Apologies if this has been said already. Some number of accidents are inevitable in city traffic no matter who or what is behind the wheel. The only question I have to ask is this: If a reasonably competent human driver had been behind the wheel, was there an opportunity in any of these accidents for the human to take evasive action to avoid the accident, something that it may be currently impractical to program into the autonomous driving system?

Generally true, but consider this -- a person called me Saturday who had a relatively new computer that just stopped booting. It gets to the splash screen and doesn't get any further. You don't throw out a computer for that reason (at least not yet) but Joe User probably doesn't have the expertise or understanding to diagnose and repair it. He found the original media (which was very fortunate -- many users have no idea where they put the disk) and I was able to talk him through the repair without losing his files. I don't think any offshore tech support person would even *try* to provide that level of service, let alone succeed.

I've had fairly good luck in freelance computer repair. I found that there were enough customers to scrape together a living who were tired of "tech support" they couldn't understand and weren't any help.

I'd say, work for yourself, find a job that requires the personal touch, and just be better at it than any offshore or H1B contractor could be.

Good point. We are seeing a group before years of selection process.

It's important to say, IT people tend to be an isolated bunch to start with, but yeah, although I didn't apply the label "Millennials", it does seem that the young members of the team seem more ... brittle, I guess is the expression I'd use. And in IT, that's not a good thing.

Facebook is an informational environment?

> "Quite honestly, we were wrong."

YA THINK??? Sorry sorry sorry. That's a little unfair, now that they're trying to do something more reasonable. Too bad it took a shot to the pocketbook, though.

I didn't really understand his response. I carry a low end Android phone that I'm not happy with at all [1], precisely because that's what my company issues. I don't see how this makes anyone a fuck-wit. Maybe because you carry an i-phone and aren't an Apple fanatic?

[1] Not because it's an Android phone, but because it's a considerable downgrade from my previous company issued Android phone.

You have a point -- I don't watch sports at all -- wife is the sports nut in our family -- but I do understand the absurdity of time-shifting sports events -- there is a human need to see it while it's happening -- so I'd say that live streaming -- a well known and mature technology these days -- is probably the answer in cases like this.

Score "troll", seriously? Who among us here hasn't had to fix breakage from a drive-by update?

That's... actually kinda cool.

...morse code? That would work on really tiny screens. Morse is a dying art -- this could breath some life into it.

> Home users will receive updates as they come out, rather than queueing them all up on "patch Tuesday."

So random breakage, then, rather than breakage on a particular weekday. Sucks to be a home user.

> so they can see if any of the patches accidentally break anything for home users before trying them out.

"if"? It's inevitable.

Graffiti is a good idea, and I think I could knock the rust off those skills in a short time, but aren't we at the point now where voice recognition is practical?

Different areas have different price structures, I guess. We currently have internet and phone over fiber for about $60/mo. Full cable/DVR when we had it was just over $120 a month... what a waste... Wife has hulu so she can binge-watch network TV shows. I canceled Netflix when daughter went a little over five months binge-watching in her room -- didn't even bathe -- she's in counseling now. Wife has her own TV, she'll leave it on an on-air channel while she's playing games or something. We have a huge DVD/BR collection (Friday is "movie and pizza" night) but I can't remember the last time I watched TV in real time. And I'm completely ignorant of what passes for commercials these days.

I think you're right, internet will eventually support cable TV instead of the other way around. And eventually cable TV as we know it today will go away. I'm really hoping the entire non-demand cable paradigm collapses as soon as possible. It really hasn't been necessary for some time, and it's holding up other types of content delivery.