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Subjunctive posted:Immediately. I can't see any reason why you wouldn't want to put vital public infrastructure in the hands of companies with shareholders Wikipedia article on Railtrack posted:Meanwhile, the costs of modernising the West Coast Main Line were spiralling.[16] In 2001, Railtrack announced that, despite making a pre-tax profits before exceptional expenses of £199m, the £733m of costs and compensation paid out over the Hatfield crash plunged Railtrack from profit to a loss of £534m.[17] This caused it to approach the government for funding, which it then controversially used to pay a £137m dividend to its shareholders in May 2001.[18]
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Jan 18, 2017 12:36
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I had a Flip briefly but it was absolutely a product that got washed out of the market once the iPhone became as ubiquitous as it is now.
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Jan 18, 2017 15:42
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Shifty Pony posted:That's why I feel that the investor was really just coming up with an after the fact rationalization for getting sucked into a well done flashy pitch which should have been exposed as fraudulent with even the slightest amount of due diligence. I thought that uBeam's technology wasn't at audio frequencies though, and instead was at higher than audio 'ultra-sound' frequencies? Is the sound wave power intensity really a problem, given that it isn't deafening you? I read a popular science IEEE article where a bunch of engineers in the ultra-sound field criticized the company's proposed technology and they didn't mention that as a problem. They claimed that if you were to calculate the link budget of uBeam's system using the ultrasonic transducer technology (or in other words, ultrasonic microphone and speaker technologies) available today and the propagation loss of an ultrasonic sound wave in air over 4 meters, you'd struggle to get anywhere near 100% efficiency. They kind of missed though that the 10 Watts it takes to charge a phone isn't really that much electricity, and so in the name of convenience, maybe you can afford to be more inefficient there when compared to powering a car or a city. Maybe even 10dB loss could be tolerated in a uBeam system, if 10dB loss means only wasting 90 Watts. The bigger problem they pointed out was that ultra-sound waves reflect strongly off of stuff like furniture and human beings. This kind of thing happens too in radio and is acceptable in radio, but radio links often run at very low efficiencies with 60dB loss. Dealing with orders of magnitude power loss due to intermittent reflections is unacceptable for the uBeam system where in ideal conditions you are struggling to maintain an acceptable link budget. So, the uBeam system is not really as convenient as claimed if your phone needs a line-of-sight to the wireless charger in order to work. It is definitely not worth losing 90 Watts to charge a phone if the only way it works is by clearing a path between your phone and the ultrasonic transmitter or speaker. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Jan 18, 2017 |
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Jan 18, 2017 16:18
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MikeCrotch posted:I can't see any reason why you wouldn't want to put vital public infrastructure in the hands of companies with shareholders All companies have shareholders  , but this has also never been public infrastructure. They were a private company from day one.
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Jan 18, 2017 16:28
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MikeCrotch posted:I can't see any reason why you wouldn't want to put vital public infrastructure in the hands of companies with shareholders If a private sightseeing and long distance travel bus company is "vital public infrastructure", than surely airliners are much more vital public infrastructure?
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Jan 18, 2017 17:45
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fishmech posted:If a private sightseeing and long distance travel bus company is "vital public infrastructure", than surely airliners are much more vital public infrastructure? MikeCrotch clearly thought you were talking about a city's public transit busses, not travel busses.
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Jan 18, 2017 19:47
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cheese posted:If an IT company does all their business on the internet, are they an IT IT company? IT squared? metaIT? iIT?
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Jan 18, 2017 20:19
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WrenP-Complete posted:IT squared? TITI. Because it's completely rear end-backwards, redundant, and should result in smirks (because I am a child). 
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Jan 18, 2017 21:42
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If you REALLY want to know what investor denial looks like, here's Tim Draper, who has invented a conspiracy to avoid admitting his investment in Theranos failed because he didn't bother to vet the science:quote:The first Wall Street Journal story critical of Theranos was published in October 2015. What was your initial reaction? https://www.axios.com/tim-drapers-keeps-defending-theranos-2192078259.html Edit: Another great quote, after being asked point blank whether he was bothered by the fact that Theranos was having to throw out way more tests due to errors than they should have: "I like that they're self-policing" Baby Babbeh fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Jan 18, 2017 |
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Jan 18, 2017 22:34
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ah yes, successful and well proven, profitable technologies like bitcoin, uber, and skype
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Jan 18, 2017 22:36
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Arsenic Lupin posted:It was the other way around. AD said "Here are our blueprints, we want the size 4 to be X mm wide at the ball of the foot, and the last prototype you sent is good to go." The Chinese manufacturer decided "American people have fat feet, so we will manufacture these at X+N mm." How brave of them to manufacture $200+ shoes in China. I'm glad that some minor miscommunications netted them a fat profit.
