this NASA project is about "sciencing the shit out of" all the tiny details that go behind the general word "tree":
- how to deal growinv something in a soil that is mostly perchlorate (not exactly a rich soil)? - how to deal with an atmospheric pressure that is a tiny fraction of earth's? - how to deal with sun's output which is a lot less (in terms of useful light) but higher (in term of radiations) - and which exact plant are you going to use as "tree" ? (probably some cyanobacteriae)
it's the detailled answers to these questions that is going to cost this budget
These days when n'erdowells make a death threat, their method of implementation is called SWATing, and no kind of weapon helps here, since they're relying on panicking law enforcement with a fake call.
You know, there still exist some countries, where the police hasn't felt the need to turn themselves into some kind of military branch.
And as long as you're not actively shooting at police, it will never cross their mind to take out their weapons.
You can no more make 50% of the population good computer programmers than you can make 50% of the population symphony class musicians.
You can't make everyone a "symphony orchestra"-class musicion. But music is an art that plays an important part in human culture. And thus it's good to at least have some rudimental ideas what music is. Hence, music classes are thaugh in school, so everybody has an idea what this thing is. (Then, some - those that have a bit of talent, and a lot of perseverance - might go on and make career in music).
Same here. You can't make a Linus Torvalds or John Carmack out of 50% of the population. But computer (and other similar smart electronics) play a crucial part in today's life. And thus it's good to at least have some rudimental ideas of how computer work, and what you can do with them. Hence, coding classes should be taugh in school, so everybody has an idea what this thing is. (Then, some could manage to make a career. The rest will just go on being users of the tech, but with at least some understanding how it works).
Again, easily provable by taking off in an airplane, while wearing a wristwatch and using your throttle to keep your groundspeed at 500mph, regardless of headwinds / tailwinds.
and their crack-pot theory probably goes something along the lines that it's hard to follow a straight line un-aided, and all the guidance systems (such as GPS are a vast conspiracy of collaborating agencies).
The instruments of the plane, and your wristwatch are probably similarly affected by a micro-conspiracy of nano-midgets hidden inside them, or something.
(I just can't imagine WHAT conspiracy is also haunting your sextant to make star navigation also similarly impossible. Is it haunted by the ghosts of the former conspirator how burned down Rome ? Antikythera proves it ?)
...but why {...} ?!? {...} the syntax looks like the bastard child of Fortran and Perl
Because since Python started overtaking Perl, my cats are sad because they can't write fully compliant programs just by random walking across the keyboard anymore.
They're concordant multi-faceted paradigm changing solutions to ensure accelerating velocity for OEM vendors and end user implementations of future requirement conditions within a broader flowing service market... Duh!
So, it's a bit like the "Git gets easier once you get the basic idea that..." parody.
And we can continue, in most latin languages (and slavic and several others), she tends to be called after the Italian "Giulietta" (and local transcriptions there of). (Which is again different than Juliett - and would even make sense in the context given that's how is the language where the action is supposed to take place. Note that these will also tend to pronounce her lover "Romeo", again closer to Italian)
So no, not the whole planet is calling them by the Shakespear's original english.
Germans just use whatever is the local variant of Juliett, for ease of pronunciation.
As German is a language regularily refered in the science (Mad scientist cliché) and computer (Blinkenlight !) lore, Romeo und Julia, could be fitting for computing language pairs.
Not with the CPU code (not the x86 core itself), but the package.
First, the wifi is generally provided by the motherboard or an addon comm board... not the processor... and I don't want the processor to have that feature even if it could.
In that hardware class where Atoms and co are used (ultrabooks, chromebooks, tablets, etc.) you use SoC : package where you try to cram as many other cores as possible to reduce the number of chips and thus some impact on the price and power usage (the screen is still the largest consumer, so don't expect miracles either).
You already have GPU, PCIe, SATA, etc. in there. As nearly all of these devices Atoms devices have Wifi, that is just yet another functionality of which you can cram as many former chips as possible (basically, everything else beside radio and antena). Smartphones have already been doing the same regarding cell modem for quite some time.
Also, it's a marketing stuff. Wifi is popular, telling people that they wifi is going to be better and that they'll stream netflix better is a good attention grabber.
Second, who the flying fuck cares about these assistants especially when you have a keyboard etc?
Not you, not me, not anyone on/. We could probably think 20 more interesting use of the better SIMD, better GPGPU that this implies.
