Tesla has publicly stated that they've on purpose designed the computer to be modular, and the current cars since recently (forgot the exact date, it's google-able, I think it's since the introduction of the triple front cam) are designed in such way that you could swap the computer with a newer one in the future. So in theory yes, if they keep their word, you should be able to install the newer computer with the better NN when it's out in a couple of years. (Or get all the torches and pitchforks and be angry at them not keeping their word). This makes a lot of sense : computers (thanks to Moore's law) are progressing and getting obsoleted much faster than cars. It would be stupid to be stuck for 8 years on the same computer. There are even start-ups organizing their business around this concept (e.g.: Comma.ai)
The problem is going to be the sensors. Tesla currently seems to be lagging a bit behind others : yup they might have a bit more side cameras, but they still don't have any LIDAR-like features, where most of the competition does (from high range stuff like Volvo, all the way down to the cheaper VW Up!), and they only very recently started putting multiple front-facing cameras (like lots of German and Japanese brands do) (Currently, Tesla's triple cams are setup to each be optimal at a different range/field of view, but in a pinch they might help some amount of stereoscopy to better discriminate 3D. A better computer would definitely help for that). These things are depending on the model of the car, AND CANNOT be retro fitted (according to the same announcement from Tesla - e.g.: they can't retro fit the triple cams to current owners).
So in short, in a couple of years, you could pay to get a better computer in your car, but you'll be lacking all the 10 new additional sensors that Tesla would be launching at that time with an announcement "This time we promise, with all these the car would be finally ready for Level 5 at some point in the future (like every other time we added sensors)" .
Very practical question regarding Tesla handling (never drove a Level 2+ car before, only my parents' car with FCAS and LDWS, and various similar system on all the various fleets of car-sharing).
Normally, a Telsa should handle both steering and accelerating/braking. I the driver where to grab the wheel to adjust steering - BUT keeps the feet hovering above the pedals without pushing them (Yet) - would this disengage only the autopilot steering ? While keeping engage the usual distance keeping / emergency autonomous braking features (FCAS) ? Or can the driver only fall back to fully manual ? (Absolutely needs to also take control of the pedals)
Also, how good are the FCAS in city ? (Im so much happy with my parent's car that I currently mostly drive on automatic distance keeping in city too. Most of the time, I'm inputing speed directly through the FCAS interface, and only use pedal in a few emergency situations that the FCAS misses.)
On one hand, given all the boasts Tesla makes, I would suspect that their system should compare well to system like Volvo's.
On the other hand, Tesla is an US company (a country where to us it seems people spend a couple hours on the highway every single day), and might only work reliably on highway. Also all the in city performance of FCAS I've seen relies on some sort of LIDAR (Volvos have a forward laser field in addition of cameras for in city mid-speed short distance obstacles, all VW have the same laser for in city safety even on the lower Up! models, etc.) which Tesla completely lacks.
{...} to comfortably exercise in other ways (though if this applies to you, I suggest trying swimming / pool exercises)
This. Thousand time this.
Due to the weightlessness-like caused by the water, you can actually swim/do pool exercies even if you're completely hopeless for any other type of physical exercises. Even if you're weak to the point that you can't walk around, you can still swim (Though in that case don't attempt it on your own the first time without specially trained supervision). There's a reason why swimming pool is used in physical rehab: it's really that good/useful.
If you need exercice, go to the pool (and optionally consider registering for gym at the pool).
Then it's followed by biking and then a little bit further down by rowing (Either the actual out-door sport, or on devices), as your weight is distributed over more points (on a bicycle, your weight is distributed over 5 points, you don't put so much stress on single joint like when, e.g., running) and the effort is spread over more muscle groups (in case of rowing you basically extend your whole body), and you can also adapt the level of efforts (light pace on flat, instead of pedaling like a maniac trying to beat the pack uphill).
As some scale, simply walking (instead of taking the car) or climbing the stairs (instead of taking elevators/escalators) is a good light exercise.
Consider eventually introducing bike to work (consider using e-bike to pedal-assist to be less sweaty), well at least when you live on the side of the Atlantic where "going to the groceries" doesn't mean "2 hours car trip".
"People who regularly compete in triathlons are 95% less likely to develop diabetes." Yeah, I bet...
I got your idea, but your example is horribly wrong.
Yes, some type of diabetes (Type 1 - the one which is genetically linked to some HLA immuno types, and tends to develop at a young age and works by killing of insulin cells in the langerhans islets, so the patient still has a functioning body but is simply completely unable to produce insulin on its own and absolutely need that any required amount of insuling gets delivered through a syringe) have nothing to do with sport. On the other hand, with correct follow-up and adaptation of A. the glucose intake, B. blood glucose measures and C. insuline administration - type 1 diabetic CAN do lots of sports. (High tech devices like continuous measuring implants, pumps, etc. can help a bit but I know people who still do it old school and still do a crazy amount of sports).
And now there's diabetes type 2 (the one which is linked to a different genetic make up and is strongly linked to obesity - the more the patient is obese, the more the patient develop insulin resistance. Their body is still producing insulin as it should, but due to various hormonal perturbation provoked by the fat tissue, the body reacts a lot less to the insuline - they either need extra bits of insulin added, or other types of drugs to help regulate). This type of diabetes is extremely strongly linked to obesity and body fat. Sports, specially endurance sports have strong regulating effect on body fat and obesity.
Thanks to lifestyle change, including physical activity (though you don't straigh out start having your MBI 45+ morbidly obese patient doing triathlons immediately. You go progressively. Taking the stairs instead of elevators/escalators is a good first baby step along the path) it's possible to dramatically reduce the medical needs of the patient, and increase long term outcome (Sometime to the point that the patient doen't need medication anymore) by reducing the weight.
(This might be a little bit easier to achieve on our side of the atlantic, than in countries that over rely on cars and processed foods like the US).
So eventually, running triathlon would *actually* help the diabetic type 2 patients, and is completely irrelevant to type 1 patients.
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On an unrelated note, that is why I'm a bit ambivalent on the "body positive" movement I'm seeing through the internet happening in the US.
On one hand, yes, I think body-shaming is pretty stupid thing, specially given that for some people over-eating is their (buggy) coping mechanism. By shaming them you'll increase their stress, and won't solve their problems. Also yes, Holywood's obsession with a very specific unique body type, and the fashion's obsession with anorexic living skeleton (so clothes fall on them exactly like on a coat-hanger ?), isn't good at all. There are lots of people who don't fit these stereotypes and have different body shapes but are still perfectly healthy (even slightly overweight people) and should indeed be considered *normal*. Being a bit more curvy than the latest movie bimbo shouldn't be a sin.
On the other hand, the giant balls of fat with an extreme morbid obesity that insist to be considered just as "body diverse", that makes me cringe. Sorry boys and girls - you aren't just "diversely body shaped", you have achieved a level of obesity at which point it's correlated with tons of negative health impacts : risks of the above-mentioned type 2 obesity, risks of cholesterol-related cardio-vascular diseases, severe stress on your joints (mostly knees and hips), etc. I can't be positive about a "walking (well almost rolling at this point) health liability". You shouldn't be shamed, you shouldn't be arbitrarily discriminated against. But you should seriously consider contacting your family doctor, getting appointment with some nutritionist, start consider some life-style change, progressively start increasing physical activity, etc. before your so-called "body diversity" kills you in a horrible way (like e.g. by clogging your brain's arteries).
