a damper on discussions...
1) "theoretical black holes", meaning they may not exist naturally. If they do, they could be rare. At any rate travelling to any of them in the near future is impossible.
2) If one were to say artificially construct one of these things, in order for it to be big enough to fit a human though, it would have to be at least a certain size. A casual search indicates that a 5m event horizon black hole will have the approximate mass of Jupiter. So if it is constructed anywhere near Earth it will probably destroy it. If done in the solar system, could potentially mess with orbits catastrophically if not very careful.
Hierarchical structure eh? Maybe those pharaohs were on to something.
Hey at least it made me laugh at the end...
Also reinforces my need not to RTFA... because spoilers!
Yup. Two additional things.
1) Any sort of language translation between us and Aliens I have to imagine to be incredibly hard. I mean it is hard to translation between us and us for Christ stakes. Additionally now add the complexity of some made up languages used to control "computers" to which may or may not exist in any sort of resembling form for aliens. At any rate of all the things to be "scared" about from aliens, them hacking our computers is probably way down the list.
2) But but, magical alien AI could totally figure all of that out! Ya well magical alien AI can probably figure just about anything out, which means it probably has much better things to do than worry about hacking pornhub...
Page 2: How to find a 1" quartz disc in the vastness of space
Exactly the joke I was thinking, needs to be modded up!
That said, I think it is entirely reasonable that Russia did the hack. If only to spit in the eye of the organization that banned them as a nation from competing. I mean so far as I know in the end, all the hacking of "hundreds" of computers ended up doing was shutting down the Wifi for a brief period of time, which is just an annoyance really. Sounds like Russian hacking team practice, pick a target and have some lulzs.
That said, apart of "national" hacking, this very well could be the work of private hacking group for much the same reason (ban us from the games will you!)... As far as the political intrigue and North Korea goes, they seem to be the world wiping boy so if you're going to try and get someone else blamed, seems like the easiest route.
...everything looks like a nail.
I don't think this is limited to Marvel. This is across the industry. CGI is "relatively" new, and as technology has increased has become increasing popular. However there are many examples of not only overuse, but misuse. I think like the title of my comment many have become either over dependent upon it or just lazy. However I think the trend is only now just starting to correct itself where perhaps movie makers are realizing that CGI like anything is just a tool, and like any tool it is good for somethings and not so good for others. Really good movies depending on the need are going to use a lot of tools in the toolbox. Some might just need a screw driver, while others might need extensive use of the hammer so to speak.
I think a perfect example of this was the latest Star Wars. The didn't use CGI on Yoda, but rather went back to the roots and used a puppet. I enjoyed it much better. The other side of that coin is I recall in one of the prequels an extensive lighsaber battle between Yoda and Count Dooku. I remember laughing out loud, but not in joy, but rather in the total ridiculousness of it. Perhaps they felt CGI was required to make that happen, when really someone should have just said "nooooo!".
Pretty much this. Stupid idea other than as a partial proof of concept in vacuum. Mass is mass.
Though I suppose if the 3D printer were designed in such a way as to use a dense mass as material, then inject gas to create essentially foam extrusions of such dimensions it would be unwieldy to launch. Anyway you'd still have to get the gas up there as there is literally nothing to work with.
Now if you could get a 3D printer to the moon, that is able to mine material, convert it to usable printing material, and then print things, and some robots able to move things around, well then you might have something... Again, a lot of missing pieces to that puzzle. However if seeing if you can reliably operate a 3D printer in vacuum (and gravity might be a bit odd to calibrate) is a first step, then it might be worth the efforty
This is how it all starts...
I'm not sure if this is the same thing they are talking about, however it has to do with the general shift I think in how organizations hire.
