Title heavy on the irony. Came here expecting something moronic. Was surprised to find an interesting comment instead.
The right to disconnect is an obvious idea and common sense. Which means of course republicans will be fighting it tooth and nail. Humans have this amazing ability to guide our lives through thinking and not purely instinct. How republican voters choose to use this gift: "let's live like ants, working our a** off all day all the time until we die"
IMNSHO, "autonomous driving" is a huge fad - the idea is good, but it is _way_ ahead of its time.
The problem is all those situations in traffic that require understanding a situation, processing what is going on, predicting potential risks, and responding appropriately. One example - you are driving and up ahead on the sidewalk there are two children. Do you slow down? What are the children doing? Do they seem to be behaving erratic, or are they engaged in playful behaviour like pushing each other around a bit, and is there a risk they could get into the road without paying attention? How old do they seem to be? Is there an obstacle in front of them on the sidewalk which is going to force them to move onto the road about the time when you pass them? Is there a puddle of water in the road which will create a huge splash unless you drive around it or slow down a lot? Are they on their way around a bend where you cannot see what is on the other side, e.g. whether the sidewalk ends or some bicycle might approach and force them out in the road?
There is a _huge_ number of such little judgement calls we make every single time we drive. And AI is nowhere _near_ of being able to process anything similar.
Forget the whole "this could be fixed with better LIDAR" etc. The reason why this whole auto-drive concept is a bust the way people are being way too excited talking about it, is not those things we could fix with current technology - it is the type of examples I am describing that we do not have a solution for.
The fix is either to force a "driver assist only" type of regime, which obviously doesn't work because of human nature, as we saw an example of with the Uber incident. Alternatively you compensate by making the auto-pilot system super risk averse and slow down for just about anything, which would be ok - except that really brings down efficiency, I am not willing to spend twice as long getting to work because of some drive that is insanely cautious. Or third, move the vehicles off regular roads into protected areas where they can drive without the dangers and unpredictable conditions of regular roads - which is an option, but requires building all the infrastructure to support it - hugely costly, and not something I see happening.
TL;DR; IMNSHO automonous cars will only happen when AI reaches human levels
And at which point we *tinfoil hat on* should think twice before getting in a car that may decide it likes us better when we are dead.*tinfoil hat off*.
This is not only a failure in Uber's testing procedure. This is the failure of the whole concept of autonomous "driver assist only" systems. There are a lot of people out there who would do the exact same thing in e.g. their Tesla - let their attention slip for a while and let the system do its job, because humans are lazy, plus we are bad at drawing conclusions - nothing bad happened the first two weeks we drove the car, so that means nothing bad is going to happen after that either - right?
This is also the reason that with only a "regular" cruise control in my own traditional car, I always keep the foot loosely on the gas pedal while cruise control is engaged. Why? Because if something happens and I need to react fast to apply the brakes, then I don't have time to figure out where I have my foot. I need to let brain automation of moving the foot from the gas pedal to the brake - something for which I have muscle memory - happen very, very quickly.
Now consider "reacting" in a half-autonomous car. You are half using your cell phone or whatever. A situation arises. You need to (a) shift focus from your distraction, (b) fully process what is the situation and what do you need to do to react, (c) figure out how to do it. And way before you get to (c), the accident has already happened.
The whole concept of "driver assist" - for drivers who are not consciously aware of the dangers mentioned above, and actively engaging their focus, body posture and pre-frontal lobe in order to override said danger - which let's be honest is actually most people out there - is quite dangerous, for any dangerous situation the car cannot handle by itself.
So this is not really about Uber. It is about human nature, and why this technology can never fully take off unless car AI gets near perfect (which I don't see happening, which I will write about in a separate comment), or drivers get as disciplined as North Koreans.
"We can overcome any new problem with dinosaurology, because it has always helped us overcome problems in the past. Oh wait... whats is that flaming thing I see on the sky..."
Oh man, I hope this doesn't mark the end of the current lineup of Motorola phones. I don't want to have to go on yet another goose chase after a decent and yet affordable phone. I currently own a Moto G, and it has the benefit of not being outrageously expensive, works "well enough" for everyday use while lasting minimum one day on a single charge,
it is not iPhone as I do not want to be locked in with the Apple eco-system (not an Apple-hater, I am writing this on my Macbook Air), and very important to me - after a truly sh##y experience with resource-hogging and annoying proprietary setup of my first Samsung smartphone, I want _the vanilla Android experience_!!! As few "customizations" as possible,
and with some reasonably new version of Android. And so far, the latest iteration of the Moto G (I had the last one, which turned out to be underspecced and have some battery problems - not so with the latest one at least yet) has really been the only phone to deliver on all of these.
