asoneth

I apologize if I was unclear. In response to a cyclist saying they prefer being near Waymo vehicles to human drivers you said:

>> that's cool. until it's not...same with code updates that will make cyclist life worse...you're not really their main concern

I agree and expect that the wide safety tolerances driverless cars currently have will become tighter as they gain more experience, and that this will make them more efficient but potentially less pleasant to be around than they used to be.

But even if pedestrian and cyclists lives are not a main concern for self-driving car companies, some concern is better than none. For some human drivers their concerns seem to be things like not getting arrested, getting to their destination as quickly as possible, checking social media to satisfy their boredom, and not scratching the paint on their vehicle. Some drivers consider vulnerable road users like cyclists to be sub-human [1].

My point is that the bar in the US has been set so incredibly low that even if the code updates make their products worse for cyclists than they used to be or even killing some vulnerable road users that may still be safer and preferable to the incompetence and complete indifference on the part of human drivers.

Having said that, the same calculus may not apply in countries that don't issue drivers a license to kill people, so the bar for driverless cars is likely to be much higher in such places.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136984782...

In the United States there are few legal repercussions when a human driver kills someone as long as they are sober and utter the phrase "I didn't see them". Therefore, biking on US roads means trusting in the inherent goodness (and attentiveness) of the drivers around you.

Driverless cars run by a company protecting itself from reputational and legal risk seems less dystopian than the status quo.

My family has a couple cars but we still ride with our kids in taxis all the time, for example to the airport or into/out of the city. Even hauling bikes isn't insurmountable -- we've taken weeklong bike camping trips with friends and because biking in a big circle isn't as much fun we hire a bigger vehicle that can haul a dozen bikes to the starting point.

> Just because they're driven by computers now isn't going to magically change all the reasons that people didn't use them before (hint: it wasn't because they were driven by humans).

Sort of. The primary reason I don't hire vehicles more often is cost, which is related to the human driver. The wealthiest families I know are much more likely to use a car service to ferry family members around.

If there was a car service that could whisk us to school, work, grocery shopping, etc with no more than 15 minutes advanced notice for less than the cumulative cost of a similarly-sized private vehicle I'd sell one of our cars in a heartbeat. I have no idea whether that future is years or decades away, but when it occurs many families I know would go from 2 or 3 cars down to 1.

I'll admit that going from 1 car to 0 cars would be a tougher sell. For that I'd have to be confident in five nines of availability and vehicles that can haul equipment like bikes and kayaks. But that doesn't seem like an insurmountable problem, just a logistical one that'll take a bit longer.

It may not stop someone the first time, but it's not hard to block the reserving account and prevent a second time from occurring. For most people the threat of being placed on the "no-fly" list is sufficient to ensure prosocial behavior.

I've taken taxis with infants and small children several dozen times. It doesn't take me more than about twenty seconds to pop the car seat out of the stroller and latch it into the back seat of a taxi, for slightly older kids we have a few lightweight folding booster seats, and personally I've found that a car seat vest is particularly handy and lightweight.

> Will you pay the cost difference afterwards?

Are you asking if I would be willing to pay more money for goods that don't irreversibly destroy ocean ecosystems and that aren't made with slave labor?

I struggle to imagine the kind of person who would say no to such a question. Someone with no money in a country with no safety net on the verge of starvation? Someone with no moral comapass?

> I kinda don't like the taste of bugs.

I don't understand what bugs have to do with ocean trawling. Is this an unusual way of referring to lobster?

That is an old screenshot. The Bloomberg Terminal currently uses a fantastic set of proprietary fonts designed for the company by Matthew Carter (who did Georgia and Verdana).

See https://www.bloomberg.com/company/stories/how-bloomberg-term...

Also see previous discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11717351

Curious what you mean by "real tray by default"?

Notifications? Background apps? One of the AppIndicator shell extensions? Something else?

Perhaps this is a "horses for courses" thing?

Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of issues with design choices in both GNOME and macOS (don't get me started on the "flattening" trend to eliminate UI signifiers and affordances) but on the whole it feels like they are at least thoughtful in how they choose to strike a balance between efficiency, learnability, functionality, accessibility, consistency, and aesthetics. I haven't used KDE in a while, but my impression was that it was not far behind.

