https://xkcd.com/810/

I worked at Intel in 2016. I luckily walked away before the big layoff, but I know several people who remained. When they blanket offer everyone over a certain age a lump sum of money in order to "retire early" (the sum wasn't nearly enough to allow someone to retire early, unless they were already planning to retire in the coming months), you really can't claim that age was merely a circumstantial correlation. After the chips fell with who did/didn't accept the "retirement package", THEN they commenced laying off the rest of the workers. Not sure if the EEOC is considering those people to be part of the layoff, or if those numbers only represent the involuntary ones.

No, we never want to kill pedestrians. But if they are indeed fewer, then that means we are killing MORE pedestrians by failing to roll it out. Fewer is absolutely the goal. Yes we want to get to 0 deaths, but can we honestly say that until self driving cars never, ever kill people, we want human-driven cars to continue to kills lots of people?

Do we have any indication that we haven't reached that cutoff point? I guess what really bothers me is that every single crash involving an autonomous vehicle gets national or international news coverage with headlines asking whether this means these vehicles aren't ready for public roads. I'm fine with that so long as every single crash involving a human driver also gets national or international news coverage asking whether this means humans should no longer be on public roads. Whats poison for the goose is poison for the gander.

So long as it hits fewer ladies with bikes than humans do, yes. It doesn't need to be perfect to be ready for adoption. It just needs to be better on average than humans. If 1/10 fatal accidents involving an autonomous vehicle could have been prevented by a human driver, while 2/10 fatal accidents involving human drivers could have been prevented by autonomous vehicles, then the obvious choice is that we should obviously switch to autonomous vehicles for a total reduction in fatal accidents. I absolutely call that progress. Yes, it's going to suck for those 1/10 people who die as a result, but it'll be huge for those 2/10 people who had their lives saved.

There are bound to be situations in which a human would react better than an autonomous system. That's not news. The real question is whether there are more per-capita accidents involving human drivers that could have been prevented by an autonomous vehicle or vice-versa. We will likely never get to the point where autonomous vehicles never make a mistake that humans wouldn't. However, when we get to the point where it makes FEWER fatal or potentially fatal mistakes than the average human, that's the cutoff point at which you're net saving lives.

I was in the wrong context. Reading two different threads. Sorry that the comment here didn't make a ton of sense. I like your suggestion of biodegradable material, but it's going to be a lot of work, and I don't know if all the little independently owned shops will stay in business. We'll see.

This is the problem. Like I said, they are everywhere. And they aren't, for the most part, chain stores that can do this as a concerted effort. It's little independently owned shops. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's also not something that is going to be as trivial of a task as the original comment seemed to imply.

You say this in jest, but really that is an ambitious schedule for Taiwan. As I mentioned in another comment, there are drink stands on every other street corner who sell drinks in 700cc plastic cups. They have big, expensive heat presses that seal a lid on top of it so you can carry it in a plastic bag and later puncture that lid with the included plastic straw. This move completely destroys their business model, and they have invested heavily in the equipment.

I lived in Taiwan for 2 years. This makes me both sad and hopeful. Hopeful because that island REALLY needs to focus on pollution. It's a country whose economy is built around manufacturing, and the factories dump tons of emissions into the air. I had a necktie I would show people when I came home. It was a nice charcoal grey tie. I'd then show them the back of the tie (the part that spent its life against my body, less exposed to the air), and it was royal blue. Bags and cups obviously don't contribute to air pollution, but the incense they mentioned definitely can (everything is extremely hazy during Ghost Month), and there is generally a lot of pollution of all forms, which you expect in such a densely populated area.

On the flip side, I loved the street vendors that served drinks. They would make your drink, pour it into a 700cc plastic cup, then use a head press to melt a thin plastic lid to it (think slightly thicker Saran Wrap). You could throw 5 or 6 of them in a plastic bag and not worry about them spilling. When you are ready to drink it, jab the disposable plastic straw through the lid and drink up. It was a genius system, and I will miss it dearly. I don't know what will become of those drink stands (seriously one every other corner throughout every city I lived in).

Also, "horribly" is "horrible". This is embarrassing.

I meant "couldn't recognize the difference". I really need to take the opportunity to review my posts when /. asks me to prior to submission...

I'm trying to figure out whether you are joking or not. I'm going to assume you're not. Intent to commit murder is not a crime. It's necessary to prove first degree murder, but treating "intent" to do something as a crime is a common distopian sci-fi theme, not a current reality (Minority Report, Orwell's Thoughtcrimes, etc). Were you thinking of conspiracy to commit murder? That's different and requires someone to have actually committed crimes before prosecution. Also, this is a horribly comparison. A more apt comparison is if the judge at a murder trial were a super-powerful toaster that could recognize when something looked like murder, but couldn't tell the difference between murder, actors reenacting a murder, and a subway worker making me a sandwich (admittedly, sometimes it does seem like they murdered my sandwich, but that's neither here nor there). Since it can't tell the difference, it gives all three the death sentence.

It's always been Kraft. Individually wrapped cheese-like substance? Macaroni and cheese-like substance? I mean, come on

If you rear-end somebody, it is your fault 100% of the time. The only possible exception is if their brake lights are out. If you're close enough that you can't react in time to an instantaneous stop, you're too close. The problem with human drivers is that none of them believe the laws of physics apply to them. Everyone assumes their stupid driving will be fine because nobody else will do something stupid, too. Several examples:
1) I had a friend tell me a story about when he was going ~100 MPH on a motorcycle on a rural road. A semi ran a stop sign at an intersection he was approaching and he was forced to stop in an inelegant way that led to damage to himself and his motorcycle. He lamented that his speed would have been perfectly fine if the idiot semi driver hadn't run the stop sign. He didn't appreciate when I pointed out that the semi's running the stop sign would have been perfectly fine if the idiot on the motorcycle hadn't been going 100 MPH.
2) In snowy areas like mine, big 4x4 trucks zoom past at 15 MPH over the speed limit with black ice all over the road. I have known several who do this. I point out how stupid and dangerous this is. They respond it's fine because their trucks have 4-wheel drive. I point out that 4 points of contact on a friction-less surface is still just a friction-less surface and offers no additional protection from sliding.
3) Ever time I hear about someone rear-ending someone else, the offended sounds exactly like you and blames the person they rear-ended for stopping too fast. As I mentioned before, it's your own damn fault. Every time.

Yes, the software will have bugs. No, it won't be perfect. But I sure pick their defect rate over the defect rate of human drivers.