Tracking can be turned off in the settings. I have several Roku TVs and Roku boxes and don't see any ads "superimposed". The only ad (singular) I see is on the home screen.
> Roku hardware and UI is superior to anything on the market.
I have to agree. I've used Apple TV, and while its UI is fancier, it lags, crashes and just doesn't have the same "ergonomics". Something as simple as toggling captions and changing picture modes while paying a video is so much easier on Roku. And, all the menus provide by the Roku OS just feel snappier.
The 1st edition is already "sold out". Reserving the AWD Pro S Gradient, a $49,675 car, is $100. So I suspect the 1st edition was around that same reservation cost. Too low. Everyone has $100 laying around. IMO reservations should be 10% msrp so that only serious buyers can make reservations.
Tesla wants $100 to reserve a car, so I'm sure that's why the value was picked. If their buyer backs out and the model is popular, they can always get full price on the car as configured anyway.
It's because you can reserve with your credit card and the OEM is responsible for the transaction fee. 10% of MSRP is like $4,000 and 1-3% of that is $40-$120. When saving 1/4 of a cent is crucial at scale, you wont be happy giving up 40-120 bucks.
> Maybe album cover art is just less meaningful in the year 2021.
Maybe cover art is less meaningful *to you*. FTFY. To the author it is meaningful.
Today UX/UI teams are making decisions for everyone and not allowing anyone to deviate from those decisions. Less and less apps offer users a choice via a settings UI. To me the fix is simple allow users to customize their UI.
The author mainly has an observation. To me, it looked like they were writing for emphasis and not as an indictment about Apple's view of artists or anything.
Cover art is no longer useful for music discovery or intriguing fans when an album "drops". Those were UX/UI things last ... century. Now they aren't. They're vestigial embellishments at best.
But then why isn't Apple Music a big list of songs, like iTunes from 2004? I'd actually prefer that. The Apple Music streaming interface instead has headshots of artists I don't care about or abstract images for each "category". Like a lot of modern UX, it's the worst of all worlds: wasting a ton of space for the purpose of aesthetics while being less useful than earlier iterations - at least to me.
But on the topic of Apple, I would say its just not that deep. Their UI/UX is factoring in the relevance of certain things, while also using some of the image metadata that all their audio files have associated with them. The graphics team factored in an ongoing music collector culture and their own preference and the medium its being played on (the phone and app system). It wouldn't be surprising if a future update did have basically a simple list, with a drilled-in view of what's playing, similar to most other music discovery apps.
> Cover art is no longer useful for music discovery or intriguing fans when an album "drops". Those were UX/UI things last ... century. Now they aren't. They're vestigial embellishments at best.
What level of quantitative evidence would you like to see?
Would you prefer if replaced "no longer useful" with "has diminished significance such that it is ultimately vestigial"?
In my world it is plainly obvious that music discovery occurs from algorithmic introductions, which are counted, and the song being played which is also captured by audio listening apps which is also counted.
In the past, cover art would have been an advertisement for an album that contained songs which weren't out yet, and also useful when browsing physical albums in a store. Both of which is pretty much not happening at all, I mean feel free to correct me if your world still has that. I remember people used to complain about all the other songs on albums not being as interesting as the one song they wanted, the people are the market and the market chose something else which evolved to a completely different form of music discovery.
I don't have a paper on that. Is it really moot if this is a shared experience? I think there are a lot of people that are just uncomfortable that the world changed and they never stopped to notice, and without a counterpoint thats how you sound to me. But if that's not the case, I'm totally open to a conversation as I don't have strong opinions on the matter and am also totally content with music discovery today, which doesn't emphasize cover art for easily understandable reasons, to me.
> Maybe cover art is less meaningful to you. FTFY. To the author it is meaningful.
The author admits they're in a niche:
> The fact of the matter is that nobody cares about cover art.
So they're aware that really most people don't really care any more. Like most people these days I listen to music for the music, not the physical media artwork.
In the 2012 version of iTunes for iOS a user can flip the iPod Touch/iPhone horizontally to view cover flow. So I would I consider that a user choice. For everyone else, where album art did not matter, one could keep the device in vertical orientation.
> I always wonder whether contributor names to closed sourced software should always be transparent.
Are you implying that the developers that created this back office tool should be liable for the false police reports?
