gregatragenet

What if by detaining and torturing an individual or a few key individuals you could prevent the death of many of your citizens and widespread destruction - through a bloody civil war. It would be for the good of the people. <--- most Autocrats

Surprised how much hate there is here for this technology from people who never tried it. I've had one for a year. It is game-changing. You can drive what you like - it supports many different cars.. I can road trip for hours on autopilot and then drive my Subaru on rocky forest roads that would rip the undercarriage out of a Tesla.. It does adaptive cruise control and lane centering for hours on end.. Being able to relax (but monitor) for the 8+ hour drives up and down the state of California is great. Being able to adjust the radio, have a snack, or just sit with your hands in your lap while the car handles lanekeeping feels like a miracle.

There is a 'dating' period when you get it where you and the autopilot learn each others limitations.. Knowing how steep a turn your car can do without hitting torque limits, learning to trust the ACC to slow down with traffic ahead, knowing how long you can sit in stop-and-go traffic without it disengaging (varies based on car and car capabilities), what light conditions it finds challenging (same ones as humans, driving into the sunset) etc. But now I know its limits, know how it notifies when it is reaching limits or unsure, I have full confidence in it when its working within its capabilities.

For those who think this device is going to kill them -- the safeties built in make it virtually impossible. Yes the main device (Eon) runs python code. However there is a hardware device which acts as a firewall between the Eon and the CAN bus which prevents any commands beyond a (very low) torque limit such that the car cannot take any action which a human couldn't notice and correct within 1 second. BY FAR the most dangerous part of my drives continue to be the drivers surrounding me who don't look or signal when entering my lane.

OMG I hope they bring it to burning man.

The quote from the consultant for LightSquared is taken out of context or just plain wrong. i.e. this statement:

cellular base stations have been "allowed next to the GPS band since 2003"

The FCC started allowing an "Ancillary Terrestrial Component (ATC)" specifically to supplement areas where satellite signals may have dead zones due to, say, dense urban areas. This would also be a low-power signal. It was put in place for things like Sirius/XM satellite radio to have acceptable performance in urban areas.

ATC is intended to (1) be a small supplement to a satellite-based service and (2) have a comparably low-power signal to the signal provided by the satellites.

Once LightSquared came along and got waivers so that (1) their whole 'satellite' spectrum could be terrestrial, and (2) could run much higher powered terrestrial stations (power levels similar to cellular towers) the amount of power they were radiating for their network eclipsed the weak signals GPS units depend on to function. The design and filtering for GPS units is fine for the adjacent spectrum to be used for similar systems/services as allocated (until the last 18 months).

Hi rorrr, You are clearly on the treadmill. Yeah if you want to buy a new car every X years, and get a mortgage for an overpriced house you are not going to be able to live this lifestyle. You will probably have the lifestyle most enjoy. Maxed out credit cards, no savings, that big oh-shit moment in your mid-fifty's when you realize you've nothing saved for retirement...

Not to burst your bubble, but his health plan is pretty good. I have a very similar one. It's shocked me too that you can get a good plan if you are willing to take a very high deductible..

And ironically if I took my deductible each year I didn't need it and burned it (or gave it to charity) I'd almost break even on my low-deductible 'old plan'. When I left employment the Cobra for my plan (2 people) was 980/month. I now have a HSA-style plan that's $170/mo. It has a ~5K-per-person deductible (x2 for two people). 100% coverage after the deductible is met. I'd about break even each year if we both simultaneously came down with cancer. But since we're healthy I get to pocket the 10K or so I save each year.

Most cities you can get by without a car. I prefer it, actually, it is a lot less stress than driving and a lot healthier. But, yeah, if you are like the folks who got a 'great deal' on a house in Stockton in 2007 and are now commuting from there to Santa Clara, I guess bikes are out of the question. It's all about live-near-where-you-work (or vice versa).

The author states he's got a $100K in savings - That's a lot more safety net than your average American. Do you have that kind of safety net?

When I was 14 I worked a warehouse gig assembling sunday-morning newspapers (the news printed that morning is combined with a larger pre-printed section of want-ads, etc). The hours were 3am-6am, it was poorly ventilated, the pay was bad, and the work tiring. The lesson I took away from that job is that if I wanted something better I had better improve myself and get some marketable skills. Skills that'd add value to what I do for an employer, and that'd cause the employer a loss of value if they were to let me go.

