monkeynotes

Natural language in place of other inputs, the command can result in summoning up a video for you, or a blog post to view.

If I am cooking and can hold a whole conversation with my virtual chef,that beats a video though. Talking through ideas at my desk would be great. Talking for navigation while I drive, yes please. Shopping with my headphones on and the device seeing everything I see and making suggestions about deals, recipe options, what's low in your pantry, and so on. I'll take that. I see technology becoming more and more transparent in our life. User interfaces will feel awkward when all you need to do is say "show me a video of cats" and it serves it to your companion screen without ever needing to touch tap any UI. No need to even have a web UI for youtube. Just an API and your device does the rest. It can show you a list of related videos without YouTube themselves providing anything more than the data model.

The cost cutting of not needing sophisticated front ends will be a big driving factor if this is as effective as I think it could be.

Anyways, my head is full of ideas like this.

I wonder how that will work out. It just looks so clunky and bulky, with limited FOV. I'd feel blinkered and constantly wanting to check my surroundings. For me an iPad is the best thing for movies on a plane. It's small, versatile, and I am aware of my surroundings.

I guess we'll see how people use it, but right now it is too expensive and full of compromises for me to consider.

I didn't say there wouldn't be a screen. But natural conversations will be much more fluid and efficient than a keyboard and google search. Having a conversation is so much better for all sorts of applications.

Today's smartphones have to evolve this way, imo. I don't know what the most efficient hardware realization would look like but I imagine it's something that isn't in your pocket most of the time, more of a sleek wearable. It will need to be able to hear and see what you do.

> will be naturally usable all day

What do you imagine that device to look like, and cost?

And that's my point, it's such a tiny niche usage window, why bother to bring it?

No way will this tech destroy phones as you know them today. What is going to destroy phones is natural language. Maybe, maybe in the distant future this tech will be mature enough to provide the visual support to a natural language first device.

xBox addressed a very well defined product sector with a couple of big players doing stuff that is well understood. xBox wasn't a toe in the water, they planned a whole strategy around it using known facts about the industry, how people play, what kind of games work, they didn't break much new ground with the xBox. All they had to do was make a compelling, affordable gaming device that had amazing games on it. The rest takes care of itself. Apple Vision Pro is nothing like that. There is no existing market to put your toe in, there are no real competitors, we haven't even found a killer use case for these devices.

No one really knows how these AR/VR devices can fit into everyday life. Currently Apple is working on finding the water to put their toe in. Right now they are at an exclusive oasis when they really need an ocean.

I think this is like a modern example of the Apple Newton in the sense it's impressive, has uses, but it too soon to be widely adopted.

I think this device will flounder, early adopters will struggle to make full use of it because of all the compromises. Take it on the plane? Why? It will run out of power in 1-2 hrs (if you remembered the full charge before you board). Lugging all that bulk just for a movie on the plane while you look like a black mirror drone.

Then there is TV, it's great if you live by yourself, but what couple has $7k to drop so they can watch TV together. For ~2hrs.

Office work? No thanks, I can't wear that all day and actually be productive.

It's an amazing accomplishment, but who is it for? The ~200k wealthy people who mostly live by themselves isn't going to fulfill an AR revolution for Apple.

I wonder what Jobs would have done.

I don't think it's a very common understanding that on the horizon covers a span of 50+ years. It doesn't conform to any definitions I can think of, I'd hate to wait for a payrise that's "on the horizon" in your world.

Apparently using the mars orbiter as a relay they can get up to 30Mbps. I couldn't find out what the transmission rate for lander -> orbiter is though. However lander direct to earth is in the Kbps on a good day.

> Cars are only a small part of the total energy pie

If 80% of US drivers switched to electric vehicles, the total annual electricity consumption would be approximately 1,013,472,000,000 kWh (or about 1.01 trillion kWh). This calculation is based on the assumptions of an average annual mileage of 13,500 miles per vehicle, an average electric consumption of 0.34 kWh per mile, and a total of approximately 276 million vehicles in the US.

As a contrast, today's total output of power in the US is 4 to 4.5 trillion kWh. So capacity needs to increase 1/4 which is not trivial.

Caveat here is we keep the same efficiency in EVs.

Should mention the govt. has to find budget to fill the gap of tobacco budget, but they've been slowly doing this as demand has slumped since 2008.

I think it's hyperbolic to look at tobacco like other drugs. Tobacco is a lifestyle thing, it doesn't get you high, it's a cultural habit. There are only upsides to getting rid of the social demand for it.

If you think taking tobacco away from consumers is infantilizing, why yes, yes it is. We are dealing with children's futures. Adults get to continue smoking, children less likely to even want to smoke as the social acceptance goes down and with that there is less and less desire to smoke. Nicotine doesn't do much other than get you addicted, no one is chasing after a pronounced high with it, people start smoking because it's perceived as cool.

