Is it really the responsibility of a journalist to hold the hand of people not well versed in the topic at the expense of technical correctness? I don't think so, I'd prefer we hold a standard of being correct and put the onus of education on the readers. They can Google what they don't understand. We can educate the public better to not be afraid of technical details. I agree with danarmak, this piece like so many others is just a bunch of sensationalized details. You should know what you're signing up for, nobody should be surprised by anything in there.
>Is it really the responsibility of a journalist to hold the hand of people not well versed in the topic at the expense of technical correctness
I think they don't have a choice but to do it this way. A typical news outlet will report on hundreds of topics a day and probably covering the entire spectrum of topics out there.
How likely it is that all of the readers will be well versed in all the areas of expertise that human race was able to achieve in the last few thousands of years of recorded history?
Also, these journalists[not necessarily this one but in general] are usually not experts on the topic that they write on and the better ones usually would consult with someone who is well versed on that topic. There's no way that the expert that the journalist is consulting with, will be able to educate the journalist, so he/she will dumb it down and then the reporter will dumb it down further and re-shape it in a form that the news outlet can sell it to its audience(right wing, left wing, alt-right, communist, highly educated ... whatever, they too are making a product for their customers).
In this case the author is not (yet? apparently he is hoping to do this kind of thing full-time) a professional journalist but someone who made a viral Twitter thread, which was picked up by the media and of which the article is a lightly edited version.
I can't be alone in thinking that the woman walking the bicycle didn't seem to be in a crosswalk...
Like, ok so autonomous driving isn't perfect, and yeah the backup driver maybe should've been paying attention to the road instead of whatever she was doing. Fine. But I can't be alone in thinking it looks at least partly the woman's own fault. Right? Walking your bike, in the dark, across a road without looking when you don't seem to have right of way is just not a great idea. Plenty of human drivers would've probably hit her too, albeit possibly slower while slamming on the brakes.
I don't mean to blame the victim here entirely, obviously I don't think she deserved to die, I just can't help but think that Uber isn't entirely at fault here. Maybe Uber can make a car that's statistically a safer driver than human drivers, but you can't out-engineer the human ability to invent ways to get around rules other humans put in place.
The problem is that video is deceptively dark. Video cameras don't pick up nearly the same amount of light as humans eyes do and there are even photos circulating around showing it significantly brighter in this area (to the point where a human could see the entire area really, really easily).
Also some areas give pedestrians the right away regardless of where they are. Granted there are plenty of exclusions to that too and this may fall into that but regardless of who is at fault this looks avoidable if a human was driving, IMO.
Regardless it's pretty insane that their software didn't pick up this person at all. That's terrifying, IMO. That shows me it's not ready for a driver to be using it and not paying attention like this driver (they kept playing on their phone, looking down and not paying attention). People, deer, lots of crazy things are going to jump out into the road and you need to be able to handle that scenario. This person didn't even jump out, they were already in the road and were likely very visible.
Uber is a well-funded corporation with a long history of disregard for the law which in order to beat competitors has chosen to conduct real world road tests of many instances of an "autonomous driving" system apparently inferior to heavily intoxicated humans at reacting to unexpected pedestrians in certain conditions.
The woman was a homeless person who is now dead.
The above may influence people's emphasis on whose actions warrant the most scrutiny.
I'm less interested in blame than I am in the engineering whys. Shouldn't LIDAR have seen her, even if I wouldn't blame a human for hitting her in the same situation?
Sure, but this particular problem seems solvable. A self-driving car can have much better sensors than a human. I.e. maybe we should expect self-driving cars to see in total darkness. That's something we, the public, could decide is a minimum requirement.
This is a huge issue I agree with. I'd never fly with my dog in cargo. However, one thing that I think gets overlooked is that in accommodating people's pet, are we being unaccommodating to others? What about those who have pet allergies? They would expect to be able to fly in peace as well. Or people with life experience that makes them afraid of dogs. You'd think the airline would be easy to work with but is that really on the person with allergies to make themselves comfortable when the argument for ESAs is that we should all be accommodating to these people and their animals/issues? Do we need to have pet friendly/no pet flight options? Or do we need the airlines to be pro-active in accommodating for people with their pets when they could just as easily say "No. Deal with it"? Good luck convincing the airlines that they need to accommodate for society. They won't even make planes someone over 6'5" can sit in comfortably.
