It's easier to focus on that reassurance rather than the decline in U.S. healthy life expectancy since 2014.

https://www.scientificamerican...

"These experiments show that when people's beliefs are threatened, they often take flight to a land where facts do not matter."

Sadly, this may be a case of just having to accept some unpalatable news.

What would be interesting is the "why?" which sadly the article is a little thin on. Perhaps there will be more analysis to follow.

It blew a hole through the space time continuum and dropped through like a stone through a wet paper bag.

“There’s a general concern in the tech community of somehow the military-industrial complex using their stuff to kill people incorrectly”

If there's ever a sentence where one word changes the entire context of a statement, it's that one - and the last word.

That word is redundant from the perspective of the tech community, but extraordinarily menacing when tacked on to the statement like that.

Don't be evil. Incorrectly.

Be the first is to lead the market, which requires huge investment, is risky, but can lead to lots of cash in the bank.

The second is to follow the leader, making products that fit the newly exposed demand - not cutting edge, but fit for purpose at a reasonable cost with reduced risk.

Add into the mix that cars are notoriously hard to get right (Tesla reportedly has lots of niggles that established car manufacturers have already solved) and now that vehicles like Volvo's Polestar and the ilk are on the horizon, from a brand reputed for reliability (albeit manufactured in China), and that Germany are building their own battery gigafactory -
  Musk should be worried. The only way he'll make money is cashing in on that first wave, and it's already being spread out.

As a proponent of both Linux and VR, I am sadly going to have to say that I'll be staying away from that unholy combo.

VR is fledgling technology that struggles to be quite what everyone wants it to be, supported by an established platform with carefully optimised drivers.

Linux is an established technology in everything but mainstream gaming, with graphics drivers that struggle to perform as well as their windows counterparts.

Jamming the two together? Why yes, I do like chilli powder in my eyes. It'll hurt a lot less than all the googling needed to get it working properly.

My first taste of "proper" VR was on a mate's Rift DK1. I think that was great because it was the novelty. What I took away from that was the genuine fear of falling off of high things, which I don't get gaming normally. The 2D screen is a safe level of isolation from the world of the game.

Nowadays, I'm playing VR on a budget - an old business i5 machine with a second hand GTX 970 and PSU slapped into it, plus an eBay Rift DK2 which didn't cost a lot. The DK2 has worked with everything I've tried on Steam VR, to give me a feel as to whether to fork out for a "proper" expensive headset.

The thrill of "being in" a game world doesn't wear off. Subnautica and Obduction are such examples. In Obduction there are paths to walk along alongside a mountain with a huge drop to one side. It looks pretty on a monitor, but it's awe-inspiring in VR. The same with standing and looking up at structures that tower above you - much more immersive in VR. Subnautica is just beautiful to swim around.

But, it is a bit tiring on the eyes. The screen door effect is completely annoying - sometimes I can get submerged in the game enough to ignore it but not for long because it's right there in my face. I understand the CV1 and Vive are better in that regard than the DK2, but it's still there to an extent. The technology needs to move on at least another generation to really make it properly viable in my opinion (caveat - I've not tried the CV1 or Vive yet - but I read reviews that grumble to an extent about the screen door effect).

So I play both 2D and VR - the former usually if I am sitting with someone and want to talk and share the experience. VR when I want to feel what the world is like around me.

When I'm playing 2D, I feel like I'm missing out on the immersion.
When I'm playing in VR, I feel like I'm missing out on a nice detailed screen without obvious pixels and that annoying screen door effect.

VR is where gaming will end up, I don't doubt it. I really want it to be good enough to use all the time. For me the DK2 isn't quite up to it, but I still can't resist strapping it on for a couple of hours to get the feel of a place that can't be captured in 2D.

And there is still the huge entertainment factor of having guests over and watching them try to stand up while on a VR rollercoaster. It was worth the expense just for those laughs.

3DTV I don't care for at all. Tried it, it was OK. But VR is something else.

Excellent video. Wish I had mod points.

I assume this is focused stateside? The articles doesn't provide much in the way of clues.

That's a very short term view. One day, without a doubt, intelligence will emerge from something we create. It's only a matter of time. In the first few instances it may only be lower level intelligence, but when we create something at least as clever as us, that may very well be the end of our era.

Or course. I've got a 3D printer and the kids love it. You don't have to look far to find models of popular toys, and they can be envy of the other kids at school if they're the only ones with glow-in-the-dark Minecraft Creepers (glow in the dark filament is pretty cool!)

Just another case of technology running ahead of the existing rules.

While this is arguably true for software that directly faces a human being, embedded/specialist applications are getting faster and more powerful. I work on a massively parallel ASIC and it benefits from every iteration of die shrink with clock speed.

If there is a machine intelligence it won't be written in Mono or Python on a standard PC - it will be a specially crafted piece of silicon with very well optimised process code.

I do believe we will reach a singularity where us squishy meatbags make ourselves redundant, but I don't fear it. If the culmination of mankind produces an intelligence that surpasses our own, that's a great end-goal. It/they will certainly be better physically equipped to explore the stars, perhaps carrying a memory of the seeds of their creation with them.

What is curious is why we haven't yet encountered such machines. I guess as a planet we've not been pumping out giveaway radio waves for long enough?

It's a bit like comparing comments between people that have and haven't RTFA. In that respect, you're Notepad. Lacking in substance. Unlikable. Liked by no one. A bitter, unlikable loner, whose passing shall not be mourned.

That's a terrible analogy.

A better one would be saying something like "Don't use ECU diagnostic interfaces to find out what's wrong with your engine - that's cheating - a real mechanic would just take it apart to see what's wrong!"

In a similar way to the ECU telling you what is up, you still need an underlying knowledge of engine mechanics in order to use the information it provides effectively. Sometimes it will be misleading. The same goes with IDEs and coding. Sure you can write everything in vi/emacs if that takes your fancy, but you won't be as efficient as if you use a decent IDE, but that's not to say you should trust the IDE entirely.

IDEs with any form of wizard for "creating stuff" potentially take away the underlying understanding that a programmer might use to come up with something better.

But, for code navigation, a good IDE is totally indispensable, particularly with large codebases of someone else's code. What could be more useful than hovering your mouse pointer over a structure variable and having a little window show you how it was declared and what members it has? Or telling you all the places the current function is called from?

A good IDE shouldn't get in the way of coding, but nor should it take over the coding for you.

It's a moon, not a planet, but since we're talking on your level... if you look on the other side there is a huge "MADE IN CHINA" sign and a big array of bitcoin ASICs that they used for their 51% attack. More hashing power than Uruguay. That's how they bought the fake landing sets off NASA!