If so then then counterpoint based on having made back office apps: the individual contributor (i.e. developer) may either (1) have little to no say in what the app is doing as they are simply implementing the requirements as provided and/or (2) have no knowledge of how it might fail (e.g. when the app is integrated as part of larger business processes)
> Are you implying that the developers that created this back office tool should be liable for the false police reports?
In other fields, having an engineer's signature (or the lack of) means something, legally speaking. Good luck getting any kind of insurance on a new construction that wasn't inspected or built by someone licensed.
Don't the engineers in this situation have more decision making powers than developers in your typical corporate environment? In my opinion, more power would need to be given to developers before they could be held accountable in the same way as engineers on bridges or buildings.
The developer's actions are 'best effort'. Didn't the company run extensive tests to cover all possible scenarios?
If you build a system that orders coffee capsules, you want to make sure you don't order x100. But when you report 'thieves' to the authorities you open yourself up for plenty of lawsuits.. imagine the poor people being harassed by the authorities for some crime they didn't do, and will take plenty of time/money/effort to clean-up, all because company XYZ does not have a thorough UAT..
"imagine the poor people being harassed by the authorities"
Unfortunately we don't have to imagine this. This is exactly what happened (Hertz was the culprit, see link downtread)
You may not even need that word "poor" inserted in there in fact, the average person in middle america may not have the resources to to avoid a night in county jail, due to a wrongful imprisonment / accusation.
Apologies, the word "poor" didn't have to do with fanancial status. We use the word "poor" also metaphorically. Someone breaks their leg, we say "poor guy".. In also know that in Italy someone may say "povre" in the meaning pity, not poverty.
What is unclear from this article, and perhaps manufacturer specific, is if a vehicle has a telematics system but the owner does not have an active subscription is vehicle data still being collected?
> Driving Data. We collect your Driving Behavior Data (“Driving Data”) which includes the acceleration and speed at which your vehicle is driven, travel direction, and use of the steering and braking functionality in your vehicle. Driving Data is used to deliver Connected Services, and App Suite services to you, and for quality confirmation, data analysis, research, and product development.
> Driving Data. We will store such data for a period of time not to exceed 20 years from the date of receipt by us, unless otherwise required by law, legal process or litigation.
Oh, by the way:
> Remote Data. At last Ignition Off, we may collect the Real Time Status of your vehicle (i.e., vehicle location, status of powered doors, windows, hood, trunk, sunroof, hazard lights, odometer reading, oil life, fuel economy, trip distance, distance to empty) so you can remotely access your vehicle’s most recent information. Toyota uses this information to deliver Remote services to you.
> Location Data. We will store such data for a period of time not to exceed 20 years from the date of receipt by us, unless otherwise required by law, legal process or litigation.
So basically, your car phones home every time you turn it off.
> Warning: If you do not deactivate Connected Services, you specifically consent to our electronic collection and use of your personal information and vehicle data as described above and our storage of such data wherever we designate.
> If you do not notify us of a sale or transfer of your vehicle, we may continue to send reports or other information about the vehicle or account to the subscriber’s contact information currently on file with us. In such case, we are not responsible for any privacy related damages you may suffer.
> If you do not deactivate Connected Services, you specifically consent to our electronic collection and use of your personal information and vehicle data as described above and our storage of such data wherever we designate.
It would be nice if opt-in by default was illegal.
It's certainly immoral. People cannot consent to something they likely don't know is happening.
Unfortunately you’d have to look far and wide to find a government that restricts companies from collecting data they’d love to snoop around in themselves.
> Texas is unusual in that almost the entire state is part of a single grid that lacks extensive integration with those of the surrounding states.
PNM in NM already has problems keeping the power running in that state. So I don't think peering with them will be of any help. I can't speak to OK, LA and AR.
It's a shame that nuclear has become a political football. As a Texan I would like to see more investment in Nuclear.
In one of four nuclear plants in Texas, "According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the shutdown of the nuclear reactor was caused by a disruption in a feedwater pump to the reactor, and that caused the plant to trip automatically and shut down early Monday."
It is interesting. The us and canada are split into a handful (8 iirc) NERC zones. Texas is almost entirely its own zone, and coördinates with noöne else. I believe Quebec is entirely/mostly seperate as well, but coördinates with/is part of the rest of the north east's NERC subsidiary. The zones or groups of zones only connect to other zones via a handful of DC connections, as part of the point of the zones are to coordinate AC frequency and to prevent national cascade outages. I think Texas has 2 to the eastern interconnect and one to Mexico.
