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Comment Re:What is the point of this story? (Score 1) 147

Because that's how Apple's PR works, and always will. Even the monumental iPhone was just rumors and guesses until the unveiling at their keynotes. This is how you get more and more normal people to watch your famous keynote, not just geeks.

If for example Apple would give a list with all the products/specs they would present at the keynote, would anyone watch it? Probably just fans, but it would be pretty boring.

But since you have no clue, you want to watch it, and this way they can and will present it to you as being something revolutionary, and this way people focus on what Apple wants people to focus on, not on what you would usually focus on from articles (things like specs, size, bla bla).

Apple PR at it's best, always worked, always will...

Comment Re:Corporate speak (Score 1, Informative) 373

If you think there are no more homogeneous populations you clearly haven't visited North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia, northern europe (norway, finland, all that) lately...they are 99.99% homogeneous. The places you speak of are probably capitalistic global countries like Singapore, Shanghai, US of A, Canada, and all others, where local traditions don't exist, and this mix of all cultures from all over the world who are there because of the economic situation.

Comment Re:No explanation for why though? (Score 5, Insightful) 254

One answer could be because now threats are mostly targeted at the biggest weakness: humans. Phishing, scams, and all that are much more profitable and incredibly hard to detect programmatically. Legit websites are hacked daily and injected phishing sites and then removed fast.

They all rely pretty much on human stupidity and ignorance, and that is very hard to stop...

Comment Re:Mercedes (Score 1) 360

You seriously consider 200k or 300k to be a lot of kilometers in 10/20 years? I did that in a normal 30k car (when new) with no problem at all. You are right though, and that was my point too, a Tesla will last longer simply because of simpler parts/functionality. You don't have to be a fan to understand that. Still they are way too expensive, but when the go under the 50k mark, and then under the 30k mark, the game is pretty much over...

Comment Mercedes (Score 1) 360

I think everybody is missing the point of how dangerous Tesla really is to traditional car makers.
Mercedes is still Mercedes, let's not try to fight that argument, they build anything that has 4 wheels, from F1 to sedans, trucks, vans, you name it, they have it.

Tesla is a disruptive technology, search for the book called innovator's dilemma, how a company which is always listening to it's customers, fails to risk anything new can go irrelevant very fast. Mercedes won't build electric cars for the simple fact it will cannibalize it's entire range once people realize they don't need it.

Let's take the big one, range: The truth is that 90% of S Class owners will rarely need more than 250 miles daily. Let's be honest, if you have an S Class, you would likely travel by plane/first class, not sit 10 hours in an S Class, as comfortable as it is, it's a matter of time lost.
And Mercedes knows that very well, BMW does too, and everybody in the high range. They basically offer something you will rarely use.

Second, servicing, yes, let's be honest, we can't compare 100 years worth of time constructing a dealer/service network worldwide, with Tesla which is 7 years old. But Tesla can fight this by simply not having hardware failures. When you battery fails, you go in, they replace it, and you will have a 5 or 10 year old car which is still functional as it was in the first day. And Mercedes knows that too. Try buying a 2001 S Class and see how it works, and then try to find parts for it.

The problem for Mercedes is, that the complexity they need to do all that fancy night vision/pedestrian detecting/road holding/autopilot things is mostly software, and it's by far much easier to implement in an electric car where you have no gearbox, no liquid fuel to control, no camshaft, nothing, just basic electric software controlled controllers like in traditional robots. And let's be honest, the IT revolution did not come from Germany, it came from Silicon Valley, and if anyone has the power to do advanced software/hardware automated systems, it's them. Germans are far better at following and improving rather than innovating. They just like to be safe, stable and not risk anything.

Tesla has still a long way to go, but once the price go down, it would take the world by storm, because you simply rarely need more than 250 miles range daily, and the feeling of having a full tank each morning is simply unbeatable by the traditional dirty/smelly gas station experience.

Comment Re:Still a ways to go (Score 1) 131

Why is everybody forgetting about how much of that energy an ICE Gas engine converts into motion? Roughly 15% ? A diesel goes up to 25% if i remember correctly. An electric engine is easily over 90% even 95%. I agree, the electric solution is still far from being better right now, but the fight is NOT only about energy/kg it's also about energy/actual useful movement too. It's a balance of both these things, makes no point to have 100 gallons of gas if you're gonna throw out 85% of it out.

Comment This is not an evolution (Score 1) 237

The real evolution will be when you will be able to control every system from the steering wheel, without seeing, and receiving confirmation inside the dashboard, not even on the windshield (HUD style) it could really confuse you. It's not an easy job, I already have something very rudimentary in my Peugeot 308, behind the steering wheel I have a control with 5 buttons and a wheel, which allows me to control a lot of functions very easy and fast. I rarely use the controls on the stereo itself. Something like that would be the future. And no, not touch interface, something physical, recognizable just by touching, and easy to manipulate when the car is jumping around.

Comment Re:I'm calling the future of gaming (Score 0) 96

Actually, the problem was not that users wouldn't buy new games, the problem is that with this way gaming companies actually have to work harder and focus on things that really make a difference: the engine, the software itself. Before that they would just change the content, and rerelease the same thing. Rockstar did that with Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice city, and San Andreas. They were basically content mods. Yes they added new small things, but in the end it was just new content. Now you can't do that, because soon modders will have the resources and skills to create content, and since creativity is not always directly connected to money, (and almost never with big companies) modders could end up creating better stories and content for games. It's the same trick the musicians did in the old days: 1 hit per album, and you could only buy the song if you bought the entire album. That's why they hate iTunes, they can't do that anymore, they have to work hard on each song now.

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