The issue is that this is extremely one-sided. They are changing the price after making a deal with a customer, even doing this to customers who sign on for a limited promotional offer. Oh sure, they almost certainly have a clause in their contracts that says they can change the deal at any time. But that is the whole point. It is a general, but often overlooked principle that contracts have to provide value of some kind to all parties involved. I offer to sell you widgets at X, you commit to buying Y cases of them per month. Whether I am asking an outrageous price or not doesn't matter. Unless the contract stipulates certain quality control measures, whether I decide to change the design and make a cheaper widget also doesn't matter. I get money, you get widgets.
In most contracts (between businesses) there are usually experts on both sides who make sure their own organizations interests are protected. When one side or the other fails to live up to their obligations, there is tort law they can turn to for a remedy. Consumers are ever increasingly not able to do that. It has become standard for contracts offered by companies to include clauses for: mandatory mediation (in the jurisdiction of the companies choice no less), company can change the deal at any time, for any reason and with no notice, The company can even sever the contract if they see fit. The consumer can only end the contract, typically with a penalty for early cancellation. Moreover, we are seeing companies exerting political influence to protect their monopolies so that consumers can't even move to another provider. No one factor seems illegally unfair, and the courts have often upheld them. But the sum total of factors creates an extremely unbalanced and unfair situation.
The best option for the consumer is to not play the game in the first place. And the cable and land line phone companies have seen market share and gross revenue drop dramatically as a result. As is typical of corporate thinking, instead of becoming more competitive and innovative, they are choosing to instead squeeze their remaining customer base that little bit more. I'm willing to bet that anyone who calls customer service and complains can get these fees waived for 6 mths.(that's long enough for these fees to be "standard industry practice" in the courts and customers to exhaust their protests.) But unless there is truly MASSIVE outrage and record numbers of customer walking away permanently, you won't see actual change.
How much do you want to bet that a random citizen would have had a MUCH harder time getting their social credit score fixed after a mistake like this?
Also, since China still has a pretty large problem with official corruption and someone in an office was able to fix this with a few clicks of a mouse, it's only a matter of time before black market social credit buffing becomes a reality.
that was a case of the law enforcement community demanding that the existing, privacy protecting, encryption be broken so that they could have a back-door without benefit of a warrant. Apples response was that the encryption was actually competent, turned into code by competent programmers, so there was no known way of breaking the encryption of an individual piece of hardware without weakening the encryption standards for _everyone_. (by replacing existing encryption with a deliberately crippled version as an "update") And keep in mind that serious bad actors could probably block the update and continue using the good encryption and/or start using some other implementation.
To me, there is a conflation between operating system and user interface. Sure, for the vast majority of current users, those are bundled so tightly as to be one and the same. But those of us who are familiar with remote sessions (Windows Terminal, Citrix, SSH X shell etc, pick your poison) are more aware of the distinction.
For Windows to operate remotely is nothing new, we've been doing it for literally decades. The only things new here are A) it's being marketed to individuals and at a global level, instead of aimed at enterprises for use in-house. B) Microsoft is hoping to completely redefine what it means to have a PC by rent seeking. (I know, arguably it isn't "rent seeking" since Microsoft would be providing something of value. But it would be looking to get annual or even monthly payments for the life of the device instead of a single license fee. Who here is willing to believe that this will result in lower revenue?)
What I'm very curious to know is what will happen to the _massive_ subsidies Microsoft currently pays to the big OEMs. Once the OEMs and system integrators are reduced to appliance manufacturers, I think we'll see those subsidies disappear and profit margins for those companies to get even thinner.
From Microsofts point of view, this is a total win on several levels:
a) They get to increase and smooth out their revenue stream from the Windows UI
b) As others have noted, their development and support costs go way down.
c) They get their own captive audience for targeted ads.
d) They get to further develop their own walled garden of apps. Central control will undoubtedly be used to block arbitrary 3rd parties software.
e) They get to cut back or even end the payola that the big OEM's have been dependant on.
And the ironic thing? We can probably thank Google and Apple for this. Microsoft is just trying to combine the two business models those companies have proven to be very lucrative. I can't see any easy way for them to tackle Amazon's business model, it's just too different from dealing in software. Otherwise I'm sure they'd be doing that as well.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't projecting onto a transparent surface exactly what Pepper's Ghost IS? This may well be a slightly different approach, using software to generate the background of the projected image instead of capturing it during the original recording, but it's still projecting onto a surface that will reflect back to the viewer(s) and working best when shown against a dark background and/or in a dark room.
I also wonder, neat as this idea is, is there a clear advantage to doing this over a simple video recording shown on a conventional TV or hosted on the course's website for students to access on their own devices?
I'm former IT as well, but from Canada, so the actual laws are different, but I think the underlying legal principles should be very comparable.
With that in mind, let me say that the duly appointed sysadmin or anyone from the IT staff can look at things without it being considered to "taint" evidence, otherwise we'd never be able to convict the sick (and stupid) people who take their computer into Best Buy for repair while leaving a folder full of child pornography.
What I was taught in school, and instructed to do at several jobs (including one internship at the provincial gov't level) was this: Do your job, which may include examining data a user has stored on their work issued equipment. IF you see anything that you think is illegal or even questionable, tell the boss and call the cops. Do not touch the machine any further. Do not even shut it down. The boss will then see to it that physical access to the device is restricted and the police will show up to handle the disconnection from the network and possible shut down. (did you know the police actually have a device that lets them fake a network connection and keep a desktop machine fully powered while driving it across town? I found the bit where they slipped a probe between plug and outlet to seamlessly transfer power source from wall to battery pack particularly fascinating).
The reason for this policy is three fold:
1) A lot of successful prosecutions, especially for illegal porn, rely on happen-stance. A tech stumbling over something, a creep forgets to log out and his wife finds it, whatever. As long as the discoverer can swear in court that they just stumbled across it and did nothing that would alter the data, then the data is still admissible.
2) The police just do NOT have the manpower to handle every "we fired John for surfing porn at work, can you come and check his machine to see if he did anything illegal as well?
3) The report of the discoverer is often the basis for probable cause and issuance of a warrant. If I didn't tell the police I saw something off, they would have no legal basis from which to proceed with an investigation.
One last thought: Even if a guy does surf or create child porn on the work issued equipment, while sufficient for conviction, it may not always be the sole source of such evidence. Any one making illegal porn on a work machine probably has more of it on his personal machine back home as well. (pedos are also notorious for amassing large collections) Thus, even if the evidence I uncover is not enough to convict on its own, it's still enough to justify warrants and investigation to collect more, better quality evidence.