But bloggers, vloggers and other "influencers" think it's trendy and shiny, and they'll be praising it. It's basically free marketing.
And I am confused... what is special about wi-fi, that needs special support on the processor?
Chip counts. Nearly any low-power (ultrabooks, chromebooks, tablets, and everything else with an atom inside) device nowadays has Wifi.
You might as well put as many of the Wifi part as possible inside your main pacakage (basically, everything except the radio itself an the antenna).
Makes less parts, which enables cheaper low-power devices, and might even reduce consumption a bit. (Though in this hardware class, the display makes the largest part of monetary and power budgets. So don't expect miracles either)
Same logic as putting GPU and PCIe and SATA controller in the same package as already done.
Same logic as smartphone chipsets putting the cell modem in there too (see Qualcom).
it's just the non-technical Verge misunderstanding some piece of meaningless PR-speak.
Probably Intel just advertising the capabilities of their current simd AVX-whatever-number-they-are-at-now and the GPGPU capabilites (opencl? vulkan used to computer shaders ?) are now so good that the various voice assistant can locally run even larger NN to handle the speech processing, before streaming it to the cloud.
AMD: we will try to make upcoming Zen 2 architecture more spectre-proof (not that there that many of the various spectre vulnerabilities that affect us, but still)
Intel: with 8th Gen Core architecture, we will make your Wifi a tiny bit faster, and make the various "voice assistant" devices even more efficient at spying on you. (Forget about the ~20 and still growing list of spectre vulnerabilities affecting our chips, look at the shiny trendy instead !)
Actually, the PIGS, massive Middle Eastern immigration, and car fires in France and elsewhere in Europe make your point less than obvious.
Have you actually *traveled* to "France and elsewhere in Europe" ?
Oh, let me guess : Nope, you never left your house, because the media you've been watching has always been telling you that Europe is a scary communist place and too dangerous to travel to.
I'm not saying that there has never ever been a single car on fire in the whole Europe ever. But it is extremely far from being any frequent thing to begin with, unlike what the media would like you to think. It's not a common part of the landscape, at all. Just stop believing everything you read on extremists forums.
(Unlike strikes. Strikes seem to be some sort of national sport in France, and might be an explanation why it could be hard to travel there:-P )
And one significant reason for this is the relentless and universal portrayal of US conservative media outlets as disreputable by the US Leftist media.
No, it's the relentless nonsensical bullshit coming from US conservative media that is US conservative media's own enemy across the rest of the world.
If even 1/10th of all the bullshit spewed by US conservative media was true, the whole European continent would be utterly bankrupt, over run by barbarians and on fire.
When I look out of my window, that's not what I see.
Hence, their bullshit isn't informative, we outside the US might as well skip it.
(Yes, I know, we're all evil depraved euro-communists over here...)
What Nokia overlooked was mindshare & influence. America might have been a minor market, but it was a hugely INFLUENTIAL market.
Huh... nope. The reason behind the downfall of Nokia is that basically Elop and Microsoft happened to them. Who did a tons of horribly bad decision that dragged down Nokia.
There are some people who have written at great lenght analyzing the subject. (Basically, Nokia disappeared from the carrier's own store due to making tons of bad decisions that alienated them, and that's the reason they disappeared from the US market. They also completely neglected the market where they were dominant and thus got their lunch eaten by cheap chinese android nonames).
It's also sweet that you think that just what a few bloggers speak about in the US will have such a big influence world-wide (though it partially happens around Apple and feature that get copied from them). Do you think that companies pop from the ground like mushrooms ? One of the reasons that companies like Huawei have managed to become dominant is that they had build momentum taking over other markets. They became popular in countries looking for cheap Android phone. They have built manufacturing capacity, they have worked through the various kinks of early model and have an actual offering by the time they seek to replace a vacant niche in the US market. They are the manufacturer who are already pushing shit tons of phones through aliexpress unto BRICS countries.
To the point that they are official device used for some non-Android phone OS like Jolla's Sailfish X. (Full-blown GNU/Linux by the former Nokia "Meego/Maemo" team, that was let go once Elop happened to Nokia)
What are some of the niches where VR is incredibly useful?
I think the poster meant that *AR* is the incredibly useful tech.
It's basically useful whenever you would need some head-up type display to give extra information.
