General Tech News

[nudge]

10 minutes ago, Mel81x said:

@nudge

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/09/how-tesla-plans-to-make-batteries-cheap-enough-for-a-25000-car/

Great to see from Tesla and the tech usage could even bleed down to other electronic tech from a usage standpoint. I'd love to see them integrate it into a 25K car one day but I think we're about two to three years away from a road-ready model.

2 to 3 years in normal time or in Elon Time? 

In all seriousness, it's good to see progress in battery tech. If I'm reading this correctly, then this tabless cell design will not only increase range and be cheaper to produce but will also allow for tighter packaging without separate cooling system, so that's definitely good news.  

[Mel81x+]

28 minutes ago, nudge said:

2 to 3 years in normal time or in Elon Time? 

This is like asking me if Windows will 'really' finishing copying those files in 1 min. We can both be surprised when it doesnt.

[MUFC]

Interesting, about time.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54692179

[Mel81x+]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/11/what-using-atts-768kbps-dsl-is-like-in-2020-yes-its-awful/

Good read on how some internet is actually quite poor. I'd imagine that its because companies have taken large sums of money for expansion but really dont jack with it all. I kinda wish other companies were allowed to step in and say "here is a better service for cheaper" but the cycle would repeat eventually.

Edited November 6, 2020 by Mel81x

[Mel81x+]

https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/09/hyundai-reportedly-in-talks-to-buy-softbank-owned-boston-dynamics/

Funny how Boston Dynamics has become a baton in some kind of weird relay race. Why SoftBank ever picked them up I'll never know but now it seems like Hyundai want to try their hands at getting the company. 

[Mel81x+]

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/hands-on-with-the-apple-m1-a-seriously-fast-x86-competitor/

The new M1 chips in Macbooks and the Mini are doing some serious tech discussion rounds across the globe. The numbers are staggering and while its still a Gen1 change its got a lot of heads turning and looking at what Apple has achieved. One can only imagine what AMD will do next year with Zen4 and how they'll draw more juice from the 5nm fabrication process. Astounding for consumers now because of what the M1 architecture can actually achieve and what it also means for high-data and IPC throughput on these chips. Simply amazing.

[Mel81x+]

https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=196533&curpostid=196570

Don't ever change Linus. This might just push Apple a bit although I seriously doubt it. Lack of virtualization is an open invitation to other ARM makers to step in and do something good, we hope.

[Mel81x+]

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/12/apple-is-allegedly-working-on-a-passenger-car-breakthrough-battery-tech/

So you have to ask  yourself a lot of questions here. Can a tech company with zero history in the automobile manufacturing business build a car? Maybe. History tells us differently based on how they've tried to enter various spaces but over time and a lot of trial and error they will make it work.

[Mel81x+]

If you want to see how fast the world is giving birth and people dying too have a look.

http://worldbirthsanddeaths.com/

[Mel81x+]

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55912878

News doing the rounds in tech circles.

Edited February 3, 2021 by Mel81x

[Mel81x+]

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/02/spacex-starlink-now-taking-pre-orders-for-service-in-mid-to-late-2021/

Starlink is taking orders and the pricing seems a bit absurd at the start but if it gets good I can see it dropping. What is more interesting is how ISPs are going to have to up their game now. 

[CaaC (John)+]

Not sure if this is in the right forum or not?

 

5 G and the future of the internet.

5G isn't for just streaming Netflix without buffering - it could change the way we interact with tech and the world around us. 

https://www.sciencefocus.com/advertisement-feature/5g-and-the-future-of-the-internet/

 

[Mel81x+]

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/microsofts-windows-11-outreach-efforts-arent-going-very-well/

I am always in favor of more security at the OS level. God only knows we need it considered all thats been going on for the last 5 years but the way this has been force-fed to users is a bit of a joke. 

[Mel81x+]

The delusion in this tweet about Big Tech is actually laugh worthy. It doesn't matter which company you talk about they are all using psychology to get you to stay on their platforms or buy more of their products. 