I appreciate the humor, but I bet when you look outside your window you see a completely different world.
The thing is, a lot of people happen to seen the same world as I out of our windows (the people who all live in more densely populate urban and sub-urban areas) than you see out the wooden frame left over after the latest of Nature's calamities trashed your windows yet again.
Yes, I fully understand that there exist people who *actually do* need off-terrain vehicle, specifically *for* their off-terrain ability. Like you do (given your description), and case in point - even on our side of the ocean - a friend's family who had their vehicle constantly covered in fresh mud and stinking awfully of dead animals, because every other week-end they drove it out deep in forest and mountains to go hunting.
But, to me, it looks like out of every batch of SUVs, pick-ups, etc. a small number go to people like you who actually need them for their capabilities, and biggest chunk remaining ends up doing simple commutes between suburbs and in-city work place. Always immaculate clean "off-road capable" vehicles. Mostly because people like to have big card for some weird perception of safety (you know all these people getting afraid of driving inside a Smart because of what would happen if it crashed into a huge SUV ?) (The split it self makes sense. There's more population living in the suburbs and commuting to city work, than people deep in the more wild area. Therefor they'll represent a bigger chunk of anything, including of SUVs bought).
From our side of the ocean it seems that this effect is even more pronounced in the US. Though it appears here around in Europe too, specially in the big capital cities of richest European countries. (Which make even less sense : being very old, lots of European cities tend to have small tortuous streets which are way easier to navigate using smaller cars).
But at least Europe seems to still prefer small cars form factors (mostly for the in-city maneuverability mentioned above. And also because of high price at the pump making gas guzzling monster less economically sane). Hence my joke : if the US seems to be over-taken by a big "i need a super-giant car" mania, to the point that several US brands seems to be entirely dropping normal cars, and some people think that this would jeopardize potential market for Tesla, maybe they should move to the part of worlds where sedan car are still comparatively more popular.
Meanwhile, given your unusual needs, of course you'ld be needing big cars. I you would be driving one of the very few (on scale of all sold) that are constantly completely covered in fresh mud.
When I look outside, I see the bridge over the brook washed out.
Now, all joking aside, I hope the local weather catastrophe didn't hit you and your folks too hard and you didn't lose too much. Seriously.
then take us 2.5 hours to the nearest town.
Water problems aside, EV technology is slowly progressing. Lots of EV here around start to pack battery packs large enough for ~250km (in my experience, I can usually get even more than the rated range, people with more aggressive style could get less) - that's about ~150 miles. I've seen recently a Renault Zoe boasting about some brand new battery bringing up to 400km.
All these are smaller more in-city cars, Tesla's giant range monsters are far better than that.
Battery tech is getting better over time. We'll eventually reach the point where it covers your range needs.
My wife's Volt would probably have the torque to do it, if it had better tires, but I would suspect submerging it in the stream is a seriously bad idea.
Actually, Lithium batteries being extremely sensitive, manufacturers tend to pay a insane big amount of attention to make sure to correctly isolate them. To the point that trying to salvage drowned Teslas seem to be
Yep, you should have told it to Amazon (AMZN), that they should have started making profit from year 1, instead of them losing money by stupidly spending it on useless stuff like expanding their infrastructure (and basically becoming THE CLOUD since then)~~
I'm sure, If they had listen to you they would have been successfuly instead of going down crashing and flaming as Tesla motors (TSLA) is going to do any moment soon !~~
Also, taking down something that also exist on the TOR network as a onion address would be hard : The Pirate Bay
And speaking of search engines take-downs : Duck Duck Go, too is available as a onion address on the Tor network. So similarily in the "not going to happen" category.
(And in an almost completely missing the point kind of irony, I've read that Facebook is also present as an onion on TOR, probably due to country where it is banned. I have no idea if the address is legit, though - too lazy and don't care enough to check it).
the rapidly shrinking passenger car slice of the US market. Ford, for instance, will make only Mustangs and Focus crossovers in 2019; all other passenger cars are gone from the Ford lineup. Fiat Chrysler and GM aren't far behind, phasing out or scaling back production of most passenger car models
Given the weird shift of interest in the US, shouldn't Tesla just move to Europe ? Say, buy the left-over factories from the Saab chinese buyout, and retool them for EV ?
On our side of the ocean we aren't that much interested into giant over-compensating penis substitutes.
From what I gather info online, and from what limited experience I have (on *other* cars) : Nope.
It's not the *car* that gets remotely disabled. (That would actually be illegal. See Renault's answer on complains about risk of remote shut down of rented Zoe batteries). It's Tesla banning some models *from their own charger*.
Super Chargers : it's their chargers, it's their call to decide what goes on there.
Chademo : They don't own these chargers, it's the charger's owner decision if they accept you on them or not. The dozen of such chargers I've seen, the only concern of the charger owner is that you swipe your credit card or membership card so they can charge you (even if the amount is ridiculously low -- the privilege of living in a country with a high cost of living and Alpine hydro everywhere : electricity seems cheap, even if it would probably give a heart attack to somebody from China if they hear how much we pay for it). The owner of the charging stations usually don't give a damn about what you plug into it. Their logic being :
- if you drove it all the way to reach this highway rest area, it means that it has passed the law-required safety test, and should be more or less safe.
- the charging system have a couple of safety measures to avoid incidents. Both the above should be enough to lower the risk of a Frankentesla catching fire to an acceptable level for them.
Which also means : had the remote-disabled Tesla currently reported on youtube happened in Europe, instead of leaving the car at a friend or needing to tow it all the way back to home, the owner of the Frankentesla, could simply plug it into a competitor's chademo station with such an adapter - or like in my post above example, into a slower Mennekes AC plug, and had it fully recharge for about the same money that his coffee budget for the trip, (and of course record his youtube rant in front of the competitor charger). (Or maybe even for free. Some businesses provide Mennekes AC charging for free as a way to attract customers - IKEA does here around)
But given most of the turn of events, I deduce that : - charging station other than supercharger apparently aren't that common in the US ? So leaving the car at a nearby's friend is the only solution. - given the type of power plugs available in the US (120V, capped at 10A max ?), it would take several days/a week to charge the battery and the friend might not be happy with such high and prolonged consumption.
Nuclear/chemicals are used as natural process catalyst (accelerate evolution through random mutation) and damn, nature has been proved not safe for years (How many natural thing just kill you?). Random mutations without trials is never never safer than chirurgical editing with a lot of trials.
The question is not whether the random mutation are more or less safe compared to chirurgical editing. (Over time, crispr will probably turn out to be safer)
The question is that random mutation have always been happening forever. And radiation has been used to increase these mutations in a slightly better controlled fashion since almost as long as radiations have been studied (what do you think did inspire all these super-hero origin stories involving radiation ?). So we have a rough idea and several decades of practical experience about rate at which things coming out of this are going to kill you. With all this data, it can be considered proven.
