How many of those million users are AI training programs?

Filing a patent does not require a lawyer. I am not a lawyer or patent agent and have written patents for my own inventions. But I'm not a typical inventor. I've worked with lawyers to review thousands of patents and have worked with them to write dozens, including doing the drawings and drafting claims.

But with that said, it's incredibly difficult and time consuming, so usually wise to use a lawyer. Which costs anywhere from $5000 to $20,000. So saving a couple hundred dollars in filing fees doesn't mean much.

Especially if you start dealing with responses, international filings, maintenance fees, etc. Then you better budget $10,000 to $250,000 or more.

As someone who has filed with large corporations, small, and micro, it's kinda hard to miss. It's a box you can check on the payment options.

You don't have to defend a patent against infringement to keep it. That may be sorta true for trademark, but is not true for patents. "Defend against infringement" isn't even a thing. A patent holder can chose to enforce or not enforce their rights as the patent holder as they see fit, They can enforce absolutely, selectively, or not at all. Immediately, or delayed.

That's where Weibull distributions come into play. It doesn't require a normal distribution in the data set. Like all statistics, it can benefit from more data. But it does a remarkable job of estimating failure rates from partial data.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

When I travel internationally for work, immigration checks are just one of the many times I have to get out my passport. Depending on the country:
Hotel check in
Train tickets
Airline tickets
Museum entrance
Security checkpoints
Credit card verification
Car rental
Dealing with police
ID at hospitals
ID at companies I visit
And so on

By law, I have to carry it with me at all times in some countries.

Not all states fund schools with property taxes. It differs by state. NM for example is state funding with some federal dollars sprinkled in.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nmlegis.gov%2Fentity...

It's a poor state, so the schools still struggle. And there are good schools and bad schools, which often mirror parental expectations. But there isn't a huge disparity between schools you might see in other states.

Coincidentally, I'm taking a break from drafting compliance plans for a medical device and decided to peruse Slashdot.

Having worked at several medical companies, I can say that the bigger the company, the less they think safety and efficacy testing is a waste of time. Pharmaceutical companies are just fine with the testing. They don't actually complain because gives them cover for charging a lot and creates immense barriers to entry.

I worked for a while at a Chinese device manufacturer to implement regulatory compliance for US and EU. Some managers fought it as a waste of time. They were let go. Eventually we grew to the largest in our market segment despite being more expensive. Our stuff was good and surgeons trusted it. Good regulations help everyone.

But the project I am working on at the moment is a great example of being over regulated. It measures the time for a patient to press a button. That's it. But it's lumped into the same category as electric bone saws. Everything must be documented, tested, validated, purchased, tracked, etc to the same degree. That's down to the individual screws, resistors, etc. The FDA requirements have some flexibility. If something is not applicable, they will listen. The EU MDR is ridiculous. I can reduce 3/4 of my compliance work out by ditching the EU as a market. One of dozens of examples: Why is cytotoxicity testing required on a button? The panel? Because ISO 10993 doesn't differentiate between something you strap to a patient's face for 24 hours and a button they press with a finger. Same with too many standards.

Yeah, I'm complaining, so you won't trust me. But the expense is real and is getting passed on.

How do these vehicles react to other objects like, say, a shoe? Ideally a wooden shoe. If only there was a word for tossing wooden shoes at machinery to make it stop. Might have to borrow one from another language.

Hate to break it to you, but the meter was based on a French Imperial unit called the toise. The meter was not defined by the size of the Earth, it was defined as a rational fraction of a toise, very close to 1/2 with the intent of making it 10,000,000 meters between the north pole and the equator.

The rest of the world may have moved onto the metric system, but in doing so, it adopted a system built on a foundation of imperial units.

Ironically, the imperial system the US uses is now defined by the metric system.

"Heat pumps, in contrast, (to gas or oil furnaces) don't generate heat. They transfer it. That allows them to achieve more than 300 percent efficiency in some cases."

Heat pumps DO generate heat. The compression step is work and adds more energy (heat) to the working fluid. That's where most of the electrical energy is going. Not losses in the motor or compressor, but in compressing the fluid.

The ability to drag more heat along is why they can get >100% efficiency ... assuming the temperature gradient isn't too large. At 100% efficiency, the amount of heat being transferred + heat from compression is in balance with the electrical power required.

Believe it or not, NM gets really cold. It is a high desert, which means nights get chilly and winters are colder than you'd expect. Heck, there are ski resorts near the same latitude as San Diego.

Of all of the states along the south edge of the US*, NM residents would benefit the least.

Couple that with the cost (source from web site promoting solar water heaters) of $9,000 and you see a lot of resistance.

* Don't call it a southern state. Several counties are named after Lincoln and Union generals specifically to piss of southerners after the civil war.

Some people want to ban this practice outright. But if somehow that can't be done, I have an alternate proposal.

"Product feature activation for a fee is only allowed during the warranty period. Upon expiration of the warranty (or product support), all features previously covered by the warranty must be activated at the sole discretion of the owner at no cost."

At a minimum, this would stop companies from demanding a fee for a feature they won't fix if it breaks.

I've done animal and human testing with surgical products. We work hard to minimize animal testing (and human) because it is slow and expensive. The goal is to get better data from fewer tests. Even worked one place that had a policy of publishing any techniques we discovered that could reduce animal testing.

That said, it's very hard to avoid any animal testing. If nothing else, it's required by the regulatory agencies of some countries. But more so due to perceived liability.

Doing human testing is harder both to justify, enroll, and sometimes even design without some animal data. "Has this ever been used before?" "Nope." "How about in animals?" "Nope." "What testing did you do." "Benchtop and theoretical."

And bad things happen to patient while taking a drug. Someone will get injured or die. Maybe due to the drug, maybe it's a coincidence. This leads to lawsuits. And the likelihood of a lawsuit will increase, as well as a payout, when lawyers have the emotional argument handed to them on a platter. "They were so greedy they skipped doing animal testing and went straight to experimenting on people like my client."