And they're collecting $10k in profit from each sale right now,
How come their losses increase, then, year after year?
Yes, you know, there's a big lie in the car industry (all manufactrurers including Tesla) : In reality, cars actually grow on trees~ For real~~~
Thus there's no way that Tesla needs to invest any money they make plus any investors' into building more plants to increase their manufacturing capability.
When Tesla stops selling more expensive models as rapidly as they can produce them, of course.
The thing is, the work into which Tesla is actually, is "building manufacturing capacity as rapidly as they can". The fact that they can already ship cars (relatively) rapidly out of those currently built manufacturing plants is just added bonus.
And thus yeah, you're entirely right:
And they're collecting $10k in profit from each sale right now, they aren't going to give that up any sooner than necessary.
They indeed need all that sweet money to pour into their "manufacturing capacity" building. For now they are not pushing that many cars out thus : - they need more manufacturing plants before being able to push them out faster - these manufacturing plants are expensive to build - thus while they are still pushing small numbers of cars, they need to push the more expensive ones with bigger margins.
The thing is that people who lost money due to scams spread through social networks could start sue the (juicy massively rich) networks' owners on the ground that they facilitated the scam spreading.
Until recently, most of the internet giants managed to get considered as a sort of utility company. They shouldn't be liable of anything said on their platform. They are not responsible for what *other people* say, they are only here to provide a neutral platform. (The same way you wouldn't accuse a power company to have provided electricity to the computer of a scam runner. They just provide the power, they aren't responsible for what people plug into it).
The thing is the situation has slowly started to change. Search engine forced to remove content due to various legislation (DCMA, right-to-forget, etc.) More recently Facebook getting under close scrutiny for having potentially had an influence on recent US election through spreading of falsified information. In this context the big actors are starting to get afraid of potential lawsuits.
They don't want to get sued and potentially found liable for monetary loss due to scam spread through their platform, they want to cover their financial asses against this : censoring is an cheap easy tool to do it. And to the hell if that happens to completely trample the free speech of sizable chunk of online people : money rules.
All of the energy possessed by the rods comes from the launch rocket, so...why not just launch the launch rocket at your target. Oh wait, that's right, we already have such a system: ICBMs are real things.
The thing which might not have been apparent in my initial post :
- how many countries are currently busy hurling nuclear ICBM at each other currently ? Not much
- how many countries and/or large entities with lots of resources are actively busy to try to hack each other's resources for financial gain and/or power purpose ? Just open the news papers on the scandal du jour.
See the trend ? That's what I was pointing at. In the current era, there are way much more lucrative way to attack and militarize than hurling nukes at each other be it from orbit or directly.
Depending on your jurisdiction, using a *downloaded* ROM dump, to play on you computer a game that you legally bought from a system that you legally own too, CAN BE ACCEPTABLE according to local copyright law.
You paid the game, you paid the system, you should be able to do what you want to do with them (<- in most jurisdictions. You paid it you own it) And it should be acceptable for you to take the internet download short-cut instead of going through the technical hassle of dumping your own ROM chips your self ( <- acceptable in several jurisdiction, most often those that have a compensatory tax for private use on blank media. France being a court-tested example)
But Nintendo's point of view seems to be against the above two.
To keep with your metaphor it's the difference that is between a copyright license, that give authorisation ("license") to make and distribute (non-personnal) copies, and EULAs that would like to set what you are allowed to do or not with something that you bought and thus should own.
Yes, but in Nintendo's warped world view, when they do it, it's okay. It's not pirated nor illegal.
It seems that in their world view, the only thing that matter is who is the owner of the IP rights. - They own the IP rights on the Mario game, they can do whatever pleases them with the ROM of the cartridges, even fetching dumps online. (Okay, that you can concede to them). - You don't own the IP rights. So even if you own an actual NES console that you legally paid for, and own a cartridge of Maria that you legally paid for, you're not allowed to use the same bits that exist on the ROM on your PC to play a game that you already legally paid for. (Which is what nearly everyone will find discusting in their behaviour).
But given the world view that they seem to have, for Nintendo to have downloaded one of these "Illegal ROM dumps" from the internet isn't incoherent.
Likely won't be long before there are nuclear warheads in orbit from one country or another. So much for peaceful space exploration.
First, nuke in orbit aren't necessary when you can deal damage by the sheer kinetic energy when de-orbiting things. There's a reason why controlled deorbit aim for the Nemo point. (Also nukes in orbit would be violating several international treaties, but I wouldn't be surprised if some rulers decided to wipe their asses with those)
Now, the most important part : You might have not noticed, but despite several decade of space conquest, there hasn't been much actual *fighting* going on in space. Most of the weapons sent into space where for the specific use of survival among the wild-life if the return capsule gets lost in the middle of nowhere (some of these lost cosmonauts where complaining of hearing wolves and bears dangerously close to the capsule during night-time, while waiting to make contact with the retrival team).
The thing which space has been used a LOT for is for intelligence and spying.
The first thing that is going to happen if other countries try to militarize their space program is high resolution camera pointing at all the place that the US won't allow to be photographed with their own satellites plus ability to jam any communication satellite that adversaries might be relying on.
Single images, {...} and “works of smaller proportions” can be used in their entirety.
Somebody fluent enough in German legalese should check the original law, but it seems that the law considers a picture so small that you might as well cite the whole picture instead of trying to get a 15% crop of it.
The student using the photo is in the clear because it was for educational purposes. However, the school itself may not be for reproducing the photograph itself.
Same source:
educational institutions can use up to 15% of any single work (e.g. Book, Film etc.) in order to supply their courses and staff, and use that amount even for third-party presentations
Thus, up to 15 percent of a work may now be reproduced, distributed and made available to the public for the purpose of non-commercial scientific research (section 60c of the German Copyright law) and illustration for teaching in educational establishments (section 60a).
Unlike here in Switzerland, in Germany if it is used in a school as part of the teaching, you can publish it for the whole world to see.
(as long it is non commercial : - advertisement : "Hey look at this example of the amazing educations your kids will get if you enroll them in our school" not okay. - education : "Here is a school paper on the subject of {some geographic region}" is okay Given that the school system in Germany is public and mandatory, there's close to no advertisement)
Basically, federal German law says : It's a small part (<15% of website and single pic), it's for school (non-commercial), so fuck your copyright claims(*).
EU stepped in to add : "...but not according to EU rules".
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(*) which some copyright owners might find scary and thus try to fight, of which fighting the fact that this was escalate from national to EU-level might be an example.
Sometime, I forget that I live in one of these countries with slightly saner copyright laws, which also covers specifically school use (sorry only available in FR/DE/IT, no EN), one of the example case is the exact situation from TFA. Here around, the single mistake would have been making the web archive of the student presentation fully public. Everything else is perfectly tolerated (it's for educational purpose, and the picture is a small part of the website).