I'll provide an example. I've been around a long enough time I guess you could call me pretty senior, at least insofar as I have knowledge no one else does as this point and am kept very busy because of that. One of the problems with many of my project is that I simply lack the time to dedicate to all of them as much as I should. One of the constant issues (and personal annoyances) I've seen over the years, is that every so often management will realize that I basically have too much work, and not enough time. They are also occasionally aware that if I get hit by a bus walking to work one day, apart from being a bit sad, they would have more than a bit of a problem with my sudden departure and the impact to our systems. So every now and again they assign a new hire, or backup, or some such junior position to try and mitigate some of those issues. I will then have to expend quite a considerable amount of my time (which is then impacting projects and my general sanity) to bring these people up to speed, train them, and get them the experience they need in order to have the knowledge necessary (which it would be less work for me to do it myself than handhold someone else to do it, which inevitably I am going to have to pick up the pieces anyway as I'll get into). However then what happens is because the organization doesn't do a good job to retain said individuals they eventually move on, usually to better positions, sometimes with little to do with what I got them up to speed on, leapfrogging up the corporate chain or elsewhere. Which to me is frustrating as after this happens over and over again I feel like I am just wasting my time which I could be spending elsewhere to basically help someone else's career options. Meanwhile we are left with the same problems, rinse repeat, over and over again. No one sticks around long enough that having that junior staff doesn't really help your future as they are gone. In the long ago past perhaps the corporate job market was such that they made a consented effort to retain and train staff. However now it seems that everyone simply just bounces around from position to position that it hardly seems worth it. In the end the organization is paying me to train someone who is going to leave anyway so why bother. Might be more effective to simply have me focus on my projects, and if in the unlikely event I get hit with a bus, just hire another senior guy and hope he can pick it up in a reasonable amount of time without too much disruption. Never mind the revolving door of management which can just play musical chairs with issues like this and hope the next guy gets it when the music eventually stops...
While I generally agree, a couple points both for and against.
#1: Fuel. Currently every conceivable method we have for propulsion requires some kind of fuel to be carried around with us. I believe even the ION drive require some sort of minute amount of fuel. I recall reading that using the most basic fuel source of Hydrogen, to reach some of the closest world, in order to get there in a reasonable amount of time, even with the considerations below, would require using an amount of Hydrogen equal to that contained within the Sun. Now consider also the impact of the extra mass and it's increased amount of inertia and all those types of factors. So even if we say in a thought experiment kind of way that we are somehow able to get up to a decent percentage of the speed of light, the practical applications of that in fuel usage and having to carry that fuel around with us, makes it even more daunting.
#2: Speed. This one is pretty simple. Take whatever time you were thinking of in terms of the speed of light (or there abouts), and the distance to said planet.... Now more than double it. As unless you want to fly by said planet doing an incredible speed for little purpose you also have to slow down. That means at the midway point you have to stop accelerating, and start decelerating. So whatever time frames you were initially thinking about just got a lot longer, making a trip even more difficult.
#3: Life. Unless you are going with self replicating/self repairing robots, most discussions involve slapping some humans into a ship of some kind. This means two things. First, your speed is going to be limited by what is reasonable to survive in acceleration and deceleration, which is further going to make the journey even longer. Second, when it comes down to it, unless you are talking about something akin to a generational type ship all of the above requirements would need to happen in a relatively short period of time given the normal human lifespan, with along with everything above is pretty hard to see happening.
#4: Magic Technology. So given our current technological capabilities, it is pretty clear that anything remotely like a human going to another solar system is pretty remote to the point of impossibility. That said, if you looked at technology we had 1000 years ago to what we have now, it is a pretty stark difference. It is hard to tell what technologies might be available to us in say another 1000 years. Now we can talk about how perhaps many technologies are plateauing, or being limited by physics (or at least our current understating of it), but again it was only several hundred years ago where many thought the earth was flat or that the Sun rotated around the earth and all sorts of other things. People thought if you sailed too far you might fall off the edge of the Earth, etc... Who knows what we'll come up with. We could get some Wrinkle in Time, wormhole kind of thing, cryogenics, or many number of things that might address the assortment of problems.
Some Problems with advancing technology:
Two of my favorite issues with the advancements of technology to solves these problems come from two great works of science fiction (though in various forms exist in several).
Red Button Issue: Slaughterhouse-Five. I won't go into all the details of the book, however the basic principle is that by the time a civilization discovers a technology that is powerful enough to basically address all the issues above of and the physics as we know it, it would have to be so powerful and so dangerous, that the first civilization that tries to develop it has a pretty good chance of destroying the entire universe/time/everything in the attempt. That essentially in testing such a device and pressing the "red button" basically breaks everything. The lesser version of this, is that on the way to that ultimate conclusion, they test a much less powerful version, and once the "red button" is pressed, ends up wiping our their own civilization meaning that civilization as a thing has a progression limit unt
EOL Windows 7 RIP
Unless it returns and is worshiped by our primitive ancestors...