I'd hope current warehouse workers would walk away with a similar lesson - but apparently not in this case since the employee at the opening of the article is 34.

Basically, if you are an unskilled worker don't show surprise at the fact that your employer can and will easily replace you with someone else who'll do more work at a cheaper price.

If not, I'll provide different advice that I learned in the Army. Drink more water if it is hot.

A rocket is a series of pressure vessels, pressurized fuel tanks, pressurized crew compartment, etc.. Round shapes spread the pressure around the entire structure. The ideal shape for pressurized vessel is spherical, however for aerodynamic reasons cylinders with rounded ends are used.

Most of the anger I see at trucks (and truck-drivers) is just ignorance of the physical limitations on trucks. They are big, so the rules of inertia mean they take longer to speed up and slow down, and they have limited visibility on the sides. Often the stories I hear about people nearly run off the road by a truck begins with the car hovering in the truck's blind-spot. I've seen drivers pull in front of a truck and then slam on the brakes to make a turn, almost causing an accident with the slower-stopping truck. Or passing a truck on the right as it is making a wide right turn. Good way to become a subcompact-sandwich. My favorite is when a truck turns on it's signal to change lanes prompting the cars around him to quickly fill that lane in an effort to 'not be behind a truck'. Awesome to keep the truck from making his turn/exit guys.

If you have trucker-angst I suggest you go rent a large vehicle - like make a road-trip in an RV. It'll open your eyes on how poorly the cars around a large vehicle will accommodate you. And how what you thought of as 'bad truck driver behavior' may just be the physical limitations of the vehicle he's driving.

If a hacker can steal your user database they as-likely-as-not have access to your reversible encryption keys.

On top of that it's bad form to mail a user their plaintext password back to them.. I don't need my password crossing third-party networks and SMTP servers in plaintext.

From the article: We don’t say, "It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!"

It's a good thing our military isn't unionized.. мы все были бы говоря России.

I ask myself the same question every year.

I dono that I agree with the author's definition of DevOps - IMHO it's not that Dev is talking to Ops, there's nothing new there.

I think DevOps is something more akin to tackling operations problems from a developer's mindset. 'Infrastructure as Code' is a DevOps mantra.

A developer writes a program, runs the program on a compatible platform, and expects a certain output.

I think DevOps is - as an Ops guy you write a program, that program runs on a platform consisting of bare-metal machines, and the expected output is a platform for your developer's software to run on (i.e. configured & monitored web/proxy/db servers)

yes, moving at only a slightly slower pace then when they have power.

ditto. Right tool for the job and all that.

China has made several statements in the last few weeks about their concerns about the dollar. However the real BIG news is not their talk, its their actions. China has been moving their dollar holdings into short-term bills out of longer-term notes. They are positioning themselves so that they can get out of the dollar quickly - and they are doing it in a way that won't raise alarms because they aren't (yet) cashing-in their dollar holdings.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/KC18Cb01.html

I think for you the best solution would be to keep your day job and work nights/weekends on your startup. With your big financial liabilities and GF that has to stay in school in FL you can't make it work on a YC check and uproot to silicon valley...

If you really wanna be in the silicon valley tech scene -- it's a good place to network about your startup idea -- start applying for jobs out there. You'll make way more money than you're making now and you can still work on your idea nights/weekends. You'll probably find a co-founder and some advisers out there and have a better chance of getting serious funding than you'd have in Florida.

I've taken ~6 months off every year since 2001. Given our progressive tax system it's a no-brainer. I keep a much higher percentage of my income than I would if I worked constantly and then retired. Working in high-technology it's been no problem picking up contract work when I return. Companies are grateful to have me as I produce more per-hour than those who've been burnt out for years with no break.

Do you really want to wait until you are decrepit before you 'retire' and have free time? - For many of you a heart attack or cancer will get you first... I rather whoop it up now and spend my elderly and decrepit years as a Walmart greeter.

-- Greg

I counter with data. World ocean temps were higher in 2005 & 2006 than in 1998. Every year after 2000 has been higher than all of the 90's except 1998.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/