And so it starts - http://www.goreadus.com/technology/uber-rolls-out-its-first-self-driving-car/

One tip (which will probably be buried) - The 4 Hour Body. Not a huge fan of the writer (Tim Ferriss), but he's a nerd all right, and the diet is based on low carbohydrates, which is becoming the de facto success story in weight loss nowadays.

This is the forum thread that actually changed my life and made me understand about low carbohydrate.

http://nuclearfuzzgrunge.com/tlcm/

if you want a medical view, check out www.eatingacademy.com. I only recommenend Mr Ferris' book because he includes an absolutely brilliant mind hack called the 'Cheat Day'. Yes yes, but you'll have to read it to understand the psychology behind the cliche.

I believe the 100lb gorilla in the corner of the room is the fact that we are witnessing an unprecedented push by the global executive for self-driving cars. The speed with which they - and their cousins autonomous trucks - are being ushered onto the world stage is breathtaking when you consider the legal, insurance and sociological implications. This suggests that there may be an ulterior motive involved, which could relate to the over-riding need to deal with chronic urban pollution, vehicular logjams and most importantly climate change.

What does this have to do with Uber/Didi/Lyft et al?

Well once these vehicles become commonplace on the road, the next most logical step is to introduce autonomous cab services, at a price and convenience that destroys the rationale for urban commuting. Whoever has the technology in any large population to supply an autonomous cab service en masse, gets to potentially grab a huge chunk of a billion (trilliion?) dollar pie. These door to door autonomous buses/cabs could literally transform the transit landscape. Already Uber is trialing an autonomous service in Arizona, it won't be long before we see more happening on that scale. The stakes are absolutely enormous long term.

Edit: Arizona/Uber - http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/uber-could-be-first-to-test-completely-driverless-cars-in-public

Two words. Unintended consequences.

Mmm... a Texan financier writes about oil, but there are some severe omissions. One absolutely no mention of the climate crisis as a driver of change. Which it is. Paris wasn't a random, soon to be forgotten wake up call. It was a seismic shift in the energy equation long (or maybe medium?) term.

This sentence - "Western oil companies and OPEC member states aren’t so worried about oil reserves in the ground..." shows that lack of understanding of this point. Google 'stranded assets' and you will see what I mean. There is a LOT of attention being paid to renewables and their effect on oil, and you could argue (and many do) that this is the main reason the Saudis are refusing to cut production to increase prices (that and the fact that historically no-one else in OPEC usually plays fair and does the same).

To meet our global carbon budget we need to keep a lot of fossil fuel in the ground. Coal is the first corpse we're going to see, and fossil fuel seems destined to follow, especially if we see the expected uptake in the production and use of hybrid transportation.

Interesting times.

It's not about science or whether GM is right or not. It's about giving control to the world's food production to a small group of commercial interests.

Yeah I saw it and not familiar with the short story. I thought it was thought provoking and a worthwhile watch. For me, I didn't need to know what was going on, and once we reached the climax and the reveal it all kind of made sense (if time travel can ever make sense). :)

Some people just have too much time on their hands, right? :)

I think it would help if you had a little more information on the landing page, so people could make a more informed decision about whether to sign up for the beta. Maybe regurgitate what you wrote here onto an About page?

Well said. Please let's hope Hubski doesn't turn into another Reddit.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that the past is the past, and it cannot be changed? So to forgive (either yourself or others) is to let go and gain freedom from something that is impossible to cure? When we fail to forgive ourselves we dwell on things instead of moving forward with a more dharmic attitude. No sense in feeling guilty, just don't do it again, and move on. When we fail to forgive others we dwell on something which again is from the past, and it stops us from moving on while focusing on opening our heart to the world. We live in an age of conditions. We need to learn how to live a life unconditionally.

This gets my vote. :)

Moksha

I think the article makes absolute sense. This is not the result of a 'lone inventor', it has come to prominence precisely because different teams across the world have also observed 'something' happening. Now whether that something is valid is the subject of the next stage of tests.

And I'm sorry I cannot agree with your assertion that this kind of research takes away from 'real' space exploration. This kind of thinking ditches the whole concept of 'blue sky' research and assumes that we know everything we are likely to know. Or even worse, that only 'large teams' can actually deliver advances. Which, of course, we know to be simply not true.

This is the money quote, isn't it?

The philosopher Thomas Nagel, who wrote the seminal essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” used a term for the tendency to deny the existence of phenomena that cannot be proved empirically. “Scientism,” he wrote in 1986, “puts one type of human understanding in charge of the universe and what can be said about it. At its most myopic, it assumes that everything there is must be understandable by the employment of scientific theories like those we have developed to date — physics and evolutionary biology are the current paradigms — as if the present age were not just another in the series.”

We survive the rainy summers and plough on. :)

Awesome podcast (vidcast?) Steven.

Firechat is also now working on Android, although so far I've only tried it on the Internet Everyone mode.