This project is awesome. I'm thinking of mounting it on an fpv quadcopter to get a realtime survey of the RF situation below. What is the feasible range triangulating where RF activity is located below in a situation like that? If it can work at 50ft range I could make it work but I'm wondering if that is realistic with this kit.
A lot of his ideas remind me of the BeReal app, it limits posts per day and is geared toward 'friends in real life' and with just a few friends on it I've stayed engaged. But it's sparse for me and can be a ghost town much of the time, but that may be just because my friend group isn't using it much. There needs to be sufficient network effect to maintain and grow it's reach as a network, which may be antithetical to its founding principles.
They show the factory in their video on the page, it's a new modern car chassis with the vintage look (so it's not a Ford Bronco chassis but the external look is inspired by it).
Google themselves are trying to figure this out, with the first (top placement) of search results showing their Gemini AI Response, at least for me. I read this as an attempt to keep users on Google instead of asking Chat GPT or other some other AI. What's your take on that?
This action comes a bit late, at the end of the "Search engine" era, at a time when AI responses from many sources are largely replacing the "Google Search".
Similar action happened against Microsoft Windows around 2000, just as the rise of web-based apps (online email, google docs, etc) largely made the underlying operating system less relevant to how people use their computers and apps.
So I read this as the dominant player can monopolize a market while it's relevant without an issue, and once the market starts to move on, the antitrust lawsuits come in to "make the market more competitive" at a time when that era is mostly over.
And trying to regulate early (as with the last administration's AI legislation that is now being repealed) we can see that only hindsight is 20/20, and regulating too early can kill a market. My conclusion is to just let the best product win, and even dominate for a while as this is part of the market cycle, and when a better product/platform comes along the market will move to it.
"Nuclear made up close to 5% of China's power generation in 2024 and is expected to rise to 10% by 2040". That is the stat that surprised me. On balance, I understand that nuclear is environmentally much cleaner than coal, correct? If 95% of power in China is coal (with some hydro/solar/wind) then perhaps the more nuclear, the better.
I have not used this one yet but as a rule of thumb I always test this type of software in a VM, for example I have an Ubuntu Linux desktop running in Virtualbox on my mac to install and test stuff like this, which set up to be isolated and much less likely to have access to my primary Mac OS environment.
I'm just in the process of setting this up using logs from a tree that just went down in a storm, so thanks for pointing that out, I had not thought of it yet! Last year I did have to build a cage around our strawberry patch and it makes sense that we will need one over this project as well. Much appreciated.
Being optimistic and positive on tech in the first place is the root issue here. This reminds me of my mom in medical school who became disillusioned when she experienced the corruption of the pharmaceutical industry and it's influence of the entire industry for it's own profit, not always in the interest of the patient. Being overly optimistic about an industry or field is in my view a worldview error, and a better approach is to be optimistic about one's own potential to contribute to the betterment of humanity, no matter the field. Also the understanding that there are and always will be bad actors should not dissuade one from being part of creating solutions, as one sees it. Being jaded and cynical will not help in the long run.
I think the argument made in the CNN clip is that it's users are now more equally distributed politically, which is reflective and a microcosm of the actual demographics of the country. I think it's a fair point. But I also agree with your take that many (like me as well) don't follow any political party (I kind of opted out around 2016). I do wish we could see a multidimensional politics rather than the polar system we have now, I know for example in some euro countries there are 5 or more parties debating policies in their houses of parliament.
Thanks, those discussions do provide helpful context! The new development here is the censorship or erasing of procurement contract records that previously existed on fpds.gov and usaspending.gov . The author considers this censorship because the deletion itself is not recorded in the official database of deleted contracts.
I've been watching the Whole Mars Catalog channel on Youtube for a while ( https://www.youtube.com/@WholeMars/videos ), he's been trying out FSD beta versions for some time now and posting the unedited drive videos, and recently I've seen the results he's getting with 12.3.3 are substantially better than v11 from last year. I do think it's at the threshold of robotaxi capability from what I've seen there, very little if any intervention for long drives through the city dealing with construction, stopped delivery vehicles, jaywalkers, etc.
>It's also odd that you were appealing to corporate-pseudo-governments to justify inaction upthread
Not really, it's just "how it is" right now, personally I would prefer open web apps and distributed social networks, but those are niche, with most people using the big apps and social networks.
In a more "open web" world, I could publish and viewers could view anywhere on the planet. China was one of the first to "firewall" their citizens from the open web (likely due to their internal political arguments about national security etc) and unfortunately now I see a bipartisan trend in the USA following the same path, to the competitive benefit of few (at Meta for example, in this case), and given the text of the rule the next targets will be banning of websites based on nebulous/political security arguments for similar competitive advantage of entrenched players.
Anyway, @tivert thanks for the conversation and sharing your take as well!
> It's nonsense to consider "deeply integrated trade partner" and "foreign adversary" to be mutually exclusive categories.
Fine, but it's also unfortunate that we have corporate-pseudo-government entities (like Meta) lobbying and leveraging the power of actual government against the will of the people through FUD campaigns (see their Targeted Victory contract, for example). Restricting American access to their biggest competitor is arguably corporate-government collusion.
To your last point, China is on that list though (as a "foreign adversary"). In my view this is a political designation as China is actually our deeply integrated trade partner, manufacturing most of the hardware we are all discussing this on, it seems absurd to label a trade partner as a "foreign adversary" IMO.
To your earlier point, of course if an app is "draining the user's bank account without authorization" Apple or Google will block them, but that is not the job of politicians in Washington.
My take - if the US is still the "land of the free" then the government should not be banning citizens access to apps.
The idea of politicians in the house and senate (or president) deciding which apps to ban from the app stores will likely lead to similar actions against websites, from the article:
As written, any “website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application” that is “determined by the President to present a significant threat to the National Security of the United States” is covered.
"National security" is a nebulous term that feels like an excuse to ban competitors on behalf of lobbyists at Meta or elsewhere, this is not in the interest of the majority of citizens.
Good question. I think an array of these as cells in a series would bring it up to levels that could power an eInk display, etc that practically never needs additional batteries for its lifetime. Super cool.