What Is Digital Humanities? - <AUTHOR> http://humanscode.com/what-is-digital-humanities/

<comment><USER2> I studied* Humanities Computer Science, as it was called at my university at the time. Behind closed doors, the professor was fairly explicit about it not being as world-changing, innovative or new as it was presented whenever they were seeking funding. Their work ranged from metadata tagging to version control to long-term digital archives.

In fact, he said the field had been renamed several times, largely to make it seem like a new field when it wasn't. Digital Humanities, Humanities Computer Science, and so on all refer to the same loosely defined field.

Although there certainly is something in it that isn't entirely nebulous, I'm not convinced "Digital Humanities" in itself, really is a thing or that the definition has any practical use other than providing a label when you seek funding.

*note: I was enrolled for a lengthy period of time and spent most of my time in university with their department and in the student association but I left without a degree.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is in many respects nebulous, but that I think is because it's not quite a discipline. It can't quite mark out it's domain and jurisdiction in the way a traditional discipline might, and that's in large part because the transformation in cultural practices -- economic, analytical, subjective, etc -- that the advent of computing, software, and big data is generating is so momentous. It will require a transformation of the basic assumptions that lay at the base of professional training in the humanities all across the board.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's a better assessment from one of the leaders in the field: [https://mkirschenbaum.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/what-is- digit...](https://mkirschenbaum.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/what-is-digital- humanities/)

It is something of an understatement to say that DH pays a generous amount of attention to its own roots and limits... At this point it is basically a cliche to ask "what is DH?"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link @quinndupont. Do you care to elaborate about what is better about Kirenschenbaum's analsysis? What, I mean, is the substance of your opinion?

<comment><USER3> I would suggest that it is more a matter of position. Kirschenbaum writes from _within_ mainstream DH, and is aware of the many discussions of DH that have occurred since its inception in 1949[1] (an arbitrary, but useful date). In another work of his (and he's not the only one analysing these matters), he lampoons the kinds of critique offered by Ethan Miller.

Kirschenbaum writes: "Herewith, then, are some of the terrible things of my title, hardly any of which are exaggerated for effect: Digital humanities is a nest of big data ideologues. Digital humanities digs MOOCs. Digital humanities is an artifact of the post-9/11 security and surveillance state (the NSA of the MLA). Like Johnny, digital humanities can't read. Digital humanities doesn't do theory. Digital humanities never historicizes. Digital humanities is complicit. Digital humanities is naive. Digital humanities is hollow huckster boosterism. Digital humanities is managerial. Digital humanities is the academic import of Silicon Valley solutionism (the term that is the shibboleth of bad-boy tech critic Evgeny Morozov). Digital humanities cannot abide critique. Digital humanities appeals to those in search of an oasis from the concerns of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Digital humanities does not inhale (easily the best line of the bunch). Digital humanities wears Google Glass. Digital humanities wears thick, thick glasses (guilty). Perhaps most damning of all: digital humanities is something separate from the rest of the humanities, and—this is the real secret—digital humanities wants it that way. Terrible things indeed these are!"[2]

Miller reiterates many of these positions without acknowledgement that not only have they been discussed before, they have even become points of ridicule. Perhaps one does not need to agree with those _within_ DH, like Kirschenbaum, but to regurgitate "MOOCs", "silicon valley" and "big data" without at least a passing familiarity with the discussions that have been going on is more than a little shallow.

Yet, DH usually thinks of itself as "big tent", so competing histories and conceptions are part of its very fabric, and sure to be welcomed. The problem with assessments of DH from the _outside_ is that they usually end up rather unsavoury and polemic, hence Kirschenbaum's invocation of William Pannapacker's rabble rousing and the attendant fallout.

[1] [http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/view?docId=blackw...](http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/view?docId=blackwell/9781405103213/9781405103213.xml&chunk.id=ss1-2-1) [2] [https://mkirschenbaum.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/dhterrible...](https://mkirschenbaum.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/dhterriblethingskirschenbaum.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you might be right about the perspective being partly a matter of "position". Looking over your own impressive body of work, I can see that you are also a deep traveller in this world. So first off, much respect for all the good work.

I think, however, you misread the text, or rather projected a certain easily dismissed critique onto it. My point was to understand what digital humanities is, as I put it, as an "epiphenomenon of the tectonic encounter between this world of computing, with its newly acquired 'Silicon Valley sex appeal,' and the world of ideas." The point of the supposed "Sex Appeal" line is not to denigrate the importance of computing or the digital humanities; quite to the contrary, it is to note that in contrast to the past computing has been elevated to a level of cultural importance that perhaps matches the revolutionary nature of the technological changes it has produced.

I agree completely with Kirschenbaum in the passage you quoted above when he rejects the notion that: "Digital humanities is complicit. Digital humanities is naive. Digital humanities is hollow huckster boosterism. Digital humanities is managerial. Digital humanities is the academic import of Silicon Valley solutionism...." My point here is precisely that "digital humanities" is that domain through which the academy is renegotiating its relationship to the broader culture, redefining the relationship of its traditional values of critique in relationship to the properties of the cultural world "outside" that is being so radically redefined by computing.

In other words, I see digital humanities as one of the most exciting cultural sites of complex cultural transformation that there is today, and in no way am I reiterating the critique to which your refer.

One point, however, where I'd like to challenge you. Your reference to "position" is I think an interesting one because it points to a fairly traditional approach to professional formation in the academy. It's a fairly common posture within a new or emerging profession to attempt to establish a "domain", to establish lines of jurisdictional control, and to begin to build a historical narrative that grounds that new domain in time, giving it a "tradition." There's a certain parallel here between the myth-building that goes along with constructing national narratives to reinforce the idea of the nation and what the myth-building that professions do about their own history. This I would suggest is why the 1949 date is so "useful," as you put it. It provides digital humanities with its own ontology.

That said, one of the things I find interesting about digital humanities is the way it is on some level potentially so fundamentally interdisciplinary. Indeed, one of the interesting consequences of thinking of digital humanities not as a traditional "profession" but rather, as I did here, as a site of cultural renegotiation, as a "tectonic" meeting of cultural spheres, capable of creating a cultural "quake" (forgive the metaphors), is that it eludes this tendency to define a profession in terms of a specific domain and orthodoxy.

So I guess what I am suggesting here is in some respects an alternative and unorthodox way of assessing the growth of a new sphere of cultural production and exploration. I wonder if this isn't particularly appropriate for the digital humanities. So I guess that's my question for you: would you like to see the digital humanities as its own professional domain, e.g. one day that every university will have its "Digital Humanities" or "Humanities Computing" department? I wonder, somehow, if this kind of outcome would mean that the kind of cultural renegotiation that I was (rather hopefully) anticipating had fallen on its face. Curious to know what you think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> At my most cynical I view Digital Humanities as the latest clever way of still getting grant funding for projects and explorations that probably otherwise in this day and age would not be able to obtain it. I follow some digital humanities mailing lists, read the Calls for Papers for upcoming conferences, and read the program agendas for conferences in this space, and frankly I just don't get much of it.

A similar thing is going on with "Data Journalism" which is, again, viewed cynically, a way to keep one's job but take advantage of incorporating sheer masses of information and "infographics" into conventional stories.

Asking "what is Digital Humanities" also reminds me of the angst certain communities felt over "what is blogging" and "what does it mean to be a blogger." I sat through many conference sessions on such topics. I did not gain much insight.

I worry that anything digital is ephemeral, and that is not a good thing for the humanities. I prefer dusty old books. They're a proven technology that tend to stick around long after whatever the latest file format, O/S, or cloud solution has passed from being in favor to being forgotten.

Finally, I will say that if the field of Digital Humanities helps imbue in people a better sense of, and better set of skills for, information comprehension, information composition, and critical thinking in the digital age of always-on, ubiquitous firehoses of noisy information about the world and everyone in it, then that is a good thing. We desperately need upcoming generations to be really good at what I call the three C's (composition, comprehension, and critical thinking). Just a brief glimpse at Twitter or any cable news outlet would suggest these skills are not often on display anymore.

<comment><USER5> > I worry that anything digital is ephemeral

After I read that I immediately thought of a bit of _why's Printer Spool. In it he poses a question that if something written by Kafka was on 32-bit PowerPC that it would have been forgotten about more easily than if it were simply left in his collected notes. I would write the actual quote by _why, but it looks to me China has blocked archive.org and I am unable to access it at this time (should've configured a proxy or something before my trip, drats).

