Not really.

I'd say there's a good argument that all of the information I give Google actually exceeds what a personal assistant would know about me. The real difference (thus far) lies in the assistant's ability to understand human context which Google's systems lack. But that's merely a problem to be solved.

Note, BTW, that I'm not saying everyone should want what I want, or be comfortable giving any search engine enough information to be such an ideal assistant. That's a personal decision. I'm comfortable with it... but I'm not yet getting the search results I want.

I think systems built by man that knows a sufficient amount about me, my interests and my needs can. We're not there yet, certainly, but the question was what I want... and that's it.

Put it this way: Suppose you had a really bright personal assistant who knew pretty much everything about you and could see what you are doing at any given time, and suppose this assistant also had the ability to instantly find any data on the web. I want a search engine that can give me the answers that assistant could.

Why would I want crappy results? I want it to give me what I want, which by definition isn't "crappy".

I want a search engine that searches for what I want, not what I type, and not even what I think I want.

Sure, but that requires only very coarse -- city-level, at most -- geolocation. If I were reviewing this product for launch, I'd tell them that they can use location as a risk signal, but must coarsen it to avoid making it possible to use it for people-tracking.

Not really ISPs, at least as we traditionally think of them. Mobile network operators.

The MNO in question isn't the middleman, it's the service provider. It provides service to the balloons, which relay it to regions that are too remote to service now.

No, most of these regions aren't served because it's uneconomical. It's not that no one is willing to invest, it's that it's not an "investment" if you know up front that the ROI will be negative. Putting up a bunch of cell towers to serve remote African farmers, for example, doesn't pan out economically because there's no way the farmers can afford to pay high enough fees to cover the costs of all the infrastructure. Project Loon aims to fix this by radically lowering the cost of serving those regions, to a point where it is economical, so the fees the people in the region can afford to pay are sufficient to make serving them profitable.

As for why Google is partnering with MNOs rather than deploying their own connectivity? I don't know but I'd guess a couple of reasons. First, I expect it will be feasible to scale faster by partnering with entities who already have a lot of the infrastructure in place, particularly when you consider all of the legal and regulatory hurdles (which in many areas means knowing who to bribe, and how -- Google, like most American companies, would not be very good at that). Second, by working through local companies Google will avoid getting into power struggles with the local governments. Google is helping their local businesses to grow, not replacing them.

(Disclaimer: I work for Google, but I don't know anything more about this than what I see/read in the public press.)

what we're saying is that arranging for velocity AND position to be 'null' at the same time is harder than simply arranging for velocity to be null and position to be +/- 100m(or so).

*Sigh*
 
I understand what you're saying - but as with my previously reply, you don't grasp the problem.
 
The appearance of the vehicle "working hard at the last second" during the first attempt was a consequence of running out of hydraulic fluid - and would have occurred regardless of the size of the target. The appearance of the vehicle "working hard at the last second" during the last attempt was a consequence of the throttle valve not operating to spec - and would have occurred regardless of the size of the target.
 
From the point of view of the final landing sequence it's not all that much easier to arrange for velocity to be null and position to be +/- 100m than it is to arrange the same +/- 1m. Selecting a landing point occurs at a relatively high altitude (and on a, relatively speaking, relaxed timeline) and final trim starts around a kilometer or so up (AIUI). From there, jittering the variables (burn time and timing, gimbal angles, and throttle settings) a tiny amount one way or another to maintain targeting isn't a substantial burden (on the software or the hardware) compared to the much larger problem of nulling your velocities.

You're talking about some kind of articulated arm (which can survive being essentially inside rocket exhaust)

I think you're picturing something different. I'm picturing something pretty big that comes in from the sides, staying well away from the exhaust.

That just makes an already heavy, complex, and expensive system even heavier, more complex, and more expensive than I envisioned.

Most guilty people will immediately try to become the victim. Ignore the fact that I convince gullible people to buy junk that at best is useless and at worst will harm them. Ignore the fact that I use my medical degree to trick people. Look at the big bad corporation over here that wants to attack me. Ignore the fact that I am in the arms of a big bad corporation that airs my tv show and wants rating no matter what.

My problem with Dr. Oz is not that he appears to be a unethical charletan that will prostitute himself to any snake oil salesman who asks. My problem is, n the few shows I have seen, is that he actively is teaching his audience bad science. This is not surprising as doctors are not scientists. For instance, there was one show on fat where his depiction of fat was completely inaccurate. The demonstration was there to be visually exciting, but at the expense of any real science. I can imagine the people who saw it going to their doctor and arguing a point, thinking Dr. Oz is right, and their doctor is wrong.

It is entertainment. I agree that persons who are fundamentally entertainers and not seriously committed to medicine should probably not be the medical staff.

Why wouldn't a randomized subsample from 10M people get funded? The required sample size doesn't grow as the population does.

I may be responding to a troll here, but, no, the GP is correct. P-values are about probability. They're often used in the context of evaluating a correlation, but they needn't be. Specifically, p-values specify the probability that the observed statistical result (which may be a correlation) could be a result of random selection of a particularly bad sample. Good sampling techniques can't eliminate the possibility that your random sample just happens to be non-representative, and the p value measures the probability that this has happened. A p value of 0.05 means that there's a 5% chance that your results are bogus in this particular way.