Now back to Germany : it seems that is has been goingthrough some reform and under the latest variation of these law (according to these sources, I'm to lazy and bad at German legalese to check the original law), there *seems to be indeed* a "fair-use" like exception - up to 15% of a work can be duplicated to be used in teachings, including third party viewing and showing it to the public.
I don't think that the website consisted of entirely one single image. And thus the photo should be definitely less than 15% of the content (more over, the source mention that a single image can be used in its entirety).
The only nitpicking would be whether the use of the secondary school was commercial/advertise (they use the paper to advertise what their students do and to display the kind of education the school is giving... that would be a stretch, it's a public school and these don't advertise in Germany AFAIK) or whether it was educational (the school made it public as a paper informing on a subject written by a student).
So according to the laws in vigor in Germany, the School was completely right to challenge the claim.
Then the German Federal Court escalated the question to the European Court, which ruled this way (photo copyright is photo copyright, no matter the educational context or the proportion that this photo occupies within the orignal website).
It might seem trivial, but copyright vs fair use is hotly debated here around in Europe. It was certainly when the law got reformed in Switzerland, and apparently it is currently in Germany. This EU judging might be the manifestation of such : people and institution who weren't happy with how the law got reformed and make all the can to push it toward their goal. (And I almost expect various members of Pirate Party to soon show up and try pulling in the opposite direction).
It could have been considered to fall under the various fair use exemption :
- This was done for a school project. I.e.: education.
- The student didn't slurp the whole website, only a small illustrative part (a single photo).
The school DID have reasons to try to challenge the claim.
Yes, because you could restart it whenever you would like simply by pushing a (metaphorical) button. Germany simply legally choose not to, in order to avoid dumping too much waste heat in the lake and rivers which are used to cool the loop.
But if Germany decided to change that law (or to ignore it due to an emergency), there are no technical limitation in restarting the plant (well, nit-picking : to actually *ramp up the output back to full capacity*, it's not really completely shut down)
but if a wind tower if offline it isn't. Got it.
Because no matter how much you would like, you can't choose to restart the wind at a button press. Even if Germany wanted to restart the plant, there's the technical problem that wind is still missing.
Same also with hydro : you can't just magically refill the lake at a button press if the water level is low... (...that is, except for a few weird projects that would like to use excess solar power to pump water back into the lake as type of storage. Basically turning the hydrodam into a giant gravity-based rechargeable battery)
Luckily, the type of weather that is bad for nuclear, wind and hydro, happens to be the type of weather that is optimal for solar : lots of sun, so no technical limitation for those !
In a twisted weird point of view, the EPA is actually right : accidental small exposure to asbesto aren't dangerous, it's the chronic long-term exposition that is highly carcinogenic.
So if you just *live* in a building that is fireproofed by asbesto, and maybe drill a hole or two to put your giant protrait on the wall (accidental small inhalation of dust), you'd be just fine.
On the other hand, the construction workers who will work on the building (e.g.: demolishing or rebuilding it) will inhale massive amount of dust over their career and will almost certainly develop cancer due to that. (well, that and the tobacco smoking).
So as said, EPA is right in a twisted sense : products using asbesto won't necessarily kill *their users*, and could be actually made safe (for the users). It's all the *other* guys, the guys that will need to process this shit and end up breathing a lot of dust that will very likely die from it.
Not the users, but the other people that will end up with this shit in their environment.
There's almost something classeist there : Trump can enjoy the benefits (mostly fire-proofing) of products, while outsourcing the horrible death to the poor low-wage (mexican immigrants ?) workers, who will handle it and end up with it in their environment.
Yes, the study found a correlation, but how to interpret that ?
The BMI *provokes* cancer ? (more correctly, that high BMI is a cause that increases cancer risks ?) For some cancers (like gastro-oesophagal tract) that might be the case (e.g. due to chronic damage by an overflowing stomach, chronic damage to the liver by fat, chronic damage by crystal formation, hormonal disbalance due to the endocrine system getting fucked up, etc.).
But it might be that BMI and cancer happen to appear in the same people due to some cofounding factor ? People eat shit. Unhealthy diet habbit increases obesity, unhealthy diet increase cancer risks due to high concentration of harmful substances (hormonal disbalance but this time due to them being in abnormal quantities in the food, well documented carcinogens present in the food, etc.).
By default, out-of-the box, most Android phone will only leak location information to the proprietary Google Service used for maps and fused location (i.e.: your phone uploads a list of all cell tower and wifi point that you see within range and their respective signal strengh, Google's cloud would do some triangulation and give you back a somewhat good location approximation, faster than it would take to get a lock on GPS sattelites - or even if you can't lock them, e.g.: because you're indoor).. And Google are smart enough to not release a "heat-map" detailled enough. (You would need to manually go and disable all the potential leak points)
Then, depending on which app you're installing, there are tons of potential snoop that could slurp your data. (All this "get automatic sale alerts and coupons when you approach a shop" type of app could potentially leverage this)
Some like Uber will keep their data secret, and only admin could have "god mode" interfaces to display it. Other like the sport tracker are stupid enough to publish maps that will publicly reveal their slurping tendencies, while also risk to make public classified information such as military bases layouts.
The GPS network is one-way only. You can get your position, but it's difficult to guess your position for somebody else. There used to be a lot of out-door GPS tracker that only saved the trail locally (e.g.: on a SD Card).
The problem is that most modern sport trackers (even the offline ones) come with - e.g. - an app on the smartphone that links to the tracker (e.g.: over BLE) and that app will automatically slurp everything onto the cloud, unless you're very careful, pay attention to all the small print, and take some time to configure everything.
I think the hierarchy either underestimated the problem of those apps, or though that the people will pay attention and only use in-device tracking and disable any upload.
And now comes the Big Surpsie!!~~~ : Most peoples are clueless and don't pay attention on the small details, even those doing their jogging or daily-step-counting on restricted/secret grounds (did they get no training about security ?!?), and they'll pay no attention to the built-in "always on by default" cloud features of their gizmo.
boot into the BIOS and pick "upgrade". The BIOS will then read the firmware from the FAT partition in question, verify it then install it before rebooting automatically. I am sure if I stuck the BIOS on a thumb drive it would work as well (except that I would need to find a thumb drive whereas the extra partition on the existing external HDD is easy to work with)
And that's what the various user-space "updater" (Windows, or TFA's Linux, or even a few older DOS for those who use that) actually do : they simply provide the file to the UEFI firmware and tell "please on the next reboot, use this file". Since UEFI, user-space program cannot have the necessary access to perform the flashing themselves any more, it's locked-up when handing control from UEFI to OS.
