How Did Yandex Discover a Private URL? - <AUTHOR> I recently set up a VPS server to provide a private service for an Appengine app. To test exception handling, I set up a test URL /boo.hoo/test, and visited it a couple of times with Chrome browser on Ubuntu to make sure things worked the way I expected. This URL has never been used by the app.
I forgot to remove the test code, and this morning (three weeks later) received an error message, which shows my exception handling works... except I hadn't visited the URL and I can't understand how anyone else knew it existed.
The request log shows (long sequences of base64 replaced with "..."):

    188.8.131.52 - - [31/May/2018:06:40:12 +1200] "GET /boo.hoo/test HTTP/1.1" 401 3817 "http://yandex.ru/clck/jsredir?from=yandex.ru%3Bsearch%3Bweb%3B%3B&text=&etext=1804.R2Y-...&state=...&sign=...&keyno=0&cst=...&ref=...&l10n=ru&cts=1527705451111&mc=4.949890056" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.132 YaBrowser/184.108.40.206 Yowser/2.5 Safari/537.36"
 So how did Yandex discover this URL? <comment><USER2> We're just investigating a similar issue on our site. We have an internal URL only available to admins (and would return a 403 otherwise, not linked to from any public page), that suddenly got crawled by Yandex. We checked the IPs of the indexing itself and they are legit.

We have only a handful of admins with access to this resource. It's possible one of them had a malicious extension I suppose, but even if they did, how did this leak to Yandex?

My colleague also found this discussion[0] recently, which reports a similar problem.

[0][https://www.webmasterworld.com/webmaster/4829663.htm](https://www.webmasterworld.com/webmaster/4829663.htm)

<comment><AUTHOR> What IP address did your request come from? Someone made the point that my request didn't come from Yandex itself, just appeared to be referred from them.

<comment><USER2> 18.104.22.168 (which has a reverse PTR of 77-88-47-81.spider.yandex.com.).

We also saw that this page was indexed by Yandex when we searched on their website. This page wasn't/isn't indexed by Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo etc by the way...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is /boo.hoo by itself (without the /test subpath) public? Adding /test to anything seems a pretty obvious heuristic for a search indexing crawler to try.

Also since Chrome is a Google product, you should expect they are logging what you do. So maybe Yandex has breached them? Yikes.

Other possibilities are somewhere in the network between you and the server, or somewhere in the Ubuntu networking stack(!). Maybe you thought of all these, but I'm mentioning them since you didn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, boo.hoo on it's own returns a 404, and there is no other instance of boo.hoo in the app's routes. I hate to sound so paranoid, but I'm guessing this is evidence of Russia's inflitration of the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Did you have any extensions enabled?

<comment><AUTHOR> No extensions - I thought of that. I'm reasonably security-aware, use Ubuntu and Duck Duck Go for search.</comment></comment>


Show HN: UI improvements for Jenkins - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kevinburke/doony

<comment><USER2> The skin is really nice. I'm a real jenkins hater (one of the reasons I started [https://circleci.com](https://circleci.com)) and while I think this makes Jenkins look really nice, I also think a superficial change like this doesn't really solve the major usability problems that jenkins has.

There's a huge amount wrong with Jenkins. My major gripe is that the world today has moved very much to "convention over configuration", also known as "usability". But Jenkins is firmly stuck behind. It's not wrong to say that nothing works out of the box, and you have to configure every little thing. CircleCI customers have told me they've literally spent 2 days configuring a jenkins box to even get it working, and are glad to be rid of it.

One example of jenkins' backwardness is a post from the Jenkins lead last week: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6434194](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6434194). Actual quote: "The literate plugin adds an Action to all Free-style projects that allows exporting these XML configuration snippets in a .zip file for unpacking into your project's source control."

I don't mean to hate on this, just jenkins. This design is a real improvement, one that Jenkins has been unable to do in the entire 10 years it's been in existence.

[disclaimer: obviously I have a massive massive bias against jenkins, as part of CircleCIs mission is vanquish it and its awful usability]

<comment><USER3> Fair enough to advocate for your project, which I btw find it very nice.

However, xml configuration is really a weak argument. It is very rare that anyone needs to touch the XML files. In fact, when someone touches those files is normally due to either a very extreme case or more commonly lack of interest in learning how the admin UI works. Jenkins lets you manage absolutely everything from the UI, from the very beginning, which is pretty convention-over-configurationish. Also Jenkins' changes control system lets you track and diff every change very quickly.

<comment><USER4> You can track changes in Jenkins configurations?

<comment><USER3> Actually I was wrong on that one. I took for granted that you could track changes because we have a nice "Job Config History" menu option. But that is actually the job config history plugin ( [https://wiki.jenkins- ci.org/display/JENKINS/JobConfigHistory...](https://wiki.jenkins- ci.org/display/JENKINS/JobConfigHistory+Plugin) )

So, I step back on saying Jenkins lets you track main changes history. That has to be done manually I guess.

<comment><USER4> This plugin is actually really nice.

Thanks, this will help. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Jenkins and many other tools are designed by developers, there needs to be a word for that... we just call it "developer design" \- functional but ugly.

<comment><USER6> In a lot of cases it's only functional in the sense that it performs a function. To me functional but ugly implies a certain sort of delusion that while it might look ugly, it is really efficient to interact with, so therefore, it doesn't need to look nice. This is often not the case though. A lot of these developer designed interfaces end up being confusing, hard to navigate, and ugly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Removes a lot of the useless icons

The screenshot implies that it's removed _all_ the icons - are icons universally considered useless now? I know I'm a sample of one, but I've always found the console icon to get "console output", the big red button for "delete", etc to be useful and unobtrusive...

> The fonts are bigger. Way bigger. > More spacing in between list items. > > Text inputs are friendlier, bigger

For people using jenkins on their phones? :S I'm using it on a 1080p monitor, and even then I sometimes use my browser's zoom feature to zoom _out_ so that I can fit more information on screen...

I'm all for UI improvements, but this just seems like "replace things with bootstrap, because everything has to be like bootstrap now" :(

<comment><AUTHOR> 11px is a pretty small default, below the recommended size. For links it also means a small target to click on.

There's some context about icons here: [http://jonoscript.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/gmail-designer- ar...](http://jonoscript.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/gmail-designer-arrogance- and-the-cult-of-minimalism/)

If they are universally acknowledgeable (a big red X, a red dot, a green dot) then yeah they make sense, otherwise they just lead to confusion about what they do. In this case I didn't think they were adding anything to the left hand marker so I removed them.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for starting this. As a daily Jenkins user, I'm convinced there's a huge room for improvement re: UX. However, I think the icon removal is misguided. Default Jenkins icons are dated and probably too bold, but we shouldn't get rid of icons entirely. Menus change a lot in Jenkins (depending on context and rights). Having icons next to links makes it easier to spot the right action or menu item by scanning, instead of having to read it all. In my opinion, the link you cite does not at all justify removing icons. It says that having _only_ icons (additionally, unclear ones) is an issue, with which I couldn't agree more.

To add more feedback: \- I love the new console output. \- I think the font- size is better. \- I like the more-roomy build history better. \- I think you could replace the dated build-status and build-weather-report icons to something more modern and better-looking

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a lot of hate bouncing around here for Jenkins. Can we stop for a moment and remember what it meant to set up a build system _before_ Jenkins was around? Sure, it's not rocket science, but Jenkins made things quite a lot easier and made continue integration actually possible to think about for many shops. It's no small feat that they managed to do this for n revision control systems * m languages with associated build systems and testing frameworks * q random options and make it still mostly work.

Jenkins moved the minimum acceptable level of automation, for the industry, up quite a lot farther than it used to be. Say what you will but remember its impact, and that the guy who made it is quite possibly reading this thread.

</comment><comment><USER10> I opted to use TeamCity for all my CI exactly because of the UI. It's not perfect either, but I think it is vastly superior. Bigger install, though and relies on a JVM.

<comment><USER11> is it free?

<comment><USER12> The Professional license is free and gives 20 active build configurations & 3 simultaneous builds. I install extra instances if I need more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I see that you've got green orbs. Or, more specifically, I don't. I saw a build history with yellow and red orbs but had a hunch and used assistive software to discover that they were actually green.

I don't really mind because I'll never put this on my boxes (I've never really minded that the jenkins UI is years behind design trends), but you may want to be aware of colorblindness when toting "UI improvements".

</comment><comment><USER14> So thankful for the Chrome extension. Even more thankful to see some UI projects happening through Github. We use Jenkins every day around the office and I can't count the amount of times someone mentions just how... not pretty... or, worse, confusing the interface can be, especially moving out of jobs you normally focus in. It's a bunch of elements that make sense after a while of using it, but initially it's a bit much.

</comment><comment><USER15> Jenkins has done a great job in getting continuous integration as a workflow into the hands of many developers.

But their usability is completely out of date and their current user base doesn't let them evolve to where they would need to be. Especially integration with PaaS services like Heroku should just be there from the start, but has never been a focus for the Jenkins community which still seems to be very on- premise based with all of their infrastructure.

