goates

This drone is impressive and does address some issues with drone deliveries, but I'm still not sold on it becoming widespread, at least not for a good while yet. Probably most useful for now for a few very time critical deliveries such as medical aid, search and rescue or for those outside urban areas. https://youtu.be/J-M98KLgaUU

Well, seeing as it has been well received and is following the plot of a popular and well regarded video game that has a sequel, it would stand to reason that they will make a second season based on the second game.

How about having your helmet painted to match? https://twitter.com/ValtteriBottas/status/1598989919699206146https://www.thedrive.com/news/valtteri-bottas-new-f1-helmet-is-a-little-creepy-mostly-hilarious

The Fairphone has an IP54 weatherproof rating while still being repairable. https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/4406223067281-FP4-IP-Rating-54-dust-liquid-protection-

Here's a closer look at how repairable the Nokia phone is. Looks like it gives up water resistance as a trade-off. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/02/the-nokia-g22-pitches-standard-low-end-phone-design-as-repairable/

Maybe this will be more popular than the Fairphone? Although the Fairphone appears to have a better warranty and software support. https://www.fairphone.com/en/

This is the sort of thing YouTube is good for. Totally scientific.

This makes perfect sense to me, with the addition that the balloons would also allow for things like gathering radio communications and other electronic intelligence as well. One other possible use is that in the case of a major war, someone might start shooting down or disabling satellites and these balloons would make for a good back-up plan. I suspect them not being noticed could well be as simple as no one was really expecting them, and thus weren't actively looking for them. NORAD was formed to watch for, and defend against, bombers, ICBMs and, more recently, hijacked aircraft. Tuning radars to exclude slow moving balloons (how many innocent weather balloons are there floating around?) would thus make sense. It wouldn't be the first time anyone, including the military, got too focused on one mission and missed something else. Hindsight is (almost) always 20/20. To me the big question is how do they go about dealing with these in the future (this might be getting a little too close to politics though)?

At least one of the photos I've seen floating around was a photoshop based on an older photo of an F-22.

For some more details on how long balloons (at least like the first one shot down) have been around, The Warzone just put out an article. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/russia-also-has-a-fleet-of-spy-balloons

Not hard to do over the Yukon territory as it's larger than the British Isles with only ~40,000 or so people.

In the cases so far, the missile debris is likely either in the water (hence waiting for the first balloon to move offshore, for example) or in very remote areas with very few people around.

The Warzone has been updating their article on the latest shoot downs, including photos of the F-16s returning to base with empty missile rails. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/fighters-shoot-down-object-over-lake-huron I suspect trying to capture an unknown balloon would be rather risky, and it would be better to just shoot them down and gather up the debris.

Sounds like another balloon. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/f-22-downs-another-unidentified-object-over-canada

Thought the latest episode was well done. On the other hand, Bostonians don't seem quite as enamoured with all of it! https://www.boston.com/culture/entertainment/2023/01/30/the-last-of-us-10-miles-west-of-boston/

Sorry to hear this Noel. Can't imagine what it must be like. Hope you can enjoy your remaining time together as best as possible.

Around here I think most people were half watching the show itself, and half watching to see if they recognized the filming locations. https://screenrant.com/where-was-the-last-of-us-filmed/

There has been exploration and development work, though I'm not sure how far it has gone in the last couple of years.

Resources, alongside the locals recently voting almost unanimously to stay part of the UK. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/14/declassified-files-reveal-british-interest-in-falkland-islands-oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Falkland_Islands_sovereignty_referendum

I think you might be misplacing the cost difference between the Prius, a hybrid with two powertrains, and the Camry. The safety bells and whistles and HUD likely aren't the major difference in price. And as others mentioned, prices for new technologies often start high, and then come down. Even more important is the availability of second hand cars.

Hard to know as the situation would be dependent on the details. Your car could well detect an impending collision and get you out of the way. Or maybe nothing could be done and the other car still hits you. I wouldn't expect autonomous cars to be 100% safe, just much better than people overall. Again, the details would matter. The autonomous system may be able to avoid whatever emergency is happening. If the problem is a fault in the tuck itself, double or triple-redundancy system designs could allow the truck to stop and shut itself down. On the other hand, drivers right now have trouble staying focused, with sometimes disastrous results. So again, I wouldn't expect perfection, just better than people. Humans really didn't evolve to operate vehicles flying down freeways at 100+ km/h.

I wouldn't be so sure about Tesla being cautious. Far too many drivers are under the impression that they are good enough to drive autonomously, with a major factor almost certainly being Tesla calling the latest update "Full-Self-Driving", among other comments. The fine print probably says it shouldn't be treated as fully autonomous, but the marketing and impression people have doesn't seem to match. https://gizmodo.com/tesla-driverless-elon-musk-cadillac-super-cruise-1849642407

By using the adaptive cruise control system many cars currently have, which use radar (and maybe lidar). My Rav4 does a great job of following cars on the highway or freeways. When combined with the lane keeping assistance, it can almost drive itself down the highway, including around corners. Makes long road trips far less tiring. In good weather at least. When the snow starts flying, and sticking to the ground in particular, the lane keeping goes out the window and cruise control becomes outright dangerous. Autonomous cars with data links to the other cars around them could do even better as they would be able to coordinate their speed better than people do. One cause of traffic jams in rush hour are people not paying attention to the car ahead, then slamming the brakes on when they get too close resulting in a ripple effect down the line of cars behind. People really aren't as good at maintaining speeds or safe distances as we like to think.

Cars can already park themselves, better than many people can. As for knowing when they're allowed to, all of the parking apps I have on my phone tell me when I can and can't park somewhere, so it shouldn't be a problem to feed that data into an autonomous car. If anything, the car will probably be better at this than some of the more confusing parking signs I've come across. With parking garages they may well need additional input to navigate properly, such as pre-loaded maps of the garage, or maybe a system where the car can download the map as it enters. None of this is a show stopper though.

We do live in a world where maximizing shareholder value rules above almost everything else.