Through lifelong dedication, a craftsman can align a car with a string, or smoke BBQ in a trash can, or whatever it is he or she does. But their activity doesn't scale beyond what they can personally produce. And if they end up smoking 100 pounds of meat per day to run their restaurant, that's it. There's little time left in the day to innovate. Craftsmen don't scale well, unless they industrialize their processes, (and then you risk ending up with a product with all the qualities of Budweiser.).

The rest of us are dedicated to other things: jobs, families, other hobbies. Does our inexperience mean we can't enjoy products of similar quality as the craftsmen produce? What's wrong with distilling the essence of their wisdom into a PID controller and an Atmel chip? If my BBQ-bot fails, I'm certainly not going to fix it with string - but that's not the point. The point is I could occasionally enjoy a high quality smoked brisket, thanks to a machine that knows more than I do about the process.

It was obvious. I appologize for being nitpicky.

The posting specifically mentions a 4kg model flying 15 feet over a crowd. That's not a "toy" sized device, that's an untethered Cuisinart.

How about handing a friend a video camera, and you with a fishing net on a long pole. Show it flying unsafely, take it down on video, and hand the footage to the cops telling them you feared for your family's safety.

I don't think Prenda Law holds any copyrights. The interesting question is whether they had permission to publish the things they published.

Why not? Suing them seems totally appropriate unless they are making adequate pre-purchase disclosure, and ensuring that the prospective purchaser is aware of the characteristics of the thing they are purchasing.

Disagree? Re-read Adam Smith.

Yes, but remember, in those days "Cookie Monster" was a typical virus. And internet communities were relatively homogenous.

There are, there must be, limits to free speech. Shouting down someone else doesn't count as free speech. At most it's a reasonable reaction to their stifling of your own speech.

In this case it appears (as an outside observer) that this is the silencing of an honest, truthful, and respected voice. If she is an employee of Rededit, then I suppose that is their right, but the proper response is to refuse to deal with or support Rededit in any way. Which is what this protest appears to be doing.

IIUC, Amen is properly interpreted as meaning "So let it be" (traditionally "so be it", but subjunctive I is rarely used anymore).

As such, Amen is not the proper resoponse to an accurate portrayal of a historical fact. "yay verily" would be more accurate.

Thank you. If this is a part of that same complex of events, that puts things in better perspective. But why would Rededit choose to associate itself with the bigots? If it did, then ceasing to support it is the only reasonable first step.

What you say is clearly reasonable, but I've got to believe that you are mischaracterizing this event. Censorship is always questionable, even when done for the highest of motives. So are you asserting that the folk on Rededit were inciting to violence? Taken literally it appears that this is what you are saying. I'm sufficiently unfamiliar with the events that this could even be a true and accurate characterization. But I think I'd need to have seen some proof before I believed it.

Given the way that people often behave, I have to admit that defending incitements to violence isn't something I have a hard time believing. What I have a hard time believing is a massive outcry in support of defending incitements to violence (without considerable prior propaganda).

It's important. The times that it's critical are rare. So... add if's it's in the middle of the road you prefer to stop rather than run over it. If it's up-right it's proper to dodge dangerously rather than to hit it. The number of crawling kids in the middle of the road is quite small, but it's larger than the number of infants, so add in something that smoothly increases the probability of human as it's (estimated) weight approaches 90 pounds and decreases it as it exceeds 300 pounds. Or 400. So you have a flattened bell curve with a smooth top.

But really, all this fiddling is just to handle corner cases. Usually you just stop or avoid the thing on the road without wondering much what it is. Only if you can't do either of those do you need the fancy figuring, which is a pain, because that's when you need the fast decision, so you "corner case handler" need to be something simple.
Rule 1: If it's standing up, it's a human. Don't hit, even if you must take damage. (This yields several false positives, but too bad. We need a quick decision.)
Rule 2: Estimate it's weight. (Ouch! That looks like a slow process...so while you're doing it, slow and start dodging.) If it's above 25 pounds, avoid even if you must take damage. (Note that hitting something heavy at a fast speed will damage you no matter what.) Continue slowing and preparing to dodge. If it's following a ball, dodge even if you must take damage.

Sorry, time's up.

This isn't a perfect approach, but it's simple, and doable. The hard step is estimating weight. There is a problem with false positives. A paper mache statue would count as human. But it should handle all common cases. And there should also be a distinction between streets where the traffic is slow and rare and streets where the traffic is fast and common. Freeways are much less likely to have humans walking in the road.

Additionally, there should be a rule about not overdriving your reaction time, especially on slow streets, but nothing can stop a kid from running out right in front of you from between two parked cars. And nobody, neither automaton nor human, can reliably deal with that. Which is why that first rule about "upright" is made to yield a lot of false positives. If you have time, then you can refigure things and perhaps decide that "that's a paper mache statute", so you may start to dodge in a way that will damage yourself, and then refigure to avoid damaging yourself when you, more slowly, decide that such action isn't needed.

will be the first to board the next launch vehicle to the ISS after all these failures.

It's not like any of them are proving themselves particularly reliable. And it's not like any of these failures would have been survivable for the crew.

Why? Just make it so that as far as the machines are concerned Gorillas are a subset of humans. And then keep the actual gorillas away from them.

You've got a reasonable point for more advanced machines, but for now I'd just as soon that they also avoid squashing dogs and cats...or, pretty much anything protoplasmic over, say, 5 pounds. Or 4. Slaugher house machines don't need to be intelligent, and shouldn't be. Not until things are FAR more developed.

And, really, wouldn't you just as soon that your car avoided running over that skunk? So if you adopt a variant of the precautionary principle, you can get most of the advantages without waiting for perfection.