I know someone who dreams of post-apocalyptic scenarios for that exact reason.

we need are smarter drivers on the road who fucking know better.

Here's the problem: we've tried to make people into better drivers since the automobile was invented. It hasn't worked. You can't change human nature.

People still drive drunk, they still drive distracted. The main reason fatalities have dropped is only because cars are safer.

We don't need smarter drivers. We need smarter cars ... or specifically, self-driving cars. Take the human entirely out of the equation, and only then will you see a real difference.

We'll have self-driving cars on the road long before anyone invents a smartphone that "knows what's good for you". And when that happens, the problem of distracted driving will become completely moot.

On a post-apocalyptic, post-industrial future, if you get ANY sort of computer, it will be either manufactured out of scavenged transistors or components too old to be fried by EMPs like 6502 CPUs, microcontrollers etc..
So, not even close to the required computing power to waste with inneficient interpreted languages.
Except basic of course.

Bandits are not going to come with clubs, they'll have automatic weapons and armor. Good luck.

People need to stop distracting themselves while driving. Better yet, make sure that anyone who causes damage, injury, or deaths due to their negligence while driving is fully prosecuted under the law. It's no different than driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Driving a vehicle requires responsibility as a driver.

Let's not kid ourselves. People will just root their phones and bypass any restrictions put in place to block access to the phone while driving. And how the hell would a phone know the difference between a passenger sitting in a car and a driver?

At it's heart, this really isn't a technology problem, but a societal one. We need to crack down on this sort of stuff, so people understand that it's simply not worth the risk to break the law. It would be awesome if software or hardware could fix all those meatware-related problems, but that's not the world we live in.

Being a bum.

No, I'm dead serious. In a post apocalyptic world, you won't need woodworkers and blacksmiths. We're not suddenly back in the middle ages. Everything we had will still be around, but society will break down. And that doesn't mean you have to learn how to make bow and arrows so you can go hunt for deer. It means find the shotgun so you have an upper hand over the other looters in the local Wal Mart.

Why everyone thinks that "post apocalypse" means that everything we did in the last 500 years goes poof over night and we have to fall back on feudal technology is beyond me. It's very likely that at the very least most of what we have will still be there. What will be lost is probably everything that requires some kind of central organization. I.e. don't expect gas, water, power, sewage or any other municipal or other central service still to work. But the stuff will still be there. Your car will still run at the very least as long as there is gas in it. You might not get to refill at the next gas station, but there's still gas in your tank! You might not get power from the power grid anymore but batteries still work. And while you might not know how to build new firearms, there's still plenty of them around along with ammo for them, so there's no need to rely on the ancient art of war. By the time you need this, chances are that YOU won't need it anymore.

Because until we have to fall back on "old tech", I'd guess that a good portion of us would no longer exist. The first ones to go would be the ones that rely heavily on medical treatment. Like dialysis patient. They'd be gone in a week or so. People with severe allergies won't last long either. If society as a whole breaks down, I would not rely on surviving if you're by some stretch handicapped, i.e. if you can't move or if you can't survive on your own. People who need hearing or seeing aids might get by, depending on their disability, but one thing's certain, your glasses better not break. My guess would be that about 5-10% of the population in our "civilized" world is simply unable to make it without said civilization.

Another 10% loss is to be assumed for looting, pillaging and general "I don't like you and no cop can force me to" behaviour. This would of course depend on the amount of firearms that are around. The more, the merrier. Yes, if both sides are armed it means that the other one can shoot back but face it: When you have food and a gun, and I have hunger and a gun, I will attack. Whether I die of hunger or by your bullet, do I give a shit? Attacking you gives me a chance.

So with fights and accidents, I think it's conservative to assume a total loss of personnel of about 50% before we have to think about moving away from living "off the land" (i.e. sustain ourselves by looting and pillaging) and actually have to pick up ancient skills like farming.

So the most apt "profession" to even GET to that 50% phase is, oddly, bums. They already know how to do that. They don't have to learn anything. They know all that is necessary. Where can you scrounge successfully. Where do you find stuff you need to survive. How do you approach others and how to gauge their reaction. How to get the hell outta some place if things get rough.

It's nice if you know how to plant fruits and vegetables, how to build your own tools and how to hunt game, but unless you somehow manage to GET there it's moot.

I have no doubt.

But this begins to go into "crazy-land" a bit. I'm not saying the historian necessarily has the best answer, but someone who actually has first-hand knowledge and experience with draft animals in large numbers would undoubtedly have a huge amount of insight over a random CS nerd who has never seen a horse.

