@Bingo
The difference is that Magic Leap is Augmented Reality (AR), or more specifically, Mixed Reality (MR). VR is using a screen, AR uses holograms to create an overlay of what you see, and MR lets you interact with the hologram and the hologram interact with your environment.
So far, Magic Leap still has a few issues that will keep it from being released for a few years. If you want something sooner, look into the HoloLens, it has already bern released to developers.
very hard to answer, as VR tech is amazing, and also Wearables… Specifically glasses, followed by Rings… (Visa has a payment ring… how cool is that? only for Visa sponsored olympians currently.)
While there’s room for Wearables to gain popularity greatly, it depends on what kind of Wearables we talk about.
I currently have an LG G Watch (which I don’t use anymore), and a Huawei Watch (which I do use).
Nice pieces of technology (mainly the Huawei Watch). However, there’s a limit to what they could do (then again, we say that about any piece of technology right before they gain unthought of functions).
While Smart Glasses are a nifty concept, the biggest fear people have (whether warranted or not) is privacy (such as all the criticism of Google Glass).
As for rings, I can only see them being useful really for NFC setups, and I guess mobile payments.
As I once gave a presentation on, and sort of talked about once on Meh, people have weird stances when it comes to privacy.
They’ll freak out over external devices (things which they don’t control), yet will download/use software without reading Privacy Policy or whatever.
I won’t even begin to talk about app permissions on iOS and Android (because it’s one of “those” nights), but there’s a reason why Google and Apple made it so that you can manually control app permissions.
@FroodyFrog like I said, I don’t get how people can expect privacy outside of an environment they control.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@DVDBZN care to elaborate? The only things that get into your house are the things you let into your house. Therefore the only expectation of privacy that you possess is an expectation of the level of privacy you enforce.
@jbartus
True. Some people start refusing to use certain technology because of privacy concerns. For example, location services on their phone, personal assistants on their mobile device or computer, a lot of people are worried about the Internet of Everything trend because they don’t trust the big companies with usage data they collect.
@FroodyFrog i am still waiting for better flexible displays. Imagine all the wearable options that will open up, and then realize you’re only imagining a fraction of what will be possible.
@jbartus I hadn’t thought of that. You’d make millions off strip clubs alone. Medical gowns. Half-betazoid weddings. The list goes on for just that idea alone.
@compunaut I’m pretty sure we’re all already being followed around by said electronic agents. It’s part of the quid pro quo of using services like search engines. People get all upset that they get tracked by Google and Yahoo and such to help target ads but that’s how they add value for their advertisers which pays for the search engines that people depend on to find things on the internet.
Google needs to cover their end somehow, hence this quid pro quo. If people want their privacy, they have the option not to use those services.
@jbartus But I’m not carrying around a smart phone when i leave the house. Shouldn’t I have a reasonable expectation of ‘privacy’ (not being followed around) if I take a bike ride, drive to the lake & kayak around, or go to the park to play frisbee?
@compunaut Not really, you’re in public. That said, do you live in the middle of nowhere such that there are unlikely to be any security or traffic cameras? Are you carrying around anything gps enabled (fitness tracker for example), does your car have OnStar/similar and/or built in navigation? If you answered yes to the first question and no to the other questions then you probably possess privacy, but being in public you shouldn’t expect privacy as the environment is out of your control. Even in the woods in the middle of nowhere some researcher might have game cameras set up to track the breeding habits of the Indigo Bunting and you’ll get picked up on it.
@jbartus In public I don’t expect privacy in the respect that I need to be alone, only that there’s no specific targeting of/spying on me. A traffic camera or research sensor might pick me up, but they were just looking (not for me in particular). I don’t want drones (or humans) following me around ‘in public’ just to know.
@compunaut I can definitely see where you’re coming from. I don’t want strangers or drones following me either. But I can normally just ditch people and a drone if I had to. But I live in an area that people don’t really pick up trendy electronics here. Like I said about ditching people, I can speed up in a car. I don’t normally walk, so I can easily get away from people on my bike.
Well I feel easily amused in comparison to the comments about autonomous vehicles, 3D printing technology and VR. Over the past couple of months I got my first smart watch (Moto 360) and quadcopter/drone. I’ve been happily enthralled with each (and am now embarrassed to have said so).