Whereas the majority of r/unixporn screenshots I've seen are gaudy with a focus on aesthetics above other considerations. That may be a good taste for some and I also wonder why someone hasn't made a desktop environment for folks who like that sort of thing, but it's not surprising that the most popular ones have a more mature approach to design.

I think that mad optimism reminds me of the https://aptera.us/ solar car as well, or some of the wackier Dyson products.

It's not about doing things differently for the sake of being different, but going back to first principles and building up from there.

Though in reality the contributions from these sorts of ground-up rethinks often end up being more about rediscovering that there was indeed a good rationale behind the conventions they discarded rather than actually producing a successful product.

Still, my hat is off to anyone who decides to spend their own money giving Chesterton's fence a good shake every now and again, just to be sure.

I have strong positive and negative emotional reactions to things on a daily basis -- I sometimes tear up reading books to my children, have emotional responses to songs, that sort of thing.

As I watched the video I found the destruction beautiful and heartbreaking. If it had been used as an artistic commentary on, oh I don't know, our underappreciation of good tools, the undermining of art under fascism, the dumbing-down and compression of culture under capitalism, etc that would have been interesting.

But the reveal at the end is that the force destroying all these artistic tools is none other than one of the world's richest companies using the spectacle to hawk their latest must-have gewgaw. And the delicious irony of Apple unintentionally positioning itself as the unstoppable, soulless destroyer of art and culture is just chef's kiss perfection. I'm honestly sad they pulled the ad.

But to your question, I haven't noticed any impact of strong emotions on a daily basis except that I get overly excited sometimes when talking about things and have to bring a tissue to movies. I'm similarly curious what it's like for people who don't really have emotional reactions to things. I work with folks like this, and I am curious. Do they feel things when they look at art, listen to music, read literature, look at photos, or is it just sort of background ambiance? When evaluating art do they plot perfection on the horizontal of a graph and importance on the vertical to yield the measure of its greatness?

> I object to the current trend of minority groups trying to impose their views to the whole of society and to paint those who disagree as 'wrong'.

I'm curious what you mean by "impose their views" with respect to meat-eating. Has a vegan ever tried to stop you from eating meat for example through physical force, threatening your livelihood, making meat illegal in their state, etc?

Don't get me wrong, I also dislike when strangers impose their moral, ethical, racial, political, or religious views on me.

But of all the groups that concern me, vegans are low on my list as their weapons mostly seem to be uncomfortably strong arguments on the internet and the occasional preachy Netflix documentary.

> Cows can‘t do that and don‘t have the point of reference to compare. I doubt even humans could unless they are raised to be taught all the cultural norms and what‘s good and bad.

By that logic, would it be ethical to eat humans who do not have a point of reference to compare and have not been taught cultural norms and what's good and bad?

> Because empathy being applied to other species is an evolutionary bug, not a feature

I hope our eventual AI overlords do not feel similarly.

> Does the CCP really think that the US military are going to use ordinary street msps to target their missiles and that this obfuscation will protect them from on-target hits?

In some cases using consumer-level street maps could make for more accurate targeting.

Many years ago I worked on command & control systems for a US military contractor. The mapping imagery our software used from military mapping providers were high resolution but often more out-of-date than commercial offerings. One example a warfighter showed me stuck with me because it was particularly embarrassing and egregious -- military imagery showed an area with a handful of shacks in the middle of the desert but Google's satellite imagery showed that it had become a sprawling town. Because of issues like that, army warfighters were forced to regularly cross-check with Google and/or Yahoo! maps when planning operations.

It is no longer an area I work in and I would expect that military imagery is now more up-to-date, but there are likely still datapoints uploaded to OpenStreetMap that are more timely and accurate than what government contractors provide. So I would not be surprised if there are still warfighters out there cross-checking with consumer mapping providers before ordering strikes.

> By this logic, would you say that software engineers should be financially liable for any bugs they cause

Yes. Professional engineers are held ethically, professionally, and in some cases financially responsible for the work they sign off on. Personally, I agree with Dijkstra who pointed out in a speech in 1993 that the term "software engineer" is a hollow sham:

> And also the programming manager has found the euphemism with which to lend an air of respectability to what he does: “software engineering”...

