I had been a customer of theirs for years, starting with the DVD rental. After a while they started adding the streaming content which was cool, but then they eventually separated the two services and switched my plan from DVD rentals to exclusively streaming content. All without any action on my part or any consent from me.
Eventually, I quit Netflix because between Prime Video and Hulu, I was covered for my streaming needs and with the exception of a few shows, was unimpressed with Netflix's original content so it was a waste of money for me.
Fast forward to a week ago, I decided to give Netflix another shot. What amazed me is the dark patterns you speak of. Like downloading content for offline viewing.
I was without access to my normal ISP and had to use cellular data so I opted to download a show. 1 episode was 100 MB and I'm on Google Fi so it was basically $1 of data usage which I understood. But then when the episode was over, I stepped away from my phone to go to the bathroom and when I came back, I found that the episode had been deleted from my phone, and that the next episode had automatically downloaded without any action on my part incurring another $0.90 of data (not to mention deleting the episode I had intentionally downloaded making the first $1 a waste)
I saw at the top of the download section that there was something called "Smart Download" enabled that claims to do exactly that - delete the last episode and download the next, but it's only supposed to happen on wi-fi which wasn't the case for me. I turned off the feature as it was obviously broken and tried contacting customer service.
The CSR I talked to then told me that the app cannot delete or download material without me clicking a button - which contradicted their description of "Smart Download" that I had just read, and he explained there was no way for them to process a refund or credit to my account because they don't have any way to do that.
This seems like a pretty major problem.
Even when confronted with a direct customer complaint, their response was just to deny, deny, deny rather than taking even minor steps to rectify the issue. This seems mind boggling from a customer service perspective when companies like Amazon will bend over backwards to keep their customers happy. Even Hulu will credit you a free month of service when they goof - they even do it if you try to cancel the service because you can't find anything good to watch. Netflix's service isn't good enough to justify this type of behavior and general apathy. Customer-last seems like a crummy business model.
I can feel your frustration with the service but I'm unconvinced that "download the next ep" is a dark pattern and more that you're a niche that their UX currently isn't catering towards.
I do a lot of cellular/tethering and know some of the pain points but can recognize that the needs are quite different to the regular user who may consume stuff at home then want to take stuff with them on the go.
Normally I see that UX often caters to the lowest common denominator which leaves power users and niche users sidelined.
My personal bug bear on this subject is that YouTube no longer buffers entire videos and holds them there - presumably this saves them lots in traffic costs and additionally allows them to up sell YouTube premium
Sorry I didn't see this immediately, I don't think that downloading the next episode is a dark pattern in and of itself. But I do think downloading the next app over mobile when the description explicitly says it wouldn't is questionable. And I think deleting downloads automatically without any good reason is so far removed from assumed functionality of a download to be a borderline dark pattern.
Without the "Smart Download" enabled the episodes persist until I delete them or cancel my service, that's the assumption with a download. Smart download immediately deletes whatever you downloaded as soon as it sees fit - which in my case was erroneously assuming I was on wi-fi. And this was my first download, it's not like it had some storage space restriction to deal with. I had ~16 GB free and it was 100 MB.
The next episode feature aside, it seems weird to say, "Okay, download this one" and then it saying, "Okay, so you meant download it and then delete it".
And to your Youtube point, I think it depends on the use-case. I fully agree with holding the buffer there, but if I'm on mobile data, I might not necessary want it to just load as much as it can as soon as it can because I pay per MB.
I actually love the smart download option, it allows me to always have the next episode downloaded when I leave the house.
This seems more like a CS fault than anything. Netflix is a huge company and CS agents are outsourced/so far from the actual product team that they operate on guidelines/info that might actually not be true/outdated. I'd say it's just a problem with a huge organization.
It's incredible. The last company I worked for before going it alone (I was the front-end engineer and moved away from ML based business models) was trying to automate statistical analysis. I came from an academic background in economics and I tried to propose modelling to them in simple terms and they jumped to, "it sounds like you're talking about forecasting, let's go with that." And they started trying to implement python models from academic papers with highly limited training data and my reaction was generally, WTF?! You can't even start to forecast without a reliable base model. But they went ahead trying to sell stuff like churn prediction to companies with 0 understanding of how these models work at the basest levels.
And yeah, Google started to throw their hat in the game with Analytics 360 and an enormously larger training base. Amazon's another major player.
Weirdly enough though, people do still blindly pay my previous employers to figure stuff out because easy answers are always actionable, even if they're wrong. It's just crazy because the CEO explained to me that lying about the service to potential customers and investors was necessary because "Faking it til you make it" was a sound business principle in his mind like 1980's Michael J Fox was his primary sources of business info.
