> Forget better frame, chassis, and body panel design to protect pedestrians! We won't need them if AI never hits anyone.
Most car manufacturers have had this figured out for a long time with crumple zones and the like.
> Forget better braking systems that apply themselves automatically
Assisted braking technology is already implemented in some cars. Hell, Tesla implements basically exactly what you're asking for...
> Forget seat belt enhancements since that'll just inhibit nap time in my self driving car.
Teslas don't let you sleep in your car, you have to move the steering wheel periodically to prove you're still paying attention or it'll pull over and shut down.
Also, I'm not quite sure what you're expecting seat belt enhancements to be.
Far be it for me to defend the AI hype, but your "things we should be focusing on instead" don't make much sense when we ARE focusing on them.
Reading through the crash test procedure, it is astounding how little attention is paid to pedestrians.
1. Front crash test. Procedure: Crash car into stationary barrier at 35 mph. Is also applicable to face-to-face crash with car of same size, going at same speed.
2. Side crash test. Procedure: Slam concrete block into side of stationary car at 38.5 mph.
3. Side pole test. Procedure: Drag car sideways towards a pole.
4. Rollover resistance. Procedure: Compare the cars footprint to the height of the center of gravity.
The biggest thing to notice is that not one of these metrics involves pedestrians. Metrics 1-3 can be easily improved by making a bigger car, elevating the passengers and providing more crumple room. Metric 4 is unaffected, as the track width is increased to compensate.
If a low sedan hits a pedestrian, the pedestrian rolls over the car, having a lower impulse given over a longer period of time. If a high SUV hits a pedestrian, the pedestrian is knocked back, having a higher impulse given over a shorter period of time. Safety ratings need to account for the danger cars pose to others.
> Reading through the crash test procedure, it is astounding how little attention is paid to pedestrians.
In the U.S. at least, pedestrian safety concerns mainly affect prescriptive legislation (i.e. no pop up headlights). Some countries and blocs have testing similar to crash tests, but I'm not really sure how effective something like that is: any meaningful standard would need to have exceptions for different categories of vehicle. Though honestly I can't see that much can be done about pedestrian safety once your vehicle is colliding with a human being.
This a trap we all fall into. Because you are smart but don't understand that a thing could exist, doesn't mean it doesn't. We often use this crutch when absolving someone else of an action taken or a design flaw. "I would have never thought of that!" or "How could someone have anticipated that?"
> I can't see that much can be done about pedestrian safety once your vehicle is colliding with a human being.
"Though honestly I can't see that much can be done about pedestrian safety once your vehicle is colliding with a human being."
I don't agree, there some definitive choices in car design that affect the aftermath of the collision that can have effect on the pedestrian surviving. As pointed above if a pedestrian is hit by a car he has a better chance to roll over the hood of the car vs an SUV where the pedestrian would probably would be hit and fall under the car.
I imagine any multi-ton mass moving in excess of certain speeds will be deadly to unprotected soft-bodied organisms. How do Modern cars differ from non-modern cars in this respect? We've added better brakes, back-up cameras and object detection to avoid running into people, hopefully reducing the number of incidents, but yeah you hit someone with a car moving at any appreciable speed and it's gonna do damage.
Look at European pedestrian safety regulations. There's a reason that the shape of the front of European cars is all kinda the same - they are designed to minimise pedestrian casualties.
Obviously no one is going to survive if you hit them at 70, but you can make a big difference in the 25-35 region that is the normal speed where there are a lot of people around.
70% more likely to be killed when struck by a larger car [1]. With a higher front face, pedestrians are struck in the chest, rather than the legs. Turns out, broken legs are a lot more survivable than damage to internal organs.
So long as there is sufficient space between the hood and the engine, which tends to be the main issue with very low cars. Sheet metal deforms as a pedestrian bounces off of the hood, increasing the interaction time and decreasing the instantaneous acceleration. This requires at least 10 cm between the bottom of the hood and the top of the engine. Less distance, and a pedestrian instead bounces off of the engine block, which doesn't deform on impact.
Crumple zones are designed to protect the occupants, not anyone external to the vehicle. Granted, the kind of basic design changes that would pretty obviously help with pedestrian harm are also.....not sexy. So seems unlikely car manufacturers will sacrifice too much on the aesthetics front when car ownership is such a status symbol.
To be fair, they're the largest non-pornographic video platform. Making them an endless target for any and all abuse possible to grow channels quickly and earn ad revenue.
It's inevitable that in such an environment the system they come up with ends up making less and less sense over time. It's death by a thousand cuts, and I don't think there's a good way to really avoid it.