More and more developers seem to be jumping on hosted solutions now (e.g. [https://www.codeship.io](https://www.codeship.io) where I am one of the founders)

<comment><USER16> Good job on having the typical non-biased flak-attack and also spamming your startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Somewhat off-topic, but if you're looking for a good OSS CI solution, you may want to check out Strider[1]. It has far fewer features then Jenkins, but it looks nice and is incredibly easy to deploy. If you want, you can just push straight to Heroku. Of course this leaves you somewhat restricted in what tools are available, but has worked well for me for simple Python and Node.js projects.

[1] [https://github.com/Strider-CD/strider/](https://github.com/Strider- CD/strider/)

</comment><comment><USER18> As for my personal tastes - and judging only by provided screenshots - I think the original looks better than redesign. Except for Courier New replacement to Consolas and console part, which, indeed, has to be white on black (or, better, light gray on black, white is for highlights), not the other way around. Probably that's the lack of primary navigation menu icons that I dislike the most.

</comment><comment><USER19> This looks nice, a friend of mine made a nice simple dashboard showing jenkins build status if anyone is interested [https://github.com/jackbot/jenkins- dashboard#screenshot](https://github.com/jackbot/jenkins-dashboard#screenshot)

</comment><comment><USER20> Chrome extension is awesome! Our grumpy sys admin will no bother updating our Jenkins.

</comment><comment><USER21> Looks nice. But then Jenkins is an extremely low bar to jump. I've always considered it kind of hilariously bad and at this point it would be kind of sad to see it improve ... it just wouldn't feel like Jenkins any more!

<comment><USER22> > Jenkins is an extremely low bar to jump.

I'm pretty fond of Bamboo's default (only?) theme [1].

Although the focus on building Java software is undeniable, we build a bunch of C# projects on it just fine (with its built-in MSBuild and MSTest tasks).

Bamboo 5 brings "deployment projects" [2] which makes CI just that little bit easier.

I've also used Hudson (ages ago: prior to it being forked) and although it's not a fair comparison, Bamboo is miles ahead.

[1] [https://www.atlassian.com/en/software/bamboo/overviewHero/im...](https://www.atlassian.com/en/software/bamboo/overviewHero/imageBinary/build- results.png)

[2] [https://confluence.atlassian.com/download/attachments/365658...](https://confluence.atlassian.com/download/attachments/365658897/VersNam.png?version=1&modificationDate=1373345903342&api=v2&effects=border- simple,blur-border)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks really awesome. We use Jenkins heavily for deploying applications from build all the way through production.

I'll look into this and see what I can get out of it.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm curious why you would want a "build now" button on every page. Isn't it easy to configure Jenkins to build on every post-push webhook from GitHub?

<comment><USER24> That might be so. But not everyone uses GitHub, y'know?

<comment><USER25> But everyone uses some other version control system, isn't it? Set Jenkins job to poll you source code repository...

<comment><USER12> Sometimes I'm trying to improve a step, and want to test a quick change. Going from Build Configuration up to Build Overview to click on Run Build is slow and easy to forget, and I don't want to check something in just o trigger a build.

Plus, TeamCity has 'Run Now' on every build-related page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great work. I've thought about doing this before, but good for you for putting in the effort to make it work, instead of just thinking about it like I did.

</comment><comment><USER26> Very nice!! I intend to implement this on our Jenkins instance this week.

</comment><comment><USER27> Repo was starred in a heartbeat.

</comment><comment><USER28> Screenshots?

</comment><comment><USER29> will install this ASAP ..</comment>


Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are 'Way in the Future' - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/business/self-driving-autonomous-cars.html <comment><USER3> I think it would happen this way: firstly you would automate things that go on a track - like trains - which I think we already have. Then secondly you could have certain lanes or roads that are designed for specific self-driving vehicles. This could help buses and trucks (in certain areas) get around. Then you would keep adding more of those, until many roads have those and very few manual lanes. It wouldn't immediately work in a big established city, but some existing highways or interstates can be fitted easily. Anywhere that has an HOV/Carpool/EV lane can be refitted to be an automated driving lane. Think of it like the Cash Only vs. Easy Pass toll lanes. At first there was 1-2 Easy Pass lanes, then the cash lane was just 1-2 - now we automate them reading license plates.

So to sum up, I think that the self driving will start in very specific areas, and then those specific areas would be expanded until they are the only areas. Especially if those roads contain automated taxi (Uber, Lyft, etc) which you can call with your mobile device. The main reason a lot of people drive is because public transportation in their area is junk and you have to go by it's schedule and route. But having a point-point self-driving option is way more convenient. It's like the subway, but it doesn't need tracks.

<comment><USER4> Seriously, please automate highway driving first. You get all the benefits for shipping and efficiency and logistics, so the money is there. The problem is so much more simple, and there can be convergent infrastructure (embedded sensors, mesh network updates, higher standards of road quality).

On long trips on highways it just kills me that I have to stare at the same image for hours basically, and that a program couldn't do that more safely than me.

And if this happens, the airlines and all their fees and cramping and security and bad customer service can be brutally competed against for any trip under 800 miles, and probably longer.

Even a one hour 500 mile trip in a plane is really 3-4 hours, and you don't get a car at your destination, while driving there is about 5-6 hours. If I could surf that whole time or nap, then I'll drive.

If I can sleep overnight, then 8-10 hour drives become far preferable to flying.

If I have friends along the way to visit, or interesting places to vacation in, two or three day trips are more preferable than 1500-2000 mile flights, especially if you have a family and it is way way way cheaper.

Airlines have been reorienting themselves to shorter hops over the last couple decades. Self driving on highways will decimate that business, and only long haul/overseas will remain.

<comment><USER5> It seems there is a solution for your problem already: Busses.

Although not strictly automated, they are externalized. That is you are not the one doing the driving, and therefor you are free to sleep, read, work, etc, while you wait to get to your destination.

The beauty about busses is that they exists. There is no unsolved technology problems with busses. And they can be (and most likely already are) implemented without any or minimal additional infrastructure in your area.

If busses are overcrowded your local government can simply buy more, so they scale really well. If they become congested, we also have a solution called trains. Trains also solves your problems with driving and as a bonus get you to your destination far quicker then driving.

<comment><USER6> Your comment is how things "should work", but really not how they do. At least in the U.S.

The drive from Las Vegas to Los Angeles is about 3.5 hours. It's a 90 minute flight.

If you try to do it by Bus it takes 12 (often for about 1/2 the price of the plane ticket), and for some reason a train with NO STOPS took 16 hours. Which was discontinued just a couple years ago, because no one was using it.

Maybe someday we will get a high speed Mag Lev train for this commute, because mass transit has completely failed this commute.

<comment><USER5> > Your comment is how things "should work", but really not how they do. At > least in the U.S.

Since this is a comment on a thread about the possibility of building the infrastructure required for highway lanes reserved for autonomous cars, i.e. a thread about how things "could work" I see no problems with giving my self the same leeway for the established technology as the parent does for any future technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We _don 't_ need all-or-nothing.

A good many people stay off the road anyhow during poor weather, and those who do go out usually stay on familiar routes, such as to work or their favorite grocery store.

If self-driving cars/buses stick to a subset of streets and don't go out in big storms, they can still be widely useful. Set up (require) a universal network/database of road conditions on the main streets that all self-driving vehicles can tap into. If a problem arises, it then only directly affects the _first_ bot-vehicle that encounters it instead of all of them that use the road. It's internet-like packet switching.

Thus, bots may get "confused" easier than humans, but they can also take advantage of automation to work around confusing areas. The upsides of automation thus counter the down-sides.

The biggest cost of taxis and buses is the driver. If you remove that, then "hitching a ride" is a lot more affordable to those who can't or don't drive.

<comment><AUTHOR> By admitting this fact you dramatically reduce the value of self driving cars and thus the inflated valuations of companies trying to create them. It is an uncomfortable truth.

<comment><USER8> The safe self driving is possible, but currently it is awkward, results in honking (because slow speed).

That is still valuable for the occasional take me home from the pub mode.

The rest of the time it should work with me and disengage prematurely if there's something going on.

<comment><USER7> Re: "results in honking (because slow speed)"

Too bad. Cowboy Driving is obsolete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This has been obvious all along to anyone who has ever driven or used a computer before and thought about the reality for more than a couple of minutes. But the press and VCs bought into the hype from the likes of Uber who needed to keep generating huge new investment to stay afloat and Tesla which is run by a delusional snake oil salesman who had a single hit with the Model S.

The shocking examples of crazy unexpected behavior in the article like street sweepers that do exactly what they are supposed to be doing and cyclists who don't follow traffic rules blow my mind. Next we'll learn that some streets have poorly painted lines or that road construction exists or that most human drivers exceed posted speed limits or that there is weather other than sunny and clear.

<comment><USER10> > Tesla which is run by a delusional snake oil salesman who had a single hit > with the Model S

Being that dismissive and willfully ignorant discredits your entire argument. A snake oil salesman produces nothing and hoodwinks people. I drive my "snake oil" every day and not only is it the best car I've ever driven, it's the coolest thing I've ever owned. I routinely watch his "snake oil" launch huge payloads to orbit and land the booster(s) autonomously for cheap re-use. Hate the guy personally if you want, but slander like yours is simply holding back progress.

<comment><USER11> It's hard to judge Tesla at this point, most automotive companies really can't be judged until their vehicles are on the road heavily for over a decade. I've said this before but I can't imagine a Tesla on the road today being on the road in thirty years. Hopefully I'm wrong. Otherwise we're going to have a lot of 'good for the environment' vehicles in landfills like cellphones. While the gas guzzling 30+ year old Toyota will be chugging along.

