robbrown451

"So if I design a self driving car which kills someone, it's the car that goes to jail?"

No but the manufacturer will typically be held responsible. If the manufacturer intentionally designed it to kill people, someone could certainly be charged with murder. More likely it was a software defect and then it is a matter of financial liability. (in between is a software defect that someone knew about and chose not to fix)

This isn't a new issue. If you design a car and the brakes fail due to a design issue and that issue can be determined to be something that could have been preventable by more competent design.... someone might indeed go to jail but more likely it would be the corporation paying out a large amount of money.

It could even be a mixture of the manufacturer's fault and the driver. Maybe the brakes failed but the driver was speeding and being reckless and slammed on the brakes with no time to spare. Had it not been a faulty design, no one would have gotten hurt, but also if the driver had been competent and responsible, no one would have gotten hurt.

But with self driving cars, when they no longer need a "safety driver", it certainly won't typically be the human occupant of the car's fault to any degree, since they are simply a passenger.

Differentiating between a human and a machine simply because one "is not an algorithm" doesn't make a lot of sense. If it were true, people would very easily game it, by using algorithms to automate the most trivial parts of copying someone's work.

Ultimately the algorithm is automating something a human could do. There is a lot of gray area to copyright law, but you can't get around that simply by offloading to an algorithm.

I live in Bernal Heights. Maybe that's why I haven't seen a human poop on the sidewalk in.... well never, anywhere near me. Probably seen it twice in 20 some years living here, and not anywhere close to here.

Were you aware that the Tenderloin is, ya know, what it is, before you got an apartment there? It's been well known as the seediest part of the city for a century or more.

I've tried to use Resolve (on other platforms). I am quite competent in, for instance, ScreenFlow for the mac. Works great for regular video editing (not just screen capture stuff), and while there is a lot to learn, it is quite intuitive. Unfortunatley my mac is old and I need windows for work, so I thought Resolve would come to the rescue.

But I just can't wrap my head around the Resolve workflow. To do really basic stuff it seems to have a huge learning curve. I have no doubt it is powerful, but there is a point where I just can't justify the time to learn it. (I use a lot of video in my job as well as hobby/family stuff, but I'm not a professional video editor per se)

Is this anyone else's experience? Is it really only targeted at professionals? I was very excited to see that they are giving away such a sophisticated product for free, but man....

Sure that's kind of my point. The larger the scale, the harder it is to solve such problems. People tend to care first about themselves and their kids, then other family, then about people they interact with regularly. The less they are related or interact with you on a regular basis, the less you prioritize their well being. This is human nature, and easily explained by Darwinian evolution.

Climate change is inherently large scale. There's nothing that will change that.

We can change the equation only by large scale "contracts" and the like. That generally means governments. For instance, we can vote for representatives that make laws that limit emissions from factories and vehicles, and make treaties with other countries. Those things are not subject to tragedy of the commons.

I am not advocating for "messing with the atmosphere" in this sense, but I'm also not rejecting it outright. We are already messing with the atmosphere on a large scale, due to billions of individual decisions driven each one of those individuals' self-interest. If you are going to mess with it, I'd rather it done based on a controlled methodology based on science.

Do you want people to explain why climate change is urgent, here in a comment?

Your links don't say "climate change isn't a problem," they just have a tiny bit of data out of context, that very few people here have the ability to fully understand as to how they may or may not relate to climate change. Do you really think the fact that agricultural output has increased over time says much about climate change, vs. technology and population and such? Or that a 2 degree temperature change in England is a) not a problem, just because a 2 degree temperature change seems minor, or b) is really going to give non-scientists a good perspective on something like this? Unless you understand all the things involved, you really need to let the scientists do an analysis on the data, rather than your seat-of-the-pants approach. If you don't want to trust the scientists, great, but just showing a tiny bit of data and extrapolating a conclusion based on intuition probably doesn't cut it.

The below is just pasted from Wikipedia, but it's a great starting point. You can follow the citations if you go to the article. Sure, it's a politicized issue so you'll always find a few on the other side. But the vast majority of scientists agree with this:

Due to climate change, deserts are expanding, while heat waves and wildfires are becoming more common. Increased warming in the Arctic has contributed to melting permafrost, glacial retreat and sea ice loss. Higher temperatures are also causing more intense storms, droughts, and other weather extremes. Rapid environmental change in mountains, coral reefs, and the Arctic is forcing many species to relocate or become extinct. Climate change threatens people with food and water scarcity, increased flooding, extreme heat, more disease, and economic loss. Human migration and conflict can also be a result. The World Health Organization (WHO) calls climate change the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century. Even if efforts to minimise future warming are successful, some effects will continue for centuries. These include sea level rise, and warmer, more acidic oceans.

I say cover all land and ocean surfaces with self-replicating robots with solar panels. Instead of the energy going into heat, it generates electricity, which powers the robots, which make more of themselves as well as do other valuable things like wash our dishes and fold our laundry.

I'm sure there is a problem with this idea but I'm not sure what it is.

Strong suspicion you've never studied game theory, or even Adam Smithian economics. "Everybody just agree to what is best for everyone" pretty much never works.

People don't work like that. Frankly, it is hopelessly naive of the human condition and akin to saying "why don't we all stop wasting money on locks and just all of us agree to stop stealing?" Or "why do we need money? Can't we just all do our part and only take what we need?" Or "why can't we agree to end wars?"

People tend to (mostly) calculate what is best for them. Most people would just say "the only thing I can control is what I do, not what everyone else does. The best outcome for me is to live like I want to live, regardless of what everyone else does." Some people have more awareness of what is good for all than others, but very few will make huge individual sacrifices for the sake of making a hard-to-detect positive impact on the common good.