But the problem is that these are tons of small specific tasks. There are tons of them so the market is very vast (nearly everybody could use some AR tech at some point) But each task is vastly different and specific (think getting head-up navigation instructions while driving vs. a surgeon getting useful data hands free while operating. Both are useful, but beside both needing some AR equipment, there's not much else in common)
Regarding motion sickness, first not everybody is affected the same. (Just like not everybody is sea sick) Some where already happy with the tech 20 years ago (VFX1-era) and since then it's only getting better (better resolution, wider field of view, more responsiveness).
For the rest, the problem has been studied, is quite well understood (basically, sensory input has to match each other. Thus there should be as little lag as possible between head motion and update of image), and since the recent Occulus wave there has been a lot of effort to solve this problem (ultra-fast display, ultra-short frame duration to avoid percieved blur, and extremely fast and precise positioning relying on cameras instead of slow accelerometers, etc.) we're slowly approaching the point were it's solved for the biggest part of the population.
AR has potential.
For AR to work any reliable, a lot of the EXACT SAME problems as the motion-sickness need to by addressed : fast display update, extremely precise and responsive positioning, otherwise the "A" part risks to lag behind the "R" part.
And in addition to the above there's a ton of OTHER new exotic tech that needs to be developed to address the mixing of "A" into the "R". (That's also where lies the downfall of Magic Leap. There was all this new tech being researched back then that showed promises : waveguides, lightfields, etc. All this could give hopes of generating SciFi-style augmented glasses. Turns out almost none of this research has turned up a good and light-weight mixing tech, so Magic Leap has to fall back to what's basically the same approach as IO-Glasses back in the mid 90s only with slightly better resolution, but still as bulcky and no that much better FOV).
To me as a hobby author writing a novel takes 1-2 years of full spare time dedication
And that's not even factoring in all the other labor-intensives step that must happen before a final book appear (like proof-reading by the publishing company, etc.)
The problem is that readers aren't paying any of these steps directly.
For historical reason, the part where a reader pay, is to get a copy, because for obvious historical reason, that used to a pretty complex and limiting one. You paid a publisher or a distributor to make copy, and that one in turn pays all the other necessary steps that bring the book into life.
The problem is that nowadays (first with printing methods having evolved a lot, and nowadays with e-books where making a new copy is completely trivial), this making a copy and putting it into the hands of the public is about the simplest and cheapest possible.
There's a total disconnect between what you are asked to pay for and what goes behind the scene into a book.
(The same logic applies to any other media)
The market should evolve a way to actually help pay the actual steps requiring work. Modern patronage over the internet (like patreon, to pay the actual artist working on something, instead of paying for some copies) could play some part in the solution, though it doesn't cover all the situations (small hobby writer. If you don't have a giant reader ship, there's no way to cover your needs through patronage).
the TL;DR: version - the problem is that nowaday you give money for something that cost nothing to do (fetching a copy) and hope that this step will cover the actual costly steps.
No commodity that constantly rises in value can be used as a currency.
Cryptocoin don't constantly rise in value, they constantly jump madly around like giant random number generator (due to a too weird and completely unregulated market - that last part is the whole point of their decentralized system).
This make them hard (or more precisely: risky) to hoard, as in keeping them as an investment.
This don't prevent them to be used as form of payment (more precisely: a payment-over-internet-without-a-central-autority <- the whole point of their invention).
You use which ever way you want to convert you stable fiat USD into bitcoins (e.g.: you might be using a coin processor like bitpayment, but you might as well be trading them on IRC), and the marchant your buying stuff from will use which ever stuff he wants to convert them into their local stable EUR (usually some payment processor. Let's say coinbase this time, for the sake of variation). You use only stable USD. The marchant only use stable EUR. the volatile BTC are only used during the transaction.
The fact that these BTC were valued at some completely different exchange rate yesterday, and will tomorrow exchange at yet another completely random rate, depending on the ups and down of that crazy market doesn't absolutely affect neither of you. It only concerns those who are into actually trading them (payment processors, exchange platforms, traders that inversts into them, etc.)
It's still useful as a payment system over internet, and unlike old-school internet payment, there isn't a single or a few company that act as central chokepoint (unlike Visa, MasterCard, Paypal), in theory there isn't a central Bitcoin Inc. (though in practice, some mining pools are dangerously close to be able to achieve that).
It's a bit similar to what systems like SEPA/IBAN have achieved between banks (and the various system that rely on that, like the swiss Twint) : as long as both endpoint follow the same protocol, you're free to choose any endpoint of your liking, and so do the merchant. (You don't need to both be registered at paypal, or both use MasterCard).
