How long before there is a Kickstarter to build an adapter that plugs into the Lightning port and provides Lightning pass through and a 3.5 headphone jack?
You're assuming that Apple won't produce a 3.5" adapter itself. They already sell a device with that functionality that solves the "listen and charge" problem at home - although obviously you'd want something a tad smaller on-the-go.
Drivers can't handle simple left/right turns so they're trying out these annoying "roundabouts" here in the US, do you really want the average driver to have a FLYING vehicle?
I think we're really talking about quieter and easier-to-fly helicopters and light aircraft that you can also drive to the airfield - for the sort of people who already fly around in helicopters or light aircraft.
At worst/best, the guy who buys the flying car is the guy currently trying to park his Audi in your tailpipe because you're trying to overtake a horse box without going more than 20mph over the limit. There's a reassuring thought...
they're trying out these annoying "roundabouts" here in the US
I love that the US is introducing roundabouts just as, here in the UK, more and more roundabouts are getting traffic lights (or even being turned back into regular junctions) because they can't cope with the traffic. OTOH, a roundabout is probably preferable to the US's obsession with the automotive poker game known as the 4-way stop, and they do help replace fatal T-bone collisions with a lot of minor low-speed shunts.
Except that he was driving the thing on a track at the time, and trying for "best time" laps.
So? This was a Tesla Roadster - a luxury sports car sold largely on the grounds of its performance (which, ISTR, Clarkson did say extremely nice things about). If you are are in the market for a $100k roadster then you might very well plan to drive it to the occasional "track day", spend an afternoon doing power laps, and drive back.
After all, you've already got the Range Rover for shopping, the Bentley for holidays and you just bought little Sebastian a BMW 3 series to get to his lectures... (or, at lest, if you're watching Top Gear, that's your fantasy for 60 minutes). That's certainly the basis on which Top Gear consistently "reviews" cars. They've also been known to point out how many sets of $1000 tyres some supercars vaporised in the course of a track session, how often the car needed filling up while racing the train between London and Cannes, and mocked the compexity of starting the engine on a McLaren, so its not like anything that runs on dead polar bears gets a free pass.
Certainly, taking your Tesla to a track day is a more plausible scenario than wanting to use a Reliant Robin as a re-usable spacecraft (although, hang on, Elon Musk...).
If there are 150M American adults eligible for this, and you pay them each $2000/month, that's $300B per month. Over a year, that's $3.6T.
No, its not going to cost that much because if you introduce UBI you raise income taxes so that, above a certain income threshold, what you gain in UBI you lose in tax. Preferably, you integrate UBI with the tax system so that most of UBI money never changes hands. The trick is tuning the tax system so that people in the transition from 100% UBI to 100% wages always have an incentive to earn more. But then (a) most countries already have a sophisticated redistributive tax system with various rates and thresholds and (b) existing welfare schemes already create "poverty traps" whereby people lose more in benefits than they would gain from a job, usually because of multiple, inter-dependent welfare schemes that suddenly cut off.
You're right, though - you can't just drop UBI into an existing system on its own and expect the invisible hand to sort everything else out - you have to consider the effect on everything - taxation, housing policy, healthcare, immigration, education. Lots of government intervention required - but then most countries (including the US) already have lots of government intervention, and it isn't going away. Remember - any government assistance to workers on low wages is an indirect government subsidy to businesses paying low wages.
NB: Welfare budgets are already a big chunk of GDP although its hard to find clear figures that unpick what we actually mean by "welfare". Certainly not your 20%, but that was a massive over-estimate anyhow. In the UK, this site puts "social security" at 6% GDP - that doesn't include the health service but might include other irrelevant things.
...or just make the disc/online version generally available at the same time as the movie release, and save having to pay for 2 rounds of publicity. Cinemas had a point when the alternative was a 20" TV & VHS player with lousy sound and picture. Now, we have 50" high def screens, surround sound and TV shows are being made with cinema production values. Cinemas need to sell the social experience rather than the film.
I'd kinda assume by now that most of the old cinemas that anybody would give a shit about saving have already found better business models than just showing the latest blockbusters.