@ruouttaurmind Remember, I’m baby-stepping here. I bought the Syma X5C-1. For a noob like me it makes a great intro to drone flying. The only negative is that the camera isn’t the greatest nor can it be removed to improve flight time.
@Cheddy Take the next step with one of these. 720p camera can be easily removed. PLUS, live view FPV video monitor and three flight batteries included. Plus, it has a one-button return to home feature which is helpful if you lose orientation.
@Cheddy Consider submitting an offer on the one in the link above. I’m very familiar with the seller. If you mention meh.com in the offer he’ll give it special consideration.
@simplersimon … Oh, okay… I misunderstood your meaning. Certainty it will be the harbinger of one universal language even though each will receive the interpretation in their language. I’ve envisioned this for a long time and now feel it could become a reality possibly before this decade passes so long as their concentration slows down on mundane entertainment gadgets.
I don’t know why so many people are excited about autonomous cars. Do you all want you’re cars to be even more boring? Do you want to sit in a mobile waiting room while you go to the doctors office where you’ll sit in another waiting room?
If cars for the masses weren’t so bland and boring, maybe people would actually enjoy driving.
@DonberKon that only works if people’s skill at driving were increased to an even greater degree. I for one am glad, despite the fact that it excludes me at the present time, that real driver’s cars are out of the price range of most of the idiots on the road. I’m a fan of the potential of autonomous cars because when that’s an option the idiots who are trying to feed their kids or do their makeup or read the paper or whatever else they’re doing when they cut me off like idiots will almost certainly engage autopilot and do those things instead.
@DonberKon
To me, it’s not really about having fun while driving. Autonomous vehicles will make driving much safer, cutting automobile accidents into a small percentage of what it is now. Autonomous vehicles will also be able to drive more efficiently, and safely drive at higher speeds.
@DVDBZN As long as autonomous driving doesn’t become required (or a nusaince to turn off, like driving aids), I supposed I’ll be ok with it. Of course, we’ll have to get used to (possibly annoying) quirks of driving next to autonomous vehicles.
@DonberKon Heck yeah I want to sit or sleep in a mobile waiting room while my car drives me somewhere on a road trip. Finish work on a Friday, fill up the gas tank, and wake up the next morning in another city? Sounds pretty good to me.
@jciatti This. I could get another 30 minutes of sleep each night if I could get up in the morning, go out to my caravan and get ready for work while it drives me!
@brhfl True, but an autonomous car is on your schedule and doesn’t cost any extra to buy tickets. Where I live, a few tanks of gas is cheaper than one train ticket to a not-faraway destination.
I get really excited during discussions about emerging technologies. In fact, I consider myself to be an “amateur expert” on a couple of these. For me, it was a toss-up between autonomous vehicles and “smart glasses” (that should be “Augmented Reality”, “Mixed Reality”, or “Holographic Computing”), both for the huge impact they will have on a wide range of insustries.
If you haven’t already, check out the Microsoft HoloLens or Magic Leap.
Alternative fuel vehicles; specifically electric cars. We’re on the verge of affordable vehicles with 200 miles range. I’ll probably never buy another gas/diesel powered vehicle again.
@FightingMongoos
We had electric vehicles with ranges longer than 200 miles for over a decade, but they weren’t affordable. Definitely something to be excited about.
@2many2no the human form is inefficient for most tasks. The only reason to use it is to help us connect to the machine, treat it more like a person. I prefer my robots not be able to blend in. Keep them well on the other side of the uncanny valley, formed better for their function. Heck, just take IoT all the way and minimize need for robots by making it all focused robots. Harder for a smart toaster and smart fridge to conspire to destroy us all.
@2many2no Yes, I know technically that Major Kusanagi is nether a robot nor an AI (rather, an android with transplanted intelligence) but the technology would have to be mature for that to happen.
@elimanningface Not necessarily, but I think they should be easy on the eye.
Other people may have different opinions about what that means, @jaremelz.
@jciatti unfortunately, my eyes keeping getting worse, meaning new glasses every couple years if I want to keep driving. If I’m like my dad and granddad, they’ll stop just in time for old age to start hardening the cornea, meaning my only hope of escaping glasses is robot eyes.