The fact that the modem itself speaks AT commands isn't anything new (the smartphone OSes still needs to send command to it to ask to get a 3G/4G connection, or to dial a voice number. The ethernet-card-like interface is only exposed by the modem when the connection is set up.)
The problem lies at two different levels :
- Why is the smartphone exposing the modem over its USB connection ? It might by a bug in the OS (it should either expose some android-y interface like ADB, expose whatever shitty thing is popular currently on Windows to exchange file (MTP ?), and/or expose a USB-Network). It might be a firmware error (like the USB connection being handled by the cell modem and accidentally exposing internals).
- Nowadays, nearly all smartphone have the cell modem directly built in the SoC and functioning as the north bridge of the chipset (in charge of bringing up and controling tons of sensitive parts, including RAM, boot firmware, etc.) This give a couple of tiny advantages (powersavings : e.g. the modem could handle a call, including routing to bluetooth, while the main OS sleeps). Bur opens tons of security issue, specially once you factor in that this critical part, due to how frequency licensing works, CANNOT run an opensource firmware, but is instead controlled by the chipset manufacturer and the service provider.
(The only notable exception are a few geek project like the Purism Librem 5, and Dragon Pyra, where the modem is still a separate chip that only speaks over serial+ethernet to the main chipset, has no other access to anything sensitive and can be killed with a simple switch).
If you make a container by mounting your host libraries as writable into the container, you can of course modify code that runs as root on the host.
Actually, nope. Doesn't work. That's partly the reason why they need a recent enough version of Linux kernel.
There's a sort of advanced setting where you map users so e.g. UID 0 is really UID 90,000. The user ID of the process creating the user namespace has all capabilities within the namespace, but none outside: it becomes root inside the container, and can't do root things outside the container. Generally, the process can only switch to another namespace if it has CAP_SYS_ADMIN in that namespace as well.
Yup, UID namespace. Means that from the point of view of the kernel, it would be UID 90000 trying to overwrite files that belong to UID0, thus nope, can't take over root files.
But you need a recent kernel enough. The feature was introduced in 3.8 and the various filesystem started supporting it over the next few version. Hence probably the reason why Google requires 3.14
But because the firmware is coreboot based, it should be possible to find an alternate firmware, file the hardware switch to enable flashing (usually a screw I've heard) and get yourself a full blown linux laptop that doesn't complain and risk self-destructing on each single boot.
a post on the Chromium Gerrit reveals that devices running Linux 3.14 or older will miss out.
So? Why would not you just download the source-code and compile it yourself?
Was not this ability the point of Linux — and the rallying cry for its fans — for 20+ years?
Yes, that was the point, but it looks like most of the chipset manufacturer completely missed the point and only provide blob drivers. Thus, on hardware like smartphone, tablet and chromebook, you're basically stuck with whatever the company that made the SoC decided to use (and never to update there after).
--
Well, in theory. In practice, *YOU CAN* actually recompile it your self, but you might have some problems :
- You might not have working graphics (and maybe a few other proprietary stuff like touch screen) missing. (e.g.: the poor guys who have some PowerVR GPU in their machine).
- Or maybe you're lucky and the chipset manufacturer has decided to release more recent drivers for more recent kernel : that's a bit more likely nowadays that Google insists on requiring kernel version 4.4 for Android. Maybe the manufacturer of the chipset could have a workable driver for a more recent kernel, and maybe you could find a way to put it into your chromebook (or maybe you could straight up try the android driver and use something like libhybris).
- Or maybe you're even more lucky and there's an opensource driver for your chipset. That should be the case of most intel-based one which tend to use intel GPUs and Intel is paying opensource drivers development themselves. Some Qualcomm ARM chipset uses Adreno GPU for which the Freedreno driver might be working. In these case, YOU CAN almost recompile nearly everything, you'd be missing only some functions (like touch screen).
On regular PC, AMD hardware is about the best you can get for Linux (they put lots of efforts into their opensource drivers), but sadly they're very seldom seen in that form factor (usually only in desktop, at most inside some budget laptop)
Slashdot Mirror
basically yes, that's the plan.
this NASA project is about "sciencing the shit out of" all the tiny details that go behind the general word "tree":
- how to deal growinv something in a soil that is mostly perchlorate (not exactly a rich soil)?
