Posts by Ashentaine 55 posts • joined 19 Dec 2018
From what I've heard a substantial amount of WoW loyalists finally got fed up and bounced over to Final Fantasy XIV recently, so much so that Square Enix had to suspend new account creations for a couple days because their servers couldn't keep up with the sudden influx of new players. Might want to skip ordering the caviar for that party, then...
Much as I'd like to think the 777 is a sly reference to Trump's ill-fated and now demolished Atlantic City casino (which he often used as proof of his business acumen, despite it being one of the most unprofitable casinos in America), I'm pretty sure it's more that a rounded up number like 800 wouldn't have been as catchy a marketing point.
I figured that was the main reason anyone would use this, as a way to safely dispose of any surplus operating budget so the beancounters don't try to claw it back at the end of the year. And if they still complain then the scorn can be easily shunted up the ladder because hey, it was the boss/department manager/board members who were always banging on about how putting everything in the cloud would save us so much money, wasn't it?
>Where are Ford/GM/Volkwagen/Fiat crysler /Renault Nissan and Daimler-Benz?
Ford and GM have largely retreated back to North America to fight over the full-size pickup truck market, which is still a high volume, high margin sector that uses its penchant for excessive waste as a selling point. Ironically this is the segment that would probably welcome full autonomy the most, given how stuffed those vehicles are with distracting gadgetry now.
Everyone else, I presume, is just waiting for the smaller companies to do all the work and then go bust, so they can scoop up the completed research for bargain prices. Toyota doesn't need to wait though, as they've effectively consumed the entire mid-size passenger car market in America and have more than enough money to just do whatever they please at this point.
>although I think it's only a matter of time before someone decides to put some sort of offensive (AKA 'Self-defensive') capability on board.
I'm not really sure what you could realistically mount on it, though. Ballistic weapons are a bad idea, as the recoil and vibration from firing would probably damage the robot and be highly inaccurate after the first shot (to say nothing of the problems of ammo storage and hardpoint location). Taser/electrical would likely require lots of shielding to protect the electronic parts, which is more cost than it's worth. At most, these could maybe have some kind of pepper spray or smoke canister dispenser.
And even then, considering they're being used on a military base they don't really need to do much more than pinpoint the location of a troublemaker, as there are surely enough properly armed and armored humans about to do the job properly.
People are pretty much conditioned to ignore whirly-blade type drones now. But you see something even vaguely shaped like a four-legged animal coming your way, it's going to make you stop and pay attention, or possibly freak you out and get you to leave very quickly. Both of which I would imagine is the desired effect in this case.
Military projects tend to have multiple subcontractors, who also have their own subcontractors, and even those sub-subcontractors can have their own subcontractors that may not even be aware that the parts and pieces they're working on is for the military. It's nearly impossible to keep every aspect of the project in a vacuum when everything is spread out that widely.
The really, really depressing possibility is that they WERE out there, but got killed off by some cosmic event beyond their control before we had the ability to discover them, and now we'll never even know that their civilization existed.
>They need it for enterprise software. When they say enterprise software they mean badly-written stuff perched on top of these "technologies" which is never ever, ever, updated.
This also includes the industrial sector where there are lots of big machines being run by crusty old software dependent on those ancient underpinnings, and can't be upgraded either because too much money would be lost by shutting down for the time needed to upgrade, or because the machine was designed to work only with that very specific configuration for proprietary reasons.
Considering the ever-increasing number of people who consider their car to be an expensive appliance and lease instead of buying because they are led to believe that it's cheaper than long-term maintenence, and considering those same people will see anything the car company touts as a "convenience feature" to be a good thing... probably a lot.
I mean, people are already comfortable with plugging their cellphone directly into a car and giving it free reign to grab up whatever data it wants, so security clearly isn't on their top 10 priorities list.
If Trump loses the election, all these anti-China policies will either be swept out with him or buried under legislation to the point of being stalled indefinitely.
If Trump wins the election, he'll say that he miraculously convinced China to "play nice" a month later and that they'll be allowed to continue as normal.
Unless there's an actual timeline set for putting any of this plan into action, then odds are it's just the typical jingoistic pandering that happens at the tail end of every American election cycle, except this time it's focused on a specific country instead of the nebulous "foreigners taking our jobs".
Or maybe just leave it on standby for a while, as the new one is most likely going to fall over a couple times before they actually get it working properly.
Be sure to also allow for the time spent on rounds of blame assignment in the statehouse and searching the couch cushions to find the budget for repairs, replacement and testing that should have been done before going live, but wasn't for a variety of short-sighted reasons.