Crispr/Cas9 has been in use for less than a decade. That's a lot less than the decades of radiation accelerating natural mutations. That's a tiny blimp since natural random mutations occur. We don't have a lot of data yet. We can't prove that it has a certain level of safety. Maybe after 20 years, we'll end up noticing that there are some unforeseen consequences.
The EU logic : let's put strong regulation on it until we know more about them.
(Note: I'm just explaining the logic. I don't necessarily agree with it).
In some jurisdiction : No, you can't. If you want to put your re-assembled franken on a street, it has to pass safety inspection.
Only then yes, if if passes inspection, you can drive your Frankencar on streets. That includes electric cars too.
Can you mod or improve this car for competition?
In these jurisdiction, competition tracks aren't considered public roads, they are considered private grounds. You aren't required to pass safety inspection by law. (But the track owner might have other requirements).
But as long as carry your Frankencar on a trailer, you're free to do whatever pleases you and the track's owner, including up to watching a nice firework if any of your mods goes wrong. (this no matter what powers you car, be it gas, electricity or even crazier tech. As long as your car doesn't make the IAEA nervous, that is).
Why can't I go into a Tesla parts counter in the same fashion as a Mazda parts dealer can get whatever the fuck I want if I'm willing to pay for it?
Because virtually all the Model 3 currently on the road are more recent that their warranty period. Thus to an end users, thinking about repairs seems free-as-in-beer.
It would be hard for any business to compete with a percieved price of "zero".
Wait a few years, for the market to start having lots of old second-hand Teslas that aren't warranty covered and needs repairs/maintenance/upgrades here and there. Then being a "Tesla parts" reseller would be much more interesting business.
If the Tesla chargers are at risk then the 50/100/175kW third party changers are going to be too.
Yes indeed for the 50 kW AC chargers.
(no for the higher charger, those are DC, and Tesla uses a different connection. Normal DC uses Mennekes connector (for ground and data) plus 2 exra pins for DC. Tesla's proprietary connection re-use pins of the Mennekes to carry DC. You can't fry a 175kW by connecting it to a Frankentesla, because you can't even connect it to begin with. Look up "Type 2" in Wikipedia for the details). (Though maybe the situation is different in the US. Are there converter plugs between whatever shit Tesla uses there and whatever you use for 175kW DC on your side of the ocean ?)
Now to go back to your discussion. Yes, you could just as likely fry a 50 kW AC charger by connecting it to a Frankentesla as connecting a supercharger.
But the thing is, the Supercharger network belongs to Tesla, so they would certainly add a feature to make sure that they only allow whichever car they want on it and refuse other cars (cars whose owner hadn't paid for the Supercharger network access now that this is a paying option. Cars who have been rebuild and that Tesla hadn't controlled and certified to a point were they are comfortable of them being plugged. Etc.) It's their electrical plug, it's their call.
Meanwhile, those 50kW AC chargers don't belong to Tesla. And up until whomever they belong to, tend to only be fussy and make checks and controls about payments (you need to wave a credit card or a membership cards on those charger which aren't 100% free-as-in-beer), but rely on all the security that already exist in current charging tech regarding safety.
Now, I am ready to bet that lots of jurisdiction have already/are going to setup precise criteria about passing inspection for a rebuilt *electric* car, just like there has always been criteria for rebuilt ICE cars. So chances are, in the near future, in lots of country, if the Frankentesla was allowed on the road and managed to drive all the way to your charging station, risks of it exploding should be rather low, given the safety features of charging tech.
(Disclaimer: All the various electric vehicles I've been driving have always been AC charging only. I haven't driven a DC-charging car yet, be it Tesla or any other brand. So I'm just speculating, it's not first hand experience)
Environmentally-conscious European companies are actually replacing plastic packaging material (expanded polystyrene foam peanuts) with biodegradable packaging material such as corn starch packing peanuts - basically unflavored corn puffs. (Examples of shops: Conrad, Lush, etc.)
So yeah, plastic and corn puffs *ARE* mutually interchangeable indeed:-D
Politicians also know that vilifying their opponents is counterproductive because one day they may have to form a coalition with the party they're vilifying now. That means party relations are a lot less toxic than in the USA, and coalition governments spend less time dismantling the work of the previous coalition than is common in the US.
I've also read somewhere that in the US, they used to have a time when the president and vice were the two topmost voted, no matter which party they come from (unlike nowadays, where each party sets up a candidate-president, and a candidate-vice, and the come together in the same package, depending on which top party was voted).
I'm laughing trying to imagine an alternate reality where the US kept those law around, and Trump and Clinton were forced to work together (one being the vice president). Trolling that the other candidate is unqualified might a lot less successful strategy.
Of course, it might be easier to laugh at such combo, when here around (Switzerland) we don't have a single head of state, but a seven headed hydra : the "head of executive power" is shared among a group of seven men and women. (There exist a label "President" that is passed around, but is only a label passed around with no political power. The power is indeed evenly shared among seven). These seven people HAVE to work together, despite different party backgrounds (usually they are from all over the spectrum)
Wouldn't broken phones be good for Google? People would then have to buy more as they keep breaking.
Only Steve Jobs is/was equipped with a potent enough Reality Distortion Field, so that people keep re-buy Apple crapphone even after the previous ones crapped. Any other brand attempting the same stun would have people coming at them with pitchforks complaining that such low quality CANNOT BE ALLOWED.
Also note that Google themselve doesn't make any relevant amount of money directly on the phone sold. The manufacturer are making money on they phone.
Google makes most of their "Uncle Scrooge's swimming pool"-level of money on advertisement and monetizing all these juicy personal data that they can milk out of their users. For that, they need the users to come and stay inside their Google Eco-system (use Gmail, use Google Search, use all the other "Google Experience" apps that they force manufacturers to install if they want to have a license to the Google APIs that popular apps use).
For that to happen, they need android to still be a popular platform. If android start to be hated because they are phone that constantly overheat and eat batteries, there's the risk that the people will switch to some other platform (say if suddenly iPhones started to look less crappy) where their tasty monetizable privacy won't be as accessible (to google) for milking.
I think this is really about what someone earlier mentioned: Cryptocurrency-supported software eliminates the need to support your software with advertisements. Google wants you to use ads, not coins, to support your software, because Google has a monopoly on Internet advertising, but they don't yet have a coin offering.
Yup, that too. Apps not relying on ads (Google Adsense ka-ching !), store and in app purchase (Google Play ka-ching !) would certainly be a risk of slow downs in the stream filling the above mentioned Uncle Scrooge swimming pools.
I've been purchasing computers since 1995 and every one I've purchased, I've been allowed to choose what to run on it, and had the choice to run software that max'd the CPU if I wanted to. {...} This is why smartphones have failed utterly at competing with the desktop, and why desktops are still years ahead for getting real work done... five or ten years ago I predicted that smartphones would usurp the desktop, and I was wrong, they remain basically toys / dumb appliances, with a few useful applications (e.g. navigation, flashlight, camera).
