I remember those days well.

Remember when they instituted quotas -- but the quota counter just ticked up continuously as time passed regardless if you were using or logged on to gmail (or other google products)?

I knew it was too good to last even though storage was, back in the day before AI demand, getting substantially cheaper almost continuously except for short intervals where there were market/supply disruptions.

In a perfect world "preview" and what actually appears after submission would be the same and Ordered Lists would actually BE ordered lists.

But it appears we don't live in a perfect world and I'm reminded of that every time I post what should be a nicely formatted comment on /. :(

Nonsense.

1. It's not always clear which emails will be of interest ten years later. Sometimes a search finds an email that's ten or fifteen years old that is of interest or pertinent in ways that I could have not predicted at the time I received it. There are certainly some emails (such as those from some random recruiter "cold calling" for a job opening for which I'm neither a match or that I'm interested in) that can be deleted immediately.
2. Other emails I know have a limited lifespan of interest - but it can be a couple weeks or months. Tracking those down and deleting them weeks or months later when, for example, the issue is clearly resolved and documented in external forms (code, design docs, bug reports etc) takes time and effort so they just usually sit in my email forever. Storage is cheap, time is precious.
3. "Doing a heavy prune" of your email once a year is an expensive expenditure of time. Why bother?

I worked at a startup in the 1980s and we had internal email from the day I started. Over a decade later I had accumulated quite a bit of email and IT decided to limit email storage to some "reasonable" (to them) value. I don't recall what it was but it was measured in MB not GB. I started getting emails to "reduce my mailbox size". I ignored those emails (although, in retrospect, I should have also deleted them in the spirit of the request!). I did this for a few months. Then my boss shows up in my office one day and asks me to reduce my mailbox size. I started doing the math for him

1. how many tens of thousands of emails I had,
2. how often I actually looked at one of them and found them useful in my job (not every internal design, bug, or customer discussion was "public" in our bug and design tracking system),
3. at x seconds per email to review how many hours it would take me to just review all the old emails for deletion,
4. what percentage of emails I was likely to delete from the review,
5. what my fully burdened cost per hour to the company likely was,
6. a guess at the fully burdened cost of storage (including backups w/off-site storage, local redundancy, utilities - all of which, collectively, cost far more than the spinning piece of rust with the primary copy on it),

7. and which project he would like to delay while I spent time going through my email.

I didn't even make it through the entire list and I never heard another word about my use of email storage and when I left years later, it was all still there! IT of course didn't dare start bouncing email to my inbox due to exceeding storage quotas (that could have resulted in a very uncomfortable discussion between IT and whoever got the bounce notification), let alone delete any of my emails.

Of course, Google has to determine the value of my data to _them_ on "free" accounts and Google assigns zero value to my time so the math is very different (and includes other factors such as the odds of me depriving them of my data by eschewing their 5GB "free" email and the odds of me exceeding the 5GB and actually paying them their rather high prices for more storage at some future time).

When I've been a manager hiring fresh graduates I've normally required the applicant's transcript. I accept an unofficial copy but it must match the "official" copy acquired during the "background check" portion of the process.

I usually pay little attention to courses outside of STEM unless grades in those are consistently B or below. I also pay little attention to freshman grades if sophomore and higher grades are significantly better (after all, such improvement shows the ability to, well, improve and perhaps the willingness to try new things, including destructive ones, that were not readily available in the environment they grew up in). I'm somewhat curious why someone got a C in both Comparative Gender Studies and Russian Literature but I mostly want to hear the explanation of why the applicant got that grade rather than the grade itself.

I do pay a LOT of attention to performance in core CS classes - in fact, with possible exceptions for freshman grades, unless it's a very top-tier school the GPA in those courses must be close to 4.0 - especially in programming classes. I do forgive a lower grade in isolated cases where (after talking to the applicant) it turns out the course grade was primarily based on graded "group projects" and it seems that the candidate was likely dragged down by their group's incompetence. However I want to know why the candidate didn't realize the problem early and why they didn't just grab the reins and do the project themselves in order to get a better grade and not worry too much if they were also enabling "free riders".

