> I wrote my first line of code in 1983. I was seven years old, typing BASIC into a machine that had less processing power than the chip in your washing machine
I think there may be a counterpoint hiding in plain sight here: back in 1983 the washing machine didn't have a chip in it. Now there are more low-level embedded CPUs and microcontrollers to develop for than before, but maybe it's all the same now. Unfathomable levels of abstraction, uniformly applied by language models?
It does sound like a good outcome for automation. Though I suppose an investigation into the matter would arguably have to look at whether a competent human driver would be driving at 17mph (27km/h) under those circumstances to begin with, rather than just comparing the relative reaction speeds, taking the hazardous situation for granted.
What I would like to see is a full-scale vehicle simulator where humans are tested against virtual scenarios that faithfully recreate autonomous driving accidents to see how "most people" would have acted in the minutes leading up to the event as well as the accident itself
>Though I suppose an investigation into the matter would arguably have to look at whether a competent human driver would be driving at 17mph (27km/h) under those circumstances to begin with, rather than just comparing the relative reaction speeds, taking the hazardous situation for granted.
Sure but also throw in whether that driver is staring at their phone, distracting by something else, etc. I have been a skeptic of all this stuff for a while but riding in a Waymo in heavy fog changed my mind when questioning how well I or another driver would've done at that time of day and with those conditions.
Indeed, 15 or 25 mph (24 or 40 km/h) are the speed limits in school zones (when in effect) in CA, for reference. But depending on the general movement and density and category of pedestrians around the road it could be practically reckless to drive that fast (or slow).
If my experience driving through a school zone on my way to work is anything to go off of, I rarely see people actually respecting it. 17 mph would be a major improvement over what I'm used to seeing.
I remember the pitch for Julia early on being matlab-like syntax, C-like performance. When I've heard Julia mentioned more recently, the main feature that gets highlighted is multiple-dispatch.
Even with text, parsing content in 2D seems to be a challenge for every LLM I have interacted with. Try getting a chatbot to make an ascii-art circle with a specific radius and you'll see what I mean.
I don't really consider ASCII art to be text. It requires a completely different type of reasoning. A blind person can be understand text if it's read out loud. A blind person really can't understand ASCII art if it's read out loud.
I think the selfishness here is related to being fine with generating a pile of electronic waste that becomes a problem for everyone else, as long as he can avoid carrying a few ounces extra.
It's hard to recycle electronics, because separating materials that are chemically bonded together is very labor intensive and isn't worth it from the price of aluminum, copper, lithium, etc alone.
It would have to cost more to dispose of a laptop for this to work out financially.
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