Ring still partners with Axon [1] as part of the Community Requests feature [2]. Since terminating the partnership with Flock is solely a PR play, the answer to your question will likely depend on if consumers en masse use this opportunity to educate themselves on the gravity of the “loss of control (of your data) in exchange for convenience” paradox of cloud services and advocate for additional changes to be made to the Ring platform, or if Amazon’s PR capability will find a way to improve consumer sentiment towards Ring products and services without addressing privacy and surveillance concerns.
The entire concept of "official act" does not actually exist. It wasn't defined in the Constitution, and neither was it defined by the Supreme Court when they invented it from whole cloth.
Isn’t this position predicated on the assumption that individuals without substantial capital “own” an AI?
When someone uses an AI they do not own, they are (maybe) receiving a benefit in exchange for improving that AI and associated intellectual property / competitive advantage of the person or entity that owns the AI—-and subsequently improving the final position of the AI’s owner.
The better an AI becomes, the more valuable it becomes, and the more likely that the owner of the AI would want to either restrict access to the AI and extract additional value from users (e.g. via paid subscription model) or leverage the AI to develop new or improve existing revenue streams—-even if doing so is to the detriment of AI users. After all… a sufficiently-trained “AGI” AI could (in theory) be capable of outsmarting anyone that uses it, know more about its users than its users consciously know about themselves, and could act faster than any human.
While I share in your hope, I think it is unfortunately far more likely that AIs will widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots and will evolve into some of the most financially and intellectually oppressive technology ever used by humans (willingly or not).
HEOS-capable gear from Marantz and Denon cover a lot of the applications you referenced. I decided I would never buy another Sonos product after the S2 rollout, and I now have a mix of eleven Denon and Marantz receivers driving both built-in, freestanding, and outdoor speakers of my choice all over my house.
HEOS is amazing for the size of the dev team, which I think is a couple folks somewhere in a large garage in Minnesota[0]. The amount of things they never touch is amazing. I appreciate the stability - my HEOS 1 speaker is still working, streaming tunein and tidal without issues - but when it comes to the app, it's borderline stagnation at this point.
They had a fairly unique and high-quality product in the early days.
It just did’t evolve very far or very fast, or even adapt pricing to better fit a rapidly changing market.
They switched away from a focus on multi-room hi-fi (or at least mid-fi) audio and users with their own hoard of digital audio to focus more on streaming services and chase the trend of little monophonic speakers. The higher-end devices remained good but became ever more niche.
Then they broke everything, particularly customer trust, with the app update.
eCommerce is inherently cashless by design. Confined / captive environments (e.g. airplane cabins) are cashless. Concessions and merchandise counters at large events (sporting events, concerts, etc.) are cashless. Self-service kiosks for anything (or vending machines) are increasingly cashless. And if memory serves me correctly, I believe that using cash to purchase real estate via arms-length transaction is prohibited in the USA by law, even if the buyer and seller agree on the use of cash (and if it was logistically feasible to do so).
I would argue that cash is not an option in more cases than it is an option.
1) What is the point of posting this website on HN? I love vinyl, and have a collection with plenty of rarities in it (one out of five, one out of ten, test pressings, promo pressings, signed sleeves, etc.), but I am not sure if a discussion on HN about a vinyl marketplace is apropos. I am not trying to be contrarian; I am asking out of curiosity.
2) As a US-based collector, I find prices listed on the posted website of some LPs I would like to have in my collection much more (as in, double) than listings I can find on Discogs… not to mention Discogs’s excellent communication tools and release database. With the exception of one purchase I made where the seller was essentially acting as a drop shipper and had no idea what they were selling, every vinyl I have purchased through Discogs has been exactly what I thought I had purchased (variant, condition, other important characteristics). I typically communicate with sellers to make sure vinyls are packaged a certain way in depending on the purchase to make sure the new addition to my collection arrives in the best condition possible. Discogs community-centric tools make it very easy to determine or infer buyer and seller reputations / trustworthiness. All said: what is the value of this site over a site such as Discogs?
> 1) What is the point of posting this website on HN? I love vinyl, and have a collection with plenty of rarities in it (one out of five, one out of ten, test pressings, promo pressings, signed sleeves, etc.), but I am not sure if a discussion on HN about a vinyl marketplace is apropos. I am not trying to be contrarian; I am asking out of curiosity.
