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bhassel

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A few quotes from that document (from 2018):

Each time a phone connects to a cell site, it generates a time-stamped record known as cell-site location information (CSLI). Wireless carriers collect and store this information for their own business purposes.

[...]

With just the click of a button, the Government can access each carrier’s deep repository of historical location information at practically no expense.

[...]

With access to CSLI, the Government can now travel back in time to retrace a person’s whereabouts, subject only to the retention polices of the wireless carriers, which currently maintain records for up to five years. Critically, because location information is continually logged for all of the 400 million devices in the United States — not just those belonging to persons who might happen to come under investigation — this newfound tracking capacity runs against everyone.

[...]

The Government and JUSTICE KENNEDY contend, however, that the collection of CSLI should be permitted because the data is less precise than GPS information. [...] The location records [...] placed [Carpenter] within a wedge-shaped sector ranging from one-eighth to four square miles.

[...]

While the records in this case reflect the state of technology at the start of the decade, the accuracy of CSLI is rapidly approaching GPS-level precision. As the number of cell sites has proliferated, the geographic area covered by each cell sector has shrunk, particularly in urban areas. In addition, with new technology measuring the time and angle of signals hitting their towers, wireless carriers already have the capability to pinpoint a phone’s location within 50 meters.

In another break with industry practice, the chip won’t be sold on its own, but will be packaged into a computer “appliance” that Cerebras has designed. One reason is the need for a complex system of water-cooling, a kind of irrigation network to counteract the extreme heat generated by a chip running at 15 kilowatts of power.

15 kW, yikes.

Camera vs. Lidar 7 years ago

That was briefly touched on in the article:

One approach that has been discussed recently is to create a pointcloud using stereo cameras (similar to how our eyes use parallax to judge distance). So far this hasn’t proved to be a great alternative since you would need unrealistically high-resolution cameras to measure objects at any significant distance.

Doing some very rough math, assuming a pair of 4K cameras with 50 degree FOV on opposite sides of the vehicle (for maximum stereo separation) and assuming you could perfectly align the pixels from both cameras, it seems you could theoretically measure depth with a precision of +/-75 cm for an object 70 meters away (a typical braking distance at highway speeds.) In practice, I imagine most of the difficulty is in matching up the pixels from both cameras precisely enough.

From https://www.bostondynamics.com/handle :

Handle is a robot that combines the rough-terrain capability of legs with the efficiency of wheels. It uses many of the same principles for dynamics, balance, and mobile manipulation found in the quadruped and biped robots we build, but with only 10 actuated joints, it is significantly less complex. Wheels are fast and efficient on flat surfaces while legs can go almost anywhere: by combining wheels and legs, Handle has the best of both worlds.

Handle can pick up heavy loads while occupying a small footprint, allowing it to maneuver in tight spaces. All of Handle’s joints are coordinated to deliver high-performance mobile manipulation.

OpenAI Five 8 years ago

It sounds like 170,000 is every possible combination of actions that might ever be valid. They stated that usually around 1000 are valid at any point in time.

Based on the examples under the "Model structure" section, I'm guessing they are counting all combinations of spell and target location, including locations on the ground for ground-targetable spells? That could add up quick... e.g. 10 spells * 20 target units * 9x9 grid of locations around each = around 16,000 possibilities.

Mir’s hiring 9 years ago

One that was certainly cool at the time, but has since burned up and was superseded by a collaborative effort. :p

I'm curious how? This FAQ page on their site claims you cannot search email contents, although they plan to support that in their upcoming Protonmail Bridge (which works with a desktop client to search locally): https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/search/

That is what I'd expect, since obviously they cannot build a search index over text they cannot read. Transferring the entire contents of your emails to your web browser to search locally would be slow and impractical on anything but a very fast connection.

That's a serious disappointment for me. I had my wallet in hand ready to buy, but I don't think I can go back to dealing with a charging cable. Wireless is so much easier... being able to grab my phone off its charge pad and return it again with one quick motion is great. And I can do it with my eyes closed at night.

Disliking patents doesn't mean I think ideas (and this idea in particular) are worthless -- the opposite, ideas like this are hugely valuable, and as you say, they can become even more valuable when they are shared and improved upon. As things stand today though, I agree with you that patents are a necessary evil in many cases for helping attract that initial investment.

