Google says self-driving car hits municipal bus in minor crash - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/google-selfdrivingcar-idUSL2N1681DP <comment><USER2> I live in the area. The stinking buses around here ... They crowd the lanes regularly. Us human drivers I suppose are used to it, but it is a serious pain in the butt.

The buses will drive right next to the lane marker, with their mirrors hanging over into your lane. This makes it so everybody has to creep over a little bit into the drivers side lane and hopefully everybody in traffic has a small enough car to deal with it. Otherwise, you have to hang back behind the bus as if it's in your lane and wait for it to get to a stop.

I've had my issues with Google autonomous cars (they drive slow and they used to be exceptionally slow at making right hand turns, causing traffic problems), but in this instance I'm happy to throw VTA under the bus, if you will, and lay blame 100% at their feet.

<comment><USER3> I especially loathe the double length buses. Seriously, why? Not like these buses get all that full. Just run them more often at peak hours.

<comment><USER4> That costs far more (in fuel, maintenance, and drivers), and typically places that have articulated buses _warrant_ having articulated buses.

<comment><USER5> And some places even run smaller buses. Here in the DC area, we have articulated buses, standard ones, and even smaller ones—about 60 percent of the size of a standard bus. It's rare to get the ideal size at the right time in an area of such bad traffic, but they do make an attempt.

<comment><USER6> In the small city I live in, we have small buses, which is sized right for the ridership. Unfortunately their top speed is about 26MPH on level ground and My commute includes a steep freeway overpass, which that drops to about 18MPH. The speed limit on that stretch of road is 25MPH and most traffic goes about 35MPH on the overpass as there is nowhere for a speed trap to be set. I can tell from 4 blocks away when one of those buses has been there recently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a common assumption that humans = bad drivers. And that these self driving cars will be much better than people at driving. I think this belief greatly underestimates the difficulty of what Google and others are trying to do.

Humans are actually great drivers when the situation requires thinking. Lot of snow and can't see the lane markers? Millions of people adapt every day to this during winter. Lots of pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, etc. doing somewhat unpredictable things? Again, look at any Asian mega city, people can adapt very fast. Basically, if the situation requires being alert, people are very good at driving.

When are people bad a driving? Whenever it's monotonous. Bumper to bumper traffic or a free flowing freeway. Constant repetition of red/green cycles while going down a suburban street. These boring situations make a lot of people basically turn off their alert thinking. Then they do other things like texting, talking on phone, etc.

And these boring situations are exactly where AI self driving is better at driving than people. Computers never get bored. The self driving car will be at 100% attention even during the most boring traffic. But when boring suddenly turns to not boring? The current state of AI is very very bad at this.

And unfortunately there's no easy way to use the best of both sides. If the AI is fully driving, then it will do great while the driving is boring. But by the time the AI decides, this is too much, can't handle this, it's too late to alert the human driver to take over. But if the human driver is required to always pay attention, what's the point of the self driving car?

Self driving cars will get there someday, but I think it's much farther away than many assume it will be.

<comment><USER8> I have a $100 bet going with a coworker at the office.

We defined self-driving cars: When I can pull out my phone in any of at least 5 major metropolitan areas around the world, order a driverless car, have it pick me up and deliver me to a specified location within the city in a timely fashion, with as little risk as getting in a taxi.

He is sub 20 years. I'm thinking more like 40-50 mark.

My thesis? We can solve the technical challenges, but so much physical, legal, and regulatory infrastructure needs to change to make this viable that it will be more than 2 decades until we see self-driving cars as a reality across multiple cities. Of course, I would be more than happy to lose the $100 as it would make everyone's lives better that much sooner. But I'm skeptical.

<comment><USER9> > He is sub 20 years. I'm thinking more like 40-50 mark.

Perspective:

* 60 years ago, we didn't have highways.

* 45 years ago, seat belts weren't required.

* 40 years ago, we expected engines to last 10s of thousands of miles. We didn't really understand crumple zones. Open containers and even drinking while driving.

* 30 years, we added fuel injection, computers, and airbags.

* 20 years ago, the hybrid car, better fuel efficiency, and side airbags

Imagine what we'll know tomorrow.

<comment><USER10> Perspective: nearly 50 years ago we _did_ have Category IIIa instrument landing systems in commercial jet aircraft capable of landing without pilot input. We had reliable gyroscopic autopilot capable of keeping aircraft on a set course long before that.

Vast sums of money have been sunk into developing exceptionally reliable avionics systems since then.

Passenger carrying aircraft still all have a pilot or two.

<comment><USER11> And to complete the thought: the main reason why human pilots are still on all those aircraft is because... the automated/computerized systems still can't really make decisions that match what the humans can do. So the computer is really great at maintaining heading, altitude and speed for a set period of time, but really bad at deciding which heading, which altitude and which speed, and for how long (the best you can do that I'm aware of is have a human lay out the desired route and punch that into the FMC, and then all bets are off if conditions change along the way, and the humans will have to decide what to tell the plane to do again).

<comment><USER12> And those decisions themselves could be easily automated, but people _choose not to_. There's a checklist for making those decisions. If you can write a checklist, you can write code. And for when there's not a checklist, then you can pick randomly, because that's what the human is essentially doing.

<comment><USER13> A human can notice when new evidence becomes relevant. If something isn't already on a computer's checklist when it becomes relevant, the human has a better chance of deciding what to do.

EDIT: I understand that there is research going into making computers recognize "novel" situations. My comment only applies to algorithms that contain "checklists".

<comment><USER12> No, then you need to get meta. There's a checklist for identifying "novel" information and reacting. By checklist I mean algorithm.

Sure, it can be tough to tease out the algorithm from the minds of current pilots. Luckily in aviation we already have training manuals. In other domains it'd be tougher to know when we're done extracting knowledge from humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> And here is the actual accident report [0]

 _" A Google Lexus-model autonomous vehicle ("Google AV") was traveling in autonomous mode eastbound on El Camino Real in Mountain View in the far right- hand lane approaching the Castro St. intersection. As the Google AV approached the intersection, it signaled its intent to make a right turn on red onto Castro St. The Google AV then moved to the right-hand sid of the lane to pass traffic in the same lane that was stopped at the intersection and proceeding straight. However, the Google AV had to come to a stop to go around sandbags positioned around a storm drain that were blocking its path. When the light turned green, traffic in the lane continued past the Google AV. After a few cars had passed, the Google AV began to proceed back into the center of the lane to pass the sand bags. A public transit bus was approaching from behind. The Google AV test driver saw the bus approaching in the left side mirror but believed the bus would stop or slow to allow the Google AV to continue. Approximately three seconds later, as the Google AV was reentering the center of the lane, it made contact with the side of the bus. The Google AV was operating in autonomous mode and travelling less than 2 mph, and the bus was travelling at about 15 mph at the time of contact.

The Google AV sustained body damage to the left front fender, the left front wheel and one of its driver's-side sensors. There were no injuries reported at the scene."_

[0] - [https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/3946fbb8-e04e-4d52...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/3946fbb8-e04e-4d52-8f80-b33948df34b2/Google+Auto+LLC+02.14.16.pdf?MOD=AJPERES)

<comment><USER15> I'm actually curious who had the right of way in this one. It sounds like the bus just plowed through them while accelerating the whole way.

<comment><USER14> I'm pretty sure it's the bus. Generally a already moving vehicle with a green light on straight road has right of way. The correct action for the autonomous vehicle (or a human driver) would be to wait for all traffic in the lane to clear (for example, after the previous light turns red and there is a lull in the traffic), then make it's way around the sandbags.

Here's my artists rending. The vertical lane is just the right hand lane, and is "wide", but still one lane. The bus is traveling "up" and the Google AV tries to manenouver around the sandbags blocking it's way. Thinking that it can get around in time, the AV starts moving to the left and crashes into the bus.