I seem to recall this sort of deal making news many times over the last ten years or so. Not all are at the national level importance that a $10 Billion dollar plant would be. Some, perhaps even most are along the lines of call centre chooses to establish in %Smalltown because that municipality offered a better tax break or subsidy than %otherSmallTown.
What's always bothered me about these deals is that the numbers always seem to be bigger than the actual taxes would have been. Clearly the regions making these deals expect to a) make it up on the taxes they collect from the residents and b) be able to get re-elected based on the "X brought %Num jobs to our area" campaign platform. It goes well beyond "we'll charge you no taxes for the next 10 years because you're bringing jobs to the region". And in most cases, the expected tax revenue from employed residents also seems to be lower than the total of the subsidy. Meanwhile, the municipality still has to provide all the usual municipal services for the company out of its own pocket. (fire, sewer, water, street cleaning, schools, police services, garbage collection etc)
Since the expected revenue is usually still less than the subsidies or tax breaks being given, it is effectively a case of the government paying to help the incumbents get re-elected.
The other problem is, as I said, businesses choosing where to go by effectively an auction of tax breaks. Which ever region offers the most, gets the nod. The government ends up committed to these contracts, but quite often the business is not. The company can, and often does, pack up and move as soon as they find another deal that is better by enough margin to cover the relocation costs. The bigger the company, the more likely they have a whole team devoted to finding the most pliable governments to bargain with and then doing their best to play one off the other. And they often do this re-iteratively. So first they look at the states with the lowest operating costs, then do the bargaining where states are effectively competing with each other until they have a clear winner. Then the company approaches a short list of municipal governments and tries the same game, hoping for even more breaks and incentives.
Governments, whether municipal, county or state level, tend not to do this. At the state level, instead of the governor or state legislatures doing the negotiations,(as in the article) they should have teams (departments, committees what-have-you). These teams should be working with a more cooperative attitude towards other teams in other towns/counties/states. If an elected official chooses to bargain directly, he or she should be able to convince the populace that they would get a better deal than the team of specialists they already employ. (hopefully then in addition to getting votes because they brought jobs in, they could also *lose* votes if the deal went sour for any reason)
The situation is analogous to companies moving in the chase for lower minimum wages and then unions cooperating so that the business ends up paying the same regardless of which region they are on. As far as I know, however, in most areas municipal governments are not allowed to engage in collective bargaining because that is what the state is supposed to be doing for them. And of course, local governments don't want the state bargaining on their collective behalf for a lot of reasons.
I think the biggest reason they don't do this though is that jobs are somewhat portable, as is the labour to fill those jobs, but political regions and the elected positions associated with them are not. If a big company chooses to build a big plant on the other side of your state, people will start migrating there. That's how little towns become big towns, and how towns become ghost towns after all.
well, rope is commonly sold by cross section, length and then type and material. E.G. A common rope seen everywhere is 3/8"x100' twisted nylon. Breaking strength is 3240 Lb/f but rated capacity is typically 270Lb/f (the common yellow rope that is damn near ubiquitous).
A better objection would be that the given rating is for an individual fibre, not for the resulting rope or cable made of it. How a rope is made (twist vs braided, core with kermantle vs plain etc) How the fibres are assembled into a rope makes a HUGE difference in the strength of the final product. (knots and bends also drastically reduce rope strength, but I doubt any space elevator will use knots to secure the cable at each end)
Because the individual fibres are roughly 1 cm long, the style of rope is likely to resemble ropes made of short natural fibres, like wool or cotton. Those are typically braided rather than twisted (yarn notwithstanding, that is not a strength focused application). If we were to make a rope that resembles common 1/4" braided cotton line but with carbon nano-tubes, how strong would the resulting rope be?
I can't be sure of my math, but here is my laymans very loose guess.
1) Cotton fibres are generally about 20 microns or 20,000 nanometers thick, while a single carbon nanotube is between.4 and 1 nanometer.
2) Thus, for a given diameter, a carbon nanotube based rope will contain 10 to 20 thousand times more fibres. I'll go with a conservative 10K to make the math more accessible to the general audience.
3) An individual cotton fibre has a tensile strength of 5 centinewtons, or very roughly 5 grams of material can be supported by a single fibre. For nanotubes, it seems that an individual fibre tensile strength of 50 GigaPascals is readily obtainable, which converts to well over 500,000,000 grams. Multiply that nanotube strength by 10K so we're continuing to compare similar diameters.
4) 1/4" braided cotton has a breaking strength of roughly 226 Kg. My theoretical carbon nanotube rope would be 500,000,000 times stronger or 1,130,000,000,000 grams which works out to 113,000 metric tonnes. (about 124,000 short tons in SI)
That means that a 1/4" braided cotton rope is suitable for hanging clothes on the line, but a 1/4" braided nanotube rope is suitable for picking up a Nimitz class aircraft carrier, fully equipped and manned.* Frankly, at that point the limiting factor isn't the strength of the rope, but the strength of the ship when suspended from a single point. Carbon nanotube rope vastly exceeds the strength of any material we can use to create the mounting points.
*assuming my math is correct and totally neglecting the impact of braiding carbon nanotubes, modulus of elasticity, attachment of the ropes to their respective loads and no doubt many more factors.
I thought you'd need an infinite number of turtles, since "it's turtles all the way down..."
But such a product might be good news for the environment, since we'd have to preserve wet lands and numerous species of turtles in order to have an assured supply of turtles to send into orbit. We don't need to breed any huge numbers of turtles at any given time mind you. Sending up an infinite number of turtles is going to take an infinite amount of time (and energy) no matter how quickly we do it, might as well have a good, solid sustainable program instead of a crash priority thing.
but wouldn't elephant carcasses, being essentially squishy things (except for the white bits inside) act more like rifle range backstops? Sure, a flake of paint doing a few thousand Km/h relative to the carcass is still doing to make a huge crater, but some energy is going to be absorbed and converted to heat. Much of the ejecta from that impact is going to have a lower velocity and a direction that takes it out of that orbit. Ideally ejecta would de-orbit and burn up or reach escape velocity and head for the stars. A lot of what remains might not have enough velocity to stay at that altitude, so the orbit will gradually decay, again burning up on re-entry.
Bigger things, like wrenches and fasteners are probably beyond the current ability of our elephant based interception technology. Further research is clearly needed to develop larger and more energy absorbing elephants.