Long story short, don't waste your time with these little companies purporting ML holy grails. They're probably just lying to you, whether intentionally or not. ML is a game for the big boys with access to market level aggregates. The models that last company came up with were wildly inaccurate.
I only partially agree. Building good ML models and even outperforming the ML services of the big players is absolutely feasible. Have e.g. a look at this talk from PyCon DE (in English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XniwzOCWi2c), which shows how a small team built a machine vision system to read car registration numbers from official documents. The system was built and trained with an extremely small dataset (I think around 60 scanned documents with some data augmentation) and was able to easily beat the Google Cloud ML algorithm by an impressive margin (Google ML had an intolerably high error rate for this seemingly simple problem).
So I'd say if you have a very specific area that you're investigating you have a very good chance of beating larger players that don't specialize as much as you can. Of course competing against Google in self-driving cars or machine translation might be a bad idea, but even in those areas there are small startups that produce impressive results (e.g. DeepL: https://www.deepl.com/en/translator). Also, big companies regularly exaggerate their capabilities as well (sometimes more than startups), just have a look at how IBM markets their Watson AI/ML solutions, and what they deliver in reality.
So personally I'd say it has never been that easy to build relevant and interesting ML/AI based solutions as a small team, and it is possible to beat large players if you have the right approach and the right (very narrow) problem.
DeepL is a very promising thing. I was very sceptic on the future of automatic translation seeing as Google Translate seems to have stagnated for the last two years or so, but I’ve just recently tried DeepL on a German newspaper article a couple of days ago and it did a very good job. Granted, I don’t know German (hence why I used DeepL) but nevertheless the English translation provided by DeepL seemed more polished than what Google Translate usually does.
I've used it a fair amount, and continue to be amazed with the quality it puts out. There are still some issues with formal pronouns, subject-matter-specific contractions etc, but otherwise it does a great job with both EN->DE and DE->EN
Oh yes. I've seen this plenty of times not with just ML, but even basic statistics (and by seeing I mean working next to people doing it). You don't need to understand statistics at all, as long as your customers don't understand it either, and you sound confident enough. If it's hard to verify whether a model works, you can keep the customer happy and yourself paid while not providing much, if any, value to them.
I currently believe this is how most ad tech runs internally. Scammers scamming scammers.
That's obvious to anyone with any sort of basic idea as to how machine learning works. Feed bots data and test the bots predictions - the more data you have then obviously it'll be better. If you have 1 picture of a bee to test you'd only ever get one very specific shape for a bee from any AI, if you have thousands, you get a much better representation. It's pretty simple.
Hey Axel! Just started watching but the interactive guide is incredible. It's like having Screenhero with a private tutor.
Only thing is, I kind of wish there were something like the time-coded comments SoundCloud has. At the end of the second guide, we're asked to play around with the tests.
I added:
console.log(net.run([0, 4]));
console.log(net.run([3, 3]));
console.log(net.run([8, 4]));
Based on the training data, I would expect this to resolve to ~4(or 1), ~0, ~8(or 1) by standard logic expectancies (if same return 0, else return the higher number or 1). But instead I received ~0, ~0, ~0.
It's not immediately obvious what is causing this. But it seems like the model created is inherently ignorant of basic logic (at least by my narrow definition), and there isn't any immediate discussion of caveats as to error margin.
I'll admit this might be a n00bish concern based on never programing neural nets before, but as this guide seems focused on introducing NN's to n00bs like me: a way to discuss concerns with other viewers/the author would be amazing.
Aside from that, incredible work! I'll keep watching to see if I can figure out my misunderstandings.
Update: Just discovered the Q&A tab, this should likely be adequate for my concerns. Well done. This may be the best online demo/tutorial I've ever seen.
Hey sorry for the delay, it was at the end of the second tutorial "Our First Neural Net!" I think you were instructing us to try testing the outputs for the other sets in the training data which all work as expected, but I took the "play around with the outputs" instruction to mean, see how the NN responds to novel inputs like the ones I mentioned.
Based on personal experience, I doubt $50k in credit card debt was what was planned for and probably came out of necessity to finish the thing.
Fund-raising takes a lot of mental space on its own which comes at a high premium when you're focused on finishing a product.
Even with $50k at 20%, we're talking about $833 a month in interest, that's not that much to someone who would usually make $100k+ at a job if they fail.
20% of $50K is $10K/year which is like 15% of the take-home pay on a $100K salary, and all you did was pay interest. That's not something to sneeze at.
Nothing about the Boy Scouts is really gender specific, beyond their requirement to be male that's set to be amended in February.