You can read it here:

[http://archive.org/details/136875051WhySCompletePrinterSpool...](http://archive.org/details/136875051WhySCompletePrinterSpoolAsOneBook)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it's only positive that academics are realizing they can take advantage of this new, low-cost method of information proliferation.

Had a brainwave about putting small-scale humanities discussion with the power of MOOCs:

[http://theodorewiles.github.io/tuto/](http://theodorewiles.github.io/tuto/)

Put a landing page and a Show HN out there but didn't get any positive responses.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really like this idea Theodore! Would love to hear more about it. Get in touch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "What's at stake, of course, is very much a question of authority."

Which explains the moral panic that accompanies any mention of the Digital Humanities in certain quarters.

</comment><comment><USER8> jeez. worrying about books is pretty much antipodal to DH as I see it practiced...

<comment><USER9> I disagree. Much of the digital humanities is actually of direct descent from bibliography and textual criticism. I would argue, in fact, that the field of book history owes a great deal TO digital humanities which exposed the nature of the book as a writing technology with unique textual affordances. A large amount of digital humanities work is centered on how to capture "bookness" in the digital realm including digital editions of just about any literary text, the Textual Encoding Initiative, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> @nkelber, thanks for this clarification here. can you recommend some good texts on this issue: "how to capture 'bookness' in the digital realm..."? It would be me much appreciated.</comment></comment></comment>


Prescription eyewear that displays app notifications - <AUTHOR> http://www.laforgeoptical.com

<comment><USER2> Is this company named in honor of our favorite blind starship engineer?</comment>


I need help? Best way to get around in the 'Bay Area'? - <AUTHOR>

So I'm at the Radisson in Brisbane until Sunday, I want to rent a car, but I'm only 21...so that's out of the question. I wanted to try and get a zip-car, but apparently there is a 1-3 day waiting period..so that's ruled out.
I need to get to Daly City, Burlingame, the Hillsdale Mall and Downtown SF today. Any suggestions besides BART?
-no im not too good for Public Trans, I'm just pressed for tim -Also my girlfriend and I have to split up, and I dont want her to go by herself
All contributions are greatly appreciated? <comment><AUTHOR> UPDATE: Apparently Alamo rents to people under 25.</comment>


Why Arch has moved to systemd (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1149530#p1149530

<comment><USER2> I would be curious to read the downsides of systemd : i.e why are some people still complaining about it ?

I'm personally using systemd since I switched to arch and never ran into any problem, but I'm just using a regular laptop so I'm guessing it's different on a server configuration.

<comment><USER3> Question already came up a few days ago in a different thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8672761](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8672761)

> Can someone TL;DR the problem with systemd?</comment></comment>


Swift Hack Probe Expands to Up to a Dozen Banks Beyond Bangladesh - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-26/swift-hack-probe-expands-to-up-to-dozen-banks-beyond-bangladesh <comment><USER2> From what I've read the 'Swift Hack' was actually just a failure to reconfigure the server configuration from it's factory settings at the Bangladesh bank. Not necessarily a hack of the Swift Software, right?

Edit: Source - Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine (yes I still get this shipped to my apartment haha)

<comment><USER3> > Not necessarily a hack of the Swift Software, right?

It was absolutely a hack of the software. The Swift/Alliance software was modified to, for example, rewrite the PCL output of print jobs so as to make sure paper-based reconciliations would match the electronic fraud.

See the informative [http://baesystemsai.blogspot.co.nz/2016/04/two-bytes- to-951m...](http://baesystemsai.blogspot.co.nz/2016/04/two-bytes-to-951m.html) for details.

<comment><USER4> That doesn't really seem to fit the infosec definition of a hack.

AFAIK so far there's been no evidence of the compromise happening via swift software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> iOS developers can relax again</comment>


Inequality and Skin in the Game - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/incerto/inequality-and-skin-in-the-game-d8f00bc0cb46#.bz1692rjs <comment><USER2> > Blindness to ergodicity which we will define a few paragraphs down, is > indeed in my opinion the best marker separating a genuine scholar who > understands something about the world, from an academic hack who partakes of > a ritualistic paper writing.

Self aggrandizing much?

<comment><USER3> I have difficulty appraising NNT: I find his writings erudite and his reasoning sound, but he blows his own horn to a totally unparalleled degree. I followed him on Twitter for a long while but eventually got banned for having made an unappreciated statement. I wish he were easier to approach and interact with, and didn't put so much effort into being actively hostile towards people who broadly agree with him and appreciate what he has to say.</comment></comment>


Police Say Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-20/video-shows-woman-stepped-suddenly-in-front-of-self-driving-uber <comment><USER2> There's at least two other trends that are, IMO, more to blame. SUVs in general for one, and the proliferation of particular mixed-use road antipattern.

SUVs is an easy one. When an SUV hits a bicyclist, motorcyclist, or pedestrian, the unfortunate person tends to go _through_ rather than the _over_ they'd be subjected to by a sedan. Motorcycle accident stats bear this out - the overall accident rate has gone down as people have started riding safer, but the fatality rate has gone up as SUVs have taken over market share.

The roads this is a bit more complicated, but basically roads need to either be slow enough to safely share space (25mph or below), separated out so that only cars can use it (freeways), or kill an alarming number of pedestrians and bicyclists. Four lanes and a 35 MPH speed limit with infrequent crossings is pretty much going to have a body count.

I'm not trying to excuse Uber here, just trying to maybe convince urban planners to stop building things that convince people to try to cross four lanes of traffic going 35 MPH.

<comment><USER3> Why do people blame SUVs when pickup trucks are some of the the highest selling vehicles in America and vans/minivans have existed since forever and are still popular? And they're both the same size as SUVs?

<comment><USER2> If you have five children, you're likely buying a car with seven seats. If you regularly transport thousands of pounds of stuff, you're getting a pickup truck. SUVs, on the other hand, often get purchased in lieu of a sedan; pickup trucks and minivans have use-value that often justify their place on the road.

<comment><USER4> SUVs have use value as well: driving in difficult conditions.

<comment><USER5> Very few people actually use SUVs for this and many modern ones aren't even that good at anything beyond a rainy day.

<comment><USER6> What sort of little bubble do you live in? Where I live people get pretty good utility out of their sport utility vehicles! We have had a ton of snow this winter, including a couple of storms where having ground clearance was key to getting around. The snow was coming down so hard that the plows couldn't keep up. I saw who got stuck and who didn't in that big storm. The interstates were a mess, secondary roads had 2' banks where plows had only gone through in one direction. Front-wheel drive cars and minivans were stuck everywhere, as were tractor trailers, RWD cars without snow tires, and so forth. Everything AWD was still moving pretty well.

Now if you're saying people with true low and high range 4wd trucks and SUVs don't go rock crawling with them that much, that's probably true, but those vehicles have a lot of utility doing things like pulling a boat trailer up a wet boat ramp, driving on a frozen lake to go ice fishing, and driving on farm roads or other unimproved surfaces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some of the commenters here think they can do a better job reconstructing the incident from newspaper cartoons than actual investigators who are working at the scene. You guys can just as well make up a story in which a murderous Uber robot chased a pedestrian off of the sidewalk and onto the road and then intentionally ran her over.

<comment><USER8> Why are we resorting to reconstructing a scene when Uber's Robot caught the whole thing on camera and LIDAR? The police statement seems quite premature, especially when the NTSB is running an investigation into the accident.

<comment><USER9> +1; Time will tell what happened as there should be enough data onboard. These systems are essentially in training mode and new scenarios will need to be accounted for.

I am curious as to why the driver didn't react. I wonder if the system keeps track of the driver as well as I would imagine it has to be mind numbing to sit behind a wheel for hours on end and not do anything... So in this situation, how attentive and alert was really the driver who is supposed to be the fail safe mechanism.

<comment><USER10> There's video from inside too: [https://t.co/2dVP72TziQ](https://t.co/2dVP72TziQ)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The NYT just published a graphic that purports to show the location of the vehicle and the victim: [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/20/us/self- drivi...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/20/us/self-driving-uber- pedestrian-killed.html)

This is the first report I've seen that indicates the Uber AV was in the _right_ lane. Remember that the victim was crossing from left to right, and that all of the visible damage on the AV is on the right-side bumper. It's very hard to imagine a scenario in which a 49-year-old woman walking her bike manages to cross 3 lanes of traffic so quickly that the Uber AV, moving at 40 mph, had no time to react, in a location with good street lighting and with clear weather. I would think most humans would be able to at least hit the brakes, if not completely avoid a collision.

