I've found that one of the more subtle cons to thinking in public is that you become more attached to the opinion you have expressed. I'm not sure if that's because you are forced to defend it more vigorously or just because it's "written down". But I do find that I'm less likely to change my mind on a particular topic after blogging about it.
This is why I comment only using throwaway accounts on all the forums I use.
I feel like I'm much less likely to get attached to an opinion if it's wedded only to an ephemeral identity that I will probably forget about entirely within a short timeframe.
I also much prefer the dynamic of having anonymous conversations with strangers.
I heartily agree about preferring anonymous conversations.
Though for the first point, personally, I view being “attached” to a particular idea as more of an external problem than internal. An alias lets me consider other ideas or play devil’s advocate or perhaps more importantly, write with less revision than I might require of my public persona, which can be the difference between making a post or deleting another imperfect draft.
I can understand the appeal for a forum operator to lock functionality behind reputation-based systems which dissuade temporary aliases to reduce spam, but I think it is vitally important to have anonymous spaces for conversation.
To reply to your first question: if the car decides to emergency brake, you can still override it by pressing the accelerator. In my experience, the braking that happens is "hard" but no more hard than you would do yourself if something suddenly appeared in your drive path, and if you are paying attention you can press the accelerator within a second or so. If the person behind you has adequate following distance it shouldn't be a problem.
If the car loses power entirely then it gives you a few seconds warning in which you may or may not be able to cross to the shoulder before the car coasts to a stop. In this scenario the braking is not "hard", but obviously there is no real way to recover and you'll need to get towed.
I have not experienced any scenario where the car does not respond to steering or acceleration commands when it was physically able to do so.
> if something suddenly appeared in your drive path, and if you are paying attention you can press the accelerator within a second or so.
So if something appears in your path, the right course of action is to accelerate into it?
within a second or so is great but not if you have 1/4 second time to respond.
> If the person behind you has adequate following distance it shouldn't be a problem.
Nice assumption.
> If the car loses power entirely then it gives you a few seconds warning in which you may or may not be able to cross to the shoulder before the car coasts to a stop.
> So if something appears in your path, the right course of action is to accelerate into it?
>> ...the braking that happens is "hard" but no more hard than you would do yourself if something suddenly appeared in your drive path...
parent post was just giving a comparison to the deceleration-snap experienced during phantom braking, and saying in the event of a phantom brake, you can cancel the event by tapping the gas (battery?) pedal
> So if something appears in your path, the right course of action is to accelerate into it?
Not into it, but around it – if possible, of course. It's something you learn in motorcycle school, for example.
The idea is that a motorcycle is harder to maneuver while under hard braking, so you have a better chance of avoiding the obstacle or falling by going around it.
>> If the person behind you has adequate following distance it shouldn't be a problem.
> Nice assumption.
Of course. This also feeds into the above. As in, not only do you have to stop, but also to make sure that the person following you will stop without hitting you.
> So if something appears in your path, the right course of action is to accelerate into it?
You mis-parsed what I said here. My sentence was probably too long. Let me try using shorter ones. Say you are driving. Suddenly a squirrel appears on the road 50m away. You apply brakes "hard" to avoid hitting it. This amount of braking is what the car does. You can still press the accelerator. The accelerator works as expected, cancelling the software's braking.
> if you have 1/4 second time to respond.
Under what circumstances would you have this short amount of time? IMO only if somebody is following you too closely. Again, remove the software from the equation and insert the aforementioned squirrel. You brake hard for it. The person behind rear-ends you because they were following too closely. Who is at fault?
To clarify, this only applies if the car doesn't think you're about to exit the lane. It will momentarily fight you, and it will take more than a slight nudge to override it.
Self-reply to add: despite (occasionally) experiencing phantom braking and my wife once experiencing the "loss of power" scenario due to a defective drive unit, I'm still very happy with the Tesla overall. In my experience it is the best car I've owned despite the flaws that seem to disproportionately make the headlines.
It comes down to your driving style. Defensive drivers will not like how AP drives, and it makes driving much more tiring, not less. If you are comfortable with the way AP drives, though, I could see it being relaxing. Hell, some people sleep when AP is cruising down the highway, so clearly there is a spectrum.
There's been a number of occasions where I would have been in an accident had it not been for the software saving me. Obviously it is possible that one day the software will result in an accident that would not have happened had I been driving alone, but thus far that has not happened, and so, thus far, I can conclude that the combination is better than me alone.
It’s fairly rare for a driver to be involved in “a number of accidents” in just a few years. Most drivers go decades with zero collisions, so if you’re experiencing multiple per year, saved only by Tesla software, you might try to see if there are other avenues that you could explore to reduce your risk to be more like the population average.
I get what you're trying to say, but if anything, you're just making the case for Tesla software.
Consider that there is a range of drivers, from "good" to "bad". If most drivers go decades with zero collisions, that's great, and it probably puts me closer to the "bad" end of the spectrum. By your own admission drivers like me should explore avenues to reduce our risk. Why is Tesla software not a valid avenue?