Maybe, instead of having a film showing in every cinema for a couple of weeks simultaneously, they should let the disc sell the film and then "tour" it over the course of a year with extras (obviously it would need something that "scaled" - you couldn't tour it with the cast - but maybe an exhibition of props, live music, post-film debate, marathon showing of the whole series etc. depending on the type of film...)
Until you have actually tried JavaScript, don't hate on it...
...because only once you've tried it will you really learn to know the meaning of hate:-)
Problem is, having a cross-platform language & API for which the runtime is already installed on most systems - so end users with zero technical skills (you know, the ones where you ask them what operating system they're running and they say "Microsoft Office 2013") will actually be able to run your programs - is jolly useful... Sadly that language is JavaScript. Pity Java kinda went wrong.
It's called Ada, not ADA! Now hand in your Geek card!
Actually, I think its "Ada(tm)" because I recall that the books on the orange (later grey) wall used to read "VAX Pascal; VAX BASIC; VAX C; and VAX(r) ADA(tm)".
Most buyers don't pay attention to which chip is coming soon
.
No, but PC makers plan their new models, and new features, around chip releases. One of the moans about Apple is that their MacBook Pros haven't had a major design overhaul for years, and its a safe bet that any new designs will be built around Skylake chips. One of many issues: USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 connectors will enable thinner/tapered cases & TB3, at least, requires Skylake.
Super upgraded power savings/longer battery life? The laptop will be plugged in 24/7
Why buy a 4 wheel-drive SUV when you never go offroad and live where it only snows 2 days a year?
Lower power also means less heat, which means smaller/thinner machines. I saw an ad on TV where an actor famous for pretending to have a humorous version of Aspergers told me that I needed to get a new PC because it was thinner and lighter.
Faster chip? Won't make Facebook faster
That depends on how many Flash/Javascript ads with animation and movies there are on the page.
Smaller die size? Who cares except enthusiasts?
...the people designing new thin & light laptops (see above).
UHD screens? What good is that right now for most people?
...Apple have been making a selling point out of "retina" displays with UHD-like pixel densities for years.
Intel's failure to support DisplayPort 1.3 - which makes 4k/5k displays less of a crapshoot - in their iGPUs and Thunderbolt 3 chipsets is certainly a problem.
Putting the "retail" back into "non retail" sales. Seriously wtf - how does this add any value?
Uh, how about the website where you can choose from a massive range of products (beyond the dreams of any old-school mail order catalog, let alone an actual store) and pick them up the next day?
Sure, you could order books (and not a lot else) from a regular bookstore if you knew exactly what you want and didn't mind paying a premium price and waiting a week or so...
...and from Amazon's POV, at a university you've got a large, captive audience of potentially valuable customers, many of whom might otherwise be put off using Amazon because they are living in shared accommodation where it is awkward to get stuff delivered safely (especially, to be fair, by the tender hands of Amazon Logistics and other cut-price couriers spawned by the Internet Shopping age).
Well, depending on which version of the story you read either she was taken off the plane because she was ill or her "illness" was entirely due to her concerns about the professor.
The Washington Post seems to think that the way of investigating an accusation of terrorism is to google the person's name (probably more reliable than the TSA but not much). Or maybe they should have publically interviewed him in his seat on the plane (for the entertainment of the surrounding passengers)?
Incidentally, I see that the Washington Post is keen to point out at every opportunity that the prof was "curly haired", "olive skinned" and "foreign-sounding" without providing a shred of evidence that this was relevant to anybody other than the woman who complained (and even that is speculation, although it sounds likely). In particular, note how the journalist has weaved these words into their account of the interview with the security guy to make sure that we associate the issue of race with the "interrogation" (and don't question their headline that claims the prof was "ethnically profiled") - that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you do spin. "Some sort of agent" is a great one, too.
...and if you read to the end of the Washington Post article you'll find the root of the narrative: yes folks, it was all Trump's fault!
Now, if Trump sat next to me on a plane writing scary notes about building walls and banning Moslems, I'd probably feign illness and demand to be let off myself, but I don't think he can be held single-handedly responsible for every instance of casual racism or ignorance in the USA.
You are blaming Windows 10 for PC sales not declining as much as Mac sales?