Edited October 19, 2021 by Mel81x

[nudge]

2 hours ago, Mel81x said:

The delusion in this tweet about Big Tech is actually laugh worthy. It doesn't matter which company you talk about they are all using psychology to get you to stay on their platforms or buy more of their products. 

Agreed, it doesn't make much sense to single out one of them and give a free pass to the others... Facebook has an awful business model, but so does other big tech companies, especially those that are based primarily on user data and content. They all have tapped into the market by using human psychology and manipulating it for profit.

Also, maybe it's just me, but I can't stand the "[insert social media name here] is ruining society and human relationships" rhetoric or the even worse one - "internet and technology is ruining us". No, there are plenty of good uses for it all, but if the majority of people wants to use it as a replacement for interpersonal relationships and actual human interaction, or use it to one up each other and feel better about themselves by creating an alter ego with happier life, then it's just a manifestation of the human nature, shallowness, superficiality, insecurities and immaturity; don't have to blame technology for that. 

Also let's be honest, an average user doesn't even understand or care about the concept of privacy and is gladly sharing their personal data every day without second thoughts, with the classical answer "I dOn'T hAvE aNyThiNg tO hIdE" when asked about it. So why we're wondering, really?

[Mel81x+]

25 minutes ago, nudge said:

Agreed, it doesn't make much sense to single out one of them and give a free pass to the others... Facebook has an awful business model, but so does other big tech companies, especially those that are based primarily on user data and content. They all have tapped into the market by using human psychology and manipulating it for profit.

Also, maybe it's just me, but I can't stand the "[insert social media name here] is ruining society and human relationships" rhetoric or the even worse one - "internet and technology is ruining us". No, there are plenty of good uses for it all, but if the majority of people wants to use it as a replacement for interpersonal relationships and actual human interaction, or use it to one up each other and feel better about themselves by creating an alter ego with happier life, then it's just a manifestation of the human nature, shallowness, superficiality, insecurities and immaturity; don't have to blame technology for that. 

Also let's be honest, an average user doesn't even understand or care about the concept of privacy and is gladly sharing their personal data every day without second thoughts, with the classical answer "I dOn'T hAvE aNyThiNg tO hIdE" when asked about it. So why we're wondering, really?

Couldn't have said it better. I think this attitude surrounding user data and privacy is really what big tech banks on to continue operating the way they do. If you think about it, how many of us actually spend the time going through the security settings on our phones to ensure that we're not inadvertently sharing data we aren't comfortable with? It's all really just about the wording too when you think about it. How bad can sharing location data be with an app that actually uses it, e.g. Google Maps. On the surface its not such a bad idea till you take into account that the same geo-location data is used to generate so much other data related to user habits, etc which we all just shrug off as a necessity to ensure that the services work right. However, I guarantee you that the day Google has to start isolating location data is the day Google Maps dies an untimely death. 

Either ways I found that tweet rather hilarious in the way he absolved those other companies while targeting just one. 

[Azeem]

Facebook is planning to change it's name

[CaaC (John)+]

@nudge  

 

Quote

In the future, you’ll share your work with robots… unless you’re a woman

A job is an important part of how we find happiness in our lives (even if we don’t always enjoy the work). But what if the machines start doing everything for us? Helen Russell finds out if our working days are numbered.

Back in 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that with technological change and improvements in productivity, we’d only be working 15 hours a week by now. But while working hours have declined by 26 per cent, most of us still average 42.5 hours a week, according to Eurostat figures.

One of the things Keynes underestimated is the human desire to compete with our peers – a drive that makes most of us work more than we need to. “We don’t measure productivity by how many acres we’ve harvested anymore, so the amount of time we spend working becomes a proxy,” says Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, visiting scholar at Stanford University and author of Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less.

“Overwork as a choice, as opposed to slaving away for subsistence wages, has been part of Western society since the Industrial Revolution when some predicted that automation would create an ‘excess’ of leisure time. Needless to say, that didn’t happen.”

