False. It is still indefensible, because it is a problem of Apple's own creation. If Apple wants to charge for it, that's fine, but only if they also allow their devices to download apps from somewhere other than Apple.

For in-app purchases of content, it already works that way, of course, but I'm assuming this isn't what is being discussed here, because it would be particularly heinous of Apple to want to charge up to a 15% tax on content that it had no involvement either in payment for or distribution of.

If students are being subjected to 4 GPa of pressure (40,000 bar), that's a real problem. I mean, that would crush their bodies beyond the limits of molecular cohesion, rupturing all cell membranes and turning all of their bodies' water into high-density ice. If the university is regularly murdering students this way, they should be stopped.

I'm not sure how pass/fail grades help, though.

Whether we like it or not, whether we use Windows or not, Microsoft is going to insist on adding the tax whether the PC comes shipped with Windows or not. This is illegal bundling, Microsoft has essentially ignored prior rulings, and it's pretty much a certainty the courts will be fine with this.

Sounds like they're going for the Amazon model — sell at a loss for years until the competition withers, then stop selling at a loss.

Ground effect requires being at lower altitude than the wingspan. Unless that plane is a quarter mile wide, ground effect doesn't play into it. And if it is a quarter mile wide, you'd better hope it doesn't fly into any populated areas. :-)

As others have pointed out, gaining altitude requires some extra energy, but over the duration of the flight, you use less fuel because the air is thinner, resulting in less drag. (This assumes that your propulsion doesn't lose efficiency to match, of course, but I think you can compensate for some of that by changing the blade angle. This is way outside my area of expertise, though, so I'm not entirely certain about any of this.)

One reason not to go to higher altitudes is that it has a range of only 125 miles. The hybrid drivetrain (500-mile range) doesn't exist yet, I don't think. With such a short range, you'd use up half your battery power on the ascent, so the benefit from more efficient travel at altitude would be lost, and you'd likely end up with even lower total mileage.

But 2,000 feet still seems awfully low to me by a factor of four or five. Dunno.

Just wait until it starts training on porn that people managed to upload to Twitch in violation of the terms and conditions. Then your use of the word "rape" in that comment will take on a whole new meaning.

Real-world flight times are likely to be miserable for most purposes. Currently, this plane has a maximum altitude of 2,000 feet. Not sure why. But the plane has a maximum airspeed of 140 knots. For context, a 737 has a cruising speed of 450 knots.

In practice, this means that this plane is only suitable for very-short-distance flights where a jet would not achieve normal cruising altitudes or speeds.

A nonstop flight from SJC to DFW takes about 3 hours and 35 minutes, give or take, for 1440 miles. At cruising speed, it would take 2 hours and 46 minutes. So an additional 50 minutes or so is spent on taxi time and landing at a much slower speed (maybe 140 to 150 knots). Of that, landing takes 20 to 30 minutes and drops the speed to a third, so I'm going to ballpark that as about 15 minutes of added time, leaving 35 minutes for taxi time. So the total flight time is probably about 30 hours at 450 knots.

Assuming that landing speed for the X1 is proportional to the difference in cruising speed (which may not be accurate, but won't make a huge difference), this means that same flight would take 35 minutes plus about 3.2x the flight time, or about 10 hours and 11 minutes.

On the flip side, the low landing speed means that it can fly into much smaller airports, and because it carries a much smaller number of passengers affordably, it could make much more direct flights economically feasible. Combine that with autonomous piloting, and if it actually had enough range to do medium-range flights, such a design would have potential.

When I fly from SJC to my mom's house in West TN, it takes me about 14 hours to fly commercially, thanks to 3.5 hours of driving, an hour of TSA time, and an hour or more of layover, and an extra takeoff and an extra landing. If I could get rid of all of that extra time and fly general aviation rules, then an automated flight with a single passenger to the nearest tiny little air strip would involve only half an hour of driving (3 hours savings), no TSA time (1 hour savings), no layover (1 hour savings), and no extra takeoff and landing (30 minutes savings), reducing the trip to about 13 hours and 15 minutes (12.5 hours in flight, 30 minutes of driving, and maybe 15 extra minutes for landing).

