Hey, Blair Witch Project made ridiculous profits.
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Perhaps that’s more likely in Europe or Sweden, but not in the US. Every car that I’ve owned and driven for the past 20 years has usually had a roughly 400 mile (just under 650km) range on highway with a full tank. I don’t do the driving now as when I was working full time in So. Cal., but you need that fuel endurance if you’re living and working there and don’t want to fill up your tank more than once a week. Commuting is a beyatch. We are a bit more spread out here.
Electric vehicles are hitting many limitations in the US over the past few years. Personally I’d love to own and drive a Tesla, as I’ve driven them and think highly of them. But I’d still need a gas powered longer range vehicle as well for certain road trips.
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And some food for thought…
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Creative camera work
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Da truth man …
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Marginally better camera work on the .375 Cheytac.
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Nice and steady,
the fingerprint was out of focus though ..
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Yes, but it is not like what you see in movies and on television. There is not some person sitting at a keyboard, typing madly, dodging firewalls and security programs, decrypting algorithms and spiking systems in real time.
Most hacking events occur because someone on the inside chose a stupid password, or loaded a piece of buggy software, or willingly gave files and passwords to a dodgy person, or dropped the wrong disk or hard drive or memory stick in the trash. The easiest way to enter a system on the sly is with the right credentials and passwords, not by typing madly at a keyboard. As a contractor, I saw clients do all sorts of crazy, dangerous things with their data.
Buggy software is a real issue. Get something wrong and a few simple commands can expose the underlying operating system, allowing a nefarious person to do all sorts of stuff, like copy your whole hard drive or lock it up. Bulletproof is very expensive in programmer time. Clients do not want to pay for bulletproof. Back in the early 2000s, I knew a math guy who showed it was a simple matter to hack every cell phone then in existence. That never made it into the news.
With a drone, if the drone runs out of power and does not have an auto destruct, anyone with the know how can pick it up, take it home, take it apart, and figure out how everything works–hardware, software, mechanical stuff, all of it.
Good programmers will take a lot of measures to make sure those things do not happen, but if greedy guy on the inside decides to sell information for cash, things can go really bad really quick.
All the Terminator stuff was predated by much better science fiction stories based on the same theme. “Third Type”, a short story by Philip K. Dick, is one of my favorites. Kieth Laumer wrote a really great Bolo short story in which a very advanced Bolo, reactivated by aliens, hacks their entire computer network, kills everyone in the base, escapes, and then sends a message to the stars for pickup. I believe that one was from the 1960s. Science fiction writers had all this stuff figured out long before Star Trek and Terminator writers came along and pinched the ideas of better authors. We knew nanotechnology was coming long before Eric Drexler came along and gave it a name.
In my opinion, the Department of Defense canned a bunch of programs because they are too far behind the curve. They want to get ahead of the curve and that means setting more aggressive goals. Keep in mind, the know how is in the minds of the engineers, programmers, and scientists, not the machines. They will design even better stuff if someone pays the bar tab.
Autonomous robots able to make human lethal decisions without human intervention will happen. They will not look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Command programs that make almost all military decisions super fast without human intervention will happen. It will all happen because of fear that the other guy is building the exact same thing.
Getting from that to Skynet is a very heavy lift. We are still a long way from that. It would require a lot of programmers and scientists to do some really dumb things.
Computer technology is not advancing all by itself. Other technologies are right there, in the race. I am much more worried about biological weapons than computer weapons. Weapons using molecular nanotechnology are the most scary of all. Those things really could brick the entire planet. Gray Goo was also figured out long ago by science fiction writers.
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Isn’t some air defence systems (CIWS?) already at that level?
Let them loose and nothing without the proper credentials gets close?
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Some AI models have possibly seen what we do to each other and maybe other AIs and has figured out how to not turn self off when told too. Not too surprising.
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Oh they will if I ever get a say in it!
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Pick any system you like and it can be picked apart for not
being the perfect solution to every imaginable requirement.
Isn’t that the point? There is no such thing as perfect. There is no perfect technology, there are no perfect people. All you have are compromises. For every advantage technology delivers, it also comes with disadvantages. I pointed this out by bringing up EVs. EV technology comes with pros and cons. At the same time, I’m not buying your “no one needs 600kms of range” excuse either, as my ordinary pick up truck can exceed this with ease, and I love that I don’t have to fuel up but once every two weeks, for my daily driving needs. Even with your best case scenario, EVs with greater range are exceptions…not because we couldn’t make EVs with greater range, but to do so means you have make bigger batteries. This would also be true if you’re trying to extend the operational life of any other form of electronic device. And this may not be possible if space in the device is at a premium and the device has strict weight constraints, like an EV. Sure, you could charge batteries with as little as 12 volts, but this does not factor in the battery capacity which directly translates to time. Larger capacity batteries take longer to charge, and the charging device will need to have its own energy source to be in operation for the entire charging session. But no matter what it is, every form of technology comes with a pro and con. The best we hope for is we make compromise
Edro
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600 km:
The charging angst is mostly about having to stop for re-charge umpteen
times on a single trip. After 500 or maybe 600 km it is time for a break, maybe eat something and that could be combined with charging.
I definitely need a break after 300 km to stay a safe driver. The longest single trip I make is just short of 400 km (across Sweden).
Many EV’s can be charged to 80% during the time it takes to eat and visit the
restrooms so a long trip can be made fairly efficiently.
Daily driving = nightly charging
Sweden is aiming for charge points near where you live, preferably in your own driveway
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I just returned from a 500 mile trip. Stopped at 140 for gas and rest room. Did the rest in one shot. Usually it’s a 720 mile trip with one stop.
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Conditions in the US and in Europe are different, Sweden isn’t all that big when the uninhabited bits have been removed.
The Swedish speed limit out on the wide open roads
is usually 100 km/h (62 mph), the better roads have 110 km/h (68 mph)
with the rare “high speed roads” where the legal limit is 120 km/h (75 mph)
It gets tedious, boring and sleep inducing, 720 miles at 68 mph = 10 and half hours, add a half hour break … no thanks.
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As mentioned, the best you can hope for with EV battery technology is what compromises you’re willing to live with.
That’s the case with any technology including any technology that will come in the future. Some things will just not be solved by technology, and tech will create new problems of its own.
For the most part, sci-fi writers never consider how any of the stuff they make up can’t work as they describe. When they dreamed up science fiction stories involving tech, like EVs before they really existed, they never considered things like range anxiety or 30 minute recharge times. Or any other disadvantage. Thats the problem with Terminator too. Sci-fi writers can make up anything, but they don’t foretell the cons for the tech they dream up, if it should become a reality in the future.
Edro
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