<comment><USER12> There are Teslas with 900,000 km. It's a bit less than 3 times the distance from the earth to the moon and a lot of 30 years old card have less km than that.

<comment><USER13> The first model S has been released in 2012, about 370 weeks ago. 900 Mm would be would be 2432 kilometres per week (1511 mi/wk), approximately 24 hours of highway speed driving (100km/h) per week.

Do you have any additional information on this claimed 900000 km figure? Or did you mean 90000 kilometres, which is just standard for such a car type.

<comment><USER14> Here: [0] It seems that 900Mm is the current record for a Model S.

0: [https://insideevs.com/news/359939/tesla- model-s-900000-kilom...](https://insideevs.com/news/359939/tesla- model-s-900000-kilometers-odometer/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We don't need self-driving cars that can go anywhere (ie. level 5) for them to be widely useful. A car that only worked in bright sunshine on a preprogrammed set of roads would be immediately useful to me.

<comment><USER16> Semi trucks, solely on well done roads (Interstates in the US) seem more likely to happen sooner. There's an obvious strategy for "ports", dealing with exceptions, etc.

<comment><USER17> Tesla frequently talks about platooning when touting their Semi. "Self- driving" by almost blindly following a human-driven lead vehicle doesn't seem that far off. But I'm not looking forward to the day when I see a "train" of semi trucks speeding down the interstate only a foot or two apart from each other!

<comment><USER18> That could work, for the platoon, while on the interstate.

It might not work for other vehicles on the interstate, though. If there's not room to pull in between them, then you have to pass _all_ of them at one time. If you're a semi that wants to drive 1 or 2 MPH faster than them, that's going to be a very long, slow, pass. It will be even worse if it's in hilly country, where the semi attempting to pass may have higher speed on flat ground, but less power for climbing. That could block both lanes for a _really_ long time. Human drivers in cars (some of whom want to drive faster than semis, and have more horsepower per ton at their disposal) will be very annoyed.

Then you get one "train" trying to pass another, and things get even worse.

Then the train gets off the interstate. They hit a traffic light. Less than all of the train makes it through the light in one cycle. Now what?

<comment><USER19> We could ban semis passing at all, that'd be fine with me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The following will happen before self-driving cars:

\- Robotic trash cans that perfectly sort recyclables and compostables without any contamination

\- Drones that fly around and kill invasive plants

\- Landscapers that show up with robotic lawnmowers

\- A dishwasher that can load and unload itself automatically

\- My Tesla can keep in its lane when it passes an on ramp

(ect)

The problem, IMO, with self-driving cars is that there are other AI problems that are easier to solve. Until we start seeing more "consumer AI" in lower- risk products, self-driving cars will always be something coming in the future.

<comment><USER21> > \- Robotic trash cans that perfectly sort recyclables and compostables > without any contamination

Sorting trash is (at least to me) a surprisingly complicated problem. The frauenhofer here in karlsruhe is working on bulk sorting using computer vision with various sensors (sorting black plastic: [https://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research- news/2016/June/s...](https://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research- news/2016/June/sorting-black-plastics-according-to-type.html) and sorting bulk goods: [https://www.iosb.fraunhofer.de/servlet/is/15954/](https://www.iosb.fraunhofer.de/servlet/is/15954/))

If automated, it probably makes sense to not sort the stuff in your home, but instead by your trash-collector companies.

<comment><USER22> I wish there was much more research in that area. It's a very hard problem and the benefit would be enormous. All the brain power that goes into ever better surveillance and selling ads would be much better used there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It is phenomenally simpler to have autonomous driving in an area where the only things on the road are autonomous and there is a standard for interacting cross manufacturer.

Many new cars, and in some countries all new cars (by law), have enough sensors to be made self driving.

Standards are already being worked on. A basic level of autonomy - good enough for an area without human drivers - is being worked on by every car manufacturer. At some point, the vast majority of cars on the road (at least in cities where leasing and turnover s highe) will have the capability to be autonomous.

At that point I expect the car manufacturers to work with the larger cities to make central city areas autonomous only. Software updates will be pushed to all those existing cars, and overnight there will be self-driving on a level which is sustainable.

Once that happens, it will push people to upgrade to newer cars, expanding the number of autonomous-capable cars, and by extension allowing for the expansion of autonomous only areas.

As autonomous becomes more standard and accepted in the public conscious, solutions that will look obvious in hindsight will deal with many areas that we consider fringe now.

I read that Fedex originally claimed there would be areas they would never service. Even if they were right, it is less of a deal than they thought it would be. Same thing will happen with autonomous cars.

<comment><USER24> I can see self driving cars and trucks on long haul freeways, but to me it seems like self driving in city centers is going to be the hardest, not first problem that is solved. Even if other drivers are taken out of the equation, there are still so many variables in a city to account for. Pedestrians, bicyclists, Lime scooters (I guess these will be self driving too?), dogs, construction, etc...

The only way I see self driving cars dealing with all this in the near future is if the roads were totally fenced off from everything else so that only self driving cars were on them more like trains. However, this seems like such a big infrastructure investment (and just a big change overall) that I just don't see it happening within the next few years.

Our cities (at least in America) can't even put in bike lanes, or provide reliable trains, which is a 200 year old technology, so how are we to expect them to completely overhaul our infrastructure to help a technology that barely even exists?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > ... "autonomous vehicles" will be a reality for "ordinary people" in less > than five years, Google co-founder Sergey Brin said Tuesday.

That's from 2012 [1]

[1] [https://www.computerworld.com/article/2491635/self- driving-c...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2491635/self-driving-cars- a-reality-for--ordinary-people--within-5-years--says-google-s-sergey-b.html)

<comment><USER26> Waymo had autonomous vehicles in Arizona giving selected members of the public rides without safety drivers in November 2017. They since stopped.

So if you really stretch you can call that an accurate prediction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Nothing makes a huge group of us cringe more, than people saying it's just around the corner. The worst part is it also comes from people who should know better.

>Waymo's CEO, John Krafcik, has admitted that a self-driving car that can drive in any condition, on any road, without ever needing a human to take control—usually called a "level five" autonomous vehicle—will basically never exist. At the Wall Street Journal's D.Live conference, Krafcik said that "autonomy will always have constraints." It will take decades for self-driving cars to become common on roads. Even then, they will not be able to drive at certain times of the year or in all weather conditions. In short, sensors on autonomous vehicles don't work well in snow or rain—and that may never change.

[https://www.cnet.com/news/alphabet-google-waymo-ceo-john- kra...](https://www.cnet.com/news/alphabet-google-waymo-ceo-john-krafcik- autonomous-cars-wont-ever-be-able-to-drive-in-all-conditions/)

[https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/07/the-dream-of- driverless-...](https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/07/the-dream-of-driverless- cars-is-dying/)

<comment><USER28> If a human can do it, I see no reason why an autonomous system can't, eventually, do it. It might take a very long time, but "never" seems short- sighted.

<comment><USER29> Imagine you're driving down a street when a kid playing on the sidewalk runs behind a truck and disappears from your view.

If the kid appears in the road from behind the truck, the computer can handle slamming on the brakes very easily - probably faster than a human can - without understanding the kid any better than a group of LIDAR points or a rectangle of pixels labelled 'obstacle' by a neural network.

But if you want to brake _before_ the kid appears from behind the truck? For that, a fully attentive human driver will be making a bunch of estimates about what the kid is doing, whether they seemed to have noticed the car, how old they were, and so on. In other words, applying a theory of mind.

Needless to say, if the latter is a must-have feature, that's a pretty hairy problem.

Of course, it's possible the decrease in deaths from being fast on the brakes in simple situations will outweigh the increase in deaths from lacking a theory of mind in complex situations. If that's the case, the self-driving car programmer's job would be a good deal simpler!

<comment><USER30> There's no need for a theory of mind - the self driving car can identify the kid as a pedestrian, recognize that it started moving in a possible collision course, then disappeared, thus prompting either slowing down to a non-fatal speed until the truck has been passed.

Children playing in the street are a common occurrence in residential areas, I see no reason why you would not develop a set of rules and heuristics to handle them. Identifying a pedestrian as child, and knowing whether it is running or playing, is well within the capabilities of modern computer vision.

<comment><USER18> It's worse than that. That small thing heading toward the road... was that a leaf blown by the wind, or was it a ball? If it's a ball, _you 'd better be already braking_, because a kid is likely coming right behind it, and paying attention to the ball rather than the road. If it's a leaf, though... you don't want to hit the brakes for every blowing leaf.

<comment><USER31> even worse: sometimes kids actually do chase leaves on the wind, or butterflies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> When read literally, there is no way that any system ever, human or automatic, will be able to drive on "any road" with "perfect safety". Crazy freak accidents happen, and human drivers regularly aren't able to handle them. On top of that, most people just can't safely drive in thick fog, icy conditions, or pouring rain. No amount of intelligence will allow a car to drive through a sufficiently flooded street.

Just like with human cars, the important metric is just whether they can drive acceptably safely in the environments that they attempt to go. There's enough low-hanging fruit from faster reaction times and 360 sensing to make that feasible without needing to solve the AI-complete problem. Nobody's asking them to be able to drive at 70 MPH through a fog bank in Alaska with ice on the road, even if that is technically part of the requirements for Level 5 that even humans can't obtain.