I don't understand how "Scouts BSA" is a violation of any trademarks that the Girl Scouts might hold. Especially considering the Girl Scouts came after BSA had already been established. If anything I would say that Girl Scouts are encroaching on the BSA's brand identity by calling themselves "X Scouts". When someone talks about being in the Scouts, I tend to take it as the Boy Scouts already.
And there aren't to my knowledge a lot of boys upset that they can't become Gold Star Girl Scouts... There are on the other hand a lot of females that are upset about not being able to become Eagles. [0]
Reading the article it sounds like some evil cookie corporation is pissed that they're losing free child labor rather than genuine concern for the empowerment of young people.
I don't have a strong opinion either way (I'm an Eagle Scout), but the decision to include girls will fundamentally change Scouting.
Guys act differently when around girls. Girls act differently when around guys. This is doubly true for ages 12-17. Whether this is a change for the better or worse is subjective but there is no doubt it is a drastic change.
There is benefit to boys interacting with girls. There is benefit to boys having some time themselves as well.
I'm an Eagle Scout too and I guess I don't really have a strong opinion because scouting here in CO is fundamentally different in my eyes than what I grew up with in CA.
In my troop, once a year we'd spend one weekend spreading flyers about our annual garage sale, over the following week we'd pick stuff up, then the next weekend we'd use the community clubhouse that was our home-base for meetings for a blow-out garage sale.
We'd clear $15-20k in a week, give everyone who donated a tax slip for their donation, and sit pretty for the rest of the year with regard to our outings. Plus we'd do a clearinghouse in the last few hours of the sale where you could fill a trashbag up with anything and pay $5 for it. (I got stuff like suits, laser prints and antique cameras for <$1)
These massive fund-raisers are why we could finance trips to places like Hawaii or Scotland every few years and had outings like going to Camp Pendleton for paintball wars, plus we were helping the community by moving their junk.
Here in CO, the Boy Scouts do the door-to-door sales thing with over-priced caramel corn and the like.
I'd rather just give the troop $20 than spend $10 on a little bag of popcorn. Maybe that's part of the GS issue, a lot of Boy Scout troops are basically just copying the Girl Scouts' business model.
But I guess what I'm saying is, there are a lot of factors that go into your fundamental scouting experience (I honestly give all credit to the crazy outdoor dads that were in my troop at the time), so I'm trying to observe this transition more than question/judge it.
I can't think of any good reason why the Scout Law shouldn't be ubiquitous in American society.
I don't know how different Scouting in the USA is to the rest of the world, but New Zealand, Australia, and the UK (and probably others) Scouting movements have been co-ed for decades. I was a scout for a while, and I don't think it would've been fundamentally different if it wasn't co-ed.
That's for Cub Scouts. For Scouts BSA, the current plan is to have boy-only troops and girl-only troops. They can share the same troop number, committee, budget, etc, but only the Scoutmaster has to be different.
I foresee that changing or troops taking initiative and organizing differently unofficially, but that's the current plan.
Venturing Crews and Sea Scouts, both of which are part of BSA, have been co-ed for a long time. My initial research was not particularly fruitful, but I think that they've been that way since their respective inceptions. There's also no gender-specific leadership or structure.
My son just switched to Sea Scouts after attaining his Eagle Scout rank and my daughter just started Cub Scouts as a Tiger. We've been really impressed with how the Sea Scouts aren't making a big deal about the young women in the program. The only thing we run into is old men calling them "gals". I didn't know that was a pet peeve of mine, but you learn something new every day.
Comparatively, the Cub Scouts are constantly creating awkward situations in relation to the girl dens. Some of that is caused by BSA youth protection guidelines (girl dens must always have a female adult present), but other times it's about over-correcting little boys' behavior in front of little girls. It's still very new and I'm sure that everyone will adjust to something that doesn't require so much effort.
I very much hope that BSA can get out of its own way as more girls move into troops and just take notice of what's been accomplished by their existing co-ed programs.
> Venturing Crews and Sea Scouts, both of which are part of BSA, have been co-ed for a long time. My initial research was not particularly fruitful, but I think that they've been that way since their respective inceptions.
Venturing Crews and Sea Scouts were both part of Exploring in 1969 when the program went co-ed.
> There's also no gender-specific leadership or structure.
There are, actually. Quoting the current edition of the Guide to Safe Scouting:
"Two registered adult leaders 21 years of age or over are required at all Scouting activities, including meetings. There must be a registered female adult leader over 21 in every unit serving females. A registered female adult leader over 21 must be present for any activity involving female youth."
Alternatively they do have explorers scouts as a coed part, and those are often attached to a regular troop, so they already have this for older scouts.
>Guys act differently when around girls. Girls act differently when around guys. This is doubly true for ages 12-17. Whether this is a change for the better or worse is subjective but there is no doubt it is a drastic change.
