Really, most of what people use pickup trucks for would be better served by a minivan. They can comfortably seat 6-8 adults, with no step-ups to get in and out. There's enough cargo space in the back for tools (and with folding seats, you can give up 1-2 seats for significantly more cargo space). Most of them can haul a light trailer (think lawn or carpentry tools). They get decent gas milage. They're $20-30k cheaper than your average truck (which just makes business sense).

Set aside social signaling and there's no reason for trucks or SUVs to exist at all. Just sayin'...

...have all served exactly the same purpose: quick, real time communication between colleagues. It's always been a useful communication method in addition to email. But, any one service has never been essential, only the fact that such services exist.

Having used every one of those in the past (dating back to 1992, and CompuServe's version before that), the only reason we seem to switch is because one service gets too noisy or starts to get unreliable or there's just a trendier new one.

So, maybe the idea of real time interaction is as useful as electricity, but no one service is indispensable and will be replaced by another at some point.

-Chris

But a minivan makes even more sense.

Comfortable seating for 7, more storage than most pickups, covered storage, better gas milage, reasonable towing capacity (for some models), no step up to enter (key for kids, older people, or just when your hands are full), typically $30k cheaper for similar use cases. Heck, even for most trades a minivan is a better option than a pickup since the interior storage space is much more flexible.

As for off roading, in my decades of owning Jeeps and taking them off road in the Rockies, I was always surprised at how often I'd reach the end of the trail to find a family in a minivan that had no problem getting there. Not saying that the Jeeps weren't more fun, just noting that most "off roading" trails are navigable by most vehicles.

I can't wait for electric minivans. :)

-Chris

Dropping OtherOS on the PS3 was the final straw for me and Sony. At least when I buy a Samsung product I expect to be screwed in some way (e.g., all my old Samsung TVs slowly dropping support for apps... easily fixed with a FireStick or similar).

Not MRIs, but for some reason the major genome sequencing instrument vendors generally require remote access to their instruments (Illumina and PacBio both do this - PacBio was just bought by Illumina, but they've been doing it since the beginning). Heck, there used to be a map that someone made that found Illumina instruments on the internet and plotted their physical locations based on the IP address (it doesn't seem to exist anymore). They also tend to run unpatched versions of Windows.

Sequencing data is even easier than MRI data is to mess with. The raw data is large (10-100s of GBs per run) and always processed by computational pipelines that are mix of scripts and random tools downloaded from the internet. Unlike with artifacts that would be detectable in an altered image, changing sequencing data is simply a matter of flipping a few characters.

We once wrote a script that scanned for a specific sequence related to a certain cancer. By flipping a few characters, it was possible to give the patient the variants that lead to a higher probability of developing cancer. We could have also done the opposite and made patients appear to have no pre-disposition when they in fact did. (our script looked at all the short reads right of the instrument and tweaked them, it didn't catch all cases, but more than enough that the variant caller gave our intended call)

An hypothetical extension of this would let scan for specific individuals based on previously sequenced samples. From there, one could write a script that only "gave" cancer to that person.

TFA actually does a good job of discussing it in layman's terms. It's surprisingly devoid of hype and hyperbole.

As a starting point that's not TFA, Formal Verification is the sub-field of CS that this is based on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

-Chris

I wish I had mod points for this.

Related: I wonder how well humans familiar with folding motifs and all the confounding factors present in nature would do vs. the models. While most chemists rely on modeling, NMR, and crystallography, the techs running these systems all have intuitions built up from years of generating structures.

Would some of them outperform the models in the same way Google's approach did?

-Chris

Because they are not safe and the companies are exploiting gaps in laws and enforcement to profit at their customer's expense.

I've been a bike commuter for 20+ years and am well aware of the hazards of the roads and how to bike in a city safely and lawfully. The vast majority of scooter riders are not being safe and are breaking laws on a regular basis.

Some examples (Austin as my reference point):

- Scooter users regularly dart through intersections when lights are red, often executing dangerous left turns. Proper action: act like you're a car and obey the stop lights or get off the scooter and use the cross walk.
- Scooter users try to pass cars on the right when cars are making right turns. Proper action: act like a car and line up behind the car and wait your turn.
- Scooter users weaving in and out of pedestrians on side walks. Proper action: don't do this. All it takes is a pedestrian waving their arm or shifting their path and both the scooter user and pedestrian are injured.
- Lack of helmets. Proper action: Wear a helmet. Sure, they don't stop concussions (common argument used against helmets that's generally true), but they do stop your skull from getting cracked in low speed collusions (much worse than a concussion).