And probably there also goes my dream of the anticipated Lenovo tablet, which I was hoping would do all these things in tablet format. After giving up on my NVidia Shield Tablet primarily due to extremely poor battery life, I have been looking for a vanilla Android tablet that is reasonably priced - and there were announcements I think spring 2017 that there would "soon" be a new tablet from Lenovo that I thought would deliver on all the above metrics, which still has not emerged. And now I am guessing the whole thing will get canned.
Bah... why must it be so difficult to find reasonably priced hardware that actually works without a lot of annoying customizations designed to lock you in with the ecosystem of some particular vendor.
I expect a lot more plans for micro-satellites going forward, e.g. with the low-cost 3D-printed rocket company on New Zealand, plus generally lower cost to orbit with new technologies like SpaceX Falcon - so there is probably a need for further international regulation in that area. Both how things go up, how they stay there, and what gets to go up. I don't really know that market, but I wouldn't be surprised if this has not been properly dealt with.
That being said, I would expect part of the solution could involve (a) something similar to transponders in aviation industry so that 'detection' is not a function only of size, (b) some low-mass low-cost technology to increase the satellites' radar signature, and (c) some international system for pro-actively registering satellites' orbits and orbital changes, instead of only relying on everything being tracked.
With people readily jumping between employers, the investment of a company to mentor a junior developer will likely not pay off. So you try to hire the people you need now, not the ones you need in the future. Increased mobility is also a consequence of more standardized technologies and development processes for "bread & butter" development like setting up web sites.
Whereas I would speculate that before people stuck longer with their jobs, so that if you took on a junior they were more likely to stick around and become an efficient senior. Or if you work within say nuclear plant control software, which would be more specialized and where you get paid for that specialization, you are more likely to stick around - plus you basically have to be taught on the job because it involves proprietary or classified stuff that you cannot learn elsewhere.
For a society and for the industry, not hiring and mentoring juniors is a really bad idea. However, this really goes back to game theory. You cannot expect an individual company to behave in the way that is best for the whole group. Which is why if you want to fix this kind of things, then some sort of regulation or intervention to shape the job market is required.
You misspelled Erdogan, swapping the 'r' and the 'd'. If you go to Turkey, you will face jail or worse for disrespecting Dear Leader. Besides, in Turkey noone is really innocent, if they harbor even a shred of the fraction of an idea that perhaps they do not always love Erdogan completely with all their heart fully and wholly.
Disclaimer: my immediate reactions to this whole thread may be biased from having watched yesterday the first episode of the documentary Apocalypse: Stalin. If you want to learn about horrible dictators, that is a pretty good starting point.
If I could upvote your comment, I would. But as you said, let's not go there. I have noticed that nothing will give me reddit downvotes as quickly as dropping a few truths about cryptocurrency. Believers will want to believe.
And being wildly unsuccessful, I really only made it to step number one in your list... which I am quite happy about. I am just tired from watching media and social media users get played again and again by these cheap tricks... which may sound harmless, but it is basically the same thing that gave us Donald Trump.
So not so harmless, it turns out.
Note that I did not say step number two, which is a complement to your comment. Regarding weird formatting, I actually wrote my comment using the OL and LI html tags... I blame the/. layout not rendering it as a numbered list.
You can try this out in Bangkok - not autonomous cars, but you agree to go somewhere with a tuk-tuk driver, and on the way he just happens to also take you to a jewelry store and make a stop by his uncle's restaurant.
If you consider children sleep about 10 hours per night, then 230 hours represents 5% of their waking time. If you instead look at their 'available time' which is not locked up in school etc, that number increases to over 10%.
Spending 10% of children's time watching commercials during the formative period of their life when they learn at the most accelerated pace, they learn motor-, social and mental skills which are key for later life, as well as having their personality 'set', is incredibly wasteful.
Some people need protection from themselves, and it is good to see SEC is trying to do just that.