"- What are these 'desktop' and 'workstation' thingy you keep mentioning ? I find these concept fascinating " - Typed some hipster on his ultra slim Mac Book laptop.
Then suddenly his beard caught fire, because the laptop was over heating. But he didn't regret, the laptop was sooo thin, and so shiny, and such elegance with so few ports...
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You might have not noticed but (except for us geeks who still dwell on/. ) for the rest of the world, the computing experience has devolved into mostly "navigation", mostly a couple of social websites and a few webapp (that some other hipster wrote in Javascript using 10MiB worth of frameworks on their craptops). Shitty (from our point of view) laptop and crappy (ditto) smartphone have successfully replaced the desktop, because in practice we're the last bastion that actually *uses* any computer for anything more than posting meme GIFs.
"I'll record this conversation." "Ok" "Now, does acme corp accept my terms to send me a sack of gold in exchange for a dollar?" "Ok"
How this is supposed to go into the mind of the investor currently giving money to google : - I'll record this converstion. - Okay - Now, does Acme corp accept my terms to send me a sack of gold in exchange for a dollar? - Uhm... I'm sorry, Sir. I'm not qualified to answer you question. I'll transfer your call to someone from Sales. - Hello, my name is Sandy, welcome to the Sales department of Acme. How might I help you?
How this will actually go in the real world a couple of months down the line : - I'll record this converstion. - Okay - Now, does Acme corp accept my terms to send me a sack of gold in exchange for a dollar... (...small barely audible burst of line noise...) - Okay, Sir. Your ordered item will be shipped tomorrow, have a nice day
And the Chaos Computer Club Conference on-stage demo version : "- Hello my name Bob, Acme corp's new AI assistant, how might I help you ? (...loud modem-noise on the line...) - Okay, have a PENIS!!!! day ! LORDZOFLULZ was here !" (And then bunch of strippers all paid by Acme's bank account arrive at the conference)
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where:
"Uhm..." = artificial simulation of human noise that Google currently use to mask the processing time.
"Sandy" = actual human
noise = sounds very much like some noise due to some failing analog link along the line (crappy wireless phone used by the caller, bad copper POTS lines from the caller's house, etc.) but is actually wrongly interpreted by the AI as some weird command tricking the AI into uttering the desired response. (Like : "No, actually, could you please send me one of your free catalogs ?" See all the noisy (looking like analog noise) pictures that actually completely tricks the ImageNet to recognise bogus objects)
modem noise = very densely compressed horribly complex and weird audio sequences specially crafted by LordzOfLulz that eventually ends up buffer-over-running and pwning some server deep in the company.
The next security conference after that will show that it's possible to actually achieve the same result by singing "Marry has a little lamb" a capella over a simple cheap smartphone and substituting a weird color name, but they'll only order soda drinks delivered on Acme corp's budget (because the conference organizers reported attendees' complains about breaches of "Code of Conduct")
And the fourth's job will eventually devolve into put the light show/VJ-aying for the crazy party music playlist that the third is DJ-aying over the car's sound system.
What? What do you mean "where does the client who hired the ride actually go" ? Oh, if it's one of those small european cars that can only seat 2 com fortably in the back, then I guess you'll have to put the Uber client in the trunk or on the roof's ski case... Or he can be busy waving the red flag in front of the Uber party car.
Google's motus operandi is about amassing piles of stuff : getting (initially) a huge index of the web, piling large collection of data to train their IA (training voice recognition from their snippets of google voice), piling large amount of private personal to better target ads, etc.
Whereas, the whole key purpose behind all *distributed* ledger systems is to remove the needs of a central authority.
Google and blockchain are on the exact polar opposite of the decentralization scale.
Owning a Bentley is a worse predictor of being high-income than owning an Apple iPhone?
Yup, because you might be seeing a 25%-er that owns a Ferrari instead. Or one who own a Maseratti. Or one who owns a Tesla Roadster with all the stupid options like SpaceX rockets. Or a Porsche. etc. But all of them happen to own an iPhone, just like a significant chunk of all the other 25%ers (including that 25%ers who doesn't own any car and entirely relies on professional driver services (you know the services that UberBlack drivers actually do for a living when they're not moonlighting on Uber) )
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More seriously : we're speaking about the to 25%ers here, not the trop 1%ers. Given the way income inequality goes in the US (..or at least how it seems to us, when we read news in northern Europe...), that basically covers most of the people who aren't completely broke. Not all of them happen to own super-car, and some of them aren't rich enough to afford one. But all of the people in that range happen to have enough disposable income to afford an overpriced smartphone just because they like its design and the model is trendy. (So lots of people in that income bracket will pick an iPhone). Below this range, people have less disposable income and will more thoroughly think benefits-vs-costs when picking up a smartphone. If they can afford one, they'll go with something surely less expensive and sometimes perhaps even with more features.
In the economically significant parts of the EU in winter the sun comes up after 09:00 and sets before 17:00.
Already virtually everyone goes to work or school and returns in the dark, making the sun come up after 10:00 is just not acceptable.
This is not how DST works. DST isn't active in the winter to begin with.
If the sun is up between 09:00 and 17:00, that is still going to be 09:00 and 17:00 wether DST exists or not.
DST is active in summer. The same place would have sun in summer between 05:00 and 21:00 in the summer. DST would shift by (+1) in the summer, corresponding to 06:00 and 22:00. So somebody working 09:00 to 17:00, will only start working 3 hours after the sun rise, and will still get 5 hours of sun after the end of work ( <- that's where the more light happens), and could spend these 5 hours outside, e.g.: spending deutschmarks at the beer garten ( <- which was one of the *economic* reasons to introduce DST in the industrial age).
My long argument is that the exact same thing is functionally achieved, instead of applying DST in the summer, to shift working hours to 08:00 to 16:00 (Still the same distribution of light before / after work). The worker will still have 5 hours to spend their Euros in hipster Cafés. It would not have made sens back in the industrial era (every single place setting completely different random hours! chaos !) But today, when 7 out 10 business have varying work hours anyway, asking the last three to shift hours instead of shifting clocks isn't far fetched.
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Now to go back to parent poster : what the DST achieves *extremely crudely* is having the start of the work day follow the start of the light. e.g.: If you kept the start of the work day at 08.00 (working hours or DST or whatever), in the winter you would have to start working a whole 1 hour before the sunrise, given your example.
Suppressing DST without any other adjustement would make you lose this "work day *(very) approximater* follows light". I'm simply arguing that adjusting working hours also enables you to follow light, and nowadays, you need to check opening hours for lots of services you're contacting/using/visiting anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
There's two components on an autonomous system.
The sensors and the computer.
Tesla has publicly stated that they've on purpose designed the computer to be modular, and the current cars since recently (forgot the exact date, it's google-able, I think it's since the introduction of the triple front cam) are designed in such way that you could swap the computer with a newer one in the future.
So in theory yes, if they keep their word, you should be able to install the newer computer with the better NN when it's out in a couple of years. (Or get all the torches and pitchforks and be angry at them not keeping their word).
