Great way to demonstrate being a "technically forward looking company" without offering anything of value. Sheesh...

I don't think it is a mystery. Mice would be eating the eggs of the nesting seabirds.

So if we kill all the mice and end up with 1000 poisoned mice carcasses per acre...

I wonder what will eat those poisoned carcasses?
[s](At least seabirds wouldn't eat poisoned mice!)[/s]

The basic internals of a PDF file is PostScript and people don't realize that PostScript is a programming language. The PostScript language is very slanted towards describing images but it is still a programming language.

Back when the US court system was figuring out electronic documents it always bothered me that they ended up going with PDF instead of TIFF which is intended to not have a way to easily be edited which is more suitable as an archive standard. Plus TIFF obviously makes it easy to add data tags that would make cataloging data much easier.

Search for "Oculus"
Now search for "Meta"

It will be hell finding a place that sells "Meta" and anything that works with "Meta".

Remember back in the dark mists of internet history when Google's motto was "Do no harm"?

Yeah. Neither do I.

Had a substitute teacher demonstrate this in high school with a reel to reel tape machine. The record head and the playback head are separate. By varying the tape speed he could change the echo delay. By varying the speed he could hit a person's "sweet spot" which was different for different people. A couple people were so susceptible that they would get stuck trying to say a syllable or two and by changing the speed he could get them so they seemed to be echoing that same sound almost backwards.
There were a couple of people who were unaffected. It was a pretty good way to get a bunch of students to pay attention to a substitute teacher.

Kickback much?

So you can put a nuclear reactor a submarine since the 1950s but they can't deal with changes of climate? Really??

The problem with Fukushima was why wouldn't they design a coastal reactor that couldn't survive being submerged? Japan already knows all about tsunamis (Hey it is a Japanese word!) so it was an obvious risk. Nuclear power is an obvious solution but it requires a serious level of paranoid planning. As long as you plan for physical disasters you can avoid their risk.

Carrington Event

How is that irrelevant? When pointing out how overblown this all is the lack of severity of actual contracting the disease seems to be the exact point.

I don't know what you are trying to say is "ok". The correct way to regain or maintain control in many situations is to add power until control is regained. It makes no difference if it is a person or a computer taking that action. That isn't a judgement call. That is the way it is.

This points out a serious question though: Is there a software company that is willing to program in an action that will directly take a life so as to avoid the much more dangerous consequences of not taking the actions that would take that life? That is the sort of situation that makes personal injury attorney's eyes gleam.

Self driving isn't a requirement to add the kind of system you are talking about. The reason that there isn't a system like you describe is that kind of an antilock brake system requires hydraulic brake systems. Air brakes can't supply the type of high speed pulsing required to make it work.
Air brakes are a required system for semi trailers because any sort of fault causes them to lock up which is way better than the complete failure that comes with any failure of a hydraulic brake system. Adding to this is the fact that the trailer brakes aren't part of the truck. They are part of the much larger quantity of trailers and to have any chance of them being maintained in any way that is close to safe the system has to be very, very simple and completely homogeneous across the whole worldwide system of tractor-trailer transport.

Yes it is possible that a system can be devised that can do the sort of traction/brake control you are talking about. But making it happen with the required cost and complexity of computers, sensors, etc without it becoming more of a danger for its lack of failing to a safe mode makes it unlikely to happen any time soon.

Yeah because modern life doesn't require pesky things like food and product in every store on the planet.

The problem is that people in vehicles around trucks don't treat them like they are dangerous. The willingness to drive in truck's blind spots, cut off, or even brake check a semi is amazing. But as it has been for all of time: Abject stupidity is dangerous and often fatal. It is just amazing that more people don't win their nomination to the Darwin Awards.

In your response to "What EXACTLY is known to be required to keep a human alert and focused?" you didn't actually respond to that question. Instead you pointed out how they are trying to detect if someone has failed to remain alert. The question still remains of HOW you get someone to remain focused and engaged. It is still human nature that you have to have a stream of 'tasks' regularly coming to you that requires your interaction. (Video game companies have made an industry out of making people engrossed with a task. Some of their design goals have an interesting bearing on this problem.)

As far as the safety record of "automated driving aids" I think it is more shocking that with how common shockingly bad driving is that the numbers aren't worse. Not a day passes where you don't see someone do something that in no way shape or form is "on the menu of available choices" yet they still have drivers licenses.
And it is rare that a week goes by where I don't see someone do something grossly wrong that infringes other vehicle's right of way and then watch the perpetrator get viciously angry if someone honks at them for trying to run them over. A large percentage of drivers are entitled, incompetent fools that are actively dangerous and still cops focus on speeding tickets instead of the much more dangerous infractions involving right-of-way.
Yeah, I'm surprised that the numbers aren't higher but it could easily be improved by very actively enforcing the laws relating to the root causes of accidents to the point of revoking driver licenses. (And speed is not a root cause. It is only a contributing factor to the severity of an accident.)