The figures combine PC & tablet sales. I suspect a lot of Apple's falls are due to traditional tablet sales tanking - the PC makers didn't really have appreciable tablet sales to lose. As for Mac/PC sales, Apple & Lenovo started the year ahead because they're mainly in laptops, small-form-factor and all-in-ones, which have been doing better than desktops for the last few years.
Intel probably get a slice of the blame, too, with delays in releasing new chips. The mobile Skylake chips with the higher-spec graphics - which is what Apple needs for any new MacBook Pro - have been slow to appear.
But no, Windows 8/10 and all that isn't the cause - its a symptom - a botched attempt by Microsoft to push into the mobile market and fix that which was not broken. The cause is the maturity of PC technology and the end of the 2-3 year upgrade cycle.
Your PC is already powerful enough to edit cinema-quality video. Even though your 3D games are entering Uncanny Valley the gameplay is no better than Half Life 1. You don't need to double the power of your PC to get your tax returns and word processing done.
That's why most of the "innovation" over the last decade has focussed on putting the same power into a smaller space.
It sounds to me like they said, "Ok, we'd better check this out." Then they spent a few minutes, confirmed that everything was fine, and were on their way. Not a problem.
Yup, and if you RTFA a bit more carefully, you'll see that the flight was actually delayed because it had to return to the gate to let off the woman who had complained, because she was feeling ill. At the end of the day, the professor writing math got to stay on the plane, the woman who complained about it didn't. Damn, that doesn't make such a good headline, does it?
One look at the posted map leaves no doubt that Tesla remains heavily rich-centered company.
The fact that the "affordable" Model 3 still costs BMW-3-series-money shouldn't leave any doubt of that to start with.
That said, the point of EVs is that most of the time you charge them at home and only need a charging station when making long trips, so the need for charging stations in cities & residential areas is reduced - they're needed along long-distance routes and at hotels, 'destination' shopping malls etc. The "high cost of living areas" are also the places that people are likely to take road trips to visit for business/pleasure.
A solution is needed for 'home charging' if you don't have a driveway or garage, but driving to a 'local' public charging station isn't going to entice people to buy EVs. I don't see high-density residential areas that already have parking problems welcoming roadside charging points unless they are 'residents only'.
This is the kind of BS you have to worry about when you have government doing things it shouldn't be doing, like running a national TV network
Yes, I envy the USA and the wonderful, unbiassed, philanthropic networks run by massive multinational corporations - and the great thing is, freedom of choice: you can choose to watch the network run by the massive multinational corporation who's entrenched interests best represents your interests. Plus, of course, the US networks are famous for never censoring or regulating content.
Oh, yes, there's public broadcasting in the US. I remember watching a show on one such channel once when visiting the US: it was the original British version of House of Cards (not the Netflix US remake) in which the anti-hero F.U. takes on (and outwits) the King who Didn't Resemble Charles At All... the US channel actually prefaced it with a little lecture about the evils of monarchy* just in case any USA viewers started rooting for the King (because although F.U. was an evil, corrupt murdering bastard, he had been democratically elected after democratically murdering/smearing/blackmailing his opponents). Not sure which sponsor had insisted on that little rider. (NB: the UK monarch doesn't actually get to run the country - I'm still not a fan, but we need the tourism and the alternative would probably be to outsource the whole bunch to Disney who'd be far more likely to interfere with running the country)
Anyway, at least PBS doesn't run those adverts telling you how wonderful it is that you get to watch adverts because they protect your right to choose products made by the companies that can afford the most adverts (seriously - Philip K Dick would be proud. This was some years ago, are they still running?)
NB: The government doesn't run the BBC, but every 10 years or so they get the chance to re-write the charter under which it operates. That's what's happening at the moment - and the current government would quite like to shut it down to keep their friends in big media companies happy. You can tell the government doesn't run the BBC because if they did they'd have already shut it down.
* Citation needed, I know, but it was a while ago and the bruise where my jaw hit the floor has long gone. It was certainly a "did that just happen?" moment.
But unlike a Raspberry Pi, the Bit requires another computer to program it.
...but you won't get far programming a Pi without a mouse, a keyboard and a display etc. In the typical school, you might, maybe, get a class set of Pis, but no teacher is going to lug 30 HDMI monitors, keyboards and mice into their classroom - they're going to book the PC lab. As all the displays in the PC lab already come with PCs attached, why not use them? Or, if the school's been kitted out in the last 10 years, it'll have a laptop or iPad trolley, which won't be much use with a Pi.