Outside of Cats/Dogs, if somebody sits down next to me with their Emotional Support Snake there's gonna be some loud WTFs and GTFOs and just a problem overall. Could the airline talk to individual passengers about this snake being near them on their flight beforehand? Sure. Are they going to? Nope. Better to just say there will be no gosh darn snakes on this gosh darn plane.
> What about those who have pet allergies?
> Or people with life experience that makes them afraid of dogs
These are quite rare, but they happen, and the solution has always been easy and amicable: move some people around, with the dog owner making the most compromise.
> Do we need to have pet friendly/no pet flight options?
This would be great. Right now even with ESA's there is a limit on the number of pets that can be on a flight, so you would have to find a different flight if the one you wanted already had some. By no means am I suggesting there should be a free-for-all. Only to have some limited arrangement where everyone can be happy.
> Could the airline talk to individual passengers about this snake being near them on their flight beforehand?
This kind of messaging is relatively easy nowadays, ranging from a little doggy icon on the website marking a specific flight as being pet-friendly, all the way to personalized sms/emails (which are already in place).
Humans live densely, there are very few actions you can take that affect no-one in no way. We are dealing with this overly brutely in my opinion, there exists a configuration that increases net world happiness that we are not taking advantage of.
Right but... was anybody unaware of that? There's plenty out there critiquing right-leaning beliefs that we didn't really need another. I think it was plenty fair in that it just presented a critical analysis of one side without necessarily supporting the other. You don't need to be fair to every side of an argument to point out a flaw.
I mostly got that there's parallels to draw between the idea of breaking down existing power structures while ignoring how you have to build new ones in their place. Instead of seeing a lack of critique of a side I already believe to be flawed, I see themes to be considered when I tell myself I've got the right of it.
Another way of seeing it: when attempting to knock someone else off their high horse, you don't need to be reassured that they deserved to be knocked off of their horse to be reminded not to climb up on your own afterwards.
I think its a great idea. If you're lifting weights you're probably not watching TV. I get that people on the treadmills probably wanna watch TV. That's cool. There's rows of TVs at my gyms for the rows of cardio machines.
The TV provides something to distract and look at. However, the news is stressful. I was on the treadmill last night and I'm just bombarded with MSNBC, CNN and Fox from all angles and I just could not focus on working out. It was stressful to look at, none of it was anything but politicized garbage. If I could've turned them all to cartoon network I'd have done it.
Put on local news, then put entertainment on the rest. I'm not at the gym to be more immersed in the ever-present war of buzzwords between political parties.
I would hope there's more to the story but somehow I doubt it. It says they went in there to test the perception that they wouldn't be welcome simply for their political views. So it stands to reason they probably would make it a point to not make a fuss and see if they were approached. If that's really the case, I agree it was really poorly handled.
On the other hand, as bristly as I know young progressives/liberals can be (we can be) I also wouldn't put it past the other students to be a bit obnoxious and trying to draw attention to their hats in an effort to have their point proven. Regardless you're right, not the path forward.
Did anybody else find Waze super distracting? I tried it once around Seattle, on/off the freeway and there was just too much. Like, how can we add all the distraction of texting-and-driving, but into a navigation app. Bam! Here's Waze.
I couldn't help but think "Get all this stuff off my screen so I can see where I'm going" followed by "If I actually paid attention to or used this app it'd get me killed".
I'm sure if I'd stopped and played with the settings I could've got it to a manageable level but I really couldn't see the point. You're driving, the social aspect is a dangerous and unnecessary one. Just get me from Point A to B the best you can. Back to Google Maps.
I hate the interface, but I find that it does a better job of routing me around bad traffic than Google Maps does (even though it supposely takes Waze data into account), and MUCH better than Apple Maps. So I use it every day for my commute. I ignore the other crap and just pay attention to the route it is sending me on.
If I'm actually navigating to a place I don't know how to get to rather than commuting, I'll tend to use Google Maps instead. The display is much easier to read while I'm driving. And Waze's traffic avoidance routing is very aggressive, so it can sometimes suggest really stupid stuff. On my normal commute when I know all of the roads, I can easily tell it's trying to get me to do something stupid and ignore it. But in an area I don't know well, I'm more likely to unkowningly follow an illogical direction.
Holy hell, I was just lamenting Google Maps' lack of such a feature, and the range of commute time estimates being way too conservative. Lo and behold, they had the feature, it was just in Waze.
