That makes no sense... Cross platform means you can play on your Playstation WITH people on XBox, so you don't have to buy the platform you don't want.
This is *Microsoft* we're talking about.
You can bet that "Crossplay" will practically implemented as games released for other platform being also able to log-in onto microsoft's accounts (XBLive or whatever it's actually called). Meaning that now even gamers owning only Nintendo Switch and PlayStation4 will need to sign into XBLive and pay monthly fee (or get their public data sold - I actually didn't bother to check what is Microsoft revenue model) if they want to be able to play these Crossplay games.
Meaning that Microsoft has extended their revenue stream from "only their XBox One owners" to "absolutely all on-line player of their multiplayer game, no matter what console they use".
I.e.: bring more people into their (paid) walled garden.
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Otherwise it won't make any sense economically : the whole point of gaming console is to lock players into walled gardens where they can be milked for their money.
If suddenly the gamer don't need anything from microsoft to enjoy online multiplayer, Microsoft would be actually losing arguments for their lock-in and thus losing revenue stream from potential gamer (who decide to play games on the non-Microsoft consoles using a 3rd party network)
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That of course won't prevent game developers from making game that attempt to organise multiplayer by going through external 3rd party server not owned by any console manufacturer (e.g.: all the ports of Quake that have ever popped-up on networked consoles) (except that some didn't have mass storage to download newer content onto, so some ports could only play using the default maps. e.d.: Quake 3 on DreamCast vs PC).
Lab made diamonds are going to be indistinguishable from natural ones to any casual observer (and probably many trained ones as well) and far less expensive.
Not "are going". Just "are".
As of 2017, lab-grown diamonds aren't used for science only anymore. You can actually buy rings containing lab-grown diamonds.
And indeed, lab grown diamonds' chemical structure is literally the same as mined diamonds' - in both case it's the same exact dense crystal of carbon atoms - and thus they have virtually the same chemico-physical properties. Only the small variations present in the diamonfs (like imperfections, extra doping elements, etc.) aren't exactly the same in both types. And the latter is actually *better controlled* in lab diamonds - meaning you can have a better choice of colors provoked by controlled amounts of impurities.
And they are already an order of magnitude cheaper.
The only thing keeping diamond mining afloat is their use a gemstone and a clever bit of marketing by the diamond companies to convince stupid young men that they need to fork over thousands of dollars for something that can be made for a few dollars in a lab.
Plus tight control of the market by a monopoly, so that the mined variety can be made artificially scarce and valued at an abnormal price.
too many devices sucking power on stand-by. Yes, I know, only a watt or two, but they all add up.
Most of the smaller boxes are usually designed to be USB powered. (e.g.: You can power the corresponding VGA-to-HDMI converter using the USB port of the Wii).
The interesting answer is master/slave power plugs (the slave sockets only get powered if the device plugged in the master socket is turned on). You also find other variations of the same, like USB-activated (slave sockets are only powered if the USB detects 5V - helps for low-power laptops that are under the level of the above and aren't detected when turned on. Or for huge laptops which, when sleeping but charging the battery, might still causes spikes in consumptions that you be wrongly interpreted as "computer is on").
The real ultimate nerd solution is network controlled smart-plugs (as used in data center) and have an always on device (like the NAS or a RaspPi) pilot it.
The dead cheap guerrilla thing would by a simple power plug with individual button, one per socket.
I've already used all the above in various situations.
I've also never found a reasonably priced universal remote that actually does everything I need it to.
Mine's literally an old slavaged PalmOS PDA (a Palm IIIc) and the "Remote IR" app (this once has low-level to both the emit and receive diods. You can record the signal from one remote to replicated it).
Total budget : a few bucks to replace the old lithium battery.
Regarding the Wii : - lots of modern consoles (all the way back from the SEGA DreamCast and some of the early PlayStation 1s) are actually able to emit VGA 480p signal or higher, if you provide the correct cable. (usually a resistor between some pin to signal the console to emit VGA, and the component output wired to a VGA connector) I've successfully used such a cable.
If the monitor only has digital inputs (DP/HDMI/DVI-D), you can find very cheap (usually less than 10$ on ebay, free shipping from China) converter box that get VGA+Audio jack to HDMI. (Again, I've successfully used such a cable)
If the projector only has digital inputs (e.g.: only 2 HDMI ports), read carefully the documentation (or ask the manufacturer) - it's possible that one of the HDMI ports actually can accept analog input and you only need a VGA-to-HDMI connector cable (about a doller on ebay, free shipping from China) not even signal conversion required (typically, the previous model offered HDMI + DVI-I. They replaced the second connector for convenience, but kept the analog capability just in case) (I've never found such one myself, but they do exist - hence the presence of simple VGA-HDMI cable on ebay).
Regarding the other device (VCR, Genesis, etc.) : - Lots of 16 bits consoles are actually able to output separate RGB components (the Genesis does) because that's what was used in the European scart *cables* (as opposed to simple connectors that convert from composite to scart). - VCR are able to emit S-Video (Luma and Chroma as 2 separate signal on the mini-din / or on the scart) - (though read beneath for this peculiar). - Only extremely old stuff (like NES) are actually limited to composite-only without mods.
There exist literally tons of different models of converter box that supports RGB, S-Video and composite inputs, with automatic switching and output to modern connectors. (I can't be much help, because back then we used our to convert to *VGA* output. I'm sure you'll find modern ones that output to HDMI though. Internet shops specialising into older consoles, such as Play-asia, are a good point to start).
Now regarding VCR in particular : after all this time, the thing is getting very fragile - tapes are losing magnetic signal, VCR could die, VCR could accidentally mangle the tape, etc. at this point, the best advice (instead of trying to plug the VCR into a monitor) would be to plug the VCR into a capture device (one capable of S-Video input for slightly better results) and try to save all old movies onto the NAS.
(Note that: as electronics the old and fail, eventually the same problem will happen with old consoles. Dumping ROMs and getting an emulator would be a reasonable advice)
The fact is, he never re-distributed the records. And probably, given the huge archive (over 250 years worth of video according to TFA) there's simply no physical way he would even re-whatch himself.
So, at the end of the day, the data was exclusively used only to test the limits of the storage.
Meaning it's probably one of the rare occurrence where the guy could genuinely argue it was done solely for research.