Didn't say it was a bad thing.
>In the era of #metoo, maybe we need to check "boys will be boys" earlier in the process...
But as long as we're over reading things, are you implying boys spending time alone with other boys encourages rape, or that the BSA encourages rape?
This is based off a study as reported by parents of teens "caregiver estimates", not the teens themselves or something potentially even more accurate like Fitbit data.
Just because a parent counts their kid as asleep because they're in their room with the lights off doesn't mean they actually are. From personal observation, I randomly see phone screens floating around in the dark while I'm getting up to go to the restroom in the middle of the night all the time.
Parents are also less likely to report in ways that make their kids out to be addicts, or themselves out to be bad parents. And there may be a correlation between excessive digital-lives for youths and neglectful parenting. Not to mention that "teens" are generally one of the hardest demographics to study because it's pretty much impossible to get a good control group as it's essentially their first time exercising freedom from control in general.
And yeah, 8.5 hours average for teens seems like prima facie BS. Kids wouldn't be "jet-lagged" if they slept that much. I think I was sleeping between 5-7 hours a night depending on how late I was up with friends or on the net when I was a teen (early thirties now).
I'm not saying one way or another as to whether or not screen time for youth is a problem or should be a topic of concern, but this article seems like nonsense.
Also, reading the study further: despite the fact that the author of the article may have been paraphrasing a statement in the abstract conclusion, the study seems to mostly undermine that premise as it shows an inverse relationship between screen time and sleep.
This is a fine idea if you use the money to subsidize free public transportation in the form of buses, trains and bike-shares and education on how to use them. Heck, go ahead and tax gasoline at 100% while you're at it.
The problem is disincentives like this only work if the market has a better option than simply finding a way to correct the cost.
There are plenty of people who can't afford to drive already but still do because they "have to". You have to take the stupid arguments off the table or make the better options stupidly obvious before you can expect people to start to respond rationally.
So I would love to get some feedback from this group on my takeaway from what I've learned of global warming.
The general consensus seems to be that gasses like carbon dioxide and methane heat cause an increase in global warming. I don't dispute that, but out of fun a few years ago on earth day I started crunching some numbers regarding our direct thermal pollution.
In the US our current consumption of gasoline alone is as 142.98 billion gallons per year[0]. At an average of 120,429 BTUs per gallon [1] that puts the US at ~17.219 quadrillion BTUs a year (in gasoline consumption alone)
Does this matter? Well at that scale we're talking about a Hiroshima Nuclear Bomb level event (15 Kilotons of TNT or ~60 Billion BTUs) every 0.54 minutes all day every day in this country when just considering American consumption of gasoline alone. If volcanoes are your thing, Mt. Saint Helens produced 24 megatons of thermal energy in its 6 years of eruptive activity. The US on the other hand produces the thermal equivalent of that every ~2.1 days... and again, that's just gasoline.
Most of our heat comes from gas which is converted directly to thermal energy. And then we have coal power...
Regardless of how "clean" you make it. We're talking about burning things to create energy so the basic law of the conservation of energy comes into play. And as hot air rises, it doesn't just magically become cooler... it dissipates that energy until it reaches an equilibrium. Thereby transferring energy into the geosphere.
And then when you explode things like natural gas or coal use, it's sometimes being used to heat, but even when it's being used to cool, we're not getting 1-to-1 efficiency. Air conditioners output more heat than they dissipate.
And if people use ACs more as atmospheric heat increases, we're talking about a positive feedback loop without even taking into account the thermal pollution of creating the energy by burning stuff in the first place. (Even nuclear plants tend to use ocean water for cooling - thereby directly heating the oceans)
I'm not saying carbon dioxide and methane aren't potentially catastrophic, but I don't think it makes sense to discount our direct thermal pollution as a potential cause. I only based figures in my argument on US gasoline consumption. That's a minor piece of the global energy pie.
Either way, reducing personal wattage through efficiency and reduced use seem to be pretty productive in terms of reducing my personal thermal impact so it seems like a step in the right direction whether thermal pollution is directly related to global warming or not.
Sure and while you're at it why not implement cameras all over every roadway to automatically ticket you every time you break the speed limit. Or better yet, why not devise a real time geolocation device to be embedded in cars and then lobby for it to be nationally adopted so people literally can't speed?
The reality is that very few people want to live in that world and even if we do fully adopt technologies like this, it doesn't necessarily make us any safer. A car traveling 30 mph is absolutely as lethal as a car traveling 10 mph faster than that. And I'm much more likely to be killed by a random traffic accident (only time I've been hit on my bike was by a white women driving a Ford) or domestic terrorist/psychopath than an immigrant.
