Is it possible to have a debit card without pin? What for? Just to avoid having to press 4 to 8 buttons and confirm?
Yes, there are two methods.
1. the numbers on the front of the card allow you to make transactions online without even using the PIN.
2. Contactless payments under £ do not require a PIN.
PINs are not great security when they aren't required. This is why we need to have two factor authentication but banks will never permit that as we'd all go back to using cash (which they cant skim a percentage off the top of).
Perhaps you forgot how the economy did just fine in the beginning of the Dubya years, and only imploded somewhere near the end. It kept on doing bad in the beginning of the Obama years, and only started improving somewhere near the end. I wouldn't be so quick to laud Trump's excuses for economic policy...
Also, considering how badly the USD is doing, I wouldn't be so quick to say the US economy is doing well at all.
The US dollar is dropping almost as fast as the GB Pound. USD/GBP is almost back to pre-brexit levels where as the GBP vs other major currencies is down at least 20%.
. . . and folks packed their bags wherever they were, and took the next flight to Canada!
Unfortunately, the Brexit campaign was abused by xenophobic folks in the UK to stoke up "foreigners are evil!" elements there. And it worked. Some foreign IT folks that I work with in the UK have told me that they feel like they have hunting targets pinned on their clothes when they go out shopping.
Xenophobia is the new wave in Europe, but the French nipped the racist "National Front" in the bud with the election of Macron. In Germany, the racist AfD got into parliament, but their political influence has been dampened.
In the UK . . . well, a majority voted for Brexit . . . how many did so on anti-foreigner sentiments . . . nobody will talk about.
But, if you are a true believer in democracy . . . it should be right of UK voters to decide to kick out foreigners . . . correct . . . ?
AfD in German was a loose alliance of far right parties that banded together for the election when it looked like the far right had a chance. They didn't get a majority and fractured, their ostensible leader, Frauke Petry resigned on day 1, they've completely descended into petty bickering. If an election was held again, I think Merkel would get a majority again and AFD would be lucky to get a few seats.
And you're completely right about Brexit. It was all orchestrated on the irrational fear of Johnathan Foreigner and now all but the hardened racists have seen it for the utter cock up it was always destined to be.
Credit card fraud is an AMERICAN problem. In other countries I can't spend your money just by providing semi-public information. Only Americans believe that is "the way it is supposed to be".
Incorrect.
Electronic Transaction (card) fraud is a worldwide problem. Its not just limited to cards, but any form of transaction.
However American banks do make it easier.
Equipment needed to accept cashless payments in China: A sticker with a QR-code. Cost: 2 cents.
Asinine statements like this only demonstrate that you've drunk the cool-aid. I guarantee that you need more than a QR code and that someone is charging a fee for facilitating it. I can demonstrate this by asking... how do you get the electronic payment out of the QR code... Seeing as all you need is a QR code and not say... some kind of account.
Even from a business owner's perspective, there's nothing that says your business has to accept cash payments
But if few businesses accept cash, and you can't actually use cash to buy groceries, then you have a de facto cashless society.
For businesses, cash means crime. Both employee theft and robberies. Cash transactions are also slower than just waving your phone, which raises costs. Cashless self-checkout kiosks are cheaper and less error prone than those that handle cash.
That quote only shows you've never owned a business. For a business, cash is profitability. The problem with electronic payments is that they cost money. Yes, the bank charges you a fee for processing the transaction and if it was on credit, a percentage of the transaction. This can also delay the funds from reaching your account for several days. This means you need to raise your prices to compensate for the lost revenue which in turn causes a loss in revenue from higher prices.
Electronic transactions are by no means safe. If there is any ambiguity in the transaction, it's the merchant who has to wear all the costs.
Cash on the other hand is cheaper, less prone to chargebacks (errors in cash handling are rarer than chargebacks). All in all, it carries less risk.
I realize that "terrorist" is the new trendy label, but while hate crimes are often related to terrorism they are not the same thing. This despite the fact that hate crimes are often intended to generate terror.
In it's simplest form, "terrorist" can be defined as "a person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims."