<comment><USER12> Right, so now she's crossing three lanes. So that's about 9 meters. At 1-3 meters per second for her, and 17 meters/second for the Uber SUV, it should have seen her 3-9 seconds (50-150 meters) before impact.

That's a pretty clear fail.

I wonder what the Uber's field of view is. At what distance should it have detected stuff about 9 meters off track?

But she did likely walk out from landscaping. So perhaps she initially "looked" like waving branches or whatever. And there must be some mechanism to suppress such false positives, or vehicles would brake when it's windy.

<comment><USER11> > _That 's a pretty clear fail._

And yet the police were so quick to say that camera footage indicates that Uber was likely not at fault. It was so quick that it makes me inclined to think it's pretty obvious. However, after the SF Chronicle published its exclusive interview with the Tempe's chief of police, the Tempe Police PR person had to issue a statement that, _" Tempe Police Department does not determine fault in vehicular collisions."_

I'm not one to believe in conspiracies or to automatically suspect shadowy influence, so I want to believe that the the camera footage seems to argue that this was an unavoidable accident. But the evidence released so far argues against that, regardless of whether the victim's crossing was illegal or not. And why are the police making a judgment on this so soon in the first place, especially when the decision will be made by county law officials, and ostensibly after referring to Uber's full suite of sensor data?

[https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/20/uber-fault-pedestrian- fa...](https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/20/uber-fault-pedestrian-fatality- police-chief/)

<comment><USER13> > And yet the police were so quick to say that camera footage indicates that > Uber was likely not at fault.

I was surprised at that -- it doesn't seem to me that the police would have the technical knowledge of Uber's hardware and algorithms to categorically state that, let alone so quickly.

<comment><USER14> Well, if you saw that video and it really did show a < 1 second time between the pedestrian becoming visible and being hit, then the autonomous systems don't matter at all. That accident is physically impossible to prevent in that car.

So whether or not the police understand self-driving systems is not relevant to the fundamental physics problem. The key question is how long was the ped visible.

<comment><USER15> "The pedestrian becoming visible" would be to the video cameras. If the vehicle has other sensors (LIDAR, RADAR, etc), how sooner/later would the pedestrian be visible to these sensors? Would it be possible to judge that by looking solely at the dashcam? Would the sensors ignore the pedestrian as a false positive in these circumstances?

<comment><USER12> That's what I wonder. Yes, it has LIDAR etc. But there was this comment yesterday by arbie:[0]

> Sensor Fusion typically merges LiDAR with stereoscopic camera feeds, the > latter requiring ambient light.

So might LIDAR data get de-emphasized when there's too little light for the cameras?

0) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16619917](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16619917)

<comment><USER16> If there's not enough light for the cameras, LIDAR would get emphasized, not de-emphasized.

<comment><USER12> Thanks. So in this case, how come the woman wasn't identified based on the LIDAR data?

<comment><USER16> No idea

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I haven't seen anyone post this yet but I highly suspect the fact that she was pushing a bicycle impacted the machine learning driven AIs ability to determine she was a pedestrian. This reminds me of the kangaroos messing up the AV programs being tested in Australia. A human paying attention may have been wary of a person pushing a bike in the shadows but for all we know the algorithm thought that she was a bush or something because her profile was impacted by the bike. There is a lot to speculate about but machine learning isn't as smart as we humans tend to believe it is and nowhere does it yet approach the form of general intelligence required to respond appropriately to all of it's inputs the way a human paying attention could.

<comment><USER18> Weird scenarios that can't be predicted are important to consider. Waymo presentations like talking about a situation they ran into where the car needed to stop because it encountered an old woman in a wheelchair with a broom chasing a turkey. As I understand it, most of these companies sensibly say "unknown weird thing in/near road means stop the car."

ooo, there's video of the turkey wheelchair broom chase: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/video/2017/mar/16/goo...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/video/2017/mar/16/google- waymo-self-driving-car-video-woman-bird)

<comment><USER19> A person pushing a bike is far, far from a "weird scenario", though.

<comment><USER20> It may depend if the test cars are used on routes with lots of homeless people or not, for the Mountain View test center I know of a handful of regularly seen homeless people on loaded bikes nearby in downtown Los Altos/Mountain View but it's not close to the level of San Francisco/San Jose/Oakland/Los Angeles/Anaheim/San Diego.

<comment><USER19> A person pushing a bike is quite a common scenario, and it falls to the Uber engineers to account for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> When I was getting my learners permit I was practicing on a curvy mountain road. I saw a person with a camera phone on the "drop off" side of the road, taking a picture of from what my angle would've been a boring cliff face. But I knew that a camera phone photographer was probably actually photographing a human, who would likely be on the other side of the blind corner. So I slowed down, despite my instructor chastising me for doing so. When we came around and there was a person in the road she asked, "How did you know?" If a self driving vehicle can't make predictions about "irrational" pedestrian behaviour like this and slow down it shouldn't be on the road.

<comment><USER22> Should your driving instructor also not be on the road?

<comment><USER21> Probably not. But I also failed my first driving test for going to slow (I was within the minimum and maximum speed range, but new drivers going slow I guess is a sign of an unconfident driver).

<comment><USER23> It's been a while since I took a driving test, but I recall the test to be more than staying within the speed limit.

There was also staying in between the lines, following road signs, and integrating with traffic. Do you think you might have failed not because you weren't pegged at the speed limit, but instead because you weren't capable of driving safely?

I wasn't there, so it could've been because you really were just driving too slowly. But maybe it was more than that.

<comment><USER21> They tell you why you failed when the test is over. And it was because of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As a side note, I find - as always - this part _disturbing_ :

>The driver, Rafael Vasquez, 44, served time in prison for armed robbery and other charges in the early 2000s, according to Arizona prison and Maricopa County Superior Court records.

He served time in prison for armed robbery more than 15 years ago, what kind of relevance would have this?

Presumably he has a valid driving license issued by the State, and was not under the effect of alcohol or drugs.

Having committed armed robbery has seemingly no connection (I mean it isn't like he was condemned for having killed someone while driving a car or something like that), and even if that was the case some State must have issued (or renewed) his driving license, meaning that he was legally authorized to drive the car.

<comment><USER25> In the US, once you commit a crime, it'll follow you for the rest of your life, even after you paid your time and money.

<comment><USER24> >In the US, once you commit a crime, it'll follow you for the rest of your life, even after you paid your time and money.

I know, and understand how this (right or wrong as it might be[1]) could be of use for the police or for the judiciary system, what I am highlighting is just how gratuitious it is on a piece of news.

[1] this is a (lesser known) writing by G.K Chesterton: "The perpetuation of punishment" (page 504 of "On Lying in Bed and Other Essays") circa 1907 [https://books.google.it/books?id=QtWvMclbR9YC&pg=PA504](https://books.google.it/books?id=QtWvMclbR9YC&pg=PA504)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Call me crazy but isn't a big part of the promise of these systems supposed to be they see things humans wouldn't or couldn't? If they're just as surprised as the human behind the wheel, that feels like a problem.

<comment><USER11> Yes, to me, this is the most relevant part of the posted article:

> _"It's possible that Uber's automated driving system did not detect the > pedestrian, did not classify her as a pedestrian, or did not predict her > departure from the median," Smith said in an email. "I don't know whether > these steps occurred too late to prevent or lessen the collision or whether > they never occurred at all, but the lack of braking or swerving whatsoever > is alarming and suggests that the system never anticipated the collision."_

We can accept that by the time the Uber AV "saw" the victim, it was too late to brake. But that doesn't mean we can't ask questions about what the AI actually saw and classified. And even if it was a "sudden" event for humans, was it "sudden" relative to computer reaction time? How fast did the victim move into the road that the Uber AV couldn't even brake?

<comment><USER27> it could be that they never saw someone pushing a bike across a road in tests before, maybe it confused that with someone riding on the road at a different angle

<comment><USER11> But why is accurate classification needed, when the overriding decision is about how the car should react now that an unidentified, moving object is moving _directly_ into the car's path? Even if someone were riding at an angle, it's still in a direction that may intersect with the car's path.