I'm looking forward to the discussion of the classic design and layout. I think its cool! High info density, no overuse of white space. And fast too!
It's even got a gif in the top right.
What distinguishes the offerings from Fabric8Labs from the offerings from long-established companies like Desktop Metal[1] that are capable of printing parts using a wide range of materials including carbon steel, stainless steel, titanium, and tungsten?
The tungsten capability really throws me for a loop. As someone who TIG welds in my spare time, I can’t imagine having a machine in my shop that could make electrodes. The amount of energy required must be … a lot.
Fabric8Labs can print 100% density, whereas Desktop Metal is highly porous. Also Fabric8Labs can directly print pure copper, which has historically been very difficult. The process is also more energy efficient and better suited for small complex parts. Desktop Metal serves a different market in terms of material and size.
disclaimer: I'm a GP at Asimov Ventures and invested in Fabric8labs' pre-seed round.
> "directly print pure copper, which has historically been very difficult"
SLM [1] has been able to 3D print Copper with precision down to the size of a mechanical pencil's lead for a long time already. In what way is ECAM better? Is it more precision + no need to handle powder + no need for laser source and containment - ECAM being slower, or am I missing some crucial feature?
The high thermal conductivity of copper makes it difficult to maintain needed temperatures during SLM. Also, copper is prone to oxidation at high temperatures, further complicating (thermal based) laser melting 3D printing techniques. It’s more typical to print copper alloys than pure copper.
SLM machines typically use an Argon gas chamber. DED machines use an Argon gas shield.
> It’s more typical to print copper alloys than pure copper.
In the context of modern SLM, it depends on your definition of "pure" and "alloy". During the process, a bit of resin to is mixed into the powder and heat treated in a final step to get to 99.9% pure copper.
edit: Just fixed up my knowledge. Indeed alloys are typically used (99% copper with things like Chrome added on depending on use-case), tough the pure copper can be used with higher laser power.
Any references for 99.9% density with SLM copper? My understanding is that pure copper SLM printing is less frequently done as doesn’t work well with the infrared lasers on most machines, requires high heat & speed, and has more porosity than other alloys. It’s also hard to print so that it’s strong, conductive and heat stable.
Sorry I wasn't talking about density but the copper content of a powder which is printable. Googling a bit I found this presentation from 2022 showing that a density of 99.5% for pure copper is possible although at half the productivity of a copper alloy https://www.coppercouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/TS2...
The copper use-case is what kick-ed off an industry-wide race towards offering blue laser as an option. There is more than just wavelength that goes into printing good copper results, but that is a major factor.
In general, the ECAM process is actually a highly energy efficient means of manufacturing especially when compared with other metal AM techniques that use either a laser or furnace to thermally process the material. Specifically, there's quite a lot of energy that goes into making the metal powders that is avoided as the input to the ECAM system is a precursor material several steps upstream of a typical refined metal.
Interesting! Can you reference some numbers? Other processes such as SLM and DED require a powerful laser, starting from 3000W. When talking about copper specifically and especially when wanting higher processes speed, you need higher wavelength blue laser reaching 10000W of power. But on the flipside, the process can be quite quick. Non-laser alternatives like Metal Paste Deposition need a furnace, though I'm unsure of the power requirements there.
Any idea or references on how ECAM would compare to that?
every metal atom requires two electrons (or three for some metals), and you typically need 1–3 volts, and sometimes there are side reactions that waste most of your electrons; probably 'faradaic efficiency' or 'coulombic efficiency' is the term to google
slm and ded and metal paste deposition just have to rearrange some crystal structures; in electrolysis (including ecm machining) and electrodeposition you have to actually rip molecules apart, atom by atom and electron by electron
basically you're charging a battery, so you can get a rough idea by thinking about how much energy a battery could store if it was the same size as your desired workpiece
Based on the graph the process is producing way less CO2 than other additive processes. Being low temperature this intuitively seems a credible claim. Maybe you are concerned about high currents which is true but since voltage is low that does not multiply to much.
