My kneejerk, not thought through notion: why not require an emergency override protocol be builtin to road using robots? No thoughts on how this would work exactly, but it would let emergency workers move robot vehicles out of the way.
It doesn't sound difficult to solve. The sensors can classify firetruck, ambulance, red&blues, uniformed police, badge, siren, etc. At a certain criteria, they can unlock the driver door for normal human driving, perhaps for a very limited speed and distance. The officer can move it to the side, and if they crash it's not waymo crashing it. This override should send the an alert to the remote command center, so a human can watch the video and also decide how much further they can drive it. Since passenger safety is a concern, if there is a passenger inside who chooses to remain inside, the car should remain locked and not allow any driver in. The human can decide to follow police orders to exit the car, or remain inside, but at that point a human becomes responsible for obstructing. The whole freezing waymo trend seems driven by legal liability - not engineering. They know if they always freeze, their million miles with no accidents stats are safe.
> Cops can't move vehicles that they don't own because of liability. The only way for them to move a vehicle without liability is to use a tow truck.
While the precise boundaries of liability depend on the laws of the particular jurisdiction (they aren't consistent across the whole US) police generally can take reasonable action to move vehicles obstructing the road in an emergency without liability for any damages incurred, whether or not they use a tow truck to do it.
I mean liability can be defined, we are writing new laws for these things.
Cops that need to move autonomous are not liable for any damages.
I do think that theres needs to be better handling of emergency vehicles and autonomous vehicles. Someone needs to spend some serious time thinking through how to handle this better because this situation was not okay.
First thought would be to have the remote human over watching to engage with an emergency responder when the override is used. The remote human can then decide whether it is a real emergency or not. Either way, if any one uses an override system, a remote human should get involved. But instead, computer devs will suggest crypto/public/private keys/blahblahblah. This is one of those where the best answer will be to boot up the bio computer running the latest software
It's not too hard to implement them with cryptographic protocols to prevent duplication and apply time/location restrictions to them. Moreover if you really wanted to steal a car, there are much easier ways of doing that, like buying a replica gun on aliexpress then going to your nearest intersection.
The problem is not really that they can get stolen, but remote control, like a bad person gaining access to the car to hit people or something like that.
Not every social problem needs a technical solution. You can steal cars now, this is solved foremost by most people not being thieves and then second the existence of police for the few people that are.
Well, I have a bear call spread on NVDA and so far its not working super great. It all depends on timing and I seem to be pretty crappy at options. o well.
_The Mind Illuminated_ Hasn't changed my life yet but it might (found it three days ago out on hoopla.com). I say this as someone who has given meditation practice a good college try (more than a year at a time of daily practice) on a couple of occasions. Most books say just keep going and you will eventually fart pixie dust. This book says you can reach advanced practice in under a year BUT requires a consistent one hour a day which might be a deal breaker. This book gets very specific about technique, achievements and expectations which is unique in my experience. And the author is not saying you need to find a "mentor/guide". If you have seen a better book I would love to hear about it.
It has changed my life to some degree- very clearly and significantly.
Yet, I read only one chapter and following the advice and instruction to the letter for almost a month.
I am feeling the deep joy from meditating just ten minutes. I know I am not supposed to get attached to this deep bliss feeling, but it validates my efforts.
I read the first chapter a few months back, but did not really start following it until I started reading W. Rahula's What the Buddha Taught and Bhante Gunaratana's Mindfulness in Plain English.
I am deeply attracted to the Theravada Buddhism philosophy. And there is no place of blind faith in it.
So, my serious attempt to meditation started after I learned more about Buddha and his way. I had to try it.
I much more calm and composed. With better concentration and more self-control. Procrastination has left me. And I have insights much easier than before. I am an overally better thinker, now. And I give the credit to meditation.
A great counterpart to this book might be Everyday Zen by Charlotte Joko Beck. The Mind Illuminated is a technical manual for meditation practice; Everyday Zen is more about how to think of the rest of your life while you’re not meditating as practice. (It’s not much about Zen specifically either; it’s author just happened to be a practitioner of Zen.)
I would say TMI is much more technical because it's written for the "Hardcore Dharma" community which is far more technique-oriented than Goenka. Goenka doesn't approach the stages of insight adaptively, which can easily frustrate practitioners of mindfulness whose first intro to meditation is body-scanning. I would rank body-scanning as one of the least efficacious techniques with very poor results when applied to the physical pain that often results from long sits.
Good meditation teaching is equipping the practitioner with a toolset with the right tool applied for the appropriate stage of practice.
TMI and Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha are necessarily complex because they are treating the entire path toward nibbana as a segmented map of attainment. I can think of virtually no technique which can be applied from the beginning to the end except for very difficult-to-approach techniques such as shikantaza ("just sitting") or the ekayana ("one vehicle") techniques of the Quanzhen ("complete reality") Chinese Buddhism schools. If you think TMI is obtuse try and approach the Shurangama Sutra which is really a mindfuck. But here's the thing: unconditioned existence is a mindfuck so we often need "lesser" graduated techniques to approach the paradoxical nature of reality.
TMI does do a good job of not providing difficult techniques, but the I think Goenka explains watching the breath much more simply and better. He emphasises not grasping or being averse to what arises, and only working with your reality in that moment instead of wishing for things to be different. TMI does mention some of those points but I found the way Goenka reemphasised them to be very helpful
"Money" (aka fiat currency) is not absolutely money. No money is money without trust. Do I trust my US greenbacks? Mostly, but in the future that will depend on prevailing inflation. Bitcoin has achieved a level of trust and has the advantage of mathematical proofs. Make your choices appropriately.
initial reaction (site unseen): This has to be a grift. Upon glancing at the site, they put at least a little effort into it. That logo is genius. It straddles between being utterly on the nose and being parody.
Powerful people get rewarded: monetarily, in kind, through social status in every single political system that ever existed. Water is wet. Why is this an important article again?
I would add, for you silicon valley/SF residents, that longnow.org puts on monthly lectures (http://longnow.org/seminars/), some of which are very interesting. E.g. the next speaker is Timothy Ferriss.
reply