Almost certainly without permission of the girls involved,
again, given the huge amount of data and how systematic and indiscriminate his grabbing scripts are, chances are very high there will be girls, boys, she-males, and all the other diversity variations found on the whole spectrum of LGBTWTFBBQ. Don't automatically assume only girls are concerned, that would be inconsiderate toward all the other people implicated there.
He should rather hope that the automation script didn't actually catch by accident anything that would be legally problematic.
(Then again, given the context of high automation, enormous data gathering, the whole "testing" purpose instead of personnal consumption, and the fact that such accidents should be a lower occurrence in this project : he might get away or at least have an argument to reduce the impact).
At that point, specially for the smaller TV screen sizes, you should also consider getting a huge PC Monitor. Which can give you a very high quality display at a decent size (but might be a bit over priced). But only llimited connectivity (usually 2 or 3 out of the list of usual suspects : Display Port, HDMI, DVI either pure digital or with combined analog and eventually legacy analog VGA)
Then you can separately tack on everything you need. - multiple HDMI can be obtained by connecting a separate HDMI switch box. Some even have remote controls - OTA receiver (DVB-T or whatever it is called elsewhere out of europe) can be found as separate stand alone boxes. - tiny flat speakers built in the monitor (available usually as an extra option on most PC -monitors) will never beat the quality of a mid-to-high range PC multispeaker set, specially those which feature a decoding box (analog + SPDIF + Optical inputs)
Then you can use either an IR-blaster on your favorite box (NAS, Chromecast, whatever) or even if your smartphone (or some old repurposed PDA) happens to have one with an appropriate app. Or get a complex programmable universal remote. So you can centralize the control of all these dozen of gadgets. Thus : - the remote is the only complex device. - if the remote is fried, you can still use all the other non-firmware-brickable devices by pushing their buttons (or trying to find where you put the dozen of specific remotes and find corresponding battery cells). - absolutely non of the above relies on any cloud stupidity. (nobody is going to hack you "over the air").
The only drawback is the absolutely huge mess of cables of connecting all this disparate devices, and trying to fit everything nicely in cabinet.
For bigger surfaces than largest PC monitors, consider projectors in your choice, with a similar "dump display + separate accessories" approach (so avoid the "professional" projectors geared toward meeting rooms, which tend to have wifi support and even an embed android able to display presentation directly from an USB stick. Just go for the dumb consumer projectors that only have DVI/HDMI).
But the draw back is that projector currently don't support resolutions as high as monitors.
The best long term advantage : when some function breaks or you want to upgrade, you only have 1 single accessory to upgrade (e.g.: by a new HDMI switch with even more ports) rather than changing the whole smarttv
Actually back then, OpenMoko's GTA01/GTA02 design was exactly the same (trying to make it opensource friendly).
The Golden Delicious' GTA04 upgrade board (same design then reused in other devices like Pyra) at least took the same "separate cell modem" design (though used the "binary-only" PowerVR GPU of the OMAP chipsets).
(b) If the phone firmware is not also "free / open / whatever RMS is calling it these days..."
That's the whole idea for going after a Freescale i.MX 6 : according to them, the plain vanilla upstream linux kernel and upstream gallium3d's etna_viv can support this chip, no firmware blobs required. (they keep the eventuallity to switch to i.MX 8 if it ends up getting similar support).
And regarding the other components (cell network, wifi, and camera) : the whole point of this phone is to have the functionality handled by separate chips that talk over a standard channels (camera as a USB UVC, Wifi as a network device, etc.) with *a physical switch to shut them off*.
So yeah, the cell modem will probably runs some manufacturer/carrier provided binary (as required by licensing). But that modem will basically be seen as serial or USB-Network device and can be unplugged from its bus simply at a swtich flip. Unlike most other chipsets (e.g.: Qualcomm) where the modem basically serves as the chip's northbridge.
in short : all the things that the user and OS will ever interact with, will be running pure opensource software. all the rest will be isolate and only come over a standard interface.
government agencies can upload whatever over-the-air "upgrades" they want, they won't have access to anything relevant.
In theory this looks like a nice idea.
In practice that is going to require fucktons of work to design their own PCB that works. (Look at how long it took to OpenMoko back then to do GTA01/GTA02 - what was basically the same "open-source friendly" design, again look how long it took for Golden Delicious to make their custom GTA04/Pyra - which doesn't even have an open-source friendly GPU).
In the EU / australia / etc Consumers have rights that we don't get in the usa.
Not only that, but some European countries (some prominent examples: Germany and Switzerland) even have consumer protection groups which can help coordinating and engaging such actions on the behalf of consumers, who regularly scan products for fraud, etc.
For example, iOS supports back to the iPhone 5s. That is four, soon five generations, back to 2013.
As a side note: - Jolla released their smartphone back in year 2013 (November) - as of 2017, it's still receiving updates of SailfishOS (once it exists beta, the next 2.1.1 will also be available for it). (though as a counter point : the Android compatibility layer used to run Android Apps is still stuck at the un-suported 4.1 Jellybean)
And if you look into it, the reasons are the same:
- Apple has a very small number of hardware platforms ("five generations ago" = means that there are litteraly only five models since then) (and Jolla has very few platforms that they officially support : Jolla1 smartphone, Jolla/Aigo/Youyota tablet, Jolla C/Intex Aquafish smartphone and the upcoming Sony Xperia-based smartphone). - Apple is directly in charge of the software that runs on these few platforms they write their update and deploy them to the end users.
Compare the situation with android:
- there are a fuckton of different hardware platforms on the market. Thousands of different Android smartphone. - Google isn't in charge of developing Android directly for all of them. Google only develops directly for a few of their demonstration platform (the various Google Nexus devices). For the rest, they just develop the base android system and make it available for licensing (or pure opensource usage).
- Very often, specially the small asian no-name, manufacturers aren't even themselves directly in charge of the software running on the phone. Often, they use more or less available component (chipsets and re-usable PCBs) for the chip manufacturer (who generally just forks the kernel used by the current android version and slaps binary-only drivers on it), that the manufacturer only adapts to their final device (i.e.: they pay an intern to quickly recompile the current android du jour on the provided kernel by the chip manufacturer). There's nearly no follow up. If a newer version of android comes - the manufacturer doesn't necessarily have a newer kernel for that specific chipset (that part of the reason why some platforms can't be upgraded beyond kit-kat even with lineageos. the only available kernel and binary drivers are extremely old and only support up to a certain API level, newer android require newer APIs that simply aren't available on the only drivers). And the intern isn't working there anymore to do a complete port/recompile of this newer version. And the manufacturer, if by random chance they still exist after all this time, are busy allocating all their available resources to producing a yet another newer model, based on a completely different chipset (whatever they managed to get cheap in the required quantities).