So you're pitching huge lifestyle and diplomatic costs without any obvious benefit... Please count me as a no.
This was something that came up shortly after the Snowden documents were released. I don't remember who made the point (maybe Moxie Marlinspike), but they pointed out how important it is to be able to break the law. That breaking the law is an vital means of effecting change in the US: kids smoke pot illegally and grow up to be adults that push to legalize it. Gay people are more and more open and successfully push for gay marriage. Etc.
So if you take away people's means of breaking the law (such as auto speed-limited cars), it's actually striking at something really fundamental in the ability of the citizens to push for change or to protest. Almost like we want to have just the right amount of law breaking, although I can't imagine anyone associated with public policy ever adopting this stance.
That does not work in states like the PRC or Russia. Indeed, in order to live and go on day-to-day, you must break the law. And people do. But, then when the state wants you, they will selectively enforce the law. That's how it works. Let people break the law, who cares, but when we need to arrest them, lo and behold, look, they've broken several laws!
"Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre." (If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.) [1] Attributed to Cardinal Richelieu though authenticity is disputed.
Anyway, dystopian films containing mass surveillance (such as Fahrenheit 451) also cover the very same practice.
Right; it's based on the assumption (which I share) that laws aren't perfect, and that the prime way of finding out whether they are is by people breaking them.
The other requirement is the ability to change laws, otherwise this would indeed only enable selective (i.e. seemingly random) enforcement.
Civil disobedience is a real thing, the first example that comes to mind is ignoring laws that require a front license plate, specifically because it reduces the likelihood that your vehicle tag will be caught on camera, those automated ticket system might move on to the next plate if they don't get a scan. I totally agree with you.
That’s not civil disobedience. In civil disobedience you blatantly and publicly violate an unjust law with the intention of being punished so that the public will be repulsed by the injustice of it. I don’t think anyone is going to cry for you if you get a ticket for not having a front plate. You’re doing it to avoid the consequences of a separate illegal act.
A recent example of where even breaking the speed limit is how laws (or speed limits) are changed:
Recently, our county measured the speed on an 8 mile long rural road. Their conclusion was that there was no need to bump the existing speed limit of 45 up to 55 or 60 (to match similar roads) because people weren't going faster than 45 on it.
Why weren't people going faster than 45 on an empty, rural road? Because the sheriff's department enforced that 45mph speed limit very rigorously, with an average of one speed trap and one roving vehicle.
I'm personally for speed limits and adherence to them, but not capping speeds at the speed limits (and I'm not talking about 150 MPH caps that you find in UK/EU) has edge cases that could be argued like overtaking.
Exceeding $MaxSpeedInYourCountry on an empty highway isn't where the majority of speeding related accidents occur, so a basic top speed limiter wouldn't do very much anyway. Not to mention that (at least in Europe) people are likely to take their vehicles to a neighbouring country where different speed legislation applies.
Any use of traffic cameras is seen as 'aggressive'. It inevitably results in hundreds of tickets that otherwise wouldn't be written, affecting hundreds of citizens in a way they see as intrusive and 'unfair'. For better or worse.
not disagreeing with the first part of your statement, but, for the second part, a reasonable remedy would be to simply lower the cost of each violation.
e.g. if almost everyone got speeding tickets, but they only cost $15 and didn't involve any points against the driver's record or insurance premium hikes, people would simply pay up and probably speed less often. complaints about the injustice of speeding tickets would probably remain at current levels.
Tragically, reasonable fees for bad behavior encourage the opposite behavior: all guilt evaporates and folks feel entitled to the behavior, after all they can pay for it. Famous studies of charging parent who were late picking up children from school, everybody started doing it and gladly paying.
I've had the same idea - a geometrically increasing 'fee' for road use depending on speed. Kind of like toll roads, but maybe even most roads. If you want to spend the money (and have the money, thus likely the deep pockets to compensate for damage) then go ahead!
But that wouldn't satisfy the "if you speed you're Literally Hitler (TM) crowd" who want punishment for minor traffic infractions to be sized for deterrence rather than the actual harm to society.
Anarchy! I remember my first time through Chicago at 7PM years ago, merging onto an 11 lane highway with a 45mph speed limit and finding everybody, absolutely everybody, going 80.
Some enforcement has to be done or it gets out of hand ever so quickly
Yeah, Los Angeles has no speed limit at all, anywhere. It's basically "don't be a dick, or you'll get pulled over" as your cruising 70 mph next to a cop in a school zone.
I agree in general but I think "A car traveling 30 mph is absolutely as lethal as a car traveling 10 mph faster than that." is a bit weak.
