bolder88

Next you'll be telling me that speech recognition works. It doesn't.

"There won't be a setting to turn off to achieve an outcome whereby the car touches any other object. It just won't happen while you're driving on public roads."

Can you not see the idiotic flaw in your plan.

You're driving along. You're coming to a junction. A bike isn't looking and is going full speed and will hit into the front side of your car. You do not have time to brake. Your only option is to swerve into the next lane, which will mean you crash into a fellow car.

You have crashed into a car, but you have saved the cyclists life.

There is absolutely no way in the world you'll be able to get regulations in place to prevent making fully manually operated vehicles. You're high. It's not going to happen.

There's also no evidence to suggest that driverless cars will make roads any safer. You still have to account for cyclists, pedestrians, animals, and the billions of cars driven by people etc etc.

If you're a "city" person, that may be the case. But it's a terribly big generalization to make about all younger generations.

The younger generations I know can't wait to drive, and have the freedom to travel where they want to.

Not really. The first rule of driving a car, is assume that everyone else driving a car is trying to kill you, is blind and is absolutely rubbish at driving.

If you keep that rule in mind at all times, you'll be pretty safe.

I would absolutely trust a random driver far more than a self driving car.

They can react quicker, but can they react correctly. What if a cow starts ramming the side of the car? Did the programmers account for that eventuality?

Just to give a counterpoint (I know this opinion will be extremely unpopular on HN)

I'd explain how there was a time when we were free to drive our own cars, and make our own decisions. And simply hop in a car and drive.

Not like now where you get in the car and it asks you to download the latest software update, then it monitors your every move, sending back data to the car makers/NSA and showing you ads as you drive along at ridiculously slow speeds. It'll probably also drive you past a certain shop if they pay the car maker enough money! Oh no, the car has crashed. Better turn it off and on again and hope for the best. Nothing like putting my life in some low paid software engineers hands! Oh dear, the car maker has gone bust. Now you can't get any software updates, and the software has stopped working as it can't dial home anymore. Oh well, tough luck! You didn't really think you could buy a car to own and do what you want with did you? You can only pay subscription fees for cars now.

Freedom is certainly a double edged sword. With freedom comes responsibility. But taking away freedom isn't the answer. Making people more responsible is.

It's going to be pretty impossible to take away the peoples right to drive cars (Even harder than taking away the right to bear arms in the US!) Stop drinking the kool-aid. It's not going to happen.

I'm rooting for some massive disasters/scandals with self driven cars, to put the idea to bed. And you can be pretty sure there will be some big disasters if they ever get anywhere with it.

Lets not pretend that anything web startup related really changes the future that much. Is twitter really improving peoples lives and happiness? Probably the reverse. Has Reddit proven itself as a net gain for us, or have billions of hours of productivity been squandered laughing at the latest meme or lolcat.

I actually joined HN a few years ago, but decided to leave my old account. I would probably stop looking at when people joined as some measure of their worth if I were you.

As for your last statement. I like playing on computers. I love building fun things. But I would be equally happy if the internet didn't exist, and I was fulfilling that 'building' desire someplace else. I don't "need" it to be happy.

Not at all.

I am happy to live now, just as happy as I would have been to live 100 years ago, or 1000 years ago.

My happiness is not tied to technological enhancement.

I think the ambition on HN is generally

  * Make another useless timewasting webapp
  * Sell it for billions
  * Solve world hunger, philanthropy, make the world all better again

I do consider myself conservative. But I don't understand why some feel the need to "progress". Why not just live and enjoy your life instead of constantly wanting to progress to the future. Are you that depressed about your current life that you need to strive for technological improvements to make it bearable?

Would you still be able to live a happy fulfilled life if absolutely NO "progress" was made during it? I would.

I'm sure it would benefit people in a few generations time. The issue I have with it is that I don't want to be forced to pay for it by my government.

I would rather not force the public to fund scientific research.