It's because that chart is measuring end-to-end energy use. Other metal printing approaches require a lot of energy to make the metal powders, so when you include that the other approaches are a lot worse.
it's an interesting point; you do of course have to add those electrons to the metal atoms in the first place when you're smelting it from ore, unless you're working from a rare native metal deposit, and plausibly you could leach metal ions out of ore and feed them into your 3-d printer. i suspect that the tests they've done so far, however, are using reagent-grade metal salts from sigma-aldrich or similar with much more embodied energy than metallurgical-grade copper or whatever
I paid far less attention to weather forecasts 30 years ago than I do now, but I have numerous anecdotal examples of how weather forecasting models and information provided by publicly available weather services have trended towards uselessness.
There is no publicly accessible weather information service that can accurately forecast weather at my house. One of the first purchases I made when I moved in to the house was an Ambient Weather Station resulting from pure curiosity that has evolved into an interest in keeping a historical record of "actual weather". Daily hi/low temperatures generally have positive correlation with forecasted temperatures, but the spread between forecasted temperatures and actual temperatures is generally ten degrees less than forecasted.
Long term qualitative temperature trends ("above average for the winter" and similar) are positively correlated.
But ...
- Forecasted storm intensities are wildly inaccurate. Forecasted high-intensity rain storms end up being all-day drizzle events or on and off rain showers, and visa versa. A forecast of “a passing afternoon shower” ends up being an all-day wash-out.
- Precipitation forecasts are wildly inaccurate, without correlation. Actual precipitation can be far less than forecasted or far more than forecasted, even when compared to short term forecasts--to include same day and intrahour forecasts. Just this past weekend we had accumulating whiteout snow squalls on an off all day long on Sunday, yet there was never any mention of any possibility of snow by any local meteorologists or by any weather forecasting service I routinely check.
Dark Sky was the best app I ever used for weather forecasting. Its short and long term forecasts were more than sufficient for planning purposes, but where the app to this day has had no equal was in its intrahour local forecasts and precipitation forecasts. If Dark Sky alerted me that there was going to be tornado in my area within the next 15 minutes, I saw a funnel cloud 15 minutes later. If Dark Sky alerted me that it was going to stop snowing in 15 minutes, the snow stopped 15 minutes later. Sadly, Apple lobotomized the service when they claimed to have integrated Dark Sky functionality in to Apple Weather. Even though I fairly regularly report weather accuracy issues to Apple via the Weather app, the reporting and forecasting provided by Apple Weather has never improved.
- Seasonal precipitation forecasts are wildly inaccurate without correlation. Modeling (from NOAA, local meteorologists, etc.) suggested we were to have "above average snowfall" this winter, with the official average winter snowfall being 48 inches. We have received 20 inches so far this winter. Either winter will go out with a bang in the next few weeks (which would be nice, IMO), or modeling will have predicted more than 140% of the actual snowfall. This is an altogether unfair comparison, but why not: if the executives of a publicly traded company forecasted 140% more revenue to shareholders than the company they preside over realized, they would all be immediately fired, sued, jailed, etc.
If society collectively will not tolerate 140% inaccuracy in financial matters (stock price manipulation, value destruction, and so forth), should we be content with weather forecasting and modeling that is just as inaccurate? After all, weather is treated as (only) a financial matter by insurance companies. On an individual level, viewing weather's impact through financial optics still makes sense--from lost days of work and lost wages, to insurance premiums, to food prices, to transportation costs, to taxes, to paying for the ability to get your money back for a concert ticket you bought months ago if the weather is too bad.
Climate change is certainly wreaking havoc on weather modeling, but it has been doing so for a significant period of time and the models do not appear (to me) to be getting better at adequately accounting for the effects of climate change. If current weather forecasting models cannot be adapted to accurately account for the effects of climate change, it may be time to either fundamentally change the way weather modeling and forecasting is done, or not do it at all. Taking out my broad brush and bucket of paint: are there any companies relying on AI to develop a more accurate weather forecasting service?
And if anyone has a weather service to recommend that will not “Night at the Roxbury” me with ads and that has accurate 3-day-or-less weather forecasts, I am all ears. Please post them here.
Climate change has no impact on weather modeling. The vast majority of weather forecasts derive from physically-based simulations of the atmosphere; the physics of the atmosphere don't suddenly change because the climate is warming. However, we rely equally heavily on statistically post-processing these physically-based simulations to correct systematic biases and better contextualize their outputs. Drift in the distribution of weather conditions - even small - can contaminate some of these types of applications. But not really in a way that you can honestly claim "climate change is making weather forecasts less accurate."
> are there any companies relying on AI to develop a more accurate weather forecasting service?