<comment><USER4> If the standard of self-driving becomes something akin to how airplanes fly, then weather will be a delay, bypass, or do not fly precondition to the execution of the flight plan.

All this stuff about "it's right around the road" vs "it'll never happen" is all unspoken assumptions around what it means to take a "safe" "trip" "in a car" "driven" "autonomously".

Safe? Compared to humans that are alert, humans with smartphones, drunk drivers? Airplanes?

Trip? Distance? Rural vs Urban? Highway? Speed?

"in a car"? Smart fortwo? Motorcycle? RV? Sedan? SUV?

"driven"? All by software all the time and no windshield? implicit backup if uncertainties are too great and can be manually overridden?

I think what needs to happen is that you need programs tailored to specific routes/roads. As you drive any distance, you download/cache the programs for the routes and execute them.

You aren't going to be carrying around a "general driving AI", except as emergency backup to specific route downloads.

Humans work this exact way. You have the idiot tourist drivers versus people that commute on a route. Commuters know how different parts of the road's concrete sound differently, how fast they can take curves if they had to, which lane to be in to anticipate merge backups.

Those commuters know how to drive those routes in winter or summer as well, deer season or not, rain or shine. So that implies conditions-specific programs as well.

<comment><USER33> > _I think what needs to happen is that you need programs tailored to specific > routes /roads. As you drive any distance, you download/cache the programs > for the routes and execute them._

Wow. That's so obvious in retrospect. I wonder why I haven't considered it before, nor why I haven't read of it before either.

I imagine having stationary "traffic controllers", semi- or completely automated, that keep real-time information about conditions on the segments of the roads they monitor, and which continuously assign "travel plans" to cars. An autonomous car wouldn't have to recognize weather conditions or static obstacles in fraction of a second, because there would be a static sensor network and processing centres responsible for this. All a car would have to do is follow assigned route at assigned speeds, and monitor its environment for dynamic obstacles.

This makes more sense than trying to pack all the intelligence into the car, and doubly more sense than having the car hooked up to the cloud. Unfortunately, I feel companies of today may find it difficult to coordinate on designing such a system.

<comment><USER34> "Wow. That's so obvious in retrospect. I wonder why I haven't considered it before, nor why I haven't read of it before either."

Get ready to have your mind blown because the next leap in this line of logic is to physically fix "tracks" to the road and run the cars on these "rails" \- possibly on a schedule.

It's a future star-trek world we in the United States can only dream of ...

<comment><USER35> Trains work incredibly well, but they don't solve the last mile problem. Hi- rail trucks are pretty common in railway maintenance. There is probably some sort of steam-punk past that could have happened where we're all driving hi- rail cars on almost all highways, and just using cars for the few last mile trips.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > _It's much more difficult to prepare self-driving cars for unusual > circumstances — pedestrians crossing the road when cars have the green > light, cars making illegal turns. Researchers call these "corner cases," > although in city traffic they occur often._

These are difficult to deal with as human drivers too. This article is pretty light on details and basically pins the lack of progress on a couple of Tesla crashes. The thing is, regular people crash cars every day. I'd much rather share the road with self-driving cars than cars driven by humans. Especially with the advent of smart phones, not a day goes by that I don't see multiple people heads down messing with Instagram _while driving_.

This technology is a lot closer to reality than the article makes it seems I think.

</comment><comment><USER37> It doesn't have to work perfectly - it just has to work better than humans.

Our sensors ain't real great in snow and rain, either.

<comment><USER38> It needs slightly more than that: when it fails, it needs to be able to demonstrate that no human would've succeeded in its place.

This isn't a moral or a technical issue, just public relations. If a system reduces road deaths from ~30,000 per year to 365 per year, but one of those deaths was it mistaking a grey skirt for an open road [1], there will still be calls for its use to be outlawed — basically what's happening now with antivaxxers, and they're hard enough to deal with when all the evidence is against them.

[1] just to give a concrete example

<comment><USER4> By "fail" you mean crash, or it detects that it's uncertainty gets too large and it pulls over safely, forcing you to wait or take over yourself?

Insurance companies will force the adoption once they become proven safe. The added insurance costs for luddites will price them out of the market.

<comment><USER39> > The added insurance costs for luddites will price them out of the market.

What added insurance costs? It's not like adding self-driving cars to the road will make manual driving _more_ dangerous.

No safety technology could make insuring self-driving cars any cheaper than free. Would free car insurance act as enough inducement to drive the fearful away from their steering wheels?

<comment><USER40> When people realize the self driving cars are better the damage claims from human accidents can go up. Right now if you kill a kid with your car you get 7 months in jail and your insurance company pays a $150,000 (these are real numbers from a 3 year old that I was really close to). If self driving cars are really that much better courts will start handing out much larger judgments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I would be immensely happy even if it was just on interstates/major highways in clear weather. That's at least 80% of the worst and most mind-numbing driving right there. The rest I don't have a problem doing myself.

</comment><comment><USER42> To be honest, 80% of what I want is a self-driving car that can drive itself on the highways during regular weather conditions. Getting it on and off the highway, I don't mind doing that manually. I would love to be able to read or work during the hour that I spend on the highway everyday. I would love to take a overnight road trip where I can go to sleep in SF and wake up the next morning in LA. I'm aware that accidents/bugs will happen, and as long as the car's safety record is better than that of humans, that's fine with me. I've never spent more than $20k on a car before, but for a car that can drive itself on the highways, I'd pay a whole lot more.

</comment><comment><USER43> Self-driving tech muggle here.

Could someone explain to me why any average Joe with minimal intellect can drive a car using only a pair of eyes but it's difficult to build a fully self-driving car even with 8+ cameras, GPS, LIDAR and other sensors us humans don't have?

<comment><USER44> A lot of those sensors and cameras are less accurate during the night or in weather or with sun glare.

I think one of the biggest issues is that people will not accept self-driving cars that are as safe as human drivers. They want perfect driving. If someone hits a pedestrian that jumps out from between two cars unexpectedly, it might get written off as an accident and the insurance company may not even have to pay if it was clearly the pedestrians fault. If it was a "robot" car that hits someone, there is going to be a suit for $500M because "Google killed my son!!!!!!". This also leads to people trying to get non-lethally hit by robot cars just to get money. The "robot" car has a big trolley problem that isn't easily solvable.

<comment><USER45> > The "robot" car has a big trolley problem that isn't easily solvable.

I really think this is overblown. it's not hard to think of a solution to these issues because we already have it in traffic laws for humans. there are rules for accessing the right of way. if you follow the rules and make a good faith effort to account for people who don't, it is pretty hard to be found at fault for an accident, or even "cause" one to begin with. rear ending someone starts with too close of a following distance (or too high a speed) for the conditions. tbones and head on collisions can only happen when one or more people are moving without the right of way. pedestrian strikes on the street can only happen when the pedestrian or the driver is not observing the other's legal right of way.

sideswipes are kinda ambiguous. it's possible for two vehicles to check that there is space in the middle lane simultaneously, then merge into each other. I don't think it's legally required, but I never merge into the middle lane when there is a car to the far left/right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Having seen the evolution of AI in fits and starts from the early days to now I don't understand why the skeptical stance is still default. We have made enormous progress in the last five years and I don't see why it's not possible to get to human-like performance in the next decade. I argue it would be surprising if we don't get there relatively soon.

<comment><USER47> Yes, especially with massive competing investments in the subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Curious how a self driving car would've responded in the NYC blackout, and to Good Samaritans directing traffic at various intersections

</comment><comment><USER49> The state of the art is discouraging for the money and years poured into it.

Recognizing solid obstacles is still unreliable. On the one side, there's Tesla running into stationary objects multiple times, and Uber running down a pedestrian. On the other side, there's a false alarm rate which causes sudden stops.

Low-speed self-driving vehicles ought to work reliably by now, but don't. Google's cute little bubble car, top speed 25MPH, was discontinued. Voyage has some cars in a retirement community. Some, as in 3. With safety drivers.[1] Local Motors has been issuing press releases for years, but not much is on the road. There are some self-driving shuttle buses, but they all have "safety drivers". EasyMile has real autonomous shuttle buses, but they had to drop the speed to about 10 MPH.

Worse, all these systems have a huge engineer to passenger ratio. Nothing is close to being financially realistic. That's not a permanent problem; in the early days of the Internet, it was said that the ratio of PhDs to packets was too high. But this is a long way from profitability.

It shouldn't be this bad.

[1] [https://www.villages-news.com/2019/01/31/villager-treated- to...](https://www.villages-news.com/2019/01/31/villager-treated-to-ride-in- autonomous-vehicle/)

<comment><USER50> The Uber did recognise Elaine Herzberg as a pedestrian in the last 2 seconds before hitting her, after failing to do so for the 4 previous seconds [1]. It could have activated its breaks and she may have had a chance to survive (though probably not unscathed).

However, the car's auto-breaking decision had been disabled because it was considered too conservative. So the only agent who could have reacted in time was the woman driving the car, who, as we know, was on her phone.

Much as I find the hype around self-driving cars brain-dead, in this case, the car's AI was not at fault. Even if it could have made the decision to stop in time, the agency to act upon this decision was removed from it.