- how to deal with an atmospheric pressure that is a tiny fraction of earth's?
- how to deal with sun's output which is a lot less (in terms of useful light) but higher (in term of radiations)
- and which exact plant are you going to use as "tree" ? (probably some cyanobacteriae)
it's the detailled answers to these questions that is going to cost this budget
These days when n'erdowells make a death threat, their method of implementation is called SWATing, and no kind of weapon helps here, since they're relying on panicking law enforcement with a fake call.
You know, there still exist some countries, where the police hasn't felt the need to turn themselves into some kind of military branch.
And as long as you're not actively shooting at police, it will never cross their mind to take out their weapons.
You can no more make 50% of the population good computer programmers than you can make 50% of the population symphony class musicians.
You can't make everyone a "symphony orchestra"-class musicion.
But music is an art that plays an important part in human culture.
And thus it's good to at least have some rudimental ideas what music is.
Hence, music classes are thaugh in school, so everybody has an idea what this thing is. (Then, some - those that have a bit of talent, and a lot of perseverance - might go on and make career in music).
Same here. You can't make a Linus Torvalds or John Carmack out of 50% of the population.
But computer (and other similar smart electronics) play a crucial part in today's life.
And thus it's good to at least have some rudimental ideas of how computer work, and what you can do with them.
Hence, coding classes should be taugh in school, so everybody has an idea what this thing is. (Then, some could manage to make a career. The rest will just go on being users of the tech, but with at least some understanding how it works).
Again, easily provable by taking off in an airplane, while wearing a wristwatch and using your throttle to keep your groundspeed at 500mph, regardless of headwinds / tailwinds.
and their crack-pot theory probably goes something along the lines that it's hard to follow a straight line un-aided, and all the guidance systems (such as GPS are a vast conspiracy of collaborating agencies).
The instruments of the plane, and your wristwatch are probably similarly affected by a micro-conspiracy of nano-midgets hidden inside them, or something.
(I just can't imagine WHAT conspiracy is also haunting your sextant to make star navigation also similarly impossible.
Is it haunted by the ghosts of the former conspirator how burned down Rome ? Antikythera proves it ?)
...but why {...} ?!? {...} the syntax looks like the bastard child of Fortran and Perl
Because since Python started overtaking Perl, my cats are sad because they can't write fully compliant programs just by random walking across the keyboard anymore.
They're concordant multi-faceted paradigm changing solutions to ensure accelerating velocity for OEM vendors and end user implementations of future requirement conditions within a broader flowing service market... Duh!
So, it's a bit like the "Git gets easier once you get the basic idea that..." parody.
And we can continue, in most latin languages (and slavic and several others), she tends to be called after the Italian "Giulietta" (and local transcriptions there of).
(Which is again different than Juliett - and would even make sense in the context given that's how is the language where the action is supposed to take place.
Note that these will also tend to pronounce her lover "Romeo", again closer to Italian)
So no, not the whole planet is calling them by the Shakespear's original english.
Germans just use whatever is the local variant of Juliett, for ease of pronunciation.
As German is a language regularily refered in the science (Mad scientist cliché) and computer (Blinkenlight !) lore, Romeo und Julia, could be fitting for computing language pairs.
I have a copy of Romeo and Juliet in Japanese and her name is not Julia in it.
Indeed, looks like "Romio to Djurietto"
This has nothing to do with CPUs.
Not with the CPU code (not the x86 core itself), but the package.
First, the wifi is generally provided by the motherboard or an addon comm board... not the processor... and I don't want the processor to have that feature even if it could.
In that hardware class where Atoms and co are used (ultrabooks, chromebooks, tablets, etc.) you use SoC : package where you try to cram as many other cores as possible to reduce the number of chips and thus some impact on the price and power usage (the screen is still the largest consumer, so don't expect miracles either).
You already have GPU, PCIe, SATA, etc. in there.
As nearly all of these devices Atoms devices have Wifi, that is just yet another functionality of which you can cram as many former chips as possible (basically, everything else beside radio and antena).
Smartphones have already been doing the same regarding cell modem for quite some time.
Also, it's a marketing stuff. Wifi is popular, telling people that they wifi is going to be better and that they'll stream netflix better is a good attention grabber.
Second, who the flying fuck cares about these assistants especially when you have a keyboard etc?
Not you, not me, not anyone on /.
