Do We Really Want Our Flying Cars?

From DCTVpedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Do We Really Want Our Flying Cars?
Number 2781
Broadcast Date JUNE 9, 2016
Episode Length 43:39
Hosts Tom Merritt
Guests Justin Robert Young

Larry Page has not one but two best that we do. He also has more money than one man could know what to do with. Justin Young and Tom Merritt discuss how much attention would should be paying to this.

Guest

Top Stories

At Lenovo’s Tech World 2016 in San Francisco the company teased a bendable phone that folds around the wrist and a tablet that folds in half. According to the Verge a quick demo w/ Megan McCarthy showed the tablet and bendable phone with a working screens. The tablet is designed to start folded and work like a phablet with screens on both sides. It then can fold out into a 10-inch tablet.
Lenovo announced the $199 Phab 2 and $299 Phab 2 Plus coming in September. Like the original Phab they feature a a 6.4-inch display and metal body but upgraded internals. The Phab 2 Pro however is the first phone to come with Google’s Project Tango. That means a wide-angle camera and depth-sensing sensor come along with the 16-megapixel camera. The Phab 2 Pro can map out a physical space, track objects, and project virtual effects in a real-world space. Lenovo expetcs about 25 apps to be available in a special app store when the phone launches in September for $499.
Motorola announced the 5.5-inch Moto Z its new flagship phone succeeding the Moto X. The 5.19 mm Moto Z and the slightly thicker Moto Z Force do not have headphone jacks. A USB-C to minijack adapter is included with the phones though. The big feature is Moto Mods. Both phones have magnetic connectors on the back for a variety of accessories. Motorola mentioned a pico projector, JBL speaker upgrade, and battery packs from Incipio, Tumi and Kate Spade. The phones come as Droid editions on Verizon this summer and unlocked from Motorola’s website this autumn. Only the Moto Z will arrive internationally in September.
Google announced a new feature for Android called Nearby that will suggest applications and websites based on your location. A notification alerts the user of the apps and sites. The Broad Museum, United Airlines, University of Notre Dame, Airside Mobile Passport and CVS have all built proximity-based experiences with beacons to trigger Nearby alerts. It’s rolling out in the next Google Play Service release and if you’re wondering, Nearby notifications are opt-in.
Uber is rolling out schedule rides in Seattle about a month after Lyft did the same. While Lyft allows you to schedule rides up to 24 hours in advance, Uber allows UberX rides to be scheduled from 30 minutes to 30 days ahead of time. You’ll get reminders 24 hours and 30 minutes before your ride. Other business travel cities will follow Seattle. In fact business profiles get priority access.
LeakedSource posted Wednesday that it received more than 32 million Twitter login credentials from a hacker going by Tessa88, who also sent in hacked credentials from VK last week. LeakedSource believes the data was collected by malware-infected browsers. Twitter trust and information security officer, Michael Coates tweeted that the company is, “confident that our systems have not been breached.” Security researchers doubt that all 32 million accounts could be valid.
Tinder VP of Communications Rosette Pambakian told TechCrunch the dating site will discontinue access to its service for anyone under 18 years old starting next week. Previously anyone 13 -17 years old could use the service to match with others in the same age range. Tinder estimates the change will affect close to 3% of its global user base.
HTC has announced the Vive Business Edition for US$1200, £849, or €1080. The Vive Business Edition gets you the headset and accessories but adds a dedicated customer support line and a commercial license with a limited 12-month guarantee. You’re also allowed to buy more than one at a time. The Vive BE launches this month in Germany, France, the UK, Canada and the US with other markets to be added in coming weeks.
Bloomberg reports Larry Page has funded two startups developing flying cars. Zee.aero launched in 2010 near Google headquarters in Mountain View and now employs close to 150 people with campuses in Hollister and at NASA’s Ames Research Center. The second startup, Kitty Hawk launched last year in Mountain View a half-mile away from Zee. Kitty Hawk’s president is Sebastian Thrun, founder of GoogleX.
Submitted by tglass1976

Discussion

Pick of the Day

Hi Tom,

Was thinking about Elon Musk's recent comments on living in a virtual world and it made me think of a book I enjoyed called Mogworld. Mogworld is a fantasy book that follows "Jim", who, sixty years after dying in a magic-school mishap, is wrenched back to life by a renegade necromancer. But the world he knew from before has changed drastically. Jim pulls himself together, (literally... his decomposing body is falling apart) and sets off to fulfill his latest goal in (after) life, finally die once and for all. But this won't be easy as he meets up with many helpful characters along the way who get in the way of his dying, and faces many obstacles, including "The Programmers" who are working on a deadline to "fix" this world again.