<comment><USER28> Exactly, it shouldn't matter what the thing is, if it's in front of my car and bigger than a plastic shopping bag I don't want to hit it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It is astonishing how many conflicting bits of information are slowly trickling out about this person's death.

<comment><USER30> Especially when there is video of it. Please tell me there is dashcam footage, since that's the first thing that should be available as evidence with a self- driving car.

<comment><USER31> Well, considering the whole thing is in a test phase, they must have a recording of all the sensor data, including what the cameras saw.

<comment><USER32> I wonder if they have a camera pointed at the safety driver? I'm curious if he is telling the truth, or was just distracted and could have theoretically braked for the woman.

<comment><USER31> Interestingly, pointing the finger at the driver is a get-out-of-"jail" card for Uber, but will ruin his life.

They can claim he's an integral safety for the test of the whole self-driving system, and he failed to do his job.

Which would make other safety drivers either think "I have to pay 100 %attention" (which they should, anyway), or "I'm outta here!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Yes, the report you'd hope to be hearing from Uber is along the lines of "0.2 seconds after the pedestrian entered the travel lane the automated system identified her as a hazard and initiated an avoidance maneuver. Despite braking and beginning to swerve away, the car impacted the pedestrian 1.2 seconds later." Thats the promise the automated vehicle people are selling. But in this case it seems the car was clueless.

<comment><USER34> If the woman suddenly walked in front of the car at the last minute, I don't see how the situation could have been avoided, no matter how fast a computer is able to process the information from the sensors.

There was also a driver behind the wheel, so it would suggest that humans are just as clueless.

<comment><USER35> _"If the woman suddenly walked in front of the car at the last minute, I don 't see how the situation could have been avoided"_

Likely, but not necessarily. Depending (hugely!) on what actually happened, it might be that the car should have started slowing down before the woman changed course.

As an extreme example, if you're driving at 50 mph and come up behind a kid cycling at the side of the road with a foot separation between the extrapolated trajectories of the bike and your car, should it be OK to continue your course at full speed, or should drivers take into account that kids are kids, and may move erratically?

Also (again purely hypothetical), if the car had already had several similar events on that road that resulted in near misses, should it have slowed down before it even entered the street, knowing the road segment to be particularly dangerous?

I think human drivers, even though they are horrible at attending to the road for extended periods, get into accidents relatively rarely because they know when they really need to pay attention.

Finally, I do not rule out that that "driver behind the wheel" reacted slower than would have happened if (s)he was actually driving the car.

Disclaimer: I'm a layman, and haven't seen the video ⇒ Let's wait and see what the NTSB will say about this.

<comment><USER36> There definitely exists a sort of pre-cognitive human quality to traffic.

Sometimes you just slow down on a subconscious hunch without any information on that particular situation. Or you might be very conscious not to slow down if you're driving a motorcycle in Asia in heavy traffic trying to make a turn with a huge truck barreling behind you.

There are massive differences in road cultures between countries, and it takes a while to adjust to local habits. Somebody who doesn't know these invisible rules is a very accident prone driver even if they can drive safely in another country.

<comment><USER37> That's just human intuition, which is trained over time through experience. Which is also how machine learning works, so it's not quite clear that humans have a sustainable advantage here.

<comment><USER38> Machine learning also has tendency to unlearn things and corrupt it's own models when left unaided.

<comment><USER37> So do people ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> A 4000 lb SUV, traveling nearly 40mph, at night, on a 4 lane divided highway, hits a pedestrian walking a bike.

The kinetic energy mismatch is the real problem, and at the very least, these companies should be testing at only 20-25mph, with _much_ lighter vehicles.

We'll have to wait for the NTSB to check in, but I'd be surprised if Uber isn't shut down(at least in Tempe) for a good long while.

<comment><USER40> Agreed. While I can understand it's much easier to strap sensors/equipment on a already available car, it makes more sense to me from a safety point of view to test with some lightweight shell of a vehicle to cause the least damage to other entities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Oh it's her fault she was jay walking and the robots now take precedence. No need to ticket jay walkers! Uber's fleet will take care of these law breakers!

Ridiculous and this company after all it's done is still around and now it's killing people!

<comment><USER42> I assure you that if you jump in front of a moving train you will be killed. How is this different?

<comment><USER43> cars are not trains, for one.

road usage is shared among cars, motorcycles and scooters, trucks, pedestrians, bicycles, mobility scooters, and other things.

<comment><USER42> Train tracks are also shared at train crossings. Yet if a car went there after the warning lights went on, the car would be to blame.

<comment><USER44> So autonomous vehicles should come with flashing warning lights every where they go?

Also, trains don't change lanes, or stop quickly. Its simply a bad analogy.

<comment><USER42> You are right, a better analogy would be if a person tried to cross in the middle of a random track segment. The woman didn't cross at a crosswalk so that part of road was not designated to pedestrians at all.

Cars (at lease autonomous ones) signal before changing lanes and slowing down.

I think that flashing lights is too annoying, but forcing cars that drive in the night to have lights sounds like a reasonable (and existent) rule.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> > "The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of > them," Moir said, referring to the back-up driver who was behind the wheel > but not operating the vehicle. "His first alert to the collision was the > sound of the collision."

</comment><comment><USER45> I cannot imagine the detailed logging the engineers might have to do in such a system. When I code I wonder sometimes if I am logging unnecessary events at info level.

This led to one more question. Do driverless cars have (or will have) a black box like that of aeroplane?

<comment><USER46> What we really need is for all of the logs from a company like Uber or Google to get streamed to some third party.

All of the logs are encrypted (with different keys), and only when an issue occurs, the company who owns the data gives the key for that particular car at that particular hour for decryption. Basically a data-escrow.

This way we know the logs are not being tampered with, and we keep the data hidden from the third party.

<comment><USER47> These are test vehicles. If you don't let the engineers have access to the results of their testing except in the event of an accident, then we will never have autonomous cars.

Of course, maybe thats what you're arguing for. But either way, I think it's a bad idea.

<comment><USER48> No reason you couldn't do _both_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Went to the link hoping to see a video, but I guess, pending all other investigations, that video would not be released.

<comment><USER50> Whether the video will be released may also depend on her family's wishes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> It's interesting how high profile this post-crash analysis is - name another time you read so much commentary about the details that caused a car crash?

It seems to me that this is exposing a few gaps in how we think about driverless cars currently:

      - A framework for how cars should be making "moral" decisions (the trolley problem [0])
      - A defined process for post car crash investigations - akin to the process in air crashes

Will be interesting to see if these emerge soon (or are emerging and I have missed)

[0] [https://qz.com/1204395/self-driving-cars-trolley-problem- phi...](https://qz.com/1204395/self-driving-cars-trolley-problem-philosophers- are-building-ethical-algorithms-to-solve-the-problem/)

<comment><USER52> I really don't see how the trolley problem is relevant to this situation. The car didn't decide that killing a person was better than some less-moral alternative.

<comment><USER53> I think that's why it's relevant. It's likely the system _can 't_ make such a decision because its developers wanted to avoid having to deal with that can of worms. If this is the case the car may have insufficient options available to it in this type of situation. With a working "trolley function" it's possible the system could have noticed the obstacle then done some "moral math" with the chances the obstacle is a pedestrian and the odds of survival for the car's occupant(s) then chosen to drive off the road and crash into a ditch. Without this feature it's likely the system's only recourse is to stop and ask for help, which it may not have time to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I found a few things interesting when I add them up:

1\. She was walking from left to right.

2\. The dent was on the right side of the car

She probably knew she was going to be hit if she sped up like that, AND... it was probably more than .2 seconds of total visibility to the SDV.

</comment><comment><USER55> Self-driving cars are still a fantasy. I don't want the AI to be comparable to an _average_ driver (who collectively get into 6 million accidents) . I want the AI to meet/exceed the skills of the _best_ driver. There is no way anyone would trust an "average" driver to pickup their kids, more than themselves.

<comment><USER56> I've been in plenty of cars driven by Uber/Lyft/Taxi drivers not to mention coworkers/friends/family who were decidedly below-average.

<comment><USER55> Well, I want my computer to be able to do perfect math, without mistakes too. Its one of the reasons people use computers to begin with !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Did the car stop itself after the accident? Are autonomous cars programmed with a "we've just hit something, stop and pull over" mode? Which sensors on the car even know if it has hit something?

</comment><comment><USER58> We only have the word of the Arizona police on the veracity of the headline. Not exactly a stellar source.