The speed of cars matter, obviously. If you are hit by a car driving 50km/h you will die 8 out of 10 times. If the car is only driving in 30 km/h you will only die 1 out of the 10 times. In other words, it's not a linear scale and the idea that you can drive a bit faster without making yourself substantially more dangerous is incorrect.
You might be factually correct, but you are misunderstanding the point of the parent poster. What makewavesnotwar is saying is simply that making exaggerated arguments for this technology in the name of making us safer is not a sufficient reason to introduce the technology. Perhaps if they had used larger numbers like 50 MPH relative to 60MPH that point would have been made clearer.
I understood the point well and I agreed with the poster. But in my view, if you are going to argue that we don't need more automated monitoring in traffic then claiming that speed has little impact on fatalities seems quite weird.
As a pedestrian and cycling advocate, more regulation of cars seems like a good idea for me. That said, the analogy is just that, an analogy so I don't think it's fair to nitpick it.
That's kind of moot, at least where I live. Less than 3% of deaths were caused by this so its not really significant. Pedestrians killed were many times higher for example.
Do you have a statistic confirming that? Most highway deaths are due to speed, not due to driving slow. Driving slow can provoke people behind to do dangerous things, but it's on them, not on a slow driver.
Do you have any support for this argument at all? It seems to overlook the reality of the situation. When one car is in a collision with another, regardless of their relative velocities, when they collide, in a serious accident they will both rapidly decelerate to a speed of zero. That's what the danger is. Their absolute speed has dangers above and beyond their relative velocities -- less control of the vehicle and greater kinetic energy wrt the environment.So, a car traveling at 25 hitting a car moving at 5 may have a 20 kph/mph differential, but the danger is minimal compared to a car traveling at 95 hitting a car at 85, where both vehicles quickly go down to zero, rolling and smashing into barriers and other vehicles along the way.
I'm not saying that differential is all that matters. A car doing zero and one doing 20 in an accident is much better than the 80 vs. 70 example.
What I'm saying is apples to apples.
Speed limit is 60, car doing 50 + car doing 80 is a lot more dangerous than two cars doing 60. In both an accident and in actually causing one to begin with.
Right - a head-on collision between objects of equal mass and velocity is equivalent to one hitting a brick wall (or immovable object) - it loses all its kinetic energy on the spot, turning it into heat and mechanical work (e.g. crushing the car and driver). Objects of slightly different mass or velocity means the work done on each is shifted, the heavier or faster one 'winning' a bit but still. The absolute values of the velocities are hugely important.
Of course on a web site for nerds, commentators are going to claim that a massive loss of life due to what they consider to be some irrelevant factor is just a technical detail which can be ignored.
In re immigration, the desire for more enforcement will inevitably lead to a national ID system, even if it's a "shadow" one like shadow Facebook profiles. The UK already has requirements for "proof of migration status" if you want to rent somewhere to live or have a bank account, and they keep trying to bring it into healthcare and schools.
The traffic cameras used in the UAE are pretty tame compared to other countries. The police there are quite open about what new technologies they adopt (it's a form of propaganda to make it look like they are on par with Western countries) so maybe that's why you think it's something new.
London has had ANPR throughout the city for 15 years, and shortly after it went live in London, the system started being rolled out across the country. Now most police cars have real time ANPR systems, and all police forces have access to track cars in real time across the country. [0]
Recently the police have been 'trialing' facial recognition devices in public locations, however given people are more concerned about privacy than they were 10 years ago, I wouldn't be surprised if they have a much more active system than they make out. [1]
Canada's largest province Ontario tried to implement it, but it was so unpopular the next government reversed the decision. News stations used to call out the location of hidden photo radar vans in an act of mass civil disobedience.
Yeah, I never got that particular argument. Speeding isn't like, my favorite hobby or anything, and it's accounted for when setting the speeding limits, so if the police suddenly became extreme sticklers, they'd also likely raise the limits.
Even if they didn't, it'd probably save lives. Fatalities are so much more common at higher speeds, we could all stand to slow down a bit on the road.
> Sure and while you're at it why not implement cameras all over every roadway to automatically ticket you every time you break the speed limit.
This is a common and interesting sarcasm.
It is interesting because the law is indeed that drivers should get a ticket every time they break the speed limit (or for any other driving offence).
These technologies enable the law to be applied absolutely for the first time. The law is no longer subject to the major caveat "if caught". You break the speed limit you are fined, you litter you are fined, etc. 100% of the time.
Many people seems uncomfortable with that, which is interesting.
Perhaps the discussion should be about the rule of law, punishment, and leeway rather than technology.
Frustration comes from laws and punishments that are optimized for less than 100% enforcement (i.e., harsh punishments for those who actually get caught) being enforced 100% of the time. Laws and punishments should be updated to account for the likelihood of enforcement.