> In the mean time, software engineering has become an almost empty term, as was nicely demonstrated by Data General who overnight promoted all its programmers to the exalted rank of “software engineer”! But for the managing community it was a godsend which now covers a brew of management, budgeting, sales, advertising and other forms of applied psychology.

> Ours is the task to remember (and to remind) that, in what is now called “software engineering”, not a single sound engineering principle is involved. (On the contrary: its spokesmen take the trouble of arguing the irrelevance of the engineering principles known.) Software Engineering as it is today is just humbug; from an academic —i.e. scientific and educational— point of view it is a sham, a fraud.

From https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD11xx/E...

> But I don't think I'd recommend Gboard to someone who needs a simplified experience. Gboard is very complicated.

Exactly. I'm not keen to attempt to explain the distinction between an input method and a keyboard language setting to a five-year-old or a reluctant 85-year-old. Nor am I keen to troubleshoot how they managed to get something as basic as a keyboard into a weird state.

Don't get me wrong, I personally appreciate the flexibility, use Android on my personal device, and I help my folks and some of my uncles when they run into an issue on their Android phones that they can't solve after a little searching. But through trial-and-error I've concluded that any family members who reach out to me at the first sign of trouble need to be in the Apple ecosystem.

On my Pixel phone keyboard I have two ways to switch language: Holding the spacebar gives me a list labeled "Change keyboard" with six options whereas clicking the keyboard icon in the lower-right corner gives me a similar list except the title is "Choose input method", the options are in a completely different order, the options have slightly different names ("English (US) QWERTY" vs "English (US) (QWERTY) Gboard"), the list uses radio buttons instead of a checkmark, and includes an option for "Google Voice Typing".

These might seem like minor issues to us, but they can derail non-technical users who may be confused why the list looks different from the last time they switched languages. And this lack of coordination between elements is par for the course for Google design. Not saying there aren't examples of bad design from Apple, but most of their products seem to have someone in a position of authority who pays attention to detail and their issues seem less like oversights than bad decisions.

Apologies for explaining the joke, but pretty sure the cucumber chopping and wall of achievements is a reference to https://vimeo.com/46304267

Tinkering with internal combustion engines in a personal garage? Sure.

In an apartment of a multi-family dwelling? Less sure.

> The amount of revenue the city takes in through ticketing is outrageous, to the point that it's less and less about bylaw enforcement and more about making money.

Be that as it may, a society that allows individuals to claim public land for private use without any compensation or penalty also seems outrageous.

I can't speak to SF and personally I'd look the other way if someone is taking less than a couple feet from a sufficiently wide sidewalk in front of their house. But at least in NYC many sidewalks, crosswalks, bike lanes, car lanes, and bus lanes are impassable because the cost of parking there is far too low.

Only $108 per ticket seems low to me. Depending on how often they write tickets it may still be worth it for residents to park on the sidewalk:

If monthly rent in SF is between $4.63 and $5.35/sqft[1] then the value of an additional ~130sqft[2] room would be at least $600/month. An unfinished garage space is probably a little less so let's say the value of a garage is $500/month. As long as you get four or fewer tickets per month then it's still cost-effective to continue to park your private vehicle in the public right-of-way and continue to use your garage for an office, gym, storage, other car, etc.

Something similar happened in NYC. Renting a garage became more expensive than just paying a couple street sweeping tickets a week so many people started keeping their car on the street and treating the tickets as a parking fee.

[1] https://www.renthop.com/average-rent-in/san-francisco-ca [2] https://www.dimensions.com/element/parking-spaces

> So I go back to him and he accused me of lying and went and told the CEO. The CEO, a pretty chill guy with a doctorate, I was expecting to have a rational discussion about with but not he screamed at me too.

That's terrible, I'm so glad you got out of that situation.

Hands down the best part about working in a field like tech and building up a cushion of savings has been that I haven't had to put up with coworkers who yell, accuse each other of lying, or any other immature, boundary-pushing behavior.

In the past I worked for the military, academia, theater, etc and there were times when I felt a strong esprit de corps and others when I felt stuck because I was a cog in a large machine and had granted jerks immense power over my life -- working on a contract in a war zone, needing approval from certain professors to further my career, needing a job to pay the rent, etc.

