I've had a few similar cases, often teenagers on bikes coming dangerously close (e.g. forcing waymo to sudden break) and last one one bicyclist just blocking me for 5-10 minutes in SF (also just to be an asshole), with a street full of cars behind all blocked. I called the "connect to support" button and they could not anything. This is the only negative experience I had with Waymo; and I am hope something is done to be able to swiftly respond to such cases (e.g. remote driver take over, or at least capture their video and work with police to punish them later) in order to deter them in the long term.
People will reply to you calling you crazy, but SF/bay is the only place I have ever experienced where many people will literally leave their cars unlocked because a broken window isn't worth the hassle. Yes, locking your parked car is a hazard here... and the reason is obvious.
In the 70s in SF my father had his car window broken by someone who wanted to steal his parking space. He found his car pushed in front of an adjacent driveway, and ticketed.
When I read this kind of stuff I am always happy I live in a normal country/place - Singapore. Absolutely insane lmao. Must be fun sitting in your Waymo hitting some panic button and it gets blocked LMAO
I live in SF and I absolutely love so much about it, but here and especially in Oakland where I also lived for years, I'd welcome bringing back caning if it meant we could live as safely and securely as in Singapore
I wish people would also care about human rights like sanitation, clean clothes, accomodation. But hey, people wearing shit-and-piss-stained rags shitting on the sidewalk?
As a Brit who has spend time in both Singapore and SF, I'd say Singapore seems more normal currently. The tents of homeless people shitting in the street and dying of overdoses is weird, like something from Dickensian London.
They blocked the Golden Gate Bridge which included ambulances, other emergency vehicles and thousands of people trying to get to work. I'm happy that the DA is throwing the book at them, I hope they bankrupt themselves trying to defend themselves and then spend a lot of time in jail.
While politically i'm on the opposite side of those guys, i do think that such severe prosecution is unwarranted and politically motivated (and may be intended to create chilling effect on all future protests no matter the cause) - blocking a road is a well established traditional form of protest which traditionally is expected to end with (if the judge is in a bad mood) something like disorderly conduct citation/fine, not anywhere close to felony.
Well, if they caused you any specific loss nothing prevents you from suing them in civil court like in any other situation when somebody causes you a specific loss. That though is a completely different thing from criminal prosecution.
Waymo and specific people there responsible for that programming/bugs could probably be charged with criminal negligence by an enthusiastic prosecutor, yet haven't been. Why? Probably common sense. Like recognizing that there weren't criminal intent. And such situations is a price of progress. The same with protests. They weren't conspiring to block ambulances. And such situations is a price of freedom of protests and speech. Though if somebody dies that way, i think they would have a civil case against the protesters. The same way like affected people can have a civil case against Waymo in the situations mentioned above.
Neither of those are acceptable. Why would you think Waymo not following the law is somehow a justification for it to continue to put people’s lives at risk to enable protesters to do the same?
Except the defense has shown that the police blocked opening an additional lane even after the protestors specifically requested it for emergency traffic, and in fact blocked more lanes unnecessarily.
> Defense attorneys argued that many of the risks to people stuck in traffic could have been mitigated — including the traffic itself — if the median had been moved to open a fourth lane on the southbound side. They said a protester designated to communicate with the CHP specifically asked for that to happen to allow emergency vehicles to access anyone who needed one.
> Northbound traffic was also stopped by the CHP as a multitude of emergency vehicles responded to the bridge, which defense attorneys pointed out would have created the same type of risks the prosecution said people were experiencing because of the protesters.
When big companies do, it's understandable - they know they can get away with it and they often do. But what makes these beloved and trusted folks commit such actions? (I've never used TB, but had heard so many good stories about them and had put them in my mind into that category of companies that almost send a handwritten note to their first 100 users, etc.)
Are we (users) perhaps partly to blame? Maybe we do let them get away and they know that? How many people are really going to delete their profile now? (instead of just opting out) Perhaps we should be more principled in our response to such things? Imagine they lose 90% of their user base because of this idiocy. May be that'd serve as a broader lesson of real ethics?
I remember well when Quora forced me to install their app on mobile (not just a reminder pop-up, they blocked the page fully) - I sweared to never use them ever again. I kept my promise for a year or so, and then somehow went back to reading it later; so I am guilty myself of not being principled. But these sort of decisions really really puzzle me.
The Quora thing was baffling to me. There fortunately is a querystring parameter, something like `block_mobile=1` that you can remove from the URL and keep using without the app.
I am afraid verified purchases are being gamed too. Sometimes I feel like scammers might be going to the extreme of coordinating clustered purchases (I am guessing the merchandise ends up in the owners hand/warehouse anyways somehow?) and posting the reviews.
This is not even mentioning incentivized reviwers who may be posting exaggerated (if not fake) reviews for promos, discounts, etc.
> Sometimes I feel like scammers might be going to the extreme of coordinating clustered purchases (I am guessing the merchandise ends up in the owners hand/warehouse anyways somehow?) and posting the reviews.
This is called brushing and there have been several articles written about it. Scammers create fake accounts for real addresses and then ship fake merchandise to those addresses to get the "verified purchase" for their review.
One way in which Amazon has restricted this type of gaming is by restricting the ability of sellers to apply extreme discounting. Even legitimate attempts to do this such as liquidation can result in a warning from Amazon about rank/review manipulation.
However, real crooks just compensate verified buyers by paying them via Paypal, Payoneer, etc. You can't protect against that except through court order or by private sting investigation. Amazon does sue organizers of these schemes and has untangled some in that way, but that is challenging to scale.
One of the most insightful pieces from the article:
"""
"I realized at that point that there was a huge ecological niche between the C language and Unix shells," says Wall.
...
"People are always looking for the interstices," says Wall. "They are always looking for the new ecological niches. And the speed with which you can move into those ecological niches is really important, because the first person into a niche is often the winner."
"""
Constant emphasis on 'people of color' makes it hard to read and dilutes the main point. Such obsession to view everything through the length of race is mind boggling. This is seems to be a US thing.
I mean, you steal a bike, you are responsible. Whether you're mostly brown, mostly white or mostly blue is irrelevant. As simple as that.
By looking at their clients, if not sponsored, at least clearly affiliated. What junk load of nonsense press release.
My view of what happened is some clowns at the top wanted a proper, full interception of traffic. Besides the attention in international media it received, people had real issues accessing the internet properly (those who installed). So they simply could not execute their MITM properly. Putting aside privacy, etc. I expected simple operational ineptitude, which is what happened (gladly) and they dropped saying "it was a mere test".
PS, in 2011 the government tried something similar with Google's traffic and after Google started redirecting the KZ traffic they backed, saying some similar B.S. like "it was a test".
Exactly. One of my favourite apps, Quora, also did it some time ago (may be they still do) - forcing you to install the app if you're browsing them on mobile. I remember being shocked - shocked because while this (horrible) practice became a common thing, I'd always though of Quora highly, and assumed they'd never do something silly like that, but no, they'd disappointed.
I can confidently say that none of my technical interview practice has ever transferred to a useful skill in the job role, but I can confidently say it has helped me land jobs. Not using it definitely makes me forget it.
You don't forget, but you do fall out of practice doing what are essentially competitive programming exercises.
When you're in a situation in front of a whiteboard with 15-45 minutes to craft some algorithm it makes a ton of difference whether or you've been practicing.
Because these skills are use-it-or-lose-it. They will be LRU'd out by the skills you will actually use every day. I guarantee at your next job you will not have to roll your own red-black tree from scratch...
