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Comment Re: seafloor carbon-fiber cannoli (Score 1) 71

Not just paying customers. Operating the vehicle with passengers of any kind (not just the guy who owns it) without explicit warnings about the actual dangers and full information about it not being certified safe.

There are crimes like manslaugher and reckless endangerment too.

Comment Re:seafloor TPE menstrual cup inside a dude (Score 1) 71

Uh, well, James Cameron did not use a sphere when he went to the Mariana Trench. As I recall it was a torpedo / cylinder-shaped submersible. It was certainly no bathysphere. It is possible to descend to those depths using shapes other than spheres.

While it is possible, Cameron did use a conventional sphere. The whole submersible vehicle is not the crew compartment. Most of it is just buoyancy material with the operator sphere at the bottom, the same way the Trieste was built 60 years ago. But the important point here is that is was good old non-fracturing, non-delaminating steel.

The submersible features a pilot sphere, large enough for only one occupant. The sphere, with steel walls 64 mm (2.5 in) thick, was tested for its ability to withstand the required 114 megapascals (16,500 pounds per square inch) of pressure in a pressure chamber at Pennsylvania State University. The sphere sits at the base of the 11.8-tonne (13.0-short-ton) vehicle. The vehicle operates in a vertical attitude, and carries 500 kg (1,100 lb) of ballast weight that allows it to both sink to the bottom and, when released, rise to the surface.

Comment Re:Just an internet connection (Score 4, Insightful) 54

Because people with phones may not be around at convenient times when you need to make a call. And the lack of public pay phones is precisely the issue being addressed here - most people moved over to cell phones, so either they dont carry change for the few public pay phones which do still exist, or the phone companies either removed them or stopped fixing them after they were last vandalised.

This guy said he set the phones up because he lost cell phone reception during his drive to work - he may work antisocial hours, so he cant just knock on someones door when he gets a flat at 3am.

And lots of people would be concerned about their own safety knocking on random strangers doors - especially in society today.

So this guy is giving people the option to make calls in cell phone dead zones, because thats what *he* saw as missing. Good on him.

Comment What about other vehicles? (Score 1) 67

Hydrogen does not make a good fuel, tor a tonne of reasons, but nitrogen fuel would be less prone to nasty reactions and fewer problems. Could N6 combustion be controlled at levels suitable for heavy road vehicles or trains?

(Electric trains have their own problems, due to the fact that the junction needs to be poor and the cost of copper is so great that lines need to use far worse conductors to reduce theft.)

Comment Re:Most cities really need this (Score 1) 107

You really need to drive here.

Like most of the US, the population density simply isn't enough for mass transit to be practical.

Buses run every 15-30 minutes on the main grid streets, nominally a mile apart. Most aren't particularly full, and there aren't enough transit police to enforce basic civility, such as the blaring music from multiple speakerphones.

A planned light rail has been replaced with an expansion of the bus line on Maryland parkway.

There are more bike lanes with spacing than there used to be, but there is *no* way I am going back on to the roads with the drivers around here.

Underground tunnels with regular small automated cars would seem to be a possibility, but only if monitored well enough. I have no idea whether it would be financially viable, though.

Comment Re:It's bad enough people get experimented on (Score 2) 34

They're also safer than human drivers because they drive slower. Human-driven trucks usually drive the speed limit, which is 75 mph on the Texas portion of I-45. A self-driving truck will go slower to minimize fuel consumption, so 55 mph. A truck going 75 has nearly twice the kinetic energy.

And also because when the signage on the long uphill grade clearly requires that trucks must keep to the right lane, the robot ruck that can climb at eleven miles an hour won't tie up miles of traffic vainly trying to pass a truck doing 10.99 mph.

Comment This is Ricardoâs theory of rent (Score 4, Interesting) 48

In case you never took that course, the classical economist David Ricardo figured out that if you were a tenant farmer choosing between two lots of land, the difference in the productivity of the lands makes no difference to you. Thatâ(TM)s because if a piece of land yielded, say, ten thousand dollars more revenue per year, the landlord would simply be able to charge ten thousand more in rent. In essence landlords can demand all these economic advantages their land offers to the tenant.

All these tech companies are fighting to create platforms which you, in essence, rent from them. Why do you want to use these platforms? Because they promise convenience, to save you time. Why do the tech companies want to be in the business of renting platforms deeply embedded in peopleâ(TM)s lives? Because they see the time theyâ(TM)re supposedly saving you as theirs, not yours.

Sure, the technology *could* save you time, thatâ(TM)s what youâ(TM)d want it for, but the technology companies will inevitably enshittify their service to point itâ(TM)s barely worth using, or even beyond that if they can make it hard enough for customers to extract themselves.

Comment Re:The Photophone (Score 1) 23

I used to work at an outfit that had a big conference room, with big beautiful windows, that faced out across an airfield into a wooded area (good hiding places). In order to mitigate such optical surveilance, the windows were equipped with small piezoelectric speakers. Driven with (I'm guessing) white noise.

If I'm understanding the article correctly, the conference room window mitigation wouldn't work against this. It doesn't rely on vibrations of the windows. Instead, you'd just need a piece of paper inside the room, lit by ordinary lamps. As long as the light reflecting off the paper could pass through the windows unmodified (i.e. the windows provide clear visibility) the white noise vibrations of the windows would have no effect.