Why can't everyone make it that easy rather than needing to run a Windows exe or boot from a special DOS boot disk or something (or even this new Linux thing)
The point here is *unattended upgrade*. A windows.EXE upgrade means that it can be part of some "update" software that runs periodically. Being accessible to "fwupd" means that on Ubuntu and Fedora, it could be part of the regular update GUI (synaptic and I forgot what respectively). Critical firmware bug could be fixed even for non-power user that would forget or even not be comfortable enough to boot into the UEFI menu to manually pick up the upgrade themselves.
With a BIOS based machine, it works this way indeed, with a DOS boot (an OS that has no protection whatsover and could directly talk to the flasher to flash a new bios).
With UEFI that not the case anymore. Lots of low-level functionality (including flashing) is locked-down once the OS is booted. This is irreversible, a OS cannot reclaim the flashing capability, you need to reboot the machine back into UEFI.
In that case, the upgrade is simply a file. This file can be either directly selected from a built-in file browser in the UEFI menu (another poster mentions this on Dell). Or this file can be pushed by an executable. That's what the Windows or DOS upgrade executable do on modern UEFI machine. They don't actually flash the update, they give the file to the UEFI to use for flashing on the next reboot.
Given that its simply uploading a file, no low-level flashing, there's no reason why it couldn't be added to Linux too.
(Bonus point: the UEFI will check signatures and compatibility of such update capsules before starting them).
Actually, to nitpick : you do NOT get user space to the Firmware.
Since UEFI, the firmware locks-down irreversibly lots of low-level access once its start to boot the OS. It's impossible to recover these low-level access unless you reboot completely. Thus these low-level access are only up and available while the UEFI firmware is active, they cannot be available while the OS is running.
Instead, it uses an approach called capsule : - the userspace part just gives a plain file to the UEFI. And that's it. It does nothing on it's own. Usually after finishing that, the userspace program encourages you to reboot. - on the following reboot, while the UEFI firmware is running, it can detect that a new payload is available, check its signature, check it is targetting the correct hardware, and eventually jumps into it *before* the usually boot-time hand-over lock-down of low-level function. - the updater can itself perform futher checks and performs the flashing.
As it's a plain file, it's usually also possible to completely ignore the OS : just save it on a USB stick, and most UEFI menu have a special entry that starts a file browser and give you the possibilty to point to the file on the stick your self, instead of relying on the OS. It will then again run the check and jump into the updater as above.
Bottom line : it's not the user-space, it's the UEFI. And the UEFI has been able to update the UEFI since ages.
You can't write a virus that will write arbitrary bullshit on the UEFI firmware. BUT if you have a valid signing key, you can write a valid upgrade that will pass all checks and will get the UEFI to self-overwrite with arbitrary bullshit.
The end result is the same (getting arbitrary bullshit), but mean is different (the user space has no access, its merely a short cut to avoid needing to manually point the update file with the UEFI menu file browser).
Given how simple the update is from the point of view of the OS, there's no technical reason why it should not be enabled on Linux.
There are reasons to open a laptop other than fixing it. Expanding memory, adding optional modules, upgrading storage, etc.. Most of those are quick and trivial
You know, the exact list of things that Apple was brave and courageous to SOLDER ON their supposedly "pro" range of laptops.
being able to manage it in a few minutes at a convenient time in the office greatly offsets the hassle of scheduling on-site service - let alone overnight or any other service type of "send it in" service.
And you can count on Apple's service being not "same-day / over-night", because they don't allow shops to keep local stock of replacement parts for the latest Pro models(need to ship a broken part in, before receiving the replacement part). Apparently to avoid some replacements ending up on ebay black market.
My current laptop is a Dell Latitude business laptop (there's exactly ONE single screw to open the bottom pannel and get immediate access to nearly everything). My next one is going to be a good business laptop too (probably a ThinkPad one if they get a good feature set, including full AMD chipset, like on the A480 / E585)
There are also other problems around the micro-B that can lead to problems.
when micro-B was developped :
- the official specs where only 5v up to 500mA (enven thouhg most desktop can output 1A without problem).
- there started to be some way to a power adapter to signal higher-than 500mA availability by shorting data-line with resistors.
since then :
- several manufacturer started their own way to signal various power availability
- some pseudo-standards like "Power Charge", "Fast Charge", "Dash Charge", etc. which are all specific to some vendors. All using different mixes of higher-voltage and/or much-higher amperage.
- eventually, true standards like USB PD (power delivery) started appearing, and eventually be available on micro-USB in addition to USB-C.
- due to the wild jungle of standarts, etc. smartphone themselves have started to get smart about charging, and monitor the voltage input and throttle down charging if voltage drops too much (or throttle up if the charger seems to be able to keep the voltage)
- conversely some charger started being smart and push up to the USB maximum tolerance (5.2 to 5.4 V) when trying to provide nominal 5V
- you can't physically push 3A / 4A over an excessively thin wire.
Due to all of the above mess, you could have a phone using micro-USB, a supposedly good charger adapter, and a cable in the middle, but still get stuck at 5V @ 500mA charging, because they aren't all the same brand and can't negociate charging together and/or the cable in the middle is completely crappy.
Now combine with the fact that some flagship smartphones seem to require a pocked nuclear reactor to charge and that the mere 2.5W of lowest-common-denominator might not even cover the needs to just keep the phone alive.
You end up with a situation were from the outside it looks like everything uses the same connector and you could plug everything into everything else thanks to micro-B, but in practice you still have all the problem of before standardization (only now, the problem isn't a visible "won't plug" but a nasty "won't charge" that you won't notice immediately). Thus again, lots of useless things like every phone needing to be boxed together with matching power-adapter and cable (all compatible with each other).
Luckily for us, as said above, USB came up with the PD standard, and that standard is mandatory on USB3 / USB-C. So now, at least there's a single protocol that newer phones and chargers can speak together to diagnose what's wrong.
So eventually, you could reach a point where the phone could be displaying clear messages about what went wrong (e.g.: "need a PD power plug that support version X.YY" - and you can check the version advertised on the plug).
Let's hope that we reach this point with USB-C. Or that the EU can manage to beat the manufacturer into this.
And that the manufacturer won't manage to balkanize it again with yet another bullshit round of proprietary extension... well, who am I kiding ? Brace yourself for "manufacturer-branded Ultra Speed Charge+ variant of USB-C".
And then the same all-over again regarding wireless charging, when Apple decides to be COURAGEOUS and BRAVE to lead the market into even less ports (zero, everything mandatory wireless)
WhatsApp... Does that even have a desktop version? Without it it won't matter much in a business context for at least a few years. If it does, it's not advertised enough.
Now there's a huge difference. When you use Web Skype, the WebApp is connecting directly to the Microsoft servers. You basically get in your browser the same thing as in the new gen applications. (The new gen Skype application is basically a wrapper around the web app). It's basically "your browser -> Microsoft's Skype server".