This makes a lot of sense : computers (thanks to Moore's law) are progressing and getting obsoleted much faster than cars. It would be stupid to be stuck for 8 years on the same computer. There are even start-ups organizing their business around this concept (e.g.: Comma.ai)
The problem is going to be the sensors. Tesla currently seems to be lagging a bit behind others : yup they might have a bit more side cameras, but they still don't have any LIDAR-like features, where most of the competition does (from high range stuff like Volvo, all the way down to the cheaper VW Up!), and they only very recently started putting multiple front-facing cameras (like lots of German and Japanese brands do) (Currently, Tesla's triple cams are setup to each be optimal at a different range/field of view, but in a pinch they might help some amount of stereoscopy to better discriminate 3D. A better computer would definitely help for that).
These things are depending on the model of the car, AND CANNOT be retro fitted (according to the same announcement from Tesla - e.g.: they can't retro fit the triple cams to current owners).
So in short, in a couple of years, you could pay to get a better computer in your car, but you'll be lacking all the 10 new additional sensors that Tesla would be launching at that time with an announcement "This time we promise, with all these the car would be finally ready for Level 5 at some point in the future (like every other time we added sensors)" .
Very practical question regarding Tesla handling (never drove a Level 2+ car before, only my parents' car with FCAS and LDWS, and various similar system on all the various fleets of car-sharing).
Normally, a Telsa should handle both steering and accelerating/braking.
I the driver where to grab the wheel to adjust steering - BUT keeps the feet hovering above the pedals without pushing them (Yet) - would this disengage only the autopilot steering ? While keeping engage the usual distance keeping / emergency autonomous braking features (FCAS) ?
Or can the driver only fall back to fully manual ? (Absolutely needs to also take control of the pedals)
Also, how good are the FCAS in city ? (Im so much happy with my parent's car that I currently mostly drive on automatic distance keeping in city too. Most of the time, I'm inputing speed directly through the FCAS interface, and only use pedal in a few emergency situations that the FCAS misses.)
On one hand, given all the boasts Tesla makes, I would suspect that their system should compare well to system like Volvo's.
On the other hand, Tesla is an US company (a country where to us it seems people spend a couple hours on the highway every single day), and might only work reliably on highway. Also all the in city performance of FCAS I've seen relies on some sort of LIDAR (Volvos have a forward laser field in addition of cameras for in city mid-speed short distance obstacles, all VW have the same laser for in city safety even on the lower Up! models, etc.) which Tesla completely lacks.
{...} to comfortably exercise in other ways (though if this applies to you, I suggest trying swimming / pool exercises)
This.
Thousand time this.
Due to the weightlessness-like caused by the water, you can actually swim/do pool exercies even if you're completely hopeless for any other type of physical exercises.
Even if you're weak to the point that you can't walk around, you can still swim (Though in that case don't attempt it on your own the first time without specially trained supervision). There's a reason why swimming pool is used in physical rehab: it's really that good/useful.
If you need exercice, go to the pool (and optionally consider registering for gym at the pool).
Then it's followed by biking and then a little bit further down by rowing (Either the actual out-door sport, or on devices), as your weight is distributed over more points (on a bicycle, your weight is distributed over 5 points, you don't put so much stress on single joint like when, e.g., running) and the effort is spread over more muscle groups (in case of rowing you basically extend your whole body), and you can also adapt the level of efforts (light pace on flat, instead of pedaling like a maniac trying to beat the pack uphill).
As some scale, simply walking (instead of taking the car) or climbing the stairs (instead of taking elevators/escalators) is a good light exercise.
Consider eventually introducing bike to work (consider using e-bike to pedal-assist to be less sweaty), well at least when you live on the side of the Atlantic where "going to the groceries" doesn't mean "2 hours car trip".
"People who regularly compete in triathlons are 95% less likely to develop diabetes." Yeah, I bet...
I got your idea, but your example is horribly wrong.
Yes, some type of diabetes (Type 1 - the one which is genetically linked to some HLA immuno types, and tends to develop at a young age and works by killing of insulin cells in the langerhans islets, so the patient still has a functioning body but is simply completely unable to produce insulin on its own and absolutely need that any required amount of insuling gets delivered through a syringe) have nothing to do with sport.
On the other hand, with correct follow-up and adaptation of A. the glucose intake, B. blood glucose measures and C. insuline administration - type 1 diabetic CAN do lots of sports. (High tech devices like continuous measuring implants, pumps, etc. can help a bit but I know people who still do it old school and still do a crazy amount of sports).
And now there's diabetes type 2 (the one which is linked to a different genetic make up and is strongly linked to obesity - the more the patient is obese, the more the patient develop insulin resistance. Their body is still producing insulin as it should, but due to various hormonal perturbation provoked by the fat tissue, the body reacts a lot less to the insuline - they either need extra bits of insulin added, or other types of drugs to help regulate).
This type of diabetes is extremely strongly linked to obesity and body fat.
Sports, specially endurance sports have strong regulating effect on body fat and obesity.
Thanks to lifestyle change, including physical activity (though you don't straigh out start having your MBI 45+ morbidly obese patient doing triathlons immediately. You go progressively. Taking the stairs instead of elevators/escalators is a good first baby step along the path) it's possible to dramatically reduce the medical needs of the patient, and increase long term outcome (Sometime to the point that the patient doen't need medication anymore) by reducing the weight.
(This might be a little bit easier to achieve on our side of the atlantic, than in countries that over rely on cars and processed foods like the US).
So eventually, running triathlon would *actually* help the diabetic type 2 patients, and is completely irrelevant to type 1 patients.
---
On an unrelated note, that is why I'm a bit ambivalent on the "body positive" movement I'm seeing through the internet happening in the US.
On one hand, yes, I think body-shaming is pretty stupid thing, specially given that for some people over-eating is their (buggy) coping mechanism. By shaming them you'll increase their stress, and won't solve their problems.
Also yes, Holywood's obsession with a very specific unique body type, and the fashion's obsession with anorexic living skeleton (so clothes fall on them exactly like on a coat-hanger ?), isn't good at all. There are lots of people who don't fit these stereotypes and have different body shapes but are still perfectly healthy (even slightly overweight people) and should indeed be considered *normal*. Being a bit more curvy than the latest movie bimbo shouldn't be a sin.
On the other hand, the giant balls of fat with an extreme morbid obesity that insist to be considered just as "body diverse", that makes me cringe. Sorry boys and girls - you aren't just "diversely body shaped", you have achieved a level of obesity at which point it's correlated with tons of negative health impacts : risks of the above-mentioned type 2 obesity, risks of cholesterol-related cardio-vascular diseases, severe stress on your joints (mostly knees and hips), etc.
I can't be positive about a "walking (well almost rolling at this point) health liability".
You shouldn't be shamed, you shouldn't be arbitrarily discriminated against. But you should seriously consider contacting your family doctor, getting appointment with some nutritionist, start consider some life-style change, progressively start increasing physical activity, etc. before your so-called "body diversity" kills you in a horrible way (like e.g. by clogging your brain's arteries).
a sauna stresses the system and is essentially a kind of exercise, a style of exercise you're going to have trouble finding elsewhere.
