wklauss

For some telcos this is a very tough deal. Countries with a lot of foreign visitors, like Spain or Italy, will have to improve network capacity to sustain the added data volume, and with no increase in revenue. A lot of carriers still operate at local country level in Europe. I guess the long-term plan is that that most telcos will end up merging into pan-european companies.

> Six years later, the technology giant is struggling to find its voice in AI.

I know that this is the most common approach to the situation but the article -as many other articles that have argued this before- provides no proof other than analysts speaking in broad strokes.

I use Siri, Alexa and Assistant several times a week if not everyday and I'd hesitate a lot before saying that Siri is behind. Alexa is more responsive but it's domain is also more narrow. Siri does a pretty good job when I dictate a message or want to set a timer. It's limited, sure, but so are the other assistants I use. I might be the odd case, but speech recognition of Siri vs Assitant is pretty comparable in my experience.

Moving onto services. Google Photos is outstanding, yes. But I fail to see any other example that proves the big advantage other players have over Apple in the ML or AI field.

Am I missing something? I feel like a lot of these articles argue their view from the experience they got from Siri 5 years ago.

> Smartphones are not replacing computers in terms of a device to get work done, other than email and phone calls.

That is A LOT of work (real work) being replaced right there.

We also need to stop thinking people bought personal computers to work or be more productive. Part of the personal computer market was sustained by families needing a device to be connected, browse the web, do homewrok, etc... those use cases are now being replaced by the phone or a tablet.

Nobody is saying that smartphones are replacing computers completely, just that for a big part of the market the computer was a complex tool that was underused. That market is now finding smartphones/tablets are simpler to use and more apt for the tasks they want. We will always have specialized devices for certain jobs, but the main computing device is (for the majority of the population) the smartphone.

> From the manufacturers point of view phones not being future proof is a feature, not a bug, that way you'll upgrade to that new shiny item which will keep the profits rolling in.

I don't think a better AI chip will be a convincing argument to change a phone one year later.

> just put in contract childcare ends same time as contract, simple as that, it's just bullshit excuse not provide option hiding it behind caring about well-being of employee

Not an excuse. Just one of the many logistics problems involved. What happens when you have to stay longer than childcare is open, etc...

Yeah, these problems also happen with third party child care but that's the point. It might be wiser and more efficient to subsidize an external option that to build an internal one. Not only for the company, for the employee as well.

Could be a fun SpaceX or Tesla HQ.

It's much harder to estimate the demand of a child care center than that of a gym or a cafeteria. Not every employee will become a parent and those who do so will only have one or two children in the lifetime.

On top of that, some would prefer an outside child care service, specially if the position has a lot of traveling involved (can your partner or caregiver bring the kid to campus when you are not there?) Even if you decide to do it. ¿How many people should you hire? ¿What happens when the employee is fired or quits? (it's hard to find a daycare center in short time), add insurance, etc...

The way most companies solve this is by subsidizing the daycare facility of you're choosing or allowing for remote work some days of the week. It's more efficient.

That being said, not sure what the policy at Apple is right now.

I'll be moving from NYC to Atlanta soon and the quality of pizza has been one of my worries (stupid, I know, but it's the little things).

Super happy to find out good NYC-style pizza can be produced there. I always assumed the high humidity will mess things up.

Now if someone can figure out how to make decent bagels down there...

The technology, here, is the algorithm and hardware related to self driving. Not the car itself. Yes, we will use self- navigating software and LIDARS for a lot of things (car, buses, trucks, planes, boats, shipping containers...). And we will find new uses for it too. But the car as an object will be considered an annoyance to have.

And probably heavily taxed to pay for roads, etc...

Real estate prices are one reason. The other is that your waiting time for a shared self-driving car will be almost nothing (around 5 min?), specially in suburban areas. Keep in mind that is very likely that your kids will go to school on a self driving bus, in any case.

Because once self-driving cars are cheap enough -and they will be-, this model won't make sense. There would to many cars competing for the few clients that need rides at any given time. The money you'll make will probably amount to nothing and won't cover the hassle.

But I don't think this will be an option. I think we all know cars are extremely inefficient, but we fail to see the magnitude of that inefficiency. They are outrageously, extremely, mind-bogglingly inefficient. To the point that, once they start to become more efficient thanks to self-driving, owning your own car will be extremely rare.

The thing with self-driving cars is that it really alters the whole economic landscape of car transportation. You don't need two cars in your garage because the same car can take your kids to school and you and your spouse to work.

