One of my good friends is a veteran of the USMC, who served two tours in Afghanistan. While deployed, he sustained injuries to his hip and brain. As a result, his mobility is impaired, and he has lost half of his field of vision.
Until his town succumbed to the taxi lobby and banned ridesharing, he was able to run errands, get groceries, and take care of himself. Now, he is counting down the days in captivity, waiting until he can once again be self-sufficient thanks to autonomous vehicles. Keep up the great work, Google et al, and let's hope that day comes soon :)
Along the lines of people who think mass surveillance is a good thing:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
Oh yeah? Well American Millennials are by far the world's most educated and knowledgeable about anthropology, sociology, race and gender studies, psychology, social media activism (aka, changing your Facebook default pic to #KONY2012), beer pong, how to find a good deal on Etsy, et al. When would we ever need to use that math stuff when uploading selfies, binging on Netflix, or ordering pour over coffee?
I've run into the date formatting issue that others are mentioning, and just this weekend I discovered the hard way that the V8 JSON parser does not correctly parse the following hierarchy:
object --> array --> object --> array
I must have spent a few hours trying to figure out why Angular wasn't iterating through the first array, only to discover that it was being parsed like so:
Pebble is getting a very cheap line of credit with theoretically no obligation to repay (hence why any money you give in a KS is a 'donation' or 'pledge').
Not discounting the content of this specific blog post, but just a heads up to consider the source, Gotnews. It's run by a 'journalist' who's been profiled by the NYT [1] and Gawker [2] for his unorthodox techniques.
In < 5 years, when someone opens up his or her Uber by Google app, they won't care about what the vehicle looks like on the outside (much like an Uber customer today!). All that matters is that it shows up promptly, and that it takes them to wherever they want to go safely, quickly, and comfortably. The focus will be on the interior - WiFi, power outlets, cup holders, leather seats - so that the passenger can pleasurably remain nose deep in his or her smartwatch / smartphone / tablet. The emotional attachment won't exist - it's just another service on demand. Not until the market becomes stratified will the luxuriousness of the autonomous vehicle come into play.
> Single-developer projects and codebases don't get anywhere at Google.
As a Googler working on a single-developer project / codebase, I'm sorry to hear that you didn't get traction. Very grateful for my mostly autonomous role :) There are tradeoffs of course, but to me the reduced overhead of no meetings and greater creative control are worth the trouble of an increased workload and providing support.
One potential long term outcome of these highly publicized fed / darknet busts is that future operators will learn from the opsec mistakes of Dread Pirate Roberts, Blake Benthall, Sanu, Lulzsec, Anonsec, etc. Theoretically after enough people cock up, the 'playbook' on how to run a dark service / h4x0r group should be sufficiently fleshed out and there will be fewer and fewer busts.
[0] http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-is-built-on-googles-...