@simplersimon
It could be possible that the glasses are worsening your vision. Since they limit your eye movement to a small frame, your eyes don’t get the “exercise” they need. Try doing eye exercises several times a day.
Autonomous passenger quadcopters. Somebody had a news article on this that called it a “drone” but a drone is something flown by an operator not on-board.
@PocketBrain sadly quadcopters aren’t really practical for cargo transport nevermind passengers. They’re inefficient, unstable, and lack agility. Helicopters are actually far superior in terms of technology. Quads are simpler mechanically which is why they are so popular for toys and hobby drones and the lightweight materials they are made from give a false sense of their agility, a human scale quadcopter would be clunky, huge, and difficult to fly.
@jbartus “difficult to fly” keep in mind, this is autonomous. Also, they asked for “excited about” not “practical.” And the chief advantage to a quad vs. a helicopter is the area needed to land it; you can wedge it in about 2-car parking spaces. That would make it capable of reaching more destinations. And I’m not getting on the damn thing, either. The general rule of thumb for passenger aircraft is, the smaller the thing, the more dangerous.
@PocketBrain I may have misunderstood, I thought you were saying the one you linked was cool but not what you had in mind. I got the impression you were looking for more of a multi-passenger vehicle type of deal that isn’t autonomous or a drone.
That said, my point stands. The quadcopter you linked is $2-300K USD and spans 18 feet, presumably square from the photos I’ve seen this puts its overall footprint at 324 square feet. That’s fully half of the area taken up by your average tractor trailer rig, a Chevy Suburban takes up 126 square feet by comparison.
To achieve this feat it was constructed of cutting edge space age materials and is propelled by a custom 142 horsepower electric motor fed by batteries that can power it for a maximum of 23 minutes at sea level at a top speed of 62 mph. Gross weight with maximum passenger/cargo load of 264 lbs is only 704 lbs.
In essence, it is only able to accomplish what it does, which really isn’t a whole lot in the scheme of things, by being built out of cutting edge materials that price it way out of the ballpark of anything reasonably affordable. Granted, nothing in the aviation sector is inexpensive, but for a single passenger travel of the future vehicle it’s sorely lacking.
The biggest problem with quadcopters is they suffer unfavorably from the square-cube law. In essence, what this means is that if you were to take a hobbyist quadcopter and scale it up the weight increase would vastly outpace the lift increase. Weight increases cubically while lift squares so, if we were even to just scale a quadcopter up by a factor of two its weight would scale by a factor of 8 while the lift would scale by a factor of 4. To gain back the lift differential you either need to spin the rotors faster or use bigger rotors.
Both of these are hugely problematic for the principles upon which a quadcopter works because, assuming you don’t destroy the rotors by spinning them fast enough to achieve the lift you need, you’re inherently hampering the quadcopter’s ability to be controlled. Quadcopters differ fundamentally from helicopters in that the blades of their rotors have fixed pitch blades, control is asserted by increasing and decreasing the speed at which these blades rotate. With higher speeds you increase the range the speed must traverse during a maneuver decreasing agility, similarly with larger rotors they have more mass and therefore more momentum keeping them going faster so they take longer/more effort to accelerate or decelerate. Nevermind the immense wear and tear all of this produces.
A helicopter, by comparison, uses a fairly complex mechanism to manipulate the pitch of its rotor blades changing how they bite into the air to control the amount of lift they create as well as assert control over pitch and roll with yaw being controlled by the tail rotor. While this is a more complex system it has many advantages including the ability to run the engine at a constant speed. Further, because the rotor isn’t dealing with airflow disruptions from other rotors it is very stable, something quadcopters inherently are not.
Further, there’s an issue of safety with a quadcopter. I’m not sure what they were talking about with their quadcopter and how it would land itself in the case of a malfunction but if you lose even one of the motors you’re not going to be in for a fun ride. Because of the variable pitch blades on a helicopter’s rotor they are able to do something called autorotation to execute a sort of controlled glide in the case of engine failure. Since quadcopters have fixed pitch blades and depend entirely on differing rotational speeds failure of even a single rotor in the system will have a massive negative effect on the control ability of the craft.
Don’t get me wrong, the video you linked is for one very cool piece of engineering, but the physical limitations of the quadcopter form literally mean that this achievement, while neat, is basically the pinnacle of what is possible.
