Not sure how Uber works in Sweden but in Kenya you can call a number and give your location and destination and they will send an Uber to you and you can pay the driver in cash.
Alternatives to Uber exist in Europe, America etc, and for decades the main way to contact them was by phone. The other way was to walk into an office, which were often located near restaurants and bars. (And the final way was by waving at an empty vehicle in the street.)
These options still exist, but I don't think Uber wants this business.
When I see all these high tech plans to grow food in developed countries, I always wonder how developing countries who sell food to developed countries will get reliable markets.
But then again no one owes poor countries a decent livelihood.
> I always wonder how developing countries who sell food to developed countries will get reliable markets.
They'll stop growing specialty stuff for export and start growing a more diverse range of crops and sell them domestically which will lower food prices and should benefit their economies in the long run.
The US exports 40% of the corn it grows, uses another 20% for ethanol production but we import 40% of our fruits and 20-something percent of our vegetables. We also exports absurd amounts of other grains. If we grew most of our crops for domestic use and stopped importing tropical and out of season fruits and vegetables, we'd have much more sustainable farming practices, less waste, considerably smaller carbon emissions from all the importing and exporting, etc.
Go to your grocery, you'll see mounds and mounds of bizarre looking alien pods which are allegedly fruit and vegetables from far off lands. I can't possibly imagine they sell even 50% of what the stores receive because most people simply have no idea what it is or how to prepare it.
Hell, I have problem finding sweet peppers that are molded and/or aren't wilted leathery looking things when I go to the grocery each week. Week after week, store after store, without fail. That's waste and none of it is grown domestically (mostly Mexico although occasionally the stores near me will have stuff from South America).
I mostly do Node.js and Android development so I can work exclusively in Linux but some of my customers install my software on Windows. Always good to see whether everything works on Windows.
The story I read indicated it was a planned "expedition", so presumably they had torches and such? You can't go far in pitch black in a cave and not injure yourself.
It doesn't really add up as it's been told. The death of the expert diver too seems very strange.
It's strange to me. I've only dived at a novice level and never in a cave:
An expert diver who was delivering spare oxygen (or was it air), with a buddy, in a system in which a static line had been placed, and in which presumably a dive leader was managing operations and wouldn't allow a diver to return without a suitable amount of air .. in that situation they simply ran out of air? It seems so unlikely.
I just assumed that he got trapped, or carried by a current, or died in what might be perceived as a "stupid" way and they didn't want to mention it as it might hinder the rescue or sully the man's memory.
I’ve done both caving and cave diving. Other than free diving (single breath), cave diving is the second most dangerous form of diving. Cave diving is really technical. As you’ve said, there’s a 1000 things that can easily go wrong.
Imagine you are in pitch black darkness, with limited visibility even with torches. The water is moving, there isn’t a GPS equivalent, it’s real hard to keep track of position other than markers on a rope.
There can be castrophobicially small tunnels that you need to crawl through. Add bulky gear to the scenario. There can be sharp edges that can tear through skin or gear. Worse, there can be stones in the water stream shooting at you.
There is so much that is an element of luck.
This is one of the reasons that interest me so much in robotics. Imagine being able to send 10’s of robots that can map the entire cave in parallel and send the accurate position of the kids. Not only that, but they can autonomously deliver important gear like food, oxygen, heat blankets e.t.c while human divers prepare for rescue. The man-machine patnership can potentially save so many lives.
I strongly believe the future of exploration/rescue is all about how smart + cheap we can make our robots. It’s so much cheaper sending robots than humans to dangerous missions.
Cave diving is a much more difficult version of diving. Many of the Thai seal team divers are open water divers. This is why there was a large contingent of foreign divers involved. Those with the requisite skills levels are widely dispersed. It's entirely likely that Saman Gunan could have done a hundred more open water dives and survived then all, but due to the difficult conditions in this situation it is possible he got disoriented and/or panicked and ran out of air. I think because the boys survived many people perhaps underestimate the difficulty of the situation now that it is resolved.
We do have experience with traditionally grown plants and mixing and cooking them for centuries. So we have the feedback on that.
It's actually a big problem currently for a lot of food.
We do have more cancer, diabetes, obesity and such disease than ever. Those are all problems that are at the very minimum influenced by food. But it took a few decades to manifest.
We may also have many others we do know we have yet, or that we don't know are linked to food.
Occam's Razor, though, says that there are far less likely to have problems with a raw cucumber that we have been eating for 1000 of years than with a Ben n Jerry ice cream we just recently invented, and optimized for people pleasure and the cheapest batch production.
When can we start seeing ads targeting Americans with links to the disastrous effects of "regime changes" and invasion of countries to effect "democratic change"?
