You have a very valid point. For their light sensor method to work they are having to implement shadow boarding (laying out everything in a predefined pace). If a shadow board is done correctly then a quick glance at it will tell you exactly what is missing (high contrast colors between the background/foreground/tool in place)

While i see the value in having a "smart" toolbox, i for one would want it to be able to give me the inventory along with helping me find the tool as you say. "digitizing" the same visual information i get from shadow-boarding just doesn't justify it for me.

So to chime in on the whole Tech owning their own tools. I hate to say this but that works fine for Auto Mechanics because they are working on random people's cars. If the Tech doesn't have the right size wrench he'll jsut use pliers or an adjustable wrench, face and corners be damned, won't matter not their problem. Same with a torque wrench, let them just tap it a few times, or use the air gun.

Move over to the industrial world and a real manufacturing/process plant where over torquing something can stop production, or damaging the bolt can cause delays in repair (lost of production) and we have a real problem. Most plants do not allow Techs to bring in their own tools. I know Plants that have banned adjustable wrenches (if you don't' have the right tool for the job don't' do it mentality)..

All that being said in real industrial settings, tool control is a big deal. The more sterile and regulated the environment the more important it can be. See the link below where it was a contractor failing to do a tool count that did some real damage.

http://defensetech.org/2012/01...

Tool counting is a basic thing, and should always happen. Things like this tool box can be used for good and bad, it all depends on the culture of the company and people using it. Sure they could use it to bash people over the head for loosing tools, but they could also use it as a safe guard/helper/checker to help the tech out in doing a tool count to make the work go quicker. I know places where this would be seen as yet another big brother in the plant, and places where they would love to have this because it would make their job easier and quicker. Its all about culture.

Personally i love the simplicity of it, although i will say that you have to have a solid 5S/Shadow boarding in place to use in place light sensors like this. It would work very well for specialized tool sets, but not your run of the mill mechanics toolbox. For that cheap RFID tags/single box reader might be more appropriate. (and could also be used for locating the tools if lost in the equipment).

Trust me that the cost of something like this is a drop in the bucket compared to the costs of real specialty tools, and the impact to production/operations when a tool is lost.

Considering the terrible back luck all space agencies seem to have had with deploying tethers (getting stuck, snapping, etc) - they plan on deploying 4 per satellite? I hope there are contingency plans or someone really thought long and hard about possible failure modes and engineered around them.

It would be nice if someone created a not for profit charity based facebook like alternative. Use the same model to sell advertising, etc.. but send most of the proceeds to the charities the users select. Something similar to smile.amazon.com but not for profit like craigslist.org

For some reason this reminded me of the "Church of Pong" in Neuromancer.

>> There are no C++ public/private protections and all
functions, even secondary ones in the kernel, can be called. ...so literally everything has global scope? ..No defined interfaces anywhere and changing the implementation of _anything_ has a high probability of breaking _everything_?

Good luck with ever getting a robust system, or even finding anyone with an actual clue that would want to contribute (a.k.a. waste) their time trying.

open source? You'd better re-read your TOS. It belongs to Facebook now, most certainly not open source.

I'm not going to try this. What if "god" suddenly decides to erase all my data?

Two words: gun camera.

They started using gun cameras in WWII to look at the effectiveness of the aircraft, but you could use them on police firearms to hold police accountable when they draw their weapons. Here the main problem is the he-said they-said nature of the event. We don't know what happened because there is no recorded account of it. Using off-the-shelf technology, you could install a small iPhone style camera and microphone that activates whenever the safety of the weapon is taken off and enough storage for 10-15 minutes of footage and audio. The recorded footage would then be available to establish whether the officer was justified in drawing their weapon and, if fired, whether the firing of the weapon was justified. If the officer committed murder, we'd know. If it was justifiable, we'd know. Either way, we wouldn't have rioting in the streets right now.

A friend who teaches economics was posting about this the other day. Her contention is that for all of history until the 1800's, it was fairly easy to just leave and go find some subsistence environment, so if you wanted workers you had to enslave them and force them to work for you. Now that it's not generally possible for most people to find environments for subsistence lifestyles, there's no longer any need to enslave people. They have to find jobs to survive. At that crossover, work stopped being something the lowest class of society did under force, and became something that was considered a privilege.

Not only that, but as I recall, the movie showed the police having flying cars, and everyone else on foot or bicycle because they were poor.

It's worth remembering that the protests started out peacefully. It was the police who escalated things by responding to peaceful protests with armored vehicles, police in body armor carrying assault rifles, launching tear gas at people exercising their constitutionally protected rights to freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. You have a police force that has abdicated its responsibility to protect and serve the population, and is instead acting like an occupying army and oppressing the community they are sworn to help. And this is after years of targeting the black community. If you act like an occupying force, it's hardly surprising if people start acting like insurgents.

Everyone already knows this, whether they want to admit it or not.

The real question is will the US gov ever actually do anything to benefit US workers, or are they already too far under the thumbs of the hi tech companies?

Thankyou. Mine too.

IMHO, the best car is one with NO computer tech or LCD screens in it.

" work a farm or the oil fields of North Dakota"

You've been in the city too long. Go 20 miles outsize of any city center and the only option for reliable, time-efficient transportation is a car. Inside any of the top 20-30 cities - sure, getting around the city is going to be more efficient on public or hired transportation. That covers about 7000-8000 square miles of the 3 million square miles that makes up the lower 48. By population, it's only about 30 million of the 330 million US residents.

For the vast majority of the US personal automobiles are, and will remain, a necessity for the typical American lifestyle.