I am not a lawyer, certainly not a lawyer specializing in motor vehicle law. But it seems to me that anyone doing this would be taking a legal risk.
First: In many areas, in addition to regulations describing the exact size, shape, colour and placement of road signage, there are also regulations defining who has the authority and responsibility to place such signs. (e.g. stops signs on public roads are the responsibility of a governing body such as the municipality or state, but stop signs in the grocery store parking lot are entirely unregulated and hence non-binding and often are not allowed to be the same size as regulation signs) You wouldn't have the authority to place such signs and would be in violation of the Highway Traffic Act or comparable legislation.
Second: If your sign does indeed cause erratic or undesirable behaviour in an autonomous vehicle that is arguably careless or even reckless driving, violations which can even lead to criminal charges depending on the severity. Mounting the sign well in advance arguably proves deliberate intent, so if any one dies because you made an autonomous vehicle behave unexpectedly, you could be found guilty of murder. (it's akin to saying "I don't want to hurt anyone, I certainly don't want anyone to die, but I'm going to go downtown and fire off my pistol in random directions just to prove that an armed citizen is likely to over-react and fire back)
Deep Learning algorithms are arguably thinking, just a limited and alien form of it. When it comes to sensory processing and manipulating the environment, there is a scale starting at the biochemical reactions between a virus and cell and ending (so far) at human cognition. At what point along that line do you consider actual thought and learning to occur. (note that sentience or self awareness is a related but separate concept). We can condition simple insects to respond to artificial cues, which seems to imply learning but is more likely a simple stimulus/response reaction.
Birds and small mammals can clearly be taught, they do learn and there are many examples of them provably engaging in reasoning thought. There are several bird species who not only recognize themselves, but can ask existential questions and even lie in order to deceive others. (The ability to lie is one of the hall marks of sentience because it implies that the liar has a mental model of the other person and how they think) What we're achieving these days in the labs is similar to the dumber birds. No sentience yet, but probably on the right path. Given the very different way deep learning algorithms operate, any thought these systems have is going to be as alien as cuttlefish. (who do engage in complex mental behaviour and will act in deceptive ways under certain conditions)
A key difficulty is that, as long as the thought processes are alien to the average layman, there will always be those who argue it is not real thought. In my opinion, we do not yet know what real thought actually is, so it is too soon for us to say that something that gives the appearance of thought isn't actually thought at all. (an important part of the Turing test. If it can convince an average person that it is intelligent, then it IS intelligent)
To be fair though, places like the Hanger Lane gyratory or the Swindon magic circle are 1) rare and 2) really tough for humans to navigate. The first time any human driver is confronted with a situation like that, they panic and cause confusion in the traffic flow because they struggle to understand the flow while simultaneously operating a motor vehicle. After a few times though them though, they get better at it. An autonomous vehicle would handle the environment decently its first time through, since it has the area mapped in its system. But it wouldn't get noticeably better after 3, 6 or a dozen times using that interchange the way a human can. In the meantime, the faster reflexes of a computer potentially mean that the autonomous vehicle is going to handle the erratic behaviour of human newbies better than the experienced human drivers (who are also more burdened with their expectations of what the other traffic is going to do).
I would think it depended on the wavelength. The longer the wavelength, the less it will be disturbed by precipitation. Of course, longer wavelengths generally also mean a far lower resolution. You would want a wavelength long enough to ignore rain, sleet and snow, but short enough to make sure you still see road signs, parts of children sticking out past parked cars etc.
If I were an engineer designing the sensor suite for an autonomous anything (which I don't even remotely have the skills to do) I would want to use a pretty wide range of wavelengths and either use a composite image to base my navigation on or run navigation computation in parallel on groups of closely related wavelengths (i.e. navigation based on visual wavelengths, a separate navigation for microwave/radar wavelengths and so on) and do route planning based on consensus between navigation methods.
As far as I know, collisions that occur in ideal or even close to ideal conditions are virtually always caused by one human doing something stupid. A classic example is of a driver realizing he needs to get over right now or he will miss his exit. So he darts over quickly, maybe forgetting to signal, certainly not signalling far enough in advance. He suddenly appears in the path of a semi, and brakes hard to make his exit. Forcing the transport to really stand on his brakes to avoid turning the idiot into a metal pizza with soylent green garnish. Sometimes the trucker just flat out can't decelerate soon enough, quickly enough to avoid creaming him, sometimes he misses the car, but gets rear ended by the guy who was following too close behind him etc etc.
The risk of missing one's exit is trivial. If you do miss it, you just go on to the next exit and back track. That's what we're supposed to do, that's what we're trained and tested on in many places. But thousands of drivers fuck it up every day. The risk of missing one's exit and dealing with backtracking is a pain in the ass and in the forefront of the drivers mind. The risk of causing an accident by erratic driving doesn't seem as immediate. We have a tendency to treat other vehicles as static objects that we are moving around somewhat slowly, rather than fast moving vehicles that we just happen to be a bit faster than. (doubly so when the other vehicle is a cargo vehicle in the slow lane.)
I think you misunderstand the basis of the posters fears about losing freedom. To be fair, he wasn't explicit in why he thinks that way.
The problem is, once autonomous driving has a proven track record of being safer than human drivers in an overwhelming majority of situations, it is likely and perhaps even inevitable that legislation will be passed restricting humans right to drive on public roads. Right now, the big concern is that humans may be placed at undue risk by robotic use of the public roads. Once a sweeping majority of vehicles are autonomous though, the concern will be other people being placed at risk by a few unreliable human drivers who insist on sharing the roads. We'll start seeing measures like human drivers being limited to driving in good weather and/or daylight hours, cracking down on elderly drivers and drivers convicted of moving violations, humans being barred from certain lanes or roads and so on.
In your own example, half of the humans can't figure it out and you imply that the tourists likewise would have a problem with it. Granted, after a few minutes, everyone figures it out and starts taking turns. I don't think any autonomous vehicle currently being used or on the drawing boards could handle that situation, but that's level 3 and 4 autonomy we're talking about. Level 5 is some years away yet, yet by definition, should be able to handle that situation at least as well, as a human driver.
Plus, changing a road from intersection to roundabout is virtually always heralded by construction for at least a few days prior. Vehicles passing through would have ample chances to update the common shared map, noting that this area is likely to be subject to further change.
