75% of drivers polled grossly overestimate their own skill behind the wheel.

Originally shared by ****

75% of drivers polled grossly overestimate their own skill behind the wheel.
https://consumerist.com/2016/03/01/aaa-75-of-drivers-say-they-wouldnt-feel-safe-in-an-autonomous-vehicle/

Guess who is narrating my next drive?

Guess who is narrating my next drive?

Originally shared by Shawna Mac

http://gizmodo.com/you-can-finally-get-morgan-freeman-to-narrate-your-comm-1760619518
http://gizmodo.com/you-can-finally-get-morgan-freeman-to-narrate-your-comm-1760619518?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Watch the little 15 second video... And know that there is NO electricity involved. That was TOTALLY mechanical.

Originally shared by James Newton

Watch the little 15 second video... And know that there is NO electricity involved. That was TOTALLY mechanical. 
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/12/frickin-amazing-clock/

And they wonder why people want to use ad blockers!

And they wonder why people want to use ad blockers!

Originally shared by Artem Russakovskii

The insane state of today's advertising. This shit right here is why people despise ads and why ads destroy your browser performance.

It's just one example, but it's so ridiculous, I don't understand how advertising companies can look consumers in the eyes. I want to bring everyone's attention to it and get people talking. Share this post with your circles if it boils your blood too.

Let me show you what I'm talking about.

VPAID (Video Player-Ad Interface Definition) http://iab.net/vpaid.

VPAID is basically pure evil. It's a video ad, but its implementation that I'm seeing across all networks that use it (that includes Google and others) is atrocious. It's shocking. It's rude. It's plain disrespectful.

A single ad that shows a single video at a time will generate thousands of HTTP requests and many megabytes of traffic. And in the case I show here, the ad isn't even animated, or showing video! I mean... what in the actual fuck? Usually, though, in the dozens of cases I've examined before, you'd be watching a video in a player, like this http://i.imgur.com/9J9oxz2.png.

I'll let this animated GIF I just took of a single ad with nothing else on the page do the talking. The ad is on the left, the Chrome Dev tools showing the Network tab are on the right.

By the time I finished writing this message, this single ad generated 9002 requests and caused 39MB of data transfer. I left it on for 30 min, and the requests never stopped coming http://i.imgur.com/EvXwupV.png.

It's possible to disable VPAID in AdSense settings (https://www.google.com/adsense/app#main/allowAndBlockAds, then click Ad serving), which I've just done, but many other advertising networks won't let you do this. As a side note, it's also unclear if blocking VPAID in AdSense will also block it in AdX and DFP.

Video ads pound the CPU and are horrible for browser performance. The tab with the ad itself, Flash, and Chrome Dev Tools all eat up CPU cycles until I delete the offender off the page: https://gfycat.com/LeanTimelyFeline.

It's no wonder people are opening tickets like this one: https://github.com/archon810/androidpolice/issues/67. If only advertisers actually cared about speed and ad delivery optimization, consumers wouldn't be revolting by installing ad blockers in droves like they are now. I'm not even talking about malicious redirects and popups - that's a whole other ball game.

Fuck you, VPAID. Seriously, fuck you and whoever created you.

Obvious allegory is obvious...

Obvious allegory is obvious...
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3978

I always heard that resonance was the problem. Interesting article with lots of good info.

I always heard that resonance was the problem. Interesting article with lots of good info.

Originally shared by Jennifer Ouellette

The Strangest, Most Spectacular Bridge Collapse (And How We Got It Wrong) http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-myth-of-galloping-gertie …
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-myth-of-galloping-gertie

It's fascinating how history tends to repeat itself, and the evolution of self-driven cars are certainly one such...

Originally shared by Thomas Baekdal

It's fascinating how history tends to repeat itself, and the evolution of self-driven cars are certainly one such case. Think about it like this.

Back in the 1800s, we had self-driven horse carriages.The horse could to some extent autonomously drive the carriage with only minor directions from the person in the carriage.

This gave us two levels of security. First we had the human driver who directed the horse to go where he wanted to. But the horse itself would also navigate or brake if needed. If someone stepped in front of the horse it wouldn't just run into it, it would try to avoid it.

But then we got rid of the horse with the invention of the combustion engine, and this was quite a scary prospect. Now we had self-propelled vehicles where the only thing keeping it safe were the human behind the wheel.