@jbartus TLDR; You really do get up early to kick me in the balls every day, don’t you. Read the poll again. Immature tech. Excited about. Practicality or limits need not apply. These things do not matter. Perhaps you should take this in horse.drone.
@PocketBrain my point is that this isn’t a matter of immature tech, it’s a matter of impossible tech. If you’d bothered to read you’d know the physics just plain don’t work.
@infornography
If you think that Google Glass is the best example of AR, then I’ve got something for you. Research Microsoft HoloLens, Magic Leap, and Meta 2. All AR/MR headsets that are only a year or two from entering the market. I’ve got more info, if you want to hear it.
However, if you don’t think that Google Glass is the best example of AR, and you were just using that as an example that most people can relate to, then ignore the previous paragraph. Thank you.
I want commodity-priced flash memory in the 1-2 TB range on a phone device.
Many on-line services rely on streaming you content in the cloud: Spotify, Netflix, Google Maps.
I want to keep all my music, books, shows, and movies on a device that fits in my pocket and syncs with a home server when I plug it in at night. We need to get back to buying music and video, which is more sustainable for independent content creators.
@Officemonkey
Give it a year, or so. Considering we already have flash drives with a capacity of half a terabyte, I would say we are not too far from that.
@DVDBZN Price, though. 16gb is pretty cheap to get in microSD now-days. I don’t want a 400-600$+ phone. My old Lumia (70$) was a pretty powerful phone. My Nexus 5 (280$) is 3 years old (mine isn’t),
and still stands strong to many other phones to this day. Also, 16gb is a ton of space with apps rapidly shrinking with more content and features than ever before. However, I would like to be able to fit files too on my phone. I can’t store 30~ movies and 45~artists with 3~ albums each on my phone which sucks and the worst part is, Nexus phones don’t have SD card support.
3D printing for sure, but I also can’t wait to see how battery technology improves over the next 5 years.
Also, FIRST.
Thin-film photovoltaics.
Self-driving cars. Too many fucking idiots on the road.
@narfcake If microsoft does self driving cars there will be countless more idiots on the road…
@duodec
Looks like several other companies are getting ahead on that, mostly automobile manufacturers. Microsoft is focusing on Augmented Reality.
@narfcake broom broom
@Preedom broom broom? Are you a big floor-sweeping enthusiast or is that an auto-correct of “vroom vroom”?
I’m so excited about autonomous cars, I’m currently working on a podcast miniseries on the future of transportation!
Cars are exciting, but I have to go with 3D printing: think of it as Replicator v0.1a.
My first thought was “immature technology. …like fart guns?”
@MsELizardBeth lol…
I picked 3d printing, since it will change humanity the most… but VR is an extremely close second.
Virtual Reality !! I have been consulting on a project that I call “Virtual Reality meets Paintball”. Incredibly immersive.
thevoid.com
@Parri That looks awesome! I want to play.
@Parri @DaveInSoCal That looks really cool. Reminds me a lot of that company Gizmodo showed some stuff from a while ago, Magic Leap:
@Bingo
The difference is that Magic Leap is Augmented Reality (AR), or more specifically, Mixed Reality (MR). VR is using a screen, AR uses holograms to create an overlay of what you see, and MR lets you interact with the hologram and the hologram interact with your environment.
So far, Magic Leap still has a few issues that will keep it from being released for a few years. If you want something sooner, look into the HoloLens, it has already bern released to developers.
very hard to answer, as VR tech is amazing, and also Wearables… Specifically glasses, followed by Rings… (Visa has a payment ring… how cool is that? only for Visa sponsored olympians currently.)
@sohmageek
While there’s room for Wearables to gain popularity greatly, it depends on what kind of Wearables we talk about.
I currently have an LG G Watch (which I don’t use anymore), and a Huawei Watch (which I do use).
Nice pieces of technology (mainly the Huawei Watch). However, there’s a limit to what they could do (then again, we say that about any piece of technology right before they gain unthought of functions).
While Smart Glasses are a nifty concept, the biggest fear people have (whether warranted or not) is privacy (such as all the criticism of Google Glass).
As for rings, I can only see them being useful really for NFC setups, and I guess mobile payments.
@FroodyFrog I don’t get how people can have any expectation of privacy outside of their own house.