In WhatsApp's case, it's a bit different. You still need a smartphone app (either Android or iOS), that app still makes connection to the Facebook servers itself. But when you log into WhatsApp Web, the phone app goes into server mode, and relays data (through cloud servers) to the web app. It's supposed to be "your browser -> some relay server -> the app running on your smartphone -> the official Facebook's WhatsApp server".
It's supposed to be done for two reason :
- to enforce the approach that WhatsApp always had about 1 instance on 1 smartphone linked to 1 cellphone number. (they don't want cellphone-less instances)
- the axolotl end-to-end encryption that Facebook has rolled both into WhatsApp and into their own inhouse Messenger *is end-to-end*. You need the smartphone to do the end-point decryption and eventually re-encrypt the data for the webapp. The webapp cannot directly connect the the WhatsApp server, because that server doesn't have any access to the cleartext.
WhatsApp is completely irrelevant (why is it even alive? Teens?)
Actually, all the youngs I've seen seem to be on snapchat nowadays.
Sorry, what has *buying a phone* to do with swapping SIM? you just take out the SIM from the old phone, fumble a bit with the size adapter (because the new phone uses yet a different format, but hey! It's 0.2mm thinner (tm) !) and put it into the new phone.
At worse, you've lost all your precut adapters that came with your SIM originally (because you're moving from nano-Shit to some of the saner size). The phone shop where you bought your new phone will happily sell you a new overpriced set of adapter (made from cheap Chinese plastic) - though still less overpriced than getting a new SIM. There's zero need to get a new SIM (though some service providers, if you buy the phone from their own in house shop, will offer a rebate on the new SIM, in order for you to get a new one with up to date firmware inside).
Getting a new SIM is only needed when your phone was stolen, when the last SIM broke, or when your SIM is so antique that its firmware is incompatible with the current network (happened to me once, with a decade+ old SIM. That's the reason why in house shop propose SIM upgrades).
a customer must now provide a previously set up PIN? And then wait several hours?
That's normal procedure here around for any online/phone contact that isn't about trivial public information (anything more than "what's your catalog price for XyZ ?") At the shop, any serious transaction (like buying a new phone on a payment plan or attaching your current account to a new SIM) requires signature and your ID. (And by ID, I don't mean any random bit of plastic that happens to have your picture on it like a credit card or a driver's licence that varies from place to place like you do in the US. But a real government issued ID like a ID Card or passport).
Once bought, the service providing company will run a separate check and you'll get a message on your SIM confirming that your account has successfully switched (in theory, you could need to wait up to 24 hours, though often it goes faster).
That's considered normal security practice for something that could potentially cost lots of money.
While you MAY be able to do something like that if the new and old phones are on the same carrier (if you don't mind pissing off your customers), it would be illegal to do it across carriers. If requested to 'port' a number by another carrier, the carrier MAY NOT refuse the request, MAY NOT contact the customer, and MUST do the port within a day.
here around it's "provided that the security check passes, they won't refuse it and do it under 24 hours".
But both your previous and your upcoming service providers need to make sure that the port is legit.
(which by the way gets abused by the carriers to try to make you stay, by bombarding you with paperwork specially if the situation is abit more complex - like the ownership of a landline shifting between family numbers - in the hopes that you'll think the procedure is too tedious and opt for not jumping ships. The upcoming new carrier will on the other hand happily assist you ghrough this).
I and most of my friends own good speaker sets in our home.
Up until recently, playing music (e.g.: at a party) basically meant plugging the cable into the jack of whatever device (the hosts' laptop, the smartphone of whomever has a nicr playlist the want to share).
Now suddenly, there is a bunch of people who simply cannot plug their music. Those with the "courageous" iPhones, or with the Chinese copycats that decided to follow the trend without muxh thinking.
(Okay, for some idiots with weird musical taste, you're actually happy that they can't subject their music to all the innocent bystanders)
Now its fumbling around to find the adequate dongle (Lightning, USB-C) to plug into (and hope the device still has enough battery). Or trying to find which service to use to share the music (oh, you're using Spotify? But I have all my playlist on Apple music / ad youtube playlists). Or you need to buy a cheap BT receiver module, except you don't want to pay 500â for it, so you get it from aliexpress and now need to hope that it will work as intended. Or you need to buy a new set of speakers with built in Bluetooth receiver, that will cost more and be less durable and shittier than the one you have.
(and then hope that the Bluetooth connection will work as intended).
But in all seriousness, that's the beauty of lab created gemstones.
Much more interesting : which lab did you go to ?
For the extra geekiness factor : do you know any lab that they would allow big geeks to do a couple of the step ? (As in "Honey, I personally *made* your diamong ! (Well I least until the labcoats threw me out before I break the expensive machines)" )
This smells like an unholy combination of two things: a development team getting burnt by premature optimization, with just a hint of "painting oneself into a corner".
Well, on the other hand, It's just number-crunching hardware, used to run their NN. Maybe they'll come up with a good computer, maybe in the future they'll realise that silicon by Nvidia or AMD ends up being the best to run their nets.
It's more important to them (they'll be divesting money into that R&D) than to users (it's just number-crunching silicon to run a NN on it. You're supposed to be able to swap the computer for a better one in the future, according to Tesla).
Between this and the omission of lidar, I'm not enthusiastic about Tesla's self-driving capability.
I totally agree with this. At a time when every body else relies on one (from high range Vovlo which add a laser field to their camera, down to the cheapest VW Up! that also has the laser as a standard for City Safety), I'm also uncomfortable with Tesla still skipping it.
On the other hand they seem to be slowly learning from their mistake. They started making big promises with a single front facing camera, but now have switched to a triple cam (currently mostly setup so that each cam has a different range/field of view compromise, but in a pinch could also be leveraged for some stereoscopy like most of the German and Japanese brands do). They seem that each each they'll announce a "This time we got all the sensors, for good !" new platform with even more sensors. They'll probably add a LIDAR down the line in a few years (probably at the time when the recent Caterpillar buyout eventually leads to their hoped smart-phone-with-a-LIDAR), and then probably redesign the LIDAR inhouse for the next iteration after that.
On the third hand : Tesla has specifically stated that their sensors are NOT retro-fitable (They can't retrofit the current triple cam), only the computers are. We should probably wait at least a couple of years, until Tesla offer a amount of sensors we're comfortable with, before being able to consider it. As you said other manufacturer who are longer at this game than Tesla would probably have beaten them to it by then. (But will probably only offer smaller batteries with shorter ranger than whatever range-monster Tesla would have on the marker, or still be stuck with hybrid tech).
Slashdot Mirror
And they're collecting $10k in profit from each sale right now,
How come their losses increase, then, year after year?