But that all assumes adequate range. With a hybrid range of only 500 miles and an all-electric range of only 125 miles, the X1 would have to make a minimum of four stops to reach Tennessee from California. So this plane, while a great demonstration of the potential for electric flight, still has very little practical use other than ultra-short-range flights. I suppose with this, I could fly into Nashville or Little Rock or Memphis and take a tiny plane to that airstrip if such a flight existed and were cheap, and that might be worth doing if it existed and were cheap, but I'm not holding my breath unless it is entirely automated.

It's a good question, but I think framing it as what humans need to do to be able to live alongside ASI is the wrong way to look at it. The right way to look at it is "What do humans need to learn how to do to have fulfilling lives?".

Of course that question also depends on what makes sense for humans in a world run by benevolent ASI. We don't need to bother thinking about humans' role in a world run by malevolent or even disinterested ASI because there will be no role.

Sort of. When my kids were in public school in the 2000s and 2010s, book encyclopedias were sometimes grudgingly accepted as source. Not always, and it was often made clear that they weren't proper sources (because they're not!). The solution was to use Wikipedia but to follow the reference links to the primary sources it cites and use those.

I thought that wasn't just a good answer, but a strict improvement over accepting hardcover encyclopedias, both pedagogically and as a matter of scholarly principle.

In the spirit of modern /., you should probably call me a liar and a moron and make some political argument.

Sigh.

CA is #6 in homeless per capita among states. #1 is NY. I can't find any good nationwide numbers on homeless spending; it doesn't seem like anyone collects that data. However, I did find numbers from CA and NY, and NY spends nearly three times as much per capita as CA, so CA is definitely not #1.

Per the official poverty measure, CA is #22. That's arguably not a great measure, though, since it assumes the value of a dollar is the same everywhere. Using the supplemental poverty measure, CA is #2, behind Louisiana (#3 if you include DC, which falls between LA and CA). LA is high because people are actually very poor. CA's poverty rate is high even because though incomes are relatively high, housing is very expensive. Anyway, not #1.

CA is #11 in percentage of income collected, though it does have the highest marginal rate. It's important to keep in mind that CA's tax burden is more progressively allocated than most other states. If you're middle-class, your tax burden in CA is about the same as someone in TX or FL. If you're poor, CA is cheaper. If you're rich, CA is more.

#6, not #1. LA, NM, MI, TX and NV are numbers 1-5. Well, that's "average literacy score". If you want to look at percent with literacy skills at or below PIAAC level 1, then CA is in a three-way tie for #2. #1 is NM, #2-4 are CA, TX and MI. Either way not, #1.

Personally, I wouldn't want to live in CA, mostly because of their ridiculous gun laws, but it's a pretty decent place to live by most measures. It's best if you're highly-educated and highly-skilled, because while it costs a lot to live there, you can also make a lot of money.

"How did you get hired?"
"I was top at Fortnite. You?"
"Combat flight sims."

"Damn, two Boeings just crashed over an oil refinery on city limits and took out half the city."
"Did you remember to save your position beforehand?"
"Yeah."
"The reload and continue from there. No-one will notice."

I love computer games. I have XPlane 12 and many scenery packs. I rank well on Elite:Dangerous. From the sounds of it, the FAA would see me as over-qualified. In reality? There's no way in hell I'd be taking those kinds of risks with real lives. There's a huge difference between having good reflexes and a good eye, versus having the complex 4D spacetime relationship mental models needed for robust air traffic control.

$424 USD.

You're thinking of Nexus. Even by the end of the Nexus era, Google had shifted towards the flagship device market. Pixels have always been aimed at the flagship market.

If you want a cheaper option, look at the Pixel "A" series devices. They launch in the spring and generally have the prior year's CPU, less RAM, cheaper cameras and more plasticky build quality, but the prices are quite a bit lower. They still offer the same seven years of OS updates, though.

Yes. Always have. If you buy on a payment plan from someone other than Google they may keep it locked until you pay it off.