America & World IV: Trump's Taxing Day

[fishbowlhead]

8 people have been shot dead at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis.

There have been at least 45 mass shootings* this month alone.
*4 or more people shot (wounded or killed) excluding the gunman.

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Post-Sandy Hook, I've lost any compassion.
If the shooting of kids isn't enough to make a change, then nothing will.

Dipping into Twitter, it's the usual comments.
"It's sick people killing, not the guns!"

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
The Onion - 2014
https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-p...s-r-1819576527

This isn’t even news there now, no one cares America.

[Asura]

This isn’t even news there now, no one cares America.

Yeah; that's the thing. Like I feel sorry for those peoples' families, but this is your problem, you need to fix it and you know how. So either do it or just keep that news local.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/19/joe-biden-to-reveal-us-emissions-pledge-in-key-climate-crisis-moment

Biden is set to announce a major emissions pledge for the US

[cutmymilk]

Oh thatll go down well.

They'll probably limit vehicles to 4 litre engines or something!

[gunrock]

Back to guns for a sec.
It's like saying "cigarettes don't kill people, smoking does". Both guns and cigarettes are products whose main function is to kill someone.

[Neon Ignition]

Though obviously normal cars remain much higher in terms of accidents, the rise in self-driving cars will eventually see figures rise and the question remains what level to once the real life actions of owners kicks in:

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One was sat in the back and one in the passenger seat. The car burned for over four hours because the battery kept reigniting.

How could the car still run with no driver present though?

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Musk claims auto-pilot was disabled.

[MartyG]

Until steering wheels and pedals are removed from cars, it still remains the responsibility of the driver to ensure they're in control of the vehicle.

[wakka]

Self-driving cars will one day be a great thing that will save lots of lives. But Musk overhyping his system, which doesn't seem remotely ready for primetime, is just dangerous as hell.

Most of the features still seem like a novelty. The 'Smart Summon', that calls the car to you from across a car park, sounds incredible - but when you watch YouTube videos, the implementation is still really underwhelming.

From what I've read he's resisted internal pressure to introduce better sensing of whether the driver is paying attention too, e.g. eye tracking cameras.

[Asura]

Deadly, but it reminds me of a trick that's been doing the rounds in Lockdown.

There's a setting, in Microsoft Teams, where your profile will change to "AWAY" if you're away for 5 minutes. It's possible to set up your org so that staff can't disable this feature.

If your organisation has done this, there's an easy way to beat it. Buy a portable analog clock (fiver from Amazon) and when you're away, place the clock face-up and put your mouse on top of it. The second hand will jiggle the mouse every 60 seconds when the second hand passes the sensor.

[wakka]

Pff - Homer was doing that in the 90s!

[Neon Ignition]

It's still the case other than getting even more cars onto the road by allowing non-drivers to have self-driving cars I just don't see the appeal of them, let alone one where you're still required to hold the wheel.

I've got zero interest as a driver in the car doing all the driving for me and knowing full well there will never be a 100% driverless cartopia future I'd never for one second trust one either. The only way to help ensure drivers remain engaged in the cars motions is for them to be involved, not to sit there like weird camera and sensor monitored drones on standby where they're effectively driving without pushing the pedal... that's just a form of cruise control and beyond unrealistic to human behaviour.

Given the staggering abundance of other measures that could be done and aren't done to make roads safer it's the usual thing of devilling the car itself and Musk is having an absolute laugh if he thinks every single time an issue comes up he can tweet away any issues for Tesla.

[wakka]

knowing full well there will never be a 100% driverless cartopia future

Why not? In the last 120 years we've gone from horse and cart and steamships to where we are now - who's to say where we'll be in another 120?

[Dogg Thang]

Yeah, I don't see the issue as things improve. Feels like insisting on manually tuning to the next channel on your telly. As soon as tech allows us to bypass that, I don't see why we wouldn't. If I want to get into the city centre and just have to walk into a box outside my house and sit there until I'm there and I get out, sounds good to me.

[Neon Ignition]

Control. Whilst there's a lot of people for who driving is a nervous experience and they'd like to be able to not drive but need the convenience there's equally a ton who enjoy the experience of driving too. One of the perks of electric cars that always comes up is the acceleration, a quirk of human drivers who want to experience and be at the helm of that race from low speed to the highest. Never mind we don't have driverless motorbikes etc and the very slow transition to get existing cars off the road. The amount of random elements is one of the reasons they'll always mandate having a driver (who increasingly becomes inexperienced due to over reliance on self-driving) and they'll never ever be acting the way manufacturers want them to.

Likewise they won't want every tom, dick and harry owning one and congesting the roads up so they need a large one that holds loads of people at once, and someone to ensure fares are paid and damage doesn't happen but also to deal with any incidents. A bus.

Those who want to travel without others, conveniently from home but not engage or be expected to engage with the driving experience. A taxi.

To be honest, it's not the tech itself I take umbrage with, it's the lack of realistic sense applied to it. Self-driving feels like a golden goose concept that is being chased but will never come to pass the way it's talked about largely because of the likes of Musk who talk so much gibberish to ensure their share prices stay buoyant. Self-driving tech just needs to feed into the existing driving model more heavily, like gently auto-braking when your car gets too close to the one in front above a certain speed. The kinds of safety developments that are already happening. Which leans back to control, there will be a large number of people who just won't give up control of their vehicles whether it's some guy doing 95mph on the fast lane, a 19 year old on a quad bike on a country lane or a older woman driving down the bypass because it makes her feel independent still. That ever present human element will always undermine the system. Whilst we still can't make simple tech work flawlessly every time I'll never trust something as complicated and hazardous as a car to navigate for me. I've avoided enough road hazards where I know a self-driving car wouldn't have done what needed to be done in the moment to not rely on one.

[wakka]

If I'd asked them what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse. As Henry Ford didn't actually ever say.

In the end, the technology will become much better at driving than humans, with all our fallibilities, ever have been. Driving your own car will become one of those things, like eating meat from a slaughtered animal, which will seem totally archaic a hundred years from now.

That's my opinion, anyway.