@jbartus
As I once gave a presentation on, and sort of talked about once on Meh, people have weird stances when it comes to privacy.
They’ll freak out over external devices (things which they don’t control), yet will download/use software without reading Privacy Policy or whatever.
I won’t even begin to talk about app permissions on iOS and Android (because it’s one of “those” nights), but there’s a reason why Google and Apple made it so that you can manually control app permissions.
@jbartus
The problem is that with new technology, it’s getting into the house.
@FroodyFrog like I said, I don’t get how people can expect privacy outside of an environment they control.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@DVDBZN care to elaborate? The only things that get into your house are the things you let into your house. Therefore the only expectation of privacy that you possess is an expectation of the level of privacy you enforce.
@jbartus
True. Some people start refusing to use certain technology because of privacy concerns. For example, location services on their phone, personal assistants on their mobile device or computer, a lot of people are worried about the Internet of Everything trend because they don’t trust the big companies with usage data they collect.
@DVDBZN right but that’s my point, if you want privacy you can have it, you just have to decide how important shiny things are to you.
@FroodyFrog i am still waiting for better flexible displays. Imagine all the wearable options that will open up, and then realize you’re only imagining a fraction of what will be possible.
@simplersimon clothes made of flexible fabric displays that can be as visible… or invislble… as you want?
@jbartus I hadn’t thought of that. You’d make millions off strip clubs alone. Medical gowns. Half-betazoid weddings. The list goes on for just that idea alone.
@simplersimon you betcha.
@jbartus Wouldn’t it creep you out to have electronic KGB agents following you around everywhere, reporting back to corporate or political overseers?
@compunaut I don’t follow. Also, you’re supposed to be somewhere!
@jbartus I was just commenting on your conversation re: expectation of privacy
@compunaut I’m pretty sure we’re all already being followed around by said electronic agents. It’s part of the quid pro quo of using services like search engines. People get all upset that they get tracked by Google and Yahoo and such to help target ads but that’s how they add value for their advertisers which pays for the search engines that people depend on to find things on the internet.
Google needs to cover their end somehow, hence this quid pro quo. If people want their privacy, they have the option not to use those services.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@jbartus But I’m not carrying around a smart phone when i leave the house. Shouldn’t I have a reasonable expectation of ‘privacy’ (not being followed around) if I take a bike ride, drive to the lake & kayak around, or go to the park to play frisbee?
@compunaut Not really, you’re in public. That said, do you live in the middle of nowhere such that there are unlikely to be any security or traffic cameras? Are you carrying around anything gps enabled (fitness tracker for example), does your car have OnStar/similar and/or built in navigation? If you answered yes to the first question and no to the other questions then you probably possess privacy, but being in public you shouldn’t expect privacy as the environment is out of your control. Even in the woods in the middle of nowhere some researcher might have game cameras set up to track the breeding habits of the Indigo Bunting and you’ll get picked up on it.
@jbartus In public I don’t expect privacy in the respect that I need to be alone, only that there’s no specific targeting of/spying on me. A traffic camera or research sensor might pick me up, but they were just looking (not for me in particular). I don’t want drones (or humans) following me around ‘in public’ just to know.
@compunaut I can definitely see where you’re coming from. I don’t want strangers or drones following me either. But I can normally just ditch people and a drone if I had to. But I live in an area that people don’t really pick up trendy electronics here. Like I said about ditching people, I can speed up in a car. I don’t normally walk, so I can easily get away from people on my bike.
Well I feel easily amused in comparison to the comments about autonomous vehicles, 3D printing technology and VR. Over the past couple of months I got my first smart watch (Moto 360) and quadcopter/drone. I’ve been happily enthralled with each (and am now embarrassed to have said so).
@Cheddy
Which gen of the 360?
@FroodyFrog 1st gen Froody. I got a good deal on it and have been very happy with it.
@Cheddy Forget the 360, which drone?
@ruouttaurmind Remember, I’m baby-stepping here. I bought the Syma X5C-1. For a noob like me it makes a great intro to drone flying. The only negative is that the camera isn’t the greatest nor can it be removed to improve flight time.
@Cheddy Take the next step with one of these. 720p camera can be easily removed. PLUS, live view FPV video monitor and three flight batteries included. Plus, it has a one-button return to home feature which is helpful if you lose orientation.
