I was going to use Google as an example of how it should work. Chrome supports open standards, and incompatibilities are minimal because if Chrome doesn't conform to the spec it's treated as a bug and fixed. When Google wants to add new features, they go through the process of getting them added as open standards. Sometimes they fail and have to be abandoned, and Google accepts it, e.g. the pseudo-anonymous ad impression reporting tech they developed.

Google actually has an open standard for spreadsheet programming using Javascript, which it's a shame nobody else uses because it's the last big hurdle to migrating away from Excel for a lot of people.

From: "On Funding Digital Public Works" https://pdfernhout.net/on-fund...
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What have funding policies in automotive intelligence wrought?

Consider again the self-driving cars mentioned earlier which now cruise some streets in small numbers. The software "intelligence" doing the driving was primarily developed by public money given to universities, which generally own the copyrights and patents as the contractors. Obviously there are related scientific publications, but in practice these fail to do justice to the complexity of such systems. The truest physical representation of the knowledge learned by such work is the codebase plus email discussions of it (plus what developers carry in their heads).

We are about to see the emergence of companies licensing that publicly funded software and selling modified versions of such software as proprietary products. There will eventually be hundreds or thousands of paid automotive software engineers working on such software no matter how it is funded, because there will be great value in having such self-driving vehicles given the result of America's horrendous urban planning policies leaving the car as generally the most efficient means of transport in the suburb. The question is, will the results of the work be open for inspection and contribution by the public? Essentially, will those engineers and their employers be "owners" of the software, or will they instead be "stewards" of a larger free and open community development process?

Open source software is typically eventually of much higher quality and reliability because more eyes look over the code for problems and more voices contribute to adding innovative solutions. About 35,000 Americans are killed every year in driving fatalities, and hundreds of thousands more are seriously injured. Should the software that keeps people safe on roads, and which has already been created primarily with public funds, not also be kept under continuous public scrutiny?

Without concerted action, such software will likely be kept proprietary because that will be more profitable sooner to the people who get in early, and will fit into conventional expectations of business as usual. It will likely end up being available for inspection and testing at best to a few government employees under non-disclosure agreements. We are talking about an entire publicly funded infrastructure about to disappear from the public radar screen. There is something deeply wrong here.

And while it is true many planes like the 757 can fly themselves already for most of their journey, and their software is probably mostly proprietary, the software involved in driving is potentially far more complex as it requires visual recognition of cues in a more complex environment full of many more unpredictable agents operating on much faster timescales. Also, automotive intelligence will touch all of our lives on a daily basis, where as aircraft intelligence can be generally avoided in daily life.

Decisions on how this public intellectual property related to automotive intelligence will be handled will affect the health and safety of every American and later everyone in any developed country. Either way, the automotive software engineers and their employers will do well financially (for example, one might still buy a Volvo because their software engineers are better and they do more thorough testing of configurations). But which way will the public be better off:
* totally dependent on proprietary intelligences under the hoods of their cars which they have no way of understanding, or instead
* with ways to verify what those intelligences do, understand how they operate, and make contributions when they can so such automotive intelligences serve humane purposes better?

If, for example, automotive intelligence was developed under some form of copyleft license like the GNU General Public License, then at least car owners or their "software mechanics" would be assured they could have access to the software in source form to ensure safe operation. What might be "street legal" in terms of software modifications might be a different story -- in the same way people can't legally drive with a cracked windshield or a broken headlight. For example, software changes might need to first be proven safe in simulation before being provisionally "street legal". But, the important thing is, foundations or government agencies funding code development could insist on some form of free licensing terms for automotive intelligence as a matter of public policy.

There are many other areas of human activities that the exponential growth of technology will effect. Automotive intelligence is just one of them that is here now and which I am familiar with from tangential interactions at universities with people developing it. In enough time similar issues will arise for the software behind household robotics or intelligent devices that assist the elderly or handicapped. The IBOT wheelchair by Dean Kamen using complex software to balance on two wheels is just the beginning of such devices.

Note the IBOT wheelchair was developed entirely with private funds it seems, so the reasoning in this essay does not apply directly to it. Also, in general Dean Kamen is a role model of a socially responsible for-profit inventor. Still, the issue arises of whether "Johnson & Johnson" should be funding such development, as was the case, as opposed to, say, the "Robert Wood Johnson Foundation", as was not, given the public policy issue of whether individuals should be continually dependent for personal needs on proprietary software. In either case it would be worth it to pay billions for such innovation, and the public will pay that in the end as a toll on for such devices.

There is a real question here of how our society will proceed -- mainly closed or mainly open. It is reflected in everything the non-profit world does -- including the myths it lives by. The choice of myth can be made in part by the funding policies set by foundations and government agencies. The myth that funders may be living by is the scarcity economics myth. How does that myth effect the digital public works funding cycle?
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Glad to see more people -- including also with Princeton roots -- taking up the cause!!! :-)

This has been the case for a very, very long time already. Corporations have been self censoring forever. You can find maps that are decades old which show Taiwan as part of China, for example.