OOGA BOOGA! THE TESLA IS ANGRY! ALL HAIL THE TESLA!
Well played Musk, well played. Did anyone check the glove compartment for any commandments?
Et obfirmatis sera reserans Model S sit convenient. Etsi autem verum est clavem ad actio- nem, non opus est ea uti.
Lev Andropov: "Components? American components, Russian components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!"
Uh, they do know that all phones, not just Huawei are made in China right? If they are determined to install malicious stuff they have the physical contact to enable them to do so presumably to any brand of phone. Unless of course someone from Apple or others do deep inspection audits of the phones when they arrive in America... (no they are not)
Selling off infrastructure to balance the budget has so been done before, this is hardly news. Typically it is by Conservatives with the whole "Private is better" approach. One of the more recent examples was the 407 highway in Ontario. The Conservatives didn't sell it however, instead they did a 99 year lease... Totally different.
I'm thinking the smart man just buys all the bridges...
Um isn't Amazon looking to move it's HQ soon? Makes sense to go through a few boxes to get rid of what you don't need before you drag it to the new pad...
I'd guess this is all part of the same corporate process.
Muhahaha!
Let the bidding begin.
This is how an Evil Villain get's their lair...
Razer sells "gaming machines" to people who don't want to or can't build their own.
People who use Linux generally build their own, or are re-purposing an old machine to be useful as something else.
Either way not a lot of market overlap for Razer, so justifiably they don't care. Also while Linux has made some inroads into the gaming scene over the years, it has been and continues to be dominated by the Windows OS, so futher reason not to care.
Some Razer Laptops might be a bit of an outlier (as you can't build one really), but again the cross over between the Linux savvy and Razer laptop owner is probably minutely small. I suppose you could multi-boot but why load Linux on a 3-4000$ gaming laptop, just doesn't make a lot of sense.
An interesting article. Most I've seen don't go back that far.
I think the take away is that modern politicians have looked back and figured out that if you want to spend a lot of money, having a war is a good way to justify it.
Although I don't think it was George W Bush's legacy of military spending or tax cuts that screwed Obama. Sure it was a lot, but no more than (relatively speaking) a lot of other instances. What screwed Obama was either deregulation or a lack of policy to create needed regulation in the financial markets around derivative trading and mortgage lending. It was the mortgage crisis, bank failures, and consequently the bailouts that were the issue. By the time Obama got the reigns he pretty much didn't have much choice in the matter.
Indeed, looking back at the "non-war" spending years, Reagan is one of the worst offenders. Though one might argue about "cold-war" being the same excuse for increase spending as the rest.
Almost more importantly, with the amount of money being thrown around it is a lot of good paying domestic jobs for many years. Politically that is how it is sold.
More oddly for Canada is that I believe we committed to "ice hardened" frigates, I guess for Arctic combat, which of course is pretty ridiculous. I can only imagine that it would add considerable weight, which would of course destroy whatever speed advantage a frigate might have.
I've always been of the mind that we should have just gotten some new ice breakers, as typically the only "missions" you're going to be doing in the arctic is either rescue or research. If need to replace aging frigates, get normal updated ones. Probably won't be all that much more that trying for the "all in one" solution that seems to be a bad idea lately.
Been around much longer than GPS, still have paper maps in my car. Been using GPS since it became available. Work in GIS so really have had more experience in the field with this sort of thing before it was really all that commercially available.
My observation at least so far as current technology goes is that GPS is really good at getting you someplace you haven't been before or do not know the way. It is also sometimes nice to have on just so you don't miss your important exist if you don't happen to be paying attention. However, for the most part it will take you VIA the most main route, which is a good thing, but usually not always the fastest or most optimal. A human "knowledgeable" of the area/route will do a better job, I have no doubt about that.
Two recent plus/minus anecdotes on GPS.