@ruouttaurmind Awesome. Thanks for the suggestion of this unit. I’ll be sure to check it out.
@Cheddy Consider submitting an offer on the one in the link above. I’m very familiar with the seller. If you mention meh.com in the offer he’ll give it special consideration.
I’m looking forward to the universal translator… can’t wait to cuss out a Frenchman in his own language.
@unkabob universal translator will be one of the least fun things we’ll be able to do the that much processing power.
@simplersimon … Maybe not but it will be fun talking one on one in any translated language.
@unkabob Oh, I agree. That is absolutely amazing. That’s part of my point.
@simplersimon … Oh, okay… I misunderstood your meaning. Certainty it will be the harbinger of one universal language even though each will receive the interpretation in their language. I’ve envisioned this for a long time and now feel it could become a reality possibly before this decade passes so long as their concentration slows down on mundane entertainment gadgets.
I don’t know why so many people are excited about autonomous cars. Do you all want you’re cars to be even more boring? Do you want to sit in a mobile waiting room while you go to the doctors office where you’ll sit in another waiting room?
If cars for the masses weren’t so bland and boring, maybe people would actually enjoy driving.
@DonberKon that only works if people’s skill at driving were increased to an even greater degree. I for one am glad, despite the fact that it excludes me at the present time, that real driver’s cars are out of the price range of most of the idiots on the road. I’m a fan of the potential of autonomous cars because when that’s an option the idiots who are trying to feed their kids or do their makeup or read the paper or whatever else they’re doing when they cut me off like idiots will almost certainly engage autopilot and do those things instead.
@DonberKon
To me, it’s not really about having fun while driving. Autonomous vehicles will make driving much safer, cutting automobile accidents into a small percentage of what it is now. Autonomous vehicles will also be able to drive more efficiently, and safely drive at higher speeds.
@DVDBZN As long as autonomous driving doesn’t become required (or a nusaince to turn off, like driving aids), I supposed I’ll be ok with it. Of course, we’ll have to get used to (possibly annoying) quirks of driving next to autonomous vehicles.
@DonberKon Heck yeah I want to sit or sleep in a mobile waiting room while my car drives me somewhere on a road trip. Finish work on a Friday, fill up the gas tank, and wake up the next morning in another city? Sounds pretty good to me.
@jciatti That’s called a train, and you don’t even have to gas it up yourself!
@jciatti This. I could get another 30 minutes of sleep each night if I could get up in the morning, go out to my caravan and get ready for work while it drives me!
Multitasking people! Multitasking…
@brhfl True, but an autonomous car is on your schedule and doesn’t cost any extra to buy tickets. Where I live, a few tanks of gas is cheaper than one train ticket to a not-faraway destination.
I get really excited during discussions about emerging technologies. In fact, I consider myself to be an “amateur expert” on a couple of these. For me, it was a toss-up between autonomous vehicles and “smart glasses” (that should be “Augmented Reality”, “Mixed Reality”, or “Holographic Computing”), both for the huge impact they will have on a wide range of insustries.
If you haven’t already, check out the Microsoft HoloLens or Magic Leap.
And here is a TED Talk on autonomous vehicles (~15min): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tiwVMrTLUWg
Alternative fuel vehicles; specifically electric cars. We’re on the verge of affordable vehicles with 200 miles range. I’ll probably never buy another gas/diesel powered vehicle again.
@FightingMongoos
We had electric vehicles with ranges longer than 200 miles for over a decade, but they weren’t affordable. Definitely something to be excited about.
@FightingMongoos meh
Robots with AI.
@2many2no the human form is inefficient for most tasks. The only reason to use it is to help us connect to the machine, treat it more like a person. I prefer my robots not be able to blend in. Keep them well on the other side of the uncanny valley, formed better for their function. Heck, just take IoT all the way and minimize need for robots by making it all focused robots. Harder for a smart toaster and smart fridge to conspire to destroy us all.
@simplersimon http://www.cnet.com/news/fridge-caught-sending-spam-emails-in-botnet-attack/
/giphy robot fridge
@2many2no why I said “harder” instead of “impossible”
Also more reason to focus on BCI than ASI.
