Podcast - This Is Only a Test

Episode 364 – More Ludicrous Than Ever – 8/25/16

Kishore, Jeremy, and Patrick Norton discuss new Tesla announcements, self-driving UBERs in 2016, and sweet poetic justice involving a tech support scammer. Plus the VR Minute and a Moment of Science involving… a human head transplant?!

Comments (22)

22 thoughts on “Episode 364 – More Ludicrous Than Ever – 8/25/16

  1. Just wanted to send a ‘shout-out’ to the boys for holding down the fort and recording a great episode. Thank you.

  2. you did great, guys! thoroughly entertained listener here 🙂

    re the ps4 slim the pics look pretty neat, but i’m really confused by some of the design priorities at sony’s. the ps4 hardware looks really good. so does the leaked slim. but they both seem to suffer from barely-recogniseable buttons. one could argue that the slim is slight improvement, but how do you not really fix this beyond any possible doubt when iterating upon a design?

    same with the dualshock 4: while i’m firmly team dualshock, how does one OK the idea that of the ridiculous amount of different surface textures on this thing, you put the glossy fingerprint magnet around the d-pad and face buttons? and if one iterates upon that design, how does that not get fixed?

    and all this while the general ordering of the OS is needlessly convoluted, tasks are hidden away without clear rationale, and the goddamn media player still is barely usable. duuuh. i love what my ps4 can do, but i really dislike how inconvenient it makes it for me.

    re thiel i mirror will’s sentiments on twitter. this will chill on the very account of most publications not even being able to enter the magnitude of battle a stray disgruntled thiel can bring upon them.

    it might be the ‘natural order’ in the US, when you pair agency-by-money with a batshit justice system, but that natural order then includes by design that the super-rich get what they want without ever suffering consequences.

  3. Quick fact check. The new Model S skew has the best 0-60 time of any production car, its not the fastest, and is tied with one or two others that aren’t just short run cars. It tops out at 155. Still an insane metric….electric cars have the advantage in acceleration.

  4. Great podcast!! I’l like to defend Audioquest – you’re absolutely right they sell ridiculously expensive cables. But, they also have plenty of reasonably priced lines too. (I have audioquest speaker cables and they are great and not SUPER SILVER BATTERY POWERED GOLDEN RATIO HAND BRAIDED whatevers) 🙂

  5. No chance on an Apple invite as long as the fixed Google/Android serial ad on tested home page I would assume.

  6. Great Podcast!!!!

    I think self-driving cars will go through a period where we have “zones” that will only be accessible to self driving cars. These zones will increase in size until eventually the road networks are 100% self-driving required.

  7. How do you see the show notes for these podcast?

    I’m interested in looking into the wifi mesh networks they were talking about.

    Thanks.

  8. Just a heads up, that was Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, not the Mayor of Tokyo in the Olympics video. Makes it all the more ridiculous (and awesome) that he dressed up Mario!

  9. They are in the description on the YT video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJT0u8V6sEg

    I just bought the Amplifi after this podcast and talking to a couple other reviewers.

    Hope to see a video on the Amplifi or hear about it on the podcast. I’ve been thinking about picking one up as well. Which version did you order?

  10. I don’t know if its just me or what but this podcasts seems smoother than Norm’s normal offerings.(My apologies Norm much love!!!). It reminds me more of the Will days.

  11. Those self driving cars are like GTA…You let the autopilot take you somewhere once for the novelty…but it is so slow you take over the driving yourself… 🙂

  12. I bought the Sansaire mostly due to the Tested coverage. It’s kinda huge and weirdly shaped. The Jewel looks way better if it performs as well.

  13. A response to Jeremy’s comments about cross-country trips with a 300 mile (~500km) range.

    People do this type of journey all the time these days. For pleasure. In fact, I have made several week long trips through the States (Canadian resident) with a maximum range of less than 150 miles before I’d have to stop and fill up. Admittedly, filling up a motorcycle doesn’t take an hour but there are usually semi-regular breaks to rest your ass, eat meals, take in the sights. I think it is fair to say that the experiences are comparable.

    Traditional North American citizens see a car trip as something to finish as quickly as possible. Get started early, take only breaks that are necessary to fill and empty bladders, and arrive as early as possible. This is logical because Canada and the States are very spread out geographically, we can easily have trips of 8 hours or more a day before getting to our destination

    Europeans can often travel the entirety of their nation in less time than that and find ways to make the trip last LONGER with meal breaks, or sight seeing. This is an attitude that Bikers have learned to appreciate – Enjoy the journey before you get to enjoy the destination. And you will do it a lot more luxuriously than ANY biker will if you’re doing it in a Tesla 😉

    I assure you that if you have a car with a 300 mile range, with a 1 hour charge time, and you find a way to make that hour into something enjoyable, your travels will FEEL shorter and more relaxing when they’re over. An hour is a nice amount of time to get to know the quieter parts of your country a little better. Grab lunch at a nearby mom and pop shop. Go for a walk to see nature or cultural hotspots. Sit in a park and read a book. Hunt Pokemon.

    Try looking at the world from a different angle!

  14. Those of us in the generation below y’all (that is, those of us in Gen Y / “Those Damn Millennials!”) also understand the limits of technology…the difference is that we prefer those limits over the limits of humans. I can’t speak to Gen Z or whatever we’re calling the generation after the millennials, though. Y’all’s kids might just expect tech to always work or something. But us millennials tend towards preferring tech not because it’s infallible, but because it’s typically less fallible than humans and human organizations on average, and that’s the only marker that really matters, especially when dealing with safety and things like how terrible humans are at driving cars.

  15. You guys should name and/or paint the vertical brick. Since Kishore pointed it out I can’t stop wondering how in the world that could have happened.

  16. just discovered this photo of the first stage of the human head transplant. It has been reported that paper bags and towels have also been found in the operating room next to a suspicious highway project.

  17. Awesome work guys. Any links to write ups of those wifi routers? Always looking for ways to improve a crappy home network.

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