Google Street View used to be a time capsule for Germany until a few years ago: they started gathering data around 2007-2008, then there was huge public backlash (something about invasion of privacy - sure, they only photograph from public streets, but the cameras are placed much higher than an average person walking or driving, so could "look" over fences that would otherwise be too high etc.), so the government decided that anyone living in a building could request their whole building to be blurred in StreetView (with an exception for storefronts IIRC). So Google kinda just lost interest (or decided to wait for the negative sentiment to die down), and for the few larger cities that were already captured, you could always take a look at how a street used to look back in 2008.

Nice, I saw a lot of blurred buildings and I was wondering why.

That was probably more Igor Sleeperagentovich than Joe Public, but yeah...

It's much easier for Russia to destroy data centers in orbit.

Easier maybe, but if they want to keep up some degree of plausible deniability over who did it, it becomes harder.

> It's much easier for Russia to destroy data centers in orbit.

Nope. Depending on the number of satellites in the constellation, it could be very hard or impossible. Russia has only so many orbital-class interceptors.

And after the first few Kessler provides far more

Sure, but Kessler is really bad at telling friend from foe...

...with stray light coming in from all sides because glasses don't cover your face completely. So the best place to use them will probably be a completely darkened room?

Unless like Vision Pro there's a surroundings control that lets you go from total visibility outside the image to complete darkness — within the FOV — in any environment.

Edit: Since the FOV is only 70 degrees, that leaves 110 degrees outside the image, divided between the edges of the glasses and the rest of the room. So for sure in daylight outside light would destroy the theater effect.

Apparently there is a flap you can place on them to block out light.

There is a "pace car" in Formula One too, although the name is informal, the official term is "safety car"...

Maybe it's clear to native speakers, but both "pacing" and "frontier" have multiple meanings. "Pace" as a verb means literally just walking, as a noun it's the speed at which something progresses. So I'm not sure that everyone reading this phrase will immediately realize that "pace" actually means slowing down the pace of development (having "slow" in the phrase would have probably sounded too negative). Also, it's not immediately intuitive that "frontier" refers to frontier AI models.

Actually, when I first read "pacing the frontier", the first thing that came to my mind was a border guard patrolling a border by foot...

> The shade supports don't have to hold up solar panels: Shade supports cost less.

If you look at the photos, the solar panels are mounted directly on the supports. If you wanted a simple shade for the canal, you would have to mount some kind of roof on the supports instead of the solar panels. Granted, the solar panels probably weigh a bit more than simple sheet metal, but that is probably more than made up for by the benefit of generating power.

PV itself (not the inverters etc., the panels) is really really cheap.

Tarp is about the only opaque covering I've found that's cheaper than PV, per square meter.

However, even for a balcony PV system the frame is about 25% the price of the panel, and balcony systems are tiny frames; I don't want to even guess about those huge steel I-beams and concrete pads. For big things like this, the cost of the frame is unlikely to go away because you need to care about wind load.

That really leaves maintenance costs (how often do you need to replace the tarp?) and revenue (PV makes money, a tarp does not).

Based on my experience in NM (higher elevation, similar insolation), the expected life of tarp-like materials in open sunshine here would be 2-3 years.

Sunshade material could be more like 5-8 years, but is significantly more expensive.

That sounds like a huge maintenance headache.

A Concrete slab is usually even cheaper.

not if you want to suspend it above the water.

Tarp, and pitch it across the canal like how you might do a hammock - you just need two anchor points on each side (or 4, at most).

We’re discussing permanent cover. A tarp barely lasts a year (or 3 if using very heavy duty fabric).

The point still stands. Regular transit users generally don't pay per ride, they use monthly passes. Or aren't those a thing in San Francisco?

It's possible to implement weekly/monthly passes on credit/debit cards too via capping, but it's indeed a bit more annoying and unpredictable. For example, NYC MTA weekly capping breaks if you ever remove and re-add your card to your phone. (And I can understand how not all transit agencies want to offer capping.)

Well, Waymo could be seen as a last mile connectivity program. That's actually the "end goal" for robotaxis: not just replace taxis, Uber etc., but offer an alternative to owning a car.

> Over the past 30 years, World Wide Words has chronicled the shifting English wordscape

I know, 30 years ago it was probably very tempting to have a website with a name that could be shortened to WWW, but still, it's a bit strange that a site with such a name only focuses on English?

The site appears to have been maintained by a single man from the UK. It's not strange.