The problem with p values is that they only describe one way that the experiment could have gone wrong, but people interpret them to mean overall confidence -- or, even worse -- significance of the result, when they really only describe confidence that the sample wasn't biased due to bad luck in random sampling. It could have been biased because the sampling methodology wasn't good. I could have been meaningless because it finds an effect which is real, but negligibly small. It be meaningless because the experiment was just badly constructed and didn't measure what it thought it was measuring. There could be lots and lots of other problems.

There's nothing inherently wrong with p values, but people tend to believe they mean far more than they do.

You're not getting what he was saying.

I do get what he's saying. What neither of you seem to grasp is that the size of the target isn't as relevant as you think, because you have to null your horizontal velocity regardless of the size of the target. It doesn't matter whether you're stopping on a postage stamp or anywhere in a given block - either way you still have to stop. It's the stopping that's problem, not the deciding where to stop. Stopping is very difficult for the Falcon 9 because it's T/W ratio is so far out of the optimal range and a larger target area won't make it all that much easier.
 

Though if they're that good at targeting, maybe programming up an adaptive 'catcher' robot would work? I'm thinking of something along the lines of 3 arms that have a range of motion, and when the rocket's within a few feet, they gently 'grab' the rocket using shaped and padded interfaces(I'm picturing a semi-circle matching that of the rocket) and provide stability.

That's "good at targeting" a couple of orders of magnitude better than what they've demonstrated to date (which is, pardon my french, already pretty fucking amazing). You're talking about some kind of articulated arm (which can survive being essentially inside rocket exhaust)... Which is, quite frankly, makes things much harder and more complicated and introduces a metric buttload of additional possible points of failure. Much easier to simply re-engineer the throttle valve.

IMHO, if more of the horizontal velocity was shed earlier, It'd be easier to stay balanced at the end.

At the cost of increasing the difficulty of targeting the landing, and still having to null any horizontal velocity due to the wind. TAANSTAFL.

I seriously doubt it. I don't see how location reporting for a payment transaction in which location data is irrelevant could possibly pass Google's privacy policy review process. Collection of data not relevant to the transaction is not generally allowed[*], and if the data in question is personally identifiable (mappable to some specific individual), then a really compelling reason for collection is required, as well as tight internal controls on how the data is managed and who has access. I don't see what could possibly justify it in this case, and I can see a lot of risk in collecting it.

FYI, Google product teams have to develop privacy design docs for all new products, and the designs have to be reviewed by the privacy team (or their delegates) and pass the privacy review before they can be launched. Although Google set these processes up before the FTC settlement, I believe they became part of the consent decree and are now mandated by the FTC and validated in regular audits, so Google can't skip or violate them without potentially-significant consequences.

Disclaimer: I'm not a Google spokesperson and this is not an official statement. It is my personal perspective on the process and requirements. However, I'm a Google engineer who's been involved in launching privacy-sensitive products, so I think my perspective is accurate. I also do security reviews of Google projects, which sometimes touches on privacy issues (though privacy review is separate from security review, as it should be).

[*] Just to head off a likely riposte: No, StreetView Wifi collection and the Safari do-not-track workaround are not counterexamples. They predated the privacy review processes and, as I understand it, were part of the motivation for establishing the processes.

As opposed to what? Cremation? Burial in a box at temperatures well above freezing? You can't seriously argue that this approach makes it less likely that she could be repaired and restarted at some point in the future than typical corpse disposal methods.

The rest of what you say is generally true, although a larger target *would* help. The advantage of a larger target is that, while you still have to zero your horizontal velocity, you don't have to zero it anywhere terribly precise.

Yeah, you do. Given the narrow footprint and the low CG of the vehicle, if the horizontal velocity wasn't as close to zero as you can get at touchdown - it's very likely to tip over. (Even if you don't damage the landing legs in the process.) The upper part of the vehicle isn't heavy, but it has a very long lever arm.
 

You can pick an optimal set of thrusts that results in the correct orientation and velocities (horizontal and vertical) without worrying overmuch *where* that series of thrusts has you touching down.

In the end, that makes far less difference than you think because while you can reduce the amount of horizontal velocity that needs to be nulled you cannot eliminate it. (Not without launch criteria that include "near zero wind at the recovery site", which is beyond impractical.) The result is, with the current vehicle, you still have to null horizontal velocity at the last second before touch down. The basic problem is that the vehicle is badly designed for what it's being asked to do.
 

. Both attempts so far clearly demonstrate the ability to do an excellent good job of targeting a (relatively) tiny barge, but currently, if the rocket would come down even 100' (30m) to one side of its target spot, it needs to induce a horizontal momentum (which requires leaving a vertical attitude as well, it can't just translate sideways) and then null that momentum at the right moment (and fix its attitude). That's hard.

Both times they've hit the barge almost dead center - I fail to see how that's an arguement for a larger landing area since neither failure was caused by the landing area being too small. Both vehicles would have crashed regardless of the size of the landing area due to control system failures. (Attitude control on the first, throttle control on the second.) That's what neither you nor the OP seem to grasp.