tatrajim

The AVP has greatly enhanced my productivity through access to a large virtual mac window inside a variety of environments, facilitating deep focus while reclining, sitting outdoors, or traveling. And the 3D image conversion of treasured photos is remarkable. On the whole, I've used it near daily for over a year and a half, and marvel at how many naysayers there are.

Famously used by Thomas Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow. The notion of obtaining a distribution of random rocket attacks blew my young mind and prompted a life-long interest in the sturdy of statistics.

They burned the church and tried to break into the White House forcing an evacuation of the president! The 1/6 riot, by contrast, was by turns both violent and civil, but no one was armed and attempting "to overthrow the election results". In fact the Trump plan of continuous debate over the merits of the election was thwarted by the riot. It was diametrically opposed to his interests and ended up favoring the Democrats. Many questions still linger over the identities of major participants, including the "pipe bomber" and the "scaffold commander", whom the FBI unaccountably never identified. Note that the 1/6 participants were relentlessly tracked by the state for years by some 6000 FBI agents and tried in DC courts, unlike the 2020 rioters aiming to storm the White House.

Remember May 31, 2020?

"Secret Service agents rushed President Donald Trump to a White House bunker on Friday night as hundreds of protesters gathered outside the executive mansion, some of them throwing rocks and tugging at police barricades.

"Trump spent nearly an hour in the bunker, which was designed for use in emergencies like terrorist attacks, according to a Republican close to the White House who was not authorized to publicly discuss private matters and spoke on condition of anonymity. The account was confirmed by an administration official who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

"The abrupt decision by the agents underscored the rattled mood inside the White House, where the chants from protesters in Lafayette Park could be heard all weekend and Secret Service agents and law enforcement officers struggled to contain the crowds."

As near as I can find, some 6 people were arrested for this violent protest by the Secret Service, and some 16 by DC police. Is is vanishingly difficult to find if anyone was subsequently charged and convicted for this event, which was without parallel, at least in my lifetime. This followed the events of May 30, 2020, when the Church of St. John's Episcopal In Lafayette Square, across from the White House, was sent on fire. To date it seems that no one has been arrested or charged for this destruction.

https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-ap-top-news-george-f...

A fair point. Amidst the nationalistic preening over DeepSeek, the question of what the unintended consequences of an all-out AI arms race are lies fallow. Apart from everything else, it is tantamount to an information war, with competitions versions of the human past vying for supremacy.

I've lived and roamed across much of China, studied in Taiwan and South Korea, and know Japan and Hong Kong well. Many Chinese are indeed great, but in the end the Chinese tendency to game every possible system, make clever use of naive 老外 to advance themselves, and just shamelessly appropriate IP ("hey, they did it too in the 18th century, and remember the Opium War!") has massively turned me off China generally. Not to mention the 50,000 RMB bounty now offered in China for reporting a "foreign spy". The recent TV drama 赤热 (English title: Silicon Wave, available with subtitles on youtube) shows the whole China nationalist tech narrative in vivid relief, including "veiled racism" against Americans, e.g. the depiction of the Chinese protagonist's American mentor at UC Berkeley. And just look at the history and career of Li Kaifu and the cavalier way he has treated all the benefits he received in the US turned into promoting the glorious 祖国. Foolish 老外 indeed.

Is it "veiled racism" to point out how China continues to wield the great firewall that effectively blocks most internet users from outside news and entertainment while Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Japan et al. do not? The basic world view in China of 天下 -- the universal dominion of China. Hence the general unpopularity of China in Vietnam, South Korea, and japan.

No, it's still rolling out globally, and has a growing group of owners, particularly using AVP for productivity applications after the recent system software update allowing ultrawide screen sharing of mac screens. See /r/visionpro on reddit for developer chatter and the latest developments.

Perhaps around 400K sold? Production to date is said to be limited by Sony. The AVP is very much alive, especially with the recent system software update allowing ultrawide viewing of mac screens. See the reddit group /r/visionpro for lively discussion of the latest developments.

Not sure about this. There have been multiple Congressional hearings that produced continuing nuggets of information, provoking yet more speculation.

And in the past 24 hours ABC had a rather shocking interview with the local police revealing that: "The local SWAT team assigned to help protect former President Donald Trump on July 13 had not had any contact with the Secret Service agents in charge of security before a would-be assassin opened fire, those officers told ABC News. . . . We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service members whenever they arrived, and that never happened," said Jason Woods, lead sharpshooter on the SWAT team in Beaver County, Pennsylvania."

This report seems sure to fuel further rounds of speculation concerning the abnormal security arrangements.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/failure-communication-local-...

Gives power to the permanent committee staff members and lobbyists who have institutional memory and social networks. No legislator could possibly understand all the nuances of policy with such short limits. Four terms, say, as a Senator and eight as a House member would be more practical.

And, on a related note for education, AI is quickly obviating the need to master and plumb the depths of foreign languages. Dating myself, doubtless, but as an undergraduate, it was an unalloyed joy to study ancient Greek and read Plato and Euripides in the original, however haltingly. And later Korean, Japanese, and Chinese beckoned providing a lifetime of rich understanding of life outside the confines of English. For Americans, at least, perhaps ours is the last generation that will seek rewire our understanding of reality through linguistic hacking.