You would expect nothing less. The far more important issue is people relying on AI as a source of information about these things. People need to learn to always question AI and verify its claims.

They need a self cleaning system like those public bathrooms where the inside is hosed down between users, and anyone who fails to exit promptly is washed out.

You certainly can write pixels directly into a bitmap on Windows. I suggest using SDL to make your life easier.

I prefer 6502 myself, but the Z80 has some interesting features. The pseudo-DMA mode, essentially an optimized copy loop, is nice. Quite a few games back in the day used it, notably Ghosts and Goblins on the ZX Spectrum which redraws the entire screen with it every frame. It's a relatively easy to integrate chip, and the port feature allows for a clean memory map and low cost/complexity peripherals.

RISC-V is appearing in more and more microcontrollers from Chinese manufacturers, as they seek to move away from dependence on any Western tech. It's still got some way to go to catch up with ARM in performance SoCs, but for low cost microcontrollers it's pretty much on a par now.

While you probably wouldn't want this as a daily driver for many other reasons, solar panels on cars make sense. 5 MPH or even less isn't much, but it's not nothing, and it's basically free. The car already has a DC charger on-board, so the added cost isn't much, and cars spend most of their time parked, usually outdoors.

The original Nissan Leaf had a small solar panel option that charged the 12V battery. That is a good idea. EVs obviously don't need cranking power for an ICE, but they do need 12V for basically everything electric except for traction. For safety reasons the traction battery is disconnected when the vehicle is parked (you may have heard the relays click). Consumers also want always-on dashcams to catch door dingers and people hitting parked cars. The cost is almost negligible too, although I'm sure Audi will charge 1,500 Euro for it.

What's really interesting is not the fight itself, but the fact that Chinese robot companies have commoditized humanoid robots that are capable of acrobatics already.

You can buy an off-the-shelf humanoid robot that has everything needed to balance, move with both feet off the ground at the same time*, get up from being knocked over etc. All the sensors, joints, and software needed to make it happen are there, you just need to teach it some fighting/dancing/labour moves.

* This demonstrates a high level of advancement. Older/shitter robots like Elon Musk's Optimus look constipated because they have to be balanced on at least one foot at all times. Boston Dynamics pioneered robots that can, like humans, throw themselves off balance and catch themselves. Both feet can be off the ground at the same time, and to walk or run like a human it's a requirement to be able to essentially fall forwards and catch itself on the leading foot.

No, it's more likely that girls and women learned to mask symptoms early for survival reasons.

If you look at hunter-gatherer societies, ADHD is paramount to survival because it avoids over-harvesting. Too little ADHD produces cultures prone to driving plants and/or animals extinct. ADHD is a critical stop-gap that prevents this. Studies show ADHD gatherers will not only collect more, they will do so in ways that cause far less damage, resulting in a far better second harvest and far better sustainability.

Into more modern times, ADHD was a valuable survival trait. Too little and you became vulnerable to diseases, pests, crop blight, etc. If you wanted a stable population, right the way through to the industrial era, you needed a high level of ADHD in the population.

It is only when neurotypical bosses decided that they had to micromanage everything and decided who lived and who died on the streets that you see ADHD symptoms suddenly and massively suppressed. But masking changes nothing. The levels will still be the same, they're just hidden.

It isn't. The under-diagnosis of girls is astronomical.

You are assuming ADHD is a new thing. No, it isn't. It is a survival thing. ADHD was critical in a very large percentage of the population for the bulk of the last 350,000 years. Without it, humanity would have gone extinct. It's merely not appropriate in a world in which neurotypicals make neurodiverse solutions a "bad thing".

They might drop by a little, but honestly not by much. Boys are mildly overdiagnosed for the reasons you give (but few places still medicate), girls are however massively underdiagnosed.

I never got myself into the whole "masculinity" obsession, even back in the 70s and 80s. The result of this was a discovery that computers launched me head-first through far fewer windows and pelted me with far fewer rocks. So, yeah, I was definitely seen as disposable though my childhood and teen years by pretty much everyone. (It's one reason anyone looking back at those as "golden years" is unlikely to win me over.)

Escapism is pretty much all I had at the time, and these days remains pretty much all I have - reality has grown far worse over the years and knowledge by the neurotypicals has not come with empathy but ammunition. There is guilt and shame in playing with creative writing or inventing, and the demons have got really bad on occasion, but you're right, it's not doing anyone any harm.

Both. It's best thought of as a positive feedback loop.

Probably when Chinese fabs really start churning out DDR5 and high end flash memory. That's the truth of it, it's a gift to them.

Sometimes I wake up and start doing new science. But usually I just roll over and go back to sleep.