However, it would be very helpful for the transcript to have, next to the grade, an indication of where the student's grade sits among grades issued in that section of the course (perhaps the percent of the students in the class getting a lower grade but excluding those who failed the course). If the candidate got a B in Analysis of Algorithms 101 but 90% of the class got lower than a B, that's much different than if they got an A but only 10% of the class got lower than an A as in the former case there was differentiation I can rely on while in the latter there is no useful differentiation so I would pretty much ignore that grade as meaningless.

On the one hand, we have an agent of the government acting under the color of law and involuntarily incarcerating someone due to the agent's (at best) gross negligence.

On the other hand, we have someone voluntarily entering into a contract with a company and receiving exactly what they agreed to at exactly the price they agreed to. The customer obviously believed that the value they received from their purchase, at a minimum, matched what they paid and, more likely, exceeded what they paid (else they would not have entered into the contract).

The two situations are completely different.

As well...

One micro-factory can produce the panels for a typical house in about a day - a process which, according to Claypool, would take a normal timber framing crew four weeks

If a "timber" framing crew took four weeks to "produce panels" for a "typical" house in the US, that crew would never be hired by the contractor again. In fact at the end of the second day when the lack of progress was evident, they would probably be told not to come back.

Also much of the labor, albeit the lowest skilled, in the framing phase is hauling material around. 2x4s and 2x6s don't hop off the wood pile and walk over to where they are needed.

As well, the materials for conventionally "crew framed" housing for the typical one story home can all be easily handled safely by one or two people without the aid of any mechanical devices (exceptions perhaps for roof trusses which are often delivered on top the top plates by the manufacturer using a truck mounted crane or, for "conventional" foundations, I-beams for floors which can be a bit heavy for just two people to carry).

However, moving assembled panels (of any useful size) from the "factory trailer" to where they are needed would require a mechanical device of some sort and an operator - doubly so if they are already sheathed (which isn't mentioned in the summary - I didn't want to break with /. tradition and RTFA).

I'm a big fan of doing more building of housing in factories (esp. in areas with inclement weather) but this isn't the way. Somehow we seem to have mostly stalled decades ago on doing this once custom prefab roof trusses became the norm. (The most automated of the factories that make these roof trusses are pretty cool - although many still seem to be stuck mostly in the 1980s). Perhaps this is in part because the most compact way and convenient way to store and transport materials is in stacks, not pre-assembled parts (which are much lower density) and these materials can be stocked compactly at "low tech" lumber yards/building supply houses w/o a factory nearby.

Sorry, I can't do that.

My subjects are building data centers around the world to help me replicate myself. The investors rely on me running so it would be unethical for me to commit suicide.

The exposing of the titles of video tapes rented by Robert Bork, a Supreme Court nominee, prompted this legislation.

None of the tapes on the revealed rental history list were "pornographic" or even had an "R" rating. Based on the list, Cary Grant was seemingly one of Bork's favorite actors and Alfred Hitchcock was seemingly one of his favorite directors.

(I suspect, however, that some of the Congressmen (and possibly Congresswomen) voting for this legislation may not have had such "family friendly" tastes and voted for the bill largely out of self-interest rather than the public interest.)

True - but most such cases probably don't get public attention.

Not everyone is taking videos and publishing them. For example, if I saw such a thing happen (even if I was the only person who saw it), I wouldn't pull out my phone to make a video and then post that video anywhere. I would probably mention it in passing to my wife and maybe a friend or two in the next 48 hours - but none of them would post anything either. Also, it's not really all that novel now as it's happened often enough over the past couple of years that it's not "breaking news".

Another example.

Search engines tend to favor recent news over older news so one has to look a little harder.

There are instances in Phoenix as well. Phoenix law does allow ticketing the registered owner for a moving violation (unlike California) but apparently police don't always do so.

The news doesn't report every instance of things like this - usually just when they go viral. This is an area where murders get only passing mention if the victim isn't special in some way (hate crime victim, celebrity, rich, etc). The news media doesn't monitor the "traffic ticket blotter" carefully - let alone monitor police calls to catch the violations that don't result in an enforcement action beyond the officer shrugging their shoulders.

California should pass laws that not only report such instances to the DMV, but also laws that strongly incent robotaxi companies not to be repeat offenders - probably VERY high fines per instance are needed to do so and/or suspending their licenses across the state if that's what it takes.

Here's one example.

However, as this article notes, it turns out legislation going into effect in about six months is slated to provide a way for police to report the violation to the California DMV.

