It should be illegal to force people to use generative ai to do things it is not needed for.
Seeing Microsoft's plans to add ai to windows was the last straw that made me change to linux.
Ecosia added ai chat which I think runs on the same thing as copilot. I don't see the point though and would like to be able to hide the ai chat option.
Oh don’t worry, they’re not giving him the real spy satellite optics for these flying digital cameras. A low orbit trash satellite cluster that will waste itself in no time is just a nice thing for the DoD to shovel money into.
Each keyhole satellite, by comparison, costs $1 billion.
They are just finally moving on from getting fleeced by the traditional massive defense contractors. Starlink satellites are an extremely cool piece of engineering, and spaceX is one of the most impressive engineering companies in the world. I’m sure these spy sats they are making are fairly advanced
Starsheild is just a satellite bus, which is just sorta like the central building block for satellites. It handles communication, navigation, etc. The government will likely be in total control of the system once it’s deployed.
Probably a lot from star link business but separately, launching a government satellite does not give you continued access to that satellite’s business.
There are about half a dozen small companies working on this but apparently the government is more interested in spending money on a company with zero experience with earth imaging. Dunno how I feel about the USG just putting all their eggs in Elon’s batshit insane basket
My guess is the optics themselves don’t need to be very mind blowing anymore. If this is a constellation, you will basically have the ability to combine many lesser quality images into higher res versions for review, and in near realtime, and from many different angles. Slap some AI upscaling magic in there, some object tracking and things like gait and attribute recognition, and you have something fairly close to ‘Enemy of the State’ capabilities, minus all the BS zooming and looking through walls.
It’s not necessarily imaging as in optics. Could be OPIR, encrypted comms, space to space ASAT, or any number of other things besides just earth imaging.
I assume the hard part here is the deployment of thousands of low orbit satellites at a rapid rate, not the imaging. The government surely already has the imaging tech, it’s getting a swarm of satellites up there what’s no other company has proven able to do.
The shitty gig companies decimated the taxi industry, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see things like drunk driving tick up, especially come winter.
I hope the city can incentivize something new to fill the void. And hopefully they can also put guardrails around it so drivers and passengers don’t get screwed.
The industry got decimated due to being worse than the apps. The apps 100% exploit drivers, but let’s not act like calling a cab was such a good experience 20 years ago.
I’ve had shit service and terrifying experiences no matter what cunt was behind the wheel. This talking point, probably invented by an advertising company doing PR for the taxi industry, needs to fucking die already.
I stopped riding in cabs after the umpteenth time of getting pressured to pay in cash instead of credit card or being told the “meter was broken” and I had to pay a flat rate.
Ridesharing has a lot of problems but they’re a much better customer experience.
The apps weren’t profitable. They sold rides for less than it cost them, which killed the industry. That’s what all disruptive companies do, sell for an unprofitable price and have investor money make up the difference.
Taxi companies could not compete. How could they? It didn’t matter if they were good or bad. There was no chance to compete because they all went out of business.
Again, the apps didn’t win because they were better, it’s because they didn’t allow competition. In a sane world they would have had to have made a profit, and the taxi companies would have made their own app, and things would be pretty much equal across the board. But that never happened.
Again, they did and failed because they couldn’t compete because investors paid for the likes of uber to run everyone out of business. I don’t know how more I can explain this to you, but you don’t seem to understand.
There was nothing stopping them and they set their own up; I’m referring to places in the UK where I know it happened, and some other countries too (SEA).
I don’t know how more I can explain this to you, but you don’t seem to understand.
Likely because of your explanation in the first place.
okay you are obviously taking this far too literally, obviously they could make an app, but the apps could not survive and exist because the competition would undersell them, paid for with investor money.
do you see what i’m trying to get through to you yet? everyone is saying “well the apps are better!” when the reality is that the big investor backed corporations like uber pushed all the smaller taxi firms out with uncompetitive price undercutting, they didn’t die out because they didn’t have an app, they couldn’t survive with an app or without - they couldn’t make that app to make you happy because you’d still pick the 20% cheaper one anyway
Cabs almost universally sucked. Nobody wanted to use one outside of somewhere like NYC; and only then because parking sucked so hard driving yourself is an even shittier option than the shitty cabs.
In places like NYC, the government over regulated cabs so hard the medallions cost into the 6 and 7 digits of dollars. Out-competing that simply involved…not paying 7-digit sums of cash just for the ability to work as a cabbie…
They aren’t. You’re paying a smallish dev staff and some people to answer emails. The rest is pure profit. If you’re not making money then you’re an idiot.
American cabs fucked passengers. Gig companies fucked drivers.
I recently said “fuck it, I’ll take a cab from the airport cab pool.” It was like immediately time traveling to a differently shitty moment in history. The cab smelled like it was made out of Newport filters and ass, and when we got to my home, the guy refused to take a credit or debit card.
Dude was picking up people from the international terminal, where they were often landing without local currency, then he would tack on a trip to the bank, with the meter running.
That’s when you refuse to pay, not your fault their card reader is “broke” and they didn’t inform you when you got in. They can get fucked, they tried pulling this shit on me before. I straight refused to pay cash.
Man I have not seen one of those credit card carbon copy machines in a long time! It’s funny current credit cards will not work on them since they don’t have any raised numbers
What do you mean? You can just call their dispatch line and talk to an incredibly rude person over the shittiest phone connection imaginable then try to describe your location and hope that they heard what you said correctly from their mumbled response and hope they might show up and then charge you an unknown amount that you didn’t know until you reach your destination while having no idea if they accept card or will demand a tip.
The whole gig economy needs to be stamped out. In a capitalist society the role of government should be to protect people from corporations and they’re not doing it.
It’s such an obvious scam as well. “Oh it’s not down to us what our contractors pay their employees!” as if they don’t know exactly how much it takes for them to hire people to do it at minimum wage and then paying somebody else substantially less.
The taxi industry let themselves get decimated because they fucking sucked and refused to improve their services. Not defending uber or Lyft, but taxis really fucking sucked and they got decimated because people were more than happy to ditch them for something better.
See Wendover Productions’ most recent video, “The Increasing Reality of War in Space” (from around 7:54); they talk about SpaceX launching unknown satellites and not reporting it either.
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