Or it might be the exact opposite :
Sauna stresses the system, and thus only people with a functional enough cardio-vascular system go there.
The people with bad hearths don't go there AND die younger.
I appreciate the humor, but I bet when you look outside your window you see a completely different world.
The thing is, a lot of people happen to seen the same world as I out of our windows (the people who all live in more densely populate urban and sub-urban areas) than you see out the wooden frame left over after the latest of Nature's calamities trashed your windows yet again.
Yes, I fully understand that there exist people who *actually do* need off-terrain vehicle, specifically *for* their off-terrain ability. Like you do (given your description), and case in point - even on our side of the ocean - a friend's family who had their vehicle constantly covered in fresh mud and stinking awfully of dead animals, because every other week-end they drove it out deep in forest and mountains to go hunting.
But, to me, it looks like out of every batch of SUVs, pick-ups, etc. a small number go to people like you who actually need them for their capabilities, and biggest chunk remaining ends up doing simple commutes between suburbs and in-city work place. Always immaculate clean "off-road capable" vehicles.
Mostly because people like to have big card for some weird perception of safety (you know all these people getting afraid of driving inside a Smart because of what would happen if it crashed into a huge SUV ?)
(The split it self makes sense. There's more population living in the suburbs and commuting to city work, than people deep in the more wild area. Therefor they'll represent a bigger chunk of anything, including of SUVs bought).
From our side of the ocean it seems that this effect is even more pronounced in the US. Though it appears here around in Europe too, specially in the big capital cities of richest European countries. (Which make even less sense : being very old, lots of European cities tend to have small tortuous streets which are way easier to navigate using smaller cars).
But at least Europe seems to still prefer small cars form factors (mostly for the in-city maneuverability mentioned above. And also because of high price at the pump making gas guzzling monster less economically sane).
Hence my joke : if the US seems to be over-taken by a big "i need a super-giant car" mania, to the point that several US brands seems to be entirely dropping normal cars, and some people think that this would jeopardize potential market for Tesla, maybe they should move to the part of worlds where sedan car are still comparatively more popular.
Meanwhile, given your unusual needs, of course you'ld be needing big cars. I you would be driving one of the very few (on scale of all sold) that are constantly completely covered in fresh mud.
When I look outside, I see the bridge over the brook washed out.
Now, all joking aside, I hope the local weather catastrophe didn't hit you and your folks too hard and you didn't lose too much. Seriously.
then take us 2.5 hours to the nearest town.
Water problems aside, EV technology is slowly progressing.
Lots of EV here around start to pack battery packs large enough for ~250km (in my experience, I can usually get even more than the rated range, people with more aggressive style could get less) - that's about ~150 miles.
I've seen recently a Renault Zoe boasting about some brand new battery bringing up to 400km.
All these are smaller more in-city cars, Tesla's giant range monsters are far better than that.
Battery tech is getting better over time. We'll eventually reach the point where it covers your range needs.
My wife's Volt would probably have the torque to do it, if it had better tires, but I would suspect submerging it in the stream is a seriously bad idea.
Actually, Lithium batteries being extremely sensitive, manufacturers tend to pay a insane big amount of attention to make sure to correctly isolate them.
To the point that trying to salvage drowned Teslas seem to be
Yep, you should have told it to Amazon (AMZN), that they should have started making profit from year 1, instead of them losing money by stupidly spending it on useless stuff like expanding their infrastructure (and basically becoming THE CLOUD since then)~~
I'm sure, If they had listen to you they would have been successfuly instead of going down crashing and flaming as Tesla motors (TSLA) is going to do any moment soon !~~
Also, taking down something that also exist on the TOR network as a onion address would be hard :
The Pirate Bay
And speaking of search engines take-downs :
Duck Duck Go, too is available as a onion address on the Tor network.
So similarily in the "not going to happen" category.
(And in an almost completely missing the point kind of irony, I've read that Facebook is also present as an onion on TOR, probably due to country where it is banned. I have no idea if the address is legit, though - too lazy and don't care enough to check it).
the rapidly shrinking passenger car slice of the US market. Ford, for instance, will make only Mustangs and Focus crossovers in 2019; all other passenger cars are gone from the Ford lineup. Fiat Chrysler and GM aren't far behind, phasing out or scaling back production of most passenger car models
Given the weird shift of interest in the US, shouldn't Tesla just move to Europe ?
Say, buy the left-over factories from the Saab chinese buyout, and retool them for EV ?
On our side of the ocean we aren't that much interested into giant over-compensating penis substitutes.
From what I gather info online, and from what limited experience I have (on *other* cars) :
Nope.
It's not the *car* that gets remotely disabled. (That would actually be illegal. See Renault's answer on complains about risk of remote shut down of rented Zoe batteries).
It's Tesla banning some models *from their own charger*.
Super Chargers : it's their chargers, it's their call to decide what goes on there.
Chademo : They don't own these chargers, it's the charger's owner decision if they accept you on them or not. The dozen of such chargers I've seen, the only concern of the charger owner is that you swipe your credit card or membership card so they can charge you
(even if the amount is ridiculously low -- the privilege of living in a country with a high cost of living and Alpine hydro everywhere : electricity seems cheap, even if it would probably give a heart attack to somebody from China if they hear how much we pay for it).
The owner of the charging stations usually don't give a damn about what you plug into it.
Their logic being :
- if you drove it all the way to reach this highway rest area, it means that it has passed the law-required safety test, and should be more or less safe.
- the charging system have a couple of safety measures to avoid incidents.
Both the above should be enough to lower the risk of a Frankentesla catching fire to an acceptable level for them.
Which also means :
had the remote-disabled Tesla currently reported on youtube happened in Europe, instead of leaving the car at a friend or needing to tow it all the way back to home, the owner of the Frankentesla, could simply plug it into a competitor's chademo station with such an adapter - or like in my post above example, into a slower Mennekes AC plug, and had it fully recharge for about the same money that his coffee budget for the trip, (and of course record his youtube rant in front of the competitor charger).
(Or maybe even for free. Some businesses provide Mennekes AC charging for free as a way to attract customers - IKEA does here around)
But given most of the turn of events, I deduce that :
- charging station other than supercharger apparently aren't that common in the US ? So leaving the car at a nearby's friend is the only solution.
- given the type of power plugs available in the US (120V, capped at 10A max ?), it would take several days/a week to charge the battery and the friend might not be happy with such high and prolonged consumption.
Nuclear/chemicals are used as natural process catalyst (accelerate evolution through random mutation) and damn, nature has been proved not safe for years (How many natural thing just kill you?). Random mutations without trials is never never safer than chirurgical editing with a lot of trials.
The question is not whether the random mutation are more or less safe compared to chirurgical editing. (Over time, crispr will probably turn out to be safer)
The question is that random mutation have always been happening forever. And radiation has been used to increase these mutations in a slightly better controlled fashion since almost as long as radiations have been studied (what do you think did inspire all these super-hero origin stories involving radiation ?).