- And that's without factoring all the asinine weirdness of "carrier-exclusive" that happens in some stupid countries like the US. There often the carrier themselves act as yet another filter deciding what software is available on the phone. Often they "customize the end-user experience" (=install a boat-load of bloatware to get some extra money) and would need to recustomise any eventual updates.
In other words: - Apple has an easy job. Just release for the latest 5 models. - Android on the other hand is a giant clusterfuck where nobody is really in charge and everybody tries to duck responsibility and it's always someone else's fault. - LineageOS (formely CyanoGen mod) is the closest to an actual player trying to bring a little bit order in this madness. They release regular updates, and there's a community out there further porting to even more devices.
On the other hand, the post-Android era is still a little bit better than what was before. Nowadays, nearly every mobile chipset manufacturer (Qualcomm, Mediatek, etc.) do release at least a few android-compatible linux kernels. The base Android it self is opensource. That enables efforts like LineageOS to make easily custom
Well, the whole thread is about these modern phones which try to avoi non-display area (both TFA's iPhone 8 and also latest by Samsung), not being able to hide a fingerprint scanner under the whole-area screen.
You can't have fingerprints on device that don't have bezels (yet - see how the technology evolves in the next few years).
Thus, technology as 3D face scanning are the only biometrics that you can manage to put into such a phone. (cameras are apparently something that manufacturer did manage to cram in a whole-surface/no-bezel screen. The patent filing I've happen to have seen, seem to point toward a miniature hole a few pixels across in the middle of the top status bar)
Thus the people complaining, about freezing-cold weather : as if removing gloves for PIN-codes / swipe codes / fingerprint scan wasn't enough, now this technolog would require to remove ski goggles and helmets, just to unlock the phone ?
Hence my joke : - touch screen -> touch ski-gloves - face scan -> face on "novelty hologram" ski-goggles ?
And speaking of jokes : - if "identity theft" of fingerprint scanners is about cutting fingers what the hell is the equivalent identity theft with face scanners ? Going full "Game of Thrones' Arya" on some victim's head ? Enrollement at the school of Faceless-Men is surely going to get high ?
phone from someone like OnePlus, Motorola, Xaomi or even LG.
Small note: if you go for some relatively known brand (some that are established on the market instead of some fly-by-night noname asian), that releases relatively few different hardware variants (i.e.: keeps the same device for some time - and all the model XyZ have the same internal, maybe except modem due to regional restrictions - instead of selling whatever comes from the workshop at that precise moment - and you end up with 4 completely different chipsets for the same official model), then you chances of finding a well tested and stable LineageOS custom ROM for it are higher.
Anonymity has never been a target for bitcoins. In fact it's even the contrary, by design.
The whole point of bitcoin is having no central authority. There's no single central "BitCoin Inc." company that handles the transactions and decide which are valid or not (as opposed to PayPal and all the controversies surrounding block funds and transactions - which were among the reasons of some of bitcoins popularity).
The bitcoin protocol achieves that by distributing the "ledger of all transaction" - the blockchain - among all node on the network, and on counting on the agreement of the network majority to decide the validity of transaction. That means that every single node on the network, by design to achieve this distributed control, must imperatively have a local copy of all transactions on the network.
The only thing is that bitcoin is *pseudonymous* - the transaction aren't signed with your Real Identity, they are signed with cryptographic key pairs on which you control the private part. Meaning that mapping which transaction is done by whom isn't necessarily obvious.
But of course, if one of the dozens of tracker present in the shops (ad tracker, content optimizer, strategic clients managers, etc.) detects you when you do your buying, chances are high that even these 3rd party will be able to map transaction in blockchain (done with a certain public key) with your detected identy. (Of course the shop themselves need to do that by design - they need to know you paid and they need to have an address where to send your goods to).
Of course a government has even more means to achieve this kind of unmasking.
Maybe he could construct some kind of protective cage around himself that would allow him to use his devices in relative safety without requiring a ludicrous amount of safety equipment? I'm not sure what you would call the kind of arrangement you'd end up with.
I know you're joking, but BMW has exactly released that :
It's bad enough now where you have to take off a glove to use your phone in the winter. Now to unlock the phone if it's -30 out you have to unprotect your face.
Clothing technology has evolved to follow the needs.
Given that the current solution for capacitive touch screen, is to equip either ski gloves, or under-gloves, with a touch capacitive surface. (basically the index finger works like a stylus), I was wondering what the corresponding adaptation would be for iPhone 8 : maybe those novelty ski goggles with a hologram lens - except instead of showing the usual Yeti, tiger or skull, they actually show what your face would look without goggles ?
But I question the common perception that self driving cars are going to lead huge drops in car ownership. {...} None of these things is a showstopper, but if I am already spending money to own my car, why wouldn't I spend money to own my self driving car, that already has my stuff in it?
Depends on where you live.
In a dense (european-style) city, owning a car is a complicated matter. There's no free street parking. You need a place to park it over night (so in addition to rent your own flat, you need to pay rent for a parking spot in the underground garage under you apartment building - if one exists. Otherwise you need to pay a yearly fee just to be able to leave it without limits in your own street) You need to pay for for parking whenever you go shopping somewhere. You need to pay a monthly or yearly fee to park it at your working place.
The situation is completely different than in US-style suburbs where everybody has a house with their own garage attached to it, and where every single place has a nearby outdoor free parking. (Also, because the car doesn't spend most of its time next to you but parked in some other space, you tend NOT to leave all your apartment's worth of stuff inside. What if somebody breaks the cars window to steal something from inside it ? Remember the car isn't in safely in different part of your house, it may be in a street down somewhere across your workplace or apartment building)
Car-sharing models at least completely remove the need to think where to leave the car. Depending on sharing models, either they have dedicated station where you park them, or you can leave them for *free* on any street parking spot, ready to be taken by the next customer.
What about child seats? Will parents have to provide their own car seats, or count on calling a car that has one or more available?
As a matter of fact, car-sharing go the first route (some car have standardized attachment points), taxis go the second one (you can basically order one with any implements you could want. But taxis just tend to be more expensive in big cities - in some countries more than in others).
but how do I call for a car that has a bike rack that fits a recumbent bike?