Bottom line: the Pi is a great little system for computer geeks, makers and school clubs, but the "teach all kids to code" line has never held water. There's no practical reason why you can't teach kids to program with the PCs or tablets that schools already have. There are kid-friendly programming environments (Scratch etc.), free virtual machine software (like VirtualBox) if you want to give them a sandbox to safely wreck, and there are robotics systems like Lego Mindstorms.
However, the Pi does seem to have captured peoples' imagination so maybe this isn't all about boring practicality. What the microbit does, really, is give kids an 'artefact' that they can program with their variation on "chaser lights", keep, take home and, figuratively, stick on the fridge, even if they don't get to play on the family PC. The Pi may be incredibly cheap for a "complete" computer but its not cheap enough to give away to schoolkids and, even when programmed, doesn't "do anything" without extra circuitry, "hats" or external i/o.
They also conflated TFA (in which the RasPi 3 does pretty well in the benchmarks against current competitors) with a puff piece for a new board which isn't widely available yet (2nd TFA didn't even have a sample - they were just comparing published benchmarks).
Seriously. The ODROID C2 looks interesting - why not post a straight announcement/review that doesn't rely on knocking the RasPI to get clicks?
ODROID-C2 is real 64-bit rather than having 64-bit capable CPU but only 32-bit kernel and userland with the raspi team announcing that in several months they'll "consider" whether making 64-bit drivers is worth it.
*ARM 64bit is a very new platform and some system specific Linux softwares are not working stably at this moment.
So there might be the compatibility issues frequently and we may need longer time to fix the issues.
* Ubuntu 16.04 LTS is also on the alpha stage and it causes the instability and incompatibility problems.
...so it sounds to me like the raspi team are dead right in not pushing a potentially unstable system on their user base just yet. I'm sure there will be unofficial ARM64 linux builds for RasPi 3 real soon now, for 733t H4X0Rs who like to bleed on the living edge.
They only identify individual users, they do not authenticate them.
But... but... even if you've stolen somebody's phone you still need a copy of their fingerprint to use this method. You'd need to get hold of something they'd handled recently, preferably with a nice shiny glass or plastic surface, like maybe a.... Oh, wait, yeah, a mobile phone.:-)
Seriously, though - there is a role for "weak" protection like this as a "line in the sand" - if you have to break a security measure, however feeble, then its hard to subsequently claim innocence or good faith. That's fine, provided everybody knows and understands that limitation.
End of the day - fingerprint protection makes your phone more secure than your wallet, and is more convenient than a strong password or PIN. It doesn't make your phone a fortress.
They take a picture and see it fade into view like magic. Polaroid makes a whole line of instant cameras with film.
TFA is about the older type of instant film whereby you pull a sandwich of film and chemicals out of the camera, wave it around for an approximate period of time based on temperature then peel off the print and try to find somewhere to safely dispose of the chemical-soaked negative. I can't really think of a use-case for that apart from nostalgia.
The newer system, where you just get a blank print that fades into view and then 'fixes' itself is more fun and more practical (but still not as practical as a phone cam).
The developer that programmed E.T. should have denied the initial offer. It wasn't a sane business plan. He should have negotiated for something better.
Its pretty clear from TFA that he was a bit star-struck and naive at the time (and, sadly, Speilberg was right - an ET-themed PacMan clone would probably have been a bigger success, and a more achievable target in the time allowed, with tried-and-tested gameplay) so that's partially fair.
However, its also clear that there were plenty of other mistakes made by Atari over the budget and sales projections (and would have probably fired him if he had objected). The notion that all the established (and totally routine) production and marketing processes take as long as they take, but the one non-routine and unpredictable aspect (designing and writing a novel bit of software) can always be compressed into whatever time remains is pretty endemic thinking amongst management.
Slashdot Mirror
Since Britain left Europe... does that mean it's a continent now?
No, just incontinent.
And that’s how the universe began?
No, but its a great way to unwind.
(Or something like that - I can't find my copy of the scripts, which is winding me up).
How long before there is a Kickstarter to build an adapter that plugs into the Lightning port and provides Lightning pass through and a 3.5 headphone jack?
