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Comment Re:History repeating itself: Google Glass (Score 2) 135

That's the thing, someone who believes their day-to-day life is so fascinating that they need to be able to record video at any given moment, probably has a severe case of main character syndrome.

So yeah, "asshole glasses" definitely fits.

Maybe, but only if you assume that the intent is to share that video with others or whatever.

On the flip side, I can think of a lot of useful reasons to do so, mostly involving use of large amounts of AI to go back and process the data. Imagine losing something and being able to ask, "Where is this," and getting an answer about where you left it. Imagine being able to say, "Was [insert person] part of the conversation where I said [insert subject]" and getting an answer. The potential impact of always-on recording for assisting with memory recall is enormous, assuming adequate storage and processing power.

Also, it completely solves the "You look familiar" problem, both in the "Did I meet this person?" sense and in the "What is his/her name?" sense.

Comment Re: Good for her! (Score 2) 135

I think it's the same in the US. You can't publish someone's photo (unless they are just part of the background) without getting a signed release.

Nope. Not true. You can't use it commercially, but the definition of commercial use excludes a lot of things that you might think are commercial, e.g. any form of artwork, book covers, Facebook posting, etc.

This doesn't give you the right to record someone who has asked you not to record them, though, especially if there is audio and it is a two-party consent state. And if you are deliberately confronting someone in public who asks you not to record them, it could also run afoul of harassment laws.

Comment Re:Here's an idea (Score 1) 54

IMO probably the best thing to happen with this industry is for copyright laws to be clipped back to 28 years. The artists will lose their shit, but honestly, the Berne convention just feels like it's designed for the sole purpose of allowing them (and the studios) to just keep rent seeking indefinitely.

I have an even more radical proposal. Roll back copyright duration to 28 years, but only for works for hire.

  • Works of corporate authorship (movies, etc.): 14 +14 (renewal required).
  • Works of individual authorship: 50 years or the life of the author, whichever is longer.

This strikes a balance that acknowledges individuals' lower ability to earn money off of a work, and ensures that individuals are able to continue benefitting from their works for the rest of their lives, while still ensuring that musical works written when my long-deceased grandparents were children are no longer locked away where no one can perform them without expensive licensing and ensuring that people who never contributed anything towards the works' creation (e.g. the grandchildren of a composer, author, or artist) don't get to live off of other people's work for the rest of their lives.

Comment Re: They are popular in JP because they work (Score 1) 198

People here are acting like bigger vehicles in the U.S. are due to some conspiracy around efficiency standards. They're not.

The shift toward massive trucks and SUVs in the U.S. is not a conspiracy as you stated, but it's not purely consumer preference either. It's a direct, documented, and mathematically verifiable consequence of how the U.S. government rewrote fuel efficiency regulations in 2011.

Prior to 2011, CAFE standards were simple: a car company’s entire fleet of "light trucks" had to average a certain MPG number (e.g., 24 mpg). It didn't matter how big or small the individual trucks were. The Obama administration reformed these rules to close loopholes... but they inadvertently created a new one. They switched to a "footprint-based" standard.

It was broken long before that. Minivans have always been treated as light trucks despite not being trucks in any meaningful sense of the word, and industry interference has prevented light truck standards from keeping up with technological improvements.

As long as we have such a culture of regulatory capture, I don't think these sorts of standards are ever going to do what they are intended to do.

Comment Re:They are popular in JP because they work (Score 1) 198

Are there states that don't allow that? I know Tennessee and California both do, though the latter is somewhat more problematic because of emissions control laws.

I think the 35 MPH road limitation is mostly about wanting to prevent people from impeding traffic. Here in FL you're able to ride a bike/e-bike/e-scooter on any road that isn't a toll or limited access highway, regardless of posted speed limit, at your own peril.

The "at your own peril" thing is a lot easier to justify when you have high situational awareness because of absolutely no expectation of safety in a low-speed collision (bicycle) than when you do have that expectation (vehicle with a roll cage).

Also, bicycles can't rapidly accelerate, are very small, and generally can't get very fast at all, so they are quick to pass compared with something the size and speed of a low-speed car. This reduces the risk of them causing accidents significantly (both with the bicycle and with oncoming vehicles).

In general, the assumption is that if it looks like a car, it should act like one. When that assumption is violated, bad things happen.

Comment Re:From Volkswagon to Trumptruck (Score 1) 198

Honestly if it gets Americans to stop driving oversized pedestrian murdermachines then it may actually be something positive to come out of his administration. I mean to be clear it won't happen, and even if it did this isn't the intention, but still wouldn't it be nice to imagine a world where America's pedestrian accident rate was *not* increasing?

America's pedestrian accident rate is increasing primarily because of pedestrian distraction, not because cars are getting less safe. The fatality rate could be caused by cars getting less safe, but not the rate of accidents, except to the limited extent that touchscreens make driving harder.

If you really want pedestrian accidents to stop happening, you need to do three things:

  • Mandate that all intersections have a separate pedestrian cycle with a button to activate it or camera-based pedestrian detection.
  • Mandate that all intersections have appropriate light control over right turns on red, such that they are not allowed during the pedestrian cycle.
  • Strictly enforce this for both drivers and pedestrians for the first few months, ticketing both pedestrians and drivers when they enter an intersection at the wrong time.

This ensures that A. cars don't have to wait for pedestrians that don't exist, B. cars have to wait for pedestrians only once even if the pedestrians are crossing in multiple directions, and C. no cars are in the intersection at the same time as pedestrians.

It improves road throughput for both pedestrians and drivers *and* makes the intersections safer. There's not much downside to this.