Cryptocurrencies in their current form is a hopeless project. It is completely unsuited for regular payment transactions,
because you cannot hold bitcoin without also speculating. I want to be able to pay for goods and getting paid for work without having the value of my wallet fluctuating plus minus tens of percent points on a daily basis.
As a financial investment instruments, it is completely hopeless as its "value" is based on nothing tangible at all, and so it really is nothing but some kind of psychological lottery. With the underlying infrastructure operated by shady people.
And ethically, it is not so good to have a "currency" which relies on vast energy consumption, adding significantly to climate change effects.
It's not just you. When you arrive Copenhagen by sea, a dominant part of the view that greets you is a large number of windmills just outside the city. I think it looks magnificent. Would I want to live immediately next to one? No. But then again, that goes for any loud or dominating infrastructure.
I usually give US employers flak for being abusive and unfair in how they exploit employees, but when it comes to job training I would like to make an argument in their defense. Compared to older times, we have a job market with more job mobility and less loyalty to employers. What would at some time be a good investment in extended training of someone you expect to stay with the company for a long time, may now end up as waste from the company's point of view.
Regarding what competence and experience you ask for when hiring - well, it is not that complex. You list the qualifications that are desired for the job, you see what applications you get, and then you see if you can live with the qualifications of the best ones. You know you probably won't get anyone who ticks off all the boxes, and potential applicants know this as well - so people who are close to meeting criteria, know it's ok for them to apply.
Requiring an education with good performance is not so much about inflation, as it is about proving up-front that you are able to learn and perform. Plus having an education that is sufficiently related to what you will be doing, that you should be able to pick up what you need for the job.
If you are smart and you deserve the job, then you will come up with a way to show them your skills. Also, sharing your employer's proprietary code is not the best way to show your wicked skillz, as most prisons do not allow telecommuting to work.
Been following Slashdot since close to the beginning and still tune in every day. The site has certainly changed and not always for the better, but I'm still here so subjectively it can't be all bad. I am not going to use this opportunity as many commenters do to list various stuff that could change - why not leave that for the 364 other days of the year and today just be happy for all the good bits. Thanks for keeping the site around.
Which is why for these type of rights, the law should state they cannot be signed away. Unfortunately, in my experience employers will put stuff into contract that is not enforceable (and which is basically illegal) such as non-compete clauses, but a non-unionized employee will not take the risk of entering a legal battle with their employer over it.
Unions are important, they keep the employment relationship more honest and balanced. People-friendly laws are a good thing, protecting the rights of the citizens of the country. Law-makers should remember, they serve not only the "job-creators" but the rest of us also.
From what I have read, almost every emergency call involves stating where you are early in the call - something like "who am I, where am I, and why am I calling". That should also enable dispatchers to immediately start looking into what types of assets they have available for responding.
It is only a few days ago that I was thinking about this very same issue, as I drove past a very recent traffic accident involving a trailer and a scooter (with plenty of people already handling the situation), and it struck me that if I had been there only a minute ago and would have been one of the people stopping to help - then how would I explain my exact location. I would be able to say that I was on the road between A and B and roughly some percentage on the way, but that's about it. And when being lazy and driving other entirely unknown places purely by GPS, I often have no clue where I am.
This is one type of scenario, a person who reports an emergency who does not know how to describe their location. Another scenario would be someone who has for instance a medical or mental problem, or who is in shock, who is unable to provide a location.
So I can clearly see a need for this type of reporting. There are perhaps security concerns, but that is why you have a burner phone;-) Joke aside, there could be for instance an obscure opt-out option for such calls, with a small icon appearing when making the call to ask 'press here within 5 seconds to hide location'.
In this case "you are wrong", because the one experiment we know about where a specimen of homo sapiens never ever in its long life uttered the phrase "I was wrong", was recently rewarded by the universe with the most powerful job position in the world.
On the other hand, this is probably the exception to the rule which proves that you are right.
Quote: "Dark matter [...] has been firmly established as real [...] There's no question that it exists." There is still plenty of controversy related to the idea of dark matter, and there is no such thing in physics as proving something exists - you can only prove something to be false. I'm not saying dark matter does not exist, only that statements like the above are too assertive.
Slashdot Mirror
Title heavy on the irony. Came here expecting something moronic. Was surprised to find an interesting comment instead.
