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As long as there is a human variable I severely doubt we will every get to a system that is 100%. The raw truth of it is to make a system that can do it close to 100% you need data. Tesla has chosen to put a semi-autonomous system into the hands of consumers in order to generate the massive amounts of data necessary to achieve full automation. Other companies have chosen to log a crazy amount of hours using technicians to generate the same set of data, both have and will continue to experienced crashes as they work toward making the system better.

Tesla I think has done a fantastic job at striking a balance between getting something into the market the generate real-world data and mitigating the risks that come with it. If this car really did crash into the fire truck at around 65 MPH then it did a pretty good job at keeping everyone safe.

I think I would be hard pressed to find any technological or mechanical innovation that did not initially involve risk or have an accident associated with it. I've seen more examples where a Autopilot has done the right thing and avoided an accident than I have read stories of it making a mistake and causing an accident.


Data is insufficient. The most famous polling miss in history relied on 2.4 million responses (~1.8% of the population) to conclude in 1936 that the Republicans would win the presidential election. What matters is the quality of your data, and if it is sufficient to draw reasonable conclusions from.

I don't see any evidence that Tesla has more, or less for that matter, of the necessary high-quality data that is needed for self-driving cars. The fact that real people are driving those cars continuously, potentially generating reams of data, is pretty immaterial, since the majority of that data is going to be useless (let's face it, 10 million hours of driving in the same conditions isn't better than 1 million hours of driving).


> If this car really did crash into the fire truck at around 65 MPH then it did a pretty good job at keeping everyone safe.

I believe your definition of keeping everyone safe differs from the common usage.


I believe parent is referring to the survivability of a 65 MPH head on crash into a heavy object.


Correct, "safe" was a poor choice of word. Alive and relatively unscathed according to the article is what I was going for. Thanks for the clarification.


It's also the survivability of the things that are being hit by two ton "autonomous" objects at 65mph that are at issue here.


As an additional perspective, here's an interview from James' perspective[1]. The interviewer is clearly fairly bias and holds the same viewpoint which is unfortunate but I think hearing James' perspective on the purpose of the document is interesting.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agU-mHFcXdw


Here's the full interview[1] - the above comment linked a shortened version.

For reference, this is Dr. Jordan Peterson, the University of Toronto professor who was fired a few months ago for his stance on using gender pronouns. He's a strong proponent of free speech, which he touches on in this discussion.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEDuVF7kiPU


> was fired a few months ago for his stance on using gender pronouns.

He wasn't fired. The university sent him two warning letters and then backed down from taking any action. He's still teaching psychology there.


This is an interesting video to listen to, but as you said, the interviewer is most definitely leaning a certain direction.

That being said, I am not informed enough on the topic of gender differences to actually weigh in on who is right or wrong in this situation.


I am certainly not either, I just think people grabbed their pitchforks impulsively and painted him as a misogynist monster without hearing his side of the story. From the interview it sounds like the document was sparked from an internal diversity meeting that was dubious in its intent. Whether that is actually truth or not who knows but I get the impression James was trying to have a discussion and present some evidence but ended up getting roasted instead of having the discussion he was hoping for.

The issue aside, the hypocrisy in this whole situation is really what pisses me off. James appears to be soliciting discussion and trying to consider both point of views while the masses simply took whatever the media headline was an ran with it without considering both sides.


If his desire is to spark reasoned debate, then Jordan "gender neutral pronouns are Evil Marxism" Peterson and Stefan Molyneux probably aren't the best choices of interviewers to help him with that, unfortunately

It's entirely possible that as he said, he wanted to spark some reasoned debate and he's just made a few mistakes (and got particularly unlucky with Gizmodo cutting his charted caveats) but it's equally possible that he knew exactly what reaction he was likely to provoke and aimed for just beyond the line of what would be considered acceptable.

(I have no insight into what he thinks or how he's been treated, but if I wanted an open discussion on the merits and shortcomings of Google's diversity policies, I'd probably start by suggesting that quotas are nearly always bad and male/female inequalities in STEM start long before people apply to Google, not with an essay insisting that men are more suited to software roles because biology and that Google's promotion of the view that attitudes contribute towards gender imbalances is left wing bias that threatens my psychological safety.)


I do agree with you on this. It really seems like he was trying to promote/encourage a discussion around diversity.

