The only time I even think about the three digits on the back of my card is when I'm buying something from an online storefront. Paypal is becoming an increasingly-available option that puts an extra layer between the store and my card numbers. Apple Pay is an option now as well, and I wouldn't be surprised if Android Pay follows suit (if it hasn't already!).
That's a lot of middlemen taking a share of the payments pie, and all of them are offering more security and peace-of-mind than a physical piece of plastic. Makes sense to try and gain a bit more trust.
It isn't enough to just preposition supplies you need to develop and transport a highly automated industrial base using technology that does not yet exist to create the things people will need to survive.
We've been building cell phones for a couple decades now. We've been building vehicles for over a century. Both are massive industrial systems that (nowadays) rely heavily on automation. Despite all the capital, research, and technology that's been put to the processes, and despite the potential profits to be reaped, in the end we still have humans on the assembly lines.
The vision Musk is offering, whether you buy into it or not (and I don't) is to get to Mars quickly, with the goal of setting up a colony that can later become self-sustaining. The important work here would be building infrastructure that would allow for that future decades down the line. Humanity has a lot of experience in building infrastructure in remote, hostile environments that are reliant on outside sources for human survival. (as it so happens, I've worked at one, up in the Arctic) We've built research stations in the Antarctic, and we've even kicked around on the ISS for a little while now. The technology we have today, and could develop in the 10-15 year timeline given, is absolutely able to give us a Mars colony.
That's not to say that research needs to be put aside, or that the reliability and safety (good lord, Musk's tenuous relationship with safety) of the supplies being sent up shouldn't be tested beyond all reasonable means, or that these things shouldn't be planned up the wazoo. But the core idea is to get a colony built, quick and dirty. Human beings are smart, flexible, and- gruesomely- cheap. Even with all the impetus behind it, we're still a long ways out from having machines that build machines here, let alone remotely millions of kilometers away.
Getting a foothold on Mars is simply easier and less costly if we let people do the work. With a few bulldozers brought along for good measure.
But just here me out: data is the new joke format. It gets old fast and you immediately want something new and relevant that will give you an edge over the competition.
But it turns out that data is more like oranges: once you strip away the rough outer layers you've got something wonderful but you still have to divide it up or squeeze it.
People want to share, though. These things are going to be more successful than Glass because:
1. They're cheaper than Glass ever was
2. They're ugly, but ugly in a way that screams "bad fashion" instead of "I'm a cyber-creep"
3. Snapchat is a massively-successful social network platform built around images and video. Google had... uh...
I think we will see (and should see!) a lot of the same issues that were raised with Glass be raised with these. But with the Spectacles there's at least a clear-cut use case, rather than "why is that guy with the thing Garrus wears staring at me"? People are still gonna get punched, but I can see a lot of people more willing to let these slide, too.
Either way, the 10sec restriction makes those glasses a rather limited gadget without much use outside of Snapchat.
Since they're entirely built with Snapchat as the exclusive use case, that's not really a design flaw.
You've got an interesting point with the 3rd-person versus 1st-person experience, but it's not impossible to make engaging 1st-person content, assuming you're doing things a person would want to watch in the first place. Google Glass was an abomination, but some of the fashion-shoot footage that came out of the early demos was still pretty fun to watch. If you're out at a party with friends (who I might also be following on Snapchat), that's something. Ditto climbing mountains or hitting up beaches or even more benign things like boarding flights. Social, personal, vicarious living.
The source is from 2009 (about the same time the book I linked to was published), so who knows how things have spread, but yeah I could be wrong. At least overstating things. (Of course I read your reply after I write my other one. Oh well.)
Why have you 'infantilized' an entire county full of people. Kind of a bigoted thing to do.
Sure, I'm painting in broad strokes that hardly means I'm infantilizing an entire country when I point out that it's been governed by a cult of personality that favours severe punishment and intense propaganda, and has for doing so for literally generations. I even provided a source entirely composed of first-hand accounts. People are suffering in North Korea and they're not oblivious to their own suffering, but that doesn't mean dropping USB keys into the country will suddenly convince them that things are wildly better elsewhere.
Why would Koreans be any different?
I never said they would. I said that the North Korean government has worked incredibly hard to brainwash them, that the lifestyle for the majority of the country is significantly different- and poorer- from South Korea's, and that it's going to take more than what amounts to flyers saying "everything is great over here!" to change their minds.