Sure there are. But AI isn't a silver bullet, and existing weather forecasting technologies are _really freaking good_. For all of the hullabaloo over AI-NWP systems like Google's GraphCast and Huawei's PanguWeather, these state-of-the-art systems are about _on par_ with the best-in-class existing numerical weather models; they offer incremental improvements in tuned forecast accuracy, but these improvements are statistical descriptions of a very, very large number of forecasts - end users really wouldn't see any practical difference in forecast quality if they relied on these forecasts. But to my point above - even AI-NWP outputs would be filtered through statistical post-processing to boost their accuracy/utility.
There are a lot of companies that _claim_ they use AI at different parts of the weather value chain to improve forecasts. A lot of them stretch the truth as to what extent they really use AI or ML. The simple reality is that the weather community has used ML since the 1970's to improve weather forecasts.
All electronics fail, and all systems reliant on electronics fail. Not all worm gears fail.
As someone who has worked in tech my whole life, and who currently runs a technology-centric company, I generally detest the state of technology these days. I have reached a point in my life where I consciously limit my use of technology, and make it a point to steer clear of purchasing and making use of devices and services with "superfluous technology" unless their are no alternatives.
Many (if not most) modern technology systems are far too complex to be properly tested, especially when taking into account integrations (via "standard" interfaces) with third party technology systems. As technology systems have become more complex, their reliability as tools to accomplish an intended goal has drastically decreased while the telemetry capabilities of the systems have been drastically improved (without me knowingly realizing any benefits thereof). As such, I have learned to rely on technology less and less as I have aged.
There are surely many reasons for the inverse relationship between complexity and reliability of technology systems, but a cursory list of suggested root causes that come to mind include:
- use of (necessary, in modern software development) automated test tools;
- use of programming languages too-abstracted from technologies employed within the system;
- a likely growing percentage of developers lacking a working domain knowledge of the systems they are developing;
- the corporate / financial pressure to needlessly upgrade or evolve technology systems--even in the absence of flaws or demand for the upgrade--in the name of maintaining / increasing shareholder value (see also: planned obsolescence, etc.)
Two immediate examples of "too much technology" that come to mind, because I have experienced them within the past few days:
1) Bluetooth is soon to be 26 years old, yet my model year 2022 smartphone cannot reliably communicate with my model year 2022 vehicle's head unit via Bluetooth to play music or relay audio during phone calls. I cannot tell you how many point releases of smartphone software (or vehicle head unit software) have been released since I have owned both the phone and the via Bluetooth, but Bluetooth has never worked correctly on any of them. Why?
2) On some recent releases of macOS Sonoma, the OS can read FAT* formatted USB media without issue, while other releases (to include 14.3.1) cannot read FAT* formatted USB media. Regarding 14.3.1: on 14.3, I could read and write to FAT* USB drives just fine, but I could not type an email longer than a couple of lines without the UI overlaying text on top of other text in the email, making the entire text of the email illegible. When 14.3.1 (with the text overlaying issue fixed) was available, I applied the update right away. Now I can write emails without issue, but I cannot read FAT* formatted USB drives. Why?
I've had nearly flawless Bluetooth support across several different car brands and devices in my cars for well over a decade. Pair it once, and it just works all day every day. I truly don't understand people saying Bluetooth is unreliable, I've personally never experienced it and I use Bluetooth across several different devices every day.
Even now, my phone's Bluetooth is my key to the car. I don't normally carry any other key.
> All electronics fail, and all systems reliant on electronics fail. Not all worm gears fail.
This is kind of a weird take: I was reading about the Therac 25 (radiation therapy machine that killed a few people because of software bugs), and one of the reasons why they were so confident it was going to work is that software isn't vulnerable to two classes of 'bugs' that analog devices suffer from: wear, and manufacturing defects.
I mean, they turned out to be wrong, but they have a point: physical devices are subject to entire categories of bugs that software can be reliably proofed against. All worm screws will ultimately fail, while software can (if done correctly) run forever. All manufactured devices are unique and have unique defects. Software can be reproduced without any defects whatsoever.
Worm screws have a known and simple failure mode, however, which people understand. It can also take a very long time to fail depending on the design - longer than the useful life of the product in many cases.
Software fails suddenly and unexpectedly, and when it does, it's rarely clear how to mitigate it. Witness all the "turn it off and on again" jokes...