<comment><USER59> And the human being behind the wheel, who I also have a problem trusting

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> What exactly is the point of reposting yesterday's unsubstantiated press release? The video can't "show" anything if the video is unavailable!

flagged.

</comment><comment><USER61> Are these systems designed to honk?

<comment><USER18> Per this old article from 2016, yes: [https://medium.com/waymo/sounds-of-the- self-driving-car-c26f...](https://medium.com/waymo/sounds-of-the-self-driving- car-c26f30fcf76c)

<comment><USER62> The culture of using the horn differs a lot between countries. Would they use locale aware honk schemes?

And similarly are self driving cars listening? Will they detect emergency vehicles by the sirens, or even listen to other cars honking at them?

<comment><USER63> Emergency and police vehicles by sirens yes, but likely not other cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> If this car hit a woman coming from so far on the other side of the street, how are they going to deal with suicides? A coworker was driving home once when a man jumped out in front of her van and she barely stopped in time. He started whomping on her driver's side window screaming "Why didn't you hit me?!?!" again and again. She quickly got away and tried to come up with an explanation for her kids and called 911.

<comment><USER65> I don't think we can really know whether or not this incident was a suicide.

<comment><USER66> The fact the woman was pushing a bike with tons of plastic bags late a night makes me think it wasn't. It sounds to me like a homeless person jaywalking in a dangerous fashion.

<comment><USER65> Yes, that's the obvious explanation.

But I spent 5.7 years homeless and was often suicidal, in part because I was homeless and things seemed hopeless, in part because I have a history of being suicidal. I had no knife, no gun, no poison. My suicidal ideation typically involved ideas like hurling myself into some nearby body of water or "playing in traffic." I was often camped near a highway and just walking out into traffic on the highway was often the most immediately available means to try to die.

I was homeless with two adult relatives who were not ever suicidal themselves. Their support is part of why I never acted on such impulses. Most homeless people are on the street alone, which means there is no one to talk to if they are suicidal and no one to try to prevent a spontaneous impulse of "I have had enough and would like to just check out of life since the entire fucking world hates me and there is no means to solve my problems."

This is part of why I say we can't really know. Homeless people often jaywalk very dangerously and it is entirely possible that one reason they do so is because they figure ending up dead would be one path out of their awful situation and bonus points for it looking like a tragic accident since suicide is stigmatizing.

<comment><USER66> Good point, that's possible. I made the above assumption because it would be easier to commit suicide by putting the bike down first and then walking into traffic. But in the context of always engaging in risky/dangerous behaviour because you don't care about your life then this would make sense as a possible scenario.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> > "It's very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any > kind of mode,"

But it's made harder if you're speeding.

<comment><USER68> It was going 3mph over the speed limit, a perfectly reasonable speed that is still probably lower than almost everyone else on the road.

<comment><USER54> That actually really sucks to hear, I was hoping that SDVs would adhere and never break the speed limit. 3 MPH at the forces we're talking about can actually make a difference in life or death.

<comment><USER69> Sure. 3 MPH would have made a difference. So would 3 MPH less after that, and 3MPH more... heck, if it had been going 2 MPH total she'd probably be fine! In the aftermath of a front collision it would _always_ have been safer if the car had been going slightly slower, regardless of the speed limit.

The strangest part of watching this story unfold has been discovering that some people have faith that speed limits are anything except a rough guess as to what's mostly safe on a given road. Oh, and subtract 10% from that guess to compensate for the fact that human drivers under 60 years old almost all speed by 4-9 MPH.

<comment><USER70> According to the UK DOT the estimated pedestrian accident survival rate is 55% at 30mph and just 5% at 40mph (due to kinetic energy rather than reaction times) so 3mph in this range is not exactly an insignificant difference. The strangest thing about watching this story is that people who are apparently ignorant of this still feel sufficiently certain of the relative unimportance of speed differences in this range to sneer at other people for commenting on it.

Of course, as others have pointed out, human tendency to ignore speed limits and react badly to vehicles driving slower than ambient traffic speed creates another potential hazard to trade increased accident fatality rates off against when deciding if and when self driving vehicles can speed. It's trolley problems all the way down.

<comment><USER71> I agree fully with your first paragraph and I chuckled at the "trolley problems all the way down" depiction.

However I can't imagine a car company accepting the legal liability of allowing their autonomous cars to go over posted speed limits to "match traffic".

In a trolley problem you have the option to refuse a decision. By participating in "speed matching" you become one of the trolleys and you have accepted the unsafe conditions.

<comment><USER70> Oh, I'm pretty sure that self driving software isn't being programmed to systematically disregard speed limits to match traffic, not even by a company with Uber's attitude towards regulations, but it is an example of conditions where rigid adherence to speed limits might increase rather than reduce risk.

<comment><USER72> With _enough_ self-driving cars on the road (which of course there aren't now), rigid adherence to speed limits might change the safest-and-easiest driving speed for everyone and lead to everyone driving at the limit rather than everyone everyone driving 5mph (or 10mph or whatever) above the limit.

So the safest reasonable thing for self-driving cars to do could depend on how many of them there are around.

(Of course there are other considerations of that sort. E.g., if _all_ cars on the roads were self-driving then they could coordinate with one another in interesting ways and maybe go substantially _faster_ than human-driven cars for a given level of safety. Maybe not, though, because of risks to pedestrians.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> I cannot understand how this could be the womans fault? Is it because of the rules of jaywalking in USA? Where I am from it is always considered the drivers fault, even if a pedestrian literally throws themselves in front of the car. Simply because the car can kill a pedestrian and not the other way around. The way I see it the uber vehicle should have slowed down to a speed at which it would have been able to react to these kind of abrupt motions. This should be cracked down hard on, not making it illegal for self driving car but the fine should be high. I dont like the thought of a self deiving car company becoming «too big to fail» and getting excused for killing pedestrians that dont understand how self driving cars work.

</comment><comment><USER74> Was the car electric? I've had a close call with a silent electric car which would have been my fault. The scenario goes like this: I'm saying goodbye to Joe and about to cross the street and notice there is no traffic around. I realize as I'm about to leave Joe, I forgot to mention something, so I turn back to him and say "By the way, blah blah", and with that, I then step off the curb onto the street without checking for oncoming traffic again, probably thinking about some chore I have to get done when I get home. If I heard cars, I would instinctually check again, but the silent electric mode does not allow for this.

I'd be interested in any studies about this: how much more often do pedestrian-at-fault collisions occur in silent electric mode?

</comment><comment><USER75> Sorry for the dumb question, but is there already any conclusion on how driverless cars will be handled for accidents, collisions, fatalities, etc?

In the short term it sounds like poor Vasquez is boned as the driver considering the media is profiling his previous conviction. There's no profiling a "driverless car" though, how inherently risky it can be.

I'm all for the future and driverless cars I've just always thought this was an idiotic idea that will turn people into Idiocracy characters.

This woman was killed by a very expensive robotic car with a human being that could have prevented it, but wasn't permitted to, because the future of driverless cars is being tested.

</comment><comment><USER63> Did Uber release sensor data from the vehicle?

<comment><USER30> My guess is that they won't release video footage out of respect for the victim and her family. That's mostly an excuse on their part though.

<comment><USER76> I don't think that respect for the victim and her family is an excuse to not release video footage. It's a valid reason to hesitate releasing actual video footage of a such a terrible event.

Sensor data is different. If Uber wants to help the story that self-driving cars are safer, then they should release sensor data to help substantiate any claims they may make in the future about what the car did and did not do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Great that all these articles are coming out defending Uber. Even if (it wasn't) her own fault, these make it sound like "well I mean she was stupid and therefore deserved it".

</comment><comment><USER78> At the risk of sounding macabre, the engineers will be pouring over thousands of lines of logs and if Uber self driving cars ever do survive to make it onto the roads again, the circumstance of woman's death and the after analysis will mean it will never _ever_ happen again. I expect that during the coming years we will analyse car crashes with the same scrutiny as airplane crashes with the hope to solve every single edge case. RIP.

<comment><USER79> That's a very optimistic view of what will happen -- or I suppose a pessimistic one. I agree that there will be a lot of scrutiny of the logs, but unless they identify an actual _bug_ ("Oh shit, we had a buffer overrun right here!") it's not necessarily going to be possible to preclude this or something very similar from happening again.