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Jan 18, 2017 22:59
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boner confessor posted:ah yes, successful and well proven, profitable technologies like bitcoin, uber, and skype uber+self driving cars will be insanely profitable
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Jan 18, 2017 23:12
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Landsknecht posted:uber+self driving cars will be insanely profitable As will Uber + Perpetual Motion Machine. Think of how much they will save on gas!
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Jan 18, 2017 23:13
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Landsknecht posted:uber+self driving cars will be insanely profitable Uber won't survive long enough to see it, and even if they do, someone will eat their lunch.
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Jan 18, 2017 23:21
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call to action posted:How brave of them to manufacture $200+ shoes in China. I'm glad that some minor miscommunications netted them a fat profit. I'm really confused about what you're upset about here.
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Jan 18, 2017 23:22
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call to action posted:How brave of them to manufacture $200+ shoes in China. I'm glad that some minor miscommunications netted them a fat profit. I can't tell if this is a moronic piece of "all factory workers in China are slaves" left-wing idiocy, or a moronic piece of "all Chinese manufacturing is taking our jobs and giving them to filthy sub-humans over there" right-wing idiocy. Could you please clarify.
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Jan 18, 2017 23:22
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a massive oval office posted:"Elizabeth started an amazing company that is so disruptive to various industries, so I think there were competitors fueling this fire. She was delivering 50 blood tests for $30. Her competitors are delivering the same thing for hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars. They were hugely threatened by this. Her product allowed consumers to have a baseline and then measure all of the changes in their blood over time. That technology is going to happen and I'm hoping it happens with Theranos. Over testing is super harmful and unethical because all tests are considerably less than 100% accurate even when done in a reference lab. They regularly review the stats for mammograms because testing in younger patients is borderline ethically dubious because the potential for harm from misdiagnosis might outweigh the cases it detects. It's just a variation on these super scummy "full body CT/MRI" companies which do nothing but increase anxiety and lead to people getting nasty invasive tests done for a meaningless "shadow" on the scan.
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Jan 18, 2017 23:25
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Baby Babbeh posted:If you REALLY want to know what investor denial looks like, here's Tim Draper, who has invented a conspiracy to avoid admitting his investment in Theranos failed because he didn't bother to vet the science: this guy is so goddamn stupid haha
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Jan 18, 2017 23:29
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LanceHunter posted:I can't tell if this is a moronic piece of "all factory workers in China are slaves" left-wing idiocy, or a moronic piece of "all Chinese manufacturing is taking our jobs and giving them to filthy sub-humans over there" right-wing idiocy. Could you please clarify. Neither, actually, but thanks for setting up the strawmen
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Jan 18, 2017 23:35
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I've met Tim a couple times in my former life as a technology reporter. My impression at the time was that, while it would be a stretch to call it an act, his public persona was at least slightly put on. He seemed like a smart guy who played the buffoon because it was useful marketing in a place where eccentricity is celebrated and because it led people to underestimate him in ways that he found beneficial. DFJ are notably hardass when it comes to negotiating deal terms, for example, something would-be business partners might be caught unprepared for. I'm not sure about that anymore. He's either been huffing his own farts for so long it's gone to his head or he's just gotten less good at hiding his crazy as the years have gone on.
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Jan 18, 2017 23:43
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the weird thing is that even though there is an amazing amount of dumb hype around tech, someone who with fairly basic "general IT support" skills can do some amazing things now with mobile, proximity sensors, and wearables it's not terribly set up a building (think a home) with either RFID or mobile proximity sensors to have environmental changes based on a trigger (usually someone passing it with the token) this poo poo wouldve been mindblowing 15 years ago considering that there are so many cheap and decent electronic components available online, en masse from china, it's amazing that people aren't more into it
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Jan 19, 2017 00:37
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Landsknecht posted:uber+self driving cars will be insanely profitable Ditching the Uber part would make it even more profitable! boner confessor posted:ah yes, successful and well proven, profitable technologies like bitcoin, uber, and skype Skype got bought up by Microsoft, that had to benefit someone.
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Jan 19, 2017 01:25
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Landsknecht posted:this poo poo wouldve been mindblowing 15 years ago And I follow someone who does more or less that, half of his comments about it are how $service downtime means he can't turn the lights on. It's not at the level of maturity you're supposing.
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Jan 19, 2017 01:26
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duz posted:Skype got bought up by Microsoft, that had to benefit someone. And by eBay. Those investors did very well.
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Jan 19, 2017 01:29
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duz posted:Skype got bought up by Microsoft, that had to benefit someone.
