I have a terrible sense of direction, and I did find myself having a lot more peace of mind once I started carrying around a smartphone with MapFactor installed. I went for a wander through a residential development yesterday, which I would never have done if I hadn’t had that GPS with me. (I did happen to find my way out unassisted, but it was a close thing. I would have been scared without the comforting knowledge that I had technology to fall back on if need be.)
Sooner or later I’m eventually going to have to start driving places on my own, and immediately after that I’m going to need one of those smartphone dashboard mounts.
(I reblogged this from Ilzo because I was mostly replying to them and thought they should see it, but I see from thathopeyetlives’s reply {{here}} that their parents would not have taken “okay, just let me ask my phone for directions” as an answer. Sorry to hear that.)
Tags:
#transhumanism #sense of direction #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #reply via reblog
It was in Ancient Egypt, where it attacked slave and pharaoh alike. In Rome, it effortlessly decimated armies. It killed in Syria. It killed in Moscow. In India, five million dead. It killed a thousand Europeans every day in the 18th century. It killed more than fifty million Native Americans. From the Peloponnesian War to the Civil War, it slew more soldiers and civilians than any weapon, any soldier, any army (Not that this stopped the most foolish and empty souls from attempting to harness the demon as a weapon against their enemies).
Cultures grew and faltered, and it remained. Empires rose and fell, and it thrived. Ideologies waxed and waned, but it did not care. Kill. Maim. Spread. An ancient, mad god, hidden from view, that could not be fought, could not be confronted, could not even be comprehended.
…
35 years ago, on December 9th, 1979, humanity declared victory.
This one evil, the horror from beyond memory, the monster that took 500 million people from this world – was destroyed.
You are a member of the species that did that. Never forget what we are capable of, when we band together and declare battle on what is broken in the world.
December 9th was when it was first declared eradicated by a group of scientists. Their conclusion was endorsed by the WHO on May 8th, 35 years ago today.
An unprecedented detailed look at Comet 67P’s jets courtesy of OSIRIS. January 16, 2015.
Source: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
Tags:
#space #the power of science #proud citizen of The Future #I like that I looked at this and thought ‘Hi 67P!’ without having to see the caption #it’s that distinctive shape #comet ducky #you’re the one #you make space exploration so much fun
Believe it or not, the present is not as gloomy as you think
Please memorize the second one.
This is so important to me
I saw Scott posted this and I was really hoping to scroll down and see some plausible argument that this all stems from the elimination of lead.
Seriously though, this is good stuff to keep in mind.
About that second one, not that their point isn’t true, but the decade they selected was the 1940s. OK, so we’re not in the middle of a world war! Go us! But I’d really prefer a more typical and less cherry-picked example.
Agreed. I seem to recall that a previous time I saw someone use the 1940’s for this, someone responded with an explanation of how it’s still true even if you don’t use a world-war decade. However, I have no idea where I saw that, so take plenty of salt.
The first time I saw a calculation of how much data was on the Internet, it was five petabytes. To think, just a few years ago the entire Internet could be stored inside Data’s brain, with room to spare. We’ve come so far.
Tags:
#proud citizen of The Future #reply via reblog #Data’s storage capacity is 100 petabytes #what does it say about me that that is my first association with the word ‘petabyte’
Please remember to be considerate and not post 2015 spoilers.
If there are jet packs and flying cars then the rest of us would like to enjoy the surprise for ourselves.
However, if we’re facing thermonuclear annihilation then a heads up would actually be appreciated.
Cheers!
To be fair, we already havejet packs and flying cars here in 2014. They just haven’t made it to the general-consumption level.
(Daily Planet has featured multiple examples of each, but Daily Planet clips are hard to track down and cite, so I just searched Google News for “jet pack” and “flying car” and picked the first articles that had the right idea.)
You know how in action movies the main guy is always like “Yeah I’ve got a contact here in Uzbekistan that owes me a favor” for no discernible reason but it occurred to me that like that’s basically what internet friends are like if I was in that situation I’d be like “Yeah don’t worry leave it to me. I’ve got a mutual in the Netherlands whose selfie I reblogged one time.”
All in favor of an action movie following this scenario, raise your hand.
Hello, fellow citizens of The Future! I am writing this from my smartphone, because I can. I just bought it this afternoon.
I’ve never owned a smartphone before. I have a lot of waste-not-want-not issues about technology, and I was never quite able to justify a smartphone to my satisfaction. Even after my then-7.5-year-old MP3 player’s clickwheel began to fail four months ago, taking two clicks forward and one click back (or, worse, the other way around), I still tried to keep using it.
A few days ago, though, after a talk with my parents, I came to terms with the fact that it was time to move on. (Besides, I can give my old Sansa to my brother anyway, and he might be able to get a bit more use out of it. It’s still a step up from his current utter lack of handheld non-GBA computer.)
At that point, the question wasn’t so much *why* to get a smartphone as why *not*. I could get an MP3 player *without* Wi-Fi and camera and variety of other goodies, or I could get one *with*, in either case for less than I paid for the Sansa.
So, I bought an Alcatel Idol Mini. I haven’t set up the phone plan yet, but there’s a lot it can do without the SIM card. Almost everything I want it to do, really.
Of course, I can’t play around with it much yet, because of the whole school thing. Soon, phone. Soon, once all this pesky schoolwork is out of the way, you and I will spend some quality time getting to know each other.
(After all these years of gazing longingly from afar, I’ve finally got a smartphone. It’s beautiful and wonderful and *mine*, *finally* mine.)
P.S. (from laptop): Today is my Hebrew-calendar birthday. I didn’t intend for the phone to be a birthday present from myself, but it’s nice how that worked out.
Tags:
#Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #(November has ended up being a very technological month) #proud citizen of The Future #oh look an original post
Brinens and Things 