>Surely it would make most sense to scatter a set of stands around a city (e.g. next to transit hubs, car parks, major shopping locations etc). Most people who want to use these things will likely arrive in a city via a transit hub etc and will likely be returning there at the end of the day.
From what I understand with the rental bicycles that we have here, you'll get charged a return fee if the bike is left outside a designated return point for more than a few hours. I would reckon they'll make a tidy profit off people who don't read the service terms on the app that unlocks the things and presume they can just ditch it wherever because "I'm only using it this one time", or consider the fee to be an acceptable alternative to finding the nearest return point and walking the rest of the way, since it's still probably cheaper overall than taking a cab.
I mean yeah, Ninja had the Twitch channel with the most viewers at the time... an insane amount really. But most of those viewers were there specifically for that one channel and had no interest in anything else. When he was done streaming they simply left instead of migrating to other channels. You're not going to build a platform if the potential users can't be bothered to stick around and explore the other content.
Then again, Mixer really didn't do that great of a job of promoting its content creators to begin with, so there's that too.
>(I wonder if these 5G protesters gave any thought to the harmful toxins that might be given off by the burning of these masts or the accelerants they used?)
Given that people once (and occasionally still do) protested the excessive emissions caused by SUV's with the method of setting them on fire in car dealership lots, creating a massive polluting cloud of burning rubber, plastic and fuel in the process... no, they probably haven't.
This reminds me of the height of the flip-phone days, when television was saturated with ads for a device that would shield your brain from the evil mind melting radiation your phone was beaming directly into your skull, improve your reception and even extend your battery life. All for just the low, low price of $24.99!
Said device was just a tiny mesh sticker you put over the earpiece, and shockingly enough it didn't really do anything at all.
>There are of course countless other ways to buy things and send people money without using Facebook Pay but the company hopes that simplicity will cause users to share their personal financial information with Facebook.
And regrettably many people will do just that out of curiosity of how well it works, especially if it can be done automatically by clicking a big shiny button. And then they'll use it a couple times, and when the novelty wears off just forget about it and not even stop to think that giving such sensitive data to Facebook might not have been a great idea.
I doubt UPS going to robodriving will completely kill the trucking industry. Certainly the larger outfits may follow suit eventually, but there are still hundreds of smaller regional trucking and shipping firms in North America that would rather pay owner-drivers rather than spend the big bucks buying their own fleet of trucks.
Things may change in the industry, and possibly not for the better, but it's not a sign of impending widespread collapse.
This isn't meant for the delivery trucks that actually drop the packages at your house, it's for the tractor trailers that haul large amounts of packages between freight hubs. The brown boxy trucks that trundle around your neighborhood and make all the local dogs bark like maniacs won't be affected by this.
He did condemn cryptocurrencies as a whole before singling out Libra. Though I suspect they don't care so much about unspecified terrorists using it as they dislike the idea of a massive corporation creating its own currency. Though the idea of Facebook using it to pay their employees in what would be company scrip is rather amusing...
I parsed it as 10% of the division's overall staff, including those 11 engineers. Not that those 11 made up 10% of the entire division.
But then again, considering Musk has taken direct control of that part of the company recently, there's no telling how many less prominent people have either walked away or were pushed out as a result. Turnover rates in some parts of Tesla appear to be comparable to that of a fast food restaurant.
"Wannbees"? Around this part of the country we call them "whackers". Many of them are kinda sad but actually fairly harmless, just thinking if they get an old cruiser from a police auction and drop an amber/white service lightbar (usually non-working) on top people will mistake them for actual cops and get out of their way on the freeways, but never really taking it beyond that.
Misguided nitwits like Florida Man and the total dirtbags that are impersonating police officers for malicious reasons are still thankfully rare, for now at least.
That's how it is in the US at least. Depending on how much a wager costs, the machine has to have a minimum percent of hits for each possible payout. Electronic slot machines have to run for 24 straight hours once the software is installed by a state gambling authority (the casino itself never gets to touch that part) to certify they meet that percentage. I learned this when I had to do some work in a newly built place that was still setting up, it's rather interesting to see firsthand.
Not surprisingly, the penny machines out front have a much higher payout rate then the big bet machines in the back...
Then they would have to spend much more money to buy the land for, build and maintain said plant. It's much cheaper and more efficient to grease a few palms in the state capitol and wave around the nebulous promise of "more jobs" to get hooked up to the local grid at a favorable rate.
As Amazon demonstrated with their attempted second headquarters scheme a few months back, a key part of these projects is squeezing the most one-sided deal out of the state they're building in before anyone realizes just how badly it's going to screw the average joe over in the long term.