Just a question : why don't you actually,... you know...*bike* on your bike ? Maybe it's my bias of living in cities which are mostly bikeable everywhere. One generally uses the bike *to* bike. If you need to travel to somewhere else, you *bike* to the train station, load the bike into the train (if you can store it inside a bag - even more easy with a foldable one - it's considered "luggage" and you don't need to pay a fare for it) and then further bike once arrived at the destination's train station. If you really want to travel to somewhere with a car (e.g.: for your vacations) you rent a car equipped with the necessary rack.
Same for skis: If you're not taking the train (winter-time, equipped with free ski storage space), you either bring your own magnetic "stick-it-on-the-roof" ski rack (Car-sharing) or rent a car with the proper equipment (car rentals).
Beside, to decrease fuel usage (due to air drag resistance), most people here around tend to mount/unmount racks on a need basis even on the roofs of their own cars.
Its very unlikely the cheap cars will only have 1 network or that it will be segregrated in a different way (for good or bad) than the higher end models. Almost all car manufacturers {...} tend to favor standardization to control R&D and maintenance costs.
The idea isn't a manufacturer design separately a secure and a non secure car computer.
Modern cars are far from having a single computer inside. They litterally have dozens of elements with embed CPUs. The metaphor of a car being "a datacenter on wheels" used by Musk isn't far off.
This will lead to several results : - a car manufacturer is seldom going to design from the ground up every single element. - except lots of them to be either subcontracted or even off-the-shelf component - To lower the cost of production of a car model, except the manufacturer to buy cheaper elements.
More precisely : - as on any other network of computer nodes, the security will require a box acting a router/firewall. - you can expect that such a router is going to cost quite a bit, just because of all the various certifications it needs to be used in a car.
You can expect some manufacturer deciding to cut corners and completely forgo the router. Why add a device that costs a few percent of the total price of the car and doesn't provide something immediately visible at the autodealer shop ?
Unless it's something that is mandate by government or considered standard (and both in enough country that it makes more sense to put it as a standard feature in all cars instead of going on a per market availability), you know manufacturer will try to get away without it.
you must have a device physically connected to the CAN bus.
Which *for now* means a laptop connected on the ODB port.
But which could mean in the future hacking into some component of the car that is on the CAN bus it self (like the infotainment center, which needs to get information about fuel consumption and a few other stuff). Hack remotely (Bluetooth, some even support Wifi and 3G/4G) that component and then you get full access to the CAN bus.
Expect *high range cars* to have two separate CAN bus and the infotainment only talking on the "public" CAN bus (and all the juicy bit staying on the "private" CAN bus). No risk to the critical component if a non critical (like the infotainment) gets hacked.
Expect *cheap cars* to have the two buses badly segregate or even only one shared bus. These (badly designed) cars could get completely owned through the music system.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers"
On the other hand, back when he did said that, the total market of then-era computer was indeed probably around five. There's more than half a century of R&D between him and the modern-day ubiquitous computer in everybody's pocket (smartphones).
Having a start-up promising within year to sell vat-grown-burgers at the current state of research and development... Is like a start-up promising to put man on the moon by the end of the decade... back when mongols used their first gun-powder based rockets (and we know how well that one went~ ). It's a little bit precocious and over-optimistic.
Currently vat-grown meat is still a lab experiment and has a long way of R&D to go until it can successfully be used as a viable commercial product with low ecological impact.
Nobody is saying that it's impossible. It's just that we're currently at the "world market of five units" stage. Spend a few more years in university research and maybe we can get closer to something that can actually be commercially successful on a large scale, cheap price and low ecological impact.
Meat is on its way out. The planet will NOT survive if humans keep wastefully cultivating animals for food
Yes, I agree that we must find alternative to feeding animals to produce food for us to eat. BUT Launching a start-up to sell vat-grown-burgers at the current state of research and development is like launching a start-up promising to put man on the moon by the end of the decade... back when mongols used their first gun-powder based rockets (and we know how well that one went~ ).
Currently vat-grown meat is still a lab experiment and has a long way of R&D to go until it can successfully be used as a viable commercial product with low ecological impact.
Sure, it costs you money to own a car, but you get benefits from car ownership as well. If you can afford (or need) those benefits, you are not being stupid.
> But you get benefits :
Do you really ? that's the key question behind this report, and the general answer is depends on the actual needs.
This report's part of the answer is that, among other, it depends on the availability of other cars and drivers. Introduce ridesharing services : and the benefits of car owner ship suddenly seem less evident - why pay for an expensive car when you could get around using Uber, Lyft, etc. Remove ridesharing services : and the ownership of cars rises up again, as suddenly owning a car, despite being still that much expensive, suddenly is beneficial again as there less other alternative to get around.
The same is observed in european cities with car-sharing.
or for those that just enjoy driving and the freedom a personal automobile provides
If that's the sole reason, then that's part of the "firvolous spending". Things that aren't a necessity, but you still spend money on because you enjoy them. That's entirely out of the scope of TFA's theme. The point is to analyse how much car ownership is beneficial, compared to availability or not of ridesharing.
If "A" is a cause "B", that doesn't imply that every single instance of "B" must necessarily only be cause be "A" and nothing else.
In other word:
To imply that Uber and Lyft may affect the level of car ownership in cities... and not {blablabla, long list of other stuff that cause car ownership}
It seems like someone has snapped on a special filter that only passes a narrow band
Nobody is trying to make think that ride-sharing is the single explanation of car-ownership. There might be tons of other reasons, but this reports simply states that ridesharing is among the factors that influence it, because eachtime you add or remove it, car ownship change accordingly.
And BTW, the same phenomon has been observed in European cities, regarding car-sharing. (after introduction of car-sharing, car ownership drops. In other words, people start thinking "why should I buy an expensive car and care for it, even when it sleeps useless in my garage, when I can just pick one of the shared cars in the streets ?")
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That makes no sense... Cross platform means you can play on your Playstation WITH people on XBox, so you don't have to buy the platform you don't want.
This is *Microsoft* we're talking about.
You can bet that "Crossplay" will practically implemented as games released for other platform being also able to log-in onto microsoft's accounts (XBLive or whatever it's actually called).