See "prisoners' dilemma", "tragedy of the commons", "invisible hand", and so on.

A government, on the other hand -- especially one as big as the US government -- is generally the only way to address this sort of thing. I'm not saying this is a great plan, but I suspect things like this are worth looking into.

Although they'd never be exact....otherwise the full moon would always be the same day of week.

Weeks aren't subdivisions of months, they are completely independent of months and years. There is good reason for this.

Having months alternate between long and short (as they typically do) is a lot better than just having one short month. It would get weird with things like rent payments if you have one month that is way shorter than the others. (although I do wish they chose a 30 day month to occasionally add a 31st day for leap year)

And I'm not sure we'd be better off with time done with multiples of ten rather than highly composite numbers like 24 and 60.

Obviously our system is far from perfect, but it's not all that surprising it is the way it is.

Except for leap seconds. Leap seconds are just stupid. Far better to make adjustments like that much more rarely.

Yes it is a challenging problem to do it well. But cool to think about!

Of course. But I didn't say a photo. (it could be video, it could be lidar, etc) And yeah maybe you need the robot to pick up each rock and look at it from different angles.

Very cool.

Now what I want is something that will scan a pile of rocks and tell me how to put them together to build a wall with minimal space between them.

https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/stone-wall-texture-pict...

Or better yet, tell my robot how to do it.

I hope you don't design things that other people use, because that sort of attitude is why so many thing suck.

There is a lot of point in, if not getting aggravated, striving to do better in the things you do.

Again, no one took out their frustrations on customer support, so I'm not sure why you keep saying that. They came to HN and voiced them.

And they have a right to be aggravated. You're talking about something else, their outward reaction, which you are making assumptions about.

I'd hope every user interface designer (and yes this is user interface design) also gets aggravated by bad design. If all you do is make excuses for bad design, it's a good bet your designs suck.

"But getting upset and starting off the chat with a real person in a bad mood or tone,"

They didn't say that. They never said they took it out on the employee. They said that the system caused the customer to be less happy than they could have been. Perfectly legit complaint, and a failure on the part of the people who set up the system.

That's actually why they came HERE to ask. That is something they have control over.

Yes I agree. (I think I said "third party")

They operate as a corporation in the United States and are subject to its laws. They owe what the law says they do. And the laws can be changed.

Feel free to vote for people who think companies can do as they please just because you aren't directly paying for them (even though they make money off you), I'll vote for other people.

No, it should not be Google doing the review, it has to be a non-biased third party. This should apply to a lot of things, including app store stuff. Google doesn't make the decision, but they do get a share of the fee (if they don't have to pay out), since it is a hassle for them and they should be protected against frivolous complaints.

And by the way, while I'm sure Google should have to restore the account in this case, I'm not so sure Google should have to compensate even for the investigation fee. Because honestly it is a tad clueless to take photos of a kid's privates and allow them in the cloud. He didn't do anything truly "wrong" (in the molestation/ child porn sense), but still should have known it wasn't a good idea, so paying $100 for his mistake and being without his account for a week sounds about the right "punishment."

"You have to consider that everything you have on any platform can be taken away at any time for whatever reason and there is nothing you can do about it"

Well there is something you can do about it, which is involve courts and/or legislation.

I mean your advice may be good for individuals who haven't (yet) run into this, but I think the discussion should be more "why is this acceptable and what can we do about it?"

Again, what does this have to do with this story? Having the police called on you because of something like this is not going to result in the police chasing you, so this has nothing to do with this story. It's just utterly unrelated what-aboutism.

"but unless we can have truly objective AI, I don't think we will be absent of these types of problems."

You don't need "objective AI." In this case, you just need a process that goes to a human when it is contested. Sure, make the user pay a certain amount of money to get an investigation by a third party or to have all the information provided to a court. But if Google made a mistake, and that mistake caused tort, Google is going to have to pay out.

The appropriate thing to happen here is something along these lines:

Google's AI tells the person their account is cancelled, but they can contest it for $100. The person contests it, and a human is put on the case and investigates. That person determines that Google made a mistake, and Google will restore the account quickly, and pay the person $200 for the hassle.

This is how I envision this should be handled in a better world where corporations aren't allowed to just say "you get what you pay for" as they screw over their customers. (and yes, users of ad-supported products are customers)

If an account is terminated, it is done in a way it can be brought back if the user thinks it was unwarranted.

The user should be told that if they want to contest it, they need to pay a certain amount of money to a third party, to pay for the time of the people who do investigate. ($100?)

Those investigating it are not owned by or controlled in any way by Google. Those investigating it are allowed to rule not only that the account be restored, but that the user is compensated (maybe up to $5000).

If the investigation doesn't go the way the user hoped, they should be able to use the courts and Google should be ready to make all available data available.

There is plenty of value discussing it here. You don't need to join in if you don't want to.

What does this have to do with running from the police? That isn't part of this story.

Let's hear the other.

If they raise them in an environment where they have to hunt/forage for food, I don't see it being a big problem. You'd want to establish a population in a sanctuary for several generations before attempting it of course. Dogs and cats both can become feral pretty easily, and these occupied a similar niche despite being so distantly related.

Agree that they haven't offered much in terms of how it could make displays more vibrant.

> At the end of the day, colors -- whether in a movie scene or a paint chip -- are ultimately chosen by eye, not by math

Well.... math is involved if you want to do even simple stuff like blending two colors in a paint program. There is subjective stuff, sure, but you aren't going to get very far in computer graphics, display manufacture or camera chip manufacture, if you just conclude that it is 100% subjective and there is no mathematical logic behind it.

Cool! It isn't surprising that someone thought of it before me!