ripe

Excellent point. Critics have often remarked that movies about Hollywood tend to get Oscars just because of the subject matter, which Academy members like. Also, a less cynical example: some movies ar…

This factory looks no different from any other big German auto facility. Maybe a little sparsely populated right now, probably because it's still growing. If you visit any Mercedes or BMW or Audi…

It's true that carmakers have made self-repair inconvenient or impossible nowadays. But wear and tear impacts all cars operated in the real world, not just gasoline cars. An EV is not magical, ju…

"So now everyone can recreate your statements."... "remember us? We're a verb now." Hahahaha! I wish this weren't true.

IMO Zakaria’s take on the history, ramifications, and possible solutions of the invasion of Ukraine are the most compelling I have read anywhere. One of his points is that as a status quo power, China…

“China and Russia are very different in this way. Russia benefits from international instability. It’s an oil state. Oil prices go up. It seeks to undermine international institutions and cooperation.…

“First, the era ended slowly, and then it ended all at once. It ended slowly as China rose in power, in wealth. And then it ended all at once with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the sharp revitaliza…

“Despite the gulf between them, both Amazon and the Postal Service function as part of a much larger and much more insidious global supply chain... Beside its environmental costs, the system also depe…

You're absolutely correct. For the design of everyday things, we naturally want similar things to look similar in some way. The similarities can be surprisingly subtle, yet we appreciate them wit…

For others like me who had no idea what "OBS" in the title refers to: It's open-source software for video recording and live streaming. https://obsproject.com/ …

I’m like you. I got grandfathered into their old 2-disks-a-month plan that costs 5 dollars. I do enjoy putting movies on my queue and then getting pleasantly surprised a few months later when I receiv…

Yes! I learned BASIC on the BBC Micro. You turned it on, and you got a BASIC interpreter. It was the most painless, most fun experience. Graphics, sound,, etc., were all available by reading the User …

> And it needs to somehow compete with the rest of the world, gone are the days that you are sat in front of a disconnected computer with not much else to do but experiment and learn - it can'…

Forget about the emissions issue, I just hate driving and having to depend on its supporting infrastructure (repair shops, gas stations, insurance...) for my day-to-day needs. I live in a US suburb. C…

The concluding para from your Nature article says the opposite of what you're claiming, and supports the person you're replying to: "the persistence of antibody production, whether elic…

Ah, I think I understand the question better now. Thanks for clarifying it. > Everything points to the conclusion that solving the self driving problem for that specific operational domain, congest…

Right. What Mercedes has done here is to recognize and target that value. They took the automated driving capabilities, added more sensors, and did the engineering and regulatory legwork around it to …

Full self-driving (not the Tesla FSD fud, but actual Level 5) is probably not possible with all the current roads and the current approach (bigger and bigger ML models with more and more data). If tha…

> If an automated car can handle all that safely without reverting to human assistance, what exactly can't it handle, and why is it not full self driving? The answer is in the article, and in …

A news item about Mercedes-Benz's Drive Pilot feature was shared on HN recently: [ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29517459 ] I'm trying to explain to non-technical peopl…

Have you looked into Hawala systems? Unofficial, trust-based money transfer agents can transfer money with a phone call. Have been doing it for decades in India, for sure, since before computers were …

> the vaccines either aren't working or are working for a very short duration of time Citation needed. That's an extraordinary statement. The vaccines (at least the ones we have in the US…

You're right. I'm trying to distinguish VoLTE as opposed to voice calls on 3G. That's the piece that's missing in the old phone. How would you get at that distinction? Any alternat…

For over a year now, I've been writing short articles for non-technical people to read. Usually I try to use something in the news as an opportunity to teach some simple concept. This is my lates…

For people who ask, "why use text-only editors like vim or Emacs, when I can use a full GUI IDE?": One of the reasons I haven't seen mentioned much is: I'm a touch typist, and I ha…

Sorry, that's like saying that the people of Flint, MI were free to move somewhere else when their water was polluted.[1] No, the university is responsible for providing safe housing for the stud…