The best nonviolent way of breaking North Korea is to let the common people know how the other Koreans live.
The big thing is, at least per the book Nothing To Envy is that the North Korean people have been under such a prolonged and intense campaign of propaganda that to the average North Korean even nothing but completely factual details of everyday life in South Korea would come off as fanciful and ridiculous.
You expect them to believe that most people eat daily what they'd consider a sumptuous Day of the Sun feast, or that they can speak freely to anyone anywhere in the world instantaneously without concern for government agents listening in on every word? Or that they could wear clothes that aren't made of vinylon?
Twitter-the-service is an amazing resource for advertising information. People don't just "like" (I mean star- no wait I mean heart) things on Twitter: a huge part of it is active engagement with topics that can be mined from all sorts of angles. It's a less-passive Facebook, and it's a better and more current indicator of what's trending than anywhere else on the web.
Twitter-the-company is in rough shape, and while I wouldn't say it's an easy job it seems pretty clear that it's largely been a management issue since, oh, the very beginning. No clear vision of what Twitter is, coupled with real shoddy use of the information had at hand. It might not be able to directly make money (or, at least, a huge amount of money) in someone else's hands, but it could be incredibly useful as a data resource that drives profits elsewhere.
Is there any particular reason these shingles are less efficient? The only reasons I can think of being less efficient are because 1. they inevitably have less area than mounted panels, and capture less power and 2. they're reliant on the angle of the roof, meaning less-than-ideal positioning. But are they actually different in any other respects?
For what it's worth I'm basically envisioning shingles with smaller PV panels in the center of them.
Sony's letting developers prioritize what they do with the PS4 Pro's hardware. I strongly doubt any AAA games will be targeting 4K rendering, but who knows. The Pro is definitely capable of rendering in 4K*, though, since Rez Infinite is already promising exactly that.
*if we want to split hairs, the current PS4 is theoretically capable of rendering and outputting at 4K, since it supports HDMI 2.0a and isn't a total slouch hardware-wise, but the results wouldn't actually be good.
3. the apple...car? Tesla will easily beat them to the market for a high performance luxury supercar with "ludicrous" speed showing up as an upgrade. nissan, bmw, and toyota already have award winning design and functionality thats not only ChaDeMO compatible but affordable for anyone whos lunch didnt happen on a yacht. Google, Uber, Lyft, and a host of other companies have already spent more time and money developing and testing the self driving car. If apple seriously thinks that somehow buying a supercar company with no experience in fully electric vehicles is somehow going to help them its difficult to see how. It would have been smarter for them to just buy an existing company, but im sure Tesla flat-out refused.
I largely agree with you here, but there's a lot of nuance that can't be ignored. Apple can't possibly be close to Google or Uber when it comes to self-driving car on-the-road research. Uber's got a massive advantage in solving the traveling salesman problem of autonomous, on-demand cars that Google and Apple don't have. Google and Apple have mapping and software experience that Uber is woefully behind on (all three have huge leads on traditional car manufacturers in software). Apple has manufacturing expertise that Uber and Google don't, but traditional car companies do. Tesla's tackling all these problems at once and breaking new ground but bleeding money as it does. There are lots of opportunities for any of these companies to slip in and take the lead in the future.
McLaren might be a supercar company, but they're also an automotive technology company. Apple loves to buy (relatively) small companies that give them key pieces to a larger puzzle, and it's perfectly reasonable to assume that a supercar company's technology group has hardware experience that can be put towards aspects of future cars. What did AuthenTec know about building a phone? Probably nothing. But TouchID is a pillar of iOS these days.
At any rate, these are rumours about an unannounced (but worst-kept-secret) product that may or may not be totally reimagined before it's ever made officially public. God knows what's going on behind the scenes.
Tesla's skating to where the puck will be: completely autonomous electric cars. They've got "electric" down pretty well, but their choices for the "autonomous" part are to either wait for their competitors to catch up and settle on standards, or take the risk to be the first, blaze the path, and reap the rewards.
That they're moving too fast and unsafely is a fair argument to make, but it's also fair to say that this is sound long-term business strategy. Assuming they don't get sued into oblivion first.
Current rumours are suggesting that Apple's car plans are undergoing a shake-up. It's entirely possible they'll ditch making a whole car themselves, and work at just a few major components that others can integrate.