I guess the "one lane" aspect is the confounding variable, but since the autonomous vehicle was stopped, then it takes on the aspect of any other stopped vehicle on the side of the road (ie giving up it's right of way). Just like if you have a road where cars are allowed to park on the side of the road, those cars cannot enter traffic unless it is safe to do so.

Edit: Actually, I have no idea. Did a quick read of California's right of way laws, and couldn't find anything that jumped out that would cover this situation.

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<comment><USER16> If it was a single lane, then technically the bus was attempting to pass a moving vehicle in the same lane as itself, which puts it at fault.

<comment><USER17> I wonder about this too. If you are new to CA, at first it seems crazy how aggressive people are about splitting the right hand lane to turn right... who would have the right of way if the bus was already stopped at a light, but the AV split the lane to turn right and passed the stopped bus? I like the idea of splitting the right lane to make right turns, but IMO, if you've done so, you no longer have the right of way for traffic in that lane.

<comment><USER18> <who would have the right of way if the bus was already stopped at a light, but the AV split the lane to turn right and passed the stopped bus?>

The AV can proceed "when safe" to approach the intersection and then, "when safe", make its turn, but the bus owns the lane otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ok, I laughed out loud on that one. This quote in particular, _" The vehicle and the test driver 'believed the bus would slow or allow the Google (autonomous vehicle) to continue.'"_

Bus drivers in the Bay Area are notorious for ignoring traffic (and pedestrians). Apparently there is some indemnity or statutes that make suing either the transportation agency or the driver nearly impossible and so pretty quickly people learn that the bus drivers drive with impunity. Plenty of stories posted to the local traffic column in the paper, and shared amongst neighbors and in the department of safety's "blotter" feature.

Google needs to go back and program their cars to always assume that buses are out to get them and avoid them at all cost, They are an active traffic hazard often operated by a disinterested and distracted driver. The only way to "win" is to not be where ever the bus is.

<comment><USER20> Up next: Google self-driving buses, finally American buses run with the same attention to time tables that Swiss ones do. And added benefit: they obey traffic safety laws.

<comment><USER21> The issue are not the drivers.

I'll report what I observed in 2 years of 3 to 4 times of using the bus a day in Germany.

Every time a bus was late, or tried to break the sound barrier™ in the hope of reducing some of the delay, was due to one of the following issues:

(a) A tourist with texan accent trying to get onto the bus, discussing with the bus driver if he can pay with credit card or in dollar (no), then asking the bus driver to wait while he's going to get money from the nearest ATM (happens at about 5% of stops in the downtown areas where the tourists are)

(b) Rush hour traffic, 200 people squeezing into a single bus, and another few hundred waiting at the bus stop – busses coming every one or two minutes, and it takes quite some time until people stop trying to get into the bus, and leave enough space for the doors to close

(c) some kids with invalid tickets trying to cheat and getting caught

These issues can't be fixed by automated busses, or trains.

Only by less tight schedules, and more busses and trains.

<comment><USER22> (a) is fixed because there's probably no-one for the Texan to talk to on the bus. For trains, the person to talk to is on the platform, and can simply let the train depart (example: Copenhagen Metro, although good luck spotting any staff).

It could be more easily fixed by accepting foreign credit cards (Gothenburg manages this, London if the card is contactless) or telling drivers not to wait.

(b) is partly solved if the cost of running buses/trains is significantly reduced, as that leaves money for extra vehicles.

(c)... well, who will notice?

<comment><USER21> Also, regarding (b):

Already many cities today operate busses by taking unemployed people and forcing them to take the job as bus driver for no pay (they'd have to continue living off of welfare), otherwise they'd lose 50% of their welfare money.

That's how you get bus drivers for free — automated vehicles can't really beat that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It was inevitable, so I'm sure they're quite pleased it was a minor issue and not something catastrophic. Someday in the future a self driving car is going to hurt or kill a person and then the real legal tests will begin, but this is the first step on the pathway to normalcy.

My personal fear is that Google and maybe one or two others will get self driving cars right, but then the imitations from other manufacturers will fall short. The liability needs to end up on the manufacturer of the self driving car system, this is not something to be taken lightly at all.

<comment><USER24> I expect self driving car liability to end up similar to vaccine liability. A fund and adjudication process is created to compensate those who have an adverse outcome.

[http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/](http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/)

<comment><USER25> The only difference is the vaccine fund doesn't have to be proven and a large, large amount of cases they receive are highly unlikely to have been caused by vaccine issues.

But a car crash will be very easy to figure out who's at fault. Why would such a fund exist for something that can be pin-pointed directly at the party at fault?

<comment><USER24> > Why would such a fund exist for something that can be pin-pointed directly > at the party at fault?

People should still be compensated when accidents happen, without the drag caused by trial attorneys attempting to extract as much as possible from self- driving vehicle manufacturers (which is going to slow down progress).

The benefits of self-driving vehicles from reduced fatalities and accidents alone are so great that a process and funding needs to be in place to allow continued innovation (if done with safety put first).

<comment><USER25> > People should still be compensated when accidents happen, without the drag > caused by trial attorneys attempting to extract as much as possible from > self-driving vehicle manufacturers.

Of course but the current laws today can drag this out when people are involved; why would cars be any different?

> The benefits of self-driving vehicles from reduced fatalities and accidents > alone are so great that a process and funding needs to be in place to allow > continued innovation (if done with safety put first).

We don't do this in any other industry as far as I know. It's a weird mechanic to make the manufacturers of automatically driving cars off the hook from accidents.

I understand the intent but I don't know how that works within our current legal system and wouldn't that encourage cheap, shitty-built cars since companies won't need to be liable?

<comment><USER24> > I understand the intent but I don't know how that works within our current > legal system and wouldn't that encourage cheap, shitty-built cars since > companies won't need to be liable?

It works if you allow self-driving vehicle algorithms to be patented. You could then open them for public examination by a government agency.

If the algorithm performed to regulation agency expectations, accident victims would still be compensated for losses without punitive damages exacted.

<comment><USER25> Regulation isn't a magic bullet though. I've seen countless companies check the boxes of regulation for their software in the government space only to have them fail spectacularly because it was done as cheaply as possible.

Regulation will never cover all possibilities of a company acting shitty; if companies find ways to doing things cheaper and still being able to check that box just so they have no liability then they will do it.

I don't think these types of get-out-of-jail-free-cards, even though they're very well intentioned, are ultimately a good thing.

But time will tell either way :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Here's the Autonomous Vehicle Accident Report filed with the CA DMV.[1] "The Google AV was operating in autonomous mode and traveling at less than 2 mph and the bus was traveling around 15 mph." The other vehicle was a 2002 Newflyer Lowfloor Articulated Bus, which is 61 feet long including the "trailer" part.

Here's where it happened.[2] You can see traffic cones around the storm drain.

This is a subtle error. Arguably, part of the problem was that the AV was moving too slowly. It was trying to break into a gap in traffic, but because it was maneuvering around an unusual road hazard (sandbags), was moving very slowly. This situation was misread by the bus driver, who failed to stop or change course, perhaps expecting the AV to accelerate. The AV is probably at fault, because it was doing a lane change while the bus was not.

Fixing this requires that the AV be either less aggressive or more aggressive. Less aggressive would mean sitting there waiting for a big break in traffic. That could take a while at that location. More aggressive would mean accelerating faster into a gap. Google's AVs will accelerate into gaps in ordinary situations such as freeway merges, but when dealing with an unusual road hazard, they may be held down to very slow speeds.

I wonder if Google will publish the playback from their sensor data.

[1] [https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/3946fbb8-e04e-4d52...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/3946fbb8-e04e-4d52-8f80-b33948df34b2/Google+Auto+LLC+02.14.16.pdf?MOD=AJPERES) [2] [https://goo.gl/maps/QzvVXQGxhX72](https://goo.gl/maps/QzvVXQGxhX72)

<comment><USER27> > The AV is probably at fault, because it was doing a lane change while the > bus was not.

