Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Maybe stick to the speed limit? (Score 1) 167

"Most of what makes neighborhood streets dangerous is pedestrians" - not in the UK.

Let me restate that. Most of what makes neighborhood streets dangerous is vehicles and pedestrians using the same space at similar times.

Pedestrians have priority over all forms of transport on the road.

Who has priority is largely uninteresting, because ultimately if a car hits you, you're still probably dead whether you had the right of way or not.

Vehicles make the roads dangerous

Ostensibly, sure, if you got rid of all the cars, streets would be safer for pedestrians, but they would also be a huge waste of space, because pedestrians don't need huge roads to walk. Roads exist principally for cars. The fact that pedestrians have to cross them is just an unfortunate design constraint that's hard to avoid cheaply, and giving pedestrians priority is mostly just feel-good policymaking that doesn't solve any of the fundamental problems.

The only truly safe way to share the space is to ensure that pedestrians aren't in the road when cars are. The best approach, at least in cities, is second-floor walkways, so that pedestrians and cars are never vertically at the same traffic layer. A slightly less optimal, but still reasonable approach is to give pedestrians a separate walk cycle in which the entire intersection is theirs. Pedestrians have priority during that cycle, and cars have priority the rest of the time, and as long as everyone follows the rules, nobody gets hurt.

But none of those solutions work for neighborhood streets, which is why the presence of pedestrians on neighborhood streets without sidewalks and proper traffic control for pedestrians results in the roads being inherently more dangerous than other streets.

Comment With Trump president? (Score 1, Troll) 48

Our intelligence agencies are going to be leaking like a sieve. The last time Trump was President the number of captured and killed intelligence assets skyrocketed. I haven't been monitoring at this time but I'm sure it's shot up again. Never mind the fact that we found out Trump was taking classified documents related to his businesses.

What pisses me off is the Democrats kept putting Republicans in charge of prosecuting Trump because they were so desperate to appear unbiased. Fuck that shit look where it got us. Tons of dead soldiers and we are probably going to put boots on the ground and do a draft soon. Because Iran isn't Iraq. We do not have the troops to occupy Iran. That's based on the pentagon's own math and that math is well tested and well understood.

Not that it matters to any of the old farts around here. None of us are going to get drafted and we know it.

Comment Yes, and it's even worse than that... (Score 1) 46

Ever heard of a race to the bottom?

So you have two candidates for a job. But one of them has a family to support and the other one is still living at home. You don't think that's relevant to the salary offer that each candidate will consider acceptable?

Too bad the future of society depends on people having families and therefore on having incomes high enough to support families. Unintended consequences and all that stuff.

Comment Winners and losers (Score 1) 177

Actually the big winners are pretty clear: Netanyahu and Putin. And they are NOT tired of winning yet. Especially not on America's dime. And speculators with insider information. They also won too much and are still winning.

I'm not sure who the biggest losers are yet. Obviously the Iranians are leading candidates, especially any moderate Iranians running loose in Iran. They were probably the most targeted victims the day after the war started.

My growing concern is with Xi's plans to get in on the winning. What sort of "other shoe" is Xi going to drop on the YOB when they meet? Some kind of deal providing Chinese boots on Iranian ground to "fix" the Hormuz problem? Perhaps in exchange for a permanent military base on Taiwan? Let's have a "great deal" to eliminate any threat of a messy amphibious invasion? Or maybe offer the YOB a couple of hotel towers with golf courses near Shanghai and Hong Kong? The corruption also knows no bounds.

Comment Re:Who's driving? (Score 1) 167

Actually they take pictures that include the driver's face. Just recently read about someone being impressed by the high quality of the images. They sent copies with the citation. The question of the identity of the driver seems like a minor one at that point. They would only need to confirm that the face matches a known face. If you tried to claim you had loaned the car to someone else, then it becomes even easier, just proving the photographed face does not match the claimed face. But it reverts to the general facial recognition problem if they send a photo of an unknown person who would then have to be identified using a large database of faces...

However the direction the world seems to be heading, the next step will be real time checking of registration information to make sure the car isn't stolen. After all, that could explain some of the speeding. A car thief is extra likely to be in a bit of a hurry.

Comment Re:And in absolutely unrelated news... (Score 1) 52

Not a bad FP branch, and I can add a relevant citation. The book is mostly about abusing people to increase the profits of giant tech companies and Amazon gets plenty of mentions. They tried to focus the book on AI, and that's where most of the examples come from, but it's really a broader thing. If there is interest in more books [On Slashdot? ROFLMAO] I can dig up some others from the last few years. But this one was published last year:

Feeding the Machine by Muldoon, Graham, and Cant.