You're assuming that Apple won't produce a 3.5" adapter itself. They already sell a device with that functionality that solves the "listen and charge" problem at home - although obviously you'd want something a tad smaller on-the-go.
Drivers can't handle simple left/right turns so they're trying out these annoying "roundabouts" here in the US, do you really want the average driver to have a FLYING vehicle?
I think we're really talking about quieter and easier-to-fly helicopters and light aircraft that you can also drive to the airfield - for the sort of people who already fly around in helicopters or light aircraft.
At worst/best, the guy who buys the flying car is the guy currently trying to park his Audi in your tailpipe because you're trying to overtake a horse box without going more than 20mph over the limit. There's a reassuring thought...
they're trying out these annoying "roundabouts" here in the US
I love that the US is introducing roundabouts just as, here in the UK, more and more roundabouts are getting traffic lights (or even being turned back into regular junctions) because they can't cope with the traffic. OTOH, a roundabout is probably preferable to the US's obsession with the automotive poker game known as the 4-way stop, and they do help replace fatal T-bone collisions with a lot of minor low-speed shunts.
Except that he was driving the thing on a track at the time, and trying for "best time" laps.
So? This was a Tesla Roadster - a luxury sports car sold largely on the grounds of its performance (which, ISTR, Clarkson did say extremely nice things about). If you are are in the market for a $100k roadster then you might very well plan to drive it to the occasional "track day", spend an afternoon doing power laps, and drive back.
After all, you've already got the Range Rover for shopping, the Bentley for holidays and you just bought little Sebastian a BMW 3 series to get to his lectures... (or, at lest, if you're watching Top Gear, that's your fantasy for 60 minutes). That's certainly the basis on which Top Gear consistently "reviews" cars. They've also been known to point out how many sets of $1000 tyres some supercars vaporised in the course of a track session, how often the car needed filling up while racing the train between London and Cannes, and mocked the compexity of starting the engine on a McLaren, so its not like anything that runs on dead polar bears gets a free pass.
Certainly, taking your Tesla to a track day is a more plausible scenario than wanting to use a Reliant Robin as a re-usable spacecraft (although, hang on, Elon Musk...).
Well, what is its new name, then?
Daisy.
If there are 150M American adults eligible for this, and you pay them each $2000/month, that's $300B per month. Over a year, that's $3.6T.
No, its not going to cost that much because if you introduce UBI you raise income taxes so that, above a certain income threshold, what you gain in UBI you lose in tax. Preferably, you integrate UBI with the tax system so that most of UBI money never changes hands. The trick is tuning the tax system so that people in the transition from 100% UBI to 100% wages always have an incentive to earn more. But then (a) most countries already have a sophisticated redistributive tax system with various rates and thresholds and (b) existing welfare schemes already create "poverty traps" whereby people lose more in benefits than they would gain from a job, usually because of multiple, inter-dependent welfare schemes that suddenly cut off.
You're right, though - you can't just drop UBI into an existing system on its own and expect the invisible hand to sort everything else out - you have to consider the effect on everything - taxation, housing policy, healthcare, immigration, education. Lots of government intervention required - but then most countries (including the US) already have lots of government intervention, and it isn't going away. Remember - any government assistance to workers on low wages is an indirect government subsidy to businesses paying low wages.
NB: Welfare budgets are already a big chunk of GDP although its hard to find clear figures that unpick what we actually mean by "welfare". Certainly not your 20%, but that was a massive over-estimate anyhow. In the UK, this site puts "social security" at 6% GDP - that doesn't include the health service but might include other irrelevant things.
...or just make the disc/online version generally available at the same time as the movie release, and save having to pay for 2 rounds of publicity. Cinemas had a point when the alternative was a 20" TV & VHS player with lousy sound and picture. Now, we have 50" high def screens, surround sound and TV shows are being made with cinema production values. Cinemas need to sell the social experience rather than the film.
I'd kinda assume by now that most of the old cinemas that anybody would give a shit about saving have already found better business models than just showing the latest blockbusters.
Maybe, instead of having a film showing in every cinema for a couple of weeks simultaneously, they should let the disc sell the film and then "tour" it over the course of a year with extras (obviously it would need something that "scaled" - you couldn't tour it with the cast - but maybe an exhibition of props, live music, post-film debate, marathon showing of the whole series etc. depending on the type of film...)