I can go on, but you get the point. Riding these scooters is not like walking or using a push scooter. They operate at speeds most users are not familiar with on infrastructure not designed for their use. There's also an entire population of other infrastructure users that are not conditioned to be aware of them.

Look, I love the idea of these scooters. I love that there's potential to help us all adapt to make it safer for all lower speed methods of transportation (bikes, skateboards, push scooters, running ;) ). But, putting everyone at risk and pretending you're not is an incredibly irresponsible way to go about it.

They did signal VR and even put a lot of development effort into it. It's only recently that they decided against it:

https://www.cnet.com/news/here...

As someone who's tried most VR tech since the early 90s, all my experience with the current generation suggests that the tech is indeed good enough.

In particular, I get lost in the Steam/HTC Vive setup my friend has every time I use it. Google Earth alone is a killer app, if you know where to go (I'm a climber: try Yosemite or Eldorado Canyon in Boulder, they've imaged the cliffs in both places to the point where you can actually see the handholds and make out routes). The paint programs are surreal as well.

I get motion sick easily. This is the first generation of VR gear that I've been able to spend 30+ minutes with the headset on and feel fine afterwards.

So, why don't I have my own VR setup? Two reasons: (1) cost and (2) I have half of it. For the latter, I purchased an X-Box One X for my son specifically because MS was setting it up as a VR platform. $500 for a game console was steep, but the hardware was right for good VR. Unfortunately, MS has now signaled that VR is not coming to the platform and I've overpaid for a gaming console. (yes, I should have just bought a PS4)

Cost, and to a lesser extent the hassle associated with that cost, is what I think is the real issue. Without a consumer friendly setup in the $500-700 range all-in that supports all VR content (PS4's problem is content), it's just too expensive to get started. I don't want to drop a few grand on a high end gaming PC, then the hundreds on the VR gear, plus the time it will take to setup and maintain the PC. It's just too expensive in money and time commitment.

The tech is there. There are compelling apps. It's just still too expensive to get started.

-Chris

Not sure about the OPs case, but if you work around gear that’s sensitive to RF noise, you don’t want everyone brining their own transmitter to work. Even without a radio, electronics can interfere with sensitive equipment.

For the knowledge workers posting here insisting that they need 8 hours to be productive, how many of those 8 (or 10 or 12) hours that you insist you work are spent on the web, “training”, shopping, or hanging with co-workers?

I’ve worked in software since the beginning of the web as a developer, manager, founder, and executive with highly productive teams developing technical software. You know what’s been constant regardless of the company or team? “Down time” throughout the day, either via the web or smoking breaks or exercise breaks. No one who’s honest with themselves will claim to work a full day every day. Sure, some days you’re heads down in code and bang out 12 hours of solid work, but most days, if you’re honest about the downtime, you did much less.

I had one employee once who worked closer to 6 hour days. He’s the only person I’ve seen not slack off regularly. He came in and got to work. He was more productive than most of the 8 hour employees. N of 1 but I noticed it then and have since paid attention to how much people actually work. It’s closer to 6 hours.

Web Master was the hottest job 20 years ago. Right up until every realized that the position was better filled via a mix traditional IT techs and software engineers.

Data science will go the same way, but it will be software engineers and statisticians that replace the current crop of bootcamp trained data "scientists". (actually, all real data science shops already do it that way... the market will correct)

Exactly why a click campaign may work. At some point, advertising budgets have to be justified. While initially the clicks will be seen as a positive, after a quarter or two of no uptick in revenue relative to ad spend, those ad budgets will start to get questioned.

Procter and Gamble is continuing to cut online ad spend due to the ineffectiveness of their ads. They're on the leading edge here, it's just up to the community to help move everyone else down that path (http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/when-procter-gamble-cut-200-million-in-digital-ad-spend-its-marketing-became-10-more-effective/)

For tracking, the goal is to decrease the signal to noise ratio and make the tracking databases worthless.

Why can’t we do the same with auto play, gifs, and everything else that fights for our attention?

My gueriila suggestion: just start clicking on all ads that annoy you. Make the advertisers pay. And mess up their “valuable” tracking metrics in the process.

-Chris