I can't imagine an adult wanting to start smoking, most adults get addicted in their teens.

I think you have have an import ban, and a black market, and still see significant gains in eroding the demand. I do not think people should be prosecuted for possession, but the UK will probably make some bad decisions there, but that doesn't mean the overall policy is bad.

Talk to me about how that works when 80% of people are charging every day. That spare capacity goes away as everyone economically chases it to the point of saturation. Everyone can change their schedule and they will all go for the cheapest, which will normalize power prices across the board, AKA no cheap power windows.

BC hydro does not reflect the whole country. In NB we pay close to $.14/kWh, and as I said that's going up this year, and the next. PEI and NS are even more, so already today we are seeing ~$40 a charge. That's with just a handful of people driving EVs. Our province needs another power station, we sell a lot of power to Maine.

Across the border in Maine it's ~.36/kWh which is getting close to your $100 a charge, granted Maine is not Canada.

As electricity demand goes up, gas demand will go down and according to economics it will just get cheaper.

That discount will not perpetuate infinitely. It facilitates people onboarding to EVs, but it has nothing to do with long-term infrastructure problems on the horizon as this stuff scales up to being the status quo for how people move around.

You didn't really acknowledge the citations or my overall point.

"E-cars almost always have charge scheduling built-in, to charge when cheapest" if everyone charges when it's cheapest, it will no longer be cheapest. Demand drives cost.

They don't fade until a threshold is met. This threshold is much slower onset than rotors because of all that mass. But once it's up to temperature they do fade just like rotors and they will struggle to shed that heat quickly. That's why drums are not useful on high performance cars.

Drum brakes generate heat across a larger surface area, which means there is more surface area to dissipate the heat, under normal braking conditions. Technically as much energy is generated, but the heat dissipation is better in regular usage.

Problem with disc brakes is they have a much smaller contact surface and the heat in the area where the calliper pinches is very focussed. Shedding that heat is much more inefficient as the steel takes a while to conduct the energy to the rest of the rotor. This is why brake fade happens much quicker for those brakes, and why there is a lot of tech on fancier disc brakes for shedding that heat.

Another benefit of drum brakes is as they heat, they expand and push the drum tighter to the pad, effectively helping you brake harder as they start to fade.

Yeah, none of those are comparable. TV never lead to children bullying each other anonymously which then leads to kids committing suicide.

Oof.

So not cops then. That's exactly what I was saying, the copyright owners usually chase this stuff, not the police. I just can't imagine uniform ever doing this sort of thing.

So you think that the challenges keeping grid capacity and stability up with demand are FUD? I think they are reasonable concerns, and seeing early signs of that already here. Our power costs are on track to go up significantly over the coming years, mainly because of capacity. Building new clean, scalable energy is expensive, someone has to pay for that demand.

I think these are very real, and reasonable problems on the horizon. And like I said, these costs are already being noticed. My power bill is going up by over 10% in the next two years for capacity reasons. They are paying people to put in more efficient electric heating, so we are using less and paying more. I know this is info about my own region but Europe is also heading toward these problems on a wider scale:

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/gro...

https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero-sto...

Also "Otherwise it’s like running your dryer". It is not, at all. If the cost of running my dryer goes up 10% that's not a big deal. Running my car at a 10% increased cost is significant. If my whole neighbourhood gets home at 5pm and plugs in, the grid would fall apart here.

Also social policy enforcement is a generational thing. The UK is only just getting toward outright banning cigarettes by making it illegal for anyone born after X date from ever buying them. Eventually you have a whole generation that isn't exposed to smoking and on the whole thinks the habit is disgusting, which it is.

No policy is 100% effective. Kids still get into alcohol, but the policy is sound.

Gambling is outright banned for a majority of regions in the US, not just kids. I don't think they are equally bad, just different bad. Gambling is addictive, and it destroys people. Social media is addictive and socially toxic, on the whole it erodes the very fabric of a society.

Rear drum brakes are actually very effective. Definitely just as safe as alternatives, they are less prone to brake fade so I'd choose them in the mountains.

From the Google:

"Drum brakes can provide more braking force than an equal diameter disc brake. Drum brakes last longer because drum brakes have increased friction contact area than a disc. Drum brakes are cheaper to manufacture than disc brakes. Rear drum brakes generate lower heat."

Are they relatively new cars? I can't imagine doing this unless I had junkers. I know people driving Civics from 2010 that have no problems.

Just wait and see what happens when charging infra becomes more expensive than existing gas infrastructure. I've anecdotally heard from Canadians that they are approximating diminishing gains having an electric car, running costs-wise at least.

I think many governments do this for reasons other than piracy. Human trafficking, child abuse, and a myriad of scams, hate groups, etc.

Seriously? Do they do the same for places playing music? I thought the copyright holders pursued these offences, I just can't imagine a cop doing a patrol popping into pubs and bars and checking for streaming.