The right to disconnect is an obvious idea and common sense. Which means of course republicans will be fighting it tooth and nail. Humans have this amazing ability to guide our lives through thinking and not purely instinct. How republican voters choose to use this gift: "let's live like ants, working our a** off all day all the time until we die"
IMNSHO, "autonomous driving" is a huge fad - the idea is good, but it is _way_ ahead of its time.
The problem is all those situations in traffic that require understanding a situation, processing what is going on, predicting potential risks, and responding appropriately. One example - you are driving and up ahead on the sidewalk there are two children. Do you slow down? What are the children doing? Do they seem to be behaving erratic, or are they engaged in playful behaviour like pushing each other around a bit, and is there a risk they could get into the road without paying attention? How old do they seem to be? Is there an obstacle in front of them on the sidewalk which is going to force them to move onto the road about the time when you pass them? Is there a puddle of water in the road which will create a huge splash unless you drive around it or slow down a lot? Are they on their way around a bend where you cannot see what is on the other side, e.g. whether the sidewalk ends or some bicycle might approach and force them out in the road?
There is a _huge_ number of such little judgement calls we make every single time we drive. And AI is nowhere _near_ of being able to process anything similar.
Forget the whole "this could be fixed with better LIDAR" etc. The reason why this whole auto-drive concept is a bust the way people are being way too excited talking about it, is not those things we could fix with current technology - it is the type of examples I am describing that we do not have a solution for.
The fix is either to force a "driver assist only" type of regime, which obviously doesn't work because of human nature, as we saw an example of with the Uber incident. Alternatively you compensate by making the auto-pilot system super risk averse and slow down for just about anything, which would be ok - except that really brings down efficiency, I am not willing to spend twice as long getting to work because of some drive that is insanely cautious. Or third, move the vehicles off regular roads into protected areas where they can drive without the dangers and unpredictable conditions of regular roads - which is an option, but requires building all the infrastructure to support it - hugely costly, and not something I see happening.
TL;DR; IMNSHO automonous cars will only happen when AI reaches human levels
And at which point we *tinfoil hat on* should think twice before getting in a car that may decide it likes us better when we are dead.*tinfoil hat off*.
This is not only a failure in Uber's testing procedure. This is the failure of the whole concept of autonomous "driver assist only" systems. There are a lot of people out there who would do the exact same thing in e.g. their Tesla - let their attention slip for a while and let the system do its job, because humans are lazy, plus we are bad at drawing conclusions - nothing bad happened the first two weeks we drove the car, so that means nothing bad is going to happen after that either - right?
This is also the reason that with only a "regular" cruise control in my own traditional car, I always keep the foot loosely on the gas pedal while cruise control is engaged. Why? Because if something happens and I need to react fast to apply the brakes, then I don't have time to figure out where I have my foot. I need to let brain automation of moving the foot from the gas pedal to the brake - something for which I have muscle memory - happen very, very quickly.
Now consider "reacting" in a half-autonomous car. You are half using your cell phone or whatever. A situation arises. You need to (a) shift focus from your distraction, (b) fully process what is the situation and what do you need to do to react, (c) figure out how to do it. And way before you get to (c), the accident has already happened.
The whole concept of "driver assist" - for drivers who are not consciously aware of the dangers mentioned above, and actively engaging their focus, body posture and pre-frontal lobe in order to override said danger - which let's be honest is actually most people out there - is quite dangerous, for any dangerous situation the car cannot handle by itself.
So this is not really about Uber. It is about human nature, and why this technology can never fully take off unless car AI gets near perfect (which I don't see happening, which I will write about in a separate comment), or drivers get as disciplined as North Koreans.
"We can overcome any new problem with dinosaurology, because it has always helped us overcome problems in the past. Oh wait ... whats is that flaming thing I see on the sky ..."
Oh man, I hope this doesn't mark the end of the current lineup of Motorola phones. I don't want to have to go on yet another goose chase after a decent and yet affordable phone. I currently own a Moto G, and it has the benefit of not being outrageously expensive, works "well enough" for everyday use while lasting minimum one day on a single charge, it is not iPhone as I do not want to be locked in with the Apple eco-system (not an Apple-hater, I am writing this on my Macbook Air), and very important to me - after a truly sh##y experience with resource-hogging and annoying proprietary setup of my first Samsung smartphone, I want _the vanilla Android experience_!!! As few "customizations" as possible, and with some reasonably new version of Android. And so far, the latest iteration of the Moto G (I had the last one, which turned out to be underspecced and have some battery problems - not so with the latest one at least yet) has really been the only phone to deliver on all of these.
