It shouldnt come as a huge surprise that Apples once ambitious selfdriving car project is no longer ambitious.The New York Times reports that the company has.Back in July, the German website for Volvo slipped and accidentally released a partial image of the 2018 Volvo XC40.Today, thanks to another leak, we now have a full.InformationWeek. com News, analysis and research for business technology professionals, plus peertopeer knowledge sharing.Engage with our community.Donald Trump Will Order Military to Begin Discriminating Against Trans Troops Within Six Months.President Donald J. Free Internet Tv Checked Shirts . Trump has decided to advance his bogus ban on trans individuals openly serving in the US military beyond tweeting vague dictates on the matter.Mercedes-Benz-C-300-3.jpg' alt='Mercedes Active Light System Currently Unavailable On Aol' title='Mercedes Active Light System Currently Unavailable On Aol' />Per the Wall Street Journal, Trump is expected to issue guidance to the Pentagon and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis which will be somewhat clearer than his original three part tweetstorm in July, which proclaimed trans people will no longer be allowed to serve in any capacity in the armed forces.There was no shortage of confusion over the tweets, which contained no actual information on how the president intended the Pentagon to carry the policy out, but did contain plenty of nonsensical rambling about decisive and overwhelming victory.Per the WSJ account, Trump is giving Mattis the ability to consider whether trans soldiers will be able to deploy when deciding who to discharge, as well as directs him to stop admitting any new trans soldiers and cut off related medical treatments for those currently serving.Mattis is being given a six month window to implement the policy.Trumps psuedomedical Twitter thesis for the decision was that trans soldiers burdened the military with tremendous medical costs and disruption, all of which is a lie of mind boggling proportions.No evidence backs this idea.Its naked pandering to bigots, and especially that particular brand of bigot eager to stigmatize trans people as mentally ill.The total cost of providing adequate medical care to the US estimated 1,3.WSJ reported, citing a 2.Rand Corp study. Even if you take the 8.One Palm Center and Naval Postgraduate School study found the cost of discharging and replacing trans service members could run as high as 9.Rands high end estimate.As for readiness, on Tuesday some 5.Trump saying the ban would disrupt the readiness of the armed forces.Research has shown there is no evidence trans troops disrupted anything in at least 1.The Rand study estimated just 2.By the way, the military at large has tens of thousands of soldiers unavailable for deployment at any given time for medical, legal or administrative reasons.As Gizmodo noted previously, the military is usually willing to shell out countless billions of dollars in sketchy contracts, unnecessary new equipment and sheer administrative waste.It wastes money left and right, and Trump wants to throw billions of dollars more on the pile anyhow.So the idea the US massive military industrial complex will be ground to a halt by the cost of paying for a few thousand soldiers heath care is beyond trite.Its insulting. Trump wants to fuck with people fighting in the US military because hes a cranky bigot, plain and simple.Wall Street Journal.Apples Self Driving Car Is Now a Dinky Self Driving Bus.It shouldnt come as a huge surprise that Apples once ambitious self driving car project is no longer ambitious.The New York Timesreports that the company has relegated research for autonomous vehicles to a software system that will power a self driving shuttle in between its new spaceship campus and its old offices.So much for reinventing the automobile experience.This is not to say that self driving shuttle is lame.Its a futuristic bus that drives itself Apple even has a patent for a bendy bus with tank treads, which is a creative idea.But then you hear the name, and your reaction is inevitably, Oh.The self driving shuttle is called PAIL Palo Alto to Infinite Loop.While the bus isnt yet running, its hard to imagine Apple employees needing a lift and chirping, Lets go hop in the PAILWhats really disappointing about the Times report, however, are the details of the now abandoned automobile hardware efforts.Weve known since last year that Apple was waffling on its self driving car projectcodenamed Project Titanand shifting its focus away from building a car from the ground up towards building software that could power an autonomous car, a strategy thats also been adopted by Waymo, the new Alphabet company that picked up Googles old self driving project.What we didnt know were many specifics about what Apple thought it could do if it did build a car.Under the leadership of veteran Apple executive Bob Mansfield and with the vision of Apple accent in chief Jony Ive, the i.Car sounds like it was going to be awesome.It wasnt really called the i.Car, but its funny to pretend that it was.Just check out these new details from The Times From the beginning, the employees dedicated to Project Titan looked at a wide range of details.That included motorized doors that opened and closed silently.They also studied ways to redesign a car interior without a steering wheel or gas pedals, and they worked on adding virtual or augmented reality into interior displays.We can only assume that this might have looked something like the Mercedes F0.Minority Report. That self driving car design features cabin wrapped in touchscreens with captains chairs up front that swivel around to create a little mobile living room.Just take out that steering wheel and those pedals, turn the chrome into matte black, and it could almost be an Apple product.But wait theres more.From The Times Apple even looked into reinventing the wheel.A team within Titan investigated the possibility of using spherical wheels round like a globe instead of the traditional, round ones, because spherical wheels could allow the car better lateral movement.Apple thought about making its car roll around on big balls Thats just crazy.Its certainly ambitiousBut its crazy.Apparently, after some infighting over building a fully autonomous car versus a semi autonomous car, Apple pruned its plans back to a new so called car.OS. This is evidently what will be powering the shuttle, and Apple presumably hopes the software will also find its way into cars designed and built by automotive companies like, well, Mercedes.You cant feel too surprised, but its okay if you feel disappointed.An Apple made mobile augmented reality chamber wouldve been really cool, and maybe well get something close in a decade or two.For now, most of us are still stuck with our gas guzzling death machines.
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November 2017
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