>> Many people seems uncomfortable with that, which is interesting.
The part I'm uncomfortable with is how do we know that the cameras are setup correctly? What third party company is actually receiving the tickets before sending them out? How much are they getting from each ticket, etc?
Without transparency there's no way to trust them. If there was a way to trust them I'm sure things would be a little different.
I would also add that that particular sarcasm is deeply American. I've never seen it in the UK (yet) where these cameras are deployed and people generally obey the speed limit.
This is wrong. Kinetic energy is not what kills you. Force is not what kills you (the human body can handle triple digit G forces for a short time). Hitting things in the cabin is what kills you. The only way kinetic energy is related is that it also happens to increase with speed.
Using kinetic energy to imply that lethality goes up exponentially with speed is misleading at best.
Are you by any chance one of those people that still believe seat belts are for sissies?
Because you can just hold tight to the steering wheel?
And yes the kinetic energy per se does not kill you. It's when the kinetic energy gets converted to elastic/inelastic transformation of your head that you die. There is a clear correlation of speed and survivability.
>And yes the kinetic energy per se does not kill you. It's when the kinetic energy gets converted to elastic/inelastic transformation of your head that you die. There is a clear correlation of speed and survivability.
Kinetic energy does nothing. NOTHING!
It's all about acceleration (which is roughly interchangeable with force since the mass of the person is constant). The human body can deal with triple digit G forces for a short time (on the order of how long a car crash takes) so long as it's mostly in the forward direction and you have a good harness. They figured this out decades ago when designing escape systems for fighter jets (no point ejecting at Mach 1 if you're gonna get killed when you hit the outside air at that speed).
Of course speed kills when you're talking about hitting pedestrians. When you have several thousand pounds of mass vs a couple hundred the acceleration (and therefore force, because mass is fixes) on the few hundred will depend almost wholly on the speed of the several thousand pounds of mass. It still has exactly nothing to do with kinetic energy. For limited access highways, rural roads and other places pedestrians are not a meaningful concern this is irrelevant.
>Are you by any chance one of those people that still believe seat belts are for sissies?
The people who use straw-men of this caliber in online arguments is a subset of people who should avoid seatbelts if you catch my drift.
There is the same correlation in regards to vehicle occupants. At some point the kinetic energy becomes so great that the body of the car is unable to absorb it sufficently and then the remaining energy kills you.
No straw men anywhere in my line of argument. Just a cheap dig. Sorry for that.
> ticket you every time you break the speed limit.
Generally I'm against government spying and tracking, but I really don't think cities could afford the traffic situation of every driver obeying the speed limit. Think about how many commuters exceed the speed limit every single day, and imagine if every person were forced to actually drive the limit at all times. I would expect at least a 10% increase in on-road-traffic at a given time, and that's being conservative. Some places might not be able to support the additional stress on traffic.
Perhaps if the speed limits were enforced with nearly 100% efficiency, they might be changed. Until then speeding fines are pretty much state sponsored highway robbery.
Agreed. I'm convinced that some laws are kept only so they can be used as leverage for police officers to legally interfere with your life/collect revenue. Artificially low speed limits are one I would consider.
If ##% of commuters exceed the limit to get to work, and they are forced to cease, then the time and highway space they save speeding would instead be added to the overall stress of traffic. That would have ripple effects against people who drive the limit, and would cause everyone to need more commute time. The question comes whether the added stress would be debilitating for other commuters.
Edit: I'm a _very_ conscious and aware driver, and agree that driving fast is dangerous for many people. It's an unfortunate situation we're in, where the busted family wagon must defend against the drunk loony in the sports car. Sometimes however, the drunk loony in the sports car has to defend against the family that's fighting inside the wagon.
Thought further this might lead to a prohibition of manually driven cars and a use of only self-driving cars (talking about the future here).
As allways it boils down to freedom vs. security.
I think, as long as we all live under the same jurisdiction the only way is to find a balance between the more risk averse and the more risk taking people.
We wont find a compromise everyone is happy with, but one that does kind of work for everyone. Not enforcing laws as strictly might calm the moods a little bit where the law goes to far for some.
There's a sentiment which I see on HN regularly which seems to relish the idea of automated judgement where laws are strict and "objective" and violations are 100% caught, preferably by machine. The argument is that if the law is unfair, it can later be adjusted.
This was most visible in discussion of "smart contracts" where people love the idea of "code-as-law". Unfortunately, it seems to creep into much more personal stuff now, such as using machines to look at everyone's face and know who they are and where they are, all the time.