(I'm no expert; I just did some research looking at data centers once.)
Quebec has a lot of hydro. Quebec is actually the one NA state/province where I personally do not mind the fact that insulation and how to heat your house are really inefficient and sucky if you compare to some parts of Europe for example. That's because the cost has already been paid mostly. As in people relocated, methane released from vegetation suddenly being submerged in water, animals displaced etc.
I don't know the actual numbers behind the impact of flooding forest lands for hydro dams vs. burning coal but I would gather the longer the dam is usable the more favourable this equation becomes for hydro power. Any pointers to studies welcome.
Quebec is exporting its power to the US and there were some projects in the process of approval recently. I don't remember how far down the powerlines were to extend but definitely not all the way to Texas. Possibly even terminating in Vermont already.
Quebec is also prone to power outages in winter storms though I suspect that power transmission to the US would be much less affected by this than local distribution. Much easier to down a regular wooden above ground power line with trees growing all over it somewhere in Quebec proper vs downing a large metal power line going cross country in a basically 'clean shaven' corridor or through farmland.
Quebec has had a lot of incentive programs for better building insulation. I don't have any data but I'd be surprised if we weren't on top for energy efficiency.
That said yes there were lots of programs (which I also took advantage of like the reno Vert and what not) and it probably helped put us on the map especially in NA. But not compared to Europe. I have some friends in Germany who have a Passiv Haus for example.
Walking around here I see a loooot of icicles drooping from roofs. So you know they're literally heating the snow off their roof.
I understand this is marketed as a "dev kit". And I understand the cost benefit for shipping a COTS OnePlus phone to provide the camera and UI. But I wouldn't buy one of these due to how much windshield visibility is blocked by the device and the wire dangling from the headliner.
It would be better to have the camera and wiring hidden away next to the rear view mirror similar to how other driver assist cameras are packaged, with a CAN connected processing box in the glovebox (so audible chimes can be made), and infotainment screen integration for the UI (perhaps as an Android or CarPlay app).
Last time I checked, they have a stripped down Android that would run a custom Termux and a single app with UI and different threads. Some of the services in Python, some of them using C, all communicated using capnp over zeromq
If anything it sounds to me as if the comma provided a false sense of security. Drawing from experience driving 9 hours is already grueling. At hour 10, 11 or 12 would you have been able to take control during a failure of the system?
I certainly think so. I have built a nice intuition for the kinds of scenarios that the system doesn’t handle well. So it’s a pretty seamless transition where I assume control whenever a slow vehicle is merging or an aggressive driver is weaving through the lanes.
I recently rented a car and on a much shorter journey (90 minutes) I was struck by how much more tedious and frustrating it was to manually pilot the vehicle.
I think the thing that makes driving grueling is that you can mostly drive at a subconscious level. Staying in the lane and matching speed are mostly automatic, but occasionally you zone out for a second, or get absorbed into the audiobook. Then you start to drift to the edge of the lane or get a little to close to a decelerating car in front. Then there is a hard attention snap where you are forced back to focused attention of the driving task.
An L2 system does marvels for just smoothing out those peaks. It’s much less frequent that you have to intervene, so your attention can stay at a much more comfortable level and smoothly ramp back to high focus when a situation presents itself.
I have one. It's fairly limited so you are forced to pay attention all of the time and think about whether you need to take over. You just aren't doing the menial tasks of keeping the car centered in the lane or keeping a safe following distance.
If the system does something you don't like you just grab the wheel or touch the gas/brakes (the control messages it sends are lower priority for the car than driver inputs). It's also designed to disable itself if it sees gas or brake input.
It's really best considered as an upgrade to the stock lane keeping assist and dynamic cruise control found on most cars. Compared to the stock systems it's much better behaved (my stock Toyota system will happily drive straight across multiple lane lines in certain lighting conditions and it astounds me that such a thing could be sold), but it is a long long way from Level 4.
> you are forced to pay attention all of the time and think about whether you need to take over
The same people who cram an orange in to their Tesla's steering wheel will just download a sketchy repack of the open source software that disables the attention checks.
if you override the safety precautions, aren't you inherently taking your safety and the safety of your passengers into your own hands? I don't think you can hold that against any manufacturer.
Tracking can be turned off in the settings. I have several Roku TVs and Roku boxes and don't see any ads "superimposed". The only ad (singular) I see is on the home screen.