The shift in the US from the 1980s to banning forced retirement age has only added to the trend toward accruing and maintaining status through navigating an established, and increasingly sclerotic, hierarchy. The quest for lifelong tenure has become increasingly and necessarily political as the length of future job security has extended into one's 80s.

Thanks be for online investing. It's been my place of economic refuge to fund my lifelong impracticality.

The ABC Conjecture and Mochizuki's IUT theory comes to mind.

As an anecdote on the topic of education, as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in rural South Korea in the 1970s, I routinely visited secondary schools that (at the time) were little more than drab warehouses for large (-70 students/class) using ragged textbooks and ancient furniture. Spirits were high, though, and these farm kids were successfully learning math through basic differential calculus plus a daunting array of other subjects.

Thereafter, I have only felt (perhaps unfairly) mild contempt for the perennial whining of US critics who blame low funding for educational failing in the public schools. In my opinion the blame lies elsewhere, starting with the family.

I use Kagi many times daily for search and for access to Clause 3 Opus. Can't say I care about t-shirts. Keep up the good work.

And in my circle, my home address, the kind of car I drive, the universities I attended, and the places I vacation all affect -- subtly and sometimes more blatantly -- my relationships. Are you arguing for absolute uniformity across all choices in life?

Sounds like you need new colleagues. Why would you wish to be part of such a snobbish group? I fail to see why anti-trust law should be brought to bear on issues concerning teen fads. How about wearing the right kind of sneakers? Branded purses, handbags? Parkas? Should uniformity reign universal across all consumer products lest someone, somewhere be excluded to a faddish distinction?

So the technology of a global company must be hobbled and regulated because of US parents being so foolish as to allow their teens access to age-inappropriate technology? Did I miss the "teen fads determine anti-trust results" section in the legal code?

I keep seeing references here to the teen market and teen attitudes toward green bubbles. Should the anti-monopoly law toward a large, but globally minority market-share company hinge on the attitudes of US teenagers?

And, an embarrassed silence fell across Silicon Valley. "What do we do now?!"

But take heart. Just as the working definition of "gender" has proved to be far more pliable that ever dreamt until recently, so, too, perhaps "history" can be cheerfully reinvented to suit the ideological whims of an age? I personally look forward to imaging the philosopher Zhuangzi as Adam Smith. The deep paradoxes of economics ("greed cumulates to the public good") hearken to the wildly shifting perspectives of Daoism.

Android Camera > iOS Camera

Are spatial videos available on android cameras, out of the box?

> The vision pro is not a big hit.

You have verified sales statistics? Why are users around the world clamoring for vision pros in their countries? Why are Chinese entrepreneurs renting out vision pros by the hour?

My wife and I marvel at the vision pro experience.

https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-vision-pro-china-renta....

I have curtailed my reading of both The Economist and the FT over the past few years due to their increasing stridency in coverage of American politics and tone-deaf reporting on East Asia, prompting me to realize I had likely succumbed to Gell-Mann amnesia effect.

Yes, we did get two, in fact. And glad of it.

I would encourage my fellow oldsters (you know who you are!) to strongly consider trying out the AVP. After several days of use, I'll be keeping mine. A few rambling thoughts.

First, and foremost, I like the feeling of mental tiredness after using it for an hour or so, reminding me of how fatigued I felt years ago, living in a remote Peace Corps location and wrestling daily with a difficult new language. One can almost feel new mental connections being forged as utterly new visages appear floating in space and novel configurations of information present themselves. And, as a consequence, one can sense dreaded dementia receding a decade or so into the murky future.

Second, the meditation app is truly awesome, and allows a length of quiet sitting I've never before been able to attain, and lower blood pressure.

Third, the near-term prospect of virtual attendance at performing arts and sports events around the planet, without needing to leave home, is enticing.

Fourth, in the mid-future, tele-medicine will surely take account of the possibilities of AVP, tied likely to various monitors the Apple watch will have, opening new vistas of quality care at a distance.

And fifth, and best of all, the sheer pleasure of personal spatial videos is not to be denied. It was delightful to hear my own spouse gasp in amazement to see herself in 3D twirling gracefully during a recent outing.

All in all, a winner for nearly every senior.

Big miss by Apple: not securing reviews from any senior citizen. By positioning the AVP to be the coolest possible means of work and play for the well-heeled technorati, Cook is missing a huge group, to wit, well-heeled boomers, seeking succor for their slowly diminishing mobility, new venues for communicating with family they can't visit easily, fresh means of medical consultation, and most of all, a high-tech way to stave off dementia. While not as glamorous as picturing its use with a sinuous model, draped over pricey furniture, the AVP is a natural fit for nearly all seniors, and will surely be a hit with them, once the marketers bother to lift their gaze from hyping yet another 3D rendering app.

I have been hoping for more informed commentary concerning the scuttlebutt that Apple and Sony had a falling out over the a purported refusal to ramp up micro-OLED production, leading Apple to source future production in the PRC. Supposedly only around 900k OLED units were supplied by Sony (so, 450k AVP units), constraining potential sales for the near future. The general assumption in the press seems to be that sales are largely demand determined, but I suspect the cutting-edge technology used may still be in short supply, hence the high price validated for the relatively few units available.

Good, neither was I. Just a fascinating hobby that accidentally brought wealth.