Yes, you know, there's a big lie in the car industry (all manufactrurers including Tesla) :
In reality, cars actually grow on trees~ For real~~~
Thus there's no way that Tesla needs to invest any money they make plus any investors' into building more plants to increase their manufacturing capability.
When Tesla stops selling more expensive models as rapidly as they can produce them, of course.
The thing is, the work into which Tesla is actually, is "building manufacturing capacity as rapidly as they can".
The fact that they can already ship cars (relatively) rapidly out of those currently built manufacturing plants is just added bonus.
And thus yeah, you're entirely right :
And they're collecting $10k in profit from each sale right now, they aren't going to give that up any sooner than necessary.
They indeed need all that sweet money to pour into their "manufacturing capacity" building. For now they are not pushing that many cars out thus :
- they need more manufacturing plants before being able to push them out faster
- these manufacturing plants are expensive to build
- thus while they are still pushing small numbers of cars, they need to push the more expensive ones with bigger margins.
The thing is that people who lost money due to scams spread through social networks could start sue the (juicy massively rich) networks' owners on the ground that they facilitated the scam spreading.
Until recently, most of the internet giants managed to get considered as a sort of utility company.
They shouldn't be liable of anything said on their platform. They are not responsible for what *other people* say, they are only here to provide a neutral platform.
(The same way you wouldn't accuse a power company to have provided electricity to the computer of a scam runner. They just provide the power, they aren't responsible for what people plug into it).
The thing is the situation has slowly started to change.
Search engine forced to remove content due to various legislation (DCMA, right-to-forget, etc.)
More recently Facebook getting under close scrutiny for having potentially had an influence on recent US election through spreading of falsified information.
In this context the big actors are starting to get afraid of potential lawsuits.
They don't want to get sued and potentially found liable for monetary loss due to scam spread through their platform, they want to cover their financial asses against this : censoring is an cheap easy tool to do it.
And to the hell if that happens to completely trample the free speech of sizable chunk of online people : money rules.
All of the energy possessed by the rods comes from the launch rocket, so...why not just launch the launch rocket at your target. Oh wait, that's right, we already have such a system: ICBMs are real things.
The thing which might not have been apparent in my initial post :
- how many countries are currently busy hurling nuclear ICBM at each other currently ?
Not much
- ...or even being in an open war ?
Not that many.
- how many countries and/or large entities with lots of resources are actively busy to try to hack each other's resources for financial gain and/or power purpose ?
Just open the news papers on the scandal du jour.
See the trend ?
That's what I was pointing at. In the current era, there are way much more lucrative way to attack and militarize than hurling nukes at each other be it from orbit or directly.
Depending on your jurisdiction, using a *downloaded* ROM dump, to play on you computer a game that you legally bought from a system that you legally own too, CAN BE ACCEPTABLE according to local copyright law.
You paid the game, you paid the system, you should be able to do what you want to do with them (<- in most jurisdictions. You paid it you own it)
And it should be acceptable for you to take the internet download short-cut instead of going through the technical hassle of dumping your own ROM chips your self ( <- acceptable in several jurisdiction, most often those that have a compensatory tax for private use on blank media. France being a court-tested example)
But Nintendo's point of view seems to be against the above two.
To keep with your metaphor it's the difference that is between a copyright license, that give authorisation ("license") to make and distribute (non-personnal) copies, and EULAs that would like to set what you are allowed to do or not with something that you bought and thus should own.
Yes, but in Nintendo's warped world view, when they do it, it's okay.
It's not pirated nor illegal.
It seems that in their world view, the only thing that matter is who is the owner of the IP rights.
- They own the IP rights on the Mario game, they can do whatever pleases them with the ROM of the cartridges, even fetching dumps online.
(Okay, that you can concede to them).
- You don't own the IP rights. So even if you own an actual NES console that you legally paid for, and own a cartridge of Maria that you legally paid for, you're not allowed to use the same bits that exist on the ROM on your PC to play a game that you already legally paid for.
(Which is what nearly everyone will find discusting in their behaviour).
But given the world view that they seem to have, for Nintendo to have downloaded one of these "Illegal ROM dumps" from the internet isn't incoherent.
Likely won't be long before there are nuclear warheads in orbit from one country or another. So much for peaceful space exploration.
First, nuke in orbit aren't necessary when you can deal damage by the sheer kinetic energy when de-orbiting things. There's a reason why controlled deorbit aim for the Nemo point.
(Also nukes in orbit would be violating several international treaties, but I wouldn't be surprised if some rulers decided to wipe their asses with those)
Now, the most important part : You might have not noticed, but despite several decade of space conquest, there hasn't been much actual *fighting* going on in space. Most of the weapons sent into space where for the specific use of survival among the wild-life if the return capsule gets lost in the middle of nowhere (some of these lost cosmonauts where complaining of hearing wolves and bears dangerously close to the capsule during night-time, while waiting to make contact with the retrival team).
The thing which space has been used a LOT for is for intelligence and spying.
The first thing that is going to happen if other countries try to militarize their space program is high resolution camera pointing at all the place that the US won't allow to be photographed with their own satellites plus ability to jam any communication satellite that adversaries might be relying on.
Just because it makes up a small part of the website does not mean it can be used as fair use or fair dealing
One of the two source I've cited literaly says :
Somebody fluent enough in German legalese should check the original law, but it seems that the law considers a picture so small that you might as well cite the whole picture instead of trying to get a 15% crop of it.
The student using the photo is in the clear because it was for educational purposes. However, the school itself may not be for reproducing the photograph itself.
Same source :
From the other source:
Unlike here in Switzerland, in Germany if it is used in a school as part of the teaching, you can publish it for the whole world to see.
(as long it is non commercial :
- advertisement : "Hey look at this example of the amazing educations your kids will get if you enroll them in our school" not okay.
- education : "Here is a school paper on the subject of {some geographic region}" is okay
Given that the school system in Germany is public and mandatory, there's close to no advertisement)
Basically, federal German law says : It's a small part (<15% of website and single pic), it's for school (non-commercial), so fuck your copyright claims(*).
EU stepped in to add : "...but not according to EU rules".
---
(*) which some copyright owners might find scary and thus try to fight, of which fighting the fact that this was escalate from national to EU-level might be an example.
Sorry, my fault.
Sometime, I forget that I live in one of these countries with slightly saner copyright laws, which also covers specifically school use (sorry only available in FR/DE/IT, no EN), one of the example case is the exact situation from TFA. Here around, the single mistake would have been making the web archive of the student presentation fully public. Everything else is perfectly tolerated (it's for educational purpose, and the picture is a small part of the website).
Now back to Germany : it seems that is has been going through some reform and under the latest variation of these law (according to these sources, I'm to lazy and bad at German legalese to check the original law), there *seems to be indeed* a "fair-use" like exception - up to 15% of a work can be duplicated to be used in teachings, including third party viewing and showing it to the public.