If that really is the main role patents play, it seems like there ought to be a better way though. One that is more sustainable and less abhorrent than keeping a huge, increasingly unknowable set of mechanisms/solutions "you may not use" when solving problems. I am cautiously optimistic that something like widespread crowdfunding, along with with a better social safety (universal basic income?) that makes risk-taking easier, could possibly fill that role instead and make patents unnecessary. Then again, maybe I'm overly idealistic...

Palmer responded to some of the criticisms on reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/21cy9n/the_future_of...:

----

"I am sorry that you are disappointed. To be honest, if I were you, I would probably have a similar initial impression! There are a lot of reasons why this is a good thing, many of which are not yet public. A lot of people obviously feel the same way you do, so I definitely want to address your points:

The appeal of Oculus (as compared to Sony, for example) is because it is on a PC platform, and thus allows us, the developers, freedom over what we want to do with it.

None of that will change. Oculus continues to operate independently! We are going to remain as indie/developer /enthusiast friendly as we have always been, if not more so. This deal lets us dedicate a lot of resources to developer relations, technical help, engine optimizations, and our content investment/publishing/sales platform. We are not going to track you, flash ads at you, or do anything invasive.

The Rift is absolutely targeted towards the gaming population, which tends to be teenage to early 20s/30s, which is the exact population that Facebook is currently losing. By partnering with Facebook, you are gaining access to a massive userbase of people that the rift is not targeted towards, which people might feel is a very bad move.

Almost everyone at Oculus is a gamer, and virtual reality will certainly be led by the games industry, largely because it is the only industry that already has the talent and tools required to build awesome interactive 3D environments. In the long run, though, there are going to be a lot of other industries that use VR in huge ways, ways that are not exclusive to gamers; the current focus on gaming is a reflection of the current state of VR, not the long term potential. Education, communication, training, rehabilitation, gaming and film are all going to be major drivers for VR, and they will reach a very wide audience. We are not targeting social media users, we are targeting everyone who has a reason to use VR.

What we fear is not that Oculus will be partnering with Facebook, but that you are selling out the company to Facebook and no longer retain control over Oculus. I can say that I, personally, support Oculus because I believed in the goals and visions that you had.

This acquisition/partnership gives us more control of our destiny, not less! We don't have to compromise on anything, and can afford to make decisions that are right for the future of virtual reality, not our current revenue. Keep in mind that we already have great partners who invested heavily in Oculus and got us to where we are, so we have not had full control of our destiny for some time. Facebook believes in our long term vision, and they want us to continue executing on our own roadmap, not control what we do. I would never have done this deal if it meant changing our direction, and Facebook has a good track record of letting companies work independently post-acquisition.

There is a lot of related good news on the way. I am swamped right now, but I do plan on addressing everyone's concerns. I think everyone will see why this is so incredible when the big picture is clear."

----

and also http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/21cy9n/the_future_of...:

"We have not gotten into all the details yet, but a lot of the news is coming. The key points:

1) We can make custom hardware, not rely on the scraps of the mobile phone industry. That is insanely expensive, think hundreds of millions of dollars. More news soon.

2) We can afford to hire everyone we need, the best people that fit into our culture of excellence in all aspects.

3) We can make huge investments in content. More news soon."

2048 12 years ago

Right click -> Inspect element (in FF / Chrome)? All sorts of ways to "cheat" there, but not sure what that would accomplish.

quick fix to make it readable on firefox, I right-clicked on the paragraph -> Inspect Element, selected the div.single-content and removed the "float:left" CSS rule.

That article is specifically about using your phone as a GPS while it's in your hand. Using it hands-free in a car dock is a different matter (and much closer to the Glass scenario). From the article you linked:

  Had Spriggs’s cell phone been fastened on a dash dock, the
  story might have turned out differently; that’s because,
  even though California has a hand-held ban for texting,
  talking, listening (and now, using GPS), it doesn’t
  prohibit hands-free cell phone use.

I agree that people without a clue have no business voting. But be careful making the assumption that someone who "can't be bothered to vote" is less informed.

Even the well-informed can end up thinking "my vote doesn't matter anyway, so why bother." And rationally, they are not exactly wrong. Yet, the system would break down if everyone took that view. People need to be encouraged to vote, even though they may see it as a waste of time, because in aggregate their votes are important.

I admit I know very little about how cell phone networks work, but why would the phone need to transmit anything to determine network congestion? Surely it could figure this out just by listening, right? Maybe with the help of the towers periodically broadcasting their utilization?

Yeah, I just tried it, and apparently typing a protocol in front replaces the hidden 'http://.

As long as you can assume that the protocol is always http:// when hidden, I think I'm ok with this.