Comment Good at enforcing rules, but Japanese folks... (Score 1) 10

They're especially good at enforcing silly rules. The rule-making process in Japan sometimes produces terrible rules, which then get enforced with enthusiasm. Or is it worse when the rules get case-by-case treatment that can make them effectively meaningless except as threats?

So anyway, I think the opening joke was weak and the story itself didn't get any attention in Japan. The FP numbers work out at a thousand bucks per "cybersecurity engineer", which is just silly. If the decimal place slipped twice and it was supposed to be $100,000/engineer, then it's only 10,000, which is actually a reasonable number to hope for some good. Unfortunately, cybersecurity is a weak chain game, which in this case means finding any vulnerability defended by a lesser engineer. The value of a top "cybersecurity attacker" is unlikely to be capped at such a small number as $100,000 and someone is gonna git overrun and breached.

Returning to the topic of "attention in Japan", absence of evidence is not proof of anything. However if it was a big deal then it should have made the local news... My bad. Turns out it did: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworl... Or did it?

Oh wait. Is it possible the Slashdot version is wrong? NHK says it's about AI with cybersecurity getting a side-mention. Investing in AI? Where have I seen that story before. Oh yeah. Everywhere.

And one more thing. About the new Subject. The particularly stupid new rules I was thinking about involve a new campaign against bicycles. Enough to convince me to get rid of my bike. Not worth more hassles, but my typically negative prediction is that bike problems are minor and bike benefits are significant, so if the new rules push more people to buy cars then the net effects will be mostly negative...

Comment No it won't (Score 0) 52

Robots are coming no matter what. There's no accelerating it anymore than it can be. The ruling class, the Epstein class is tired of being dependent on employees and they don't give a rats buttered behind what it costs. The only thing stopping them from automating everything is they haven't quite worked out how to do it yet. Cost is not a factor anymore. They don't want you. They don't want you as a consumer and they especially don't want you as an employee.

The Old Kings had a Divine right. The Epstein class wants that back.

Comment Oh fuck off (Score 1) 52

Ai and robots are coming no matter what because the ruling class doesn't like being dependent on us filthy filthy consumers and employees.

They will spend any amount of money to eliminate you from the economy. And we gave them all the money because of sentiments like yours.

I get that you are trolling because it's fun but the thing is they are coming for you and all of us. The sooner you come to terms with that the better.

Assuming you're not ancient Boomer trash. In which case you get to die leaving everybody else to deal with the mess you made. I'm not exactly happy with older Gen x either. They gave us war in Iran along with the help of the boomers...

Comment Re:Please sir (Score 1) 177

now imagine Iran got nukes...

Attacking nuclear facilities is at least moderately rational. Various countries have done that half a dozen times over the past few years. Attacking drone manufacturing and storage might also be reasonable.

But...

What does an illegal decapitation attack have to do with nukes? Do you think the new supreme leader is going to somehow be more rational than the last one? There is a fundamental difference between going after clear military targets to prevent Iran from developing weapons that threaten their neighbors and going after civilian and government targets.

If you don't stop them now. They will just dig deeper and try again. They will keep doing this until someone stops them.

No, they will keep doing this until they are a nuclear power. They've seen what denuclearization did for Ukraine, and it's hard to argue with their logic. Having nuclear weapons is a strong deterrent to invaders, who realize that the response could be swift and devastating at a scale that countries never recover from.

It's unclear what other things they will do at that point. We can only speculate. Mind you, I don't like the idea of a nuclear-armed Iran, but again, I see no evidence that anything happening over there right now is going to change anything, or even delay it enough to matter.

Iran knows it can close the strait any time it likes. Are you willing to just let them hold the world hostage? Pay them the toll and buy their oil so they can get to the nukes faster?

Is anything that the U.S. government is doing right now going to change that reality? The way you prevent them from laying mines is the same way that you prevent oil from leaving Iran — bombing ships the second they leave the harbor. If you're not willing to start with a full air and naval blockade, you've already failed, and the only thing continuing the war can do is increase the number of ways that you've failed.

Slashdot Top Deals

Take your work seriously but never take yourself seriously; and do not take what happens either to yourself or your work seriously. -- Booth Tarkington

Working...