Yes, probably true, but not crystal clear. The Google car never left the lane, so it comes down to subtle questions about appearing to be parked or impromptu division of lanes near right-hand turns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This story is getting a lot of press coverage. Reuters, CNBC and Wired are already covering it.

When Cruise (YC 14)'s car hit a parked car at 20 mph in SF last month, there was no press attention.[1] Even though it was across the street from the main police station.

That Cruise crash is an example of the "deadly valley" between manual driving and fully automatic driving, The vehicle made a bad move which prompted the driver to take over, but too late. This is exactly why AVs can't rely on the driver as backup.

[1] [https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/bc21ef62-6e7c-4049...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/bc21ef62-6e7c-4049-a552-0a7c50d92e86/Cruise_Automation_01.08.16.pdf?MOD=AJPERES)

</comment><comment><USER28> > The vehicle and the test driver "believed the bus would slow or allow the > Google (autonomous vehicle) to continue."

Clearly the algorithm does not take into account the classic attitudes of bus drivers.

<comment><USER29> Even more lucky it wasn't a BMW.

Here in Europe the attitudes of BMW drivers are not highly regarded.

<comment><USER30> Not even in Germany?

<comment><USER31> This is their lair. They are the worst here.

<comment><USER30> What is the German ranking in terms of obnoxiousness like?

E.g. based on BMW, Porsche, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Opel, <foreign invaders>?

<comment><USER29> Pretty much that exact order.

<comment><USER30> I would guess Mercedes owners would be more obnoxious than Audi owners though? :)

<comment><USER31> Mercedes are a special problem. Often driven by older male drivers who sometimes remember that their car can drive fast but not caring most of the time. Even while on the left lane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Technically, even if self driving cars are more safe than human drivers (even if they're not perfect), should be good enough. But my lizard brain tells me that I'm putting my life in the hands of a machine that potentially has bugs, and that's a little scary.

Most of us are going to expect nothing short of perfection from these machines to really trust them.

<comment><USER25> The same thing happened with elevators. When they had operators who would physically make the elevator move and then these new fangled "magic" ones came in people freaked out, got used to it and now no one cases.

I get the feeling the it's the same way with cars just an order of magnitude bigger of a change since they're such a part of our lives.

<comment><USER33> But that also provides evidence of the parent's point that "Most of us are going to expect nothing short of perfection from these machines to really trust them."

We absolutely wouldn't be OK with elevators that now and then fail in a dangerous way. Doesn't mean it never happens but it's considered to be someone's fault when it does.

<comment><USER34> Elevators do fail occasionally. There are several videos of elevators moving before the door has finished closing, or stopping mis-aligned with a floor. It's just a very unusual occurrence.

<comment> nommm-nommm Yeah, when I was a teenager I was hit in the head by a closing elevator door. That _hurt_ like all hell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> In related article [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-selfdrivingcar- idUS...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-selfdrivingcar- idUSKCN0W22DG)

"Google said in the filing the autonomous vehicle was traveling at less than 2 miles per hour, while the bus was moving at about 15 miles per hour."

Google said in a statement on Monday that "we clearly bear some responsibility, because if our car hadn't moved, there wouldn't have been a collision. That said, our test driver believed the bus was going to slow or stop to allow us to merge into the traffic, and that there would be sufficient space to do that."

<comment><USER36> >That said, our test driver believed the bus was going to slow or stop to allow us to merge into the traffic, and that there would be sufficient space to do that."

it was a [double] bus. It isn't the kind of vehicle one stops out of courtesy to let the other car to merge (until such courtesy is the only option for the other car to merge, obviously)

Anyway, it is an obvious software failure as the Google car hit the side of the bus at slow speed. There is no reason to blame it on somebody.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> > The vehicle and the test driver "believed the bus would slow or allow the > Google (autonomous vehicle) to continue."

Love this. I'm shamelessly rooting for self-driving cars, and crashes are inevitable. Having the human in the car agree with the computer brings a lot of credibility to the report and follow-up.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm actually more impressed that they are trying to code "believed the bus would slow".

Understanding the expected behavior of other drivers is critical to making self driving cars work. And that seems like a pretty hard thing for a computer to figure out.

<comment><USER39> > Understanding the expected behavior of other drivers is critical to making > self driving cars work. And that seems like a pretty hard thing for a > computer to figure out.

You're definitely right.

With regard to this particular instance, based on my experiences in many cities in different countries, buses pulling out into traffic when they don't technically have the right of way is an expected behavior. :)

<comment><USER40> Unless I'm reading the report wrong, it appears that the bus did have the right of way. Indicating intent and hoping will get you in trouble with more than just busses.

<comment><USER39> > Unless I'm reading the report wrong, it appears that the bus did have the > right of way.

Yeah, I was more trying to make an observation about general behavior of buses. When I read the article there was no mention of fault or reference to a report, so I didn't know. But I do know that buses disregarding right of way is fairly common. "With regard to this instance" was probably too strong/literal of a phrase to use to tie-in my observation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> If you're having trouble visualizing what happened (like me), here's the intersection: [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-122.0843836,3a,75y,...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-122.0843836,3a,75y,180.9h,70.85t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sT2jrKcM8pLU8MPq1hj60xQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!5m1!1e4!6m1!1e1)

Looks like the far right lane has double the normal lane width to accommodate on-street parking. The Google car, looking to turn right on red, attempted to use the right-most part of the lane to pass cars that were waiting to go straight, but there were sandbags covering the storm drain near the corner, so it had to stop. When the light changed, the cars it had passed continued on while the Google car waited for a gap, which ended up being in front of a bus, likely caused by the bus accelerating more slowly than the cars in front of it. The Google car tried to use the gap to get around the sandbags, assuming that the bus wouldn't just plow into it, but the bus plowed into it. Perhaps the bus driver assumed the Google car was parked and wasn't paying much attention to it.

<comment><USER42> The question is, how much room did the AV have in front of the bus to merge out in front of it?

I'm wondering if the bus was cruising along and saw the AV inching out into its lane and just thought "Oh, once they see this big-ass bus coming along, they'll stop trying to merge." And the AV thought "Once that bus sees me inching out, it'll slow to let me merge." And neither one was right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> It is going to be difficult to predict the actions of irrational actors like bus drivers. You can usually assume that a driver has a vested interest in not damaging their vehicle, but my experience navigating California's city streets has consistently suggested otherwise when busses are involved.

I would group them into a category along with police cars and ambulances due to the prioritization of speed over safety. (Although, in my experience ambulances, are usually very good a prioritizing safety.)

</comment><comment><USER44> The linked report doesn't say Google is accepting responsibility, so it'll be interesting to see what tact they take here. In _Toronto_, from talking with acquaintances that are drivers, I understand they work in near constant fear of accidents. They are expected to at least practically always be able to avoid accidents, and the feeling is that if something happens, they're presumed guilty (within management), and proceed from there.

I don't know if all professional bus drivers' conditions are the same as Toronto, but I can imagine this could be extremely distressing for the bus driver involved. At least nobody was injured.

<comment><USER45> > The linked report doesn't say Google is accepting responsibility

That's for insurance reasons. You're never supposed to admit fault at the collision in the US. You let the police decide and that's that. It's like the first thing listed on the guidelines for collisions on your insurance card.

<comment><USER44> Agreed re: insurance reasons. That said, the phrasing of the event is interesting "...self-driving car hits municipal bus..." and (in article) "...self-driving car struck a municipal bus...", and the co-driver (and vehicle) is quoted as "believed the bus would slow or allow the the Google (autonomous vehicle) to continue.", sound a little "soft", more like "yeah, I think that's my fault". I don't have 'favourite to win', regardless. There's another article[0] that I didn't see earlier that does in fact accept at least partial fault, and additionally mentions that the software was updated as result of this event. Thankfully it seems to be a low-cost (in terms of injury and damage) event, but fascinating given the young state of autonomous driving.

