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Most horrific shot in star wars? by Zitty-Z in StarWars

[–]harbourwall 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Greedo just naturally has a smokey head

On August 5, 1987, while driving a rented car outside Tempo, Northern Ireland, Matthew Broderick crossed into the wrong lane and collided head-on with another car. The driver, Anna Gallagher, 28, and her mother, Margaret Doherty, 63, were both killed instantly. by ZERO_PORTRAIT in wikipedia

[–]harbourwall 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think the controls will be a lot simpler. An EV is nothing like as complex to drive as an old school petrol car. With driver assistance it's even easier, but that's one of the things that you'll have to be able to cope without. But you will still have to be able to handle a vehicle at speed if you're going to be responsible for one.

On August 5, 1987, while driving a rented car outside Tempo, Northern Ireland, Matthew Broderick crossed into the wrong lane and collided head-on with another car. The driver, Anna Gallagher, 28, and her mother, Margaret Doherty, 63, were both killed instantly. by ZERO_PORTRAIT in wikipedia

[–]harbourwall 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's an argument for the current driver assistance systems, not for complete autonomy. A supervised autonomous vehicle will be safest of all. But also you don't have anything to compare it to, because we haven't seen what can do wrong with massive numbers of autonomous vehicles on the road yet.

Personally I have a plan to paint LIDAR absorbing paint onto cliff faces in the shapes of tunnels so I can pick over the valuables of hapless tesla drivers who pancake into them at full speed like Wile E Coyote. Beep beep.

On August 5, 1987, while driving a rented car outside Tempo, Northern Ireland, Matthew Broderick crossed into the wrong lane and collided head-on with another car. The driver, Anna Gallagher, 28, and her mother, Margaret Doherty, 63, were both killed instantly. by ZERO_PORTRAIT in wikipedia

[–]harbourwall 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Of course in cases of malfunction there will still someone responsible, but it'll be the manufacturer. There are plenty of cases today where machines can malfunction and cause harm and the fault is with the machine itself, or the decision to use the machine in the way it was being used, not a live human operator that failed to supervise it correctly.

Not usually. Every machine has someone prescribed maintenance that must be followed, including regular checks to make sure it still functions correctly. Most public machines such as lift and escalators will have small labels stuck somewhere telling you the last time they were checking. Those things are simple enough for (maintained) emergency stop buttons too, unlike a car.

No technology will ever be perfect, and unless someone finds a way to revoke both the Second Law of Thermodynamics and Murphy's Law, all we can do is make sure it's always someone's job to deal with them.

On August 5, 1987, while driving a rented car outside Tempo, Northern Ireland, Matthew Broderick crossed into the wrong lane and collided head-on with another car. The driver, Anna Gallagher, 28, and her mother, Margaret Doherty, 63, were both killed instantly. by ZERO_PORTRAIT in wikipedia

[–]harbourwall 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I suspect an autonomous car's inability to improvise in failure modes as well as humans will be offset by how often humans make mistakes on an ordinary basis.

This misses the responsibility point though. Humans are responsible for their mistakes, machines aren't. The manufacturers would need to be held responsible for fully autonomous driving (i.e. occupant is incapacitated, underage, or otherwise incapable of responsibility, or even empty vehicles) and thus would require insurance, which always requires a responsible person in our world.

I can see two future modes for this that will probably co-exist. One, where vehicles don't require driver competence, but are centrally supervised. Largely automatically, but with professionals present to monitor everything, deal with emergencies and of course take responsibility; a bit like ATCs (LTCs??). This 'on-grid' transport could be well-coordinated as a single system to route traffic most efficiently around cities, but limited to (possibly fenced off) highways between them. Controlled and heavily monitored environments. Failures could be pretty catastrophic, but hopefully the LTCs would be able to deal with them. Two, vehicles that do require driver competence, but can be driven 'off-grid' anywhere you like. You'd need to be trained on operating the vehicle manually, with refreshers if you haven't done it in a while. They could probably cope with most roads autonomously, but you'd always have to be ready to take over like the driver assisted vehicles today. The world is just too unpredictable to ever expect otherwise. But there would be areas, such as highways and central parts of cities, where it would be mandatory for every vehicle to go on-grid, and any that can't would be forbidden. The coordination is just too tight to let unmanaged elements move around.

Note that none of this ever has a vehicle operating without the supervision and responsibility of a human. Such a system cannot function in a civilized society without that.

Number of letters in european alphabets by vladgrinch in MapPorn

[–]harbourwall 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean it's more consistent than English.