Meaning that now even gamers owning only Nintendo Switch and PlayStation4 will need to sign into XBLive and pay monthly fee (or get their public data sold - I actually didn't bother to check what is Microsoft revenue model) if they want to be able to play these Crossplay games.
Meaning that Microsoft has extended their revenue stream from "only their XBox One owners" to "absolutely all on-line player of their multiplayer game, no matter what console they use".
I.e.: bring more people into their (paid) walled garden.
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Otherwise it won't make any sense economically :
the whole point of gaming console is to lock players into walled gardens where they can be milked for their money.
If suddenly the gamer don't need anything from microsoft to enjoy online multiplayer, Microsoft would be actually losing arguments for their lock-in and thus losing revenue stream from potential gamer (who decide to play games on the non-Microsoft consoles using a 3rd party network)
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That of course won't prevent game developers from making game that attempt to organise multiplayer by going through external 3rd party server not owned by any console manufacturer (e.g.: all the ports of Quake that have ever popped-up on networked consoles) (except that some didn't have mass storage to download newer content onto, so some ports could only play using the default maps. e.d.: Quake 3 on DreamCast vs PC).
Lab made diamonds are going to be indistinguishable from natural ones to any casual observer (and probably many trained ones as well) and far less expensive.
Not "are going". Just "are".
As of 2017, lab-grown diamonds aren't used for science only anymore.
You can actually buy rings containing lab-grown diamonds.
And indeed, lab grown diamonds' chemical structure is literally the same as mined diamonds' - in both case it's the same exact dense crystal of carbon atoms - and thus they have virtually the same chemico-physical properties.
Only the small variations present in the diamonfs (like imperfections, extra doping elements, etc.) aren't exactly the same in both types.
And the latter is actually *better controlled* in lab diamonds - meaning you can have a better choice of colors provoked by controlled amounts of impurities.
And they are already an order of magnitude cheaper.
The only thing keeping diamond mining afloat is their use a gemstone and a clever bit of marketing by the diamond companies to convince stupid young men that they need to fork over thousands of dollars for something that can be made for a few dollars in a lab.
Plus tight control of the market by a monopoly, so that the mined variety can be made artificially scarce and valued at an abnormal price.
to introduce you to roulette.
and in Russian Roulette,
it's the roulette that controls your brain
(...'s splatter pattern).
too many devices sucking power on stand-by. Yes, I know, only a watt or two, but they all add up.
Most of the smaller boxes are usually designed to be USB powered.
(e.g.: You can power the corresponding VGA-to-HDMI converter using the USB port of the Wii).
The interesting answer is master/slave power plugs
(the slave sockets only get powered if the device plugged in the master socket is turned on).
You also find other variations of the same, like USB-activated (slave sockets are only powered if the USB detects 5V - helps for low-power laptops that are under the level of the above and aren't detected when turned on. Or for huge laptops which, when sleeping but charging the battery, might still causes spikes in consumptions that you be wrongly interpreted as "computer is on").
The real ultimate nerd solution is network controlled smart-plugs (as used in data center) and have an always on device (like the NAS or a RaspPi) pilot it.
The dead cheap guerrilla thing would by a simple power plug with individual button, one per socket.
I've already used all the above in various situations.
I've also never found a reasonably priced universal remote that actually does everything I need it to.
Mine's literally an old slavaged PalmOS PDA (a Palm IIIc) and the "Remote IR" app (this once has low-level to both the emit and receive diods. You can record the signal from one remote to replicated it).
Total budget : a few bucks to replace the old lithium battery.
Regarding the Wii :
- lots of modern consoles (all the way back from the SEGA DreamCast and some of the early PlayStation 1s) are actually able to emit VGA 480p signal or higher, if you provide the correct cable.
(usually a resistor between some pin to signal the console to emit VGA, and the component output wired to a VGA connector)
I've successfully used such a cable.
If the monitor only has digital inputs (DP/HDMI/DVI-D), you can find very cheap (usually less than 10$ on ebay, free shipping from China) converter box that get VGA+Audio jack to HDMI.
(Again, I've successfully used such a cable)
If the projector only has digital inputs (e.g.: only 2 HDMI ports), read carefully the documentation (or ask the manufacturer) - it's possible that one of the HDMI ports actually can accept analog input and you only need a VGA-to-HDMI connector cable (about a doller on ebay, free shipping from China) not even signal conversion required (typically, the previous model offered HDMI + DVI-I. They replaced the second connector for convenience, but kept the analog capability just in case)
(I've never found such one myself, but they do exist - hence the presence of simple VGA-HDMI cable on ebay).
Regarding the other device (VCR, Genesis, etc.) :
- Lots of 16 bits consoles are actually able to output separate RGB components (the Genesis does) because that's what was used in the European scart *cables* (as opposed to simple connectors that convert from composite to scart).
- VCR are able to emit S-Video (Luma and Chroma as 2 separate signal on the mini-din / or on the scart) - (though read beneath for this peculiar).
- Only extremely old stuff (like NES) are actually limited to composite-only without mods.
There exist literally tons of different models of converter box that supports RGB, S-Video and composite inputs, with automatic switching and output to modern connectors. (I can't be much help, because back then we used our to convert to *VGA* output. I'm sure you'll find modern ones that output to HDMI though. Internet shops specialising into older consoles, such as Play-asia, are a good point to start).
Now regarding VCR in particular :
after all this time, the thing is getting very fragile - tapes are losing magnetic signal, VCR could die, VCR could accidentally mangle the tape, etc.
at this point, the best advice (instead of trying to plug the VCR into a monitor) would be to plug the VCR into a capture device (one capable of S-Video input for slightly better results) and try to save all old movies onto the NAS.
(Note that: as electronics the old and fail, eventually the same problem will happen with old consoles. Dumping ROMs and getting an emulator would be a reasonable advice)
apparently, the orange troll at the head of your country, managed...
***TO ECLIPSE the solar eclipse !!!***
(Cue in song by "The Who").
violating the T&Cs of the sites in question.
The fact is, he never re-distributed the records.
And probably, given the huge archive (over 250 years worth of video according to TFA) there's simply no physical way he would even re-whatch himself.
So, at the end of the day, the data was exclusively used only to test the limits of the storage.
Meaning it's probably one of the rare occurrence where the guy could genuinely argue it was done solely for research.
Almost certainly without permission of the girls involved,
again, given the huge amount of data and how systematic and indiscriminate his grabbing scripts are, chances are very high there will be girls, boys, she-males, and all the other diversity variations found on the whole spectrum of LGBTWTFBBQ.