Until you have actually tried JavaScript, don't hate on it... :-)
...because only once you've tried it will you really learn to know the meaning of hate
Problem is, having a cross-platform language & API for which the runtime is already installed on most systems - so end users with zero technical skills (you know, the ones where you ask them what operating system they're running and they say "Microsoft Office 2013") will actually be able to run your programs - is jolly useful... Sadly that language is JavaScript. Pity Java kinda went wrong.
It's called Ada, not ADA! Now hand in your Geek card!
Actually, I think its "Ada(tm)" because I recall that the books on the orange (later grey) wall used to read "VAX Pascal; VAX BASIC; VAX C; and VAX(r) ADA(tm)".
Most buyers don't pay attention to which chip is coming soon
.
No, but PC makers plan their new models, and new features, around chip releases. One of the moans about Apple is that their MacBook Pros haven't had a major design overhaul for years, and its a safe bet that any new designs will be built around Skylake chips. One of many issues: USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 connectors will enable thinner/tapered cases & TB3, at least, requires Skylake.
Super upgraded power savings/longer battery life? The laptop will be plugged in 24/7
Why buy a 4 wheel-drive SUV when you never go offroad and live where it only snows 2 days a year?
Lower power also means less heat, which means smaller/thinner machines. I saw an ad on TV where an actor famous for pretending to have a humorous version of Aspergers told me that I needed to get a new PC because it was thinner and lighter.
Faster chip? Won't make Facebook faster
That depends on how many Flash/Javascript ads with animation and movies there are on the page.
Smaller die size? Who cares except enthusiasts?
...the people designing new thin & light laptops (see above).
UHD screens? What good is that right now for most people?
...Apple have been making a selling point out of "retina" displays with UHD-like pixel densities for years.
Intel's failure to support DisplayPort 1.3 - which makes 4k/5k displays less of a crapshoot - in their iGPUs and Thunderbolt 3 chipsets is certainly a problem.
Putting the "retail" back into "non retail" sales. Seriously wtf - how does this add any value?
Uh, how about the website where you can choose from a massive range of products (beyond the dreams of any old-school mail order catalog, let alone an actual store) and pick them up the next day?
Sure, you could order books (and not a lot else) from a regular bookstore if you knew exactly what you want and didn't mind paying a premium price and waiting a week or so...
...and from Amazon's POV, at a university you've got a large, captive audience of potentially valuable customers, many of whom might otherwise be put off using Amazon because they are living in shared accommodation where it is awkward to get stuff delivered safely (especially, to be fair, by the tender hands of Amazon Logistics and other cut-price couriers spawned by the Internet Shopping age).
Well, she WANTED off the plane,
Well, depending on which version of the story you read either she was taken off the plane because she was ill or her "illness" was entirely due to her concerns about the professor.
The Washington Post seems to think that the way of investigating an accusation of terrorism is to google the person's name (probably more reliable than the TSA but not much). Or maybe they should have publically interviewed him in his seat on the plane (for the entertainment of the surrounding passengers)?
Incidentally, I see that the Washington Post is keen to point out at every opportunity that the prof was "curly haired", "olive skinned" and "foreign-sounding" without providing a shred of evidence that this was relevant to anybody other than the woman who complained (and even that is speculation, although it sounds likely). In particular, note how the journalist has weaved these words into their account of the interview with the security guy to make sure that we associate the issue of race with the "interrogation" (and don't question their headline that claims the prof was "ethnically profiled") - that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you do spin. "Some sort of agent" is a great one, too.
...and if you read to the end of the Washington Post article you'll find the root of the narrative: yes folks, it was all Trump's fault!
Now, if Trump sat next to me on a plane writing scary notes about building walls and banning Moslems, I'd probably feign illness and demand to be let off myself, but I don't think he can be held single-handedly responsible for every instance of casual racism or ignorance in the USA.
You are blaming Windows 10 for PC sales not declining as much as Mac sales?