In addition, in the North American and European road signage standards, drivers are supposed to be alerted to the presence of a round-about ahead by signs. (there is some variation in what roundabout signs look like though) All the autonomous vehicle projects do try to look for road signage to inform the system of the path and conditions ahead.
What I'd like to see, and Waymo at least is well positioned to do, is also use the data from satellite imagery. I have no idea how challenging it would be to integrate that data into the autonomous system, but visual range satellite imagery updated daily and weather satellite imagery updated in 15 min increments would be damn useful for route planning. The satellites can see construction much further ahead than anyone or any thing on the ground (weather permitting of course) and it would useful to the long haul autonomous trucks to know that there is heavy snow in Maryland, three hours ahead of it, but clear roads going through West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Human truck drivers get that information manually, from dispatchers, fellow truckers on the CB and their favourite app on their cellphones. It only makes sense to try and provide that same functionality to autonomous vehicles.
Something to think about: Sure autonomous vehicle testing has been done almost exclusively in good weather conditions and relatively low traffic loads. But doing so is a necessary step in reducing the risk. Any good test involves reducing the variables as much as possible after all. The engineers who are building these vehicles have passed the point where closed track testing gives meaningful results. They have to start putting these vehicles on the open road in order to further refine the designs. They ave convinced the relevant legislators that they have done all the due diligence required, that the vehicles as they stand today are good enough to pass the driving test standard that human drivers are held to. Moreover, this is a pretty tiny handful of cars from a few companies. These cars are being heavily monitored and every deviation from expected behaviour is scrutinized to death by the engineers, the legislators and the general public.
There will come a time when these vehicles will be out there in the worst weather and road conditions imaginable. BUT, in the meantime, if they encounter weather or road conditions that tend to lead to accidents, they just stop. Humans will push on even when the level of risk is high because we suck at judging relative risks.
Someone posted about driving home in a blinding blizzard and questioned if an autonomous vehicle would even find the road, let alone get him home safely. I would say that if your ability to even see the road is compromised that badly because of the weather, you probably shouldn't have been driving in it.
You make a good point about scientific experiments normally requiring Informed Consent from its participants. But I have three counter-balancing points for you to consider:
1) There are a number of people out there who I think should not be driving. I don't consent to them sharing the road with me. But I am forced to accept that I must share the road with them because it is public infrastructure. Any member of the public who qualifies based on a pretty easy driving test is allowed to use the roads in a motor vehicle. Based on that idea, an autonomous vehicle that is demonstrably as safe or safer than your average driver in a road test should be allowed to access the public roads.
2) People with bikes, scooters, roller blades et al don't even need a license. It is akin to the concept of the commons, areas where anyone could bring their herds to pasture and/or people could cross freely on their way to somewhere else. Choosing to use that area when headed to my destination is tacit acceptance of the risk that I will step in manure or be confronted with animals who interfere with my progress. Likewise, choosing to use the public roads can be construed as acceptance that there is a certain irreducible level of risk in doing so. The question isn't whether autonomous vehicles represent a risk to the general public. It is whether it measurably increases the level of risk that is already there.
3) No matter how much closed track testing you do, no matter how complex and varied your test environment is, sooner or later it will be deployed on public roads. No matter how much preparation you have done. that initial deployment is still technically an experiment. As with drug testing, no matter how careful we are in the testing phase, there is still a chance that we will uncover one or more flaws, potentially serious flaws once it is available for general prescribing. What is important is having an effective process in place where those flaws can be quickly identified, confirmed and mitigated or solved.
Surveillance is optional but most governments seem to be embracing it anyway. As I understand it, wide spread, even ubiquitous surveillance gives the appearance of spreading a very wide and at the same time, selective net at a cost per suspect far lower than traditional methods.
While I believe that police and intelligence agencies certainly should be paying attention to our digital interactions and activities, I believe it needs to be more selective and carefully targeted than is usually the case. In IT security one fundamental principle is the least amount of access needed to do a job. The police surveillance equivalent would be only looking at a persons traffic after a warrant has been issued. But what seems to be done instead is getting the most sweeping powers they can get away with at the time legislation is passed, then pushing slightly beyond that limit on the down low afterwards. (see parallel construction)
An analogy that might be helpful is looking in trash bags. In many places, looking in your trash does not require a warrant because it is considered to be placed into the public domain. So, in theory, a police dept could set up an inspection station at the dump and household waste transfer stations looking at everyone's trash. From there, if anything of interest is found, they would then start to backtrack that item through the collection network to identify the house it came from. The biggest reason they don't do this I think is because the expense in capital equipment and manpower is just too high for the number of clues they would get. So for trash, our privacy is respected by the logistical concerns.
However, in digital surveillance, the equipment to do the searching is already there and paid for by the ISPs. There is far less manpower required, but what there is of it is split between the ISP and the police. All a cop needs to do is send a letter to the ISP, demanding logging of all traffic with a certain signature (IP address, web protocol, key words or destinations etc). One of their admins fires up his management console and starts the logging process. The difference in cost between tracking one individual of interest and tracking an entire community is trivial compared the the scaling costs of real world surveillance.
If we want the same level of privacy and protection from unreasonable search and seizure, we need to find a way (possibly a multi-prong approach) to make it hard for authorities to cast wide nets without a damn good reason. My suggestions are:
1) All interception done at the behest of law enforcement should require a warrant, not simply a letter.
2) All interception done at the behest of the intelligence community should require the approval of elected officials on a case by case basis.
3) regardless of who requests the surveillance, the ISP's should be paid a reasonable amount for their services.
4) All warrants and National Security Letters must be required to state the expiration date and any other limiting factors.
5) Authorities must be held accountable when cases of over-reach, misuse or abuse are identified. The penalties must be meaningful. Someone, possibly several someones have to lose their job, it has to be possible to put someone in jail if the abuse was severe enough. Corporations must be fined heavily enough to affect the bottom line.
6) It has to be possible for an ISP to refuse a request if they have reason to believe the request fails to meet the legal criteria. When that happens, they will record the requested data, but not hand it over to the police until the matter can be reviewed by a judge or impartial panel. Requiring people to cooperate even when police are in the wrong supports the authority of the legal system, but also gives people the classic "I was only following orders" excuse for participating in a crime.
As far as I know, the definition of a planet is not only being in orbit around a star, but also being large enough to form a sphere and large enough to clear its orbit. A minor planet is one that fails that last criteria. So it's my understanding that Pluto still falls under the category of planets, but is properly further defined as a minor planet.