[0] [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-selfdrivingcar- idUS...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-selfdrivingcar- idUSKCN0W22DG)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The description of events is slightly suspicious. For all the predictive smarts of the car and its impressive LIDAR, keeping from bumping into things seems like it would be the highest priority possible second only to loss of life. The corners of the car have some kind of distance sensor so the car would have to have known it was about to collide with something. In CPU time there was plenty of time to react and its always looking at all four corners.

The article make it sound like the AI blindly changed lanes into the bus. It seems most likely that the AI knew about the impending collision and decided colliding was safer than any other option. It'd be great to know what the other options were, but I imagine we'll probably never get more detail.

<comment><USER16> It didn't change lanes, which is why the description didn't say it did. The entire event took place in a single extra-wide right lane, which are pretty common. The extra width is to accommodate on-street parking as well as right hand turns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Maybe Google should train their cars at demolition derbies instead of on public roads. Have one group of vehicles trying to crash into another. And let competing teams of students program the crashers. Winning team gets $25K.

And play with touch football rules to keep the costs down. Cover vehicles with touch sensors and cameras that record each crash.

</comment><comment><USER48> Is there any information available about how these cars take evasive action or attempt to reduce damage in the event of an imminent impact? The article's wording makes it sound like the car was at fault for the crash by re-entering the lane:

> "But three seconds later, as the Google car reentered the center of the lane > it struck the side of the bus"

Presumably the car's software predicted the crash before it occurred but was unable to completely avoid it. I'd love to know what the programmed behavior is in these 'unavoidable' crash scenarios. edit: formatting

</comment><comment><USER49> Can the URL be changed to a source that at least links to the report, like [http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/29/11134344/google-self- drivi...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/29/11134344/google-self-driving-car- crash-report) or [http://www.wired.com/2016/02/googles-self-driving-car-may- ca...](http://www.wired.com/2016/02/googles-self-driving-car-may-caused-first- crash/)

</comment><comment><USER50> This incident hints at what I believe is going to be a big issue in the transition to autonomous vehicles in busy urban areas. If AVs are too passive, human drivers will take advantage of them. If they are too aggressive, the accident rates will be high, and the risk of an AV causing a major accident increases. Threading this dichotomy is more difficult than solving the physics of driving.

</comment><comment><USER51> The country where I live buses have right of way when leaving bus stops. They seem to actually try to hit cars which are in the next lane (even when the car has almost passed and it of course isn't a "right of way" situation anymore)... So if you program an autonomous car it would be smart to program it to never get next to a bus :)

</comment><comment><USER52> The vehicle and the test driver "believed the bus would slow or allow the Google (autonomous vehicle) to continue."

If the test driver stated that s/he thought the car should yield to the bus, would the test driver still have a job? I would have been shocked if the test driver said the software was at fault.

</comment><comment><USER53> "The vehicle and the test driver "believed the bus would slow or allow the Google (autonomous vehicle) to continue.""

This sounds like a very strong assumption. When was the last time you saw a bus slow down for a car or anything much? There's a reason "Fuck you I'm a bus" is a meme.

<comment><USER54> Since the light had just turned green, the assumption was probably that the bus would cease accelerating long enough for the Google car to get around the obstacle, not that the bus driver would hit the brakes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> My question is - why are bus drivers such assholes (as depicted by the comments here)?

Serious question I'm curious about. Is this societal, is it a technology problem (do the way buses work somehow encourage this behavior towards other motorists), is it likely a combination of both?

</comment><comment><USER56> I hate El Camino road. The right most lane is always far too wide which means if a bus has stopped everyone expects you to still squeeze from the limited space. If you don't they will honk. If you do there is always a possibility that the giant bus might miss you and hit you.

However an important take away for all bay area drivers from the article is

You are supposed to HUG the right shoulder when making a right turn. I am yet to see a single driver who embraces that principle. It is not just for your safety and convenience of the traffic behind you but also because of the safety of bike riders, if you make a sudden right turn they might hit you and get injured.

</comment><comment><USER57> I think this minor accident is actually a good thing for self-driving cars. It sets the expectation that they may not be perfect, and isn't a PR disaster in the way that a fatal accident may have been.

From here, more accidents are able to happen without being huge news stories. Undoubtedly, the first time someone dies in an accident involving a self- driving car, there will still be lots of questioning of the technology, but it won't come as a complete surprise, now that smaller accidents have occurred.

</comment><comment><USER58> I don't know in US, but at least where I live when somebody hits you from behind, it's his fault. The idea is that you are supposed to drive cautiously and therefore be prepared if the vehicle in front of you behave erratically -- that is, even if the vehicle's driver is wrong (say, it's not his right of way), you still should be in a safe distance.

</comment><comment><USER59> Google needs to program their AVs to be aware of the universal "law of anything bigger"!

[http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/headhuntersholosuite/ima...](http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/headhuntersholosuite/images/6/6c/Spaceball_One_001.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER60> Seems like this was inevitable. Its astounding to me that it took this long and that there was no one hurt!

It is even more amazing that there have been apparently 0 injuries or fatalities. I wonder how these autonomous cars compare in terms of hours on the road to # of incidents (not accidents mind you, I hate that term).

</comment><comment><USER61> So what happened when the bus driver walked over to the self-driving car in order to exchange insurance information?

<comment><USER62> The human in the car exchanged it and thanks to the multitude of sensors and cameras this will be the single best documented fender bender in the history of the planet.

<comment><USER26> Yes, especially since the New Flyer buses also have cameras and data recorders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> It would be great if it turned out google car swerved into the bus to avoid hitting a fat man.

<comment><USER64> 'Sand bag' turns out to be a euphemism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's interesting to observe the highly varying amount that other cars will allow for merging. Merging onto the freeway during a busy day (maybe 35MPH traffic), I tried to merge and the car I was planning on going in front of moved up until their bumper was about a meter from the vehicle in front of them and leaned on their horn. "I technically have the right of way in this situation and by God, I won't yield it to you!"

This was a situation where there were about 40 cars merging onto the freeway and they mostly just do a fairly standard zipper merge.

</comment><comment><USER65> That was not a small target...

</comment><comment><USER66> This just in ... one vehicle on the road hit another vehicle on the road.

<comment><USER67> I'm finding the description of the accident a little... passive. Has anyone found other reporting or even video of the incident itself?

<comment><USER68> I mean they aren't trying to advertise this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> skynet?

</comment><comment><USER70> Uber + Self-driving = Mayhem

</comment><comment><USER71> Some of these discussions seem to severely underestimate human intelligence and the ability to reason and take decisions rapidly.

There are hundreds of millions of cars operating in all sorts of conditions with little incident. There are literally hundreds of thousands of preemptive actions, foresight, experience and instinctive actions at play for every possibility on roads that millions of people adopt easily.

To say that's not good enough one must articulate a system that is clearly better or has the potential while avoiding a broad brush with 0.1% incidents or diminishing human drivers. That's an argument of convenience and could reflect a lack of understanding of the scope and scale of the problem. This is just sandbags, there are literally millions of obstacles and scenarios negotiated without incident everyday.

Crashes in snow is not always about bad decisions. It could also be extremely poor conditions that cars should not be in, inadequate vehicle or tyres and computing will not help if hardware is deficient. Presuming the worst of others or jumping to conclusions about their intelligence levels is unsavory and dangerous if used to push something.

An AI vehicle in any crowded Asian city is going to be literally stranded by indecision. On relatively empty and organized roads the computing power needed will barely scratch the surface of what a proper self driving AI system needs to be unless you redesign the roads and place constraints, which then becomes a different discussion to approach carefully.</comment>


Software Development as an Emergent System - <AUTHOR> https://www.blinkingcaret.com/2018/08/22/software-development-emergent-system-ndepend/ <comment><USER2> Cool and all, but having a way to measure the gnarliest parts of the code is not, in my experience, the problem. Having a management objective that is willing to devote any non-zero amount of time to paying down technical debt is more often the problem. Technical debt costs over time, and new features pay off much quicker. The management may not even intend to be around in the long term (if they're developing for a client or intend to sell to a larger company, for example).