And probably there also goes my dream of the anticipated Lenovo tablet, which I was hoping would do all these things in tablet format. After giving up on my NVidia Shield Tablet primarily due to extremely poor battery life, I have been looking for a vanilla Android tablet that is reasonably priced - and there were announcements I think spring 2017 that there would "soon" be a new tablet from Lenovo that I thought would deliver on all the above metrics, which still has not emerged. And now I am guessing the whole thing will get canned.
Bah ... why must it be so difficult to find reasonably priced hardware that actually works without a lot of annoying customizations designed to lock you in with the ecosystem of some particular vendor.
I expect a lot more plans for micro-satellites going forward, e.g. with the low-cost 3D-printed rocket company on New Zealand, plus generally lower cost to orbit with new technologies like SpaceX Falcon - so there is probably a need for further international regulation in that area. Both how things go up, how they stay there, and what gets to go up. I don't really know that market, but I wouldn't be surprised if this has not been properly dealt with.
That being said, I would expect part of the solution could involve (a) something similar to transponders in aviation industry so that 'detection' is not a function only of size, (b) some low-mass low-cost technology to increase the satellites' radar signature, and (c) some international system for pro-actively registering satellites' orbits and orbital changes, instead of only relying on everything being tracked.
A nasty problem for Apple and Samsung. A wonderful problem for my bank account. I am fine with this trade-off.
With people readily jumping between employers, the investment of a company to mentor a junior developer will likely not pay off. So you try to hire the people you need now, not the ones you need in the future. Increased mobility is also a consequence of more standardized technologies and development processes for "bread & butter" development like setting up web sites.
Whereas I would speculate that before people stuck longer with their jobs, so that if you took on a junior they were more likely to stick around and become an efficient senior. Or if you work within say nuclear plant control software, which would be more specialized and where you get paid for that specialization, you are more likely to stick around - plus you basically have to be taught on the job because it involves proprietary or classified stuff that you cannot learn elsewhere.
For a society and for the industry, not hiring and mentoring juniors is a really bad idea. However, this really goes back to game theory. You cannot expect an individual company to behave in the way that is best for the whole group. Which is why if you want to fix this kind of things, then some sort of regulation or intervention to shape the job market is required.
... a proximity sensor.
You misspelled Erdogan, swapping the 'r' and the 'd'. If you go to Turkey, you will face jail or worse for disrespecting Dear Leader. Besides, in Turkey noone is really innocent, if they harbor even a shred of the fraction of an idea that perhaps they do not always love Erdogan completely with all their heart fully and wholly.
Disclaimer: my immediate reactions to this whole thread may be biased from having watched yesterday the first episode of the documentary Apocalypse: Stalin. If you want to learn about horrible dictators, that is a pretty good starting point.
If I could upvote your comment, I would. But as you said, let's not go there. I have noticed that nothing will give me reddit downvotes as quickly as dropping a few truths about cryptocurrency. Believers will want to believe.
And being wildly unsuccessful, I really only made it to step number one in your list ... which I am quite happy about. I am just tired from watching media and social media users get played again and again by these cheap tricks ... which may sound harmless, but it is basically the same thing that gave us Donald Trump.
So not so harmless, it turns out.
Note that I did not say step number two, which is a complement to your comment. Regarding weird formatting, I actually wrote my comment using the OL and LI html tags ... I blame the /. layout not rendering it as a numbered list.
You can try this out in Bangkok - not autonomous cars, but you agree to go somewhere with a tuk-tuk driver, and on the way he just happens to also take you to a jewelry store and make a stop by his uncle's restaurant.
Advertisement sponsored rides - no thank you.
If you consider children sleep about 10 hours per night, then 230 hours represents 5% of their waking time. If you instead look at their 'available time' which is not locked up in school etc, that number increases to over 10%.
Spending 10% of children's time watching commercials during the formative period of their life when they learn at the most accelerated pace, they learn motor-, social and mental skills which are key for later life, as well as having their personality 'set', is incredibly wasteful.
Looks like someone has a rocket complex.
