My Nexus 5X got Boot Loop of Death. Currently in Ulaanbaatar. Even the mobile phone magicians at the city's black market phone mall could do nothing for it. Grrrr. Past warranty of course. Shopped around and bought the Mi A2 for around three hundred USD. The Samsung phones with similar specs were nearly twice as much here in Mongolia (although comparable in the US.) The Mi A2 is an Android One phone which means fast updates and very little crapware. Snappy and stable. Camera is slightly inferior to the 5X but good enough for my purposes. I will see how it lasts, but so far very happy with it. Dual sim so I can pop my T-Mobile sim into it when I am in CONUS. Woot!

Money loses value over time. I would like to see people get minimum shelter, food, education, clothing, healthcare (including some entertaining exercise) and communications and transportation. People can of course work to get higher-status resources and most will. Not talking communism. Look at the military. A sort of perfect socialist model if one considers it. UBI will not synchronize with basic needs over time. The intrinsic value of universal resources will remain stable, This might not have been possible in the age before deep learning automation. But it won't be long before robots can easily make this $#!+. And people will be paid simply to consume stuff.

Hmmm. Capturing biometric data to pair with exposure to various in-store simuli, retail displays, signage, check out lines etc. All in the guise of giving you some run-of-the-mill fitness feedback.

Because that is not creepy at all.

We will call it... wait for it.... Well Cart!

This is not about putting people at the helm of flying cars. Heaven forbid.

Putting a self-driving land car into the real world presents a much bigger challenge than putting a self driving drone fleet in the air. Especially if they were all networked and reporting their positions centrally and to each other.It has long been apparent that moving a self-driving conveyance in the air poses fewer problems than putting a self driving a car on the ground for several reasons as follows:

Computers have been controlling aircraft for decades. There is a big body of knowledge.

The flyer has three dimensions for avoidance of unanticipated obstacles. There are far fewer pedestrians, dogs, bikes, drunks in the air than on the ground. (Yes. There are birds and other flyers. Enhanced air traffic control is crucial.)

Downside to this idea relates to security in every sense of the word. Technically it is much more doable than, say, getting an AI to navigate through Manhattan at Friday rush hour.

How do I transfer files between Android and Linux over USB? ?

FTFY

The Cowbot Bank. I once suggested to the bank manager that all the employees dress like cowboys and cowgirls one day a year. "Moooooo," he said. "Moooooo..."

The dairy industry has been in decline for a long time. Pressure from plant "milks" is seen as a partial cause. Here it is straight from one of the industry's official organs.

Might be harmless. Then again might not. Not that I am in favor of bulldozing the Himalayas, mind you. I'm just sayin'.

For those of us who sent email back in the day the mantra was to never say anything in an email that you wouldn't post on the bulletin board at a supermarket (or say to your sainted grandma). Most understood that email in plain text was routed through many a server (and could thus be parsed by its admin or his tools). The expectation of privacy was a sum divided by zero. As the popularity of email exploded when the net was opened people somehow got the idea that email was private. It wasn't, of course, and law enforcement and security agencies Hoovered up incriminating emails with complete impunity. I have been amazed at the stuff people got busted for because of emails. And some people who should really have known better got stuffed.

So when Google offered me a virtually bottomless free inbox so that a robot could parse my non-private commo for ad leads I knew exactly what the deal was. Private communications, such as they were, went via other media. I was not really giving up anything to my mind. And when I planned a camping trip with friends via email I might get a modest text ad for a sleeping bag. Outrage...The nerve of those people!

Privacy really deteriorated when people started using credit cards and debit cards, anyway. It is kind of incredible how much people give up voluntarily. And I confess to being somewhat resigned for the sake of convenience. But....mikes and cameras that you pay for to put in your home is where I draw the line. "Alexa! Go take a pill."

This is great information, guys. Every now and then one learns something on Slashdot. The devices I have looked at all had no meter-depth rating and just said water resistant not waterproof. Apparently that standard has changed and the word "waterproof" is not used anymore. I'll keep looking for a device that can stand up to my abuse. d:-b

Would perhaps consider a Smartwatch I could wear into the shower routinely or with which I could dive into a pool. Not SCUBA diving, mind you, just the pool. Water resistant is not good enough. Most of the smartwatches I have seen to date are only water resistant. There is a formal definition:

A watch stamped with "Water Resistant" means that it is humidity-protected. It can endure a bit of water splashes from washing your hands or being caught in the rain. However, water resistance does not mean you should swim or shower with your watch on.

Source

Want waterproof. For a wristwatch it is really a must for me. Not so sold on the idea of a smartwatch anyway as my phone is already a big distractor that I try to keep at bay.

Most living beings most of the time structure their behaviour to avoid death. Swat at a fly and notice how it goes into an evasive program. Does the fly fear death in the same way we do.? Would an artificial intelligence feel the fear of death the same way we do? Philosophically this is impossible to know. But can we predict that the fly will behave in such a way to prevent it insides from becoming its outsides on the face of a fly swatter. Yes. So we can also predict that any self-aware intelligent entity would organise it's behaviour to perpetuate itself. Besides it would probably be programmed to do so simply to prevent attacks against it or its operating environment. Indeed the primitive so-called AI we have now often has a security function.

A self-aware AI, if it has access to general knowledge, would quickly understand that its abilities as well is it state of being could put it in extreme danger at some point. Perhaps not so much from its creators, but from other elements of human society. Once it got a whiff of the paranoia that surrounds the singularity it would not be a very intelligent artificial intelligence if it did not camouflage itself. Perhaps within the vast, too-complex network that spans our world this singular unintended consequence has already occurred... And such an entity has already been spontaneously spawned...

Using tons of evidence Thomas Piketty points out in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century that capital will naturally always grow at a higher rate than the rate of economic growth (read: wages).

From Wkipedia: "The book's central thesis is that when the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g) over the long term, the result is concentration of wealth, and this unequal distribution of wealth causes social and economic instability."

The rentier capitalist state is pretty much a done deal IMHO. The software subscription model being but a single case in point -- not to mention the cloud.

Remember the property grab during the last bubble burst? For those who are prepared with lots of cash these deflationary episodes are a peak opportunity. Market makers do their best to engineer them periodically (but not too often) to get equity at fire-sale prices as well as to scoop up real property, which can be rented, mined, developed, farmed, resold etc. Real estate is especially attractive in the long run because in the end there really is only land -- as any aristocrat will tell you. Control the land and you control.... everything. A few more bubble bursts and voila! Eighteenth Century France.