Of course, having a measurement might help shine a spotlight on how things are getting worse, but I've never actually seen this happen. Perhaps others have a different experience?

<comment><USER3> I think it's a matter of attitude. Either you accept that there is value in keeping a code base reasonable or not. Maybe some metrics can help to make a point but any metric will be abused over time if used too religiously.

You are making a good point about people not being around long term. In my company there are departments with high turnover and they tend to go for quick victories that are often costly in the long term. At the time this becomes clear the manager who made the previous has already been promoted somewhere else and the next guy will make another quick decision to fix the previous problem. Then this guy gets promoted too and the cycle continues.

Technical debt is really only a problem if you think long term.

<comment><USER4> A good analogy for older management, which is disappearing as an extant object in the office, is that of the file room. Sometimes, you'll see a seeming "whiz kid" file clerk who seems to be far faster than normal, but it turns out that he's "faster" because he doesn't actually re-file and reorganize.

Refactoring is quite literally the same thing as re-filing and reorganizing physical files. Under the academic definition of refactoring, the "contents" (the functionality) is not changing. Only the organization is changing.

<comment><USER5> A colleague and I developed a good routine for a while. He's a much faster programmer than me. But his code quality is usually much lower (not _wrong_ , but often poorly structured and hard to maintain). He'd code fast, I'd code slow. Then I'd clean up his stuff while we waited for feedback on the system and he did other things. Refactoring work and the like, no meaningful (to an end user) changes.

This was effective. Except that management saw him as fast and so he kept getting more work, and completing it. But the quality wasn't there because no one went in behind him to keep it clean and tidy. Management never really saw the issue, they just thought the rest of us were bad programmers because we were so slow. We were slow because: 1) some of us (like me) work slowly; 2) the fast guy introduced a lot of technical debt (or we introduced it because we weren't given the cleanup time I used to have).

He's still a good programmer (in general), but without the support structure his products are far less useful than they same at first glance (due to the introduced technical debt).

<comment><USER6> Having to work in and around very bad code slows everybody else down, we have a very prolific guy who creates his own jargon (inconsistently) and enjoys convolution like it's an art form. Everybody else has to spend twice as long doing the most rudimentary features.

But management loves their heroes, so the people with high tolerance for complexity get promoted, and all the people I trust keep leaving...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think the author understands what "emergence" is. The concept of emergence is that a complex system might have properties that CANNOT be explained by studying the parts.

</comment><comment><USER5> The talk about boids made me think this would go in a different direction.

Programmers and our employers exhibit flocking behavior. See how Ruby on Rails brought so many people to the Ruby language. How Python had a similar surge earlier in the 00s, and later with the explosion of use (numpy and similar) in data science applications. Additionally, things like Ruby on Rails helped make the web application commonplace. See JavaScript and AJAX for that as well.

Perl established an effective code repository (CPAN) that enabled their userbase to grow via a similar flocking mechanism. Go has no central repository but has an easy to use mechanism for adding dependencies based on git repositories. That ease of access to published modules allows people to adopt the technology once a peer (someone working in a similar domain) publishes something. And it encourages people to contribute back in some fashion (publish new modules or update the existing ones). In Perl's case you saw a lot of people from outside IT making use of it (the same is now true for Python with data science) because the heavy lifting was done and they could focus on gluing things together.

Exploiting this flocking behavior, then, becomes important to anyone wanting to push a new technology out. Even if it's the best thing and would produce the best software ever, it won't always succeed on its own merits.

(random thoughts, no real thesis here)

<comment><USER8> The simple model for this kind of thing is Polya's Urn.

Take an urn with green and red balls (or blue and orange, if you're colour- blind).

Pick out a ball. If it is red, put it back and replace a green ball with another red ball. If green, put it back and replace a red ball with a green.

Even starting with a perfect 50:50, and choosing _completely randomly_ , a Polya process will eventually show that your probability of picking one colour becomes more or less certain. The urn "locks" into a particular path. While in theory it _could_ return to 50:50 or swing back to the other colour, the odds of doing so rapidly become astronomical.

John Sterman's _Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World_ has a really excellent discussion. Worth looking for.

<comment><USER5> That book actually just made it onto my Amazon wishlist (for other reasons). I know I'm unlikely to succeed in my current company, but I'm trying to increase my understanding/fluency in systems thinking in order to improve the company's understanding. Realistically, this means I'm building a skillset for my next job.

That particular model is interesting for what I described. Essentially, if someone wants to program they'll be drawn to one of the projects/people already out there which are already using some language. They'll then use the same language and become a person or produce a project that the next person may be drawn to. The original thing that drew them to the language is still there, and they're another point to draw someone else to the same language.

Thanks.

<comment><USER8> Exactly, this is path dependency in a case where value comes from network effects. I have occasion to apply this material in thinking about my work and I'm hoping to get to apply more of it as time goes.

Sterman's is the best all-round book on systems thinking I've read. Not too hand-wavy, not swimming in calculus, plenty of interesting case studies and practical advice that show deep experience. It's in a sweet spot for me.

Edit: as a note, it always seems to be substantially cheaper on Book Depository than on Amazon. I suspect that bots are, hilariously, in a feedback loop bidding up a book about feedback loops.

<comment><USER5> This [0] is something I came across while looking up information on systems dynamics/thinking in general. That's how the book ended up on my list. I haven't gone through it yet but I probably will over the next few weeks now that my life/schedule has settled down a bit.

I've also been reading Weinberg's _General Systems Thinking_ (bundle with it and some other books at Leanpub[1]). I can't say I've seen anything _new_ in it yet, but it (like many books) is connecting dots for me that I hadn't connected before. Reading through it, I wish I'd seen some of its content when I was younger, it could've made some things easier over the years.

[0] [https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of- management/15-87...](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of- management/15-871-introduction-to-system-dynamics-fall-2013/)

[1] [https://leanpub.com/b/generalsystemsthinkerbundle](https://leanpub.com/b/generalsystemsthinkerbundle)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I write down every issue - everything from user interface issues to bugs, and then delete them as they get fixed. I can then use that file to measure code debt. The file is saved in version control, so no fancy stuff, but I can run statistics and compare code growth and growth of issues. In my experience you want to keep this file small. On a current project I've estimated that it will take five years to clear this file < _grin_ >. This file seem to grow exponentially with new features. And I think at some point there's a point of no return - where you can't possible fix all issues ...</comment>


Ask HN: How does a software developer land a marketing role? - <AUTHOR> What are the skill sets or things that a developer would need to learn to get a junior marketing position (e.g. being a growth hacker)?<p>Or is there simply a way where a web developer could give a strong argument to immediately land marketing roles? <comment><USER2> "Sales" jobs where your performance is individually attributable are easy to get. If you, the thing you are selling, and your personal network all work together you will be very well paid. If not you will find that kind of job is easy to lose.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you know anything about marketing?

Maybe you can try to land a software or IT job at a marketing firm, and learn from there

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks guys, I appreciate the answers! I'll look into marketing companies.</comment>


The Terrifying Potential of 5G - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/the-terrifying-potential-of-the-5g-network <comment><USER2> If we should be concerned about the deployment of 5G, it's due to the fact that it will render our weather satellites nearly useless. The frequency they chose for 5G just so happens to be about the same frequency as water's resonance. 5G cell towers would show up as huge points of water concentration and we have no idea how to work around this yet.