So laws were imposed to ensure public safety, called the Locomotive Acts. Today we also know them as the 'red flag' law (which was repealed in 1896). As Wikipedia puts it:

Firstly, at least three persons shall be employed to drive or conduct such locomotive, and if more than two waggons or carriages he attached thereto, an additional person shall be employed, who shall take charge of such waggons or carriages.

Secondly, one of such persons, while any locomotive is in motion, shall precede such locomotive on foot by not less than sixty yards, and shall carry a red flag constantly displayed, and shall warn the riders and drivers of horses of the approach of such locomotives, and shall signal the driver thereof when it shall be necessary to stop, and shall assist horses, and carriages drawn by horses, passing the same.

The law(s) also imposed speed limits (all the way down to 4 MPH in the country and 2 MPH in the city).

It was all quite silly.

Fast forward to 2015, and something funny is happening. First of all, Google and many others are developing self-driving cars, which are already at the point where they are safer to drive than normal vehicles.

The first thing about this is that we have come full circle. In 1800, we had 'cars' that had two levels of safety. One was the human, the was the autonomous horse. In 2015, we have Google cars that also comes with two levels of safety (for the moment). One is the human, and the other is software and the sensors (who can do a much better job than any horse could do).

So for all sense of purposes, self-driving cars are much safer already today than anything we have ever had. But this hasn't stopped governments from freaking out about it.

A new California draft law is set to define the requirements for driving a self-driven car:

"It is required that the cars have a steering wheel, and a licensed driver must be ready to take over if the machine fails. [...] Both the manufacturer and an independent certifier would need to sign off that the car has passed safety testing. Any person who wants to lease or use one of the cars would need special training provided by the manufacturer and then receive a special certification on their driver's license." (http://goo.gl/nGsleP)

In other words. If I wanted to borrow a self-driven car from Google to do some shopping, it will not be enough that I have a driver's license. I actually need to get special training and certification ... for driving a car that is already safer than any other car on the road.

This is just like the old red flag laws.

And it's not just Google. Look at Tesla. Today with Tesla's assisted driving technology, you don't need a special driver's license to drive one. But if the car where to drive itself, you, the driver, would need more training and a special license to operate one.

Wait, what?

Here is how I think self-driven cars should be evaluated. Ask them to take a driver's test.

We have the theoretical test (the ones we humans complete in classrooms), which could just as easily be presented to the cars' software. Put the cars in a number of pre-defined scenarios, and see if the software recognizes the situation and acts accordingly. This is what that test is supposed to check with us humans, so why not do the same with cars?

Secondly, we have the practical test, which would be very simple to perform. Put the examiner in the car and see if the car can follow the directions. If the car takes the examiner to where he wants to go and it follows the rules of the road, it has passed.

But, wait-a-minute, you say. This might not be enough.

True, there may be several cases where things could still go wrong, but that is no different from how we humans drive. More than 2 million people were injured last year in the US alone.

2 million!

We don't need self-driving cars to be 100% safe. We just need them to cause personal injuries less than 2 million times per year, and then gradually improve on that number all the way down to zero.

From all the testing that Google has already done, it's pretty clear that we are already well below this threshold.

We shouldn't have laws requiring "the cars have a steering wheel, and a licensed driver must be ready to take over if the machine fails." We should have laws saying: "the car must be ready to take over if the human fails. "

We are the ones who are failing. Not just at driving our cars, but also in legislating whether something is safe or not.

Interesting analogy -- which, like all analogies, isn't a perfect fit.

Interesting analogy -- which, like all analogies, isn't a perfect fit. As usual, the comments on Yonatan Zunger​'s post add a lot to the conversation.
https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/M6BwSdia3jP

This could be exciting!

This could be exciting!

Originally shared by Daniel Suarez

Stellarator fusion reactor ready for tests.

In the next day or so, German researchers will for the first time switch on the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator fusion reactor -- the largest ever built. Housed in the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics in Greifswald, the €1 billion machine looks like a prop escaped from the film 'Event Horizon.' However, its unusual shape serves a specific purpose, as seen in the video below.

More info available here: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/350/6259/369.full
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=72&v=u-fbBRAxJNk

I thought this was kinda cool

Originally shared by Gerry Miller

I thought this was kinda cool

CloudReady's claim of turning any hardware into a Chromebook is no joke. Jack Wallen shows us how it's done.

Originally shared by The Linux Foundation

CloudReady's claim of turning any hardware into a Chromebook is no joke. Jack Wallen shows us how it's done.
http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/867247-neverwares-cloudready-brings-a-chromium-fueled-chromebook-os-to-standard-hardware