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Comment Re:What took so long? (Score 1) 64

Why?

I run a Shopify store, and if anybot wants to buy from me, by all means, and please invite all your bot-friends!

I think the only merchants who should be fearing this are ones relying on brand recognition rather than low prices and good products, since bots have more time to "shop around".

Comment Re:"if you pay for it, you own it" (Score 4, Informative) 63

BTW, this also applies to old games. Have an old game that no longer runs on modern operating systems? In Europe, you have the right to task an AI to fix it so it will run.

Adding *new features*, mind you, is trickier. You're not allowed to decompile and alter a program to add new features, but you *are* allowed to decompile for interoperability purposes. So you are within your rights to task an AI to decompile a program to figure out how to link a mod into it and then to write a mod.

Comment Re:"if you pay for it, you own it" (Score 4, Informative) 63

In Europe, it is. Article 6 of the Software Directive grants an "interoperability exemption". The lawful licensee of software has the statutory right to strip DRM in order to achieve interoperability. Any EULA terms that prohibit reverse engineering for interoperability are automatically treated as void. Article 5(1) of Directive 2009/24/EC also grants the ability to decompile to fix bugs that impair the ability to use the software, even if the supplier prohibits it. So long as you don't then start sharing your "offline mode" version of the software, you're within your rights

People in Europe are within their rights to task an AI to decompile and tweak a game they own make an "offline mode" version of it, or to create their own servers or whatnot if the manufacturer plans to shut them down or otherwise strip features that the user paid for.

Of course, the US is less consumer-friendly in this regard.

Comment Re:Good start (Score 1) 140

As for Islamic countries, there's only two that ban women from driving: Afghanistan and Turkmenistan - both de facto / arbitrary / adminstrative bans rather than official bans (e.g. refusing to issue/renew licenses, requiring guardians for long-distance travel, or things of that nature). Saudi Arabia revoked their ban in 2018. And Iran has always allowed women to drive (though they have to cover their hair while driving).

Comment Re:Good start (Score 1) 140

*Full, nationwide bans*? No. But the Soviet Union banned women from many types of driving (as "arduous and hazardous"), such as driving subways, long-haul freight, various kinds of heavy construction machinery, etc. These were inherited and retained post-Soviet states, including Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, though the lists of jobs has dropped over time. Even today, in Belarus (where Lukaschenko talks up the nation's foundational Christian values), under Article 262, women can't drive a firetruck or operate heavy machinery with significant vibration (under the grounds of "safeguarding womens' reproductive health")

Heck, even in the US, up until 2015,, women couldn't drive a tank, an IFV, a mobile artillery piece, operate a submarine (until 2010), or a number of other military roles. And Hegseth wants to reverse the earlier decisions. And Trump also seems to have it in for women as even commercial airline pilots as well.

Comment Re:Green is (Score 3, Informative) 30

I mean, normally green stars aren't real, to the human eye. The problem is that from a standard blackbody curve, as you go up in surface temperature, by the time you've flipped the red-green cone activation ratio to the green side, you're getting so much blue that it looks like white instead. And then if you keep going, blue dominates and it turns blue. So it goes red, yellow, white, blue, not stopping for green. You also don't get purple because, for the most part, purple needs a strong red activation, little green, alongside at least a reasonable amount of blue - but with stars, the blue is way stronger than the red under a typical blackbody curve (there actually is a small shortwave red activation peak, so you *can* get purple purely with shortwave (like in a rainbow), but in the blackbody spectrum, the blue is so dominant that its not enough).

The trick here is that specific emission and absorption spectra can deviate from a standard blackbody curve. It may seem weird because one is used to sodium emission lamps being orange. But in the star's ~4000K photosphere, pressure broadening smears out the sodium doublet into a massive absorption trough, absorbing red to yellow light. Accreted calcium also has a similar effect on the blue side of the spectrum. Look back at the 4000K blackbody curve in the above link, imagine even a relatively minor suppression in both red and blue, and you can see how it morphs into a curve that the eye will read as green. :)

Comment Re:Incredible but doubtful about priorities. (Score 1) 223

Fan cars, like rockets, are too noisy and have too much debris risk for normal roads. Both fans and rockets will have to be locked behind a track mode, with the possible exception of in emergencies / AEB, where things like noise and debris hazards are generally waived if it can help prevent or ameliorate an accident.

Comment Re:WTF is OP talking about? (Score 1) 223

Depends on how big the rounds are and how far away they're fired from.

They don't float though. Sounds like Elon kept pushing and pushing the engineers on that one and they just could not deliver in any sort of way that would keep practical as an actual car. I wonder how much money they burned trying...

Comment Re:I'm more interested in the Snake River Canyon j (Score 1) 223

10-15 seconds available of a couple Gs of thrust should have no problems. Even if total thrust is only 2G (and remember, they have the bottom fans too) - just 1G beyond gravity - I calculate it should only take about 4 seconds of counterthrust to stop from terminal velocity (if the car's flight is kept with the bottom oriented toward the airflow, that is).

If the car had a radar that could let it accurately estimate time to collision, it should be able to arrest pretty much any fall safely.

Comment Re:Fucking Awesome (Score 1) 223

The tanks are powered by an onboard compressor, powered by the battery pack; you don't have to find "a place" with a compressor to recharge them. Air intakes are at the rear. No word on how long they take to refill, but I would imagine 1-3 minutes. And I imagine you probably have ~15-20 seconds of thruster power before pressure drops enough that the thrusters are no longer choked and their thrust collapses (and thrust will steadily drop even before then). TL/DR, it's a jumping car, not a flying car.

Obviously, all of these features need to be locked behind a "track mode", like other features that are illegal on normal roads. That said, they could probably get an exemption for "emergency features" (AEB and the like).

Ion thrusters are extremely low thrust and take an extremely large amount of power per unit thrust. They're for mass-efficiency. But we don't care about mass efficiency here, we have an atmosphere.

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