While we may not have seen the video associated with this case and we do not fully understand this individual's motivations, it is not unreasonable to theorize that those motivations were political on some level, and therefore not unreasonable to refer to this jackass as a domestic terrorist (or simply terrorist) until such time as evidence of his true motives is presented.
Then why does the media not apply the same definition to anyone who is brown or black and does something illegal?
UK takes cars of its citizens. Protects them from extradition, gives them tax-supported healthcare. The US? Land of medical bankruptcies, guns for any yob who can fog a mirror, killings by police, and excessive prison sentencing. US would have been better off if the "founding fathers" had been shot as traitors and it had remained a British colony. Britain even ended slavery 30 years before the US did.
Actually, slavery in England was ended hundreds of years before the US' Emancipation Proclamation.
1574: Last remaining Serf's in England emancipated by Elizabeth I.
1706: Courts declare as soon as a Negro comes to England they are free.
1807: Abolition of the Slave Trade act bans trading of slaves on British ships and ports.
1807: The West Africa squadron is formed with the purpose of curtailing the Atlantic slave trade. By 1860, the squadron has freed 150,000 slaves bound for the Americas.
1838: Slavery is declared illegal in any British colony.
1845: The West Africa squadron becomes the worlds largest fleet.
1860: The Indian indenture system is abolished by the British Raj.
1863: The Emancipation Proclamation was issued by Abraham Lincoln.
These (apart from the last, obviously) were only the acts where the British worked alone, I'm not even counting the myriad of anti-slavery treaties that the British signed and enforced. In fact, it wasn't until this decade that the UK had an explicit law banning slavery because slavery had been virtually eliminated in the United Kingdom for hundreds of years.
Any proof that he actually stole anything of value or profited from his so-called crimes? This was more like a drunk teenager climbing the fence into my backyard, looking around, and maybe making a commotion. Yeah, some Americans' response might be to shoot without asking questions, but fortunately, the British know better.
This.
Some drunken youths decided to barrel over my fence a few months back and broke the fence. I have a security camera in my back yard and caught them. Cops knew who they were and they paid for the fence (there were only 12,000 people in my town, 57,000 in the greater area). No guns, no therapists, didn't even have to go to court as they realised it would be cheaper just to pay me for my fence when the Rozzers picked them up. Even the drunken idiots of Britain seem to know better.
If its so bad bad bad they why is it working so great for China and Japan? works so great US corporation move their manufacturing to China and Japan and other communist country that don't have laws to protect workers or the environment... only winner in the US? the scum CEOs and board members and the rich.
And the average Chinese can't afford a car. The average Japanese is having that privilege taxed away from them as well. Protectionism only punishes the people it's meant to "protect".
Also when did Japan become a communist country that had no laws to protect the environment? Even China is communist in name only.
I wonder if they removed LIDAR after Waymo lawsuit?
I doubt it, LIDAR is likely to be someone elses tech bought off the shelf. Not sure about Uber but Alphabet (Google) uses Helodyne units which I've used for aerial terrain survey. Phenomenally accurate units except if its raining, snowing or there's cloud in the way.
But consider this. Next time you're a passenger at night on a poorly lit road take out you phone and record the road. I'll wager that your real eyes can see better in the low light then your phone or the camera attached to the Uber car.
This. I've got a dash cam, it's daytime quality is excellent, Night time not so much. The Human eye can handle contrast much better and focus much faster. At night switching between bright lights (headlights and street lamps) and darkness takes most cameras a few seconds. Especially a $150 dash cam.
Beyond that, I think the footage Uber supplied has been doctored to look darker.
I agree the LIDAR should have been able to see her before she entered the light.
However, what we still do not know is - when did she start moving?
LIDAR definitely would have seen it. It would be nearly impossible for it not to. LIDAR isn't the problem, the problem is what the software did with the information provided by LIDAR. The software either wrote the pedestrian off as a false positive or failed to take into account it's path and how it intersected with the vehicles path.
However, what we still do not know is - when did she start moving?
We can extrapolate a likely answer from the movement speed before they were hit.