The driving of an autonomous vehicle is an emergent event of large numbers of complicated and in some cases opaque subsystems. Changing the interactions of these subsystems in a narrow way to preclude this particular kind of event is not necessarily something they'll be able to figure out a way to do without causing more problems.

<comment><USER66> But it's still optimistic compared to todays current status quo. We now have a system we can optimize and build into to make our _best effort_ to prevent in future events.

Which is how it similar to airplane crashes, as it's a heavily automated and centralized system (ie, humans are far less a factor in the event than cars, which can't be optimized nearly as easily).

While cars have had improvements in safety via vehicle design, and popular culture, road signs, traffic laws, etc can influence human behaviour to drive differently, I don't think there has ever been a better time to reduce these events if not everytime, then at least far less often than the current standard.

Which is what is so often missing in these conversations: a rational baseline and a clear reliable process that we will now be in a better position going forward for this not to happen again (assuming the right processes are in place, which they may very well not be in this case).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> This title should read "Tempe Police Chief alleges/interprets video shows woman stepped out suddenly in front of self-driving uber"

</comment><comment><USER81> I wonder if test drivers should also be video monitored to record their alertness? It's quite a responsibility.

</comment><comment><USER82> To Uber's credit, it was working as designed, because the pedestrian had just hailed a Lyft.

</comment><comment><USER83> Bloomberg title:

>> Uber Victim Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Car

First line of the first paragraph in the article (my underlining):

>> _Police say_ a video from the Uber self-driving car that struck and killed a woman on Sunday shows her moving in front of it suddenly

And the title on this thread:

>> Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly in Front of Self-Driving Uber

Both titles are very misleading. The Bloomberg title because it doesn't clarify it's repeating a police statement, the HN title because it makes it look like the relevant video is in the article, or at least that someone from Bloomberg has seen it, neither of which is the case.

<comment><USER84> Yes. Maybe it's time we quit obsessing over headlines, and realized that actually _reading the article_ might be necessary.

<comment><USER85> I was confused when I clicked on the article and could not find a video. The title is misleading, and while it would be nice if we always had the time to carefully read every article we come across, the reality is that I (and probably many others here) will skim through multiple titles and only click on the most interesting ones. Something as definitive as "Video Shows Woman Stepped Suddenly..." can easily leave a false impression in people's minds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Uber is damaged goods!

What's next their going to kill a bunch of kids trying to help their blind friend out of the street? I mean the headlines this company writes!

</comment><comment><USER86> Could people start wearing small transmitters that nearby autonomous vehicles can read?

<comment><USER87> Please no. You should not be required to carry a beacon in order to be safe walking around a city or crossing a street.

<comment><USER88> The woman who was hit ran _across_ the road. It's easy to be safe: don't do that.

<comment><USER58> Am I supposed to get in a car to cross the street?

<comment><USER88> Use a crosswalk?

<comment><USER58> Sure, when they're available. Have you looked at the area where the woman was hit?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> > _The driver, Rafael Vasquez, 44, served time in prison for armed robbery and > other charges in the early 2000s, according to Arizona prison and Maricopa > County Superior Court records. Uber declined to comment on Vasquez's > criminal record._

I didn't realize that people with criminal records like this could become Uber drivers. That is, these types of crimes are relevant to working as an Uber driver—more than things like tax fraud or failure to pay child support.

<comment><USER90> > I didn't realize that people with criminal records like this could become > Uber drivers.

In a civilized society people should be able to get jobs when they get out of prison. It's called "time served" for a reason. Everything other is just paving the path to recidivism - when people can't make a living because no one will hire ex-cons, they don't have any other way of literally staying alive than living as hobos or breaking the law.

The attitude in your comment is imho perfectly representing why the US has such problems with career criminals.

The only class of people where even after time served there should be safeguards are when there's a psychological reason that actually makes people dangerous, like pedophilia.

<comment><USER91> My understanding is that in Europe a criminal record is hidden from all but LEOs after 7 years as well.

<comment><USER90> Depends on the country and the type of offense(s). I'm fine with justified accesses for employers - e.g. a trucking company might be allowed to ask the state "has XYZ committed a drunk/drugged or other driving offense in the last 3 years", but I see no valid reason to (involuntarily) disclosing to any new employer that someone has been sentenced for public urination or fare dodging. AFAIK, there is no such "filtering" option available anywhere... and especially with fare dodging, people get essentially criminalized for being poor.

The state should provide an interface for employers to input the personal data of the candidate and the job the candidate is applying for, and the interface should simply give a "OK", "not OK", "no way OK" (e.g. for pedophiles applying for childcare jobs) and "OK with conditions". That would be a safeguard for privacy while also providing employers with a check that they don't hire someone totally wrong for the job.

<comment><USER92> > The state should provide an interface for employers to input the personal > data of the candidate and the job the candidate is applying for, and the > interface should simply give a "OK", "not OK", "no way OK" (e.g. for > pedophiles applying for childcare jobs) and "OK with conditions".

This sounds vaguely similar to the approach taken in the UK. For most jobs, you can't refuse to employ someone because of spent convictions (and the applicant isn't required to tell the employer of them), and sentences up to 4 years are considered spent after a certain amount of time[1]. The employer cannot request a criminal records check, and if an individual requests their own record it will only show details of unspent convictions.

For certain roles (e.g. healthcare or childcare), a employer can request a criminal records search which WILL show spent convictions, as as you indict certain offenses will permanently make someone unsuitable for those jobs. There are three levels:

* a standard check shows spent and unspent convictions, cautions, reprimands and final warnings * an enhanced check shows the same as a standard check plus any information held by local police that's considered relevant to the role * an enhanced check with barred lists shows the same as an enhanced check plus whether the applicant is on the list of people barred from doing the role[2]

Which of these an employer is allowed to do depends on the job in question (e.g. becoming a solicitor -> standard check, working in an elderly care home as a cleaner -> enhanced check without the adult's barred list check, working in a school -> enhanced check with the children's barred list check).

[1] [https://www.gov.uk/exoffenders-and- employment](https://www.gov.uk/exoffenders-and-employment) [2] [https://www.gov.uk/dbs-check-applicant-criminal- record](https://www.gov.uk/dbs-check-applicant-criminal-record)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> I'll just leave this here. Arizona pedestrian deaths increased 9% in 2017.

[https://www.12news.com/article/news/local/arizona/arizona- pe...](https://www.12news.com/article/news/local/arizona/arizona-pedestrian- deaths-increased-in-2017-new-data-shows/75-504506914)</comment>


Data Science Interview Questions - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/160-data-science-interview-questions-415s3y2a <comment><USER2> I would consider it a strong negative signal if a company used this kind of question for anything more than a very quick initial screen - a sort of "data science FizzBuzz." Firstly, most of these questions are things that a reasonably smart person with the right technical background could just look up on Wikipedia or in a textbook, etc. - why base your interview on whether the candidate has bothered to memorize a bunch of easily at hand knowledge? More importantly, none of these questions focus on the parts of a data science job that--for almost all data scientists--are actually the most difficult and subtle: understanding your data and where it came from, disentangling confounds, communicating results, understanding the right question to answer, etc.

<comment><USER3> For example,

> What kind of CNN architectures for classification do you know?

Is rated as an expert level question, but reads more like "what are some of your favorite pokemon?".

<comment><USER4> I can almost guarantee you that this is because "deep learning" is considered "advanced DS" in most corporate settings. DS has gotten so broad that, if you try to fit everything into a single category (rather than breaking it out into sub-areas like ML Engineer, Data Engineer, Research Scientistic, etc.), this is what you end up with. What "advanced" here really means is "relatively new field."

You can't ask someone just out of a stats program about CNNs because they probably have never touched them, even though for someone doing a lot of DL work in CS may consider this trivial, so you mark it as intermediate. And you can't ask someone with 10 years of pre-DL experience in DS about CNNs because they've been doing forests and regression and clustering and such, so you move it from intermediate to advanced.

In other words, it's "advanced" because HR wants to make sure it's "optional".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This blogger has questions and answers:

[40 Statistics Interview Problems and Answers for Data Scientists ]([https://towardsdatascience.com/40-statistics-interview- probl...](https://towardsdatascience.com/40-statistics-interview-problems-and- answers-for-data-scientists-6971a02b7eee))

[Amazon's Data Scientist Interview Practice Problems ]([https://towardsdatascience.com/amazon-data-scientist- intervi...](https://towardsdatascience.com/amazon-data-scientist-interview- practice-problems-15b9b86e86c6))

[Microsoft Data Science Interview Questions and Answers]([https://towardsdatascience.com/microsoft-data-science- interv...](https://towardsdatascience.com/microsoft-data-science-interview- questions-and-answers-69ccac16bd9b))

</comment><comment><USER6> Making a list of questions is the easy part. There are intricacies to all of them. Understanding that is the hard part.

