uktechie

ireland said:

Left wearing a watch, arrived in a place where time was interpreted differently and returned 5 years later not wearing a watch. Haven't worn a watch since (15 years)

Where was that and how was time interpreted there? I’ve never worn a watch in my life.

The Mars Rover team adjusted to a daily cycle that was 24h 40m. I’m not sure it was regarded as an aid programme unless NASA discovered Martians in need of our help...
https://www.space.com/17815-mars-rover-jet-lag.html

Wow - that’s amazing. 
Its whole life flashes before its camera just before the end...
But wait, what’s that final frame? Is that a digital angel or a tunnel to silicon heaven?

mtbnut said:

"Moen faucet" style spigot that contains four smaller hoses..." 

And this is how they identified the author: They swap out the faucet brand for each interviewee. Grohe is Person A, Delta is B, and so on. 

Genius. 

Hmmm, no... Far too obvious and not enough possibilities without severely limiting the number of interviewees. I reckon they use a combination of badge and uniform colours:

 “The writer was checked in and provided with a green visitor's lanyard... Two sets of employees welcomed the individual, with blue-shirted Apple Security personnel accompanied by green-shirted "greeters”. 

Lets say they use 32 differentiable colours - that gives you 2⁵ x 2⁵ x 2⁵ = 32768 combinations to identify 32768 unique interviewees. They probably use even more colours...

Me? I got the turquoise lanyard, mikado yellow security and sarcoline greeters...

Oh, wait... was this the interview question?

I completely agree.

I’m a proud owner of an iPhone X and love the dual cameras and convenience of Face ID.

I’m very envious of my wife’s small iPhone SE though and would happily get an iPhone like that if it had Face ID (for the big screen experience in a small form factor) and dual cameras. I doubt they’ll put dual cameras in an iPhone SE sized phone but I’d certainly buy one if they did, even if it cost a lot more than today’s SE. 

I usually have an iPad or MacBook nearby so having a big iPhone isn’t important to me. 

I’m very impressed with the accuracy, speed and reliability of Face ID and it is impressive technology but I’m convinced all the sophistication is in the software. 

Apple have cleverly used fancy terms to help promote Face ID without saying how it works. 

I think the “Dot projector” is just a light source firing IR light through some pinholes to generate a unique pattern for each iPhone (you can see this in YouTube IR videos). It’s probably mirrored and has a lens but it’s nothing comlex - just an IR led and a tiny perforated light shade. 

Similararly, the depth sensor is just an IR camera that is used to determine the location of the dots. 

As the projector and detector (camera) are offset the horizontal offset of each dot can be used to determine the depth (like the parallax effect). 

How is much does an IR LED and relatively low res IR camera cost? Not much...

It’s stunning technology and it works better than I expected but the sophistication is in the software - the cleverness of the design keeps the cost down. 

The notched display and assembly costs shouldn’t be ignored but an iPhone SE/X with Face ID and big display in a small iPhone would be stunning.