The figures combine PC & tablet sales. I suspect a lot of Apple's falls are due to traditional tablet sales tanking - the PC makers didn't really have appreciable tablet sales to lose. As for Mac/PC sales, Apple & Lenovo started the year ahead because they're mainly in laptops, small-form-factor and all-in-ones, which have been doing better than desktops for the last few years.
Intel probably get a slice of the blame, too, with delays in releasing new chips. The mobile Skylake chips with the higher-spec graphics - which is what Apple needs for any new MacBook Pro - have been slow to appear.
But no, Windows 8/10 and all that isn't the cause - its a symptom - a botched attempt by Microsoft to push into the mobile market and fix that which was not broken. The cause is the maturity of PC technology and the end of the 2-3 year upgrade cycle.
Moores law is becoming irrelevant.
Your PC is already powerful enough to edit cinema-quality video. Even though your 3D games are entering Uncanny Valley the gameplay is no better than Half Life 1. You don't need to double the power of your PC to get your tax returns and word processing done.
That's why most of the "innovation" over the last decade has focussed on putting the same power into a smaller space.
It sounds to me like they said, "Ok, we'd better check this out." Then they spent a few minutes, confirmed that everything was fine, and were on their way. Not a problem.
Yup, and if you RTFA a bit more carefully, you'll see that the flight was actually delayed because it had to return to the gate to let off the woman who had complained, because she was feeling ill. At the end of the day, the professor writing math got to stay on the plane, the woman who complained about it didn't. Damn, that doesn't make such a good headline, does it?
One look at the posted map leaves no doubt that Tesla remains heavily rich-centered company.
The fact that the "affordable" Model 3 still costs BMW-3-series-money shouldn't leave any doubt of that to start with.
That said, the point of EVs is that most of the time you charge them at home and only need a charging station when making long trips, so the need for charging stations in cities & residential areas is reduced - they're needed along long-distance routes and at hotels, 'destination' shopping malls etc. The "high cost of living areas" are also the places that people are likely to take road trips to visit for business/pleasure.
A solution is needed for 'home charging' if you don't have a driveway or garage, but driving to a 'local' public charging station isn't going to entice people to buy EVs. I don't see high-density residential areas that already have parking problems welcoming roadside charging points unless they are 'residents only'.
This is the kind of BS you have to worry about when you have government doing things it shouldn't be doing, like running a national TV network
Yes, I envy the USA and the wonderful, unbiassed, philanthropic networks run by massive multinational corporations - and the great thing is, freedom of choice: you can choose to watch the network run by the massive multinational corporation who's entrenched interests best represents your interests. Plus, of course, the US networks are famous for never censoring or regulating content.
Oh, yes, there's public broadcasting in the US. I remember watching a show on one such channel once when visiting the US: it was the original British version of House of Cards (not the Netflix US remake) in which the anti-hero F.U. takes on (and outwits) the King who Didn't Resemble Charles At All... the US channel actually prefaced it with a little lecture about the evils of monarchy* just in case any USA viewers started rooting for the King (because although F.U. was an evil, corrupt murdering bastard, he had been democratically elected after democratically murdering/smearing/blackmailing his opponents). Not sure which sponsor had insisted on that little rider. (NB: the UK monarch doesn't actually get to run the country - I'm still not a fan, but we need the tourism and the alternative would probably be to outsource the whole bunch to Disney who'd be far more likely to interfere with running the country)
Anyway, at least PBS doesn't run those adverts telling you how wonderful it is that you get to watch adverts because they protect your right to choose products made by the companies that can afford the most adverts (seriously - Philip K Dick would be proud. This was some years ago, are they still running?)
NB: The government doesn't run the BBC, but every 10 years or so they get the chance to re-write the charter under which it operates. That's what's happening at the moment - and the current government would quite like to shut it down to keep their friends in big media companies happy. You can tell the government doesn't run the BBC because if they did they'd have already shut it down.
* Citation needed, I know, but it was a while ago and the bruise where my jaw hit the floor has long gone. It was certainly a "did that just happen?" moment.
But unlike a Raspberry Pi, the Bit requires another computer to program it.
...but you won't get far programming a Pi without a mouse, a keyboard and a display etc. In the typical school, you might, maybe, get a class set of Pis, but no teacher is going to lug 30 HDMI monitors, keyboards and mice into their classroom - they're going to book the PC lab. As all the displays in the PC lab already come with PCs attached, why not use them? Or, if the school's been kitted out in the last 10 years, it'll have a laptop or iPad trolley, which won't be much use with a Pi.