[https://hackaday.com/2019/04/16/5g-buildout-likely-to-put- we...](https://hackaday.com/2019/04/16/5g-buildout-likely-to-put-weather- forecasting-at-risk/)

<comment><USER3> The same is reported in the journal, Nature, which requested a comment from the FCC but didn't receive a reply. The Hackaday article contains this line: "FCC Chairman Ajit Pai rejected the request, stating that there was an "absence of any technical basis for the objection." But the Washington Post really zeroes in on the FCC, reporting unresponsiveness to the NOAA, NASA, and even the House Appropriations Committee. All they're asking for is some time to study the situation, but the FCC won't delay spectrum auctions or even concede that there could be an issue.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01305-4](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01305-4)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/03/13/fcc- auctio...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/03/13/fcc-auction-off- wireless-spectrum-that-could-interfere-with-vital-weather-data-rejecting- requests-us-house-science-agencies/?utm_term=.5263f9460f5e)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The new 5G wireless technology involves millimeter waves (extremely high frequencies) producing photons of much greater energy than even 4G and WiFi. Allowing this technology to be used without proving its safety is reckless in the extreme, as the millimeter waves are known to have a profound effect on all parts of the human body."

-Prof. Trevor Marshall, Director Autoimmunity Research Foundation, California

<comment><USER5> Air polution is known to kill millions of people every year. And not just in India. Cities like Paris and London are mess.

Nobody gives a shit.

<comment><USER6> This is both irrelevant and wrong. It's wrong because people do give a shit and these cities are trying to come up with a solution like limiting or completely banning certain pollutants like cars or burning coal etc. The air quality is constantly monitored since years and EU country's have implemented quite strict environmental policies.

It's irrelevant because even if people didn't given a shit about pollution , wouldn't mean that they should not give shit to other risks.

<comment><USER7> > EU country's have implemented quite strict environmental policies.

True, but yet, noone cares: \- [https://www.theguardian.com/uk- news/2018/jan/30/london-reach...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk- news/2018/jan/30/london-reaches-legal-air-pollution-limit-just-one-month-into- the-new-year) \- [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/12/london-h...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/12/london- housing-approved-in-area-with-illegal-pollution-levels-lewisham) \- [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science- environment-44612642](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-44612642)

You can point to the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), which means you can't drive in to very central London (where most people work, but almost noone actually lives there) with a petrol car or van that is older than 13 years. Doesn't sound ultra low to me, compared to hybrids have been produced for more than a decade and electric cars are available to the mainstream. And even this very low bar is enforced to the very inner boroughs only. The 50 years old diesel trains that are running its per-carriage engines at the platform when idle, are an exception of course.

[https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra-low-emission- zone/way...](https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra-low-emission-zone/ways-to- meet-the-standard)

<comment><USER6> I don't get how do you reach the "No one cares" conclusion.

<comment><USER7> I meant it has been happening since the EU-wide regulation came out. London reaches the critical yearly level at the first weeks of January and only cosmetic changes have been applied. E.g. a 20-year-old, rusty diesel truck, that makes ~£500/day gets away with £12.5 fee instead of ban from Greater London. The actual polluters won't invest in newer vehicles, because the lease is more expensive than just £12.5 per day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe I'm not forward thinking enough, but I've yet to hear any compelling new use cases for 5G. I'm doubtful it'll be of much use for self-driving cars or robotic surgery, and 4G is more than fast/low latency enough for my phone needs and the needs of most people. I really don't see how 5G is going to add anywhere close to $12T to the economy.

<comment><USER9> Game Streaming (like Google Stadia), AR/VR (because you need to download the models which are usually big).

Accoding to AngelList newsletter that I read: [https://sg- mktg.com/MTU1NTYwNzI3Nnw4YzJTNW5sbi1uQW9ScXVCOElJ...](https://sg- mktg.com/MTU1NTYwNzI3Nnw4YzJTNW5sbi1uQW9ScXVCOElJZExqYkZNc2pIbWY0Y2YzZG1PVHV3d1Z0SVBiUVhxaFU4OEY2WkJoTUt0N08tUFlaTTYyRGo0dG84Zlh5cnhqYlpPTi1VSzM0MHBEM2prckdHM2Jlc1JhcDJXQmZZUjlrOEZJQmV3UEJ4VjFQVDZScll2UW9TaXJaemlkVWNWZFdHNFNFcTUyY2ZPRDhWa29BaHNUcHh0d203YzJTQS1hb2NmclZ0MVM3Tkh6a0pFa2Z2OTcwVzJCakR6VTVnM2tuZ3BYQklJWE5TcVlkRThXUUNRd3Y0U3VMdWhFZEhhWm9pYzNMdGhRRFRCckJremlzRUx1Y0NCUT09fH3OIHQ7IJUN8R1EvI4Nx8YJN5N7ge9jxMzpV_bWzf7f)

<comment><USER10> That is reasonable but IMO they are over-estimating the market size. And businesses are very interested in the return of investment metric.

Investing in 5G in some of the areas with predicted boom might just turn out to be too expensive in comparison with the expected revenue.

<comment><USER11> The big one that grabs my interest is as a cable internet replacement, I would love to be able to ditch Comcast.

<comment><USER10> They will probably lobby their way out of this as well.

Not sure if there's any hope for the USA to break free of carrier oligopoly.

<comment><USER12> I don't know if it's 5g or not but I have 300-500Mb wireless internet in Boston right now. There's at least two companies doing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'll tell you more. Earth is heated by an ongoing nuclear fusion reaction which emits a wide spectrum of radiation between 430-770THz. The radiation density during daytime is about 1KW/m^2, and some of it is proven to directly cause cancer. Is that "terrifying" enough?

<comment><USER14> Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of '99 Wear Sunscreen If I could offer you only one tip for the future, Sunscreen would be it The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists

<comment><USER15> bad for sealife

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I remember they said a lot of this when 4G was coming out. If it's anything like that we got nothing to worry about. Add some $1200 phones and slightly faster speeds when you're in the middle of the city and you've pretty much summarized it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Thousands of studies link low-level wireless radio frequency radiation exposures to a long list of adverse biological effects, including:

DNA single and double strand breaks.

Oxidative damage.

Disruption of cell metabolism.

Increased blood brain barrier permeability.

Melatonin reduction.

Disruption to brain glucose metabolism.

Generation of stress proteins.

Let's not also forget that in 2011 the World Health Organization (WHO) classified radio frequency radiation as a possible 2B carcinogen.

<comment><USER17> You also get EM radiation from the electric wiring in your house, lightbulbs, the sun and so on. It's also about the strength of that EM radiation that determines is if it's harmful.

To compare, your wifi router does a max of 4000mW transmission, which is 4W

<comment><USER18> The 50/60hz wiring radiation is a mild annoyance compared to 2.4 and 5Ghz wifi (I prefer 5Ghz because it seems to transfer less heat to my tissues); I sporadically use 4G on my phone so I don't need a permanent wifi installation in my room. Contrarily, I've found that staring into the sun, early in the morning for seconds up to a few minutes, is quite pleasant.

If 5G is much worse than 4G I'm literally getting lead-lined underwear. It's already a bother to keep my phone sufficiently far from my brain and balls while typing this comment.

Then again, my sensitivity is way too high. I can also feel whether my microwave is turned on through the wall!

<comment> crooked-v > I prefer 5Ghz because it seems to transfer less heat to my tissues

A single 60W incandescent bulb (which has about 10% efficiency for its lighting) transfers more heat to your tissues than a stack of 10 home routers.

<comment><USER18> That's a wide-band transmission with a regular 50hz signal, instead of a narrow-band 2.4/5Ghz modulated by chaotic 10/100/1000Mhz (Mb/s) data.

Like the difference between a lightbulb and a tissue-penetrating laser strobe.

<comment><USER19> No it isn't. The antenna is basically just a flashing light bulb for 5 GHz. 5 GHz transfers way less energy into your body than visible or infrared light because it's not absorbed as readily and each photon has less energy. It's like the difference between a blue lightbulb and a red lightbulb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Along with the 5G there is another thing coming – Internet of Things. If you look at it combined the radiation level is going to increase tremendously and yet the industry is very excited about it…. they project 5G/IoT business to be a $7 trillion business."