@2many2no Yes, I know technically that Major Kusanagi is nether a robot nor an AI (rather, an android with transplanted intelligence) but the technology would have to be mature for that to happen.
@2many2no Sexbot. There I said what you’re thinking.
@elimanningface Not necessarily, but I think they should be easy on the eye.
Other people may have different opinions about what that means, @jaremelz.
@2many2no They should be easy on the eye, but nothing nothing else.
As someone who was wearing corrective lenses before he started 1st grade, anything to make glasses better gets my vote.
@simplersimon Are you a candidate for lasik? Best money I ever spent.
@jciatti unfortunately, my eyes keeping getting worse, meaning new glasses every couple years if I want to keep driving. If I’m like my dad and granddad, they’ll stop just in time for old age to start hardening the cornea, meaning my only hope of escaping glasses is robot eyes.
@simplersimon
It could be possible that the glasses are worsening your vision. Since they limit your eye movement to a small frame, your eyes don’t get the “exercise” they need. Try doing eye exercises several times a day.
OH GOD NO DON’T MAKE ME CHOOSE!!!
Autonomous passenger quadcopters. Somebody had a news article on this that called it a “drone” but a drone is something flown by an operator not on-board.
@PocketBrain sadly quadcopters aren’t really practical for cargo transport nevermind passengers. They’re inefficient, unstable, and lack agility. Helicopters are actually far superior in terms of technology. Quads are simpler mechanically which is why they are so popular for toys and hobby drones and the lightweight materials they are made from give a false sense of their agility, a human scale quadcopter would be clunky, huge, and difficult to fly.
@jbartus “difficult to fly” keep in mind, this is autonomous. Also, they asked for “excited about” not “practical.” And the chief advantage to a quad vs. a helicopter is the area needed to land it; you can wedge it in about 2-car parking spaces. That would make it capable of reaching more destinations. And I’m not getting on the damn thing, either. The general rule of thumb for passenger aircraft is, the smaller the thing, the more dangerous.
@PocketBrain I may have misunderstood, I thought you were saying the one you linked was cool but not what you had in mind. I got the impression you were looking for more of a multi-passenger vehicle type of deal that isn’t autonomous or a drone.
That said, my point stands. The quadcopter you linked is $2-300K USD and spans 18 feet, presumably square from the photos I’ve seen this puts its overall footprint at 324 square feet. That’s fully half of the area taken up by your average tractor trailer rig, a Chevy Suburban takes up 126 square feet by comparison.
To achieve this feat it was constructed of cutting edge space age materials and is propelled by a custom 142 horsepower electric motor fed by batteries that can power it for a maximum of 23 minutes at sea level at a top speed of 62 mph. Gross weight with maximum passenger/cargo load of 264 lbs is only 704 lbs.
In essence, it is only able to accomplish what it does, which really isn’t a whole lot in the scheme of things, by being built out of cutting edge materials that price it way out of the ballpark of anything reasonably affordable. Granted, nothing in the aviation sector is inexpensive, but for a single passenger travel of the future vehicle it’s sorely lacking.
The biggest problem with quadcopters is they suffer unfavorably from the square-cube law. In essence, what this means is that if you were to take a hobbyist quadcopter and scale it up the weight increase would vastly outpace the lift increase. Weight increases cubically while lift squares so, if we were even to just scale a quadcopter up by a factor of two its weight would scale by a factor of 8 while the lift would scale by a factor of 4. To gain back the lift differential you either need to spin the rotors faster or use bigger rotors.
Both of these are hugely problematic for the principles upon which a quadcopter works because, assuming you don’t destroy the rotors by spinning them fast enough to achieve the lift you need, you’re inherently hampering the quadcopter’s ability to be controlled. Quadcopters differ fundamentally from helicopters in that the blades of their rotors have fixed pitch blades, control is asserted by increasing and decreasing the speed at which these blades rotate. With higher speeds you increase the range the speed must traverse during a maneuver decreasing agility, similarly with larger rotors they have more mass and therefore more momentum keeping them going faster so they take longer/more effort to accelerate or decelerate. Nevermind the immense wear and tear all of this produces.