>As it was, Apotheker and the board agreed to pay a 68 per cent premium for Autonomy (on its market cap) – incidentally, Lesjak told the court Oracle had been in the frame as a potential bidder for the big data biz.
Now I wonder if Apotheker bought Autonomy for the sole reason of keeping it out of Oracle's hands, rather than seeing it as an asset for HP. At this point I wouldn't consider such a thing out of the question.
To be fair, Google's botchup was due to their digging the trenches way too shallow in a bid to speed up the process. I think they called it "nano-trenching" and only went down 2 inches, which anyone with a lick of sense could tell you isn't nearly far enough. Granted the 6 inches that microtrenching calls for is less than ideal as well, but at least the cables won't be rising from their graves after a few months like they did in Louisville.
> you really annoy a judge, they can simply sling you in the clink for contempt of court. I've no first hand experience of this, so I may be wrong...
At the very least they can have you removed from the courtroom if you're considered as disruptive, which is a pretty damning thing in and of itself. And I'm sure judges have a fair amount of latitude regarding what they consider disruptive to court proceedings.
>"South Western Railway has a policy of blocking inappropriate material, including pornographic websites, on its onboard and station Wi-Fi services.
"We are investigating this incident to establish how this material was broadcast on our service.
A mystery for the ages, indeed. It's a good thing portable electronic devices don't have any kind of built-in storage that would permit videos to be viewed without the need for an Internet connection. Cause if you're really crass enough to be watching porn in public or on the job, you wouldn't want to risk dodgy free wi-fi causing an "interruption" at the wrong moment, now would you?
Most likely, the reason is that the smaller wheels are cheaper to produce. No one really expects e-scooters to stick around more than a couple years anyway, so likely the manufacturers figured why bother spending all that money on a proper design?
>I do see the random powered scooter or skateboard rider, but they usually own the equipment, and, thus, are more likely to be wearing a helmet.
That, and if they own the thing they most likely have experience in how to operate it correctly. I would presume that the vast majority of injuries caused by these scooters came as a result of the rider having never touched one before and not knowing what the thing's limitations are.
>New phones aren't anything special, no one sees them as a status symbol, in fact it's the opposite, some young people these days see displays of wealth as distasteful.
The public perception of cellphones is gradually going the way cars went over the last couple decades. Once they were a status symbol that not everyone could afford and gave a feeling of freedom, but now they're just viewed as a burdensome appliance that eats money every month whether you use it or not, is owned by everyone else and impresses very few even if you have the most expensive one out there.
Apotheker's testimony looked like it was rapidly descending towards a playground level argument near the end.
"Well... well maybe I didn't have time, okay? Running a company is HARD! I don't see YOU running any multinational businesses, so where do YOU get off telling me how do do my job, huh? Huh? Huh?"
Exactly. Answering indiscriminate destruction with more indiscriminate destruction is never a good solution. Especially in such a naive manner like this, that assums only the baddies will be exposed to it, or that it won't be made even more destructive by some anarchy-minded jackass.
The fact that it's already been sent to some notorious troll havens already is not exactly helping either...
I'm pretty sure a laser like that would demolish your eyes before you even had time to blink. The cheap green laser pointers that are sold online can cause permanent damage with only a short direct exposure, since they often don't have an IR filtering lens in them to keep the cost down.
Oh, and most types of safety glasses designed for use with lasers don't filter out IR either (as again, good quality lasers have a built in lens to filter that), so don't be surprised if ze goggles, they do nothing.
Even if this does come out at some point, the disaster that was the Playstation Classic has pretty much killed the market for the plug and play retrobox.
And even if that weren't the case, it'll likely not have the key feature that made the Nintendo offerings popular to the non-technical market; a carefully selected collection of fondly remembered games, presented in a way that completely insulates the user from the emulator and makes it feel like the old console.
Not surprising that they're rolling it out in Japan and South Korea first, those are the only two places in the world with good enough broadband to make such a thing viable.
I suspect we won't be hearing much more about this service, aside from lots of marketing fluff trying to convince people to buy RTX cards that no one really wants because it'll be at least a year before games that fully use its features are available.
...like most similar pie-in-the-sky predictions, this one doesn't factor in that setting up the infrastructure necessary will be very expensive, and once the numbers start getting crunched and people start asking who'll foot the bill for it, the novelty wears off pretty quick.
A municipality that can barely afford to fix potholes on its main roads certainly won't be able to invest in an armada of drones to replace or augment the local police force. Corporations aren't going to just donate an investment that large to Smalltown out of the goodness of their hearts. Federal grants would no doubt just be whizzed away on unrelated projects. So where would the money for such a project come from?
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