The minus is that GPS, is only so good as the data it consumes, which comes from a variety of sources. This is way taking a main route for GPS is often a safer bet, as it can't always account for changes, particularly with old route. That said in this particular instance, rather than take the route I normally take, I let the GPS guide my way blindly, which turned out to be a mistake. It was winter, and the roads got more rural, and worse, until I was eventually on what amounts to a cottage road, which terminated to an entrance to a forest road. For those that don't know what a forest road is, in summer it might be good for ATV's, trucks and offroad type SUV's at best.... In winter it wouldn't be plowed, and would be suitable for a snowmobile and that's about it. After listening to my girlfriend yell at me for a good 45min, I had to backtrack about another 30min to find another way out of where I was. In this case that road was in the GPS and classified as a highway. It was obviously bad data, as in no way shape or form was it ever a highway.
To the plus, I was on a rather long road trip, which unrelated to GPS started out rocky where my battery died within the first 2 hours and required a tow truck to service station, turning what might have been a 12 hour drive into a 14 hour drive. Which should have been a 10 hour drive, but on the main highway, to which there is little way around there was a massive accident shutting it down for many exits. What was interesting is that my GPS was aware of this, and got me off the highway on rural back roads before I got stuck in traffic. One thing that was funny about the experience was there was a convoy of like 8 or 10 of us all on the same back roads to which none of us had any right to be on normally, so I knew that every single one of those cars were also using a GPS. When we came out the other side, we still got stuck in traffic but only because the small rural cottage road couldn't handle the overflow. I recall a police officer chatting with me as he stopped me to let some people off the highway exit I was passing to get around. Apparently some people had been stuck for 3+ hours, so at least in this case my GPS certainly did well. I had never had a GPS do that before, it just piped up about a large delay ahead and if I wanted to detour around it, I was unsure about it, but was curious so said what the hell lets try it, glad i did.
Anyway GPS has it's pros and cons, and it has certainly gotten better over the years, and I suspect it will continue to do so. However I think things like the algorithms, interface, and routing is largely mature, it is more about the data, it being complete and kept up to date which is the continual challenge. Crowd sourcing the data collection maybe with a pinch of AI is likely the future. If you recall the inception of Apple Maps and how that initially went, it really is all about the fundamental data.
I don't think it has to do with education, but it likely is a contributor. Similarly some have mentioned IQ, but perhaps more aptly generically stated "intelligence" (to which education itself could be called a factor), is also likely a contributor. That said neither of those things explain it thoroughly. I've seen people who've I'd thought were educated and/or pretty smart parrot a lot of pretty far right bs.
I think it has more to do with personality. I also notice the same (causal or not) folks are usually religious, perhaps for the same reasons. They seem to have the ability to hear what they want to hear, and to be able to discount anything that might threaten that no matter what it is. This may also be attributed to perhaps (and I don't know for sure), understanding, but just not caring as it doesn't match your world view. As to why they share it so often, it is almost certainly propaganda. Repetition is key. It is hard to say if this is done intentionally because they are looking to further their cause, or unintentionally in that it reinforces their own beliefs so gives a kind of credence to their own world view. Kind of like proving to someone something by citing 8 papers, all of which you wrote yourself... Though in this case it is more like being able to site papers written by other people simply parroting the same thing.
I mean I have a couple people I know from high school, that post so much right wing stuff that I find myself actually wondering if they are seriously considering running for public office sometime in the near future.... That said I rarely post any retorts to this kind of stuff though I occasionally get galled into something. I know as soon as I do, all I am doing is adding more people that are able to see it because posted on it, and so on and so forth until it snowballs into something viral which is the ultimate end game of these stupid posts in the first place to get the widest audience as possible for their soapbox. They don't necessarily care if all people agree, because some of them will, and will start the whole insidious process all over again. It is very self perpetuating. In fact, the more ludicrous and crazy it is, the more left wing folks will also comment, which will only further help propel it into prominence. Which is funny in a depressing way, as those leftists are the same ones calling into question the right wing IQ, and then by their own actions helping them to perpetuate their propaganda. I've had the conversion with people about not engaging them, that I agree with your arguments, but by feeling your need to speak your mind, you are only helping them further.