chernofool

Hush, the city is unaffordable enough already without a surge of VC valley types.

5 years from now: content is only available on expensive ad platforms, everybody is back to pirating content.

10 years from now: rightsholders get desperate enough to let you purchase and download DRM-free TV shows and movies. Whoever re-invents iTunes gets on the cover of Forbes.

I wish we could find a way to disincentive the sort of collective short-term greed that sinks an industry. These periodic dry spells of accessible media content are inconvenient and unnecessary.

None of those systems are autonomous, people still handle the decision-making. Also, AI does not mean faster or more advanced compute; the fact that it requires so many cycles and watts is a testament to its relative inefficiency.

Aerospace code is much too thoroughly-vetted to use something as slow and imprecise as a modern AI system. Existing realtime platforms and sensors are plenty fast, and you can prove that they'll work correctly. Plus, when you're procuring chips to run in an adverse environment, advanced process nodes will probably be too fragile and prone to interference.

Too bad that Apple works so hard to strangle 3rd-party software in the cradle.

A device like this would be fantastic with a full desktop environment. Many desktop apps have solid touchscreen support now, ChromeOS has demonstrated that mobile apps can be run seamlessly in a desktop window manager, and you could easily dock it to use with bluetooth mouse/keyboard.

Alas, we've got to put up with a hi-res smartphone OS because that is Apple's vision for this product line.

Are you certain that AI is used in any of the tech that the US is sending to Ukraine?

It's mostly cold war era equipment, designed around the '90s or earlier. Modern AI also seems very failure-prone for military applications around populated areas.

You could probably get 2W from a wide over-ear band in direct sunlight. Maybe that's 2-4 hours per day, with indirect light scattered around the day.

If you get say, 2W*6h=12Wh/day, you could afford about 15mA/hr @3.3V. That might be able to power a set of wireless headphones with a reasonably-sized battery, if you left them on a windowsill in direct sunlight when you weren't using them.

Modern designs will probably use monocrystalline cells, but old solar-powered calculators used amorphous cells. Those are less efficient, but they can recover a trickle of energy from weaker light sources such as indoors or cloudy days.

I also wonder what sort of materials they'll use. Plastics don't usually handle excessive UV exposure well.

Interoperable car parts are a terrific idea.

I like reliable old cars for this reason. Sometimes things need to be replaced, but those things are usually cheap and easy to work with. Need a new headlight? $25 at the local parts store, $50 for the LED version. You can install it with a screwdriver.

The curved, round lights on new cars look nice, but why couldn't they ask a supplier like Sylvania to settle on a few consistent options? With a new Honda Civic, you'll need to order a bespoke headlight assembly for about...$340?

https://www.go-parts.com/2222-honda-civic-headlight-assembly...

Bad idea for mushrooms. Some of them are insidious - you could feel fine for several hours while your liver is destroyed, and by the time you feel sick it's too late to do anything.

Most plant ID apps have a disclaimer saying that you should never eat anything that you use the app to identify. Seek reminds you every time you open the camera.

They're mostly intended as entertainment, but some of them use the data to analyze where species are growing in realtime.

It's strange, isn't it? In the span of a year or two, the zeitgeist shifted from "online stranger danger" to "you don't exist if you're not active on [website]".

Even stranger, few people seem willing to re-evaluate their place in mass-scale social sites, even after 20 years of spam, scams and shams.

Maybe it's a tragedy of the commons. People might enjoy the effortless positive reinforcement provided by their worldwide in-groups, which makes it easy to ignore the huge negative externalities?

Or could people be addicted to the feeling of righteously fighting a great evil, such as their [adjective-of-the-month] neighbors?

>What man has broken man can fix.

Counterpoint: Nuclear disasters like Chernobyl.

Some things just need to fix themselves over a long timescale. If we screw up badly enough, humanity won't be around to see the eventual recovery.