I've seen some layman debate about whether a given body's ability to hold an atmosphere is relevant, but I don't think it is. Whether a body has an atmosphere isn't just a product of a body's size, but also its composition and distance from the star it orbits. The Goblin planet mentioned in the article likely doesn't have any atmosphere at all because it would be too cold for even gaseous hydrogen. I suspect that the unknown planet X may be equally cold.
1) Cost of course. There is cost to printing and distributing them of course, but also cost to translate. For every manual, there is likely 2 or 3 (or more) draft versions being handed around to various people for their contributions. These days it just makes sense to do that digitally. And if all the drafts are digital, why not the released version as well?
2) Updating: an online manual (usually in.pdf format) is enormously easier and faster than having to send out updated copies of the printed manual.
3) Less waste: updated manuals or EOL products both mean obsolete printed material taking up warehouse space.
4) For many consumer products, use is obvious enough that manuals really aren't needed as much as they used to be. And where manual type information and instruction is still needed, they have been largely supplanted by user forums.
5) Even when manuals were common and very useful, a LOT of people didn't bother to read them anyway. (hence RTFM-Read The Fucking Manual)
I seem to recall an apocryphal speech by an American politician campaigning in the first half of the 20th century that had the line "...and we will continue on this path until all Americans have an above average income!" Or something to that effect. I found it in a Robert A. Heinlein book so it may be entirely fictional, but R.A.H. often based those sorts of anecdotes on real world examples from his personal experience in politics.
This story reminds me of that. By definition, middle class means those people in the middle of the socio-economic ladder. How far up or down on the ladder you place the cut off points is subject to change by whomever is collating the data, but not the definition itself.
I can't be bothered to read the source, but it occurs to me that this sort of story could be generated simply by moving the lower boundary downwards while also not recalculating the median or mean. I am no mathematician, certainly not a statistician, but the article just strikes me as bad statistics in action.
Back when Tesla first announced that they were going to use 18650 (laptop and cordless tool) batteries, I remember thinking how crazy that sounded because you'd need to use literally thousands of them. It might give you a lot of flexibility in the form factor of the final packs, but it seemed to me that there were too many downsides:
1) A shit load of welded/soldered connections to manage, which probably adds to the resistance of the final pack by some non-trivial amount.
2) Lots of smaller cells, each individually packaged, then packaged in a larger module and that module incorporated into the final pack. That sounds like the ratio of weight of packaging to weight of electrochemical material is pretty bad.
The situation with the new larger 2170 batteries is a bit better, especially on the total current output. But the issue with so many connections and total weight of packaging still seems high.
Can any one give me technical reasons why small cylindrical cells like this would be superior to pouch or prismatic cells? I always assumed that a good car battery would resemble the form factor of car starter batteries, big rectilinear shapes putting out decent voltage but a shit-load of amps. The only advantage I can think of for the cylindrical format is ease of roll to roll manufacturing. But even there, unless there is some problem with bigger cells (dielectric breakdown at higher amps maybe?) a larger cylindrical form would be better wouldn't it?
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In most contracts (between businesses) there are usually experts on both sides who make sure their own organizations interests are protected. When one side or the other fails to live up to their obligations, there is tort law they can turn to for a remedy. Consumers are ever increasingly not able to do that. It has become standard for contracts offered by companies to include clauses for: mandatory mediation (in the jurisdiction of the companies choice no less), company can change the deal at any time, for any reason and with no notice, The company can even sever the contract if they see fit. The consumer can only end the contract, typically with a penalty for early cancellation. Moreover, we are seeing companies exerting political influence to protect their monopolies so that consumers can't even move to another provider. No one factor seems illegally unfair, and the courts have often upheld them. But the sum total of factors creates an extremely unbalanced and unfair situation.
The best option for the consumer is to not play the game in the first place. And the cable and land line phone companies have seen market share and gross revenue drop dramatically as a result. As is typical of corporate thinking, instead of becoming more competitive and innovative, they are choosing to instead squeeze their remaining customer base that little bit more. I'm willing to bet that anyone who calls customer service and complains can get these fees waived for 6 mths.(that's long enough for these fees to be "standard industry practice" in the courts and customers to exhaust their protests.) But unless there is truly MASSIVE outrage and record numbers of customer walking away permanently, you won't see actual change.
Also, since China still has a pretty large problem with official corruption and someone in an office was able to fix this with a few clicks of a mouse, it's only a matter of time before black market social credit buffing becomes a reality.
that was a case of the law enforcement community demanding that the existing, privacy protecting, encryption be broken so that they could have a back-door without benefit of a warrant. Apples response was that the encryption was actually competent, turned into code by competent programmers, so there was no known way of breaking the encryption of an individual piece of hardware without weakening the encryption standards for _everyone_. (by replacing existing encryption with a deliberately crippled version as an "update") And keep in mind that serious bad actors could probably block the update and continue using the good encryption and/or start using some other implementation.
For Windows to operate remotely is nothing new, we've been doing it for literally decades. The only things new here are A) it's being marketed to individuals and at a global level, instead of aimed at enterprises for use in-house. B) Microsoft is hoping to completely redefine what it means to have a PC by rent seeking. (I know, arguably it isn't "rent seeking" since Microsoft would be providing something of value. But it would be looking to get annual or even monthly payments for the life of the device instead of a single license fee. Who here is willing to believe that this will result in lower revenue?)
What I'm very curious to know is what will happen to the _massive_ subsidies Microsoft currently pays to the big OEMs. Once the OEMs and system integrators are reduced to appliance manufacturers, I think we'll see those subsidies disappear and profit margins for those companies to get even thinner.
From Microsofts point of view, this is a total win on several levels:
a) They get to increase and smooth out their revenue stream from the Windows UI
b) As others have noted, their development and support costs go way down.
c) They get their own captive audience for targeted ads.
d) They get to further develop their own walled garden of apps. Central control will undoubtedly be used to block arbitrary 3rd parties software.
e) They get to cut back or even end the payola that the big OEM's have been dependant on.
And the ironic thing? We can probably thank Google and Apple for this. Microsoft is just trying to combine the two business models those companies have proven to be very lucrative. I can't see any easy way for them to tackle Amazon's business model, it's just too different from dealing in software. Otherwise I'm sure they'd be doing that as well.
I also wonder, neat as this idea is, is there a clear advantage to doing this over a simple video recording shown on a conventional TV or hosted on the course's website for students to access on their own devices?