I don't think that the website consisted of entirely one single image. And thus the photo should be definitely less than 15% of the content (more over, the source mention that a single image can be used in its entirety).
The only nitpicking would be whether the use of the secondary school was commercial/advertise (they use the paper to advertise what their students do and to display the kind of education the school is giving... that would be a stretch, it's a public school and these don't advertise in Germany AFAIK) or whether it was educational (the school made it public as a paper informing on a subject written by a student).
So according to the laws in vigor in Germany, the School was completely right to challenge the claim.
Then the German Federal Court escalated the question to the European Court, which ruled this way (photo copyright is photo copyright, no matter the educational context or the proportion that this photo occupies within the orignal website).
It might seem trivial, but copyright vs fair use is hotly debated here around in Europe. It was certainly when the law got reformed in Switzerland, and apparently it is currently in Germany. This EU judging might be the manifestation of such : people and institution who weren't happy with how the law got reformed and make all the can to push it toward their goal. (And I almost expect various members of Pirate Party to soon show up and try pulling in the opposite direction).
It could have been considered to fall under the various fair use exemption :
- This was done for a school project. I.e.: education.
- The student didn't slurp the whole website, only a small illustrative part (a single photo).
The school DID have reasons to try to challenge the claim.
So, if a nuke plant is offline it's available,
Yes, because you could restart it whenever you would like simply by pushing a (metaphorical) button.
Germany simply legally choose not to, in order to avoid dumping too much waste heat in the lake and rivers which are used to cool the loop.
But if Germany decided to change that law (or to ignore it due to an emergency), there are no technical limitation in restarting the plant (well, nit-picking : to actually *ramp up the output back to full capacity*, it's not really completely shut down)
but if a wind tower if offline it isn't. Got it.
Because no matter how much you would like, you can't choose to restart the wind at a button press.
Even if Germany wanted to restart the plant, there's the technical problem that wind is still missing.
Same also with hydro : you can't just magically refill the lake at a button press if the water level is low...
(...that is, except for a few weird projects that would like to use excess solar power to pump water back into the lake as type of storage. Basically turning the hydrodam into a giant gravity-based rechargeable battery)
Luckily, the type of weather that is bad for nuclear, wind and hydro, happens to be the type of weather that is optimal for solar : lots of sun, so no technical limitation for those !
Things are a bit more complicated.
In a twisted weird point of view, the EPA is actually right :
accidental small exposure to asbesto aren't dangerous, it's the chronic long-term exposition that is highly carcinogenic.
So if you just *live* in a building that is fireproofed by asbesto, and maybe drill a hole or two to put your giant protrait on the wall (accidental small inhalation of dust), you'd be just fine.
On the other hand, the construction workers who will work on the building (e.g.: demolishing or rebuilding it) will inhale massive amount of dust over their career and will almost certainly develop cancer due to that. (well, that and the tobacco smoking).
So as said, EPA is right in a twisted sense : products using asbesto won't necessarily kill *their users*, and could be actually made safe (for the users).
It's all the *other* guys, the guys that will need to process this shit and end up breathing a lot of dust that will very likely die from it.
Not the users, but the other people that will end up with this shit in their environment.
There's almost something classeist there : Trump can enjoy the benefits (mostly fire-proofing) of products, while outsourcing the horrible death to the poor low-wage (mexican immigrants ?) workers, who will handle it and end up with it in their environment.
Yes, the study found a correlation, but how to interpret that ?
The BMI *provokes* cancer ? (more correctly, that high BMI is a cause that increases cancer risks ?)
For some cancers (like gastro-oesophagal tract) that might be the case (e.g. due to chronic damage by an overflowing stomach, chronic damage to the liver by fat, chronic damage by crystal formation, hormonal disbalance due to the endocrine system getting fucked up, etc.).
But it might be that BMI and cancer happen to appear in the same people due to some cofounding factor ?
People eat shit. Unhealthy diet habbit increases obesity, unhealthy diet increase cancer risks due to high concentration of harmful substances (hormonal disbalance but this time due to them being in abnormal quantities in the food, well documented carcinogens present in the food, etc.).
By default, out-of-the box, most Android phone will only leak location information to the proprietary Google Service used for maps and fused location (i.e.: your phone uploads a list of all cell tower and wifi point that you see within range and their respective signal strengh, Google's cloud would do some triangulation and give you back a somewhat good location approximation, faster than it would take to get a lock on GPS sattelites - or even if you can't lock them, e.g.: because you're indoor)..
And Google are smart enough to not release a "heat-map" detailled enough.
(You would need to manually go and disable all the potential leak points)
Then, depending on which app you're installing, there are tons of potential snoop that could slurp your data.
(All this "get automatic sale alerts and coupons when you approach a shop" type of app could potentially leverage this)
Some like Uber will keep their data secret, and only admin could have "god mode" interfaces to display it.
Other like the sport tracker are stupid enough to publish maps that will publicly reveal their slurping tendencies, while also risk to make public classified information such as military bases layouts.
The GPS network is one-way only. You can get your position, but it's difficult to guess your position for somebody else.
There used to be a lot of out-door GPS tracker that only saved the trail locally (e.g.: on a SD Card).
The problem is that most modern sport trackers (even the offline ones) come with - e.g. - an app on the smartphone that links to the tracker (e.g.: over BLE) and that app will automatically slurp everything onto the cloud, unless you're very careful, pay attention to all the small print, and take some time to configure everything.
I think the hierarchy either underestimated the problem of those apps, or though that the people will pay attention and only use in-device tracking and disable any upload.
And now comes the Big Surpsie!!~~~ :
Most peoples are clueless and don't pay attention on the small details, even those doing their jogging or daily-step-counting on restricted/secret grounds (did they get no training about security ?!?), and they'll pay no attention to the built-in "always on by default" cloud features of their gizmo.
boot into the BIOS and pick "upgrade". The BIOS will then read the firmware from the FAT partition in question, verify it then install it before rebooting automatically. I am sure if I stuck the BIOS on a thumb drive it would work as well (except that I would need to find a thumb drive whereas the extra partition on the existing external HDD is easy to work with)
And that's what the various user-space "updater" (Windows, or TFA's Linux, or even a few older DOS for those who use that) actually do :
they simply provide the file to the UEFI firmware and tell "please on the next reboot, use this file".
Since UEFI, user-space program cannot have the necessary access to perform the flashing themselves any more, it's locked-up when handing control from UEFI to OS.
Why can't everyone make it that easy rather than needing to run a Windows exe or boot from a special DOS boot disk or something (or even this new Linux thing)
The point here is *unattended upgrade*. A windows .EXE upgrade means that it can be part of some "update" software that runs periodically.