Certainly not. I'd rather see taxes lowered, so people can make their own decisions about how they want to spend their own money.

I'm perfectly happy to live my life on Earth. If they suddenly colonise Mars, and it's fantastic, and it makes you live twice as long and have superpowers, I would still rather stay here. I'm simply not interested in it.

People often cite the technological advances - "velcro" etc but I don't think you're getting value for money if that's your aim, and again, I think it should be done in the private sector rather than forcing people who have absolutely no interest in space, to pay for it.

Love how theguardian has a massive banner ad at the top of this article. God I hate the guardian.

why depressing? I've never understood this fascination some have with spending billions going on a fun trip to mars.

That sort of thing should be funded by rich people or corporations who see market value in doing it. Not paid for by taxes.

We have enough problems to solve here that will actually benefit people.

It also instantly removes the concept of personal responsibility, or any incentive to try.

Communism failed. Remember?

Why bother getting a job when you can just vote in whichever party is going to raise the 'basic income' the most?

Why bother, as a political party, with having good solid policies that will benefit everyone, when you can just bribe the electorate with money, by promising to raise the 'basic income' paid for by future debt!

There's trying something new, and there's complete idiocy. This is the latter.

It's dangerous and very worrying that people are trying to repeat mistakes.

OR, those people are wealthy because they have a high IQ, and are likely to give birth to children with a high IQ.

I would bet that's far more likely.

My alternative would be firstly to legislate that any network can only send packets that have a source address owned by them.

This would drastically cut down source address spoofing, which is the worst type of DDoS to try to cope with.

Secondly I'd setup a far better method of reporting and blocking traffic up the chain.

FWIW, This is fairly standard.

Linode for example will null-route your linode for 24 hours if it's attacked.

It's quite irritating that hosting companies seem to see null-routing as a solution to a DDoS attack.

demeaning and offensive? Don't you think animals or other possible future species should have rights too? Shame on you.

"It's now very common to hear people say, "I'm rather offended by that", as if that gives them certain rights. It's no more than a whine. It has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. "I'm offended by that." Well, so fucking what?" - Stephen Fry

I'm done here.

Why not change it to include interspecies marriage next? Man+sheep+frog. What about inanimate objects! A man and a lamp? May as well allow people to marry trees while we're at it.

I am suggesting that yes.

The majority of people against redefining the word marriage to include same sex unions, aren't against it because they want to deny anyone any rights.

  Waitress - a woman who waits on people
  Marriage - The union of one man and one woman

Either both words are sexist and discriminatory, or neither is, or you do not accept the common meaning of the word 'marriage'.

As Stephen Fry said, give them all the same rights, just call it something else. "Civil Union" or something.

Is the word "waitress" discriminatory and sexist as well? Should we campaign to get that word redefined so it includes men?

People who say yes to the above are the ones sapping all the fun and enjoyment out of the world in the name of their crazy political correctness bullshit.

I don't think it's fruitful to get into such an argument here, so lets just agree to disagree.

In what possible way is it relevant? Why would it even be something anyone attending would care about? The conference is about programming, not gayness.

Good on him for standing up for what he believes in, and putting his money where his mouth is. If only more did the same.

Disagree.

You wouldn't say "Wow you invented a lovely picture of a house" to your kid would you. They drew a picture. Just like a programmer writes a program.

Why is he "inventor of..." and the others are just "creator of..."

Personally, I think using "inventor" when related to writing software is a little over the top.

Still, not as irritating as when people call Crockford "inventor of JSON" I guess...

You probably posted something slightly critical of startups, or a YC company at some point in the past.

Polls like this are the equivalent of asking a builder if he likes wood, metal, concrete, plywood, slate, etc. Or if he likes a saw more than a hammer.

Which only a complete moron would do.

Take the twitter valuation, and say to yourself "well even if I'm only 0.1% as successful as twitter is...." and go from there.

500m tweets a day is nothing.

That's only 5,700 tweets a second.

An average IRC network for example does more than that.