* Posts by WilfForrow

4 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Sep 2016

Evernote's fall from grace is complete, with sale to Italian app maker

WilfForrow

As usual people who find Evernote pretty brilliant, like me, won't have time to post here. On the desktop it's brilliant anyway - the iOS version not so much and buggy, but I mostly use that just to refer to existing notes.

The big disruption at v10 was to move to a single-source that behaved the same way across platforms. Every platform was different and incompatible. It couldn't go on. They bit the bullet, and playing with bullets means collateral damage.

They just need to keep moving forward, fixing bugs, adding features, accepting that you can't please all of the people all of the time.

Why does everyone expect everything for free? You know there's no such thing as a free lunch - right? When Google, Microsoft or any others say "Free", they really mean cross-subsidised from another income stream, abusing their market dominance to drive everyone else out of the market. Anti-Trust legislation says that's illegal, but everyone turns a blind eye to it because there would be uproar.

Human-free robo-cars on Washington streets after governor said the software is 'foolproof'

WilfForrow

Only need to be better than human drivers

They don't need to be foolproof - they only need to be better than human drivers. And they definitely will be - we just don't know whether that's 1 or 10 or 50 years. Massively better.

When (not if) the risk becomes less than a human driver, then insurance will cost less. If It's up to society to make insurance work, and to stop lawyers trying to make money by sue-ing the programmer.

Boffins explain why it takes your Wi-Fi so long to connect

WilfForrow

Need Google's help again

Surely if Google writes Android, it can build up a database of best wifi's? It already knows your location just from the wifi you're connected to? Don't need AI for that, just 'I'.

Robot cars probably won't happen, sniffs US transport chief

WilfForrow

The industry needs to PROVE how much safer autonomous vehicles are, by building long term accident stats that people trust, comparing manual to autonomous. I'd guess they'll be at least 10 times safer.

Then they need to create a legal contract and insurance framework that gives 'reasonable' protection to all parties, (including the manufacturer). The goal is not perfection, the goal is 'better than manually driven'.

After that, the economic, social & safety benefits will be so huge and so obvious that no government could block them and stay in power.