You know it would be dirt simple for Musk to lubricate them to have his rockets selected for contracts.

"What's all this extra stuff?"

Vendor: "Nah, nothing."

...if it were, MS would surely tell us. Hackers would never append malware to an install packet.

And yes, you can call me Shirley, I live in a blue state and like it!

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.politico.com%2Fmagaz...

...has risk. An international election system should be set up whereby each nation gets votes proportional to their population, perhaps with a slight bonus to help smallbie's, similar to US's Electoral College.

And if its impact leans regional, then countries close to the region also get a vote bonus.

I have a feeling we're going to need this system; prevention and restraint ain't goin' so well.

Still don't understand. According to your own post you would use electric for "most" of your driving.

Also a Hybrid is much more efficient with gas than a plain ICE. It already has the electric motor and some batteries, the PHEV is not more complicated.

So my verbal description confused readers, I get that. I'll try again using examples.

This site hosts an Image-to-Triangle-Converter.

I invite you to play with it. You can see it's possible to convert any 2D image to bunches of triangles. The more triangles one uses, the better the resolution. The defaults on this site are not high-resolution, but high-res can be achieved by using much smaller triangles. (The optimum number of vertices per polygon and polygon sizes is an R&D project.)

So you agree any 2D image is "polygonizable"? Good.

Now extrapolate this idea to a movie. Rather than each frame be an independent triangle (polygon) set, an extrapolation algorithm connects similar "adjacent" polygons in each frame. Think of the frames as stacked on top of each other like a card deck.

In most cases, Frame n + 1 will be very similar to Frame n, giving us gradually-changing candidate connection lines. The extrapolation algorithm will give us a best fit, or best "economical" fit in terms of vertex conservation (depending on chosen resolution settings). The end result would be 3D polygons that together make up a giant cube: the Polycube. Our proverbial card deck is kind of melted together into one big "card cube".

(The boundary between "cut scenes" won't end up sharing very many polygons, but this is not a problem.)

If one digitally takes a "slice" of this cube, they get a frame of the movie. Note there are infinite slice points such that the frames don't have to be displayed in fixed intervals. The slice spacing would be determined by a particular display device, as each is capable of different display rates.

Make sense? If not, which phrase isn't clear?

Just because the writing was not clear doesn't mean it's schizo. It's just very hard to describe the concept using only words.

I invite help. Thank You.

If you wanted clarification of my original message, just say so instead of snarky shit. It is hard to describe without using several graphic illustrations, however.

My more plausible but still less nefarious guess is that Trump wants things to brag about, and with Isaacman running it, NASA has a chance of actually doing something worth boasting about. Though not in 3 years.

I don't know. When Isaacman was first nominated, pretty much everyone in the space enthusiast community was like, "oh, that's interesting..." and were genuinely surprised and hopeful because he's generally regarded as a space exploration idealist. Then when Trump revoked the nomination the assumption was that Trump didn't like him because he actually was an idealist and wasn't just a sycophant. I'm not sure why Trump has changed course again, and I do agree there's probably a deal or a mutual understanding that's been agreed to, but Isaacman is still one of the better choices to actually get NASA exploring again.

There are several brands that work totally local (ZWave, Zigbee)
There are also some that can use either the cloud but also work locally. Your story shows why one should be ware of such devices. Some still require the cloud to function, or to change settings, even if they can be operated without the cloud. So you keep them online, there's an update, and something gets broken. Philips Hue will no longer function without registering ab account with the company. Tado removes functionality (allowing thermostatic radiator valves to demand heat for a room even if there's no wall thermostat) for newly added devices: that now requires their monthly subscription. Support for certain APIs get dropped. And so on.

I don't say it often but there ought to be a law, regarding services tied to physical devices owned by the end user. No diminishing functionality when a device is updated, no hiding formerly free functions behind paywalls or subscriptions. And cloud service guaranteed for the reasonably expected lifespan of the last device sold officially (not of of clearance or second hand)

It seems inevitable that a movie should be stored as a giant cube built with myraid 3D polygons ("polycube" for a working term), where the axises of the cube are X, Y, and time. There would be no need for frames or pixels, those are only things the end-user's display device will have to create based on its particular technology.

Converting it for display would be like rapid "slicing of the cheese". A given second can be sliced into 10 frames or a 1000, there is no limit, other than computer processing of the display device.

Frame interpolation for smoothing then wouldn't be needed because there are no frames. Older movies can be converted to a polycube using conversion and interpolation algorithms. It could indicate a "favored frame rate" to reduce interpolation anomalies, which would make nostalgic purists happy.

It should also make producers happier because it gives display devices less reason to have to guess.

I suspect they'll eventually end up being designed akin to tall buildings with corridors between adjacent buildings ever few floors. The coolant will run in between.

"Intel bricks inside!"