On the one hand because they are this large, they cannot currate content. On the other hand they are arguing because they are this large they are the only ones who can currate this content.
I would feel more sympathetic to your argument if the companies wouldn't argue both cases at the same time.
> I would feel more sympathetic to your argument if the companies wouldn't argue both cases at the same time.
I don't really care about sympathy, so much as I care about reality. The companies will do as all companies do. Try to make money by garnering confidence in their product & abilities. Even if they have to lie through their teeth.
Reality is, there isn't a good system (currently) to really curate massive amounts of user submitted video content, in an environment where anyone anywhere can submit said video content.
The problem's scale is always going to lead towards either a compromise of being an open video platform, or a compromise in relation to curation.
What if I compile javascript... to javascript. So that I can have actually functioning javascript across the majority of fairly modern browsers, while using modern features.
All I'm saying is, honestly. I don't blame people for not writing straight javascript, when even if you do, you still need a build system in between if you want to support all browsers.
> The alternative to Agile is Software Engineering, where you do important things like assess your requirements and capabilities, identify how to validate those requirements are functioning properly and support your business requirements, promote testing and QA to a first-class citizen. Most importantly to always have functioning software that is reasonably demonstrated to be correct. That way you release with confidence, people take pride in their work, and the product, team, and schedule all become quite pleasant.
That just sounds like Agile...
Like, legit just sounds like the Agile Manifesto.
Honestly, if anything is likely to be the issue. It's Scrum. Scrum has the cargo cult. Agile just seems to get drug through the mud by everyone that implements some authoritarian variant of Scrum.
But again, not exactly a proponent of Agile here anyway.
What do you see as the problem: Scrum itself, or the cargo cult of folks who do it badly?
Scrum done properly is very low overhead, at least from a developer's standpoint.
At my old job we did fairly strict Scrum and I estimated that it consumed only about 4 (so, 10% of a theoretical 40-hour week) of my hours per week.
I feel that is very low overhead. I don't know of a lot of development scenarios where you don't need to spend at least 10% of your time communicating with management.
I mean, people really have to think about what their actual dream scenario is. Some kind of world where they only have to spend 1% of their time interacting with management? 0%? These people need to get real. Management/stakeholders exist and you are going to need to communicate with them.
I have had jobs where upwards of 50% of my time was spent in seemingly endless meetings, plus "drive-by shootings" where management randomly stopped by and wanted to see progress and dump new shit onto my plate. Scrum is not perfect, but for most workplaces would be an upgrade.
Agile just seems to get drug through the mud by
everyone that implements some authoritarian variant
of Scrum.
I feel it is close to the opposite.
"Agile" is a nebulous term that has lost nearly all practical meaning. Bad management does some weird, loose version of "agile" (usually with some trappings of Scrum) and gives both Scrum and "agile" bad names.
> What do you see as the problem: Scrum itself, or the cargo cult of folks who do it badly?
Scrum itself. Sorry, but when you create a list of ScrumButs and indirectly deride everyone for not being able to take "Full Advantage of Scrum" so that your purists can go out and attack it at full force, yeah, that might be the problem.
The idea that different organizations might actually benefit from not adopting a methodology wholesale isn't that farfetched.
You could argue that's part of the cargo cult, I'd agree to some extent. But it becomes difficult to separate the 2 when you're literally derided for not following it to the religious T.
I guess you have had different experiences than me. We did fairly strict Scrum at my old job for a few years.
I never felt "attacked at full force" or "derided" even though we didn't follow Scrum to a T.
Never saw that "ScrumButs" thing until I Googled it just now.
I still don't feel attacked or derided. I've talked to dozens and dozens of developers over the years with various feelings on Scrum and never experienced those feelings.
But, you do, and it is 2020 so all feelings are valid. I'm sorry you've had bad experiences. People should not be jerks to you about Scrum or anything at all.
Might sound weird, but that's honestly my main reason for learning modal editing and emacs with evil.
Less flip flopping between mouse and keyboard might not be "more productive", but it's more comfortable.
And beneath that you start to find better fuzzy project searching with tools like ripgrep, an easier time navigating your project, powerful in-file movement commands, etc.
I'm mostly an emacs evil user, so I also have workspaces, projectile, magit, and a whole host of other extremely powerful tools.
And I don't really lose out on much wrt code completion, or other functionalities you normally get from an IDE. Since I can use the same language servers you would use in vscode.
That's not to say there aren't things that suck though. Emacs in particular isn't for someone that's unwilling to make changes to their config.
Only thing I ever really tweaked was running a more up-to-date kernel for an old soundcard I used to use. Which took a couple of clicks.
Sorry for your colleague who had trouble with wifi, but. /shrug