Some people need protection from themselves, and it is good to see SEC is trying to do just that.
Cryptocurrencies in their current form is a hopeless project. It is completely unsuited for regular payment transactions, because you cannot hold bitcoin without also speculating. I want to be able to pay for goods and getting paid for work without having the value of my wallet fluctuating plus minus tens of percent points on a daily basis.
As a financial investment instruments, it is completely hopeless as its "value" is based on nothing tangible at all, and so it really is nothing but some kind of psychological lottery. With the underlying infrastructure operated by shady people.
And ethically, it is not so good to have a "currency" which relies on vast energy consumption, adding significantly to climate change effects.
The sooner this bubble bursts, the better.
It's not just you. When you arrive Copenhagen by sea, a dominant part of the view that greets you is a large number of windmills just outside the city. I think it looks magnificent. Would I want to live immediately next to one? No. But then again, that goes for any loud or dominating infrastructure.
I usually give US employers flak for being abusive and unfair in how they exploit employees, but when it comes to job training I would like to make an argument in their defense. Compared to older times, we have a job market with more job mobility and less loyalty to employers. What would at some time be a good investment in extended training of someone you expect to stay with the company for a long time, may now end up as waste from the company's point of view.
Regarding what competence and experience you ask for when hiring - well, it is not that complex. You list the qualifications that are desired for the job, you see what applications you get, and then you see if you can live with the qualifications of the best ones. You know you probably won't get anyone who ticks off all the boxes, and potential applicants know this as well - so people who are close to meeting criteria, know it's ok for them to apply.
Requiring an education with good performance is not so much about inflation, as it is about proving up-front that you are able to learn and perform. Plus having an education that is sufficiently related to what you will be doing, that you should be able to pick up what you need for the job.
If you are smart and you deserve the job, then you will come up with a way to show them your skills. Also, sharing your employer's proprietary code is not the best way to show your wicked skillz, as most prisons do not allow telecommuting to work.
Been following Slashdot since close to the beginning and still tune in every day. The site has certainly changed and not always for the better, but I'm still here so subjectively it can't be all bad. I am not going to use this opportunity as many commenters do to list various stuff that could change - why not leave that for the 364 other days of the year and today just be happy for all the good bits. Thanks for keeping the site around.
Which is why for these type of rights, the law should state they cannot be signed away. Unfortunately, in my experience employers will put stuff into contract that is not enforceable (and which is basically illegal) such as non-compete clauses, but a non-unionized employee will not take the risk of entering a legal battle with their employer over it.
Unions are important, they keep the employment relationship more honest and balanced. People-friendly laws are a good thing, protecting the rights of the citizens of the country. Law-makers should remember, they serve not only the "job-creators" but the rest of us also.
From what I have read, almost every emergency call involves stating where you are early in the call - something like "who am I, where am I, and why am I calling". That should also enable dispatchers to immediately start looking into what types of assets they have available for responding.
It is only a few days ago that I was thinking about this very same issue, as I drove past a very recent traffic accident involving a trailer and a scooter (with plenty of people already handling the situation), and it struck me that if I had been there only a minute ago and would have been one of the people stopping to help - then how would I explain my exact location. I would be able to say that I was on the road between A and B and roughly some percentage on the way, but that's about it. And when being lazy and driving other entirely unknown places purely by GPS, I often have no clue where I am.
This is one type of scenario, a person who reports an emergency who does not know how to describe their location. Another scenario would be someone who has for instance a medical or mental problem, or who is in shock, who is unable to provide a location.
So I can clearly see a need for this type of reporting. There are perhaps security concerns, but that is why you have a burner phone ;-) Joke aside, there could be for instance an obscure opt-out option for such calls, with a small icon appearing when making the call to ask 'press here within 5 seconds to hide location'.
In this case "you are wrong", because the one experiment we know about where a specimen of homo sapiens never ever in its long life uttered the phrase "I was wrong", was recently rewarded by the universe with the most powerful job position in the world.
On the other hand, this is probably the exception to the rule which proves that you are right.
Quote: "Dark matter [...] has been firmly established as real [...] There's no question that it exists." There is still plenty of controversy related to the idea of dark matter, and there is no such thing in physics as proving something exists - you can only prove something to be false. I'm not saying dark matter does not exist, only that statements like the above are too assertive.