-Prof. Girish Kumar, Professor at Electrical Engineering Department at IIT Bombay

</comment><comment><USER20> This title is clickbait

<comment><USER21> Agreed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I love 5G

<comment><USER23> why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Whether people want to believe it or not, 5G is being deployed as both a biological and psychological weapon. Millimetre waves and their effects are well studied and utilised by military in their active denial crowd control systems. Wifi is also dangerous, why would they have chosen 2.4Ghz when this is the frequency absorption spectrum of H2O. The same frequency microwave ovens use to most effectively heat food. Similarly, the frequency absorption spectrum of oxygen is mm wave 60Ghz, 5G is likely to use this spectrum at some point. Next generation wifi (WiGig) has its default frequency based on the oxygen molecules absorption point. This means they are messing with the fundamental elements of biological life. Ethernet cables do not have these same flaws. The surveillance and control aspect of this iot 5G network ecosystem is going to have chilling effects on freedom, liberty and sovereignty. Social credit anyone?

<comment><USER24> For microwave ovens / water: You have cause and effect reversed. You believe water has an absorption peak at 2.4GHz because microwave ovens use it, not the other way around. In reality, microwave ovens use 2.4GHz because it's legally available (ISM band) and water has a wide absorption spectrum in GHz area (the exact peak shifts wildly with temperature[1]. 2.4GHz is _far_ from optimal). Microwave ovens also contain kilowatt output in a small chamber using RF reflective walls (necessary for the standing waves to develop). Contrast this with the inverse square law for cell towers.

For air: The 60GHz allows reduced cell size. This makes it more realistic for you to opt out of receiving everyone else's emissions (by walking away). Also, air is not not "fundamental to biological life" (anaerobic organisms exist). More seriously, at 60GHz and above skin penetration is very, very shallow.

Active denial systems use a slightly higher frequency (95GHz) and much higher radiated power (30kW-2.5 MW says Wikipedia).

The social aspects of IOT have as much to do with 5G as with, say, smartphones in general. That's just anti-tech. It can be discussed, but it's not an interesting argument in the context of whether 5G is harmful.

You are making emotional arguments that are not grounded in technical arguments.

[1] Please refer to the chart in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_absorption_by_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_absorption_by_water#Microwaves_and_radio_waves)</comment></comment>


Import me - <AUTHOR> http://import.carlosvergara.me/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! I'm the author. Made this page to try and see if anyone cares about taking me abroad, and actually am interested in anything you have to say about the whole thing: the proposal, the styling, the... name?

If something irks you, do please let me know.</comment>


Ask HN: Who is Firing? - <AUTHOR> <comment> alex- A few states including California have the WARN act [1]. The latest layoffs reported can be found here: [http://www.edd.ca.gov/jobs_and_training/warn/WARN-Report- for...](http://www.edd.ca.gov/jobs_and_training/warn/WARN-Report- for-7-1-2016-to-02-25-2017.pdf)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraini...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraining_Notification_Act)

<comment><USER2> Wow, parsing that from all states that have it could be interesting.

<comment><USER3> Early heads up on an imminent recession maybe?

<comment><USER4> More likely it would be a lagging indicator, rather than a leading one. Companies will close plants and offices with same delay on the onset of a recession (itself defined formally as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The layoffs continue at Oracle, specifically in Hardware ("converged infrastructure" too), as our HW revenue has shrunk from 5b per year in 2010 to 1.7b roughly this year.

Margin had dropped drastically as well, from 1.9b in profit to -45m (!) in the same time period. All data taken from our public SEC filings.

While this doesn't truly affect Oracle and its stock that much, our overall revenue continues to shrink globally. As such there have been thousands of people who have been laid off in the past two years, some silently, some in the WARN act.

Countless others have seen their roles relocated to India and Romania _, which helps the company save on salaries, benefits, and commissions. By lowering cost of sales by hundreds of millions USD, the company has maintained its margin of roughly 30% per year.

But the layoffs will continue, and if the "Enterprise Hardware amd Software" market ever truly does ship out to the cloud, it probably won't be Oracle that is there to service those customers.

_: many of my friends are Indian and Romanian and I am very glad they have decent jobs in their countries. I do not share the xenophobic sentiments of many of those who resent those countries that are receiving jobs from laid off roles in the US

<comment><USER6> How is one being xenophobic if they are not happy their job is going overseas?

<comment><USER5> I apologize for the very late delay on this response.

Of course someone should be unhappy that their CEO and Board of Directors has made a decision to lay them off in the USA explicitly because of salary costs, instead of performance or some important cause.

The reality is that this is the right of a private company- all you can do is attempt to navigate the deeply illogical and political system that we call the private sector.

Deciding that you should hate someone you've never met, because of their skin color, national origin, etc, because you think that THEY PERSONALLY took your job, is not logical or enjoyable in my opinion.

One should always blame the company, an artificial and greedy machine, not a fellow human, which is an organism driven by self preservation no matter the country of origin

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Telefonica (10th telco globally) is firing people in the wholesale/global solutions areas. Not just in Spain, also in the US, Brazil, Argentina, etc...

</comment><comment><USER8> Ok, I thought there is a different between layoff and Firing.

Now seems everyone using it Interchangeably.

<comment><USER9> Firing is usually "for cause": you, specifically, did something wrong or aren't performing well.

Layoffs are usually more related to business conditions: the company is losing money and needs fewer employees, or is pivoting in a different direction and no longer needs certain types of employees.

All that said, it's called "Who's Firing" because it's pithier and matches the "Who's Hiring" threads; these comments are all probably layoff-related.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What is the point of threads like this? Is the OP trying to be witty or humorous?

I don't believe these threads contribute to any discussions on this website. They are deliberately created as a joke.

<comment><USER11> They are presumably useful to anyone actively in the job market, as a company firing staff is a red flag for any prospective employee

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Akamai is firing a decent batch of people.

<comment><USER13> Do you know what offices and/or positions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A colleague of mine got laid off from VMWare.

</comment><comment><USER15> Keen.io secretly laid off a large amount of staff recently across-the-board. They provided severance in exchange for fresh confidentiality agreements. Here are some examples of the various people and departments affected by the lay- off and all let-go simultaneously:

Director, People Operations & Facilities

VP Engineering

Sales

Tech Writing and Dev Engagement

<comment><USER16> We deleted the URLs you put in there to people's personal LinkedIn pages. That's way over the line. Please don't do that here.</comment></comment>


/bin/true used to be an empty file - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/rob_pike/status/966896123548872705 <comment><USER3> Funny story, AT&T claims copyright on this empty file. Every time you use a blank line in your program, you're violating their copyright

[http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/humor/ATT_Copyright_true.html](http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/humor/ATT_Copyright_true.html)

<comment><USER4> AT&T may claim copyright on a file that contains, besides the copyright notice, only blank lines, but even if that copyright is valid, that doesn't make any use of blank lines a violation of that copyright.

Copyright violation requires actual copying/derivation, not mere similarity of content. (The latter can be evidence of the former, and often—because of the nature of the content and improbability of coincidental similarity, can be compelling evidence—but is not the thing prohibited.)

<comment><USER5> And to make it slightly more explicit, the nature of _empty_ content - <USER2> complicated creative content - is that coincidental similarity is actually pretty likely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> All due respect to Rob Pike, but I think David Batley nails it in his response:

> tl;dr: they replaced a cryptic, undocumented implementation, which _starts > an entire bash shell_ just so it can exit, and replaced it by a fast ELF > binary, which works like all the others.

/bin/true as an empty file may seem like an elegant implementation and lesson in UNIX, but it's actually slower, and I'd much rather have standardisation and documentation across all system commands.

</comment><comment><USER7> By the way, don't forget that virtually all (modern) shells will have a built in for /bin/true:

       $ type true
       true is a shell builtin

So in your shell scripts, don't bother about performance.</comment>


Ask HN: How early did you bring in a full-time marketer? - <AUTHOR>

Hey entrepreneurasaurs:
At what stage in your company's development did you decide it was worth it to have a full-time marketer on your team?
We have a three-person team (all developers, although we're learning the business ropes), and we're trying to chart out the money we'll need in our first year; we can get a minimum-viable-product out the door in three months, and then were considering bringing in a marketer. Any advice you could give would be greatly appreciated! <comment><USER2> I spent a couple years in product marketing (as a change-of-pace from dev), and I handle "marketing" for my company. Here's what I have to say: you need to be very careful.