Being accessible to "fwupd" means that on Ubuntu and Fedora, it could be part of the regular update GUI (synaptic and I forgot what respectively).
Critical firmware bug could be fixed even for non-power user that would forget or even not be comfortable enough to boot into the UEFI menu to manually pick up the upgrade themselves.
With a BIOS based machine, it works this way indeed, with a DOS boot (an OS that has no protection whatsover and could directly talk to the flasher to flash a new bios).
With UEFI that not the case anymore. Lots of low-level functionality (including flashing) is locked-down once the OS is booted. This is irreversible, a OS cannot reclaim the flashing capability, you need to reboot the machine back into UEFI.
In that case, the upgrade is simply a file.
This file can be either directly selected from a built-in file browser in the UEFI menu (another poster mentions this on Dell).
Or this file can be pushed by an executable. That's what the Windows or DOS upgrade executable do on modern UEFI machine. They don't actually flash the update, they give the file to the UEFI to use for flashing on the next reboot.
Given that its simply uploading a file, no low-level flashing, there's no reason why it couldn't be added to Linux too.
(Bonus point: the UEFI will check signatures and compatibility of such update capsules before starting them).
Actually, to nitpick : you do NOT get user space to the Firmware.
Since UEFI, the firmware locks-down irreversibly lots of low-level access once its start to boot the OS.
It's impossible to recover these low-level access unless you reboot completely.
Thus these low-level access are only up and available while the UEFI firmware is active, they cannot be available while the OS is running.
Instead, it uses an approach called capsule :
- the userspace part just gives a plain file to the UEFI. And that's it. It does nothing on it's own. Usually after finishing that, the userspace program encourages you to reboot.
- on the following reboot, while the UEFI firmware is running, it can detect that a new payload is available, check its signature, check it is targetting the correct hardware, and eventually jumps into it *before* the usually boot-time hand-over lock-down of low-level function.
- the updater can itself perform futher checks and performs the flashing.
As it's a plain file, it's usually also possible to completely ignore the OS : just save it on a USB stick, and most UEFI menu have a special entry that starts a file browser and give you the possibilty to point to the file on the stick your self, instead of relying on the OS. It will then again run the check and jump into the updater as above.
Bottom line : it's not the user-space, it's the UEFI. And the UEFI has been able to update the UEFI since ages.
You can't write a virus that will write arbitrary bullshit on the UEFI firmware.
BUT if you have a valid signing key, you can write a valid upgrade that will pass all checks and will get the UEFI to self-overwrite with arbitrary bullshit.
The end result is the same (getting arbitrary bullshit), but mean is different (the user space has no access, its merely a short cut to avoid needing to manually point the update file with the UEFI menu file browser).
Given how simple the update is from the point of view of the OS, there's no technical reason why it should not be enabled on Linux.
There are reasons to open a laptop other than fixing it. Expanding memory, adding optional modules, upgrading storage, etc.. Most of those are quick and trivial
You know, the exact list of things that Apple was brave and courageous to SOLDER ON their supposedly "pro" range of laptops.
being able to manage it in a few minutes at a convenient time in the office greatly offsets the hassle of scheduling on-site service - let alone overnight or any other service type of "send it in" service.
And you can count on Apple's service being not "same-day / over-night", because they don't allow shops to keep local stock of replacement parts for the latest Pro models(need to ship a broken part in, before receiving the replacement part). Apparently to avoid some replacements ending up on ebay black market.
My current laptop is a Dell Latitude business laptop (there's exactly ONE single screw to open the bottom pannel and get immediate access to nearly everything).
My next one is going to be a good business laptop too (probably a ThinkPad one if they get a good feature set, including full AMD chipset, like on the A480 / E585)
There are also other problems around the micro-B that can lead to problems.
when micro-B was developped :
- the official specs where only 5v up to 500mA (enven thouhg most desktop can output 1A without problem).
- there started to be some way to a power adapter to signal higher-than 500mA availability by shorting data-line with resistors.
since then :
- several manufacturer started their own way to signal various power availability
- some pseudo-standards like "Power Charge", "Fast Charge", "Dash Charge", etc. which are all specific to some vendors. All using different mixes of higher-voltage and/or much-higher amperage.
- eventually, true standards like USB PD (power delivery) started appearing, and eventually be available on micro-USB in addition to USB-C.
- due to the wild jungle of standarts, etc. smartphone themselves have started to get smart about charging, and monitor the voltage input and throttle down charging if voltage drops too much (or throttle up if the charger seems to be able to keep the voltage)
- conversely some charger started being smart and push up to the USB maximum tolerance (5.2 to 5.4 V) when trying to provide nominal 5V
- you can't physically push 3A / 4A over an excessively thin wire.
Due to all of the above mess, you could have a phone using micro-USB, a supposedly good charger adapter, and a cable in the middle, but still get stuck at 5V @ 500mA charging, because they aren't all the same brand and can't negociate charging together and/or the cable in the middle is completely crappy.
Now combine with the fact that some flagship smartphones seem to require a pocked nuclear reactor to charge and that the mere 2.5W of lowest-common-denominator might not even cover the needs to just keep the phone alive.
You end up with a situation were from the outside it looks like everything uses the same connector and you could plug everything into everything else thanks to micro-B, but in practice you still have all the problem of before standardization (only now, the problem isn't a visible "won't plug" but a nasty "won't charge" that you won't notice immediately).
Thus again, lots of useless things like every phone needing to be boxed together with matching power-adapter and cable (all compatible with each other).
Luckily for us, as said above, USB came up with the PD standard, and that standard is mandatory on USB3 / USB-C.
So now, at least there's a single protocol that newer phones and chargers can speak together to diagnose what's wrong.
So eventually, you could reach a point where the phone could be displaying clear messages about what went wrong (e.g.: "need a PD power plug that support version X.YY" - and you can check the version advertised on the plug).
Let's hope that we reach this point with USB-C. Or that the EU can manage to beat the manufacturer into this.
And that the manufacturer won't manage to balkanize it again with yet another bullshit round of proprietary extension... well, who am I kiding ?
Brace yourself for "manufacturer-branded Ultra Speed Charge+ variant of USB-C".
And then the same all-over again regarding wireless charging, when Apple decides to be COURAGEOUS and BRAVE to lead the market into even less ports (zero, everything mandatory wireless)
WhatsApp... Does that even have a desktop version? Without it it won't matter much in a business context for at least a few years. If it does, it's not advertised enough.
Look up Web Whatsapp.
Now there's a huge difference.
When you use Web Skype, the WebApp is connecting directly to the Microsoft servers. You basically get in your browser the same thing as in the new gen applications. (The new gen Skype application is basically a wrapper around the web app).
It's basically "your browser -> Microsoft's Skype server".