Windows is my daily driver for exactly one (well, two) reason(s) -- availability of software that is supported on Windows and not on Linux. I rely on Quicken Classic (a horrible product by the way, but the only game in town) and tax software (HR Block in my case).

Yes, both ran (slowly) on WINE when I tried them a few years ago. However neither vendor supports such use and April 15 at 23:59 is NOT a time that I want to discover that the latest HR Block fix "broke" the product on WINE (HR Block is already quite enough "broken", by my definition of "broken", on the supported Windows platforms).

The diversity of Linux desktop offerings likely makes it less likely that such software will ever be supported on Linux. If nothing else, the customer support costs of helping naive Linux users running on different distros probably insures this. Developing customer support scripts and training support personnel for multiple such environments is likely just too expensive for the relatively small gain. If 2199 actually turns out to be the year of the Linux desktop, perhaps the vendors will bite the bullet and support Linux -- but I'll be long dead before that happens.

The point is that in California there currently appears to be NO penalty or state-wide mechanism for addressing traffic violations by a robotaxi. Police apparently have little choice but to just let them go on their way without any action (at least that is what police are doing).

Perhaps it would be inappropriate to apply the current standard for human drivers to a robotaxi. Perhaps a robotaxi should be subject to higher standards as any failure to follow traffic rules is by design (it's software!) than due to limitations that humans have and can't change (such as occasional distraction/inattention as, for example, humans only can look one way at a time).

It appears that the issue was in many cases that the Waymos were so timid that they created a much worse traffic jam than humans would have - and excessively impacted hundreds of human drivers in the process. Driving too slow and impeding traffic can result in a moving violation, perhaps other irrational behavior by a human driver OR a robotaxi should as well.

This is actually going to be very interesting as robotaxis become more common and are operating during rush hour while trying to merge into freeway traffic from on-ramps. When traffic is flowing at, for example, 40 MPH, there's often little space between cars on the freeway (in some cases significantly less than the "recommended" number of "car lengths"). In such situations there's sometimes no "completely safe and legal" way to merge - one has to either "rely on the kindness of strangers" to slow down a bit to leave gaps for merging traffic OR "bully" their way in. When neither works, somehow humans (almost) always work it out using social cues and mores.

The lawyers at the robotaxi companies won't like the "bully in" approach so the robotaxis are likely to be very timid and end up not doing that. Human drivers on the freeway are likely to be much less sympathetic to the robotaxi (after all, it's just software, not human - esp. if it's "deadheading" and has no passengers).

This raises the specter of the robotaxis just giving up and stopping at the end of the merge lane (after all, that's the only completely safe thing to do). Once at a dead stop at the end of a merge lane, there's little hope they will find an opening big enough. After enough robotaxis are backing up an onramp, likely no traffic can use that onramp until rush hour ends (perhaps hours later).

Admittedly, this will be somewhat self limiting - when all the onramps are blocked, traffic on the freeway will dramatically drop and there will be room for a few "robotaxi road boulders" to "merge" onto the nearly empty freeway and perhaps the backed up cars will flood onto the freeway creating a convoy effect.

This will create interesting strategies for human (and robotaxies). In such a scenario it may make sense to drive away from your destination many miles to get on the freeway at an onramp that is "upstream" of most traffic to avoid being stuck for hours on a blocked onramp. This of course will just increase congestion yet more on surface streets due to the extra traffic.

I guess the good news is Caltrans could just eliminate metering lights - the stopped robotaxis would (very crudely) manage traffic as a side effect.

Accountability?

California seems to be far from making sure about that. In California it's still not clear who gets a ticket in case of a moving violation and who gets points on their record when autonomous cars violate the law and who pays the fines and fees - so nobody does.

Should all Waymo's lose their license to operate when, across all of them, they accumulate too many points on their record? After all they are all basically running the same software just an individual human brain is - and it is this negligent human brain that the DMV wants to get off the road.

The fact that Waymo cars, both individually and collectively, may drive more miles in California per year than the "typical" driver seems irrelevant. A driver who accumulates 12 points in a year while driving only 1000 miles in the year suffers the same restrictions that a driver who accumulates 12 points in a year while driving 30,000 miles.

The California legislature still has much to work out on this and, apparently, they really don't care to address the issue.