Written by video game journalist Yahtzee Croshaw in a style much like Douglas Adam's "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" it's a fun little book and I think others would like it as well.
Submitted by Preston (Biocow)

Messages

Hey Tom,

As you know, I work in two fields (delivery and Uber) where my office is for all practical purposes the driver's seat of a vehicle. I can avoid most distractions like texting or email while behind the wheel, but there are occasions where people need to get into contact with me and it's usually via a phone call. The ideal situation would then be for me to pull over to the side of the road and focus on the call instead of driving, however as those of us who live in large, congested cities know, finding a place to even pull over out of traffic is far easier said than done.

It would seem that the very roads we drive on were never built with the need to quickly pull over and deal with a communication-related distraction in mind. For me and many others, simply not driving is just not an option.

Later,
Sent by Sekani


The Moto X (and descendants, including the moto-built Droids on Verizon) have the capability to have a personalized voice activation phrase. So while Ok Google won't activate my phone, but it probably would my tablet.
Sent by Roland


As another pilot in your audience, I thought I might weigh in on this headline.
In my view, this really isn't news at all - there are tests announced through NOTAMs all the time, often including GPS or even airborne lasers! The size of the area affected sounds a little unusual, but since NOTAMs are safety - oriented, it's probably a very conservative estimate of the area that may actually be jammed. Additionally, it's important to keep in mind that GPS jamming is not an all-or-nothing operation. Jamming will cause the largest navigation errors closest to the source, while the impact at the edges may not be measurable. Aircraft can still navigate with degraded GPS signals, which is why GPS in aircraft report their calculated accuracy at any given time relative to a performance standard called "RNP" (there are different tolerances for different types of navigation and RNP 5 is usually used for enroute, which assures that the aircraft reported location is within 5 miles of the actual location 95% of the time). Lastly, GPS is not the only navigation source for aircraft. The navigation systems used for air travel before GPS are still in use and perfectly capable of providing a fallback system in the evening of GPS outage. The most common enroute navigation station ("navaid") is a VOR/DME, which is a radio station with a cleverly arranged set of rotating antennas that allow a receiver to determine bearing and range to the navaid. With a map of the VOR/DME location, the pilot can determine (with a fair amount of accuracy) their location over the ground.
TL;DR - this jamming issue isn't really news-worthy and won't have any noticeable impact on your next airline flight, but it does offer some opportunity for interesting insights into how the air navigation structure operates.
New listener, but I love the show,
Sent by Peter


As to WHY the test: The US military used to have something called selective access where they could reduce the accuracy of GPS for non-military users. In 2007 selective access went way with the GPS III generation of satellites.

Now it's 2016, the entire active GPS system is made up of GPS III satellites and the DoD has no way of altering the accuracy or access to GPS globally. My belief with the NOTAM announcement yesterday is that our service R&D folks are developing and testing ways to deny our future enemies the accuracy or access of GPS on the battlefield in future conflicts. I have theories about how they're doing that, but totally a discussion for another time. I'm with Lamarr though... 👽!
Sent by Gadgetchaser


On the China Lake GPS interference Tyler Rogoway did a nice piece on what the Navy is probably doing.
Sent by Twitter user @hg203


Hey guys, On the topic of foldable screens,
One use case I could see is a foldable screen that you have in your pocket/bag that can connect wirelessly to your phone, so that the phone handles most of the work while the screen only displays stuff (to make it as thin as possible), that way the problem of carrying a rigid tablet with you all the time is somewhat lessened.
Sent by Anas from Syria

YouTube

Links



Preceded by:
"Stop Driving on My Lawn!"
Do We Really Want Our Flying Cars?
Followed by:
"PS… More?"