The problem is that in order for your "B student in algorithms" to solve this problem, you'd have to have precise information about the physical logistics of the situation, as well as detailed knowledge of and experience with the real-world problems that arise with huge numbers of unreliable things (like animals that need to eat, poop, might get sick and die, etc.).

Honestly, this sounds something like a scenario where a person has a heart attack in a public place, a bystander calls for help: "It seems he has no pulse! I think he might have some sort of blockage. Does anyone know how to get his blood flowing again?" and out steps a chemical engineer, saying: "My skills are applicable in a wide variety of areas, and this reduces to a simple problem in fluid mechanics, which I've taken a number of courses in. Hold on while I spend some time with the Navier-Stokes equation!"

Seriously -- there's a reason we make jokes about mathematicians or physicists saying, "Assume a spherical cow...." The real world is messy, and unless you already have access to a person who knows almost enough to run the draft army already who can feed you good data to solve the problem in the abstract, I'm not sure your scenario is realistic.

I mean absolutely NO disrespect, and if you're an intelligent person, I'm sure you can find a way to apply your problem-solving skills to many different scenarios. I just think real-world scenarios are often quite messy, and until you accumulate enough data to construct an accurate model, your algorithmic solutions are likely to have serious flaws.

Umm, you're doing it wrong, if you're waiting to sort until you get the bags in your house. I don't have a computer science degree, but my sorting begins as I put items in my CART. (Just a rough sort into refrigerated items, fragile items, etc.) This makes it more efficient for me to unload the cart onto the conveyor belt, and it ensures that bagging procedures will be most efficient and least likely to cause food spoilage (e.g., refrigerated stuff going together, heavy things packed separately from "squashable" things, frozen foods all in a few bags, etc. -- supermarket baggers can vary quite a bit in their attention to reasonable bagging methods). By the time I get the stuff into my house, I should already have a group of a few bags for the freezer, a few bags for the fridge, etc.

This does not require a CS degree, and frankly it sounds like you're starting the sorting process a little late for maximum efficiency (not to mention food safety and quality standards).

Absolutely. This is one point I agree with, and it makes the summary sound stupid.

The main problem is that we are human being, that we are *NOT* robot.

As human beings we are the product of millions of years of evolution - an evolution that did not encounter _any_ form of electronic gadgets until very recently.

The fact that we can drive a car (or any vehicles) is not because we *adapt* to the way the car operate, but it is another way around.

We engineer the vehicles so that they can become our tool, and the operation of that tool is *within* our range of capability.

While using cellphone (and now smartphone) have been accused of causing a lot of accidents, they are not the only distraction. Long before the advent of the cellphone, a lot of traffic accidents were caused by drivers adjusting their radio (either looking for station of turning up/down the volume), or adjusting the seat, or the air condition, or whatever.

It is thus evidenced that we human beings are not made to be effective "multi-tasking" device

And smartphones are not the only culprit - I have known drivers who were so distracted by their on-board sat nav devices such as tomtom (and other brands) they drove their car into poles, walls, and so on

Personally when I drive, I drive. If I have to adjust my seat, my mirrors, my radio, or whatever, I stop my car at the roadside (or any other safe place) to make the adjustment, and then continue my journey.

The best graphics are generally on PC games that were originally developed for consoles. Computer-only releases are generally MMORPGs or indie games, which tend to have worse graphics.

Unless you have another Earth somewhere, you have to use NHST, rather than using a control, as you have no control Earth that is the same minus humans. Well, you do, but you ignore it. Mars polar caps, which have better records than earth ice caps, show they are shrinking.

Either way, AGW believers are not doing hard science with global warming, where you, say, apply heat to this sample, but not this one, to determine the changes caused by heat.
(or whatever the theory is, that one was a simple example)
Which is fine. If your models work, your science is "unequivocal". But...

The science is not "unequivocal" because the predictions of the models don't come to pass. The northern ice cap is not missing as predicted (excuse me... suggested would be missing) The earth has failed to warm as much as AGW believers are predicting. It has warmed as much as might be predicted by the normal warming trend of coming out of an ice age, which we are doing on geological scales.

If reality does not do what the "unequivocal" science says, then the science is incomplete, and not unequivocal.

Faith is unequivocal. I will change my position when the science matches what happens in the real world.

Four games, in two years.

I understand Hotline: Miami was a critical success, because lo-res, 2D games equal coolness with indie developers, but it's nothing but a twitch game for hipsters.

And the same Rock Paper Shotgun hipsters who have a ball slaughtering prostitutes in Hotline: Miami are lecturing us on why AAA games are sexist and too violence oriented. Irony will only take you so far, you know?