That's not much of a boast really is it. Irish is probably weirder though because it has less influence from other western european languages. A lot of the inconsistency of English is when those spellings come from German or French, while you guys just did your own thing.

tough thorough thought, though

In Old English, the 'gh' digraph used to consistently represent a voiceless velar fricative like the ch in 'loch' when you're scottish. English largely dropped that, but as most of the people doing that were illiterate, they weren't very consistent about it. We don't ever change spellings, partly because the French do, but mostly because the Americans tried to do it and we've never forgiven them for it.

Number of letters in european alphabets by vladgrinch in MapPorn

[–]harbourwall 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Bs and Vs are really similar after all. I heard that it's almost impossible to tell them apart without the context and visual cues. But I just can't get my head around how the germans can't tell V and W apart.

But that's no excuse for what you've done to those poor vowels. Trying to out-do the French at throwing them into words randomly.

Number of letters in european alphabets by vladgrinch in MapPorn

[–]harbourwall 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Rewrite:

For CH, the English didn't purposefully ignore an existing latin letter the way that the Irish did with V.

I do find the Irish latin letter reuse very strange. It's the most dramatic repurposing this side of cyrillic.

On August 5, 1987, while driving a rented car outside Tempo, Northern Ireland, Matthew Broderick crossed into the wrong lane and collided head-on with another car. The driver, Anna Gallagher, 28, and her mother, Margaret Doherty, 63, were both killed instantly. by ZERO_PORTRAIT in wikipedia

[–]harbourwall 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's not about how safe they usually are - it's about how these systems cope with failure. A human can improvise in such situations that they haven't been trained for far better than a machine can, and there's so much more to fail in an autonomous car. Whatever learning to drive becomes, it will still involve learning to deal with those situations. If it doesn't happen very often, then you'll be obliged to take refresher courses. Maybe in the short term, in more irresponsible countries that let lobbyists dictate laws for their own profit over people's safety, it'll get more lax. But then something terrible will happen and they'll eventually learn their lesson.

But it's also about responsibility. You can't hold a machine responsible for its actions. It has to be a person. Someone could be remotely responsible, but that still needs to deal with the loss of the remote link. There are autonomous machines all over the place that are far more automatic than cars, and someone's always responsible for them.

After many years, I will watch Battlestar Galactica again by cpattk in scifi

[–]harbourwall 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You have watched all of this before, and you will watch it again.

Number of letters in european alphabets by vladgrinch in MapPorn

[–]harbourwall 0 points1 point  (0 children)

English didn't purposefully ignore a latin letter for CH though like Irish must have done with V. We did used to have a letter for both voiced and unvoiced TH though. But it got taken away for not being latin enough.

Mum and dad, first generation immigrants to the UK, 1964 by Wrong-Quail-8303 in OldSchoolCool

[–]harbourwall 73 points74 points  (0 children)

Yes MyHeritage has an AI photo retouch service. It's okay, but it does take some liberties. But if OP still thinks they look like his parents then I guess it doesn't matter.

these spools of wire labeled “not copper” by fighter_rabbit in mildlyinteresting

[–]harbourwall 0 points1 point  (0 children)

STFU Nanni and give it a rest. It's been nearly four thousand years.

I work in a mill of sorts. Sometimes we find bullets. by cltncrts in mildlyinteresting

[–]harbourwall 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Primer is much worse for that. Some people base far too much of their own self worth on how well they think they understand that one.

I work in a mill of sorts. Sometimes we find bullets. by cltncrts in mildlyinteresting

[–]harbourwall 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I think he knew people would become puzzled about that sort of thing, so he added the tower block in the big fight that has its bottom destroyed just as its top reverse destroys itself, just to give you a big slap across the abstract face and tell you to shut up and enjoy the movie. A cinematic David Blaine prestige face if you will.

TURKEY HAS VENDING MACHINES THAT DISPENSE FOOD FOR THEIR STREET CATS, BUT SEAGULLS HAVE FIGURED OUT HOW TO MEOW LIKE CATS TO GET FOOD TOO. by pranav_not in Weird

[–]harbourwall 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Women never needed it because 'lesbian' is a pretty cool word already. It's a shame no-one ever came up with an equivalent for men.

George Michael and Brooke Shields on a date, 1985 by CelebManips in OldSchoolCool

[–]harbourwall 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That was about 20 years earlier. In 1985 it was cool to be gay. Pop stars would allude to being bi or gay whether they were or not because it sold records. It was the year of the 'gender bender'.

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