We could probably think 20 more interesting use of the better SIMD, better GPGPU that this implies.
But bloggers, vloggers and other "influencers" think it's trendy and shiny, and they'll be praising it.
It's basically free marketing.
And I am confused... what is special about wi-fi, that needs special support on the processor?
Chip counts.
Nearly any low-power (ultrabooks, chromebooks, tablets, and everything else with an atom inside) device nowadays has Wifi.
You might as well put as many of the Wifi part as possible inside your main pacakage (basically, everything except the radio itself an the antenna).
Makes less parts, which enables cheaper low-power devices, and might even reduce consumption a bit.
(Though in this hardware class, the display makes the largest part of monetary and power budgets. So don't expect miracles either)
Same logic as putting GPU and PCIe and SATA controller in the same package as already done.
Same logic as smartphone chipsets putting the cell modem in there too (see Qualcom).
it's just the non-technical Verge misunderstanding some piece of meaningless PR-speak.
Probably Intel just advertising the capabilities of their current simd AVX-whatever-number-they-are-at-now and the GPGPU capabilites (opencl? vulkan used to computer shaders ?) are now so good that the various voice assistant can locally run even larger NN to handle the speech processing, before streaming it to the cloud.
AMD: we will try to make upcoming Zen 2 architecture more spectre-proof (not that there that many of the various spectre vulnerabilities that affect us, but still)
Intel: with 8th Gen Core architecture, we will make your Wifi a tiny bit faster, and make the various "voice assistant" devices even more efficient at spying on you.
(Forget about the ~20 and still growing list of spectre vulnerabilities affecting our chips, look at the shiny trendy instead !)
huh... what ?
Actually, the PIGS, massive Middle Eastern immigration, and car fires in France and elsewhere in Europe make your point less than obvious.
Have you actually *traveled* to "France and elsewhere in Europe" ?
Oh, let me guess : Nope, you never left your house, because the media you've been watching has always been telling you that Europe is a scary communist place and too dangerous to travel to.
I'm not saying that there has never ever been a single car on fire in the whole Europe ever.
But it is extremely far from being any frequent thing to begin with, unlike what the media would like you to think.
It's not a common part of the landscape, at all. Just stop believing everything you read on extremists forums.
(Unlike strikes. Strikes seem to be some sort of national sport in France, and might be an explanation why it could be hard to travel there :-P )
And one significant reason for this is the relentless and universal portrayal of US conservative media outlets as disreputable by the US Leftist media.
No, it's the relentless nonsensical bullshit coming from US conservative media that is US conservative media's own enemy across the rest of the world.
If even 1/10th of all the bullshit spewed by US conservative media was true, the whole European continent would be utterly bankrupt, over run by barbarians and on fire.
When I look out of my window, that's not what I see.
Hence, their bullshit isn't informative, we outside the US might as well skip it.
(Yes, I know, we're all evil depraved euro-communists over here...)
What Nokia overlooked was mindshare & influence. America might have been a minor market, but it was a hugely INFLUENTIAL market.
Huh... nope.
The reason behind the downfall of Nokia is that basically Elop and Microsoft happened to them.
Who did a tons of horribly bad decision that dragged down Nokia.
There are some people who have written at great lenght analyzing the subject. (Basically, Nokia disappeared from the carrier's own store due to making tons of bad decisions that alienated them, and that's the reason they disappeared from the US market. They also completely neglected the market where they were dominant and thus got their lunch eaten by cheap chinese android nonames).
It's also sweet that you think that just what a few bloggers speak about in the US will have such a big influence world-wide (though it partially happens around Apple and feature that get copied from them).
Do you think that companies pop from the ground like mushrooms ? One of the reasons that companies like Huawei have managed to become dominant is that they had build momentum taking over other markets. They became popular in countries looking for cheap Android phone. They have built manufacturing capacity, they have worked through the various kinks of early model and have an actual offering by the time they seek to replace a vacant niche in the US market.
They are the manufacturer who are already pushing shit tons of phones through aliexpress unto BRICS countries.
Sony even have an official "Open Device" program.
To the point that they are official device used for some non-Android phone OS like Jolla's Sailfish X. (Full-blown GNU/Linux by the former Nokia "Meego/Maemo" team, that was let go once Elop happened to Nokia)
What are some of the niches where VR is incredibly useful?
I think the poster meant that *AR* is the incredibly useful tech.
It's basically useful whenever you would need some head-up type display to give extra information.