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Jan 19, 2017 02:30
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duz posted:Ditching the Uber part would make it even more profitable! i use skype for work, it is so god damned slow now
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Jan 19, 2017 02:44
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cheese posted:Is Skype like, a thing even still? I mean is it making money? It's Microsoft's standard business chat/VoIP thing now, so I imagine so.
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Jan 19, 2017 03:09
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cheese posted:Is Skype like, a thing even still? I mean is it making money? It was making $2 billion a year in revenue in 2013, the last year before Microsoft folded its accounting into a business unit with other properties (it having had the sale completed in early 2012).
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Jan 19, 2017 03:22
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Hahahaha! Ask me about working at six companies in a row that either were bought disastrously or bought another company disastrously, mostly the first. I was starting to worry about carrying a curse, but even I couldn't kill Oracle.  Not personal, just I have never used an Oracle product that wasn't horrible to unusable, and their death would make me very happy.
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Jan 19, 2017 03:31
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A Man With A Plan posted:It's Microsoft's standard business chat/VoIP thing now, so I imagine so. Nah. That's Skype for Business, formerly known as Lync. And a lot less confusing when it was called Lync, because it's not the same thing as Skype, like at all. MS made some stupid, stupid branding choices a few years back.
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Jan 19, 2017 04:29
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Albinator posted:Nah. That's Skype for Business, formerly known as Lync. And a lot less confusing when it was called Lync, because it's not the same thing as Skype, like at all. MS made some stupid, stupid branding choices a few years back. Well I knew it used to be Lync, I just assumed they had integrated some of Skype's tech in addition to the rebranding. My bad!
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Jan 19, 2017 04:35
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I have my home set up to turn off all the lights if I ever weigh more than 160 pounds. I guess so I can only be fat in the dark. (or more realistically not for any real reason except it doesn't happen in practice so it doesn't matter and it felt fun to click together all the inputs and outputs I owned on ifttt)
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Jan 19, 2017 04:44
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JawnV6 posted:Not really, considering Bill Gates' house was doing it 20 years ago? Matthew Garrett's Twitter includes many of his adventures with the Internet of poo poo. His reviews of the stuff on Amazon are a hoot too. He got into this as a Linux kernel developer whose copyright they were flat-out ignoring, and progressed to being the bane of the manufacturers of this garbage.
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Jan 19, 2017 09:53
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I'm seeing press reports about a fatal Tesla self-driving car crash- but I don't have time to follow up.
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Jan 19, 2017 19:26
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Discendo Vox posted:I'm seeing press reports about a fatal Tesla self-driving car crash- but I don't have time to follow up.
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Jan 19, 2017 19:28
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currently arguing about this in the (awful) self driving car thread - people have a bunch of high minded fantasies about self driving cars but what they really want is just to be able to watch porn while behind the wheel with a lessened chance of dying. it's gonna get ugly as manufacturers and insurance companies warn people specifically not to do that and people play with their phones while nominally in control of a speeding car, which they already do way too often as of yesterday
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Jan 19, 2017 19:32
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call to action posted:How brave of them to manufacture $200+ shoes in China. I'm glad that some minor miscommunications netted them a fat profit.
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Jan 19, 2017 19:56
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boner confessor posted:currently arguing about this in the (awful) self driving car thread - people have a bunch of high minded fantasies about self driving cars but what they really want is just to be able to watch porn while behind the wheel with a lessened chance of dying. it's gonna get ugly as manufacturers and insurance companies warn people specifically not to do that and people play with their phones while nominally in control of a speeding car, which they already do way too often as of yesterday 
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Jan 19, 2017 20:05
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Landsknecht posted:the weird thing is that even though there is an amazing amount of dumb hype around tech, someone who with fairly basic "general IT support" skills can do some amazing things now with mobile, proximity sensors, and wearables Coworker and I won a hackathon building an IoT coffeepot that shames you on twitter for taking last cup and not making a new pot. We were then invited to Vegas to demo during AT&T keynote and won 2nd. We split 17k in prizes after the whole ordeal. IoT is stupid easy to get into considering EVERYONE has an API to do something. Everyone kept asking us what we were going to do after going forward, but we just laughed and said it was gonna sit on a table at work and we'd chuckle from time to time about it.
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Jan 19, 2017 20:12
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boner confessor posted:currently arguing about this in the (awful) self driving car thread - people have a bunch of high minded fantasies about self driving cars but what they really want is just to be able to watch porn while behind the wheel with a lessened chance of dying. it's gonna get ugly as manufacturers and insurance companies warn people specifically not to do that and people play with their phones while nominally in control of a speeding car, which they already do way too often as of yesterday
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Jan 19, 2017 20:29
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