For those with an advanced degree in statistics, what % of DS interviewers remotely understand the questions they ask?

I was great at interviewing. Then I took the time to really learn it, and made myself unhireable. So now I moved to a field where I am ignorant, and everybody seems brilliant again.

<comment><USER7> > made myself unhireable

you mean because your answers weren't cookie-cutter enough?

<comment><USER8> He/she talks about negative selection, probably

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No answers. Any recommendations on books or blogs to learn data science?

I working through this book, which I do like:

[https://www.amazon.com/Data-Science-Scratch-Principles- Pytho...](https://www.amazon.com/Data-Science-Scratch-Principles- Python/dp/1492041130/)

I'm rewriting the examples in Swift to help me learn:

[https://github.com/melling/data-science-from-scratch- swift](https://github.com/melling/data-science-from-scratch-swift)

Something with a little more theory might be good. Lots of the questions seem to require more theoretical knowledge.

<comment><USER9> I can really recommend Introduction to statistical learning by James, Witten, Hastie and Tibshirani if you are looking for something that covers the theory without going into too much detail.

There is also Elements of statistical learning by the same authors if you are looking for something more rigorous. I haven't read very much of it but it is supposed to very good too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The first time I loaded this page they had a female-looking icon as intermediate and a somewhat-male looking icon for expert. It now has a star and rocketship, res.

</comment><comment><USER11> what is considered good data science interview questions? I think it depends on the purpose of the company.

</comment><comment><USER12> [http://archive.vn/GDEDj](http://archive.vn/GDEDj)

</comment><comment><USER13> How odd our field really is. Many of these questions are basic stats. Others seem like the kind of statistics process control I learned in my undergraduate engineering curriculum. Some are more modern, and would be learned by going through something like the scikit-learn documentation, or taking a coursera, though I suppose this might be in a more current formal curriculum.

The odd part is, do senior actuaries get quizzed on integration by parts when they interview? Do law firms put new hires through their 1L civil procedure exam?

And while those are fields with a standardized entrance exam (actuarial exams, bar exam, etc), I know lots of people in non-credentialed fields that still are knowledge based. They may get asked about a database or their experience with it, but they don't go through anything like this kind of technical exam style interview. It really is an exam, it's just administered capriciously, often by people who have unknown or dodgy credentials, without any review by experts or assurances that it won't be used to discriminate (the modern day equivalent of a "literacy" test, I suppose), and is graded under conditions of great secrecy (people often sign a non-disclosure prior to interviewing, google asks people to do this).

I personally think a company is well within its rights to do subject experienced people to an eternal cycle of undergraduate midterms if that's what it chooses to do. I think that this practice deters a lot of people from going into these fields as well, which is also their right as free and full members of the society they live in, free to choose a career path in response to their own interests and how they align with what employers want and what they're offering.

But... well, here we go. The companies that do this are almost always talking about a shortage of workers, one that the government needs to solve (or at least mitigate) by creating a special visa that allows employers to decide who is allowed to work in the united states and the conditions under which they are allowed to remain. Conditions that, surprise surprise, often involve working in a field that subjects people to an endless repeats of their undergraduate midterms. When people with choice won't choose a particular job, isn't that the market's answer? Just to be clear, I positive about immigration, provided the people who immigrate are, well, free. But why on earth would we create a special corporate controlled worker visa so that companies can continue to engage in practices that drive away people who can choose, in large numbers?

This is the pits, people. Don't these lists bug you just a little? I mean, I'm not trying to put down the list itself, I suppose it's probably a pretty good list for people who are going to subject themselves to this kind of interview exam, either because they like the field or because it's the only way to get through the US's byzantine immigration system without relatives.

But is it really a surprise that people with choice (i.e., the "free" citizens of Rome who are not bound by law to work only in certain fields as a condition of remaining within Rome) are rationally choosing to do things where they don't have to put up with this bullshit?</comment>


Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice - <AUTHOR> http://www.livescience.com/18132-intelligence-social-conservatism-racism.html

<comment><USER2> This has been posted several times on HN, and it really has no business here. There are no references provided to any scientific claims backing up the article which are desperately needed for a piece making such bold claims.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't seem find a citation for the actual study, seems like link bait to me.</comment>


What Could I Possibly Learn From a Mentor Half My Age - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/business/what-could-i-possibly-learn-from-a-mentor-half-my-age.html <comment><USER3> I totally believe that everybody has something to offer to everybody else. I'm 43, can I learn from a 23 year old? Abso-lutely! And vice-versa, of course.

But... I really reject this whole "millenials as digital natives" narrative, in terms of the idea that millenials have some unique relationship to technology and some innate sort of technological prowess. It's just a rehashing of an earlier idea which dates back at least to the 80's, where "kids have to program their parents VCR's". There's always this notion that "the young" \- at a point in time - are more technical. But in absolute terms? Well, Gen-X kids grew up with access to computers and a lot of technology as well, although it was (obviously) the technology of the the time. I would posit that there's no reason to assume that a Millenial would be any more inherently technical than a Gen-X'er.

<comment><USER4> Indeed, I think it's insulting to old and young alike to assume that the young know more about "technology".

At this point my sister-in-law (10 years older than I) and my mother-in-law (30 years older) know more about social networking and Facebook than I do, because I do not use these things and they use them almost daily. Plenty of old people know how to use computers and technology. Plenty of young people do not.

Furthermore, just knowing how to use Snapchat is not really knowing about "technology," any more than knowing how to drive a car makes one a mechanical engineer or knowing how to plug a gizmo into the wall means one knows about electrical theory. So there are some newer things out there that use a smartphone. So what; knowing how to use them does not make one knowledgeable about technology or smart.

If this writer wanted to know how to use Snapchat, good. Find someone who knows how to use Snapchat. One's Snapchat abilities has nothing to do with one's age.

<comment><USER5> I think it's a good moment to bring up the immortal essay:

[http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use- co...](http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/)

<comment><USER6> Haha, one to keep around: _" The parents seem to have some vague concept that spending hours each evening on Facebook and YouTube will impart, by some sort of cybernetic osmosis, a knowledge of PHP, HTML, JavaScript and Haskell."_

And it's so true, you know, you learn about computers when you need a floppy with drivers for the 4x cd-rom drive you just installed yourself (or when you later install Slackware and then Gentoo... also helps). You don't learn about computers using a modern smartphone.

I like this part a lot: _I 've messed up, as I'm sure many of you have. When we purchased an XBox it was Techno-Dad to the rescue. I happily played about with the mess of cables and then created profiles for everyone. When my son's MacBook was infected with the FlashBack virus Techno-Dad to the rescue. I looked up some on-line guides and then hammered away in the terminal until I had eradicated that bad-boy. When we purchased a 'Family Raspberry Pi' Techno- Dad to the rescue. I hooked it all up, flashed an OS to the SD-card and then sat back proudly, wondering why nobody other than me wanted to use the blasted thing. All through their lives, I've done it for them. Set-up new hardware, installed new software and acted as in-house technician whenever things went wrong. As a result, I have a family of digital illiterates._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We hired a new grad last year... he's very sharp, though of course inexperienced when it comes to working as part of a team on a large project (but time will fix that).

Now, I have no idea how this is possible, but he has deeper knowledge of Hg and Git than anyone I've ever met (If your experience is limited to school and solo personal projects, how in the world do you develop advanced knowledge of version control? On my personal projects, I rarely need anything more than git add/commit/push/pull and basic branching).

I'm over 10 years older than this guy, but I find myself asking his advice whenever I need to do something advanced or out of the ordinary with Git.

<comment><USER8> Deep knowledge of git is a sign of immaturity :) There are literally 10 commands one will ever need, which can be conveniently aliased to something more sane. Keep the brain space for something that produces higher value add.

<comment><USER9> Some day you will be caught in a corner case and you'll spend half a day learning about git's internals.