With that in mind, let me say that the duly appointed sysadmin or anyone from the IT staff can look at things without it being considered to "taint" evidence, otherwise we'd never be able to convict the sick (and stupid) people who take their computer into Best Buy for repair while leaving a folder full of child pornography.
What I was taught in school, and instructed to do at several jobs (including one internship at the provincial gov't level) was this: Do your job, which may include examining data a user has stored on their work issued equipment. IF you see anything that you think is illegal or even questionable, tell the boss and call the cops. Do not touch the machine any further. Do not even shut it down. The boss will then see to it that physical access to the device is restricted and the police will show up to handle the disconnection from the network and possible shut down. (did you know the police actually have a device that lets them fake a network connection and keep a desktop machine fully powered while driving it across town? I found the bit where they slipped a probe between plug and outlet to seamlessly transfer power source from wall to battery pack particularly fascinating).
The reason for this policy is three fold:
1) A lot of successful prosecutions, especially for illegal porn, rely on happen-stance. A tech stumbling over something, a creep forgets to log out and his wife finds it, whatever. As long as the discoverer can swear in court that they just stumbled across it and did nothing that would alter the data, then the data is still admissible.
2) The police just do NOT have the manpower to handle every "we fired John for surfing porn at work, can you come and check his machine to see if he did anything illegal as well?
3) The report of the discoverer is often the basis for probable cause and issuance of a warrant. If I didn't tell the police I saw something off, they would have no legal basis from which to proceed with an investigation.
One last thought: Even if a guy does surf or create child porn on the work issued equipment, while sufficient for conviction, it may not always be the sole source of such evidence. Any one making illegal porn on a work machine probably has more of it on his personal machine back home as well. (pedos are also notorious for amassing large collections) Thus, even if the evidence I uncover is not enough to convict on its own, it's still enough to justify warrants and investigation to collect more, better quality evidence.
I seem to recall this sort of deal making news many times over the last ten years or so. Not all are at the national level importance that a $10 Billion dollar plant would be. Some, perhaps even most are along the lines of call centre chooses to establish in %Smalltown because that municipality offered a better tax break or subsidy than %otherSmallTown.
What's always bothered me about these deals is that the numbers always seem to be bigger than the actual taxes would have been. Clearly the regions making these deals expect to a) make it up on the taxes they collect from the residents and b) be able to get re-elected based on the "X brought %Num jobs to our area" campaign platform. It goes well beyond "we'll charge you no taxes for the next 10 years because you're bringing jobs to the region". And in most cases, the expected tax revenue from employed residents also seems to be lower than the total of the subsidy. Meanwhile, the municipality still has to provide all the usual municipal services for the company out of its own pocket. (fire, sewer, water, street cleaning, schools, police services, garbage collection etc)
Since the expected revenue is usually still less than the subsidies or tax breaks being given, it is effectively a case of the government paying to help the incumbents get re-elected.
The other problem is, as I said, businesses choosing where to go by effectively an auction of tax breaks. Which ever region offers the most, gets the nod. The government ends up committed to these contracts, but quite often the business is not. The company can, and often does, pack up and move as soon as they find another deal that is better by enough margin to cover the relocation costs. The bigger the company, the more likely they have a whole team devoted to finding the most pliable governments to bargain with and then doing their best to play one off the other. And they often do this re-iteratively. So first they look at the states with the lowest operating costs, then do the bargaining where states are effectively competing with each other until they have a clear winner. Then the company approaches a short list of municipal governments and tries the same game, hoping for even more breaks and incentives.
Governments, whether municipal, county or state level, tend not to do this. At the state level, instead of the governor or state legislatures doing the negotiations,(as in the article) they should have teams (departments, committees what-have-you). These teams should be working with a more cooperative attitude towards other teams in other towns/counties/states. If an elected official chooses to bargain directly, he or she should be able to convince the populace that they would get a better deal than the team of specialists they already employ. (hopefully then in addition to getting votes because they brought jobs in, they could also *lose* votes if the deal went sour for any reason)
The situation is analogous to companies moving in the chase for lower minimum wages and then unions cooperating so that the business ends up paying the same regardless of which region they are on. As far as I know, however, in most areas municipal governments are not allowed to engage in collective bargaining because that is what the state is supposed to be doing for them. And of course, local governments don't want the state bargaining on their collective behalf for a lot of reasons.
I think the biggest reason they don't do this though is that jobs are somewhat portable, as is the labour to fill those jobs, but political regions and the elected positions associated with them are not. If a big company chooses to build a big plant on the other side of your state, people will start migrating there. That's how little towns become big towns, and how towns become ghost towns after all.
A better objection would be that the given rating is for an individual fibre, not for the resulting rope or cable made of it. How a rope is made (twist vs braided, core with kermantle vs plain etc) How the fibres are assembled into a rope makes a HUGE difference in the strength of the final product. (knots and bends also drastically reduce rope strength, but I doubt any space elevator will use knots to secure the cable at each end)
Because the individual fibres are roughly 1 cm long, the style of rope is likely to resemble ropes made of short natural fibres, like wool or cotton. Those are typically braided rather than twisted (yarn notwithstanding, that is not a strength focused application). If we were to make a rope that resembles common 1/4" braided cotton line but with carbon nano-tubes, how strong would the resulting rope be?
I can't be sure of my math, but here is my laymans very loose guess.
1) Cotton fibres are generally about 20 microns or 20,000 nanometers thick, while a single carbon nanotube is between .4 and 1 nanometer.
2) Thus, for a given diameter, a carbon nanotube based rope will contain 10 to 20 thousand times more fibres. I'll go with a conservative 10K to make the math more accessible to the general audience.
3) An individual cotton fibre has a tensile strength of 5 centinewtons, or very roughly 5 grams of material can be supported by a single fibre. For nanotubes, it seems that an individual fibre tensile strength of 50 GigaPascals is readily obtainable, which converts to well over 500,000,000 grams. Multiply that nanotube strength by 10K so we're continuing to compare similar diameters.
4) 1/4" braided cotton has a breaking strength of roughly 226 Kg. My theoretical carbon nanotube rope would be 500,000,000 times stronger or 1,130,000,000,000 grams which works out to 113,000 metric tonnes. (about 124,000 short tons in SI)
That means that a 1/4" braided cotton rope is suitable for hanging clothes on the line, but a 1/4" braided nanotube rope is suitable for picking up a Nimitz class aircraft carrier, fully equipped and manned.* Frankly, at that point the limiting factor isn't the strength of the rope, but the strength of the ship when suspended from a single point. Carbon nanotube rope vastly exceeds the strength of any material we can use to create the mounting points.