Also, it sounds like he _actually_ was more asking for feedback from a specific group within Google that in-turn decided to circulate it within the company as a whole.

The most troubling thing is the claim that James makes about the 'super secret, unrecorded meeting' that he attended within Google that prompted this paper in the first place. If that meeting really did take place, that is a sign of systemic racism/sexism within Google at some of the highest levels. If. I have no idea who to believe in this situation. An investigation into the company may be called-for.


Do the number of pawns correspond to the puzzle number?


I think the lack of control is undesirable. I agree the feature itself can be very useful. The title of this post sounds way more sinister than it appears.


What possible controls can Apple put in place though other than a checkbox for do/do not sync ?

And remember Apple is a positioning iCloud as a cloud for dummies solution so adding choice comes with trade offs.


Couldn't I apply the same argument for while google needs to send your call history to its servers to perform number lookup? Yet people cry fowl (rightfully so) about privacy implications.


Google has a track record of disregarding user privacy. Apple has the opposite, a track record of protecting user privacy as much as they can.


It's funny because the apps linked section below that works exactly like it should, the request goes over ajax and then the DOM is updated without a full page refresh. I wonder if the different UX was an oversight or intentional...


Dealing with time-zones and daylight savings time (which countries have it and which don't) can be a very challenge and messy problem that is really easy to get wrong.

Heres a pretty good video from computerphile on the subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY


Won't most mainstream languages have a built in library for that sort of thing these days?


Most do, but the problem is less about the library and more about understanding how to use it.

For example, if you want an event to happen in 12 hours, and it happens to be 9pm the day before daylight savings time, do you schedule it using the timezone-aware API (so it happens at 9am, which is actually 13 hours away) or 8am (which is 12 hours, but non intuitive)? What about the event that's supposed to happen every 12 hours in perpetuity?

What happens when the user/device is mobile, and crossing timezones? Which times do you use?

What happens when you're scheduling something far in advance, and then the timezone definition itself changes (as happens a few times a year) between the time you scheduled the event, and the time something actually is supposed to happen? Does the event adjust for the new definition or follow original time?

Luckily for many problem domains, the details around this don't matter too much, but this is just the tip of the iceberg with timezone challenges.


The libraries don't really help with some issues.

E.g. a rather trivial example of displaying a hourly graph/table of some measurement, including comparison with yesterday (because there are daily patterns of fluctuation).

DST means that some of days have 23 hours and some days have 25 hours. The libraries will help you make the relevant calculations, but now you have to make a decision wether the comparison that you make with "yesterday equivalent" of today's 11:00 is yesterday's 11:00 (23 hours ago) or yesterday's 10:00 (24 hours ago).

For another example, accounting of hours worked - you may have a person that has worked 25 hours in a single day, such events break some systems.


They do. The problem is that the rules of DST change over time (sometimes at the very last minute https://github.com/eggert/tz/commit/868f3528a9fd60491439ce45...) and can lead to all sorts of date math bugs when comparing timestamps across timezones.


A lot of them are... not great. Moment.js makes it somewhat bearable in JS, but the native stuff is hot garbage.


Spring forward, fall back!


But not every country or even every part of every country...


Agreed which is why I will likely not subscribe. If people are willing to pay that price point then that's fine. $15 per episode for a variable schedule seemed pricey, if you dont care about the immediacy of it it basically turns into $29 once a year where you download the back-catalog and watch at your leisure. In that sense you are paying for the ability to get it as it comes out, not for the content itself.


Wouldn't it be great if after a few more successful launches and recoveries they just come out and say they've been re-using the rockets all along.


Payload insurance won't like that very much.


Them pulling it off doesn't mean that they aren't telling their insurers :)


This. You can bicker all day long about the "correct" language to write something in but at the end of that long day of going back and forth nothing actually got written. Better to go with what you know and prototype then weigh the benefits of rewriting/refactoring it in another language/toolchain.


Except, of course, when it is already written and people are just ignorant of tools that have been around for many many years.


Somewhat off topic but I hadn't heard of Instapaper before, have you used Pocket and if so what do you like better about Instapaper? Looks like they have a speed reading and kindle sync option which is pretty cool.


I use Instapaper. I haven't heard of Pocket. I like Instapaper's really minimal design, their "Instapaper Text" extension, and the ability to save and sort articles for later.


I personally like Pocket over Instapaper. It seems to work better for me.


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