Don't automatically assume only girls are concerned, that would be inconsiderate toward all the other people implicated there.
He should rather hope that the automation script didn't actually catch by accident anything that would be legally problematic.
(Then again, given the context of high automation, enormous data gathering, the whole "testing" purpose instead of personnal consumption, and the fact that such accidents should be a lower occurrence in this project : he might get away or at least have an argument to reduce the impact).
At that point, specially for the smaller TV screen sizes, you should also consider getting a huge PC Monitor.
Which can give you a very high quality display at a decent size (but might be a bit over priced).
But only llimited connectivity (usually 2 or 3 out of the list of usual suspects : Display Port, HDMI, DVI either pure digital or with combined analog and eventually legacy analog VGA)
Then you can separately tack on everything you need.
- multiple HDMI can be obtained by connecting a separate HDMI switch box. Some even have remote controls
- OTA receiver (DVB-T or whatever it is called elsewhere out of europe) can be found as separate stand alone boxes.
- tiny flat speakers built in the monitor (available usually as an extra option on most PC -monitors) will never beat the quality of a mid-to-high range PC multispeaker set, specially those which feature a decoding box (analog + SPDIF + Optical inputs)
Then you can use either an IR-blaster on your favorite box (NAS, Chromecast, whatever) or even if your smartphone (or some old repurposed PDA) happens to have one with an appropriate app. Or get a complex programmable universal remote. So you can centralize the control of all these dozen of gadgets. Thus :
- the remote is the only complex device.
- if the remote is fried, you can still use all the other non-firmware-brickable devices by pushing their buttons (or trying to find where you put the dozen of specific remotes and find corresponding battery cells).
- absolutely non of the above relies on any cloud stupidity. (nobody is going to hack you "over the air").
The only drawback is the absolutely huge mess of cables of connecting all this disparate devices, and trying to fit everything nicely in cabinet.
For bigger surfaces than largest PC monitors, consider projectors in your choice, with a similar "dump display + separate accessories" approach (so avoid the "professional" projectors geared toward meeting rooms, which tend to have wifi support and even an embed android able to display presentation directly from an USB stick. Just go for the dumb consumer projectors that only have DVI/HDMI).
But the draw back is that projector currently don't support resolutions as high as monitors.
The best long term advantage :
when some function breaks or you want to upgrade, you only have 1 single accessory to upgrade (e.g.: by a new HDMI switch with even more ports) rather than changing the whole smarttv
Actually back then, OpenMoko's GTA01/GTA02 design was exactly the same (trying to make it opensource friendly).
The Golden Delicious' GTA04 upgrade board (same design then reused in other devices like Pyra) at least took the same "separate cell modem" design
(though used the "binary-only" PowerVR GPU of the OMAP chipsets).
(b) If the phone firmware is not also "free / open / whatever RMS is calling it these days..."
That's the whole idea for going after a Freescale i.MX 6 :
according to them, the plain vanilla upstream linux kernel and upstream gallium3d's etna_viv can support this chip, no firmware blobs required.
(they keep the eventuallity to switch to i.MX 8 if it ends up getting similar support).
And regarding the other components (cell network, wifi, and camera) :
the whole point of this phone is to have the functionality handled by separate chips that talk over a standard channels (camera as a USB UVC, Wifi as a network device, etc.) with *a physical switch to shut them off*.
So yeah, the cell modem will probably runs some manufacturer/carrier provided binary (as required by licensing).
But that modem will basically be seen as serial or USB-Network device and can be unplugged from its bus simply at a swtich flip.
Unlike most other chipsets (e.g.: Qualcomm) where the modem basically serves as the chip's northbridge.
in short :
all the things that the user and OS will ever interact with, will be running pure opensource software.
all the rest will be isolate and only come over a standard interface.
government agencies can upload whatever over-the-air "upgrades" they want, they won't have access to anything relevant.
In theory this looks like a nice idea.
In practice that is going to require fucktons of work to design their own PCB that works.
(Look at how long it took to OpenMoko back then to do GTA01/GTA02 - what was basically the same "open-source friendly" design,
again look how long it took for Golden Delicious to make their custom GTA04/Pyra - which doesn't even have an open-source friendly GPU).
In the EU / australia / etc Consumers have rights that we don't get in the usa.
Not only that, but some European countries (some prominent examples: Germany and Switzerland) even have consumer protection groups which can help coordinating and engaging such actions on the behalf of consumers, who regularly scan products for fraud, etc.
For example, iOS supports back to the iPhone 5s. That is four, soon five generations, back to 2013.
As a side note :
- Jolla released their smartphone back in year 2013 (November)
- as of 2017, it's still receiving updates of SailfishOS (once it exists beta, the next 2.1.1 will also be available for it).
(though as a counter point : the Android compatibility layer used to run Android Apps is still stuck at the un-suported 4.1 Jellybean)
And if you look into it, the reasons are the same :
- Apple has a very small number of hardware platforms ("five generations ago" = means that there are litteraly only five models since then)
(and Jolla has very few platforms that they officially support : Jolla1 smartphone, Jolla/Aigo/Youyota tablet, Jolla C/Intex Aquafish smartphone and the upcoming Sony Xperia-based smartphone).
- Apple is directly in charge of the software that runs on these few platforms they write their update and deploy them to the end users.
Compare the situation with android:
- there are a fuckton of different hardware platforms on the market. Thousands of different Android smartphone.
- Google isn't in charge of developing Android directly for all of them. Google only develops directly for a few of their demonstration platform (the various Google Nexus devices). For the rest, they just develop the base android system and make it available for licensing (or pure opensource usage).
- Very often, specially the small asian no-name, manufacturers aren't even themselves directly in charge of the software running on the phone. Often, they use more or less available component (chipsets and re-usable PCBs) for the chip manufacturer (who generally just forks the kernel used by the current android version and slaps binary-only drivers on it), that the manufacturer only adapts to their final device (i.e.: they pay an intern to quickly recompile the current android du jour on the provided kernel by the chip manufacturer). There's nearly no follow up.
If a newer version of android comes - the manufacturer doesn't necessarily have a newer kernel for that specific chipset (that part of the reason why some platforms can't be upgraded beyond kit-kat even with lineageos. the only available kernel and binary drivers are extremely old and only support up to a certain API level, newer android require newer APIs that simply aren't available on the only drivers).