You say you're running lean and taking a minimal product to market. Great! What are you hoping to do with a marketer?

In product companies, the "marketing" department does a bunch of different things, usually with different people specializing in each:

* _Product marketing management_ (PM): Pricing. Figuring out what customers want you to build. Getting customers on the phone. Understanding competitors. Building a position for your product that differentiates you in terms of features and benefits.

* _Marketing communications management_ (marcom): Advertising and conferences. SEO. Deciding to have a blog. Presumably (I'm wouldn't know) marcom people are also botching Adwords at startups all around the world as we speak.

* _Public Relations_ (PR): Getting you mentioned in the press, on blogs, and in analyst reports.

Which of these functions you needs depends on what market you're selling to. I have basically no experience selling to people like my mom, but decent experience selling to other businesses. Let me break that market down for you:

* PM: The whole lean startup minimum viable process is designed to do the PM's job, meaning, if you're following the Reis/Blank playbook, you're already doing this person's job. Also, in a small software startup, this is a core role. If it's not being done by the engineers, it should be the "CEO" doing it.

* Marcom: If you can write posts on Hacker News you can set up a blog yourself. You can't afford a marcom person who knows how to use Adwords well, and if Adwords is your strategy, I'll let Patrick chime in to make a case for you automating and engineering that process instead of delegating it to someone with an MBA. You should avoid conferences altogether until you have customers.

* PR: At this stage of the game, you can do a lot of this work yourself. Mostly it involves hustling with bloggers in your space getting them free copies and bugging them to write about you, and then rolling that coverage up to the trade press in your field. (Be especially careful of an older bit of Graham advice about PR firms --- I'd be surprised if he still stood by it --- they are galactically expensive and, to put it generously, will pay off either spectacularly or not at all).

It's possible that you don't want any of these functions, and instead you just want a "business person", by which you might mean:

* Sales: someone to call prospective customers on the phone and get deals to happen

* Channel sales/marketing: someone to call prospective partners/resellers on the phone and get deals to happen.

* Bizdev: someone to call prospective acquirers on the phone and get deals to happen.

None of these are really "marketing" tasks, and in fact these roles are traditionally antagonists of marketing (sales and marketing have a long and sordid history of blaming each other when numbers don't get met). And none of them are things you want to hire before you have customers.

A running theme here is to follow Jason Freid's advice: don't hire people until you are getting run ragged doing their role for yourself. At least that way you know what you're getting into and what you're looking for.

<comment><AUTHOR> This sounds like awesome advice. We should be able to cover all these roles – in particular, the CEO should be doing the PM role as his main gig. Some of the engineers are already starting to get into the science behind the SEO/AdWords stuff, so I imagine that we'll be inclined to keep some MBA's hands off of it :). PR feels like it will be easy for us – we've gotten some press attention already, and in our space as long as something is an awesome product, then it can get at least some attention.

Thanks tptacek! You might have just saved us a lot of money/time/disconnectedness from our users...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm going to be in the minority here and as a marketer I am probably biased, but I think you should have a marketer or a business guy as soon as possible, when you are designing your product, writing sales copy, setting pricing ,deciding the angle/niche you target and so on. These are are critical early marketing tasks. By marketer I don't mean one of the millions of narrow minded seo guys. I mean someone who can develop a deep understanding of your target audience and the marketplace and how your product fits in

<comment><USER4> I agree you need someone who understands your target market from the beginning. However, I think that for some markets, a conventional 'marketing guy' would be the wrong choice... for example, I sell infrastructure to SysAdmins. Yeah, if I wanted to sell infrastructure to managers, I'd need a conventional marketing guy. But for my current target market? I am pretty close to the optimal 'marketing guy' because I'm building a product that I would want to buy myself, and I'm selling it to people who buy it for the same reasons i would buy it.

I think it's essential to have someone on the team who understands the target market, their needs, their culture, and their feelings. It's really difficult to know how to build something you don't want for someone you don't really understand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The money side depends on how much equity you want to share. I think it is worth bringing someone on board very early. You don't want to go from a cold, standing start at PM fit. You don't want a big company, big budget marketer but what Sean Ellis calls a "growth hacker" who can get creative, and experiment with many different user acquisition approaches. Ideally this is someone who can wear a lot of hats, is very product oriented and can help with customer development, and contribute a lot to the venture pre-PM fit, whether it be UX, working on bizdev relationships (these take time), a blog/PR strategy, and other avenues of attack. The more they can do with the least amount of money, the better. Someone who cares a lot about analytics and finds startup metrics for pirates the coolest thing ever. Someone who obsesses about messaging. Someone who has been at the super early stage before. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> I think we really have two options: find someone like this, or have one of our team become that person. This sounds like a good starting recipe if one of us wants to become that person themselves – Sean Ellis seems pretty awesome!

<comment><USER5> I meant to actually put exactly that in my note - there is no reason why if one of you is particularly interested in and seems adept at the business side of things that you cannot cover it yourself. Just think through how it will change your dev velocity, and make sure the person enjoys the role, because you always do a better job when you are having fun :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You already have three full-time marketers. </Seth Godin>

To elaborate a little: there isn't a huge distinction between much of what you're doing _right now_ and the really crucial marketing stuff for small startups. You're already making decisions with SEO implications, for example, and that is highly likely to be an important channel for you. If you don't feel comfortable making those decisions, rather than getting a dedicated SEO Guy I'd strongly suggest that one or all of you start reading/doing/measuring/testing. Ditto on copywriting, etc.

Don't even get me started on the degree to which building the product or talking about building the product is marketing.

<comment><AUTHOR> We've already got the front-end guy on our team getting a little SEO obsessed, so hurray! I think the big question was if it was worthwhile to have someone not completely mired in the coding who was working full time on customer acquisition/evaluation; it looks like based on what everyone is saying, that IS the CEO's job. Hey, good news for us – we like trying to do everything ourselves!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My first advice is figure out what type of marketer do you want? There is a huge difference between a business development specialist and an online marketer. Generally a business development specialist is focused on distribution, partnerships, sales, and potentially affiliate programs if you are lucky. A traditional internet marketer will be focused on SEO, content development, user experience, email etc.

My advice is that if you can make the time you should start looking now, even if you are not ready to hire. It is going to take some time to find the right person to mesh with your personalities and if you do find a great person they need to be as excited about your product as you are.

</comment><comment><USER8> My own startup is nowhere near needing that but my experiences with startups would say: not anywhere near that time-frame. For one thing, it depends on what you're thinking about in terms of marketing.

Are you thinking customer-development and incorporating feedback into the product? That should be done by the founders and product people.

Are you thinking of people who do things like social media and PR? For that you can hire a more experienced firm or consultant with a hire hourly rate but likelier to do more in that hour than some junior "marketing" major.

If I had to put some value on it, I would say: once you have built a "fully" viable product that is market tested and its value is confirmed.

<comment><AUTHOR> It sounds like all these jobs are things we can and should be doing ourselves. It sounds like a full time person once the product is "done" AND there's an opportunity for much larger growth if we were more widely known, THEN it might make sense to bring someone on.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow, thanks for the thoughts, everyone! This might totally change how our company goes about its business – rather than three coders who try to think about market on the side, we'll be two coders being driven by someone actively interacting with the market and learning from it. I'll let you know how it goes 3 months out or so...

<comment><USER2> If one of you owns SEO and the other takes over in-application metrics, there's no reason all three of you shouldn't be market-facing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> you made need a sales or biz dev person more than a marketing person. some use these terms interchangeably, but I don't believe they're equivalent.</comment>