As they find out that guns aren't in fact banned in the UK.
Just imagine what will happen when they find out guns aren't necessary for self defence here in the UK because we haven't armed criminals to the teeth.
The biggest criminal risk at the moment are people on mopeds stealing phoned out of the hands of those not paying attention.
Guns are owned in the UK for mostly recreational purposes, which is fine with the overwhelming majority of Britons. You need a license, safe place to store it and a place to use it... and Volia... you can have a gun.
Democracy is an awful way to run a country, but it's the best system we have. - Winston Churchill
If you're going to quote someone, quote them properly (or at least say your paraphrasing or from memory).
"Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" - Winston Churchill, 11 November 1947.
The full quote is:
"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.â¦"
On the contrary, almost any human driver would have spotted that women from far away. Don't be fooled by the artificially darkened video, as others have noted in reality the lighting conditions on that road are pretty good, and she was also not jumping on the road but crossing it slowly and under perfect weather conditions. As some autonomous driving expert on HN as commented, the sensors should have had no problem picking her up from far apart and this looks a lot like a problem with the LIDAR software.
This accident was fully preventable.
This.
But it should be noted the car was not using high beams on an unlit empty street. This is something a new BMW 2 series can be optioned with (as well as auto-dipping headlights which is standard). This wouldn't have prevented the collision because the operator wasn't paying attention, but its a flaw that still needs to be fixed.
The radar and lidar certainly SHOULD have seen the pedestrian and it certainly appears that the driver was NOT paying attention.
I've worked with LIDAR for aerial surveying.... LIDAR certainly would have picked the pedestrian up. Its software that ignored it. There is no way for the LIDAR or RADAR not to return an object like a pedestrian or pedestrian with bike at that distance (the parking distance control RADAR in my BMW freaks out at an overhanging leaf). What likely happened is that it was written off as a false positive because it wasn't directly in the way of the car and the car was not tracking the path of nearby objects.
No human driver could have seen that woman in time to stop, but a car equipped with infrared lidar should be able to. Time to update the sensors on the test fleet.
I guess I'm a superhuman driver... In fact if that's your criteria for being beyond human then you'd best start to welcome your tea-swilling British overlords.
Because this shit happens in the UK all the fucking time and no-one dies. Suicyclist rides on unlit road in black with no lights or reflectors... Yet our streets aren't filled with bodies, quite the opposite, we have 1/4 the number of deaths per capita from road accidents than the US.
What was wrong here was:
1. The "operator" wasn't paying attention.
2. The car was not using high beams on a dark street (my BMW 2er does this automatically).
3. The "operator" wasn't paying attention.
4. The car was not taking into account the paths of objects off the road.
5. The car was travelling too fast for the conditions (low visibility).
6. Did I mention that the "operator" wasn't paying attention.
Using these simple steps:
1. Use your high beams appropriately.
2. Manage your speed according to the conditions.
3. Pay FUCKING attention.
I can avoid killing cyclists and pedestrians in the dark.
The lady was about 15 yards away... total distance to brake from 35mph is about 20 yards in perfect conditions (not counting reaction time, which would eat already 10 yards), and 40 yards in general.
I don't think this is a problem with autonomous cars in general, but a problem with Uber's 'I got mine, fuck everyone else' mentality towards everything.
True. A car without LIDAR and various RADARs and ultrasonic sensors for road texture is not really self driving ready. This car basically only had an auto pilot, lane detection and sign detection. Pedestrian detection failed due to bad light/camera conditions.
Pretty certain the car had LIDAR and there is no way LIDAR couldn't have detected this.
Its more likely to be a software fault mistaking them for a false positive and/or not taking into account the lateral movement of objects not in its path (something most humans do on a subconscious level).
The pedestrian was crossing the road at the time, that means a human driver would have seen it and braked earlier, the autonomous car simply ignored it and kept going until it hit her. Driverless cars have a long way to go to match average humans.
"Pedestrians have the always have the right of way."
We'll engrave that on your tombstone.
I'll take that compared to making license plates because you thought "The Pedestrian shouldn't have been there so I'm fine to run them over". Vehicular manslaughter gets you sent to PMITA prison.