Hotline: Miami is gaming for fashion victims.

Indeed.

I'm an EE. If the grid goes down and I've got carte blanche, I could get some semblance of electricity up and running in under a week. (Which would enable you to plug in your standard appliances.) I could get solar USB chargers working in the same time frame.

First you get the electricity, then you get the... power... uh... then you get the wom... can I start over?

I know how to make beer.

Swinging a sword huh? I want to be marauder against your camp. I would have guns and ammo, the most valuable commodity post-apocalypse.

several of my apps respond to voice. Admittedly still trying to get that right since they respond to what's playing the radio.

My new phone is better.
Its a brave new world

I'm not sure how much my phone, and those connected to it, I'd like to know.
have to see how it goes

needs to know that we don't know what is good for us when it comes to driving

A) How does it know if you are a passenger or not.

B) Phones that don't do what we want when we want are considered "broken" by most people, not "helpful".

If a few million people stop supporting a company because they spend ad dollars at Fox News we might see serious changes at Fox. The powerful do understand a punch in the wallet rather quickly.

I've watched Voyager too. I challenge you to cite sources about the scarce resource aspect.

The characters don't ever talk about the holodeck or replicators as being a scarce resource. They don't think in terms of scarcity. It's a post-scarcity society. Any scarcity is being imposed by your brain, not by the script-writers.

We might see another plague, but that doesn't match the horror these guys are talking about, where infrastructure is destroyed and no one can remember how to rebuild it and computers don't work anymore. It would take more than 50% dead for that to happen, unless it targeted people with college degrees or something.

How are these going to differentiate between drivers and passengers? And if, as many studies are finding, even talking hands free involves the same risk as texting/etc, does that mean all phone usage would have to be turned off? How about using cell phones as GPS nav devices, something I do often myself, are actual GPS systems somehow magically less distracting? Do we ban all screens in the driver's view, including radios, nav devices, and the instrument panel? I find passengers distracting sometimes, how do they impact accident rates? Or is this getting a bit ridiculous... - HEX

I never thought I would be a person to advocate a law to restrict personal freedoms but I think it's time to require smartphone vendors to disable texting when driving speeds are detected. This is not about protecting people from themselves but about protecting other people [on the road]. Texting while driving is unbelievably dangerous. I'm sure someone can come up with way to differentiate a driver from a passenger so that passengers can still be permitted to text. If not then so be it.

p.s. FNC did have a good weekend special on govermnent bullying one or two weekends ago. They covered shakedowns of Gibson Guitar and others, but one was a ranching family, have no idea if it's the same as the one involved in the news this week, but apparently the federal goverment had four armed squads from four different departments go pay them a visit to try to intimidate them, from four different (strained) angles of concern.

I.e. it's not just the agencies under DHS that are now talking and working together. It looks like every mundane agency, no matter how distanced from an expectation of meeting violent resistance in undertaking their particular kinds of regulations, like say the FDA, is now weaponized. And is taking requests from other agencies.

There are some good info graphics on actual data here. PC has 51% of the playtime marketshare and consoles only have 30%. http://www.superdataresearch.c...

Free to play games are where the big money is now. League of Legends made $624 million in revenue in 2013. They even gave out $14.3 Million in tournament prize money.
Crossfire (a counter-strike clone popular outside the USA) had the most revenue and made almost a billion dollars in revenue last year.

Since the dawn of man the size of political units has always been increasing.

Family
Band
Tribe
City
State
Nation
World Government(?) (If we don't have nuclear war first)

Until someone can explain to me how the number of accidents per million miles travelled has steadily declined for almost two decades, yet cellphones are supposedly causing people to drive like they're intoxicated or worse, I won't put much stock in these "safety-critical events" claims.

In a post apocalypse world, why would you even go electricity?

Simple mechanical linkages. Easier to build and repair. Welcome to the steampunk apocalyptic aftermath.

...you can learn to put a fucking cell phone down.

We don't need smarter apps to tell us to ignore a phone while driving.

We don't need smarter six-packs. Or smarter makeup. Or smarter food containers. All of these things should not be mixed while steering a ton of steel down the freeway.

We we need are smarter drivers on the road who fucking know better.

And I agree. We don't need more laws. What we need is more real consequences like jail time for offenders so that they may wise up. Clearly current methods are not working, and Darwin award winners in this case take innocent lives with them.

the Black Knight is designed specifically for autonomous casualty evacuation and unmanned cargo resupply missions. While it can be flown by an onboard pilot, its unmanned capabilities are intended to keep pilots out of harm's way on dangerous missions.