If that's the case, buying McLaren counterintuitively makes a lot of sense: they do serious design and component work, and having that experience would aid Apple's efforts. Apple's not planning on releasing a million+ dollar car*. Their products (first-gen Apple Watch Edition aside) are expensive but priced to be aspirational, not unattainable.
*Apple-branded, anyway. If they do buy McLaren they could still release new, hyper-expensive cars under that marque
The new ceramic Watch is listed as "edition", but the gold and rose gold edition watches haven't made the Series 2 cut, at least per Apple's website. Presumably they didn't sell well enough to be worth upgrading, since the new ceramic model is, despite being "edition", only costing a couple hundred more than the priciest stainless watches.
As for upgrade plans Apple offers, if you're buying the solid gold Watches, either 1. you can afford to take the hit or 2. you're a wealthy and significant-enough tastemaker that Apple will directly deal with you. They made a solid gold Watch band for Beyonce, after all.
Very. I didn't wear a watch when I went to bed before, and the Apple Watch isn't changing that habit*. I have a cheap little charging stand that lets me use the watch as a bedside alarm clock while it's charging, so it's still useful even when I don't have it on. Charging overnight, like I do with my phone and laptop, is a non-issue of an inconvenience.
*David "Underscore" Smith made the Sleep++ app and detailed how to "time" your charging to let you wear the watch nearly 24/7. I gave it a try for a few weeks, but I didn't find the benefits worth the hassle.
I'm eagerly waiting for the day when phone manufacturers (not just Apple) decide that a clear name is all they need for their phones and they can drop the numbers not directly tied to the model. Car manufacturers use years, why not electronics?
That jump takes Tencent narrowly past the market cap of China Mobile, and into the same premier league of public corporations as U.S. tech giants Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. The Chinese e-commerce group Alibaba is not far behind...
Make sure your company's name starts with the letter A.
Slashdot Mirror
The only time I even think about the three digits on the back of my card is when I'm buying something from an online storefront. Paypal is becoming an increasingly-available option that puts an extra layer between the store and my card numbers. Apple Pay is an option now as well, and I wouldn't be surprised if Android Pay follows suit (if it hasn't already!).
That's a lot of middlemen taking a share of the payments pie, and all of them are offering more security and peace-of-mind than a physical piece of plastic. Makes sense to try and gain a bit more trust.
It isn't enough to just preposition supplies you need to develop and transport a highly automated industrial base using technology that does not yet exist to create the things people will need to survive.
We've been building cell phones for a couple decades now. We've been building vehicles for over a century. Both are massive industrial systems that (nowadays) rely heavily on automation. Despite all the capital, research, and technology that's been put to the processes, and despite the potential profits to be reaped, in the end we still have humans on the assembly lines.
The vision Musk is offering, whether you buy into it or not (and I don't) is to get to Mars quickly, with the goal of setting up a colony that can later become self-sustaining. The important work here would be building infrastructure that would allow for that future decades down the line. Humanity has a lot of experience in building infrastructure in remote, hostile environments that are reliant on outside sources for human survival. (as it so happens, I've worked at one, up in the Arctic) We've built research stations in the Antarctic, and we've even kicked around on the ISS for a little while now. The technology we have today, and could develop in the 10-15 year timeline given, is absolutely able to give us a Mars colony.
That's not to say that research needs to be put aside, or that the reliability and safety (good lord, Musk's tenuous relationship with safety) of the supplies being sent up shouldn't be tested beyond all reasonable means, or that these things shouldn't be planned up the wazoo. But the core idea is to get a colony built, quick and dirty. Human beings are smart, flexible, and- gruesomely- cheap. Even with all the impetus behind it, we're still a long ways out from having machines that build machines here, let alone remotely millions of kilometers away.
Getting a foothold on Mars is simply easier and less costly if we let people do the work. With a few bulldozers brought along for good measure.
But just here me out: data is the new joke format. It gets old fast and you immediately want something new and relevant that will give you an edge over the competition.
But now we know that data is the new web article: if you do a lot of digging you can find nuggets of vital importance in even the blandest drivel!
But it turns out that data is more like oranges: once you strip away the rough outer layers you've got something wonderful but you still have to divide it up or squeeze it.
It goes down smooth and tastes great but if you get more than you can handle you end up driving your car through a house.