But the problem is that these are tons of small specific tasks.
There are tons of them so the market is very vast (nearly everybody could use some AR tech at some point)
But each task is vastly different and specific (think getting head-up navigation instructions while driving vs. a surgeon getting useful data hands free while operating. Both are useful, but beside both needing some AR equipment, there's not much else in common)
You will never solve the motion sickness problem.
Regarding motion sickness, first not everybody is affected the same. (Just like not everybody is sea sick)
Some where already happy with the tech 20 years ago (VFX1-era) and since then it's only getting better (better resolution, wider field of view, more responsiveness).
For the rest, the problem has been studied, is quite well understood (basically, sensory input has to match each other. Thus there should be as little lag as possible between head motion and update of image), and since the recent Occulus wave there has been a lot of effort to solve this problem (ultra-fast display, ultra-short frame duration to avoid percieved blur, and extremely fast and precise positioning relying on cameras instead of slow accelerometers, etc.) we're slowly approaching the point were it's solved for the biggest part of the population.
AR has potential.
For AR to work any reliable, a lot of the EXACT SAME problems as the motion-sickness need to by addressed : fast display update, extremely precise and responsive positioning, otherwise the "A" part risks to lag behind the "R" part.
And in addition to the above there's a ton of OTHER new exotic tech that needs to be developed to address the mixing of "A" into the "R".
(That's also where lies the downfall of Magic Leap. There was all this new tech being researched back then that showed promises : waveguides, lightfields, etc. All this could give hopes of generating SciFi-style augmented glasses.
Turns out almost none of this research has turned up a good and light-weight mixing tech, so Magic Leap has to fall back to what's basically the same approach as IO-Glasses back in the mid 90s only with slightly better resolution, but still as bulcky and no that much better FOV).
To me as a hobby author writing a novel takes 1-2 years of full spare time dedication
And that's not even factoring in all the other labor-intensives step that must happen before a final book appear (like proof-reading by the publishing company, etc.)
The problem is that readers aren't paying any of these steps directly.
For historical reason, the part where a reader pay, is to get a copy, because for obvious historical reason, that used to a pretty complex and limiting one. You paid a publisher or a distributor to make copy, and that one in turn pays all the other necessary steps that bring the book into life.
The problem is that nowadays (first with printing methods having evolved a lot, and nowadays with e-books where making a new copy is completely trivial), this making a copy and putting it into the hands of the public is about the simplest and cheapest possible.
There's a total disconnect between what you are asked to pay for and what goes behind the scene into a book.
(The same logic applies to any other media)
The market should evolve a way to actually help pay the actual steps requiring work.
Modern patronage over the internet (like patreon, to pay the actual artist working on something, instead of paying for some copies) could play some part in the solution, though it doesn't cover all the situations (small hobby writer. If you don't have a giant reader ship, there's no way to cover your needs through patronage).
the TL;DR: version - the problem is that nowaday you give money for something that cost nothing to do (fetching a copy) and hope that this step will cover the actual costly steps.
No commodity that constantly rises in value can be used as a currency.
Cryptocoin don't constantly rise in value, they constantly jump madly around like giant random number generator (due to a too weird and completely unregulated market - that last part is the whole point of their decentralized system).
This make them hard (or more precisely: risky) to hoard, as in keeping them as an investment.
This don't prevent them to be used as form of payment (more precisely: a payment-over-internet-without-a-central-autority <- the whole point of their invention).
You use which ever way you want to convert you stable fiat USD into bitcoins (e.g.: you might be using a coin processor like bitpayment, but you might as well be trading them on IRC), and the marchant your buying stuff from will use which ever stuff he wants to convert them into their local stable EUR (usually some payment processor. Let's say coinbase this time, for the sake of variation).
You use only stable USD.
The marchant only use stable EUR.
the volatile BTC are only used during the transaction.
The fact that these BTC were valued at some completely different exchange rate yesterday, and will tomorrow exchange at yet another completely random rate, depending on the ups and down of that crazy market doesn't absolutely affect neither of you.
It only concerns those who are into actually trading them (payment processors, exchange platforms, traders that inversts into them, etc.)
It's still useful as a payment system over internet, and unlike old-school internet payment, there isn't a single or a few company that act as central chokepoint (unlike Visa, MasterCard, Paypal), in theory there isn't a central Bitcoin Inc. (though in practice, some mining pools are dangerously close to be able to achieve that).