Comment Re:I must be getting old. (Score 1) 122

Am I the only person on the planet who still opens the garage door with, you know, my hands? Is that completely crazy? Am *I* crazy?

Around my neighborhood almost no one parks in the garage (they park in their driveway, or the street). The garage is where you store stuff (and you rarely open the garage door).

I thought the garage was where people put their guest bedroom. :-)

Comment Re: He's a cosmonaut, not an astronaut, dude. (Score 1) 71

That was the only pad Russia had which has the infrastructure necessary to launch humans into space

Not entirely correct. It is the only *active* pad with that infrastructure. There are decommissioned pads that have been used for manned missions in the past. What state they are currently in is an unknown, but it has been speculated that equipment could be salvaged from them to repair the damaged pad.

Comment Re:He's a cosmonaut, not an astronaut, dude. (Score 1) 71

Russia doesn't have the ability for manned spaceflight. ergo they don't have cosmonauts any more.

Tell that to the folks on ISS who ride back and forth on Soyuz all the time. A couple of people went up to ISS from Russia just one week ago.

To be fair, at the moment, future ISS launches from Russia won't be possible because of some launch pad damage incurred by a recent launch, but Russia still has the capability of launching crewed rockets into space from other pads. They just can't send any to ISS right now because its orbital inclination is incompatible with the locations of those other pads while staying within the fuel capacity limits of their rockets.

Comment Re:The old auto makers are fucked. (Score 1) 254

Cars have been getting shittier for decades now. You never noticed because American marketing convinced Americans that 100K miles on any car engine is dangerously out of fashion.

What are you talking about? On average, engines last 150k to 200k miles in the U.S., complete with CAFE standards.

And the main goal of the current CAFE standards was to push hybrids and electric vehicles. Manufacturers rigging the game by trying to make pure ICE cars with ridiculous mileage is an unanticipated negative side effect, mostly because the folks coming up with the rules did not expect automakers to be so stupid that they would do something like that.

Comment Re:The old auto makers are fucked. (Score 1) 254

When I purchased my latest car, which has this crazy 1 year 10K recommended oil change interval (OCI) while using 0w20 oil, I searched and found online manuals from various other countries. In countries where OCI/emissions are not regulated (various former Soviet republics), the car manual states to use 10w30 oil and 5K OCI recommended for the same car.

For the most part, oil change schedules are set so that car dealers can make money off of mandatory service so that you keep your warranty. In reality, if you periodically change your filter, use a filter with a smaller pore size, and use synthetic oil, there's at least potentially no need to change the oil at all, at least within the typical lifetime of a passenger car.

Semi goes 1 million miles without an oil change.

Comment Re:The old auto makers are fucked. (Score 1) 254

0W-20 runs in the American motor in order to barely eek out another 1MPG to barely meet the CAFE standards necessary to ship product. 5W-30 runs in the EU motor because it’s the best viscosity for the damn engine. Which they determined long ago with engineering and testing, both in lab and real world results.

Now pull those engines apart after 100K miles and see why we need to get rid of CAFE bullshit. The American environment isn’t being “saved” by forcing Americans to replace their disposable cars before the fucking loan is even fully paid.

The problem is not the CAFE standards per se. The problem is that they are trying to meet them by playing tricks instead of with actual design changes. And even though they come with thinner engine oil, 90% of people will put standard oil into the cars at the first change. So they get higher MPG for the first 5,000 miles, and then the same as they did before the CAFE standards.

I suppose that in theory, you could argue that the standards are flawed for not requiring normal oil weights during testing, but that's about it.

The correct way to hit the MPG targets is to use more electric drive trains. If you make your cars hybrids, you can improve the efficiency of the electric drive train and find ways to engineer the vehicles to weigh less by using more modern materials, and you won't have to work too hard to hit the standards.

Better yet, push actual EVs, which typically have an eMPG of 100+. If just one-third of your vehicles get 130 eMPG and the rest get 30 MPG, you're averaging about 53 MPG already.

Comment Re:Wow! (Score 1) 199

In another article, I saw a suggestion that scientists were trying the opposite: injecting vaccines with a tattoo gun. The whole point of that is that the immune system is very active just below the skin, while deep in the muscle tissue you are too far behind the defenses.

Not with a tattoo gun, but yes, microneedle delivery is a new experimental way to deliver vaccines. It's less like a tattoo gun and more like a nicotine patch or a bandaid, though.

Comment Re:Useless technology anyway (Score 1) 95

> And you've done nothing to explain what the use case is.

Sorry, did I miss when I agreed to educate you? Since when is it important to ME that YOU agree with me? I don't care what you think. I'm telling you to get your head out of your ventilation shaft and consider that _other people have other needs_.

Okay. Thanks for all but admitting that exactly none of those needs are actually solved by the feature we're talking about.

You don't have a need. You just don't want your routine to be disrupted by a company taking away a feature that works for you. And it's entirely okay to feel that way. But it's not really a good reason to have designed such an overly complex and, at least in the real world, frequently under-performing protocol in the first place.

Your other comments show you don't understand the limitations of the things that work for you, in other use cases.

Keep telling yourself that I'm the one who doesn't understand the tech if it helps you sleep at night.

Comment Re: Useless technology anyway (Score 1) 95

My TV doesn't have Internet. The remote is not going to let me watch Netflix.

Then neither will casting, because casting by definition requires the TV to have Internet. It's a handoff process whereby the TV itself retrieves the content from the Netflix servers, and all your phone does is handle the authentication and key delivery plus playback controls.

You can do screen mirroring with a non-Internet-capable or disconnected TV, but not you can't use the ridiculously designed feature that I'm talking about.

So everything I'm saying is useless is useless for you, too.

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