_____________

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elaine_Herzberg#Cause...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elaine_Herzberg#Cause_investigation)

<comment><USER51> > Much as I find the hype around self-driving cars brain-dead, in this case, > the car's AI was not at fault. Even if it could have made the decision to > stop in time, the agency to act upon this decision was removed from it.

The agency to react was removed because its reactions are crap. If the AI is braking due to false positives all the time, and the the only way to fix it is to disable its ability to react, then I would say that indeed, it is the car's AI at fault, albeit indirectly.

<comment><USER50> Like I say, _in this case_ the car's AI was not at fault.

I don't know how good or bad is Uber's car AI. If by "crap" you mean that image recognition in general is brittle when exposed to real world conditions, as opposed to the controlled experimental conditions in published results, then I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I can't help but notice that the hyper-enthusiastic media talk about self driving cars died down right around the time of Uber and Lyft IPOs.

Like, if you want to sell something, you want to create a sense of urgency, right? "If you don't invest into U/L you're missing out on the self-driving revolution, and it's going to be huge! Just look at all the media going crazy!".

<comment><USER53> And any time Tesla is about to do a cap raise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> They mean in America, right?

Because I'm sure China will simply build dedicated roads to kickstart the process.

Dedicated self-driving roads for trucks to move products would likely be profitable.

There's no need to solve the entire problem for self-driving to be worthwhile.

<comment><USER55> These are called railways and every civilized country already has them.

<comment><USER56> I believe you misspelled "small."

The US does actually have railroads, but it's so huge that it's utterly unreasonable to build enough railways to be a major contender for general transit.

At least, that's my perspective as a US citizen who commutes by train daily.

<comment><USER55> I US actually has ok railways ... for fright. Commuter trains are admittedly underdeveloped, even in regions that have similar size and population density to European countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Strong but brittle is how you could describe most automated systems. They are superhuman in the right context but fail comically if you alter the context just slightly out of what the system can handle. I think the best way forward is to set up infrastructure on roads to help the partially autonomous systems. Its important to not let great get in the way of good.

</comment><comment><USER58> Every time I read about autonomous cars, I wonder if these points have ever been discussed:

\- Yielding to an emergency vehicle with sirens on.

\- Moving backwards to a safe and large enough spot when the route is too narrow to fit self-driving car and oncoming huge lorry (and there is no line marking the limit between road and ravine).

\- Upon instructions from authority, recognizing that the highway is closed due to an accident and, no matter what the driving code says, you actually have to make a U-turn on the highway and follow the crowd. Alternatively, just take that route (yes, the one with the large no-entry sign at the beginning) or that narrow path in the wood (yes, it exists, even if Google Maps isn't aware of it). At the bare minimum, park yourself off the road and let the others move on.

\- Verifying whether a queue is forming behind you. Listening to the honkers, they may be right. When you are an obstacle to the most part of traffic, moving to the side and letting others pass from time to time is sincerely appreciated.

<comment><USER4> \- a broadcast radio signal and microphones can detect sirens. That seems easy.

\- that's just flow analysis and basic perceptions of the environment. At a minimum, just tell the driver to take over.

\- highways will benefit from convergent infrastructure, and alerts like this will be part and parcel of highway driving automation. Flying does this already, basically.

\- sensors have 360 degree vision, and mesh networking between cars would help solve this, and automatically call towing/traffic control emergency vehicles to help with disabled cars

I don't worry about any of those situations, those can be readily incorporated into certification and testing of the algorithms/systems.

<comment><USER58> > a broadcast radio signal...

> ...just tell the driver...

> ...alerts like this will be part and parcel of highway driving automation...

> ...mesh networking between cars...

You are not talking about _autonomous_ cars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I can't read the article, so only going off the headline, but how does the conjecture that self driving cars are far off jive with the fact that my understanding is they are already deployed in production in Phoenix, AZ? And are being used regularly in the bay area in testing?

Obviously it's incremental. I fully expect in the next 24 months I will be able to call an autonomous car via an app on my phone in the bay area under certain known conditions, like good weather and common, low-risk routes. Or, specifically, that I'll be able to direct my model 3 to drive me to the San Jose airport (a 10 minute drive) without the need for me to actually take any manual interventions along the way. (Though I will still be asked, by Tesla, to be ready to take control.) If true, that's progress, and I expect the progress to continue until eventually this technology is widespread and covers the vast majority of routes and conditions.

</comment><comment><USER60> Detractors of self-driving cars are always eager to lap up a story like this as proof that it will never happen or it would take decades...."Years" doesn't mean decades, even 10 yrs is a relative short time, i owned my last care for about 13 yrs.

Some proponents of self driving cars might have gotten too ahead of the hype train but nevertheless, self-driving is here and soon would be common place.

It would obviously take some time to turn over the current inventory of non- self-driving cars but even that would happen faster than most people anticipate. Americans already replace their cars quite often and it is hard to think of a more compelling nudge to replace your car than the prospect of not having to actively drive it.

As for the outstanding technical challenges, I am often baffled when people point to that as a reason for skepticism...it is the whole point of the endeavor, to solve those problems.

<comment><USER61> The question of "how much and how fast" matters more than you give it credit for, I think.

Take drones - drones are "here" in some sense. You can buy one, they work. But there's a big question about how common drones will be and what they will be used for. How much we care about drone regulations, safety, tracking, etc, will depend a lot on how often we see them. Right now they're rare-ish, but if delivery-by-drone works they could be very common.

The same is true of self driving cars. Of course we will have some number of self driving cars and self-driving features will probably exist on most new cars eventually. But how many and how much they can do matters a lot! I think people point out existing problems to suggest that the magnitude and universality of the technology is still unknown and impactful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Instead of individual cars we need a highly dense network of rail cars that can merge and split and allow u to travel from any one block in the city to another. Should be able to ship moving trucks via this system where it would deliver them to the near address from where an operator autonomous or otherwise takes over

<comment><USER63> I fully agree. If everyone knows that self-driving cars are the future, why would we not just retrofit our roads to use some fixed transportation scheme like trams or street cars? Self-driving cars seem extremely wasteful, like some bad idea of public transit

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> There's a professor at Oklahoma State with a popular Youtube channel who has a proposal to create an Autonomous Truck Corridor as a way to fix a lot of our infrastructure problems. His proposal works with the autonomous driving technology available today--not level 5 autonomous driving that may be available sometime in the future.

[http://www.acpa.org/wp- content/uploads/2019/04/OKStateUniv-A...](http://www.acpa.org/wp- content/uploads/2019/04/OKStateUniv-ATC-Concept.pdf)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ev6hIQYKYY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ev6hIQYKYY)

</comment><comment><USER65> I'd be quite happy if they could just drive up and down the motorway themselves in reasonable conditions. Seems like we're pretty close to that already, and that hasn't even required wiring them all up to talk to each other.

</comment><comment><USER66> I believe that self driving cars are here whenever they can take a standard driving test in whatever conditions we feel are normal for the legislative area they are employed in.

Until then any kind of self driving should be given the same penalties that we would impose on a party operating a vehicle without the appropriate license. This is such an obvious thing to me I really wonder why it has not been implemented.

After all, if 'AI' is allowed to drive why aren't kids aged 12 allowed to drive, they are obviously more intelligent. It's because they have not passed a driving test and won't be eligible until they are of the right age.

</comment><comment><USER67> After Musk's announcement that Tesla will stop selling cars to consumers after cracking Level 5 autonomy, I've stopped even looking forward to it because he's right. Why would a manufacturer sell a self-driving car for $50000 when they can make $300000 off of it as a taxi over its lifetime? Why would anyone make a non self driving car when for a couple thousand dollars in parts they can make money off of it for a decade?

Level 5 self-driving is the death of private car ownership. That may sound great to people living in a city but for those of us to whom visiting family means dirt roads it's stomach-churning.

</comment><comment><USER68> I don't understand why independent full automated self-driving is the goal. This just leads to competing "standards" so to speak. I think auto manufacturers should be working with governments to create smarter roadways and define an automated driving standard. You'd have smarter cars that would be able to link up in trains on the roadways. They'd be more efficient aerodynamically. It would be safer. You'd have "road ranger" style e-vehicles that could link up and charge you without ever stopping. And you could help fund it all using tax payer money.

</comment><comment><USER69> The ugly part of this is that if drivers get used to self driving in reasonable weather then, in the one percent of the time (or less) when conditions get really horrible, their driving skills won't be up to the challenge.

However as self driving becomes common investment will be made to make roads easier for self driving technology and extend the technologies usefulness.

Even now in snow storms when temperatures are just below freezing human drivers have a hard time coping. If self driving just has to do better than that. It doesn't have to be perfect.

</comment><comment><USER70> I wonder if this is partially because the people working on AI/ML intentionally don't put enough efforts into this. I'm one of those people and while I'm to increase accuracy of an existing ML model by 0.3% and collect a fat paycheck, I'd never release any really novel ideas if I happen to come up with some. The reason is our society isn't ready for AI: it's bent by greed and doesn't even recognize this as a problem. Bezos makes billions out of literally slave labor and is cool with that. The US ships containers with firearms to middle East and Africa for profit. The first world people are ok with slave labor in Africa and China as long as it makes the next iPhone cheaper. China and UK are proud of making fast progress in making the survelliance state happen. Australian billionaires open new coal mines and don't care about the rest of the world as long as they have clean air where they live. American healthcare mafia extorts outrageous prices for basic meds and services and would rather let millions die than cut it's profits. What can AI give to this world? Superpowers for the tiny ruling elite? Private armies that can't possibly be challenged by common people. I don't want to live in that world.