*assuming my math is correct and totally neglecting the impact of braiding carbon nanotubes, modulus of elasticity, attachment of the ropes to their respective loads and no doubt many more factors.
But such a product might be good news for the environment, since we'd have to preserve wet lands and numerous species of turtles in order to have an assured supply of turtles to send into orbit. We don't need to breed any huge numbers of turtles at any given time mind you. Sending up an infinite number of turtles is going to take an infinite amount of time (and energy) no matter how quickly we do it, might as well have a good, solid sustainable program instead of a crash priority thing.
Bigger things, like wrenches and fasteners are probably beyond the current ability of our elephant based interception technology. Further research is clearly needed to develop larger and more energy absorbing elephants.
First: In many areas, in addition to regulations describing the exact size, shape, colour and placement of road signage, there are also regulations defining who has the authority and responsibility to place such signs. (e.g. stops signs on public roads are the responsibility of a governing body such as the municipality or state, but stop signs in the grocery store parking lot are entirely unregulated and hence non-binding and often are not allowed to be the same size as regulation signs) You wouldn't have the authority to place such signs and would be in violation of the Highway Traffic Act or comparable legislation.
Second: If your sign does indeed cause erratic or undesirable behaviour in an autonomous vehicle that is arguably careless or even reckless driving, violations which can even lead to criminal charges depending on the severity. Mounting the sign well in advance arguably proves deliberate intent, so if any one dies because you made an autonomous vehicle behave unexpectedly, you could be found guilty of murder. (it's akin to saying "I don't want to hurt anyone, I certainly don't want anyone to die, but I'm going to go downtown and fire off my pistol in random directions just to prove that an armed citizen is likely to over-react and fire back)
Birds and small mammals can clearly be taught, they do learn and there are many examples of them provably engaging in reasoning thought. There are several bird species who not only recognize themselves, but can ask existential questions and even lie in order to deceive others. (The ability to lie is one of the hall marks of sentience because it implies that the liar has a mental model of the other person and how they think) What we're achieving these days in the labs is similar to the dumber birds. No sentience yet, but probably on the right path. Given the very different way deep learning algorithms operate, any thought these systems have is going to be as alien as cuttlefish. (who do engage in complex mental behaviour and will act in deceptive ways under certain conditions)
A key difficulty is that, as long as the thought processes are alien to the average layman, there will always be those who argue it is not real thought. In my opinion, we do not yet know what real thought actually is, so it is too soon for us to say that something that gives the appearance of thought isn't actually thought at all. (an important part of the Turing test. If it can convince an average person that it is intelligent, then it IS intelligent)
To be fair though, places like the Hanger Lane gyratory or the Swindon magic circle are 1) rare and 2) really tough for humans to navigate. The first time any human driver is confronted with a situation like that, they panic and cause confusion in the traffic flow because they struggle to understand the flow while simultaneously operating a motor vehicle. After a few times though them though, they get better at it. An autonomous vehicle would handle the environment decently its first time through, since it has the area mapped in its system. But it wouldn't get noticeably better after 3, 6 or a dozen times using that interchange the way a human can. In the meantime, the faster reflexes of a computer potentially mean that the autonomous vehicle is going to handle the erratic behaviour of human newbies better than the experienced human drivers (who are also more burdened with their expectations of what the other traffic is going to do).
If I were an engineer designing the sensor suite for an autonomous anything (which I don't even remotely have the skills to do) I would want to use a pretty wide range of wavelengths and either use a composite image to base my navigation on or run navigation computation in parallel on groups of closely related wavelengths (i.e. navigation based on visual wavelengths, a separate navigation for microwave/radar wavelengths and so on) and do route planning based on consensus between navigation methods.
The risk of missing one's exit is trivial. If you do miss it, you just go on to the next exit and back track. That's what we're supposed to do, that's what we're trained and tested on in many places. But thousands of drivers fuck it up every day. The risk of missing one's exit and dealing with backtracking is a pain in the ass and in the forefront of the drivers mind. The risk of causing an accident by erratic driving doesn't seem as immediate. We have a tendency to treat other vehicles as static objects that we are moving around somewhat slowly, rather than fast moving vehicles that we just happen to be a bit faster than. (doubly so when the other vehicle is a cargo vehicle in the slow lane.)
The problem is, once autonomous driving has a proven track record of being safer than human drivers in an overwhelming majority of situations, it is likely and perhaps even inevitable that legislation will be passed restricting humans right to drive on public roads. Right now, the big concern is that humans may be placed at undue risk by robotic use of the public roads. Once a sweeping majority of vehicles are autonomous though, the concern will be other people being placed at risk by a few unreliable human drivers who insist on sharing the roads. We'll start seeing measures like human drivers being limited to driving in good weather and/or daylight hours, cracking down on elderly drivers and drivers convicted of moving violations, humans being barred from certain lanes or roads and so on.
In your own example, half of the humans can't figure it out and you imply that the tourists likewise would have a problem with it. Granted, after a few minutes, everyone figures it out and starts taking turns. I don't think any autonomous vehicle currently being used or on the drawing boards could handle that situation, but that's level 3 and 4 autonomy we're talking about. Level 5 is some years away yet, yet by definition, should be able to handle that situation at least as well, as a human driver.
In addition, in the North American and European road signage standards, drivers are supposed to be alerted to the presence of a round-about ahead by signs. (there is some variation in what roundabout signs look like though) All the autonomous vehicle projects do try to look for road signage to inform the system of the path and conditions ahead.
What I'd like to see, and Waymo at least is well positioned to do, is also use the data from satellite imagery. I have no idea how challenging it would be to integrate that data into the autonomous system, but visual range satellite imagery updated daily and weather satellite imagery updated in 15 min increments would be damn useful for route planning. The satellites can see construction much further ahead than anyone or any thing on the ground (weather permitting of course) and it would useful to the long haul autonomous trucks to know that there is heavy snow in Maryland, three hours ahead of it, but clear roads going through West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Human truck drivers get that information manually, from dispatchers, fellow truckers on the CB and their favourite app on their cellphones. It only makes sense to try and provide that same functionality to autonomous vehicles.
There will come a time when these vehicles will be out there in the worst weather and road conditions imaginable. BUT, in the meantime, if they encounter weather or road conditions that tend to lead to accidents, they just stop. Humans will push on even when the level of risk is high because we suck at judging relative risks.