A helicopter, by comparison, uses a fairly complex mechanism to manipulate the pitch of its rotor blades changing how they bite into the air to control the amount of lift they create as well as assert control over pitch and roll with yaw being controlled by the tail rotor. While this is a more complex system it has many advantages including the ability to run the engine at a constant speed. Further, because the rotor isn’t dealing with airflow disruptions from other rotors it is very stable, something quadcopters inherently are not.
Further, there’s an issue of safety with a quadcopter. I’m not sure what they were talking about with their quadcopter and how it would land itself in the case of a malfunction but if you lose even one of the motors you’re not going to be in for a fun ride. Because of the variable pitch blades on a helicopter’s rotor they are able to do something called autorotation to execute a sort of controlled glide in the case of engine failure. Since quadcopters have fixed pitch blades and depend entirely on differing rotational speeds failure of even a single rotor in the system will have a massive negative effect on the control ability of the craft.
Don’t get me wrong, the video you linked is for one very cool piece of engineering, but the physical limitations of the quadcopter form literally mean that this achievement, while neat, is basically the pinnacle of what is possible.
@jbartus TLDR; You really do get up early to kick me in the balls every day, don’t you. Read the poll again. Immature tech. Excited about. Practicality or limits need not apply. These things do not matter. Perhaps you should take this in horse.drone.
@PocketBrain my point is that this isn’t a matter of immature tech, it’s a matter of impossible tech. If you’d bothered to read you’d know the physics just plain don’t work.
Fart machines!
/giphy how did you miss this obvious joke
I’m just excited to see how these immature technologies will integrate Bluetooth speakers!
Walls that pee back on spraying cats (part of the problem when you have so many - they’re all rescues, so whadda you do?)
@lisaviolet They supposedly already have some kind of paint that does that. Reflects it back anyway.
@Al_Coholic @lisaviolet
@brhfl
Well, way to make me choose between my favorite things.
Ultimately I have to go with autonomous cars because of how life changing that will be for so many people. Especially those who are disabled.
But I am also extremely excited about augmented reality (google glass) and 3d printing (which is getting really damned close to being mainstream)
@infornography
If you think that Google Glass is the best example of AR, then I’ve got something for you. Research Microsoft HoloLens, Magic Leap, and Meta 2. All AR/MR headsets that are only a year or two from entering the market. I’ve got more info, if you want to hear it.
However, if you don’t think that Google Glass is the best example of AR, and you were just using that as an example that most people can relate to, then ignore the previous paragraph. Thank you.
Oh, I’m excited about slash commands.
/giphy yawn
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I want commodity-priced flash memory in the 1-2 TB range on a phone device.
Many on-line services rely on streaming you content in the cloud: Spotify, Netflix, Google Maps.
I want to keep all my music, books, shows, and movies on a device that fits in my pocket and syncs with a home server when I plug it in at night. We need to get back to buying music and video, which is more sustainable for independent content creators.
@Officemonkey
Give it a year, or so. Considering we already have flash drives with a capacity of half a terabyte, I would say we are not too far from that.
@DVDBZN Price, though. 16gb is pretty cheap to get in microSD now-days. I don’t want a 400-600$+ phone. My old Lumia (70$) was a pretty powerful phone. My Nexus 5 (280$) is 3 years old (mine isn’t),
and still stands strong to many other phones to this day. Also, 16gb is a ton of space with apps rapidly shrinking with more content and features than ever before. However, I would like to be able to fit files too on my phone. I can’t store 30~ movies and 45~artists with 3~ albums each on my phone which sucks and the worst part is, Nexus phones don’t have SD card support.
I really hope 2016 is the year morons stop calling scooter/segways “Hoverboards”.
If it doesn’t hover, it’s not a hoverboard. I hate society in times like this. I know it probably bothers me more than it should.
@DarkHuD Yes. Those people need to be exterminated.
@Al_Coholic
Whatever rogue AI system is eventually developed to wipe out all life on this shitty fucking planet.
@Al_Coholic
Unless it’s technically already here (yet still learning)
@FroodyFrog Don’t get my hopes up.
@Al_Coholic @FroodyFrog
Road to Superintelligence
@2many2no yeah I read part of that a while back at the suggestion of a co-worker, but never bothered coming back and finishing it. Maybe someday.
@2many2no @Al_Coholic
Words + colors + graphs + lack of drinks = my interest gets lost.