</comment><comment><USER71> Id take this article with a large pinch of salt, considering their previous predictions about technology.

case in point below:

"Hence, if it requires, say, a thousand years to fit for easy flight a bird which started with rudimentary wings, or ten thousand for one which started with no wings at all and had to sprout them ab initio, it might be assumed that the flying machine which will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years--provided, of course, we can meanwhile eliminate such little drawbacks and embarrassments as the existing relation between weight and strength in inorganic materials. "[Emphasis added.] The New York Times, Oct 9, 1903, p. 6.

see -> [https://11points.com/11-ridiculously-terrible-predictions- ma...](https://11points.com/11-ridiculously-terrible-predictions-made-new- york-times/)

<comment><USER72> Your best case example is a statement made over a century ago?

<comment><USER71> well if you see the link I posted, there are 11 examples from various points in the past. I was just making the point that their track record with technology predictions isn't stellar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> On highway is where it's at. City corner cases are going to be Impossible for a long time, but caravans of self driving trucks could easily happen in the next couple years. It already happens with a person in the front vehicle that is followed closesly in a train by robotic vehicles.

<comment><USER74> GM is already selling "Super Cruise" vehicles with level 4 autonomous capability on a limited set of controlled access highways.

[https://www.cadillac.com/world-of- cadillac/innovation/super-...](https://www.cadillac.com/world-of- cadillac/innovation/super-cruise)

<comment><USER75> Super Cruise is considered level 2, not level 4.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> I honestly think that even when we do get full self driving cars, you won't be able to own one. They will be rideshare only. The reality is that autonomous vehicles are so complex that you need advanced mapping of very well known conditions to make this feasible. Companies will make these sort of maps for major cities where they run their ride service but anywhere else cars will just not be advanced enough to handle unexpected conditions. Self driving cars will only ever work under controlled circumstances such as well known cities and suburbs.

<comment><USER77> It is also the case that the downtown area of cities is often the place where parking your own car is the most problematic, so being able to use a self- driving rideshare would be really helpful for that reason also.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> I'm going to be the contrarian here and say that they quoted people and events from some of the laggards or less advanced companies (like Uber's crash, which was totally preventable). I see much more optimism from the leaders in the space, although it's not like they are planning 100% self-driving taxis next year.

Also, keep in mind that the fair comparison is whether the cars outperform the average rate of human drivers. It doesn't have to be perfect.

</comment><comment><USER79> How about just programming human driven cars to obey speed limits (downrated in bad weather or visibility conditions). Many accidents are caused by people driving at an unsafe speed (who has not gone into a turn a little bit too fast). No AI needed, just a speed limit overlay onto existing GPS maps, plus a bit of logic to reduce speeds in certain conditions (night, low visibility, etc).

<comment><USER80> Unexpected (by the driver) braking, possibly while making a turn, or controls failing to respond (the accelerator, say) seems more dangerous than the status quo.

Plus you'd have to roll it out everywhere at once, or my merge onto a 60mph limit highway where flow-of-traffic is closer to 75, in my software-crippled car that thinks I shouldn't exceed or maybe even match the speed limit in the on-ramp, is gonna be _way_ more dangerous than having no such feature.

Then there's GPS often not quite knowing where you are most of the time (the route-finding apps just guess a lot—watch what happens when you make a wrong turn and it takes a few seconds to correct, because it's just assuming the diff between where you are and the road you're supposed to be on is an error, because there often _are_ errors that large)

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> The problem is that the mistakes even a much-better-statistically-than-human driverless car will make are going to be different types of mistakes than a human would make.

A driverless car that kills half as many people per mile as normal driver BUT the ones it does kill are in ways that people feel sure that a human driver would not have been killed then it'll still be a problem.

</comment><comment><USER82> We need to regulate corner cases just like we did with trains, regular cars, medicine, e.t.c

Someone supposed dedicated lanes - that is goog thinking, dedicated intersections is the next step. No pedestrians allowed, but no lights whatsoever. Then, a section of city where regular cars cannot drive, and pedestrian areas are automaticaly driven at reasonably low speeds.

</comment><comment> d--b Just to play the devil's advocate: the level at which autonomous vehicles operate today was unthinkable in 2000. Literally unthinkable.

The progress in AI has been a massive step forward in a very short amount of time.

We may be years away, but the truth is we are one or two "massive breakthrough" away. These could happen tomorrow, or in 50 years, or never at all.

<comment><USER83> "Literally unthinkable" is too much. Here is a self-driving van back in 1993: [https://youtu.be/JTnBiTIvGqY](https://youtu.be/JTnBiTIvGqY)

Sure, it is an empty highway. I guess that is what you mean by "the level at which autonomous vehicles operate today". Still, people surely were thinking about Waymo like performance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Serious question, do you think Self-Driving vehicles would be as heavily invested in if cellphones did not exist?

</comment><comment><USER84> So, the singularity isn't imminent?

<comment><USER85> if and when are 2 separate questions. i'm giving the singularity anywhere between 500-2000 years to happen if we manage to stay alive as a species

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Level 5 AV will never exist, because there isn't even a Level 5 human.

How about we just see if an AV can pass a license test to operate in a jurisdiction? They probably can already- but we do have higher expectations on AV then we have with humans I think. Which is good.

</comment><comment><USER87> >Waymo's CEO, John Krafcik, has admitted that a self-driving car that can drive in any condition, on any road, without ever needing a human to take control—usually called a "level five" autonomous vehicle—will basically never exist. At the Wall Street Journal's D.Live conference, Krafcik said that "autonomy will always have constraints." It will take decades for self-driving cars to become common on roads. Even then, they will not be able to drive at certain times of the year or in all weather conditions. In short, sensors on autonomous vehicles don't work well in snow or rain—and that may never change.

This reminds me of the time Bill Gates allegedly said: "640K ought to be enough for anybody", taking about RAM memory.

Why would you say it will never happen? That is just silly. It may be decades out, today sensors may have a long way to go. But it's just silly to say it will NEVER happen.

Never say never!

<comment><USER88> > In short, sensors on autonomous vehicles don't work well in snow or rain

This is a curious line of reasoning for me. Why are humans allowed to drive in snow or rain though? Your sensors work considerably worse in snow or rain, and there is abundant evidence over the entire history of cars that humans butcher each other with motor vehicles in snow or rain constantly.

The bar is simply that an autonomous car has to be significantly less likely to cause an injury in snow or rain than a human is.

<comment><USER89> 5G will give vehicle position better than GPS, will they use this instead of sensors for Lane detection?

<comment><USER90> Lane detection isn't really the big problem here, though. It's whether there is an obstacle on the road in front of you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> It seems like the easy answer is to kick human drivers off the road, right? That will eliminate a great deal of the unpredictability. Start with a small section of a city, and if the results are good, people will want to expand it.

<comment><USER92> Also bicyclists, and also human pedestrians -- they decide to cross roads at the craziest times. A city without humans is what we need.

<comment><USER85> this sounds exactly what machines silently taking over would say

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The really interesting thing (to me) is that Waymo operated self-driving cars on public streets in Arizona without safety drivers during November 2017 but stopped within a month. (google waymo "november 7 2017") Why did they stop? I'm sure it was partially because they realized there were some situations it wasn't handling properly, but my conjecture is mostly that expectations have changed.

I bet that Waymo cars are massively safer than human drivers in many situations, and that they're not as safe in a few others, and that there are a bunch of situations they don't handle well and "freeze up" or otherwise behave unpredictably. Waymo has probably realized that the bar isn't "as good as a human" but "significantly better than humans".

</comment><comment><USER93> Just give me platooning on highways and approximately 95% of my personal use cases for self driving cars are satisfactorily fulfilled. And the problem is vastly simpler to solve.

</comment><comment><USER94> the only thing I see in this thread are hundreds and hundreds of people who have never had the opportunity to drive a car with Tesla Autopilot or Comma.ai EON (this article included)

Those two products are literally the best purchase I've made in years, and have enabled hours of mental energy in my life freed up from the confines of soul crushing traffic in major American cities.

remember that slashdot comment about iPods being lame?

people will look at articles like this, and threads like this in the same way in 5 years...

<comment><USER95> Can Tesla's autopilot really navigate "major American city" areas with no human interaction? I thought it was just a slightly smarter cruise control for highways only and the driver still needs to be somewhat alert?

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> But the billions of dollars in investment are here and now.

</comment><comment><USER97> Given that people feel confident falling asleep in their Teslas while it drives, I think the writer should just lower their standards.

</comment><comment><USER98> Despite high hopes, incompetent new comers discover they can't compete in new industry...

</comment><comment><USER76> I have been saying this for years. Even if self driving cars handle 99% of situations correctly, they don't become feasible until they can do that last 1%, which is 100x more difficult then previous 99. The reality is, if the car drives itself, people will be doing other things in the car and will be unable to respond to emergencies.