It's a bit similar to what systems like SEPA/IBAN have achieved between banks (and the various system that rely on that, like the swiss Twint) : as long as both endpoint follow the same protocol, you're free to choose any endpoint of your liking, and so do the merchant. (You don't need to both be registered at paypal, or both use MasterCard).
The fact that the modem itself speaks AT commands isn't anything new (the smartphone OSes still needs to send command to it to ask to get a 3G/4G connection, or to dial a voice number. The ethernet-card-like interface is only exposed by the modem when the connection is set up.)
The problem lies at two different levels :
- Why is the smartphone exposing the modem over its USB connection ? It might by a bug in the OS (it should either expose some android-y interface like ADB, expose whatever shitty thing is popular currently on Windows to exchange file (MTP ?), and/or expose a USB-Network). It might be a firmware error (like the USB connection being handled by the cell modem and accidentally exposing internals).
- Nowadays, nearly all smartphone have the cell modem directly built in the SoC and functioning as the north bridge of the chipset (in charge of bringing up and controling tons of sensitive parts, including RAM, boot firmware, etc.) This give a couple of tiny advantages (powersavings : e.g. the modem could handle a call, including routing to bluetooth, while the main OS sleeps). Bur opens tons of security issue, specially once you factor in that this critical part, due to how frequency licensing works, CANNOT run an opensource firmware, but is instead controlled by the chipset manufacturer and the service provider.
(The only notable exception are a few geek project like the Purism Librem 5, and Dragon Pyra, where the modem is still a separate chip that only speaks over serial+ethernet to the main chipset, has no other access to anything sensitive and can be killed with a simple switch).
If you make a container by mounting your host libraries as writable into the container, you can of course modify code that runs as root on the host.
Actually, nope. Doesn't work.
That's partly the reason why they need a recent enough version of Linux kernel.
There's a sort of advanced setting where you map users so e.g. UID 0 is really UID 90,000. The user ID of the process creating the user namespace has all capabilities within the namespace, but none outside: it becomes root inside the container, and can't do root things outside the container. Generally, the process can only switch to another namespace if it has CAP_SYS_ADMIN in that namespace as well.
Yup, UID namespace.
Means that from the point of view of the kernel, it would be UID 90000 trying to overwrite files that belong to UID0, thus nope, can't take over root files.
But you need a recent kernel enough. The feature was introduced in 3.8 and the various filesystem started supporting it over the next few version. Hence probably the reason why Google requires 3.14
The *default* firmware requires dev mode.
But because the firmware is coreboot based, it should be possible to find an alternate firmware,
file the hardware switch to enable flashing (usually a screw I've heard) and get yourself a full blown linux laptop that doesn't complain and risk self-destructing on each single boot.
By the way, you should have used double-ROT13, I've heard it's more secure :-P
So? Why would not you just download the source-code and compile it yourself?
Was not this ability the point of Linux — and the rallying cry for its fans — for 20+ years?
Yes, that was the point, but it looks like most of the chipset manufacturer completely missed the point and only provide blob drivers.
Thus, on hardware like smartphone, tablet and chromebook, you're basically stuck with whatever the company that made the SoC decided to use (and never to update there after).
--
Well, in theory.
In practice, *YOU CAN* actually recompile it your self, but you might have some problems :
- You might not have working graphics (and maybe a few other proprietary stuff like touch screen) missing.
(e.g.: the poor guys who have some PowerVR GPU in their machine).
- Or maybe you're lucky and the chipset manufacturer has decided to release more recent drivers for more recent kernel : that's a bit more likely nowadays that Google insists on requiring kernel version 4.4 for Android. Maybe the manufacturer of the chipset could have a workable driver for a more recent kernel, and maybe you could find a way to put it into your chromebook (or maybe you could straight up try the android driver and use something like libhybris).
- Or maybe you're even more lucky and there's an opensource driver for your chipset. That should be the case of most intel-based one which tend to use intel GPUs and Intel is paying opensource drivers development themselves. Some Qualcomm ARM chipset uses Adreno GPU for which the Freedreno driver might be working. In these case, YOU CAN almost recompile nearly everything, you'd be missing only some functions (like touch screen).
On regular PC, AMD hardware is about the best you can get for Linux (they put lots of efforts into their opensource drivers), but sadly they're very seldom seen in that form factor (usually only in desktop, at most inside some budget laptop)