So we have a rough idea and several decades of practical experience about rate at which things coming out of this are going to kill you.
With all this data, it can be considered proven.
Crispr/Cas9 has been in use for less than a decade. That's a lot less than the decades of radiation accelerating natural mutations. That's a tiny blimp since natural random mutations occur. We don't have a lot of data yet. We can't prove that it has a certain level of safety. Maybe after 20 years, we'll end up noticing that there are some unforeseen consequences.
The EU logic : let's put strong regulation on it until we know more about them.
(Note: I'm just explaining the logic. I don't necessarily agree with it).
Can you assembly these disassembled pieces?
In some jurisdiction : No, you can't.
If you want to put your re-assembled franken on a street, it has to pass safety inspection.
Only then yes, if if passes inspection, you can drive your Frankencar on streets.
That includes electric cars too.
Can you mod or improve this car for competition?
In these jurisdiction, competition tracks aren't considered public roads, they are considered private grounds.
You aren't required to pass safety inspection by law.
(But the track owner might have other requirements).
But as long as carry your Frankencar on a trailer, you're free to do whatever pleases you and the track's owner, including up to watching a nice firework if any of your mods goes wrong.
(this no matter what powers you car, be it gas, electricity or even crazier tech. As long as your car doesn't make the IAEA nervous, that is).
Why can't I go into a Tesla parts counter in the same fashion as a Mazda parts dealer can get whatever the fuck I want if I'm willing to pay for it?
Because virtually all the Model 3 currently on the road are more recent that their warranty period.
Thus to an end users, thinking about repairs seems free-as-in-beer.
It would be hard for any business to compete with a percieved price of "zero".
Wait a few years, for the market to start having lots of old second-hand Teslas that aren't warranty covered and needs repairs/maintenance/upgrades here and there.
Then being a "Tesla parts" reseller would be much more interesting business.
If the Tesla chargers are at risk then the 50/100/175kW third party changers are going to be too.
Yes indeed for the 50 kW AC chargers.
(no for the higher charger, those are DC, and Tesla uses a different connection. Normal DC uses Mennekes connector (for ground and data) plus 2 exra pins for DC. Tesla's proprietary connection re-use pins of the Mennekes to carry DC. You can't fry a 175kW by connecting it to a Frankentesla, because you can't even connect it to begin with. Look up "Type 2" in Wikipedia for the details).
(Though maybe the situation is different in the US. Are there converter plugs between whatever shit Tesla uses there and whatever you use for 175kW DC on your side of the ocean ?)
Now to go back to your discussion. Yes, you could just as likely fry a 50 kW AC charger by connecting it to a Frankentesla as connecting a supercharger.
But the thing is, the Supercharger network belongs to Tesla, so they would certainly add a feature to make sure that they only allow whichever car they want on it and refuse other cars (cars whose owner hadn't paid for the Supercharger network access now that this is a paying option. Cars who have been rebuild and that Tesla hadn't controlled and certified to a point were they are comfortable of them being plugged. Etc.)
It's their electrical plug, it's their call.
Meanwhile, those 50kW AC chargers don't belong to Tesla. And up until whomever they belong to, tend to only be fussy and make checks and controls about payments (you need to wave a credit card or a membership cards on those charger which aren't 100% free-as-in-beer), but rely on all the security that already exist in current charging tech regarding safety.
Now, I am ready to bet that lots of jurisdiction have already/are going to setup precise criteria about passing inspection for a rebuilt *electric* car, just like there has always been criteria for rebuilt ICE cars. So chances are, in the near future, in lots of country, if the Frankentesla was allowed on the road and managed to drive all the way to your charging station, risks of it exploding should be rather low, given the safety features of charging tech.
(Disclaimer: All the various electric vehicles I've been driving have always been AC charging only. I haven't driven a DC-charging car yet, be it Tesla or any other brand. So I'm just speculating, it's not first hand experience)
All of my favorite foods are vegetarians as well.
...free range Vegetarians, I hope ?
Really seriously :
Environmentally-conscious European companies are actually replacing plastic packaging material (expanded polystyrene foam peanuts) with biodegradable packaging material such as corn starch packing peanuts - basically unflavored corn puffs.
(Examples of shops: Conrad, Lush, etc.)
So yeah, plastic and corn puffs *ARE* mutually interchangeable indeed :-D
Politicians also know that vilifying their opponents is counterproductive because one day they may have to form a coalition with the party they're vilifying now. That means party relations are a lot less toxic than in the USA, and coalition governments spend less time dismantling the work of the previous coalition than is common in the US.
I've also read somewhere that in the US, they used to have a time when the president and vice were the two topmost voted, no matter which party they come from (unlike nowadays, where each party sets up a candidate-president, and a candidate-vice, and the come together in the same package, depending on which top party was voted).
I'm laughing trying to imagine an alternate reality where the US kept those law around, and Trump and Clinton were forced to work together (one being the vice president). Trolling that the other candidate is unqualified might a lot less successful strategy.
Of course, it might be easier to laugh at such combo, when here around (Switzerland) we don't have a single head of state, but a seven headed hydra : the "head of executive power" is shared among a group of seven men and women.
(There exist a label "President" that is passed around, but is only a label passed around with no political power. The power is indeed evenly shared among seven).
These seven people HAVE to work together, despite different party backgrounds (usually they are from all over the spectrum)
Wouldn't broken phones be good for Google? People would then have to buy more as they keep breaking.
Only Steve Jobs is/was equipped with a potent enough Reality Distortion Field, so that people keep re-buy Apple crapphone even after the previous ones crapped.
Any other brand attempting the same stun would have people coming at them with pitchforks complaining that such low quality CANNOT BE ALLOWED.
Also note that Google themselve doesn't make any relevant amount of money directly on the phone sold.
The manufacturer are making money on they phone.
Google makes most of their "Uncle Scrooge's swimming pool"-level of money on advertisement and monetizing all these juicy personal data that they can milk out of their users. For that, they need the users to come and stay inside their Google Eco-system (use Gmail, use Google Search, use all the other "Google Experience" apps that they force manufacturers to install if they want to have a license to the Google APIs that popular apps use).
For that to happen, they need android to still be a popular platform.
If android start to be hated because they are phone that constantly overheat and eat batteries, there's the risk that the people will switch to some other platform (say if suddenly iPhones started to look less crappy) where their tasty monetizable privacy won't be as accessible (to google) for milking.
I think this is really about what someone earlier mentioned: Cryptocurrency-supported software eliminates the need to support your software with advertisements. Google wants you to use ads, not coins, to support your software, because Google has a monopoly on Internet advertising, but they don't yet have a coin offering.
Yup, that too. Apps not relying on ads (Google Adsense ka-ching !), store and in app purchase (Google Play ka-ching !) would certainly be a risk of slow downs in the stream filling the above mentioned Uncle Scrooge swimming pools.
I've been purchasing computers since 1995 and every one I've purchased, I've been allowed to choose what to run on it, and had the choice to run software that max'd the CPU if I wanted to. ... five or ten years ago I predicted that smartphones would usurp the desktop, and I was wrong, they remain basically toys / dumb appliances, with a few useful applications (e.g. navigation, flashlight, camera).