Mechanical objects frequently fail unexpectedly, especially if you're trying to do something weird or unusual. We're just used to living in a world of machines that are in their second century of iterative improvement.
I make installation art, and from personal experience, despite being an equally shitty programmer as I am an engineer, the software is way more reliable, and there are way fewer ways in which it can fail. Anything from materials being not what they say they are, to some jackass accidentally making earth live, to stuff catching on fire - it's all possible.
Why not properly educate the population on why electric stoves should be preferred over alternative stoves?
Why not incentivize buyers to buy electric stoves (e.g., tax credits) or incentivize OEMs to lower the cost of electric stoves?
As someone who’s house is intentionally and entirely designed around the premise that we lose mains power on a routine basis due to poor infrastructure and challenging environment (a mountain with dense forest), and wish to have a means for cooking food indoors without electricity, I have a propane stove. It is the only viable option as far as I am concerned, and as such, I am willing to pay a premium for one if I need to replace the unit I have. But if I can’t get a replacement propane stove in the future, what am I supposed to do? Overhaul my house at my own expense? Pay the electric company the multiple millions of dollars it would take to modernize their infrastructure to make an electric stove a viable option?
Shifting that much burden onto someone like me is absurd, as is this ban. There are numerous other ways to address the problem that the ban aims to solve.
Bans are rarely—if ever—good solutions, and should only ever be used as a measure of last resort. The situation at hand is far from one of last resort. But apparently the US is fully mired in the unfortunate “bans are the best way to score political points” phase of its history… one that I think we’d all be best served to put behind us quickly.
A tax would be better than a ban. The tax can increase every year. And the money from the tax could be redirected to help people transition to electric.
The downside of a tax is it's harder to implement, so there will be inefficiency in the system. A ban is easy.
The long term effect of such legislation, especially if replicated in other jurisdictions, is that OEMs will cease to manufacture LNG/LP appliances because of lack of demand.
If OEMs no longer sell LNG/LP appliances, vendors that make LNG/LP components (burners, orifices, combustion chambers, etc.) stop making them. Over time, appliances become unserviceable.
Then consumers must purchase electric appliances, even if they are not a viable option—because they are the only option.
You are correct; there is no cause for immediate concern for existing appliances and existing residences. But over time, only electric appliances (and parts) will be available for purchase, and that is precisely the intent.
Just as California emissions laws generally set the standard for automobiles that are available for purchase in the US, this legislation will have far reaching affects across the country.
If people were paying for their own healthcare, maybe we could let them take on the risk of improper fume hoods in their kitchens. But since the risk is socialized, your poor health choices could cost me money.
> As someone who’s house is intentionally and entirely designed around the premise ...
Do you live in New York State? Otherwise it would seem like complaining about California earthquake construction requirements when you live on a houseboat in Georgia.
Also, these bills only concern new construction, not older houses, so wouldn't affect you.
> and wish to have a means for cooking food indoors without electricity
> Pay the electric company the multiple millions of dollars it would take to modernize their infrastructure to make an electric stove a viable option?
The linked-to page says "requirements for reliable service [are] already enshrined in state law" and "A potentially major caveat on grid reliability pushed by Assembly Democrats and a major gas utility also hasn’t been finalized, leading environmental advocates to moderate their enthusiasm until they see the final wording."
That reads like NY will require the electric companies to modernize their grid, not you.
> Bans are rarely—if ever—good solutions, and should only ever be used as a measure of last resort.
Umm, housing and fire codes ban a lot of construction practices. Do you consider them a measure of last resort? Or scoring political points?
As an example, when Hurricane Andrew came through South Florida in 1992 there was a widespread realization that the building codes weren't good enough. ("South Florida building codes were completely revamped based on studies about compromised garage doors, roof structures, basically how to hold houses together, according to Gracia Szczech, FEMA Region IV director. Homes built today in the state of Florida are far stronger than pre-Andrew." - https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/lessons-learned-30-years-... )
Governor Chiles got "political points" for pushing improvements in those codes, which, yes, outright banned certain building practices.
You make it seem like that was a bad thing.
And in any case, we've known that gas furnaces result in CO poisoning deaths every year. If safer alternatives exist - which seems to be the case in NY - how many deaths do you need until you say a ban is indeed the proper last resort?
[1]:https://www.axon.com
[2]:https://ring.com/support/articles/uds27/Community-request
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