And the intern isn't working there anymore to do a complete port/recompile of this newer version.
And the manufacturer, if by random chance they still exist after all this time, are busy allocating all their available resources to producing a yet another newer model, based on a completely different chipset (whatever they managed to get cheap in the required quantities).
- And that's without factoring all the asinine weirdness of "carrier-exclusive" that happens in some stupid countries like the US.
There often the carrier themselves act as yet another filter deciding what software is available on the phone. Often they "customize the end-user experience" (=install a boat-load of bloatware to get some extra money) and would need to recustomise any eventual updates.
In other words :
- Apple has an easy job. Just release for the latest 5 models.
- Android on the other hand is a giant clusterfuck where nobody is really in charge and everybody tries to duck responsibility and it's always someone else's fault.
- LineageOS (formely CyanoGen mod) is the closest to an actual player trying to bring a little bit order in this madness. They release regular updates, and there's a community out there further porting to even more devices.
On the other hand, the post-Android era is still a little bit better than what was before.
Nowadays, nearly every mobile chipset manufacturer (Qualcomm, Mediatek, etc.) do release at least a few android-compatible linux kernels.
The base Android it self is opensource.
That enables efforts like LineageOS to make easily custom
I don't think it would work for fingerprint
Well, the whole thread is about these modern phones which try to avoi non-display area (both TFA's iPhone 8 and also latest by Samsung), not being able to hide a fingerprint scanner under the whole-area screen.
You can't have fingerprints on device that don't have bezels (yet - see how the technology evolves in the next few years).
Thus, technology as 3D face scanning are the only biometrics that you can manage to put into such a phone. (cameras are apparently something that manufacturer did manage to cram in a whole-surface/no-bezel screen. The patent filing I've happen to have seen, seem to point toward a miniature hole a few pixels across in the middle of the top status bar)
Thus the people complaining, about freezing-cold weather :
as if removing gloves for PIN-codes / swipe codes / fingerprint scan wasn't enough,
now this technolog would require to remove ski goggles and helmets, just to unlock the phone ?
Hence my joke :
- touch screen -> touch ski-gloves
- face scan -> face on "novelty hologram" ski-goggles ?
And speaking of jokes :
- if "identity theft" of fingerprint scanners is about cutting fingers
what the hell is the equivalent identity theft with face scanners ?
Going full "Game of Thrones' Arya" on some victim's head ? Enrollement at the school of Faceless-Men is surely going to get high ?
phone from someone like OnePlus, Motorola, Xaomi or even LG.
Small note: if you go for some relatively known brand (some that are established on the market instead of some fly-by-night noname asian), that releases relatively few different hardware variants (i.e.: keeps the same device for some time - and all the model XyZ have the same internal, maybe except modem due to regional restrictions - instead of selling whatever comes from the workshop at that precise moment - and you end up with 4 completely different chipsets for the same official model),
then you chances of finding a well tested and stable LineageOS custom ROM for it are higher.
Anonymity has never been a target for bitcoins.
In fact it's even the contrary, by design.
The whole point of bitcoin is having no central authority. There's no single central "BitCoin Inc." company that handles the transactions and decide which are valid or not (as opposed to PayPal and all the controversies surrounding block funds and transactions - which were among the reasons of some of bitcoins popularity).
The bitcoin protocol achieves that by distributing the "ledger of all transaction" - the blockchain - among all node on the network, and on counting on the agreement of the network majority to decide the validity of transaction.
That means that every single node on the network, by design to achieve this distributed control, must imperatively have a local copy of all transactions on the network.
The only thing is that bitcoin is *pseudonymous* - the transaction aren't signed with your Real Identity, they are signed with cryptographic key pairs on which you control the private part.
Meaning that mapping which transaction is done by whom isn't necessarily obvious.
But of course, if one of the dozens of tracker present in the shops (ad tracker, content optimizer, strategic clients managers, etc.) detects you when you do your buying, chances are high that even these 3rd party will be able to map transaction in blockchain (done with a certain public key) with your detected identy.
(Of course the shop themselves need to do that by design - they need to know you paid and they need to have an address where to send your goods to).
Of course a government has even more means to achieve this kind of unmasking.
Maybe he could construct some kind of protective cage around himself that would allow him to use his devices in relative safety without requiring a ludicrous amount of safety equipment?
I'm not sure what you would call the kind of arrangement you'd end up with.
I know you're joking, but BMW has exactly released that :
prepare your eyes to be shocked by the bastard fruit of a forbidden sex night between a smart car and a motor scooter.
It's bad enough now where you have to take off a glove to use your phone in the winter. Now to unlock the phone if it's -30 out you have to unprotect your face.
Clothing technology has evolved to follow the needs.
Given that the current solution for capacitive touch screen, is to equip either ski gloves, or under-gloves, with a touch capacitive surface. (basically the index finger works like a stylus),
I was wondering what the corresponding adaptation would be for iPhone 8 : maybe those novelty ski goggles with a hologram lens - except instead of showing the usual Yeti, tiger or skull, they actually show what your face would look without goggles ?
But I question the common perception that self driving cars are going to lead huge drops in car ownership. {...} None of these things is a showstopper, but if I am already spending money to own my car, why wouldn't I spend money to own my self driving car, that already has my stuff in it?
Depends on where you live.
In a dense (european-style) city, owning a car is a complicated matter. There's no free street parking.
You need a place to park it over night (so in addition to rent your own flat, you need to pay rent for a parking spot in the underground garage under you apartment building - if one exists. Otherwise you need to pay a yearly fee just to be able to leave it without limits in your own street)
You need to pay for for parking whenever you go shopping somewhere.
You need to pay a monthly or yearly fee to park it at your working place.
The situation is completely different than in US-style suburbs where everybody has a house with their own garage attached to it, and where every single place has a nearby outdoor free parking.
(Also, because the car doesn't spend most of its time next to you but parked in some other space, you tend NOT to leave all your apartment's worth of stuff inside. What if somebody breaks the cars window to steal something from inside it ? Remember the car isn't in safely in different part of your house, it may be in a street down somewhere across your workplace or apartment building)
Car-sharing models at least completely remove the need to think where to leave the car.
Depending on sharing models, either they have dedicated station where you park them, or you can leave them for *free* on any street parking spot, ready to be taken by the next customer.