{...}
This is why smartphones have failed utterly at competing with the desktop, and why desktops are still years ahead for getting real work done
"- What are these 'desktop' and 'workstation' thingy you keep mentioning ? I find these concept fascinating " - Typed some hipster on his ultra slim Mac Book laptop.
Then suddenly his beard caught fire, because the laptop was over heating.
But he didn't regret, the laptop was sooo thin, and so shiny, and such elegance with so few ports...
--
You might have not noticed but (except for us geeks who still dwell on /. ) for the rest of the world, the computing experience has devolved into mostly "navigation", mostly a couple of social websites and a few webapp (that some other hipster wrote in Javascript using 10MiB worth of frameworks on their craptops).
Shitty (from our point of view) laptop and crappy (ditto) smartphone have successfully replaced the desktop, because in practice we're the last bastion that actually *uses* any computer for anything more than posting meme GIFs.
"I'll record this conversation."
"Ok"
"Now, does acme corp accept my terms to send me a sack of gold in exchange for a dollar?"
"Ok"
How this is supposed to go into the mind of the investor currently giving money to google :
- I'll record this converstion.
- Okay
- Now, does Acme corp accept my terms to send me a sack of gold in exchange for a dollar?
- Uhm... I'm sorry, Sir. I'm not qualified to answer you question. I'll transfer your call to someone from Sales.
- Hello, my name is Sandy, welcome to the Sales department of Acme. How might I help you?
How this will actually go in the real world a couple of months down the line :
- I'll record this converstion.
- Okay
- Now, does Acme corp accept my terms to send me a sack of gold in exchange for a dollar...
(...small barely audible burst of line noise...)
- Okay, Sir. Your ordered item will be shipped tomorrow, have a nice day
And the Chaos Computer Club Conference on-stage demo version :
"- Hello my name Bob, Acme corp's new AI assistant, how might I help you ?
(...loud modem-noise on the line...)
- Okay, have a PENIS!!!! day ! LORDZOFLULZ was here !"
(And then bunch of strippers all paid by Acme's bank account arrive at the conference)
---
where:
"Uhm..." = artificial simulation of human noise that Google currently use to mask the processing time.
"Sandy" = actual human
noise = sounds very much like some noise due to some failing analog link along the line (crappy wireless phone used by the caller, bad copper POTS lines from the caller's house, etc.) but is actually wrongly interpreted by the AI as some weird command tricking the AI into uttering the desired response. (Like : "No, actually, could you please send me one of your free catalogs ?" See all the noisy (looking like analog noise) pictures that actually completely tricks the ImageNet to recognise bogus objects)
modem noise = very densely compressed horribly complex and weird audio sequences specially crafted by LordzOfLulz that eventually ends up buffer-over-running and pwning some server deep in the company.
The next security conference after that will show that it's possible to actually achieve the same result by singing "Marry has a little lamb" a capella over a simple cheap smartphone and substituting a weird color name, but they'll only order soda drinks delivered on Acme corp's budget (because the conference organizers reported attendees' complains about breaches of "Code of Conduct")
...and soon, a third...
And the fourth's job will eventually devolve into put the light show/VJ-aying for the crazy party music playlist that the third is DJ-aying over the car's sound system.
What? What do you mean "where does the client who hired the ride actually go" ?
Oh, if it's one of those small european cars that can only seat 2 com fortably in the back, then I guess you'll have to put the Uber client in the trunk or on the roof's ski case...
Or he can be busy waving the red flag in front of the Uber party car.
Also, if your code is that performance-critical, an interpreted language is not a good idea.
Yup, try convincing ESR about that.
Google's motus operandi is about amassing piles of stuff :
getting (initially) a huge index of the web,
piling large collection of data to train their IA (training voice recognition from their snippets of google voice),
piling large amount of private personal to better target ads,
etc.
Whereas, the whole key purpose behind all *distributed* ledger systems is to remove the needs of a central authority.
Google and blockchain are on the exact polar opposite of the decentralization scale.
Owning a Bentley is a worse predictor of being high-income than owning an Apple iPhone?
Yup, because you might be seeing a 25%-er that owns a Ferrari instead. Or one who own a Maseratti. Or one who owns a Tesla Roadster with all the stupid options like SpaceX rockets. Or a Porsche. etc.
But all of them happen to own an iPhone, just like a significant chunk of all the other 25%ers (including that 25%ers who doesn't own any car and entirely relies on professional driver services (you know the services that UberBlack drivers actually do for a living when they're not moonlighting on Uber) )
--
More seriously : we're speaking about the to 25%ers here, not the trop 1%ers.
Given the way income inequality goes in the US (..or at least how it seems to us, when we read news in northern Europe...), that basically covers most of the people who aren't completely broke.
Not all of them happen to own super-car, and some of them aren't rich enough to afford one.
But all of the people in that range happen to have enough disposable income to afford an overpriced smartphone just because they like its design and the model is trendy. (So lots of people in that income bracket will pick an iPhone).
Below this range, people have less disposable income and will more thoroughly think benefits-vs-costs when picking up a smartphone. If they can afford one, they'll go with something surely less expensive and sometimes perhaps even with more features.
In the economically significant parts of the EU in winter the sun comes up after 09:00 and sets before 17:00.
Already virtually everyone goes to work or school and returns in the dark, making the sun come up after 10:00 is just not acceptable.
This is not how DST works.
DST isn't active in the winter to begin with.
If the sun is up between 09:00 and 17:00, that is still going to be 09:00 and 17:00 wether DST exists or not.
DST is active in summer.
The same place would have sun in summer between 05:00 and 21:00 in the summer.
DST would shift by (+1) in the summer, corresponding to 06:00 and 22:00.
So somebody working 09:00 to 17:00, will only start working 3 hours after the sun rise, and will still get 5 hours of sun after the end of work ( <- that's where the more light happens), and could spend these 5 hours outside, e.g.: spending deutschmarks at the beer garten ( <- which was one of the *economic* reasons to introduce DST in the industrial age).
My long argument is that the exact same thing is functionally achieved, instead of applying DST in the summer, to shift working hours to 08:00 to 16:00 (Still the same distribution of light before / after work). The worker will still have 5 hours to spend their Euros in hipster Cafés.
It would not have made sens back in the industrial era (every single place setting completely different random hours! chaos !)
But today, when 7 out 10 business have varying work hours anyway, asking the last three to shift hours instead of shifting clocks isn't far fetched.
--
Now to go back to parent poster : what the DST achieves *extremely crudely* is having the start of the work day follow the start of the light.
e.g.: If you kept the start of the work day at 08.00 (working hours or DST or whatever), in the winter you would have to start working a whole 1 hour before the sunrise, given your example.
Suppressing DST without any other adjustement would make you lose this "work day *(very) approximater* follows light".
I'm simply arguing that adjusting working hours also enables you to follow light, and nowadays, you need to check opening hours for lots of services you're contacting/using/visiting anyway.