Bottom line: the Pi is a great little system for computer geeks, makers and school clubs, but the "teach all kids to code" line has never held water. There's no practical reason why you can't teach kids to program with the PCs or tablets that schools already have. There are kid-friendly programming environments (Scratch etc.), free virtual machine software (like VirtualBox) if you want to give them a sandbox to safely wreck, and there are robotics systems like Lego Mindstorms.
However, the Pi does seem to have captured peoples' imagination so maybe this isn't all about boring practicality. What the microbit does, really, is give kids an 'artefact' that they can program with their variation on "chaser lights", keep, take home and, figuratively, stick on the fridge, even if they don't get to play on the family PC. The Pi may be incredibly cheap for a "complete" computer but its not cheap enough to give away to schoolkids and, even when programmed, doesn't "do anything" without extra circuitry, "hats" or external i/o.
They also conflated TFA (in which the RasPi 3 does pretty well in the benchmarks against current competitors) with a puff piece for a new board which isn't widely available yet (2nd TFA didn't even have a sample - they were just comparing published benchmarks).
Seriously. The ODROID C2 looks interesting - why not post a straight announcement/review that doesn't rely on knocking the RasPI to get clicks?
ODROID-C2 is real 64-bit rather than having 64-bit capable CPU but only 32-bit kernel and userland with the raspi team announcing that in several months they'll "consider" whether making 64-bit drivers is worth it.
Yet, from the ODROID C2 page:
*ARM 64bit is a very new platform and some system specific Linux softwares are not working stably at this moment. So there might be the compatibility issues frequently and we may need longer time to fix the issues.
* Ubuntu 16.04 LTS is also on the alpha stage and it causes the instability and incompatibility problems.
...so it sounds to me like the raspi team are dead right in not pushing a potentially unstable system on their user base just yet. I'm sure there will be unofficial ARM64 linux builds for RasPi 3 real soon now, for 733t H4X0Rs who like to bleed on the living edge.
They only identify individual users, they do not authenticate them.
But... but... even if you've stolen somebody's phone you still need a copy of their fingerprint to use this method. You'd need to get hold of something they'd handled recently, preferably with a nice shiny glass or plastic surface, like maybe a.... Oh, wait, yeah, a mobile phone. :-)
Seriously, though - there is a role for "weak" protection like this as a "line in the sand" - if you have to break a security measure, however feeble, then its hard to subsequently claim innocence or good faith. That's fine, provided everybody knows and understands that limitation.
End of the day - fingerprint protection makes your phone more secure than your wallet, and is more convenient than a strong password or PIN. It doesn't make your phone a fortress.
Tesla has deployed a total of about 100,000 cars. For reference, AAA membership is 54,000,000 .
I'll take anecdotes from 100 people who actually have some relevant experience over survey results from 54 million people who don't.
Kids love it.
Kids don't have to pay for the film.
They take a picture and see it fade into view like magic. Polaroid makes a whole line of instant cameras with film.
TFA is about the older type of instant film whereby you pull a sandwich of film and chemicals out of the camera, wave it around for an approximate period of time based on temperature then peel off the print and try to find somewhere to safely dispose of the chemical-soaked negative. I can't really think of a use-case for that apart from nostalgia.
The newer system, where you just get a blank print that fades into view and then 'fixes' itself is more fun and more practical (but still not as practical as a phone cam).
The developer that programmed E.T. should have denied the initial offer. It wasn't a sane business plan. He should have negotiated for something better.
Its pretty clear from TFA that he was a bit star-struck and naive at the time (and, sadly, Speilberg was right - an ET-themed PacMan clone would probably have been a bigger success, and a more achievable target in the time allowed, with tried-and-tested gameplay) so that's partially fair.
However, its also clear that there were plenty of other mistakes made by Atari over the budget and sales projections (and would have probably fired him if he had objected). The notion that all the established (and totally routine) production and marketing processes take as long as they take, but the one non-routine and unpredictable aspect (designing and writing a novel bit of software) can always be compressed into whatever time remains is pretty endemic thinking amongst management.