Thanks, that's a nice feature that makes it worth having on my phone. I'll still switch to google maps for the actual navigation because of the cleaner UI, but being able to look this up ahead of time is useful.
Yes! I recently used it for a road trip and was horrified at how much clutter and crap they put on the screen - it's like gamified navigation.
A great example - I really really don't need to know how many waze users are behind me, or driving the opposite direction, or hell - even in front of me. I also don't need 3-4 indicators on the screen showing the speed of traffic going the other way on the freeway. I only care about where I'm going and how quickly I can get there.
It literally is gamified navigation, you get point rewards for driving over "candy" on your route, although so many people use waze nowadays i only wind up with a piece of candy every few months.
FWIW the display of other Wazers is useful if you want to know the likelihood of any speed traps being correctly identified (a lot of other Wazers ahead of you in either direction should suffice).
Absolutely not. Waze is the pinnacle of GPS vehicle navigation apps. Google and Apple maps don't even come close.
Waze has probably saved me at least $1,000 in speeding fines, and has an almost uncanny ability to report upcoming hazards liked stopped cars or debris in the road. (Seriously, I can't believe how some car that just stopped is there)
Reading your comment is thoroughly confusing, since you really shouldn't be "looking" at waze while driving much since it talks to you the whole time. Adding an event is trivial, I mean I'm not sure how you could make it any more simple.
Unless you suffer from a specific condition preventing you from taking your eyes off a nearby screen I can't see how it would impact your driving any worse than any other GPS app
Is there some clever way of entering events better than touching the screen? I find that I often can't deal with the phone the second I see a hazard/construction/speed trap but would like to at least "register" it so I can send it off a few minutes later. Same for confirming alerts from others, I find that I can't verify an alert until I get to the location, and at that point I only have about 200 feet until the option goes away.
I defended Waze in this thread, but frankly it's absurd to me that someone would argue that a process which requires several taps on specific parts of the screen (like reporting a stopped car) is the same level of impact as other GPS apps that require literally zero interaction while you're driving...
I use Waze for nav and I don't find it any more/less distracting than Google or Apple Maps. I did turn off all sounds/alerts and never report on things while I'm driving. So basically I just use it for a nav app and nothing else.
The UX is goddamned terrible, and there needs to be a setting to mute alerts but allow turn by turn directions to be spoken. Why the hell I want to hear about every dead squirrel on the side of the road but NOT hear directions is beyond me.
You can turn off specific alerts (at least on the iPhone version); I've disabled "Hazards on shoulder" because it was getting annoying hearing it so frequently.
I'd make an exception for that. Though I don't find it to be all that useful. For one, I haven't been pulled over since I moved to CA 15 years ago and I speed EVERYWHERE. But I don't do anything else 'wrong' behind the wheel.
I use it as my navigation app. It works better when I got the bigger phone (Not sure how I used it on an iPhone 4s). There is a lot on the screen, but I usually just use the voice navigation feature.
It gives pretty good directions most of the time, and reroutes gracefully. Works in many countries.
I don't like the UI though. It figures out you've stopped and as I glance to see the map, an add pops up over the top of the screen, which is anoying. Clicking on the bar on the bottom of the screen to "stop" or enter a new address never seems intuitive. Its workable though and good at finding locations by name.
One feature it has thats nice, is that you can send someone your route, and it will when your about 2 minutes out (alternatively they can watch your progress).
It's fantastic for a passenger to help someone navigate with, but I could see it being distracting for an individual.
When you're a passenger, you can point out (and report) upcoming obstacles, amuse yourself looking at the little catcar bubbles, etc. They should probably make a quick "I am the driver/passenger" button, though.
Pick up a sport/hobby with a social aspect. Many cities (I'm assuming you live in a populated area) have City League sports you can simply sign up for, pay a fee, then get put on a team.
You can join a low level (or high level if you're competitive) dodgeball team, or soccer, or basically whatever strikes your fancy, then meet some new friends. It also gets you out of the house once a week or more with some new faces.
To add to the GP: you might consider trying ultimate frisbee. The barrier to entry for a city league is really low (little athletic ability and no domain knowledge required) and many players tend to be technical people: I know several software devs who play frequently. In addition, the community is the most welcoming and least disparaging I've ever seen in any organization, bar none.
If you're really really not into athletic pursuits, I would second meetup.com for your interests. You also might check to see if your city has any bars/restaurants focused around board games or trivia. Those are also great for meeting new friends.