<comment><USER26> If they get in a situation they cannot handle, the car can stop and pull over to the side of the road before asking the human to take over. And it can refuse to navigate to areas where it wouldn't be able to do that. (And if you're in an area where an emergency stop is unsafe, it's unsafe for human drivers too. Getting rear-ended for an emergency stop is that fault of the following car for that reason.)

<comment><USER99> So I'll still need to have a drivers license to use an autonomous vehicle? That pretty much defeats the whole purpose, at least for me.

<comment><USER26> Or you'll need to call a tow truck when it gets disabled, or you'll need a stage 5 vehicle rather than stage 4, or you'll have to subscribe to an emergency low-speed teleoperation service that has been hypothesized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> "Never" is kind of equally absurd. It's just a brutally hard problem.

<comment><USER53> You will never define a complete and consistent algebra. You will never exactly measure the momentum and position of a particle. They're not brutally hard problems, they're not possible. We know that there are a set of things that are impossible. Why is recreating human intelligence in silicon beyond that consideration?

<comment><USER101> Things are impossible till they aren't. It's not like we solved Go the board game, but we did build some killer AI which has now surpassed all human players. And that was within a matter of years: first it was a fluid game of human intelligence impossible for a machine, then it was obvious machines could be better.. but look at this other thing humans are still better at.

<comment><USER37> Google's AlphaZero AI went from not knowing chess at all to beating the best current software (Stockfish) in mere hours. It's a whole new world out there.

<comment><USER102> For playing computer games maybe. Chess is such a simple proposition compared to real life and you are only comparing this AI against other AI...

<comment><USER37> Stockfish isn't an AI, just an expert system. It was designed from the ground up to play chess.

AlphaZero is generalized AI. It was designed to learn how to do things - <USER2> play chess. The fact that it easily beat a custom-designed expert system with only a few hours of learning time is incredible. It's a different order of complexity altogether. It may not be human intelligence, but it's a great deal closer to how humans function than how machines (like Stockfish) function.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> can someone please advertise public transit to these deep-pocketed VC dumbasses as somehow being an artificially intelligent city network

something something we have a real bridge to sell you

</comment><comment><USER104> Is it just me, or is the Argo CEO interviewed for every single article that's pessimistic about self-driving cars?

</comment><comment><USER105> No one will ever need more than 64kb ram - Bill Gates

<comment><USER16> He didn't say that, and it was 640k at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> I think there is no reel need for driverless cars. Having technological difficulties aside we should question whether there is really a need for self- driving cars. Life is not that bad without autonomous cars. I don't hear anybody complain about in real life not having driverless cars. Basically a driverless car is same thing having a private chauffeur and I know quite a few people who don't want to use their private chauffeurs lots of time.

<comment><USER107> There's no real need for anything in life other than food and shelter. If driverless cars work and don't cost much, some people will use them and enjoy them and that's enough.

<comment><USER106> There are levels above food and shelter. Having a car is a real need and it solves a problem for lots of people. However having a self-driving car may solves some people's problem but that don't seem to big part of human population. I think that makes the development of self-driving cars slower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER108> Even if it will be technically possible, and I'm pretty sure some day that will be solved. That's the easiest part.

The biggest hurdle for self-driving cars will be ethics, such as 'the car brakes for a child suddenly crossing the street but then kills the old woman' or perhaps even make decisions based upon social status. Lots of options here.

Those ethics have to be agreed upon, and they will likely differ per culture, state, country, etc. It's a political and sociological challenge. It will be interesting crossing borders.

And then those ethics need to be implemented in software. I would refrain from saying it's never going to happen, but I doubt very much this will happen in our lifetime.

<comment><USER26> I believe that this scenario is very over-blown. If you're in a situation where you have to choose between swerving into another car or hitting a child that darts out onto the street then the question really is: why were you in that situation in the first place? At 20mph pedestrian collisions are almost invariably non-fatal and emergency stops are almost instantaneous. So if you're on a street where a child can appear instantly, why are you going faster than 20mph in the first place?

<comment><USER45> a child can appear instantly on any street. they can even run into the highway if their parent pulls onto the shoulder for a bathroom break or something.

of course, it's much more likely to happen in a neighborhood than on the highway, so we drive slower in the neighborhood. but anything that can happen eventually will, so there ought to be some policy.

that said, I think there is a certain segment of the population that gets overly excited about mapping the trolley problem onto autonomous driving. I expect that little will change other than the liable party (the car driver vs the company) and it will mostly work out.

<comment><USER26> Exactly. The maximum safe speed in a neighborhood is 20mph, and the maximum safe speed passing a stopped car on the freeway is a lot less than 60mph.

<comment><USER45> sure, but I don't think the whole highway is obligated to slow down for a stopped car on the right shouler, only the lane next to the shoulder (and I would argue that this lane suddenly slowing all the way down to 20mph would create a worse hazard). theoretically the child could make it all the way to to left before being struck. I'm not saying this is likely, just that there is no speed where you can _guarantee_ that you won't hit a pedestrian that is behaving erratically. the best you can do is make it very unlikely in most cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER109> Could be saying that to defeat competition. Don't bother trying it's decades away! And Ford is notoriously behind the rest of the pack so I'd believe even less of what they say as well. I don't listen to executives with a stake in the game regardless of which side they are playing.

The barriers to this seem mosly man made. Regulations, restrictions, taxi lobby, trucker unions, etc. A lot of it depends on where the line is drawn for safety or versatility. Does one vehicle need to operate in all climates with 0 accidents a year? Simply being safer than humans is easy- we are already there.

I'd be happy to even see more and more driver assist to the point where you can't crash even if you jerk the wheel and try to.

I think the bar has been set incredibly high, almost impossibly out of reach, by people interested in things staying the same.

<comment><USER110> > Simply being safer than humans is easy- we are already there.

Seriously?

<comment><USER109> Just Waymo was driving over 1 million miles a month in 2018. How many people have they killed? The fact that an autonomous vehicle or Tesla "autopilot" fatality makes national news is telling. It's not commonplace.

<comment><USER111> It's not sufficient for these systems to just be "better" than humans in terms of accidents/mile/vehicle, they have to be FAR BETTER than humans.

Today, when accidents occur, blame and liability goes to the responsible parties. We're talking about millions of accidents and millions of drivers.

If you suddenly have a car that drives, the blame and liability for all accidents then gets focused like a giant magnifying glass onto ONE (or a few) companies which have made the self-driving car.

I don't know how many accidents/mile/vehicle is the "magic number" but I expect it is going to have to be far far _far_ lower than what it is now. Otherwise, these self-driving car vendors won't be able to survive the legal onslaught.

<comment><USER112> Why can't we accept a little better now and keep striving for far better? Seems stupid to have an all or nothing approach, especially when plenty of luxury vehicles have pieces of automated driving in them already. Liability is for insurance leeches to figure out

<comment><USER113> Because the proper comparison isn't X accidents vs Y accidents. It's X accidents and Z billion dollars spent vs Y accidents, where that Z billion dollars could have gone to other efforts. If the delta between X and Y is minor, Z is wasted.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


TELL HN: Open Google in IE. Click I'm feeling lucky. Counter to New Years? - <AUTHOR>

Open Google in IE. Click I'm feeling lucky. I think it's a counter to New Years... <comment><USER2> thats not new</comment>


5 Growth Hacking Articles You Should Read - <AUTHOR> http://desmart.com/blog/5-growth-hacking-articles-you-should-read <comment><USER2> The one by Karan Thakkar is more of running a race to get more followers and very much less of a growth hack technique.

You will get as he promises in his post but that won't be useful at all. I would like to suggest you to not use it. You will end up having so many spammers in your following lists. And to top that all, some of them will be posting nudes and like offensive content and no one or very less among them gonna click on your links.

Don't you use that script provided in the article to follow people.

I

PS. I've no ill intentions against Karan. I don't know him and I am sharing the results that I got after following whatever has mentioned in that post. And I really appreciate the way he promoted Crowdfire by this single post by him. He has, in real sense, hacked growth for Crowdfire through his post. But, you may have other targets. Karan is a savvy marketer.

<comment><AUTHOR> You have right, but also you can get into your influencer/business guru Twitter profile followers and then can use that script. It will help you to avoid spammers.</comment></comment>


Is sugar really that bad for you? - <AUTHOR> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/j.1467-3010.2012.01960.x/asset/j.1467-3010.2012.01960.x.pdf;jsessionid=EDC18BA7F39D121E9BE021D8ACD28145.f04t02?v=1&t=if3x3gp9&s=cbc0f8259059f175a0d4a601fa602d1ac94e0b87 <comment><USER2> I don;t know because I cannot read the article

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /store/10.1111/j.1467-3010.2012.01960.x/asset/j.1467-3010.2012.01960.x.pdf on this server.

<comment><USER3> Same here. I was able to find it at [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-3010.2012....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-3010.2012.01960.x/pdf) . The short version is "no", where the baseline for "that bad" is a commentary in Nature that sugar is toxic.</comment></comment>


Exquisite Corpse: The Winter of 1947 in Europe - <AUTHOR> https://granta.com/exquisite-corpse/ <comment><USER2> People interested in Allied military government may like the memoir "Naples '44"; the author was landed at Salerno and from that point was in charge of trying to impose something resembling civil order in Naples in an environment where there was very little food available to the local population. Armed only with a classical education and a reasonable command of Italian.

