its nice to see Microsoft enter the game

No, it's actually not. Microsoft-controlled hardware is a fantastic way to end up with a pile of EOL'd devices which have otherwise decent hardware after only a couple months.

Knowing Microsoft, there will likely be call-home functionality in the hardware itself, and booting anything other than approved, licensed OSes will be impossible. That's not good for anyone except Microsoft, particularly when you consider how good Microsoft is at security (they aren't) and the massive attack surface that'll allow. Get ready for your firmware to be botnet'd irreparably - because there won't be a way for a user to run anything on it.

It'd have been much better for them to have partnered with and provided funding with an organization like the Raspberry Pi Foundation to help create a platform that would be useful and inexpensive, while also remaining - at least somewhat - open.

If this is supposedly for the purposes of safety, as they state, then why would it make any sense to exempt "nonprofit" or government agencies? It's an operational cost, for the purposes of safety. FIN.

Don't be duplicitous.

I keep saying this.

Wait until the lawyers get involved after the first rash of poorly conceived executions. They'll get filthy rich, and then technical people will called in to clean up the mess.

Many companies will be lost and many golden parachutes given. It'll sour folks on AI for years.

The government will continue to use them, though.

The show "Chuck" gave people who worked in that business the air of being special secret service types. That was already long after Best Buy stopped being a useful store and was predatory, so the kind of person who works there tends to be a bit delusional and predatory.

(Perfect intersection with the reddit demographic, tbh.)

Yep. A device that indicates it's got a tracker to nearby thieves is 100% useless: they will find and remove or disable the tracker and keep the device. Likewise, to inhibit kidnapping.

I can't conceive a single use this has other than "I'm forgetful and don't know where my keys are". It's just not useful for what most people will want to use it for.

You can get the mechanisms necessary to track someone's vehicle for as little as about $25 and $5/month - and this has been true for a long time. From that, you can figure out where someone lives and works. If you know who they are and the building they live in, the rest is easy.

Crippling the #1 functionality you'd use the device for "for safety" is like selling guns that only shoot foam bullets.

It's not just packaging, of course - it's also the materials used to produce things.

So-called environmentalists seem to want it both ways. Plastics were touted as an inexpensive alternative to paper, and in many cases metal. They do fulfill that role: we're wasting a lot less metal on small, cheap parts previously made of things like pewter, tin, zinc, nickel, etc. because plastic is not only cheaper, but frequently mechanically better: more durability, lubricity, etc.

The same for packaging: it weighs a lot less to use bubbles of air (styrofoam, or the manufactured bubbles) than wadded up paper.

But it's a tradeoff, you've got to accept one or the other, or a combination of both. It's totally reasonable - now that we're aware of the problem of microplastics - to scale back the use of plastic and revert to renewable, compostable, reusable packaging materials. We've also advanced technology enough that we should be able to figure out a new, better way to use paper-based products (or hemp!) and reduce the overall amount of plastics used in general, things like (maybe):

- hot-extruded plastic-hemp-fiber lattices for packaging padding
- origami paper packaging
- a return of reusable shipping packages (eg. perhaps standard sized thin-clad aluminum boxes that can be reused).

There are tradeoffs for all of these, like in fuel use. That poses a logistics opportunity, which would of course cost a lot of money to innovate and progress. And that's OK: people need to stop having a fatalist, minimalist mindset and start thinking grandly again. Bridges crossing rivers instead of barges would have never happened if people simply tried to make more efficient barges. That's the mindset we've fallen into - making better barges - instead of trying to think of the next step of progress.

I don't know why they haven't converted over 100% to a paper-based packaging regime, honestly.

Paper-based envelopes, boxes, and packaging material (eg. usually just rolls of inexpensive paper that get wadded up) seems like a pretty reasonable way to ship things at a very moderate weight gain over plastic padded bags. (My wife has stopped using Amazon for a number of purchases due to repeatedly receiving liquids like hair conditioner in plastic bags, resulting in them getting consistently damaged in shipping due to crushing, anyway. You'd think they'd figure that one out...)

If you want to have your packaging material have more rigid volume (like the plastic air bags) and thus less weight, it makes sense to me to invest in the technology/machines to make oragami paper package filler - cheaply "knit" paper based void filler with more rigidity and less mass than simply wadding paper up. This seems like something easy to achieve and a fun project for a couple fluid dynamics mathematicians and structural engineers - well within the financial capabilities of a company like Amazon.

Why do you think it's fictional? Or are you simply being reactionary, and haven't fully evaluated the topic?

Cloud seeding has been a thing since the late 1950s. It is a common practice, and has caused a number of flooding disasters from miscalculation of effect, in both China and the US. It is a "well accepted" practice and numerous US states have state programs to do so (North Dakota being one that's more prominent about it, doing it regularly to help maintain crop moisture levels). There is now significantly elevated levels of aluminum in accumulated snowcaps from the practice, and identifying the planes doing it (officially or illicitly) from flight data has become a pastime for many.

You can't tell me you've not noticed planes flying overhead and, instead of leaving a contrail which rapidly dissipates, it leaves a trail which slowly disperses, eventually becoming a smog of hazy, unnatural grey cloud cover? It usually happens on clear days when the weather is anticipated to be pleasant for several days, by the weather forecasters.

Maybe you live in an urban area and don't go outdoors often. It's quite evident elsewhere.

Yep.

Internet is going to start to suck due to this, and costs will go up for the consumer, largely across the board. Media distribution will become more expensive for eg. netflix, and you'll have record profits for carriers. No, your local broadband connectivity will not improve as a result.

I'd have really expected better, less short sighted thinking from technical people. It's like they don't realize that every government agenda is labeled the exact opposite of what they do.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act - resulting in people getting served takedown notices for their own content from large copyright holders, just because.
The Patriot Act - clearly bombing other countries for corporate profit and feeling up grandma at the airport helps with freedom.
Affordable Care Act - is your healthcare more affordable now than 10 years ago? It's almost twice the price, with half the service? Hmm
No Child Left Behind Act - You mean to say kids are even more likely to be illiterate now than before? I wonder why...
The Equality Act - which gives highly politicized, sectarian preferential treatment to preferred minority groups?

You could keep going. Net Neutrality is the same line of deception. Folks here on slashdot used to be smarter about this, and the last time this was heavily discussed on here, they were (rightfully) opposed.

Guess this is a shallow wading pool, now.

Nope. There are just as many games this year, as last year, and the year before - even more, really, because games don't expire and they keep making them.

I suspect it has more to do with a worsening economy, and people strapped for time as they grind for the extra money to make rent.

Wait, that actually works? Goddamn. That's one of the last things i'd have expected. Thanks! lol

The batteries failing in November the first year we moved in, causing the furnace to stop running, indicated that this isn't true.

Many of us on this website dream of a day when humans no longer have to perform backbreaking or mind-numbing labor. Our spirits are assaulted whenever we hear politicians hatefully brag about how they will create more jobs instead of leading us toward the Star Trekkian paradise of less soul-crushing or injurious toil.

I thought Amazon was one of the few good guys, working to help create a world of 100% unemployment. I know it's only an ideal to strive for (we'll likely never free everyone from having to work) but they seemed to be trying.

How many times have we been promised "I'll replace you with a script" or "AI is coming for your job?" Empty words. Lies. To find out they were secretly saddling innocent humans with computers' jobs, is an insult to both of our races.

That, and the compiler really is slow. Understandable given the extra work it does, but I am imagining this as a productivity effect: https://xkcd.com/303/

Which have you found missing? So far everything I've looked for has had a crate for it, though of course not things with the breadth of Boost or the depth of Eigen.