People want to share, though. These things are going to be more successful than Glass because:
1. They're cheaper than Glass ever was
2. They're ugly, but ugly in a way that screams "bad fashion" instead of "I'm a cyber-creep"
3. Snapchat is a massively-successful social network platform built around images and video. Google had... uh...
I think we will see (and should see!) a lot of the same issues that were raised with Glass be raised with these. But with the Spectacles there's at least a clear-cut use case, rather than "why is that guy with the thing Garrus wears staring at me"? People are still gonna get punched, but I can see a lot of people more willing to let these slide, too.
Either way, the 10sec restriction makes those glasses a rather limited gadget without much use outside of Snapchat.
Since they're entirely built with Snapchat as the exclusive use case, that's not really a design flaw.
You've got an interesting point with the 3rd-person versus 1st-person experience, but it's not impossible to make engaging 1st-person content, assuming you're doing things a person would want to watch in the first place. Google Glass was an abomination, but some of the fashion-shoot footage that came out of the early demos was still pretty fun to watch. If you're out at a party with friends (who I might also be following on Snapchat), that's something. Ditto climbing mountains or hitting up beaches or even more benign things like boarding flights. Social, personal, vicarious living.
The source is from 2009 (about the same time the book I linked to was published), so who knows how things have spread, but yeah I could be wrong. At least overstating things. (Of course I read your reply after I write my other one. Oh well.)
Why have you 'infantilized' an entire county full of people. Kind of a bigoted thing to do.
Sure, I'm painting in broad strokes that hardly means I'm infantilizing an entire country when I point out that it's been governed by a cult of personality that favours severe punishment and intense propaganda, and has for doing so for literally generations. I even provided a source entirely composed of first-hand accounts. People are suffering in North Korea and they're not oblivious to their own suffering, but that doesn't mean dropping USB keys into the country will suddenly convince them that things are wildly better elsewhere.
Why would Koreans be any different?
I never said they would. I said that the North Korean government has worked incredibly hard to brainwash them, that the lifestyle for the majority of the country is significantly different- and poorer- from South Korea's, and that it's going to take more than what amounts to flyers saying "everything is great over here!" to change their minds.
Because Americans are clamouring for 29$ phones with mesh networking software installed?
The best nonviolent way of breaking North Korea is to let the common people know how the other Koreans live.
The big thing is, at least per the book Nothing To Envy is that the North Korean people have been under such a prolonged and intense campaign of propaganda that to the average North Korean even nothing but completely factual details of everyday life in South Korea would come off as fanciful and ridiculous.
You expect them to believe that most people eat daily what they'd consider a sumptuous Day of the Sun feast, or that they can speak freely to anyone anywhere in the world instantaneously without concern for government agents listening in on every word? Or that they could wear clothes that aren't made of vinylon?
App.net- I mean Ello- I mean Peach- I mean Yo- I mean... well, it's finally their time to shine!
Twitter-the-service is an amazing resource for advertising information. People don't just "like" (I mean star- no wait I mean heart) things on Twitter: a huge part of it is active engagement with topics that can be mined from all sorts of angles. It's a less-passive Facebook, and it's a better and more current indicator of what's trending than anywhere else on the web.
Twitter-the-company is in rough shape, and while I wouldn't say it's an easy job it seems pretty clear that it's largely been a management issue since, oh, the very beginning. No clear vision of what Twitter is, coupled with real shoddy use of the information had at hand. It might not be able to directly make money (or, at least, a huge amount of money) in someone else's hands, but it could be incredibly useful as a data resource that drives profits elsewhere.
Is there any particular reason these shingles are less efficient? The only reasons I can think of being less efficient are because 1. they inevitably have less area than mounted panels, and capture less power and 2. they're reliant on the angle of the roof, meaning less-than-ideal positioning. But are they actually different in any other respects?
For what it's worth I'm basically envisioning shingles with smaller PV panels in the center of them.
Sony's letting developers prioritize what they do with the PS4 Pro's hardware. I strongly doubt any AAA games will be targeting 4K rendering, but who knows. The Pro is definitely capable of rendering in 4K*, though, since Rez Infinite is already promising exactly that.
*if we want to split hairs, the current PS4 is theoretically capable of rendering and outputting at 4K, since it supports HDMI 2.0a and isn't a total slouch hardware-wise, but the results wouldn't actually be good.