On the other hand, lightweight curtains that blocked the view through the window would stop this technique, but probably wouldn't significantly reduce what was detectable from a laser bounced off the windows (assuming no white noise).

Comment Re:I swear (Score 1) 42

You didn't read correctly.

I think we're talking past one another. I'll try to be clearer.

I said, that if you think Play is keeping you safe, nobody prevents you from only using *Play*.

Sure, but that's not the point. The point is that Android does prevent most users from using anything other than Play. Not by actually blocking them from using other app stores but by simply not offering the option. And that's a good thing, because most users have no idea how to decide whether or not something is safe.

I think perhaps the confusion here is because you and I are looking at this from different directions. You seem to be looking at it from the perspective of what you or I might want to choose. I'm looking at it from the perspective of an engineer whose job is to keep 3B users safe, most of whom have no idea how to make judgments about what is safe and what isn't. Keeping them within the fenced garden (it's a low fence, but still a fence) allows them to do what they want without taking much risk. The fact that the fence is easily stepped over preserves the freedom of more clueful and/or adventurous users to take greater risks. I think this has been a good balance.

And while you are usually (not sure for all manufacturers) not prevented from using other stores

I'm pretty sure that the ability to allow unknown sources is required by the Android compliance definition document, and that a manufacturer who disables it is not allowed to call their device Android, or to pre-install the Google apps or Play.

Google does a few things to make it uncomfortable. Trusting the store is a one-time thing, but you still have to acknowledge every app install twice and updates require confirming you really want to update the app, while Play can update apps in the background, optionally without even notifying you.

Until Epic decides that they want their store to be able to install and update as seamlessly as Play can, and gets a court to order that. Still, your point is valid, there is still some friction for other stores. Is it enough? I guess we'll find out. Will it be allowed to remain? I guess we'll find that out, too.

Comment Re:Monarchs Nerfed before US Revolution (Score 1) 163

England was never going to nerf its monarchy if we were still saying "long live the king!" from across the pond.

Actually we "nerfed" the monarchy in 1649 while you were still part of the UK and still saying "god save the king!" from across the pond. It happened as a result of the English civil war that established parliament's pre-eminence over the monarchy - and the "nerfing" was pretty severe since Charles I was beheaded! While the monarchy was restored in 1660 it was as a figurehead position with little to no political power, or as you would put it, a severely "nerfed" version of what went before!

Not exactly. The restoration brought back a king (Charles II) who had considerable power -- conducting wars, dismissing lords, granting the charter to the East India Company thus creating a rich and powerful supporter, refusing to persecute Catholics, dissolving Parliament, etc.

Parliament got a bit tired of having a powerful activist king so shortly after he died they fired the monarchy again in The Glorious Revolution of 1688 with dethroned Charles II's successor James II. This time the power rearrangement stuck. William and Mary were well aware that they served as monarchs at the pleasure of Parliament and that they could be fired and replaced. All English monarchs since have known that they need Parliament support and action for anything important they wanted to accomplish (cf George III and the "King's Friends" in Parliament).

Comment Re:whats the harm (Score 1) 19

How much could it possibly be costing them to keep this service alive... they could have it in a holding pattern for another 15 years and then kill it when its really no longer being used and it would cost them pennies.

goo.gl links are a significant abuse vector, so Google has to maintain a non-trivial team to monitor and mitigate the abuse. I'll bet there are several full-time employees working on that, and that the total annual cost is seven figures.

Even if it weren't an abuse vector, the nature of Google's internal development processes mean that no service can be left completely unstaffed. The environment and libraries are constantly evolving, and all the services require constant attention to prevent bit rot. A fraction of one engineer would probably be enough for something like goo.gl if it weren't abused, but that's still six figures per year, not pennies.

Comment Re:Most cities really need this (Score 1) 107

oh, no.

It doesn't even *compare* to the uselessness of the Las Vegas monorail and its multiple bankruptcy.

It goes to something like five resorts and the convention center.

Due to the juice that the taxi companies used to have, it was blocked from going anywhere useful, such as the airport.

And the fair for those short hops is something like $9, although only a dollar for locals.

I haven't heard of any extensions of the boring loop in at least a couple of years, though. It will *supposedly* reach the airport and downtown, but I'll believe it when I see it.

And I'm not sure that there's any point in the current form in which it needs drivers in passenger cars. But next to the monorail, it's downright brilliant! [insert eyeball here]

Comment Re:I swear (Score 1) 42

Nobody prevents you from only installing stuff from Play.

This isn't true for the vast majority of Android users. To a first approximation, all Android users are using devices that have "unknown sources" disabled, so they can only get stuff from Play. Of course, it's trivial to find out how to enable unknown sources and install stuff from other places and I'd expect that nearly all slashdotters who use Android have at least experimented with that, even if they don't use f-droid or whatever on a regular basis. But slashdotters are not remotely a good representative sample of Android users.

I mean for other software you probably also have a selection of sites you trust and avoid others.

If you're talking about desktop/laptop software, sure... but most Android users don't use a desktop or a laptop and are accustomed to expecting that anything they can install is safe. And even among those who do use a non-mobile device, people expect mobile devices to be safer, because they are. This court ruling may change that, to some degree. The result will probably be good for Apple, since Android insecurity will drive people to the safety of Apple's walled garden.

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