It isn't intended to always come home, or to replace special forces helicopters.

The chemicals and equipment make it more economical and profitable but you are greatly underestimating the knowledge and abilities of farmers. Most of them would have little difficulty getting successful crops using old fashioned methods. They know very well how to do it with readily available fertilizers and labor.

Percentage is a perfectly valid way of measuring CO2. Anyone with any understanding of math can convert it to PPM at will. Scientists can operate perfectly well with either number, and will use whichever is most convenient at the moment.

The equation is this:
ppm / 1,000,000 * 100 = percentage.

I've got a nice old book on telescope making. It's amazing the quality of lenses you can make with some math, technique, and a bit of abrasive powder.

I caught some blurbs on FNC a few days ago, but I have such distrust of them nowadays (which is a sad commentary on today since they're certainly much more trustworthy than any other). I heard something about the ranchers being legally in the wrong, and the government trying to solve this for a long time, despite the (very telling) government heavy-handedness. But I assume FNC would run it for days anyways, to get ratings from Right-wingers.

But that last parenthetical part is where I wanted to go with this. Haven't been following it so I don't know, and feel free to set me straight, but my gut is this is not really about land, and certainly isn't about any stupid turtle. In the 21st century in America, this is about a "teachable moment" for the public, and in this case it is about the American people knowing their place: underneath the government.

NSA bulk data collection and mass surveilance is not about watching out for Islamic terrorist foreigners blowing something up. It's about watching out for Conservative natives thinking independently of where we're being led and our trying to slow the expansion of a strong federal government and the erosion of the Constitution that is an agreement to limit it.

I.e. the government does not feel threatened the most by terrorists, Putin, Iran, North Korea, China, global warming, meteors, or space aliens. The people who run/work in the federal government feel their biggest threat (to their keeping all their jobs and expanding their organization's role) is from the traditional-minded citizen.

Expect the corruption to continue to be less and less hidden, and more shows of force, as they continue to test the waters on how close the American people are to being ready to accept a combination end-game of complete social manipulation in some aspects (like for example public opinion on gay marriage, re: MH42's recent JE) and total rule on the rest.

Without laying down what we mean by this "apocalypse" (What happened? Where? Why?) no useful discussion can result (well, this is Slashdot, so perhaps I am being redundant).

Is industrial civilization just going to sort of evaporate? Really? How?

Why would we revert to pre-industrial society, rather than to an earlier form of industrial civilization, or more likely a hybrid of early and later technology?

Router? Are you telling me that you include the cost of a router in the purchase cost of a console?

Why not include the cost of the house I use it in as well? It isn't like I would be playing games out in the rain!

The cost is certainly higher if you include all the peripherals, but my keyboard and monitor are about 15 years old, my mouse costs all of $20, headphones were $20 though I've since upgraded to something fairly high-end (which work just as well with a console, so that's a wash), and I replace things like cases and optical drives when they become completely non-functional (just a vanilla DVD-ROM dating back to the 90s in there right now, and the case isn't much newer). Sure, it would probably cost $600-700 to replace it all, but if I had a console it would plug into a TV/stereo/etc and those aren't cheap.

When I look at TCO/etc the PC makes a lot of sense. It is my only PC running Windows and I wouldn't need it but for gaming, and even so I spend very little on it.

Two things. First, the PS4 didn't even do video playback on day one. It's a games focused machine. The Wii U is entirely games focused as well. The fact that both can do Netflix isn't so much a statement about consoles becoming entertainment centers, but rather, the dogged determination of Netflix to be EVERYWHERE. The XB1 on the other hand... Well. That's another thing entirely.

(This is also true of the Vita and 3DS. Both of which are strongly focused on games.)

There really is a diminishing return on graphics. At some point, making better graphics just requires more human power.

The problem with the PC is that the control scheme is REALLY limited. Say what you will about two analog sticks and some buttons, but, you get more variety of game play out of that, than you can with KB/M. Moving along 4 dimensions with smooth analog controls is nicer than 2, and using something other than a mouse.

Playing something like Armored Core or Metal Gear just feels nicer on a game pad. Sure, it's less precise, but, more precise isn't exactly more fun. When you're aiming at high speed targets, i'd rather have auto-lock than a mouse.

And whatever happens, don't forget your towel!

Who needs to worry about competition when you own the pipeline end-to-end?

So - no.1 is the argument that you propose as "the truth"?

In other words, you can discriminate between 10000 shades of a color (which can come in handy when determining whether some fruit is ripe or not) and you can identify stupid people the nanosecond they spoke a word (useful when finding out who to take along as a comrade and who to use, essentially, as self propelled food).