In WhatsApp's case, it's a bit different. You still need a smartphone app (either Android or iOS), that app still makes connection to the Facebook servers itself. But when you log into WhatsApp Web, the phone app goes into server mode, and relays data (through cloud servers) to the web app.
It's supposed to be "your browser -> some relay server -> the app running on your smartphone -> the official Facebook's WhatsApp server".
It's supposed to be done for two reason :
- to enforce the approach that WhatsApp always had about 1 instance on 1 smartphone linked to 1 cellphone number. (they don't want cellphone-less instances)
- the axolotl end-to-end encryption that Facebook has rolled both into WhatsApp and into their own inhouse Messenger *is end-to-end*. You need the smartphone to do the end-point decryption and eventually re-encrypt the data for the webapp. The webapp cannot directly connect the the WhatsApp server, because that server doesn't have any access to the cleartext.
WhatsApp is completely irrelevant (why is it even alive? Teens?)
Actually, all the youngs I've seen seem to be on snapchat nowadays.
when purchasing a new phone (for instance),
Sorry, what has *buying a phone* to do with swapping SIM?
you just take out the SIM from the old phone, fumble a bit with the size adapter (because the new phone uses yet a different format, but hey! It's 0.2mm thinner (tm) !)
and put it into the new phone.
At worse, you've lost all your precut adapters that came with your SIM originally (because you're moving from nano-Shit to some of the saner size).
The phone shop where you bought your new phone will happily sell you a new overpriced set of adapter (made from cheap Chinese plastic) - though still less overpriced than getting a new SIM.
There's zero need to get a new SIM (though some service providers, if you buy the phone from their own in house shop, will offer a rebate on the new SIM, in order for you to get a new one with up to date firmware inside).
Getting a new SIM is only needed when your phone was stolen, when the last SIM broke, or when your SIM is so antique that its firmware is incompatible with the current network (happened to me once, with a decade+ old SIM. That's the reason why in house shop propose SIM upgrades).
a customer must now provide a previously set up PIN? And then wait several hours?
That's normal procedure here around for any online/phone contact that isn't about trivial public information (anything more than "what's your catalog price for XyZ ?")
At the shop, any serious transaction (like buying a new phone on a payment plan or attaching your current account to a new SIM) requires signature and your ID. (And by ID, I don't mean any random bit of plastic that happens to have your picture on it like a credit card or a driver's licence that varies from place to place like you do in the US. But a real government issued ID like a ID Card or passport).
Once bought, the service providing company will run a separate check and you'll get a message on your SIM confirming that your account has successfully switched (in theory, you could need to wait up to 24 hours, though often it goes faster).
That's considered normal security practice for something that could potentially cost lots of money.
While you MAY be able to do something like that if the new and old phones are on the same carrier (if you don't mind pissing off your customers), it would be illegal to do it across carriers. If requested to 'port' a number by another carrier, the carrier MAY NOT refuse the request, MAY NOT contact the customer, and MUST do the port within a day.
here around it's "provided that the security check passes, they won't refuse it and do it under 24 hours".
But both your previous and your upcoming service providers need to make sure that the port is legit.
(which by the way gets abused by the carriers to try to make you stay, by bombarding you with paperwork specially if the situation is abit more complex - like the ownership of a landline shifting between family numbers - in the hopes that you'll think the procedure is too tedious and opt for not jumping ships. The upcoming new carrier will on the other hand happily assist you ghrough this).
Exact reverse thing noticed here.
I and most of my friends own good speaker sets in our home.
Up until recently, playing music (e.g.: at a party) basically meant plugging the cable into the jack of whatever device (the hosts' laptop, the smartphone of whomever has a nicr playlist the want to share).
Now suddenly, there is a bunch of people who simply cannot plug their music. Those with the "courageous" iPhones, or with the Chinese copycats that decided to follow the trend without muxh thinking.
(Okay, for some idiots with weird musical taste, you're actually happy that they can't subject their music to all the innocent bystanders)
Now its fumbling around to find the adequate dongle (Lightning, USB-C) to plug into (and hope the device still has enough battery).
Or trying to find which service to use to share the music (oh, you're using Spotify? But I have all my playlist on Apple music / ad youtube playlists).
Or you need to buy a cheap BT receiver module, except you don't want to pay 500â for it, so you get it from aliexpress and now need to hope that it will work as intended.
Or you need to buy a new set of speakers with built in Bluetooth receiver, that will cost more and be less durable and shittier than the one you have.
(and then hope that the Bluetooth connection will work as intended).
Bring on the hate for being married on Slashdot.
No actually, we won't...
But in all seriousness, that's the beauty of lab created gemstones.
Much more interesting : which lab did you go to ?
For the extra geekiness factor : do you know any lab that they would allow big geeks to do a couple of the step ?
(As in "Honey, I personally *made* your diamong ! (Well I least until the labcoats threw me out before I break the expensive machines)" )
This smells like an unholy combination of two things: a development team getting burnt by premature optimization, with just a hint of "painting oneself into a corner".
Well, on the other hand, It's just number-crunching hardware, used to run their NN.
Maybe they'll come up with a good computer, maybe in the future they'll realise that silicon by Nvidia or AMD ends up being the best to run their nets.
It's more important to them (they'll be divesting money into that R&D) than to users (it's just number-crunching silicon to run a NN on it. You're supposed to be able to swap the computer for a better one in the future, according to Tesla).
Between this and the omission of lidar, I'm not enthusiastic about Tesla's self-driving capability.
I totally agree with this. At a time when every body else relies on one (from high range Vovlo which add a laser field to their camera, down to the cheapest VW Up! that also has the laser as a standard for City Safety), I'm also uncomfortable with Tesla still skipping it.
On the other hand they seem to be slowly learning from their mistake. They started making big promises with a single front facing camera, but now have switched to a triple cam (currently mostly setup so that each cam has a different range/field of view compromise, but in a pinch could also be leveraged for some stereoscopy like most of the German and Japanese brands do).
They seem that each each they'll announce a "This time we got all the sensors, for good !" new platform with even more sensors.
They'll probably add a LIDAR down the line in a few years (probably at the time when the recent Caterpillar buyout eventually leads to their hoped smart-phone-with-a-LIDAR), and then probably redesign the LIDAR inhouse for the next iteration after that.
On the third hand : Tesla has specifically stated that their sensors are NOT retro-fitable (They can't retrofit the current triple cam), only the computers are.
We should probably wait at least a couple of years, until Tesla offer a amount of sensors we're comfortable with, before being able to consider it.
As you said other manufacturer who are longer at this game than Tesla would probably have beaten them to it by then. (But will probably only offer smaller batteries with shorter ranger than whatever range-monster Tesla would have on the marker, or still be stuck with hybrid tech).