But keep that idea scaling. Your whole neighborhood could probably get around with less that one self driving car per house. So you'll start seeing neighborhood associations or apartment buildings pooling resources to buy 20 or 30 cars for the whole community to use.

Scale even further. The same could be said for a city. You could just have a fleet of 1000 cars, paid and maintained by the local government with taxes, that move people around with maximum efficiency.

It's not that Uber has a tough future ahead. All car companies that rely in selling cars in volume will also face pressure. There will be a lot of concentration, a lot of mergers and a lot of bankruptcies, because we are going to a market that will be 1/10th the size of what it is now.

It's glued so no, not possible to replace.

They don't have to be constantly sweaty. repeated friction and skin oil from palm of hands is enough to discolor palm rests in normal laptops. This is an even easier surface to discolor / stain.

It will depend on how much you type, of course, and it will be different for different people but I wish they'd have chosen another material even though this one looks gorgeous.

And, more important, how much they type. I'd say that for a machine aimed at teenagers this might not be a good idea. Time will tell.

Not the only downside. Machine looks great but that fabric material in the keyboard looks like it will be easily stained with sweat (a common problem with surface pro keyboards). No USB-C seems like a big missed opportunity as well.

Apps that use in-app purchases are not free apps, they are priced apps that defer payment. There are millions of real free apps in the AppStore.

I know math. But my point is that no solution will ever be satisfactory. Is 9% too high? 6%? 3%?

Also, think on the reverse situation. Apple currently makes 0$ on the sale of free apps but obviously these apps have a cost in storage and distribution. ¿What is the "fair" proposition in that case?

> The volume needed for that to be any sort of business model seems extraordinarily high.

If it can be easily automated that is not a big deal.

> AKA Highway robbery and Google doesn't do any better. It should be in the single digits.

Why single digits?

>For my apps, I used the affiliate program to get back some of the Apple tax. >So from my perspective, this is just the latest in a long line of developer hostile developments from Apple.

I know this is a common practice but it's not the intended use of the tool and therefore I think it's quite a stretch to say this is a "hostile development towards developers". I understand the frustration, though.

"Feel" seems like the key word here. Unsure how much of this is the placebo effect at work or just simple recursive autosuggestion (you expect to be more sharp and so you are constantly checking for that sharpness and therefore find that feeling validated)

They do. iPhones have used them since iPhone 6 and I think its common among other manufacturers as well in the high-end range of smartphones. But number of AF points it's still small and there are limitations due to the sizes of the sensors.

Also more complex and with more things that can go wrong due to mechanical failure

Unless you, personally, account for the other 99% of the photography market I wouldn't hand wave this camera that fast.

It's a very specialized piece of equipment for a very specific user, sure, but Sony has other bodies suited for different jobs. What the A9 shows is that there are advantages unattainable to mirror systems. As technology matures and cost of entry lowers, the more limited and cumbersome mirror systems will be cast away.

Optical viewfinder, albeit nice, won't sustain the whole market for DSLR. The advantage of no having vibration or rolling shutter or silent operation, will eventually drive people to mirrorless systems.

OTOH, being a mirrorless system you can use an adapter for pretty much any lens ever made, not only Canon but any possible glass that has been used in the modern history of photography. And some times without any significant loss of functionality.

But yeah, its true. Professionals take to stick to brands for a lot of reasons. Investment already made in lenses, repairability, how easy is to find a colleague during a job that can loan you some missing equipment, etc...

Sony is not going to conquer the professional market overnight, granted, but it's important to have this camera in their catalog to start moving things in that direction.

Maybe, but the first one I got was 5 or 6 years ago and was already an electronic voucher redeemable in the website.

Always an electronic voucher with the full amount offered. My last one was a 600$ voucher and I paid a full round trip to Europe with it.

You can use United vouchers online. I have volunteered a couple of times in the past and used them without any problem on United's website. You can also use them for multiple trips if the amount on the voucher is not exhausted. They do expire after a year, though, that is correct.

One of the commenters on Electrek points to this:

"Panasonic's existing panels have low temperature coefficient, so their performance doesn't drop off as much with heat. If they also add in Tesla's Silevo technology which has even lower temperature coefficient, most of the hit for thermals would be negated as compared to standard panels."

I'm sure this is throughly tested, in any case. Panels like these have been in use for a while in Japan.

It was obvious that pay you for power was not scalable. Eventually you'll see people disconnecting from grid altogether to avoid fixed rates.