Whether you agree with automated enforcement or not, the outrageous level of power-imbalance that works against individuals here is disturbing.
But have you thought about the children? you can always pile on more legislation if talk about the children, u can even regulate the games they play and the porn they see. I don't think that barrel has a bottom.
And guess what, children in cars around you don't stop people from speeding and increasing the differential between them and people around them.
Thinking about the children isn't something that people generally do... So parents have to take responsibility and be a lot more cautious on the roads.
Police departments do not rely on ticket revenue. Cities do. In many cases, a step up in traffic violations is done by a request by a town councilman who may have been pressured by constituents complaining and not revenue.
Source: business contacts with police and relative who is an officer.
Re: cars: that's a very interesting and deeply American viewpoint. It also smells of rationalization, because the talk of "extra 10mph don't matter" is clearly nonsense and I expect most people here realize that V squared in kinetic energy formula makes 10mph a big deal. So the question becomes — what exactly are you trying to rationalize? Because lower speeds most definitely make people safer.
Not only that, but lowered (and observed) speed limit also helps the environment and public health by encouraging people to cycle. Strictly controlled 20mph speed limit in London is probably the most important reason I like cycling here.
> The reality is that very few people want to live in that world and even if we do fully adopt technologies like this, it doesn't necessarily make us any safer.
Yet they will still freely give you information, their most intimate details, on social media. The sad and bitter truth is that the future will be heavily monitored and totalitarian. And there is nothing that can be done to stop this inevitable course of events.
Yeah. The most perilous stretch I have on my bike is through a neighborhood of million dollar homes with asshole clueless Porsche SUV drivers buzzing around.
"And I'm much more likely to be killed by a random traffic accident (only time I've been hit on my bike was by a white women driving a Ford) or domestic terrorist/psychopath than an immigrant."
Are you using your experience with the Ford to support that claim?
> why not implement cameras all over every roadway to automatically ticket you every time you break the speed limit
The recent front-page story about the new bridge connecting to Hong Kong said that, based on camera footage, software identifies people who have yawned three times (or something similar to that) and alerts authorities.
I think a big issue you're nodding to is localized definitions.
For instance, why must you legally have a privacy policy? Because of a law in California.
What does that privacy policy entail? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You can write a privacy policy that say you are going to go out of your way to make any private information given to you as public as you can or sell it all to the king of Saudi-Arabia and if nobody reads that privacy policy then it's kind of meaningless. And very few people read the privacy policy.
People seem to think, well this is popular... so they can't be doing anything bad or someone would stop them. And with internet properties, that's simply not the case.
There's no implicit privacy or federal/global definition of what privacy rights people should have, if anything the rights are diminished the higher up the ladder you get. So people have to navigate a sea of differing definitions in massive legal documents which they aren't properly trained to do unless they already hold a law degree.
I had been a customer of theirs for years, starting with the DVD rental. After a while they started adding the streaming content which was cool, but then they eventually separated the two services and switched my plan from DVD rentals to exclusively streaming content. All without any action on my part or any consent from me.
Eventually, I quit Netflix because between Prime Video and Hulu, I was covered for my streaming needs and with the exception of a few shows, was unimpressed with Netflix's original content so it was a waste of money for me.
Fast forward to a week ago, I decided to give Netflix another shot. What amazed me is the dark patterns you speak of. Like downloading content for offline viewing.
I was without access to my normal ISP and had to use cellular data so I opted to download a show. 1 episode was 100 MB and I'm on Google Fi so it was basically $1 of data usage which I understood. But then when the episode was over, I stepped away from my phone to go to the bathroom and when I came back, I found that the episode had been deleted from my phone, and that the next episode had automatically downloaded without any action on my part incurring another $0.90 of data (not to mention deleting the episode I had intentionally downloaded making the first $1 a waste)
I saw at the top of the download section that there was something called "Smart Download" enabled that claims to do exactly that - delete the last episode and download the next, but it's only supposed to happen on wi-fi which wasn't the case for me. I turned off the feature as it was obviously broken and tried contacting customer service.
The CSR I talked to then told me that the app cannot delete or download material without me clicking a button - which contradicted their description of "Smart Download" that I had just read, and he explained there was no way for them to process a refund or credit to my account because they don't have any way to do that.
This seems like a pretty major problem.
Even when confronted with a direct customer complaint, their response was just to deny, deny, deny rather than taking even minor steps to rectify the issue. This seems mind boggling from a customer service perspective when companies like Amazon will bend over backwards to keep their customers happy. Even Hulu will credit you a free month of service when they goof - they even do it if you try to cancel the service because you can't find anything good to watch. Netflix's service isn't good enough to justify this type of behavior and general apathy. Customer-last seems like a crummy business model.