What about child seats? Will parents have to provide their own car seats, or count on calling a car that has one or more available?
As a matter of fact, car-sharing go the first route (some car have standardized attachment points), taxis go the second one (you can basically order one with any implements you could want. But taxis just tend to be more expensive in big cities - in some countries more than in others).
but how do I call for a car that has a bike rack that fits a recumbent bike?
Just a question : why don't you actually, ... you know...*bike* on your bike ?
Maybe it's my bias of living in cities which are mostly bikeable everywhere.
One generally uses the bike *to* bike.
If you need to travel to somewhere else, you *bike* to the train station, load the bike into the train (if you can store it inside a bag - even more easy with a foldable one - it's considered "luggage" and you don't need to pay a fare for it) and then further bike once arrived at the destination's train station.
If you really want to travel to somewhere with a car (e.g.: for your vacations) you rent a car equipped with the necessary rack.
Same for skis: If you're not taking the train (winter-time, equipped with free ski storage space), you either bring your own magnetic "stick-it-on-the-roof" ski rack (Car-sharing) or rent a car with the proper equipment (car rentals).
Beside, to decrease fuel usage (due to air drag resistance), most people here around tend to mount/unmount racks on a need basis even on the roofs of their own cars.
Its very unlikely the cheap cars will only have 1 network or that it will be segregrated in a different way (for good or bad) than the higher end models. Almost all car manufacturers {...} tend to favor standardization to control R&D and maintenance costs.
The idea isn't a manufacturer design separately a secure and a non secure car computer.
Modern cars are far from having a single computer inside. They litterally have dozens of elements with embed CPUs.
The metaphor of a car being "a datacenter on wheels" used by Musk isn't far off.
This will lead to several results :
- a car manufacturer is seldom going to design from the ground up every single element.
- except lots of them to be either subcontracted or even off-the-shelf component
- To lower the cost of production of a car model, except the manufacturer to buy cheaper elements.
More precisely :
- as on any other network of computer nodes, the security will require a box acting a router/firewall.
- you can expect that such a router is going to cost quite a bit, just because of all the various certifications it needs to be used in a car.
You can expect some manufacturer deciding to cut corners and completely forgo the router. Why add a device that costs a few percent of the total price of the car and doesn't provide something immediately visible at the autodealer shop ?
Unless it's something that is mandate by government or considered standard (and both in enough country that it makes more sense to put it as a standard feature in all cars instead of going on a per market availability), you know manufacturer will try to get away without it.
you must have a device physically connected to the CAN bus.
Which *for now* means a laptop connected on the ODB port.
But which could mean in the future hacking into some component of the car that is on the CAN bus it self (like the infotainment center, which needs to get information about fuel consumption and a few other stuff).
Hack remotely (Bluetooth, some even support Wifi and 3G/4G) that component and then you get full access to the CAN bus.
Expect *high range cars* to have two separate CAN bus and the infotainment only talking on the "public" CAN bus (and all the juicy bit staying on the "private" CAN bus).
No risk to the critical component if a non critical (like the infotainment) gets hacked.
Expect *cheap cars* to have the two buses badly segregate or even only one shared bus.
These (badly designed) cars could get completely owned through the music system.
And in a few years, you'll be sick of hearing how Apple revolutionnized modern TV by inventing the whole streaming concept.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers"
On the other hand, back when he did said that, the total market of then-era computer was indeed probably around five.
There's more than half a century of R&D between him and the modern-day ubiquitous computer in everybody's pocket (smartphones).
Having a start-up promising within year to sell vat-grown-burgers at the current state of research and development...
Is like a start-up promising to put man on the moon by the end of the decade... back when mongols used their first gun-powder based rockets (and we know how well that one went~ ). It's a little bit precocious and over-optimistic.
Currently vat-grown meat is still a lab experiment and has a long way of R&D to go until it can successfully be used as a viable commercial product with low ecological impact.
Nobody is saying that it's impossible. It's just that we're currently at the "world market of five units" stage.
Spend a few more years in university research and maybe we can get closer to something that can actually be commercially successful on a large scale, cheap price and low ecological impact.
Meat is on its way out. The planet will NOT survive if humans keep wastefully cultivating animals for food
Yes, I agree that we must find alternative to feeding animals to produce food for us to eat.
BUT
Launching a start-up to sell vat-grown-burgers at the current state of research and development is like launching a start-up promising to put man on the moon by the end of the decade... back when mongols used their first gun-powder based rockets (and we know how well that one went~ ).
Currently vat-grown meat is still a lab experiment and has a long way of R&D to go until it can successfully be used as a viable commercial product with low ecological impact.
Sure, it costs you money to own a car, but you get benefits from car ownership as well. If you can afford (or need) those benefits, you are not being stupid.
> But you get benefits :
Do you really ? that's the key question behind this report, and the general answer is depends on the actual needs.
This report's part of the answer is that, among other, it depends on the availability of other cars and drivers.
Introduce ridesharing services : and the benefits of car owner ship suddenly seem less evident - why pay for an expensive car when you could get around using Uber, Lyft, etc.
Remove ridesharing services : and the ownership of cars rises up again, as suddenly owning a car, despite being still that much expensive, suddenly is beneficial again as there less other alternative to get around.
The same is observed in european cities with car-sharing.
or for those that just enjoy driving and the freedom a personal automobile provides
If that's the sole reason, then that's part of the "firvolous spending". Things that aren't a necessity, but you still spend money on because you enjoy them. That's entirely out of the scope of TFA's theme.
The point is to analyse how much car ownership is beneficial, compared to availability or not of ridesharing.
If "A" is a cause "B", that doesn't imply that every single instance of "B" must necessarily only be cause be "A" and nothing else.
In other word :
To imply that Uber and Lyft may affect the level of car ownership in cities... and not {blablabla, long list of other stuff that cause car ownership}
It seems like someone has snapped on a special filter that only passes a narrow band
Nobody is trying to make think that ride-sharing is the single explanation of car-ownership.
There might be tons of other reasons, but this reports simply states that ridesharing is among the factors that influence it, because eachtime you add or remove it, car ownship change accordingly.
And BTW, the same phenomon has been observed in European cities, regarding car-sharing.
(after introduction of car-sharing, car ownership drops. In other words, people start thinking "why should I buy an expensive car and care for it, even when it sleeps useless in my garage, when I can just pick one of the shared cars in the streets ?")