My phone doesn't take several minutes to get a GPS fix even when I'm in the middle of nowhere well beyond the range of cell towers let alone wifi routers...
I understand that in theory it could if it had no clue what time it was either for some reason... but in practice we're talking seconds (though more than 2) not minutes.
I feel like that's not a true cold GPS signal! Though I'm not arguing the parents scenario is realistic either. I got a GPS module for a drone I was building and it took 20 minutes to get a proper GPS lock from cold!!! I was sitting there watching betaflight doing it's thing wondering why the heck it takes so long when there's so many satellites in view!
It doesn't need to be a cold GPS signal, it only needs to be one that doesn't track you. Your drone doesn't have access to the internet to do the almanac and ephemeris download, that's the difference.
Aiding the fix by obtaining data from a faster unidirectional source (instead of satellite to device, it's just internet to device) doesn't reveal anything private, unlike mass-capture of WiFi (B)SSIDs.
Also, I would look into the quality of the GPS radio and antenna you are using - $95 u-blox modules will get an RTK-quality fix without outside assistance in minutes.
You're right that it's not a true cold GPS signal. I've connected to the network in the last 180 days (and thus have information on satellite information), I have a rough clock (time within 20s or so). The phone probably assumes it's closeish to where it last turned on. Etc.
It is the realistic scenario that people would face without using WiFi routers or cell towers though. True cold fixes aren't something phones need to deal with basically ever.
20minutes just means a shitty module or lots of ~1.3ghz noise (e.g. from dji o3/o4 or gopro cpu), although bad input filtering and gps located near an antenna could saturate the amplifier even with antenna on a different frequency. 1min is typical for cold fixes but you can make it faster by uploading ephemeris/cache using AssistNow (valid for about a month).
> Do you really think Western providers will not train on your data? I have no such illusions.
Noone wants to "train on your data". You can't learn the answers to questions by pretraining on the questions, and nobody wants to teach the models to output text that looks like a user query.
The Chinese providers "train on your data" by sending your query to Anthropic and training on the answers that come back.
This feels like an incomplete statement. Waymo makes decisions locally and also escalates to humans, often. Humans making decisions at intersections or important route moments or unexpected scenarios is probably the right move for a long time, in my opinion. The moment by moment decisions are onboard as they have to be but it isn't "wayno doesn't do this".
IIRC the car typically asks yes/no questions, but comes to a safe stop on its own first. In some cases they might draw an escape route for it on a map.
Is that assuming Instacart/DoorDash? Click and collect or even delivery from grocery stores isn't nearly that bad, right? I thought it was pretty competitive.
If you order at least once a month it is probably worth upgrading from Walmart+ to Walmart+ InHome. That's $40/year but it has these advantages:
• Delivery is by a background checked salaried Walmart employee in a company van rather than third party contractors.
• Tipping is not allowed.
• Instead of just delivering to your doorstop you can have them deliver to your garage, or even inside your home where they will even unpack them and put the perishable items in your fridge and leave the rest neatly arranged on your counter top or table.
Since the minimum order for free delivery with Walmart+ is $35, a 10% tip on a single order would be more than the $3.33 that a $40 year annual subscription divide by 12 is (and most people would tip $5 on a minimum order rather than 10%).
Very interesting. The person I know that thoroughly uses the services avoids buying some perishables (milk, meat) because they get to unsafe temps and quickly spoil. Maybe this would solve their problems!
> It can never be better for consumers. The only way a business would adopt this practice is if it leads to greater revenues. On average, that necessarily means worse prices for the average consumer.
That depends on the distribution of consumer incomes. Price discrimination (charging people more who can afford more) can be good for low-income customers.
> Price discrimination (charging people more who can afford more) can be good for low-income customers.
Unfortunately it doesn't work out that way. Consider banks, for example. As a relatively wealthy person, I don't pay fees for practically anything. On the contrary, banks pay me in the form of new-account signup bonuses, interest-bearing checking accounts, ATM fee reimbursements, etc.
Poorer bank customers, on the other hand, are continuously getting nickeled-and-dimed by banks in the form of monthly account fees, foreign ATM fees, NSF charges, etc.
Likewise, poorer customers are less able to avoid this kind of price discrimination at the grocery store.
If you walk or take the bus to the grocery store, you have fewer grocery stores to shop around for a deal at. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you're less able to stock up on, say, cold medicine, when you see a good deal (and more likely to pay the "we know you're sick" price). And if you're time-poor (because you're working two jobs, and neither are the kind you can browse the Internet at while your code is compiling), you're less able to do comparison shopping, or notice that the price of what you need is always more expensive than when you don't.
If you somehow arrange for a redistributive effect. But in practice, the firms are likely to charge each consumer the maximum that consumer can afford. These firms are not engaging in some philanthropic process here.
If you want redistribution, implement a wealth tax.
Are there any examples of markets where price discrimination is good for the average consumer? Airline travel is the one that pops to mind - first class customers pay well above marginal cost and effectively subsidize the cattle class, right?
If this was the case and the cattle class would cause airlines to lose money you would definitely see airlines flying smaller planes just for the first class.
Most likely what happens is that cattle class pays for the plane to fly, and airlines make more from first class.
In the long run it would be strange for this to be the case, no? What are the economic forces that give rise to this? Maybe sometimes recessions affect poorer people more, and first class tickets smooth out revenues?
But in the long run, we've seen a steady worsening of the economy experience as airlines have invested in improved first class experiences. In the long run it's simply impossible for a firm to serve poor people (they have no money), absent interventions that allocate buying power to the poor person, or others that force the firm to do so.
I think the worsening economy class situation is simply consumer choice. Discount carriers offer worse service for a (sometimes minimally) lower price. People pick that, so other airlines do the same (or they would loose customers).
Arguments are not executable code or the final work product of… whatever it is they're arguing about. You have to continue interacting with these people and their AIs, so the underlying question of whether they're trustworthy and not evil always exists.
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