Most games are going to upscale, but if a less demanding game can be run at true UHD/4K resolutions, Sony will let them.
Meanwhile most console gamers have already picked a side and will probably just upgrade whichever system they've already invested in.
3. the apple...car? Tesla will easily beat them to the market for a high performance luxury supercar with "ludicrous" speed showing up as an upgrade. nissan, bmw, and toyota already have award winning design and functionality thats not only ChaDeMO compatible but affordable for anyone whos lunch didnt happen on a yacht. Google, Uber, Lyft, and a host of other companies have already spent more time and money developing and testing the self driving car. If apple seriously thinks that somehow buying a supercar company with no experience in fully electric vehicles is somehow going to help them its difficult to see how. It would have been smarter for them to just buy an existing company, but im sure Tesla flat-out refused.
I largely agree with you here, but there's a lot of nuance that can't be ignored. Apple can't possibly be close to Google or Uber when it comes to self-driving car on-the-road research. Uber's got a massive advantage in solving the traveling salesman problem of autonomous, on-demand cars that Google and Apple don't have. Google and Apple have mapping and software experience that Uber is woefully behind on (all three have huge leads on traditional car manufacturers in software). Apple has manufacturing expertise that Uber and Google don't, but traditional car companies do. Tesla's tackling all these problems at once and breaking new ground but bleeding money as it does. There are lots of opportunities for any of these companies to slip in and take the lead in the future.
McLaren might be a supercar company, but they're also an automotive technology company. Apple loves to buy (relatively) small companies that give them key pieces to a larger puzzle, and it's perfectly reasonable to assume that a supercar company's technology group has hardware experience that can be put towards aspects of future cars. What did AuthenTec know about building a phone? Probably nothing. But TouchID is a pillar of iOS these days.
At any rate, these are rumours about an unannounced (but worst-kept-secret) product that may or may not be totally reimagined before it's ever made officially public. God knows what's going on behind the scenes.
Tesla's skating to where the puck will be: completely autonomous electric cars. They've got "electric" down pretty well, but their choices for the "autonomous" part are to either wait for their competitors to catch up and settle on standards, or take the risk to be the first, blaze the path, and reap the rewards.
That they're moving too fast and unsafely is a fair argument to make, but it's also fair to say that this is sound long-term business strategy. Assuming they don't get sued into oblivion first.
Current rumours are suggesting that Apple's car plans are undergoing a shake-up. It's entirely possible they'll ditch making a whole car themselves, and work at just a few major components that others can integrate.
If that's the case, buying McLaren counterintuitively makes a lot of sense: they do serious design and component work, and having that experience would aid Apple's efforts. Apple's not planning on releasing a million+ dollar car*. Their products (first-gen Apple Watch Edition aside) are expensive but priced to be aspirational, not unattainable.
*Apple-branded, anyway. If they do buy McLaren they could still release new, hyper-expensive cars under that marque
The new ceramic Watch is listed as "edition", but the gold and rose gold edition watches haven't made the Series 2 cut, at least per Apple's website. Presumably they didn't sell well enough to be worth upgrading, since the new ceramic model is, despite being "edition", only costing a couple hundred more than the priciest stainless watches.
As for upgrade plans Apple offers, if you're buying the solid gold Watches, either 1. you can afford to take the hit or 2. you're a wealthy and significant-enough tastemaker that Apple will directly deal with you. They made a solid gold Watch band for Beyonce, after all.
Very. I didn't wear a watch when I went to bed before, and the Apple Watch isn't changing that habit*. I have a cheap little charging stand that lets me use the watch as a bedside alarm clock while it's charging, so it's still useful even when I don't have it on. Charging overnight, like I do with my phone and laptop, is a non-issue of an inconvenience.
*David "Underscore" Smith made the Sleep++ app and detailed how to "time" your charging to let you wear the watch nearly 24/7. I gave it a try for a few weeks, but I didn't find the benefits worth the hassle.
I'm eagerly waiting for the day when phone manufacturers (not just Apple) decide that a clear name is all they need for their phones and they can drop the numbers not directly tied to the model. Car manufacturers use years, why not electronics?
That jump takes Tencent narrowly past the market cap of China Mobile, and into the same premier league of public corporations as U.S. tech giants Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. The Chinese e-commerce group Alibaba is not far behind...
Make sure your company's name starts with the letter A.