Whereas in tech it's easier to fix situations like this. In one case I went home early to send out resumes and left a few months later. In the other I just sent a record of the conversation to my boss and she dealt with the issue appropriately.

A major career regret is having put up with jerks. No matter how much the customer/company pays or how interesting the work is you can find other work that pays just as well and is just as interesting except you get to spend more of your exceedingly short lifespan with kind, smart, well-adjusted people.

My friends and I did DC to Pittsburgh every couple years when I lived in Pittsburgh and it's a great gateway trip to see if you like bike camping.

Not sure about your fitness level but if you can handle a 75 mile ride and have a three day weekend in the summer you can ride from Pittsburgh to Ohiopyle, camp at the state park, spend a day doing rafting, natural water slides, Fallingwater & Kentuck Knob, etc, and then come back on the third day. (And for folks who don't like sleeping on the ground there are hotels / B&Bs there too.)

> None of these lists ever seem to be as fleshed out, up to date, or well organized as https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted

That is an excellent and comprehensive list, but is it targeted at individuals or organizations? Every area lists dozens of projects with a short description but no ranking, comparisons, skill-set required, or editorial recommendations.

Personally I rely on resources like https://alternativeto.net or "best of" lists to pick a couple options to evaluate in more depth. If I analyzed 10 times as many options I might discover really wonderful projects I would have otherwise missed, but I struggle to imagine having that kind of time.

Right, I suspect that $15 will prove to be far too low to dissuade 90% of lower Manhattan drivers. Having said that, it's a reasonable (and politically palatable) starting guess, it provides funding to improve transit, makes drivers pay for at least a fraction of the negative externalities they impose on the neighborhoods they drive through, and it can always be increased over time until it has the intended effect.

> I wonder if the city will keep metrics up to see how well it's working.

Certainly they've talked about tracking travel times before and after, but I think the real test will be the long-term changes in land value. My guess is that eventually land value in car-dependent communities in the NYC metro area will decrease relative to those with transit access.

> It will hurt the Uber drivers and delivery drivers

That is a reasonable hypothesis, but I'm sure we'll find out. I would wager that the reduced travel time will allow drivers to make more deliveries which will make up for the daily $15 fee. In the end, the market will decide.

> Why just Manhattan you think?

That's where the supply/demand imbalance seems most acute. Well, there and many of the brides which we should be charging for as well. Any place that becomes gridlocked on a regular basis should probably have a price applied to ensure efficient utilization.

Finally, if we're worried that this fee is regressive, I think a better solution would be to use some of the funds to make the state income tax even more progressive. Subsiding driving for a small number of poor and middle class drivers seems less fair and efficient than letting people keep more of their money at tax time.

I agree we should ticket anyone who is blocking the box and I wish they still enforced those fines/points. But as drivers become increasingly lawless, especially in NYC, being the only person following the law can make you and the people around you less safe. Similar to driving in a developing country, driving safely in NYC requires learning the actual rules of the road which are not the same as the legal rules.

(Personally I avoid driving and biking in midtown these days because I am uncomfortable breaking the law, but when I do have to choose between following the law and operating safely I choose the latter.)

> Making something more expensive will actually lower costs?

Yes, this isn't uncommon. Besides the example you gave of developing new methods, if costs are high due to supply shortages causing production delays, then increasing the price of those supplies can lower overall costs if it results in higher and more predictable supply.

In the case of the supply shortage of NYC roadway space I do not know if $15 is high enough to lower travel times, but if it is then I can absolutely see it lowering delivery costs.

As a thought experiment, if someone built private tunnels throughout lower Manhattan that allowed drivers to bypass most traffic and charged $15 per day for access, what fraction of delivery drivers would choose to pay that versus sit in traffic and make fewer deliveries?

I'm curious what fraction of people who drive a personal vehicle into lower Manhattan on a regular basis are poor or middle class. What would your guess be?

Mine would be a tenth or less. When I lived in NYC the only people I knew who commuted by personal car in Manhattan were people who made mid-six-figures and lived in some NJ/Westchester suburb. Everyone else took the train/subway.

I think it's meant to approximate that sort of dynamic pricing while making it simpler for drivers (and voters) to understand.

Sort of like how dynamic electricity pricing for retail consumers takes the form of binary peak/off-peak pricing whereas industrial users can buy from wholesale markets with wild price swings.