In many civilized countries (i.e. UK), pedestrians always have the right-of-way
They don't have right-of-way. Cars are not under any obligation to stop to let you cross a road, except at a zebra crossing.
Just because there's no offence of jaywalking, that doesn't mean pedestrians have priority over cars on the road.
If you had of said "I've got no idea what I'm on about" it would have been faster and saved me from writing this post.
If you hit a pedestrian in the UK, you are considered at fault unless you can demonstrate you had no way of stopping in time. I.E. they stepped out of a blind corner such as from behind a lorry and even then you still should have been travelling slow enough to expect it. At the very best you can expect a charge of "driving without due care and attention" (AKA: careless driving) which will carry some points and a fine (3-9 points and up to £2,500), however if it were deemed preventable the best thing you could hope for is a charge of dangerous driving but there is the potential to be charged with vehicular manslaughter.
So yes, even if the pedestrian is not meant to be on the road, it's still the onus of the driver to watch out for them.
Defensive drivers like me watch out for pedestrians on the foot path (side walk for the Americans playing along at home) because they can change direction and head out onto the road without warning. The Uber car was clearly not doing this.
This incident makes no one a "monster" -- just like CSX and Amtrak aren't "monsters" when a pedestrian gets struck by one of their trains (which is almost universally because someone trespassed onto the right-of-way, or just plain decided to commit suicide by train). You can't bubble wrap the world.
Terrible analogy alert.
A pedestrian is not expected to enter a railway track without notice. However in the UK where many tracks are electrified, there are reasonable steps taken to ensure that people cannot accidentally step out onto them.
Pedestrians and other objects (like animals and children) are expected to step out onto the road and drivers (and other road users) are expected to be able to deal with it without hitting them.
But even then they shouldn't be storing that stuff by default, but rather because the customer flies that often and has insisted they keep it or has enrolled in some kind of subscription model (like Netflix).
This is partly because of the stupidity and apathy of the banks. Immediately after the first transaction, they could give the merchant (Orbitz in this case) a token for repeated transactions, that could only be used by that merchant. Then the merchant would only need the last 4 digits (to confirm the CC # with the customer), and would have no need to store the other digits.
People that suffer from CC fraud:
1. End users
2. Merchants
People that have the power to fix the problem:
1. Banks
You're correct up to here.
Please note that these are disjoint sets. Banks actually profit from fraud because they can charge $30 for every chargeback, which costs them $0 to process. They have no incentive to fix the system.
Banks actually lose money on fraud. You cant do a chargeback to a fake merchant set up in some shithole where criminals are pretty much permitted to get away with murder so long as they remain in a certain Vlad's favour. As soon as the first chargeback comes in, the merchant account is shuttered with the money already moved to other accounts and the start the whole thing over again with a new merchant account.
How banks make money is by skimming a few percent of every transaction done on credit. Even if it's in positive balance (I.E. using your own money) they still take 1-6% by charging the merchant to accept the card (meanwhile encouraging you to use it). You're 100% right that banks have the power to stop this and you're right that they're not doing it to protect profit but just wrong about the method. If banks actually implemented meaningful card security, they'd eliminate a vast percentage of fraud but it will involve making cards harder to use and this means people will just go back to cash because it's easier, this means the bank isn't getting a cut of everything you buy.
So banks wont introduce meaningful or effective card security because the amount of money they'd lose to other payment methods is significantly less than the amount they're currently losing to fraud.
One year credit monitoring is a joke. Seriously, in this day and age who still has not frozen there credit? Equifax now offers it for free after their breach and the other two (TransUnion and Experian) are just a few bucks. Depending on what state you live in you might even be able to freeze your credit for free depending on the law there.
Actually the storing of card information, especially in an unencrypted or easily decrypted format is the joke here. If sites didn't store card information then we wouldn't have so much need for credit monitoring or so many freezes.
Slashdot Mirror
Do You Miss Windows Phone?
No. Next question.
I occasionally do miss windows phones, sometimes my aim is off.
Is it possible to have a debit card without pin? What for? Just to avoid having to press 4 to 8 buttons and confirm?
Yes, there are two methods.
1. the numbers on the front of the card allow you to make transactions online without even using the PIN.
2. Contactless payments under £ do not require a PIN.
PINs are not great security when they aren't required. This is why we need to have two factor authentication but banks will never permit that as we'd all go back to using cash (which they cant skim a percentage off the top of).
Perhaps you forgot how the economy did just fine in the beginning of the Dubya years, and only imploded somewhere near the end. It kept on doing bad in the beginning of the Obama years, and only started improving somewhere near the end. I wouldn't be so quick to laud Trump's excuses for economic policy...
Also, considering how badly the USD is doing, I wouldn't be so quick to say the US economy is doing well at all.
The US dollar is dropping almost as fast as the GB Pound. USD/GBP is almost back to pre-brexit levels where as the GBP vs other major currencies is down at least 20%.
iZombie or The Walking Dead brain heist?
Canada said:
Oh, take off, eh!"
. . . and folks packed their bags wherever they were, and took the next flight to Canada!
Unfortunately, the Brexit campaign was abused by xenophobic folks in the UK to stoke up "foreigners are evil!" elements there. And it worked. Some foreign IT folks that I work with in the UK have told me that they feel like they have hunting targets pinned on their clothes when they go out shopping.
Xenophobia is the new wave in Europe, but the French nipped the racist "National Front" in the bud with the election of Macron. In Germany, the racist AfD got into parliament, but their political influence has been dampened.
In the UK . . . well, a majority voted for Brexit . . . how many did so on anti-foreigner sentiments . . . nobody will talk about.
But, if you are a true believer in democracy . . . it should be right of UK voters to decide to kick out foreigners . . . correct . . . ?
AfD in German was a loose alliance of far right parties that banded together for the election when it looked like the far right had a chance. They didn't get a majority and fractured, their ostensible leader, Frauke Petry resigned on day 1, they've completely descended into petty bickering. If an election was held again, I think Merkel would get a majority again and AFD would be lucky to get a few seats.
And you're completely right about Brexit. It was all orchestrated on the irrational fear of Johnathan Foreigner and now all but the hardened racists have seen it for the utter cock up it was always destined to be.
I don't want my Mac to behave like my iPad. I don't want a dumbed-down experience where I can't do anything that Apple doesn't permit.
What you want is irrelevant. Apple tells you what you will have.
... and the additional risk of credit card fraud.
Credit card fraud is an AMERICAN problem. In other countries I can't spend your money just by providing semi-public information. Only Americans believe that is "the way it is supposed to be".
Incorrect. Electronic Transaction (card) fraud is a worldwide problem. Its not just limited to cards, but any form of transaction.
However American banks do make it easier.
Equipment needed to accept cashless payments in China: A sticker with a QR-code. Cost: 2 cents.
Asinine statements like this only demonstrate that you've drunk the cool-aid. I guarantee that you need more than a QR code and that someone is charging a fee for facilitating it. I can demonstrate this by asking... how do you get the electronic payment out of the QR code... Seeing as all you need is a QR code and not say... some kind of account.
Even from a business owner's perspective, there's nothing that says your business has to accept cash payments
But if few businesses accept cash, and you can't actually use cash to buy groceries, then you have a de facto cashless society.
For businesses, cash means crime. Both employee theft and robberies. Cash transactions are also slower than just waving your phone, which raises costs. Cashless self-checkout kiosks are cheaper and less error prone than those that handle cash.
That quote only shows you've never owned a business. For a business, cash is profitability. The problem with electronic payments is that they cost money. Yes, the bank charges you a fee for processing the transaction and if it was on credit, a percentage of the transaction. This can also delay the funds from reaching your account for several days. This means you need to raise your prices to compensate for the lost revenue which in turn causes a loss in revenue from higher prices.
Electronic transactions are by no means safe. If there is any ambiguity in the transaction, it's the merchant who has to wear all the costs.
Cash on the other hand is cheaper, less prone to chargebacks (errors in cash handling are rarer than chargebacks). All in all, it carries less risk.
In it's simplest form, "terrorist" can be defined as "a person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims."
While we may not have seen the video associated with this case and we do not fully understand this individual's motivations, it is not unreasonable to theorize that those motivations were political on some level, and therefore not unreasonable to refer to this jackass as a domestic terrorist (or simply terrorist) until such time as evidence of his true motives is presented.
Then why does the media not apply the same definition to anyone who is brown or black and does something illegal?
UK takes cars of its citizens. Protects them from extradition, gives them tax-supported healthcare. The US? Land of medical bankruptcies, guns for any yob who can fog a mirror, killings by police, and excessive prison sentencing. US would have been better off if the "founding fathers" had been shot as traitors and it had remained a British colony. Britain even ended slavery 30 years before the US did.
Actually, slavery in England was ended hundreds of years before the US' Emancipation Proclamation.
1574: Last remaining Serf's in England emancipated by Elizabeth I.
1706: Courts declare as soon as a Negro comes to England they are free.
1807: Abolition of the Slave Trade act bans trading of slaves on British ships and ports.
1807: The West Africa squadron is formed with the purpose of curtailing the Atlantic slave trade. By 1860, the squadron has freed 150,000 slaves bound for the Americas.
1838: Slavery is declared illegal in any British colony.
1845: The West Africa squadron becomes the worlds largest fleet.
1860: The Indian indenture system is abolished by the British Raj.
1863: The Emancipation Proclamation was issued by Abraham Lincoln.
These (apart from the last, obviously) were only the acts where the British worked alone, I'm not even counting the myriad of anti-slavery treaties that the British signed and enforced. In fact, it wasn't until this decade that the UK had an explicit law banning slavery because slavery had been virtually eliminated in the United Kingdom for hundreds of years.
Any proof that he actually stole anything of value or profited from his so-called crimes? This was more like a drunk teenager climbing the fence into my backyard, looking around, and maybe making a commotion. Yeah, some Americans' response might be to shoot without asking questions, but fortunately, the British know better.
This.
Some drunken youths decided to barrel over my fence a few months back and broke the fence. I have a security camera in my back yard and caught them. Cops knew who they were and they paid for the fence (there were only 12,000 people in my town, 57,000 in the greater area). No guns, no therapists, didn't even have to go to court as they realised it would be cheaper just to pay me for my fence when the Rozzers picked them up. Even the drunken idiots of Britain seem to know better.
If its so bad bad bad they why is it working so great for China and Japan? works so great US corporation move their manufacturing to China and Japan and other communist country that don't have laws to protect workers or the environment... only winner in the US? the scum CEOs and board members and the rich.
And the average Chinese can't afford a car. The average Japanese is having that privilege taxed away from them as well. Protectionism only punishes the people it's meant to "protect".
Also when did Japan become a communist country that had no laws to protect the environment? Even China is communist in name only.
I wonder if they removed LIDAR after Waymo lawsuit?
I doubt it, LIDAR is likely to be someone elses tech bought off the shelf. Not sure about Uber but Alphabet (Google) uses Helodyne units which I've used for aerial terrain survey. Phenomenally accurate units except if its raining, snowing or there's cloud in the way.
But consider this. Next time you're a passenger at night on a poorly lit road take out you phone and record the road. I'll wager that your real eyes can see better in the low light then your phone or the camera attached to the Uber car.
This. I've got a dash cam, it's daytime quality is excellent, Night time not so much. The Human eye can handle contrast much better and focus much faster. At night switching between bright lights (headlights and street lamps) and darkness takes most cameras a few seconds. Especially a $150 dash cam.
Beyond that, I think the footage Uber supplied has been doctored to look darker.
I agree the LIDAR should have been able to see her before she entered the light.
However, what we still do not know is - when did she start moving?
LIDAR definitely would have seen it. It would be nearly impossible for it not to. LIDAR isn't the problem, the problem is what the software did with the information provided by LIDAR. The software either wrote the pedestrian off as a false positive or failed to take into account it's path and how it intersected with the vehicles path.
However, what we still do not know is - when did she start moving?
We can extrapolate a likely answer from the movement speed before they were hit.
As they find out that guns aren't in fact banned in the UK.
Just imagine what will happen when they find out guns aren't necessary for self defence here in the UK because we haven't armed criminals to the teeth.
The biggest criminal risk at the moment are people on mopeds stealing phoned out of the hands of those not paying attention.
Guns are owned in the UK for mostly recreational purposes, which is fine with the overwhelming majority of Britons. You need a license, safe place to store it and a place to use it... and Volia... you can have a gun.
Democracy is an awful way to run a country, but it's the best system we have. - Winston Churchill
If you're going to quote someone, quote them properly (or at least say your paraphrasing or from memory).
"Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" - Winston Churchill, 11 November 1947.
The full quote is:
"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.â¦"
On the contrary, almost any human driver would have spotted that women from far away. Don't be fooled by the artificially darkened video, as others have noted in reality the lighting conditions on that road are pretty good, and she was also not jumping on the road but crossing it slowly and under perfect weather conditions. As some autonomous driving expert on HN as commented, the sensors should have had no problem picking her up from far apart and this looks a lot like a problem with the LIDAR software.
This accident was fully preventable.
This. But it should be noted the car was not using high beams on an unlit empty street. This is something a new BMW 2 series can be optioned with (as well as auto-dipping headlights which is standard). This wouldn't have prevented the collision because the operator wasn't paying attention, but its a flaw that still needs to be fixed.
The radar and lidar certainly SHOULD have seen the pedestrian and it certainly appears that the driver was NOT paying attention.
I've worked with LIDAR for aerial surveying.... LIDAR certainly would have picked the pedestrian up. Its software that ignored it. There is no way for the LIDAR or RADAR not to return an object like a pedestrian or pedestrian with bike at that distance (the parking distance control RADAR in my BMW freaks out at an overhanging leaf). What likely happened is that it was written off as a false positive because it wasn't directly in the way of the car and the car was not tracking the path of nearby objects.
No human driver could have seen that woman in time to stop, but a car equipped with infrared lidar should be able to. Time to update the sensors on the test fleet.
I guess I'm a superhuman driver... In fact if that's your criteria for being beyond human then you'd best start to welcome your tea-swilling British overlords.
Because this shit happens in the UK all the fucking time and no-one dies. Suicyclist rides on unlit road in black with no lights or reflectors... Yet our streets aren't filled with bodies, quite the opposite, we have 1/4 the number of deaths per capita from road accidents than the US.
What was wrong here was:
1. The "operator" wasn't paying attention.
2. The car was not using high beams on a dark street (my BMW 2er does this automatically).
3. The "operator" wasn't paying attention.
4. The car was not taking into account the paths of objects off the road.
5. The car was travelling too fast for the conditions (low visibility).
6. Did I mention that the "operator" wasn't paying attention.
Using these simple steps:
1. Use your high beams appropriately.
2. Manage your speed according to the conditions.
3. Pay FUCKING attention.
I can avoid killing cyclists and pedestrians in the dark.
The car obviously had no lidar.
The lady was about 15 yards away ... total distance to brake from 35mph is about 20 yards in perfect conditions (not counting reaction time, which would eat already 10 yards), and 40 yards in general.
I don't think this is a problem with autonomous cars in general, but a problem with Uber's 'I got mine, fuck everyone else' mentality towards everything.
True. A car without LIDAR and various RADARs and ultrasonic sensors for road texture is not really self driving ready. This car basically only had an auto pilot, lane detection and sign detection. Pedestrian detection failed due to bad light/camera conditions.
Pretty certain the car had LIDAR and there is no way LIDAR couldn't have detected this.
Its more likely to be a software fault mistaking them for a false positive and/or not taking into account the lateral movement of objects not in its path (something most humans do on a subconscious level).
The pedestrian was crossing the road at the time, that means a human driver would have seen it and braked earlier, the autonomous car simply ignored it and kept going until it hit her. Driverless cars have a long way to go to match average humans.
"Pedestrians have the always have the right of way."
We'll engrave that on your tombstone.
I'll take that compared to making license plates because you thought "The Pedestrian shouldn't have been there so I'm fine to run them over". Vehicular manslaughter gets you sent to PMITA prison.
In many civilized countries (i.e. UK), pedestrians always have the right-of-way
They don't have right-of-way. Cars are not under any obligation to stop to let you cross a road, except at a zebra crossing.
Just because there's no offence of jaywalking, that doesn't mean pedestrians have priority over cars on the road.
If you had of said "I've got no idea what I'm on about" it would have been faster and saved me from writing this post.
If you hit a pedestrian in the UK, you are considered at fault unless you can demonstrate you had no way of stopping in time. I.E. they stepped out of a blind corner such as from behind a lorry and even then you still should have been travelling slow enough to expect it. At the very best you can expect a charge of "driving without due care and attention" (AKA: careless driving) which will carry some points and a fine (3-9 points and up to £2,500), however if it were deemed preventable the best thing you could hope for is a charge of dangerous driving but there is the potential to be charged with vehicular manslaughter.
So yes, even if the pedestrian is not meant to be on the road, it's still the onus of the driver to watch out for them.
Defensive drivers like me watch out for pedestrians on the foot path (side walk for the Americans playing along at home) because they can change direction and head out onto the road without warning. The Uber car was clearly not doing this.
This incident makes no one a "monster" -- just like CSX and Amtrak aren't "monsters" when a pedestrian gets struck by one of their trains (which is almost universally because someone trespassed onto the right-of-way, or just plain decided to commit suicide by train). You can't bubble wrap the world.
Terrible analogy alert. A pedestrian is not expected to enter a railway track without notice. However in the UK where many tracks are electrified, there are reasonable steps taken to ensure that people cannot accidentally step out onto them. Pedestrians and other objects (like animals and children) are expected to step out onto the road and drivers (and other road users) are expected to be able to deal with it without hitting them.
But even then they shouldn't be storing that stuff by default, but rather because the customer flies that often and has insisted they keep it or has enrolled in some kind of subscription model (like Netflix).
This is partly because of the stupidity and apathy of the banks. Immediately after the first transaction, they could give the merchant (Orbitz in this case) a token for repeated transactions, that could only be used by that merchant. Then the merchant would only need the last 4 digits (to confirm the CC # with the customer), and would have no need to store the other digits.
People that suffer from CC fraud:
1. End users
2. Merchants
People that have the power to fix the problem:
1. Banks
You're correct up to here.
Please note that these are disjoint sets. Banks actually profit from fraud because they can charge $30 for every chargeback, which costs them $0 to process. They have no incentive to fix the system.
Banks actually lose money on fraud. You cant do a chargeback to a fake merchant set up in some shithole where criminals are pretty much permitted to get away with murder so long as they remain in a certain Vlad's favour. As soon as the first chargeback comes in, the merchant account is shuttered with the money already moved to other accounts and the start the whole thing over again with a new merchant account.
How banks make money is by skimming a few percent of every transaction done on credit. Even if it's in positive balance (I.E. using your own money) they still take 1-6% by charging the merchant to accept the card (meanwhile encouraging you to use it). You're 100% right that banks have the power to stop this and you're right that they're not doing it to protect profit but just wrong about the method. If banks actually implemented meaningful card security, they'd eliminate a vast percentage of fraud but it will involve making cards harder to use and this means people will just go back to cash because it's easier, this means the bank isn't getting a cut of everything you buy.
So banks wont introduce meaningful or effective card security because the amount of money they'd lose to other payment methods is significantly less than the amount they're currently losing to fraud.
One year credit monitoring is a joke. Seriously, in this day and age who still has not frozen there credit? Equifax now offers it for free after their breach and the other two (TransUnion and Experian) are just a few bucks. Depending on what state you live in you might even be able to freeze your credit for free depending on the law there.
Actually the storing of card information, especially in an unencrypted or easily decrypted format is the joke here. If sites didn't store card information then we wouldn't have so much need for credit monitoring or so many freezes.