If you're a "good" driver, you don't need it, and that's fine, you can get some other car or drive with autopilot off or whatever. But for us "bad" drivers, the software makes us safer (both personal risk and to others on the road) so why not use it? What other avenues would you suggest exploring?
I would say close calls are fairly common, especially in urban areas with lots of traffic. It’s not just your driving but the people around you. It takes two to get into an accident.
Right. I suspect that the net effect is that the Tesla software transforms these what would have been close calls into…still close calls where the Tesla software gets credit for a “save”.
If a Tesla “saved” a driver 5 times in 20K miles, my first question is always going to be “how many collisions did they have in the prior 20K miles in their other car?”
This effect has a large influence on the overall A/B analysis. If pre/post test analysis suggests that Tesla saved you from only 0 to 1x collisions vs a previously estimated 4x-5x collisions, your tolerance for newly introduced collisions would naturally be much lower.
One person cannot drive enough miles in their lifetime to allow making a determination that one system is definitely safer than the other. The reliability that we require from an autonomous system means you might never experience a safety failure (again, even if you drive every minute of the rest of your life), but the system is still less safe.
True, but manufacturers can look at aggregate miles traveled and come to some conclusions about the safety of vehicles without any safety systems, with active safety systems like automatic emergency braking, and in Tesla’s case, Autopilot. They publish the statistics regularly and crashes are far less common per million miles driven when autopilot is engaged.
I think these stats aren’t very useful because 1) Tesla drivers are different than other drives as they are rich. Comparing miles driven by rich people to all miles driven isn’t useful for knowing if Teslas are safer; 2) Tesla has really low numbers so it’s hard to compare a small sample to a huge amount. It would be like comparing walking accidents by 7th Day Adventists. They may walk a million miles among the whole population but that’s nothing compared to the trillion miles of the entire population.
The data is not transparent, they publish what they want. How many times drivers intervened? Does Tesla or the fans consider those as a +1 for human and a -1 for the AI in the stats? Nope.
Try looking at about:support to see if there are any third-party modules (antivirus etc. loaded). That has been a cause of problems like this in the past. More likely on Windows and I saw you're running macOS, but worth a shot.
The only plugins in the Plugins section of about:addons should be the OpenH264 plugin and the Widevine plugin (only if DRM is enabled). Both can be disabled there.
This is awesome! I just wrote a blog post along the same lines (https://staktrace.com/spout/entry.php?id=883) and I would like to join forces with you. Let me know if there's anything concrete I can do at the moment, otherwise I'll just keep an eye on your work and help where I can.
That's great to hear! Yes, we've wondered across the same sort of idea with your "DONATIONS.txt" file. I post updates when I can to the Matrix chatroom:
First tip: don't ask for advice from people who know nothing about you. The less context people have about your specific situation, the more generic and less useful their advice is going to be.
No, CyberDildonics is right - and asking the pertinent question. Strike doesn't denominate customer deposits in any kind of crypto. They're a traditional custodial wallet for fiat deposits, and a registered money services business. They appear to be using the lightning network to move money between Strike's own accounts.
They seem to use their own lightning nodes - that they don't allow third parties onto - to move money between their own accounts, rather than amending the centralized database of who owns how many dollars directly. However, it's all closed and internal, and I simply do not get why they would do this.
You argue it is stable by arguing you never need to convert it to fiat. If your economy is running 100% on Bitcoin it doesn't matter what the exchange rate to USD our any other currency is. (Note I'm not actually arguing this is the case in El Salvador, just pointing out that there is a theoretical argument that could be made.)
That is only true if the entire global economy is running 100% on bitcoin. The second you need to trade with another economy (like any nation needs to in order to import/export goods), you are bitten by the same issue.
The US is El Salvador's largest trading partner - so Bitcoin's price relative to the USD does matter.
>That is only true if the entire global economy is running 100% on bitcoin.
100% on bitcoin means no services, no goods, an economy where nothing but bitcoin exists. As soon as I need to drink water the price of water and the income of the operator of the well will go down over time because of the fixed supply and the hoarding of currency.
I think there's probably some middle ground here. Like say the national economy is 100% on Bitcoin and then as long as they have a balanced trade with other countries (i.e. no long term trade deficit/surplus) they can deal with those obligations in fiat currency. But I'm just guessing here.
No currency ever has been 100% stable. The exchange rate is how we perceive it in the modern economy, but fluctuation in commodity prices was the indicator of an stable, or not, currency when the gold standard was in place. That will be the indicator if bitcoin, or any other currency, achieve 100% use, which in itself is impossible.
But there is no guarantee to stability, bitcoin doesn’t provide it any more than the usd backed by millions of soldiers does. Stability begins on the production side, not the monetary one; after a huge drought you’ll see prices skyrocket irrespective of the currency.