> "We had been given no briefing or orders of any kind, and so far as the > Americans were concerned we might as well not have existed. This was the > greatest invasion in this war so far – probably the greatest in human > history – and the sea was crowded to the horizon with uncountable ships, but > we were as lost and ineffective as babes in the wood. No one knew where the > enemy was, but the bodies on the beach at least proved he existed. In place > of the guns, tanks, armoured cars, barbed wire we had expected to see, all > that had been landed in this sector of the beach were pyramids of office > equipment for use by Army Headquarters. We had been issued with a Webley > pistol and five rounds of ammunition apiece. Most of us had never fired a > gun.

As the sun began to sink splendidly into the sea at our back we wandered at random through this wood full of chirping birds and suddenly found ourselves at the wood's edge. We looked out into an open space on a scene of unearthly enchantment. A few hundred yards away stood in a row the three perfect temples of Paestum, pink and glowing and glorious in the sun's last rays."

</comment><comment><USER3> I find it extremely odd that at no point does this article make any reference to the actual temperature, aside from saying that things froze.

<comment><USER4> Honestly, giving temperature measurements might not have made the article better. An average temperature might not matter - the brief pockets of severe cold do the most damage. Lows and highs are fine, but then where do you calculate that over? The lowest temperature for all of France? You'll get a handful of outliers killing your data.

Additionally, temperature as it is felt is very dependent on how prepared people are and the wind and the moisture. Just a raw number might not do it. Ultimately, I think there probably exists some sort of statistical measure to measure the temperature "fairly" over a long period, but I doubt it's simple enough to use in the article.

<comment><USER3> That make sense. When I was trying to find actual data, I did find a number of reports of temperature, and some days the temp was well over freezing. +5C°, I think.

I eventually found another article, which appeared to be calculating number of days below freezing in a specific season, and that was the number that was out of whack.

I think you're right. Purposefully excluding raw temperature figures can prevent people from jumping to the 'well, it wasn't that cold' conclusion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > and when the Soviet propaganda became crudely anti-Western

In spite of Churchill's speech in Fulton it was inevitable I think.

<comment><USER6> It was strongly anti-Western - and particularly anti-Capitalist - before WW2 was over. So there's zero question it was guaranteed to go that direction no matter what, post WW2.

Stalin was fundamentally opposed to the foundational values of much of the modern West, whether we're talking about representative elected government, substantial & enshrined human rights protections, or free market economics.

<comment><USER7> Stalin died in 1953, though. Maybe it didn't have to continue to be that way after.

<comment><USER8> Khrushchev promised to "bury you" well after Stalin's death. It took a new generation coming to power and ham-handedly taking USSR apart.

<comment><USER9> You do understand that phrase is a mistranslation which doesn't carry the same meaning in original right?

<comment><USER10> I feel it would have been less condescending to say "that is a mistranslation", without posing it as a question. What do you think the translation should be? Wikipedia suggests it could be "We shall be present at your funeral" or "We shall outlive you", neither of which seem to be hugely different in meaning. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_will_bury_you](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_will_bury_you)

<comment><USER11> It's quite different. The bolsheviks believed that the collapse of capitalism was imminent, and that revolution would eventually sweep across the west even without their involvement. I always interpreted "We will outlive you" as the ideological belief in the long time superiority of their state. I'm not a historian, but the USSR was very much inferior to the US in strength in the 1950's, and both Krustchev and Eisenhower knew as much, even if the american public. He didn't have the strength to carry out the threat even if he'd wanted to, had that been his intention.

<comment><USER8> They really meant both -- the eventual victory of communism, and that they would help, with nukes if necessary, to achieve it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ann Nelson Took on the Biggest Problems in Physics - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/ann-nelson-took-on-the-biggest-problems-in-physics-20190822/ <comment><USER2> She was a mod in a Washington Facebook group for hiking, which had about 150k members. She was the only mod who took a stand against bad behavior in the outdoors instead of just sweeping it under the rug.

I was devastated to see such a tragic loss.

<comment><USER3> This is not true at all, I am personal friends with a number of the mods, none of them are allowing bad behavior in that group and none of them promote bad behavior in the outdoors. And they certainly aren't sweeping anything under a rug.

<comment><USER3> Down voting it, doesn't make it any less true. Interesting response though.

<comment><USER2> You can't downvote direct responses to comments, so it wasn't me.

But yes, they absolutely do sweep it under the rug. Anytime someone calls out bad behavior, the comment threads are locked. People who consistently call out bad behavior are banned ("put on the scat list"), and it's expected that you just "scroll on".

Ann was, as far as I could tell, the only one who would create campaigns on awareness.

It has to be one of the worst run Facebook groups on, well, Facebook. There's another group called "You run a Facebook group, not a country, but OK," which pretty much targets the overbearing moderation practices exemplified by that group.

And no, I've never been banned, so you can save that assumption :)

<comment><USER3> well when you moderate a group that big(for free, in your spare time) and have first hand experience you can speak to how they are handling things, otherwise its just another uninformed opinion.

How else would you deal with threads that are constantly off topic? Aside from turn comments off? How else do you deal with someone that keeps whining about the group and how its members act? How its moderated? If you don't like it, leave. ya know? it's exactly how id treat someone that kept complaining... show them the door. Many have left on their own to form different groups.

Anne was a great lady, but to say she was the only one moving the needle or to assume they are hiding things is just bizarre to me.

<comment><USER2> OK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article is about the subject's social justice activism, not about her physics research. Nothing wrong with that but not what I was expecting.

<comment><USER5> As I get older I tend not to see things falling into distinct groups; they all blur together.

While you say it's not physics, to me it is because fixing one problem will help the field so (again, to me) separating them seems a mistake.

But that's just one POV.

<comment><USER6> Is someone a great physicist if they produce 0 papers but reduce stigma in STEM

<comment><USER5> If the reduction in stigma got more people involved who _did_ produce quality work, then they've improved the field of physics - so in a way, yes.

You may reject the _label_ 'physicist', I'd understand that, but results are results. (Edit: in which case, does the label matter?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Particle physics, even compared to the rest of physics, is a notoriously > homogeneous discipline, full of white men.

I'm a non-white-male theoretical particle physicist myself and I somehow don't feel that (dominated by, maybe; full of, absolutely not). Need some stats to back that up.

<comment><USER8> Also a (former) non-white-male particle theorist (well, phenomenologist) here. This isn't hard data by any means but in the first year of my PhD, I attended a mandatory summer school for all particle theorist (and associated fields) PhD students in the UK.

There were about 95 student attendees. About 5 of those were women and only two of 95, including myself, were non-white. And very amusingly, the other non-white guy was someone I went to high school and university with. Also, he was on ATLAS and not strictly a theorist as such! If we discount myself on the grounds of being a phenomenologist, that probably makes things even worse.

<comment><USER9> The general population of the UK is overwhelmingly white compared to eg. the US. Many parts of the UK eg. Scotland it is 98% white or more, so it would be expected that courses in any discipline are going to be overwhelmingly white at universities in those regions.

<comment><USER8> For sure, although given that 87% of Britain is White British, for a cohort of 95 students in my year, one would expect all things equal for there to be about 12 non-white students, when in fact there were two.

This is not to get mired into a debate about inclusion in STEM, but it's also worth noting that both me and my other non-white friend (who's background I know because we grew up together, weirdly), were very fortunate to have had quite middle class upbringings too, and hailed from Northwest London.

In fact, I doubt it comes as any surprise for me to say that from my time at undergrad all the way up to completing my PhD, I suspect that the much bigger discriminant for getting into Physics is class more than race (gender is a separate issue here I suppose). I remember this coming up in a talk from someone on the IOP commission to look at inclusion in Physics, although for their online reports I can only find the ones on gender, for anyone interested: [http://www.iop.org/education/teacher/support/girls_physics/r...](http://www.iop.org/education/teacher/support/girls_physics/reports- and-research/page_63816.html)

<comment><USER9> Another thing to consider is that the UK as a whole not being 99% white is a recent development of the last four or five decades. At least in the first few decades most immigrants were working class and so you wouldn't expect their offspring to be proportionately represented at university level for socioeconomic reasons.

So I would argue the disparity is more of a socioeconomic access one than a racial one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Made me think about the lifters and grifters we all run into during our lives. Ann Nelson was a brilliant and powerful lifter.

</comment><comment><USER11> She died whilst hiking, how common is that?

Are there any guidlines to reduce these dangers, was she walking in a particularly dangerous area?

<comment><USER3> She was aware of the risks, the area wasnt overly dangerous. She was waking on a ledge that crosses a cliff face, I've crossed it a few times, it's sketchy but "safe", in that dozens do it yearly without issue.

It's hard to quantify the seriousness of deaths while hiking because we don't know how many hikes there are each day, and there are agencies actively working to downplay and hide the data.</comment></comment>


A Prophet of Scientific Rigor–and a Covid Contrarian - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/prophet-of-scientific-rigor-and-a-covid-contrarian/ <comment><USER2> "There is ZERO rigor with Ioannidis. ZERO probabilistic reasoning & risk management rigor. He doesn't even known what an exponential means. ZERO." \--NNTaleb [https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1256970494336737281](https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1256970494336737281)</comment>