<comment><USER8> I've been using git for 7 years now, never had the need to go deeper. Lately, I'm using github and pushing / saving my work every so often [kind of like CTRL + S in Windows Office in the '90s]. If something goes wrong, happy to yank the local git and start with a fresh clone from github :)

<comment><USER10> [https://www.xkcd.com/1597/](https://www.xkcd.com/1597/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In tech, some people (not you, other people) might need an article titled

What Could I Possibly Learn From a Mentor _Twice_ My Age?

<comment><USER12> How to get to out of the typing pool for one.

<comment><USER12> As this quick comment has attracted a few downvotes I think I shall elaborate:

Back in the days of my grandmother large organisations had typing pools. When trying to progress a career many found themselves stuck in the pool, or remaining as generic, exchangeable, secretaries.

It was well known that to progress onto the better compensated, less intense, more fulfilling jobs (personal secretary, group secretary, all kinds of travelling roles) you had to show you were capable.

The trick to this was, as it is with any career, identifying which projects will develop the right skills and expose you to the right people.

This is a soft skill, and befriending an older woman who would help you choose projects was recognised as a way to get out quickly.

There are many parallels between this and any career, however I see a very literal one for programmers.

Consulting someone twice my age (in my case friends from traditional engineering disciplines) about the opportunities I have had available has helped me immensely.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the clarification.

I didn't downvote it but I had no idea what the sentence meant.

I think that second "to" was a typo, but it lead to weird alternative ways to parse the sentence.

<comment><USER12> Oh wow. Now I can see it that is great

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > It was not easy, partly because the software is not intuitive

Damn right. You hear a product is good, you go out and get it, and then you try and use it. Like always you hit a roadblock and you RTFM.

But this time there isn't a manual, no dense text with an index of all the weird and wonderful functions you could master to be an expert.

No this time you only get a string of badly written blog posts, verbose and out of date.

<comment><USER13> Reading that snapchat is not intuitive is always weird for me. It was the most immediately obvious and intuitive app I've ever used.

Maybe you are thinking it is a lot more complex than it actually is? Take a picture then select who you send it to. Swipe left to see pictures sent to you. Swipe right to see pictures people have posted for everyone. That's 99% of it. There is no need for an index of functions that can be mastered as there only are a handful of functions.

<comment><USER14> Things in Snapchat that aren't intuitive, off the top of my head:

1\. Why are my snaps significantly blurrier than the pictures from the normal camera app? (a: you have to explicitly tap the main part of the screen to get it to focus, then take the snap. Why does it not focus automatically when taking the snap?)

2\. Why does it do significantly worse in low-light than the normal camera app? (Is it just a problem with Snapchat, or do I need to manually do something that the machine should do, like in #1?)

3\. What do the emojis next to names in the friends list mean? (I found a table with the meanings on some spammy website.)

4\. What do the smileys that sometimes pop up in chat mean?

5\. Why does the menu button not work like it does in _every single_ other app? Sure, "swipe down, then tap the gear" isn't hard, but they removed the mechanism that I'm conditioned to expect to work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It isn't just technical or process skills.

People are wired differently. I know people who are much younger than I am who are much wiser than I am at the ways of the human animal. I rely on a couple of them to be able to, after a meeting where some strange interpersonal thing happened, simply ask: "what just happened there"?

Everyone has their own personal set of cognitive blind spots and may need assistance for navigating those types of situations. For me, simply learning where my blind spots are, identifying who doesn't have my particular combination of defects (regardless of age), and being able to develop a relationship with them so that I can ask them for navigational assistance does wonders.

</comment><comment><USER16> >America's younger workers have already been "personal technology consultants in their own families, so it's a role they're very comfortable playing," she said.

Fuck all of that noise.

I'll teach you how to use something if you really want to learn it, but I'm not going to be the guy you just hand your laptop to and go "Fix it for me I don't know how to do it you're so much better at it than I am."

</comment><comment><USER17> I like to think of people as having chronological age as well as a [skill] age, with chronological age being largely irrelevant among adults. I'm 41 and my co-founder is 27. He had been programming Java for 7 years when I met him, and now he's a decade in. He has taught me a ton about programming, and I expect the lessons to continue. As a person gets older and specializes, the likelihood that someone younger than them, on a separate path, will have a higher [skill] age increases, which means they need to be increasingly open to learning from chronologically younger people.

</comment><comment><USER18> My philosophy is that everyone has useful nuggets of information to share, regardless of age, gender, race, etc. Take it all while ya can. Learn from everyone.

<comment><USER3> _"Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own."_ ~~ Bruce Lee

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Lots. I learn from my kids who are 1/7th of my age all the time. Not so much from the experiences of raising them, but from their insights and observations. A couple of times, their observations about something have blown my mind.

You only have to be open and humble.

<comment><USER20> yes, Knowledge is a two way street. We can learn from each other. Age bias is bad both ways. The saying "Its hard to teach old dogs new ticks" is WRONG and this articular stinks of it.

<comment><USER21> Unfortunately, it's a saying that is rooted in truth; as you grow older, your neural plasticity and fluid intelligence steadily declines, and so learning new tricks is, perhaps not impossible, but certainly more difficult - so it's important to recognize this and make the extra effort to remain open to new ideas and new experiences, the way one does almost unconsciously in youth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Instead of being indignant that we can be "mentored" by a person half our age, let's rephrase the question and ask, "What could I possibly LEARN from a person half my age?"

Well, almost everything. Your typical grandparent was probably taught how to use the new technology of their day by their grand kids. People not half their age, but something like a fifth or even a tenth their age.

I've read about a guy, I think his name is Tao and I'm sure HNers are familiar with him, who got his math PhD at 21 and was teching undergrads while a young teen. Could you be twice his age and learn from him? Is that a trick question?

I think the reason this is even a talking point at all is that the word mentor implies imparting knowledge gained from experience, and since experience correlates to age, we inevitably wonder how a person younger than you could be more experienced than you. But really, the thing we are after is knowledge regardless of how it was acquired. When you look at it like that, the age of your source of knowledge becomes a complete non issue.

</comment><comment><USER23> Isn't this what is supposed to happen? I mean the whole point of education from the early days is that everyone is collectively standing on the shoulders of the previous generation.

If the idea of accelerating knowledge acquisition - across all domains - <USER2> working, then it stands to reason that those with the most plastic brains and access to a wealth of knowledge, as well as tools to figure out what is relevant and contextual, will be able to outperform those who have well worn cognitive paths.

Seems like a great thing to me - but terrifying for anyone who is used to the idea that more time = better.

</comment><comment><USER24> During my first job out of undergrad, I recall a fairly senior and well respected IT director who didn't use a computer, and didn't read email. He was good at "being strategic" and "delivering for customers". While both of those are great things, I vowed never to become him. The only way to stay vital and connected is to hang out with the young, as well as the old. Just never ever talk pop culture.

</comment><comment><USER25> My $0.02/anecdote:

Before I became a software engineer, I was a math supplementary instructor at a community college in my hometown. I love teaching, talking about and thinking about math.

Some of my favorite students were the older students that already had preconceived notions about their abilities with math, what things meant or how things fit together.

I discovered those things they brought with them were great vehicles for bending my explanations in such a way that they could understand them.

Eventually this occurred often enough you work a lot of that into how you talk about the subject, and I feel this made me a better/more effective teacher, more often, than I had been before.

Onto the subject, in my new job, one of the other engineers I work closely with is what I would consider non-trivially younger than me. (I'm in my late 20s)

It set me back a smidge to learn that when I did. But in the time I've been here, and that isn't very long, I've learned an incredible amount from him.

I found and this article only confirms that closing yourself off from even a little only hurts the self and is very narrow minded.

Good stuff can come from anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER26> Well right off the top of my head my first thought was "A different way of looking at things".

People always have a different perspective to offer, regardless of age.

</comment><comment><USER27> As others have said, a lot! I think this is what keeps many teachers engaged-- they learn from their students as well.

</comment><comment><USER27> On somewhat of a tangent, I have to wonder if Snapchat is an appropriate medium for reporting news...

</comment><comment><USER28> "My Little Sister Taught Me How To Snapchat Like The Teens"

[https://www.buzzfeed.com/benrosen/how-to-snapchat-like- the-t...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/benrosen/how-to-snapchat-like-the- teens?utm_term=.pw773lbXk#.rg5n19yKp)

</comment><comment><USER29> How to pretend?

</comment><comment><USER30> with that attitude... nothing.

</comment><comment><USER31> The answers appears to be "snapchat" according to the article. So nothing useful then.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Great article showing that in tech, mentoring can go both ways.</comment>