Someone posted about driving home in a blinding blizzard and questioned if an autonomous vehicle would even find the road, let alone get him home safely. I would say that if your ability to even see the road is compromised that badly because of the weather, you probably shouldn't have been driving in it.
1) There are a number of people out there who I think should not be driving. I don't consent to them sharing the road with me. But I am forced to accept that I must share the road with them because it is public infrastructure. Any member of the public who qualifies based on a pretty easy driving test is allowed to use the roads in a motor vehicle. Based on that idea, an autonomous vehicle that is demonstrably as safe or safer than your average driver in a road test should be allowed to access the public roads.
2) People with bikes, scooters, roller blades et al don't even need a license. It is akin to the concept of the commons, areas where anyone could bring their herds to pasture and/or people could cross freely on their way to somewhere else. Choosing to use that area when headed to my destination is tacit acceptance of the risk that I will step in manure or be confronted with animals who interfere with my progress. Likewise, choosing to use the public roads can be construed as acceptance that there is a certain irreducible level of risk in doing so. The question isn't whether autonomous vehicles represent a risk to the general public. It is whether it measurably increases the level of risk that is already there.
3) No matter how much closed track testing you do, no matter how complex and varied your test environment is, sooner or later it will be deployed on public roads. No matter how much preparation you have done. that initial deployment is still technically an experiment. As with drug testing, no matter how careful we are in the testing phase, there is still a chance that we will uncover one or more flaws, potentially serious flaws once it is available for general prescribing. What is important is having an effective process in place where those flaws can be quickly identified, confirmed and mitigated or solved.
While I believe that police and intelligence agencies certainly should be paying attention to our digital interactions and activities, I believe it needs to be more selective and carefully targeted than is usually the case. In IT security one fundamental principle is the least amount of access needed to do a job. The police surveillance equivalent would be only looking at a persons traffic after a warrant has been issued. But what seems to be done instead is getting the most sweeping powers they can get away with at the time legislation is passed, then pushing slightly beyond that limit on the down low afterwards. (see parallel construction)
An analogy that might be helpful is looking in trash bags. In many places, looking in your trash does not require a warrant because it is considered to be placed into the public domain. So, in theory, a police dept could set up an inspection station at the dump and household waste transfer stations looking at everyone's trash. From there, if anything of interest is found, they would then start to backtrack that item through the collection network to identify the house it came from. The biggest reason they don't do this I think is because the expense in capital equipment and manpower is just too high for the number of clues they would get. So for trash, our privacy is respected by the logistical concerns.
However, in digital surveillance, the equipment to do the searching is already there and paid for by the ISPs. There is far less manpower required, but what there is of it is split between the ISP and the police. All a cop needs to do is send a letter to the ISP, demanding logging of all traffic with a certain signature (IP address, web protocol, key words or destinations etc). One of their admins fires up his management console and starts the logging process. The difference in cost between tracking one individual of interest and tracking an entire community is trivial compared the the scaling costs of real world surveillance.
If we want the same level of privacy and protection from unreasonable search and seizure, we need to find a way (possibly a multi-prong approach) to make it hard for authorities to cast wide nets without a damn good reason. My suggestions are:
1) All interception done at the behest of law enforcement should require a warrant, not simply a letter.
2) All interception done at the behest of the intelligence community should require the approval of elected officials on a case by case basis.
3) regardless of who requests the surveillance, the ISP's should be paid a reasonable amount for their services.
4) All warrants and National Security Letters must be required to state the expiration date and any other limiting factors.
5) Authorities must be held accountable when cases of over-reach, misuse or abuse are identified. The penalties must be meaningful. Someone, possibly several someones have to lose their job, it has to be possible to put someone in jail if the abuse was severe enough. Corporations must be fined heavily enough to affect the bottom line.
6) It has to be possible for an ISP to refuse a request if they have reason to believe the request fails to meet the legal criteria. When that happens, they will record the requested data, but not hand it over to the police until the matter can be reviewed by a judge or impartial panel. Requiring people to cooperate even when police are in the wrong supports the authority of the legal system, but also gives people the classic "I was only following orders" excuse for participating in a crime.
As far as I know, the definition of a planet is not only being in orbit around a star, but also being large enough to form a sphere and large enough to clear its orbit. A minor planet is one that fails that last criteria. So it's my understanding that Pluto still falls under the category of planets, but is properly further defined as a minor planet.
I've seen some layman debate about whether a given body's ability to hold an atmosphere is relevant, but I don't think it is. Whether a body has an atmosphere isn't just a product of a body's size, but also its composition and distance from the star it orbits. The Goblin planet mentioned in the article likely doesn't have any atmosphere at all because it would be too cold for even gaseous hydrogen. I suspect that the unknown planet X may be equally cold.
2) Updating: an online manual (usually in .pdf format) is enormously easier and faster than having to send out updated copies of the printed manual.
3) Less waste: updated manuals or EOL products both mean obsolete printed material taking up warehouse space.
4) For many consumer products, use is obvious enough that manuals really aren't needed as much as they used to be. And where manual type information and instruction is still needed, they have been largely supplanted by user forums.
5) Even when manuals were common and very useful, a LOT of people didn't bother to read them anyway. (hence RTFM-Read The Fucking Manual)
This story reminds me of that. By definition, middle class means those people in the middle of the socio-economic ladder. How far up or down on the ladder you place the cut off points is subject to change by whomever is collating the data, but not the definition itself.
I can't be bothered to read the source, but it occurs to me that this sort of story could be generated simply by moving the lower boundary downwards while also not recalculating the median or mean. I am no mathematician, certainly not a statistician, but the article just strikes me as bad statistics in action.
1) A shit load of welded/soldered connections to manage, which probably adds to the resistance of the final pack by some non-trivial amount.
2) Lots of smaller cells, each individually packaged, then packaged in a larger module and that module incorporated into the final pack. That sounds like the ratio of weight of packaging to weight of electrochemical material is pretty bad.
The situation with the new larger 2170 batteries is a bit better, especially on the total current output. But the issue with so many connections and total weight of packaging still seems high.
Can any one give me technical reasons why small cylindrical cells like this would be superior to pouch or prismatic cells? I always assumed that a good car battery would resemble the form factor of car starter batteries, big rectilinear shapes putting out decent voltage but a shit-load of amps. The only advantage I can think of for the cylindrical format is ease of roll to roll manufacturing. But even there, unless there is some problem with bigger cells (dielectric breakdown at higher amps maybe?) a larger cylindrical form would be better wouldn't it?