Surely theres a better source for this news than this sort of tabloid trash? Just looking at the article's title - it's so sensationalist and clickbaity.
My issue is that they still have not sorted out suspend and resume. Half the time when I reopen my laptop lid my keyboard no longer works. Had the same issue on 18.04.
This is why I love HN. I get to see wonderful new ideas and great tools being developed and also feel a sense of community when the creators that enable the creators also get involved!
I know this is a low quality/value comment to the overall discussion, but I could not help myself!
Google Maps has speed limits, police and other warnings. Been there for at least a few months now. Not sure how accurate they are as I doubt they have as much engagement/reporting as Waze.
You as a Google maps user can report various things, its a speech bubble under layers button with a + sign in it, in Android. I do now, for any cop cars, debris on road, accidents etc.
tbf it's debatable if there 's a lot to learn from C.elegans. Simple animals have been studied for decades from aplysia to the mouse. But those are not behaviours that are interesting when attempting to learn more about the human brain. The Allen institute's connectome project is more relevant to mammals, even if it's only a tiny volume of the mouse cortex, in order to mildly constrain models of brain function. Even if we had the whole brain, it s too large to be simulatable. These data help our understanding, and we 're lucky we have amazing tools to probe brains at this moment. But we need more and better theories to put them to good use
I don't even know where to begin rebutting your argument. Most of the stuff we actually know, actionable knowledge that has withstood the test of time, comes from small animals, including C. elegans, Drosophila, Aplysia and others. This is because a lot of the stuff is genetically conserved. Even things that are considered specific to mammals, neuromodulatory systems such as dopamine, serotonin are highly conserved. For example worms, flies etc they all get hooked on cocaine through what's thought to be a very similar pathway. Pathways governing such "complex" behaviors as learning, memory, exploration, exploitation etc. all seem highly conserved, which means that a lot can he learned. Source: I'm a worm neuroscientist working on mathematical aspects of neuromodulation of behavior.
c elegans has very primitive, simple behaviours. It's not really possible to get something useful out of it about either our cognitive functions or our brain disorders. The things that regard single cell pathologies (e.g. plasticity) are already studied in vitro in mammalian cells. There s probably many cognitive phenomena that only become apparent in large brain sizes, so i m not sure this method scales up.
In what situation WOULD you be able to expect to extract "something useful" about "our cognitive fucntions or our brain disorders"? It seems silly to think we could learn anything about such complex things without understanding something simpler first, hence the approach of validating models of simpler structures.
While from the articles Lynk is doing interesting and perhaps technically impressive work, I think they are going to struggle with competing with the deep pockets of the likes SpaceX, OneWeb, Blue Origin and now Apple and others.
I see from the articles linked and their site that their business model is different, but I doubt they could sell enough service to cover the cost of launching and maintaining their own constellation. Their best hope (and plan) might be to get absorbed by one of the bigger players.
It is hard to compete against a well-funded company that makes its own rockets and payloads and has access to hundreds of experienced engineers in their own and sister companies.
I am not even that convinced that Lynk's idea would work from a technological point of view. A quick look at Wikipedia states that:
"A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an Earth-centered orbit with an altitude of 2,000 km (1,200 mi) "
I don't think you're getting a cell-signal to remain above the noise threshold/detectable level that far, especially under unfavorable atmospheric conditions. Yes, the satellite could have some impressive high-gain antenna, but the average cell phone is not going to transmit enough power to go more than 50 miles, let alone over a 1000. I'd genuinely love to see some data that contradicts me as I find the concept intriguing.
They actually demonstrated the link. LEO goes down to 200-400km altitude. Their prototype was at 400km altitude.
What makes their technology impressive is the ability to work beyond the usual ~20 mile limit without modifying user hardware.
A good article:
"For example, a standard cell phone connected to a terrestrial tower generally has a range limited to around 35 kilometers (21 miles) if the line-of-sight is not interrupted by hills, buildings, or foliage. The phone signal can travel further, but the reception range is artificially limited by the highly accurate time frames of the cell phone protocol.
To get the phone to connect to a satellite flying 500 kilometers (310 miles) overhead, Lynk’s software at the satellite overcomes the built-in time-frame distance limit built into standard phone protocols."
http://www.satmagazine.com/story.php?number=1127710956
No need to wipe anything if you build it yourself. Plenty of online guides show you how with cheap Chinese parts. This is for a racing drone, but you get the idea:
