we need to find a way to debate issues on which we might disagree
Without letting the people who disagree with me talk.
You do know that splitting it up into smaller meetings actually encourages dissenting voices. Smaller meeting allows people to express themselves more openly without worrying about what others may think of them and allows them to send ideas up the chain in a more anonymous fashion. Smaller meetings also allows more people to speak compared to a large meeting where question time is limited.
If anything, this move allows for more dissent, not less.
You want to measure diversity at google? Count the political bumper stickers on the cars that park there. You'll have no problem finding Hillary and Sanders stickers, but Trump stickers are rarer than hen's teeth.
What if that is just because you need to be highly intelligent to get a job at Google. Its not our fault that Trump supporters tend to be in the bottom quintile for intelligence and as such may not be suited for working at Google, in order to protect diversity, we cant get caught up in strict quotas over political affiliations.
And before you mod me down, you're defending Damore for the exact same argument.
I don't see any way that Uber could become a non-evil company without, at a minimum, replacing all of management and the board of directors.
Or changing their business model.
Here in the UK, Uber is legal but they still aren't making a profit (or any cheaper than a minicab). Their business model relies on ignoring costs that other providers have to bear, right now they cant even make a profit by ignoring private hire laws, how can they make a profit when they abide by the same regulations as regular private hire cars (which in the UK, are minimal).
I kind of wonder if he intended to get fired and the sue... It wasn't exactly hard to predict. He could have published it anonymously, but didn't. It just seems like he wanted to martyr himself.
I think it's the other way around. He did something he knew he'd get fired for, so he wrote a manifesto to make it look like he's being fired for being conservative (because in Cali, you cant be fired for political beliefs). If he did something bad enough, Google is probably legally required not to publish the details, at least until after the court case.
CEO's don't get called back from holiday to deal with a memo that goes against the groupthink. That is the kind of mundane crap HR gets to deal with.
Like you said, it really looks like he's trying to martyr himself.
Lets see:
- Says using the words "white privilege" is racist.
- Argues that feminism is trying to infantilise society.
- Opposed a bill to make gender identity a protected attribute in Canada.
Whilst he's entitled to his opinions, it really doesn't make him impartial, or even slightly balanced in this debate. Just because he's got a PHD does not mean he's an absolute authority, it definitely does mean he's unbiased.
Those two links were used above and they're really just trying to validate what you already believe rather than shedding light on the issue. You're essentially using the "teach the controversy" argument here and looking for anything to back it up.
So that leads me onto my next question, legitimate news agencies would be chomping at the bit to interview Damore. Why did he then do a YouTube interview with a guy who expresses anti-feminist views? Again, he's within his right to do but it strikes me as very odd that he would seek out someone with the same views as him if his statements can stand up to peer criticism. Even Fox News would have given the memo and Damore more legitimacy, something like the BBC/CBC would have been even better.
So in order to back up his "research", he goes in search of people with similar views. Wait... Didn't Damore rail against the "echo chamber" culture in Google via his memo? If that's bad, why does he seek to create his own echo chamber where he is unwilling to have his views questioned.
Yes, so he goes straight to an alt-right anti-PC conspiracy theorist (Jordan Peterson's the kind of person who says "white privileged" is a racist term, his credibility is not good) rather than some legitimate news agency (or even a semi-legitimate one like Fox News)... Of course Peterson and Damore are entitled to their views... But what was in his treatise about echo chambers again?
I'm going to make two bets about this.
1. He's a classic case of "figures don't lie, but liars figure". The science has been misrepresented to reach his conclusions.
2. Something else is going on here. Google, being a classic "whiny liberal" organisation sends people like this off on nice paid vacations with educational courses to help them see the errors of their way. His manifesto was written in such a way he knew full well he was about to be fired and it certainly isn't something that would get a CEO called back from holiday. An memo like Damore's is something HR would deal with. So my second bet is, the manifesto is a smoke screen and he was fired for another reason Google is not permitted to divulge (especially if he's sued for wrongful dismissal).
Yes I've read Damore's manifesto, and yes I've read your links. They're both tenuous at best, putting a bunch of names behind your ideas does not magically make them correct.
Third bet, this will be forgotten about in a month.
I do support for clients in the finance sector. You'd be surprised how many people think that if they move these files a few months in advance, they wont get caught. Hell, I'm surprised how many of them still use email to do it. Finance company == log fucking everything.
Or "using a password you picked up while still at the firm"?
This, the headline tries to infer that he was imprisoned for hacking, the summary says he was imprisoned for corporate espionage, whether he did that by electonic means or walking out the front door with a bunch of paper files under his arm does not matter.
How is that not kid friendly? It's wrong to coddle children and keep them away from the good things in life (blood, boobies, giant fighting robots, etc).
Japan produces a lot of kid friendly animation, most of which gets dubbed by western distributors. It just gets overshadowed by Anime and Hentai. That being said, South Korea is rapidly moving into that market (erm... the kid friendly stuff, not the Hentai).
Much like "Political Correctness" its too vague and ill-defined to be an insult and trades on the fact its said with venom. it has no substance and people are now starting to realise that. See my sig for more details, using PC or SJW is just someone admitting their in a position where they cant argue their point any more and are desperate to detract from this fact.
SJW isn't even a proper insult and demonstrates a supreme lack of intelligence on the part of the user of said insult. I mean you could at least call me a Collective Impartiality Serviceperson or a Lawful Nightlife Paladin (being Australian, LNP is a bit of an insult already) or at least have the fortitude to call me a proper cunt, I mean SJW isn't even a half measure for insults (especially here in the UK).
Breitbart is not a high quality news media outlet in my opinion, but I've yet to find anything I can point at as conclusive proof that they have published fake news. There's definitely misleading/biased articles I can point at but that's not the same thing and anyone can find an example of that in a more respectable news outlet like the New York Times.
Erm, the Muslim mob in Germany that didn't happen. False reporting on the UK climate. Still to this day trying to claim Obama is a Kenyan Muslim... Hell, even Fox News gave up on that one years ago.
I challenge you to find a Brietbart article that is accurate and factual (to the BBC standard). Hell, forget the BBC standards, find me one that doesn't rely on thought terminating cliches.
This so demoralized a lot of his women co-workers that many stayed home from work on Monday.
This right here is a problem and it sort of reinforces the notion that some people
That right there is the problem with some people. They live such a comfortable, entitled life that they have no idea what it is like to be discriminated against. People who got everything on a silver platter, in many cases taking from the not so silver platter of others and expecting them to take that with good graces.
Sorry if that takes away from your rather ill conceived rant.
This wasn't a case of one person who was a little upset, the guy refused to treat men and women equally when there was no cause to do otherwise. Just because he wrote out a manifesto using impressive sounding words does not mean he's right. That there is the problem with a lot of people today, when the evidence does not fit their biases, they invent a whole bunch of conspiracy theories to make it fit.
Regardless of what you think, this guy broke company policy to the point where the CEO was called in from holiday. Once that happens you are well and truly fucked my self entitled friend. Doesn't matter who you are or what excuses you can cook up and victim blaming will only make it look worse for you. If you have a problem with that, I suggest putting on your big boy trousers and getting over it.
This is wishful thinking. It may be true in very dense urban centers, but it is less and less likely to be true anytime soon out in suburbia, and even less likely in rural areas where farms operate and grow food that everyone in the urban centers is dependent on.
This,
Its just people who have no knowledge of the engineering jumping on the Tesla hype bandwagon.
The problem Tesla has is that it's using the same battery technology as a laptop and as anyone who has half a brain and uses a laptop on battery regularly will have noticed is that battery power degrades with each charge cycle. It's not noticable over a few... but try doing 300. Batteries are consumable, up until now when the battery pack in your Prius goes, you've still got the gasoline engine to cover you. The problem Tesla will have in a few years is that the batteries wont be doing anywhere near a 300 mile range.
Also thats 300 miles under laboratory conditions. Not when Tailgater McOnThePhone is in charge.
Sure there's a lot of talk about banning the sale of new ICE vehicles in Europe at some point in the distant future... but that's just talking and handwringing from governments that barely even know what's going to happen in 2 years time, let alone 20.
Every couple years the distributors try to setup their own streaming company. And every few years said new streaming company goes under because the rights holders make stupid decisions and the streaming doesn't work. Expect it to fail just like all the things before it.
As much as I agree with that point, if anyone is going to be able to do it it'll be Disney. They're specialists at pacifying the most unruly consumer group that has ever dared to appear at a Target... Children. All Disney have to do is price themselves at $1 less that the pain threshold of parents with kids.
They do, actually. Trees are rather flexible, you see.
He's talking about lanes that are lined with walls and buildings... which unlike an American truck, are quite solidly built and again unlike an American truck, will probably stand for another few hundred years.
Why have a drill over a major American City if they aren't trying to spy on Americans?
This can easily be explained by bureaucracy.
Operations programme A gets X dollars for operations each year, part of that cost is jet fuel. Programme manager realises that he's only used three quarters of this years fuel budget and if he doesn't use up the rest he wont get the same amount next year. So he sends a plane up to burn fuel to ensure his budget isn't slashed.
Or it could be that Boeing's Everett plant is near by and it's a plane undergoing testing before it's released to the USAF.
I do think GPS has been a big benefit for safety. Reading maps while driving was never safe but often necessary before GPS.
If you need to sit staring at a map whilst driving, you were never taught to use maps properly. Most of us managed to navigate using maps whilst keeping both eyes on whats around you.
Remembering back to the orienteering I did in high school (many, many moons ago now), you don't wander around with your head in a map, you find points on the map you can see and use those as directional indicators. I was actually quite good at it, I can read a map for a minute or two, then remember my route by various cues (2 sets of lights then a left, right at the Tesco... so on and so forth).
I still do the same with my GPS although I like my GPS because it tells me what lane I need to be in ahead of time. I like this because I don't want to be that jerk holding up traffic trying to get into a packed lane at the last minute.
I have yet to see a good way on a small-screen phone or GPS to answer questions like "how far away is the coast," or "how much out of our way would it be to go to that town" or "what's the next sizable town within 2 miles of the road we are on," which a glance at a paper map answers. GPS will tell you the closest town but it may be way off your route.
Try using Google maps.
If it cant be automatically answered, you can see for yourself by looking at the map. In addition to this, it tells you exactly where you are so you're not guessing as to your location.
I've never had the issue you've described using Google maps on my phone, then again I was taught proper orienteering as school with maps and compasses, not those nice compact things but massive ones made from wood and wrought iron, the kind of compass Brunel would have made. Its still a useful skill, I went to a hillclimb event recently. I pulled up a topo(graphical map) of southern England from the internets (overlaid onto Google maps oddly enough) and found the best place to park so I didn't have walk up the entire hill to get from my car to trackside.
there was some kinda of paper navigation tool you could fold up and keep in the glove box. Or perhaps even a book of said previous things.....
The problem is finding such a tool on short notice.
It was back in the heady days of 2014 and I was driving through the small towns of Southern California. Due to various circumstances beyond my control I had no in car charger and was running on batteries all the way from LAX to Pismo Beach. I would have been fine if they hadn't of closed a section of Highway 1 around Pismo Beach so I had to take a detour which had a complete lack of markings. Not to fear, I've done a bit of orienteering before and I'm actually quite good at it, so I pulled into a gas station and asked the attendant if he had any maps of the area. He returned a look that tended to say "what is this map thing you speak of, man from a strange and far off land". They didn't actually have any maps. He was at least able to direct me back onto the Highway and I made it safely to my overnight stop in SLO. It was as well planned and executed as a Top Gear road trip special.
I also managed to drive my rented Mustang (Yes, I was a tourist) over a very low wall but still high enough to do some damage to the underside. Fortunately the hire company never found out about that.
Ever been halfway to your destination when "Satellite signal lost" is heard over the speaker?
Never had that problem using Google Maps.
Most modern devices are capable of extrapolating your location using the last known location, vector and current speed until the satellite connection is re-established.
Not pick-up trucks, They're called pick-up trucks. The larger vehicles called trucks in the US are what are called lorries in the UK.
It depends, in common vernacular in the UK, they're just called pickups, no-one calls them pickup trucks over here. A lorry is any goods vehicle larger than a van, they can be enclosed, flat bed, articulated (artic), we have many different names for different vehicles.
Pickups are not common in the UK because it rains quite a bit here, as most people who drive pickups are tradesmen, they tend to drive vans in order to keep their tools and wares dry. Even farmers will get an enclosed 4x4 like the Land Rover Defender. The flimsy, 2WD American pickups are utterly unsuited for and will be ruined by the gently undulating English countryside.
I don't slow down in my pickup truck for speed bumps. I think the effectiveness of fake speed bumps depends greatly on what kind of suspension your car has and how little you give a fuck.
The thing is, if you tried driving your "pick up" in London, speed humps will be the last of your worries as you won't be able to get to most of them to begin with. I've got a BMW 2 series... and that's massive on London streets. Glad I don't drive there often.
Americans and Australians who've never driven here don't get how narrow the streets get because unlike our nations, many British towns existed before roads were even a thing.
Your estimate of pilot's salaries is way high, I think. Many of the smaller regional jets have pilots that earn 20-40K$/year, but those planes have something like 50 passengers. The ones earning the big bucks are a dying breed.
You als need to account for the various benefits of course.
Few airline pilots will be earning US$200,000 p/a, but you've got to add in externalities, taxes, duties, support staff, overtime/expenses. Sure this wont add up to US$200K but that's also the point the GP was trying to make, even at a vastly over-inflated cost, getting rid of the pilots will not make air travel any cheaper or cost effective.
I think it's a good thing that planes have such capable safety systems, but knowing how these systems work I wouldn't want to fly in a pilotless plane. An Airbus contains four computers, three primaries and a backup. If these three computers do not agree on something, the decision is thrown back to a human. In cases where immediate action is required, manual control is thrown back to the pilot. I'm certain Boeing will have a similar system (most of its produced by the 3rd parties like Honeywell or Thales). You could argue that you can keep remote pilots, but I wouldn't trust someone a thousand miles away with no situational awareness to be able to react as well as a pilot in the cockpit.
Slashdot Mirror
we need to find a way to debate issues on which we might disagree
Without letting the people who disagree with me talk.
You do know that splitting it up into smaller meetings actually encourages dissenting voices. Smaller meeting allows people to express themselves more openly without worrying about what others may think of them and allows them to send ideas up the chain in a more anonymous fashion. Smaller meetings also allows more people to speak compared to a large meeting where question time is limited.
If anything, this move allows for more dissent, not less.
You want to measure diversity at google? Count the political bumper stickers on the cars that park there. You'll have no problem finding Hillary and Sanders stickers, but Trump stickers are rarer than hen's teeth.
What if that is just because you need to be highly intelligent to get a job at Google. Its not our fault that Trump supporters tend to be in the bottom quintile for intelligence and as such may not be suited for working at Google, in order to protect diversity, we cant get caught up in strict quotas over political affiliations.
And before you mod me down, you're defending Damore for the exact same argument.
I don't see any way that Uber could become a non-evil company without, at a minimum, replacing all of management and the board of directors.
Or changing their business model.
Here in the UK, Uber is legal but they still aren't making a profit (or any cheaper than a minicab). Their business model relies on ignoring costs that other providers have to bear, right now they cant even make a profit by ignoring private hire laws, how can they make a profit when they abide by the same regulations as regular private hire cars (which in the UK, are minimal).
You realize the guy identifies as liberal, right?
Did you read his memo... He started out by saying he'd be fired for being a conservative. If that guy is a Liberal, Elton John must be straight.
I kind of wonder if he intended to get fired and the sue... It wasn't exactly hard to predict. He could have published it anonymously, but didn't. It just seems like he wanted to martyr himself.
I think it's the other way around. He did something he knew he'd get fired for, so he wrote a manifesto to make it look like he's being fired for being conservative (because in Cali, you cant be fired for political beliefs). If he did something bad enough, Google is probably legally required not to publish the details, at least until after the court case.
CEO's don't get called back from holiday to deal with a memo that goes against the groupthink. That is the kind of mundane crap HR gets to deal with.
Like you said, it really looks like he's trying to martyr himself.
You can add a fifth highly credentialed scientist in the field this is about that reviewed it... line by painstaking line.. in an interview with him.
Hmmm... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Peterson
Lets see:
- Says using the words "white privilege" is racist.
- Argues that feminism is trying to infantilise society.
- Opposed a bill to make gender identity a protected attribute in Canada.
Whilst he's entitled to his opinions, it really doesn't make him impartial, or even slightly balanced in this debate. Just because he's got a PHD does not mean he's an absolute authority, it definitely does mean he's unbiased. Those two links were used above and they're really just trying to validate what you already believe rather than shedding light on the issue. You're essentially using the "teach the controversy" argument here and looking for anything to back it up.
So that leads me onto my next question, legitimate news agencies would be chomping at the bit to interview Damore. Why did he then do a YouTube interview with a guy who expresses anti-feminist views? Again, he's within his right to do but it strikes me as very odd that he would seek out someone with the same views as him if his statements can stand up to peer criticism. Even Fox News would have given the memo and Damore more legitimacy, something like the BBC/CBC would have been even better.
So in order to back up his "research", he goes in search of people with similar views. Wait... Didn't Damore rail against the "echo chamber" culture in Google via his memo? If that's bad, why does he seek to create his own echo chamber where he is unwilling to have his views questioned.
Also important to remember that he was a computer scientist addressing the "science" behind an issue outside his area of expertise.
Fair enough. Here's Dr Jordan Peterson's interview with the guy https://youtu.be/SEDuVF7kiPU
Yes, so he goes straight to an alt-right anti-PC conspiracy theorist (Jordan Peterson's the kind of person who says "white privileged" is a racist term, his credibility is not good) rather than some legitimate news agency (or even a semi-legitimate one like Fox News)... Of course Peterson and Damore are entitled to their views... But what was in his treatise about echo chambers again?
I'm going to make two bets about this.
1. He's a classic case of "figures don't lie, but liars figure". The science has been misrepresented to reach his conclusions.
2. Something else is going on here. Google, being a classic "whiny liberal" organisation sends people like this off on nice paid vacations with educational courses to help them see the errors of their way. His manifesto was written in such a way he knew full well he was about to be fired and it certainly isn't something that would get a CEO called back from holiday. An memo like Damore's is something HR would deal with. So my second bet is, the manifesto is a smoke screen and he was fired for another reason Google is not permitted to divulge (especially if he's sued for wrongful dismissal).
Yes I've read Damore's manifesto, and yes I've read your links. They're both tenuous at best, putting a bunch of names behind your ideas does not magically make them correct.
Third bet, this will be forgotten about in a month.
Have to plan ahead.
You'd think so...
I do support for clients in the finance sector. You'd be surprised how many people think that if they move these files a few months in advance, they wont get caught. Hell, I'm surprised how many of them still use email to do it. Finance company == log fucking everything.
Or "using a password you picked up while still at the firm"?
This, the headline tries to infer that he was imprisoned for hacking, the summary says he was imprisoned for corporate espionage, whether he did that by electonic means or walking out the front door with a bunch of paper files under his arm does not matter.
How is that not kid friendly? It's wrong to coddle children and keep them away from the good things in life (blood, boobies, giant fighting robots, etc).
Japan produces a lot of kid friendly animation, most of which gets dubbed by western distributors. It just gets overshadowed by Anime and Hentai. That being said, South Korea is rapidly moving into that market (erm... the kid friendly stuff, not the Hentai).
why does this almost seem like a (bad) zero wing parody?
I too was expecting it to end in "For great justice".
...which is what you *just did yourself* by using that bullshit three-letter-acronym
Its the acronym that the SJW's chose. The SJW's invented the term and are now mad that it has a negative connotation.
No they didn't.
In the modern context it was invented by the kind of people who used to use "PC" because calling someone PC doesn't have an impact any more.
Originally used in 1824, it was not used in any popular form until 2011 where it was used to belittle people supporting the Gamergate saga. It was definitely not a term chosen by them. Coincidentally, because its so overused and poorly defined as an insult it is going the way of "Political Correctness". Using SJW as an insult tends to turn people off as its more of an indicator that the insulter has very tenuous links to reality and the insulted is more likely to be correct in the argument.
Much like "Political Correctness" its too vague and ill-defined to be an insult and trades on the fact its said with venom. it has no substance and people are now starting to realise that. See my sig for more details, using PC or SJW is just someone admitting their in a position where they cant argue their point any more and are desperate to detract from this fact.
SJW isn't even a proper insult and demonstrates a supreme lack of intelligence on the part of the user of said insult. I mean you could at least call me a Collective Impartiality Serviceperson or a Lawful Nightlife Paladin (being Australian, LNP is a bit of an insult already) or at least have the fortitude to call me a proper cunt, I mean SJW isn't even a half measure for insults (especially here in the UK).
Breitbart is not a high quality news media outlet in my opinion, but I've yet to find anything I can point at as conclusive proof that they have published fake news. There's definitely misleading/biased articles I can point at but that's not the same thing and anyone can find an example of that in a more respectable news outlet like the New York Times.
Erm, the Muslim mob in Germany that didn't happen. False reporting on the UK climate. Still to this day trying to claim Obama is a Kenyan Muslim... Hell, even Fox News gave up on that one years ago.
I challenge you to find a Brietbart article that is accurate and factual (to the BBC standard). Hell, forget the BBC standards, find me one that doesn't rely on thought terminating cliches.
This so demoralized a lot of his women co-workers that many stayed home from work on Monday.
This right here is a problem and it sort of reinforces the notion that some people
That right there is the problem with some people. They live such a comfortable, entitled life that they have no idea what it is like to be discriminated against. People who got everything on a silver platter, in many cases taking from the not so silver platter of others and expecting them to take that with good graces.
Sorry if that takes away from your rather ill conceived rant.
This wasn't a case of one person who was a little upset, the guy refused to treat men and women equally when there was no cause to do otherwise. Just because he wrote out a manifesto using impressive sounding words does not mean he's right. That there is the problem with a lot of people today, when the evidence does not fit their biases, they invent a whole bunch of conspiracy theories to make it fit.
Regardless of what you think, this guy broke company policy to the point where the CEO was called in from holiday. Once that happens you are well and truly fucked my self entitled friend. Doesn't matter who you are or what excuses you can cook up and victim blaming will only make it look worse for you. If you have a problem with that, I suggest putting on your big boy trousers and getting over it.
This is wishful thinking. It may be true in very dense urban centers, but it is less and less likely to be true anytime soon out in suburbia, and even less likely in rural areas where farms operate and grow food that everyone in the urban centers is dependent on.
This,
Its just people who have no knowledge of the engineering jumping on the Tesla hype bandwagon.
The problem Tesla has is that it's using the same battery technology as a laptop and as anyone who has half a brain and uses a laptop on battery regularly will have noticed is that battery power degrades with each charge cycle. It's not noticable over a few... but try doing 300. Batteries are consumable, up until now when the battery pack in your Prius goes, you've still got the gasoline engine to cover you. The problem Tesla will have in a few years is that the batteries wont be doing anywhere near a 300 mile range.
Also thats 300 miles under laboratory conditions. Not when Tailgater McOnThePhone is in charge.
Sure there's a lot of talk about banning the sale of new ICE vehicles in Europe at some point in the distant future... but that's just talking and handwringing from governments that barely even know what's going to happen in 2 years time, let alone 20.
This is Hulu 2.0.
Every couple years the distributors try to setup their own streaming company. And every few years said new streaming company goes under because the rights holders make stupid decisions and the streaming doesn't work. Expect it to fail just like all the things before it.
As much as I agree with that point, if anyone is going to be able to do it it'll be Disney. They're specialists at pacifying the most unruly consumer group that has ever dared to appear at a Target... Children. All Disney have to do is price themselves at $1 less that the pain threshold of parents with kids.
They do, actually. Trees are rather flexible, you see.
He's talking about lanes that are lined with walls and buildings... which unlike an American truck, are quite solidly built and again unlike an American truck, will probably stand for another few hundred years.
Why have a drill over a major American City if they aren't trying to spy on Americans?
This can easily be explained by bureaucracy.
Operations programme A gets X dollars for operations each year, part of that cost is jet fuel. Programme manager realises that he's only used three quarters of this years fuel budget and if he doesn't use up the rest he wont get the same amount next year. So he sends a plane up to burn fuel to ensure his budget isn't slashed.
Or it could be that Boeing's Everett plant is near by and it's a plane undergoing testing before it's released to the USAF.
Or it's just bullshit, considering the source.
My thought exactly. Of all the news outlet available, we resort to citing RT for USAF activities.
Why not... I mean if I want maps of Russia the first place I'd go is the CIA.
I do think GPS has been a big benefit for safety. Reading maps while driving was never safe but often necessary before GPS.
If you need to sit staring at a map whilst driving, you were never taught to use maps properly. Most of us managed to navigate using maps whilst keeping both eyes on whats around you. Remembering back to the orienteering I did in high school (many, many moons ago now), you don't wander around with your head in a map, you find points on the map you can see and use those as directional indicators. I was actually quite good at it, I can read a map for a minute or two, then remember my route by various cues (2 sets of lights then a left, right at the Tesco... so on and so forth).
I still do the same with my GPS although I like my GPS because it tells me what lane I need to be in ahead of time. I like this because I don't want to be that jerk holding up traffic trying to get into a packed lane at the last minute.
I have yet to see a good way on a small-screen phone or GPS to answer questions like "how far away is the coast," or "how much out of our way would it be to go to that town" or "what's the next sizable town within 2 miles of the road we are on," which a glance at a paper map answers. GPS will tell you the closest town but it may be way off your route.
Try using Google maps.
If it cant be automatically answered, you can see for yourself by looking at the map. In addition to this, it tells you exactly where you are so you're not guessing as to your location.
I've never had the issue you've described using Google maps on my phone, then again I was taught proper orienteering as school with maps and compasses, not those nice compact things but massive ones made from wood and wrought iron, the kind of compass Brunel would have made. Its still a useful skill, I went to a hillclimb event recently. I pulled up a topo(graphical map) of southern England from the internets (overlaid onto Google maps oddly enough) and found the best place to park so I didn't have walk up the entire hill to get from my car to trackside.
there was some kinda of paper navigation tool you could fold up and keep in the glove box. Or perhaps even a book of said previous things.....
The problem is finding such a tool on short notice.
It was back in the heady days of 2014 and I was driving through the small towns of Southern California. Due to various circumstances beyond my control I had no in car charger and was running on batteries all the way from LAX to Pismo Beach. I would have been fine if they hadn't of closed a section of Highway 1 around Pismo Beach so I had to take a detour which had a complete lack of markings. Not to fear, I've done a bit of orienteering before and I'm actually quite good at it, so I pulled into a gas station and asked the attendant if he had any maps of the area. He returned a look that tended to say "what is this map thing you speak of, man from a strange and far off land". They didn't actually have any maps. He was at least able to direct me back onto the Highway and I made it safely to my overnight stop in SLO. It was as well planned and executed as a Top Gear road trip special.
I also managed to drive my rented Mustang (Yes, I was a tourist) over a very low wall but still high enough to do some damage to the underside. Fortunately the hire company never found out about that.
Ever been halfway to your destination when "Satellite signal lost" is heard over the speaker?
Never had that problem using Google Maps.
Most modern devices are capable of extrapolating your location using the last known location, vector and current speed until the satellite connection is re-established.
It is because in Britain they are called Lorry.
Not pick-up trucks, They're called pick-up trucks. The larger vehicles called trucks in the US are what are called lorries in the UK.
It depends, in common vernacular in the UK, they're just called pickups, no-one calls them pickup trucks over here. A lorry is any goods vehicle larger than a van, they can be enclosed, flat bed, articulated (artic), we have many different names for different vehicles.
Pickups are not common in the UK because it rains quite a bit here, as most people who drive pickups are tradesmen, they tend to drive vans in order to keep their tools and wares dry. Even farmers will get an enclosed 4x4 like the Land Rover Defender. The flimsy, 2WD American pickups are utterly unsuited for and will be ruined by the gently undulating English countryside.
I don't slow down in my pickup truck for speed bumps. I think the effectiveness of fake speed bumps depends greatly on what kind of suspension your car has and how little you give a fuck.
The thing is, if you tried driving your "pick up" in London, speed humps will be the last of your worries as you won't be able to get to most of them to begin with. I've got a BMW 2 series... and that's massive on London streets. Glad I don't drive there often. Americans and Australians who've never driven here don't get how narrow the streets get because unlike our nations, many British towns existed before roads were even a thing.
Your estimate of pilot's salaries is way high, I think. Many of the smaller regional jets have pilots that earn 20-40K$/year, but those planes have something like 50 passengers. The ones earning the big bucks are a dying breed. You als need to account for the various benefits of course.
Few airline pilots will be earning US$200,000 p/a, but you've got to add in externalities, taxes, duties, support staff, overtime/expenses. Sure this wont add up to US$200K but that's also the point the GP was trying to make, even at a vastly over-inflated cost, getting rid of the pilots will not make air travel any cheaper or cost effective.
I think it's a good thing that planes have such capable safety systems, but knowing how these systems work I wouldn't want to fly in a pilotless plane. An Airbus contains four computers, three primaries and a backup. If these three computers do not agree on something, the decision is thrown back to a human. In cases where immediate action is required, manual control is thrown back to the pilot. I'm certain Boeing will have a similar system (most of its produced by the 3rd parties like Honeywell or Thales). You could argue that you can keep remote pilots, but I wouldn't trust someone a thousand miles away with no situational awareness to be able to react as well as a pilot in the cockpit.