The limitations on the smart speaker in the past have been that it doesn't have access to enough services to be terribly useful. The end-user value will be linked to all the services the speaker can access, such as podcast player, subscriptions like music streaming, Netflix, other podcast-hosting apps, social media apps, email, text messaging, and web browsing history. If the app ecosystem can funnel audio streams to the smart speaker, it can capitalize on all that media and essentially curate your daily listening. It can also monitor all of your communication channels and suggest responses that are written in your style.

I'm not a fan of the monitoring, but I can see how others would welcome a fully integrated audio-based companion into their lives. I also foresee its potential as a companion for elderly people who might have a smartphone but aren't inclined to learn its features or lack the eyesight to use its screen. It would need a lot of effective guardrails to be useful

The difference is that emergency personnel are trained in how to break windows / move the improperly parked car out of the way. If you run fire hoses through a self-driving car and it drives away, it takes your hoses with it. You can gesture to a human driver to move out of the way, where you cannot currently gesture to a self-driving car to move in the direction you need it to.

At the same time, it is true that it is easier to hand-wring about a situation involving new technology that does not transparently provide an immediate path to emergency services accommodation. However, the lack of a developed standard to ensure emergency personnel can immediately move self-driving cars in an emergency is exacerbating the situation.

So what I hear you saying is that if we get a VPN that terminates in India, we can get a serious discount on Netflix?

Amateur Radio was setup to provide emergency response communications. There is etiquette built-in to the organizational structure and communications style. It's hard to imagine useful information (and no misleading info) being passed around during civil unrest, without getting swamped with propaganda.

If you want "everyone" to be able to participate in something like this, base it off bluetooth. It already has the ad-hoc comm messaging profiles built-in. Or maybe an alternate Android OS distro would be able to utilize the wifi chipset for ad-hoc comms?

Bandwidth is so limited in longer range comms that it seems like it would be difficult for this to be practical in an emergency situation.

Would it be possible for Epic to get a court order against this - some sort of temporary injunction forcing Apple to allow Epic back into the App Store? It might state that the potential damages to Epic are significant, and that Apple could attempt to claw back some revenue later if they receive a favorable ruling on appeal?

This seems like another economic instrument akin to raising the minimum wage. When you raise the minimum wage, those folks effectively get a forced pay increase without necessarily changing their job duties or hours worked. The guaranteed income program, designed to offset significant job losses in transportation and other industries due to robotics and automation, still doesn't address another problem: what do people do with their newfound time with these additional funds they have been granted? What is there to prevent landlords from raising rents because they know their tenants now have at least $1200 more per month? You notice the rich folks who cook this stuff up aren't ceasing to work just because they're worth a ton of money. However, they're saying "well with self-driving trucks and cars, the transportation industry will fire a ton of employees, and we have nowhere for them to work anymore" without creating alternative employment options. There have been some other studies in this area, with varying results.

Most video streaming services block VPN and data center IPs, including AWS. The home VPN server is really the best option.

Seems like the next step would be Netflix putting pressure on the ISP to offer transit by some type of advertising campaign. Essentially, "SK Broadband" wants you to pay extra for your Netflix in SK -- so they can take a cut. Do you want SK to be able to force Netflix and other providers to extract this money and drive up subscription fees? Or do you want to voice your feelings to SK Broadband?

Pick a data center that has a generator located within the building itself and apparently it will burn itself down.

I realize that it seems like the capitalism model is to sell the spectrum and then presumably put the money to good use, but I feel that it is tying our wireless infrastructure to a very costly model. The wireless companies must recoup their expenditures and the subscribers will pay for essentially a pass-through tax. In addition, the concept of a national spectrum auction specifically encourages monopolistic organizations rather than regional or local providers. I'm sure it is a lot less work for the FCC to make one giant sale though.

I really wish there was a way to support smaller local organizations without giving up the convenience of roaming with the same handset through large areas. It's too bad that the tower equipment is so expensive, and the necessary high speed links to connect the towers are also incredibly expensive -- which is why the telcos are the players in this business.

I suppose this is how we pay for national infrastructure in a country where "I don't want to pay for your service" means that those who want the 5g high-speed data will pay the extra cost to access it through Verizon's network.

The bankruptcy firm turned over $80 million to investigators.
Investigators received $46 million in assets.
Disbursements to creditors totaled $15 million.

Stories like these are excellent for the right-to-repair movement. I understand that the refurbisher is frustrated with the whole process. If there are enough people pushing for right-to-repair, I'm sure Apple can come up with a solution.

I'm a bit on the fence with this whole issue, though. I completely agree that Apple should take steps to avoid the rampant theft of their computers. I also believe that crippling a computer by using an on-board SSD with a limited lifetime should be outlawed. If this continues, I bet we'll start seeing robot rigs designed to replace bad SSD memory chips, and Apple will magically come up with an app that lets you "release" the computer from your clutches. It doesn't even have to unlock the drive -- it just allows someone else to wipe it.

I agree - plus, a physician's analysis would be necessary to confirm that the data collected in the app accurately predicted continuous consciousness. Most likely the data from the health app was inconsistent with his story. He would have experienced a significantly elevated heart rate which may not have been recorded.

If your company is concerned about employees leaving for other competitors and taking their valuable intellectual property with them, you can file patents and then defend those patents. If the employee takes intellectual property from their employer to their new employer, it's called intellectual property theft, and can typically be demonstrated via digital forensics.

An engineer who has spent a significant portion of their career developing knowledge on a specific skill shouldn't be prevented from working for a competitor simply because their employer does not want to protect their intellectual property through existing mechanisms. This artificially lowers wages in the field because the employer does not have to increase the employee's salary to match other companies' offers, as the employee would not be able to take advantage of those offers without a significant wait.

Employees receiving on-the-job training can sign an agreement stating that the training reimbursement is contingent upon them continuing to work for the company for X months/years. If the period is not completed, they can go after the employee to recoup a portion (or all) of their training cost.

I have heard of horrible clauses in veterinarian contracts which prevent the person from working in the same field within a huge radius - essentially forcing them to move away from their community if they want another job. It would be nice if this proposed legislation would stop this practice.

I'm not an attorney, but these sound like reasonable solutions.

The latest craze in community college education appears to be online classes whose "content" is provided by the book publishers. From several of these courses, it appears that the publishers are sending their books to the lowest bidder and having them come up with slides and test questions. Then, the community college just has to hire someone to oversee the class and ask questions from students. Of course, the book is required reading, and without the book, you are likely to fail the class.

Why?

The tests are primarily about regurgitating exact quotes from the book. The exam authors don't actually understand the material and only take random snippets from each chapter and ask about them. Therefore, an understanding of the concepts is not enough to pass the test - you must have basically memorized entire passages from the book. The exams and "lecture slides" are also riddled with errors, as is to be expected when you ask an unqualified person to write them.