dws-2

bloggerblog said:

A human would've realized that there was someone dismounting the bike and getting ready to cross. If they see that the subject was not paying attention, they may honk the horn or start to slow down. Lidar is a machine that detects objects and runs algorithms, it has no sense of empathy or human sequence prediction. The technology will be ready, but it's not ready yet.

I wonder about this, too. I'm not ready to say that it's a real (vs. a theoretical) problem, but I do wonder if there's any algorithm for weirdness. For example, when I see a person weaving about the road, I no longer think it's safe to be near them, so I either slow down or pass if I believe it's safe. Same for a human. If I see someone who's drunk or obviously not watching where they're going, I'll slow down or change lanes even if they're currently not on the road. I wonder if the self-driving cars treat these are unpredictable events, whereas most drivers would notice the odd behavior and take preemptive action.

Here's the trouble I see. Snapchat made its mark being the service for teens and those in their twenties to share temporary private stuff (and parts). Its popularity depended in large part on being opaque and confusing to their parents.

Snapchat now wants to grow into something like Facebook, but there's already a facebook. Right now, they are trying to make it more user-friendly so everyone can use it. Snapchat will either eventually destroy the service or they will become huge like Facebook. My money's on the former.

As long it it costs a ton of money to unlock an iPhone, and Apple is free to continue locking its system down harder in response, I'm fine.

I think Apple should be free to try to make its phone impenetrable, and people should be free to attempt to hack them.

To me, the most important thing is that some thief or police officer can't break into my phone easily. If it costs a ton of money, that means that any law enforceable officer is going to have to get multiple approvals, and that adds enough layers of protection for me to free comfortable. That means the police at a minimum are going to need to have a very good reason for suspecting the person of a serious crime. And a thief isn't going to steal my information if it costs them a ton of money.

lkrupp said:

blastdoor said:

Yay guns! 

So ban pellet rifles too? How about rocks?

Those are not equal in the amount of damage they can do. You might have heard the old saw, "Don't take a pellet rifle to an assault rifle fight."

I'm pretty sure that Consumer Reports was once a valuable resource for people deciding what to buy.

In any case, these days, they are only relevant because of their past. I treat their reviews at about the same level as a blogger I've never heard of. I'll read the review, but I won't rely on it.