Thanks to computerisation and globalisation in the 1980s, managers could demand more of employees under the threat that jobs could be given to someone else. So the pressure piled on. And we took it, buckling under the strain, but shouldering the burden all the same. The psychologist Barbara Killinger writes in Workaholics: The Respectable Addicts about how we willingly sacrifice our own wellbeing through overwork for regular ‘hits’ of success.

But far from delivering productivity, value, or personal fulfilment, overwork has been proven to lead to burnout, stress, greater risk of heart disease, stroke and even shorter lifespans. Nevertheless, we persisted – until COVID-19 came along.

Those of us working from home during the pandemic put in an average of six hours of unpaid overtime a week, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS). Those not working from home put in an average of 3.6 hours.

As well as driving us to work more, COVID-19 has also accelerated the move towards automation and artificial intelligence, especially for jobs with high physical proximity – from Amazon developing delivery drones to self-driving cabs. By 2050, economist Dr Carl Frey and Michael Osborne, a professor of machine learning, both at the University of Oxford, predict that at least 40 per cent of current jobs will be lost to automation, while management consultancy firm McKinsey puts the figure at 50 per cent.

There are exceptions. Jobs that involve complex social interactions are beyond current robot skills: so teaching, social care, nursing and counselling are all likely to survive the AI revolution. As are jobs that rely on creativity. The same also goes for cleaning jobs, according to Frey and Osborne, due to the multitude of different objects cleaners encounter and the variety of ways those objects need to be dealt with.

Interestingly, areas of the workplace traditionally dominated by women won’t be so easily adopted by AI. Nor can robots pick up the ‘second shift’ – with women still shouldering three-quarters of all unpaid care work and doing 40 per cent more household chores according to the ONS. Robots are unlikely to assist in the ‘work’ of childrearing, preparing lunchboxes and doing the laundry.

Those whose work falls outside the caring/cleaning/creative realms will still work in future, just differently. In about 60 per cent of occupations, according to McKinsey, it’s estimated that a third of the tasks can be automated, meaning substantial changes to the way we work – and retraining.

A large-scale study carried out by accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers predicted that over the next 20 years, although 7 million jobs will be lost to AI, 7.2 million new ones will be created as a result. So we will work in future: we just don’t know what we’ll be doing yet.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/will-we-work-in-the-future/

 

Edited October 27, 2021 by CaaC (John)
Spacing

[nudge]

6 minutes ago, CaaC (John) said:

@nudge  

Simply irreplaceable  

[Mel81x+]

Facebook is now moving to a new name of Meta. And their site is meta.com

Have to say it just feels like what Google did with Alphabet years ago.

[nudge]

21 hours ago, Mel81x said:

Facebook is now moving to a new name of Meta. And their site is meta.com

Have to say it just feels like what Google did with Alphabet years ago.

I kinda hoped they'd call it Incite Inc. So many missed opportunities there...

[Mel81x+]

It's unreal how our eyes start to trick us once we get past 120Hz and even then its hard to distinguish monitor speeds. I use a 240Hz but you realistically could get the same out of a 144Hz which is way cheaper now.

[MUFC]

Paddle vs Apple

https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/09/paddle-saas-series-d/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAEz9namWJKSLcM0mDrO2QmyhEn5YrPc6a3YloSIrjGuXa_-C8DyDrABB42Vmkt0u0WAXEjUdcx_0vOXFf2WaDQaKD8bJzyLJEHw9YWIA0Mju_gpkAZABAKx40JTCDs-Oa6a94-izTX7AMm-eEn7UjF4eoSy1HLnIYPeQJfaZuBHo

[Mel81x+]

Sheryl Sandberg i stepping down from Meta operations. I think its good for Meta that it now has one less cancerous person at the helm than two. It's also very opportune for her considering how they are now pivoting to more "virtual" avenues which will allow them to steal information in even more creative ways.

[Mel81x+]

Apple Products Set to Use Common Charging Point | Time

I like this a lot. The fact that you need to carry around so many chargers for everything you own is a PITA.

Edited June 8, 2022 by Mel81x