Boeing themselves, including their CEOs, kept repeating that bullshit. Even after the FAA finally realised the issue, and refused Boeing's first attempted fix that relied on pilots being able to identify the situation and enact the procedure within 10 seconds (in various tests in a Southwest training center, it was around 30s on average). Then the FAA mandated a full redesign of the MCAS system to actually rely on two sensors and handle disagreements. And Calhoun kept repeating that "this wouldn't have happened with American pilots".
As a matter of fact, the same issue did occur to US-based-airlines, and the pilots did catch it. That does not however answer the question of whether they just got lucky, or were more skilled, though there are some indications that it may have been skill.
I'm sure that a flaw in the plane can be handled more gracefully by the more skilled set of pilots however that's not the point really. Their point was that the flaw in the plane wasn't a big deal and the loss of life and equipment wasn't Boeing's fault, which wasn't true.
The reason we focus on the OEM more than the pilots is that Boeing getting its act together (or being regulated to do so) is more scalable than every pilot in the world becoming more skilled. Individually blaming pilots isn't effective, regardless of whether you're morally for or against it.
Nope, we are focusing on Boeing because their product turned out not to be functioning as advertised.
There are many peculiarities in all machines, including the planes and we often handle that by trainings and warnings. There's no laws dictating that machines should be operable by dummies, especially in professional settings.
It's not really the same. Pilots need extensive training for how to handle emergency situations and maintenance crew don't. It's not super harsh to say that pilots in different regions are at different levels for those weird situations. It is super harsh to say that maintenance crews in some regions can't do their baseline job.
That's entirely false, the maintenance crew are highly trained people they don't figure out things on the go and when they have to figure out solution to an issue, it's based on what they know about the aircrafts from their training.
Totally agree. Maintenance staff often get ignored. It is worth pointing out how skilled these people are and, in general, how dedicated they are to their task. It is also worth pointing out that often maintenance do get involved in emergencies, especially those that work on the line. I had a guy catch a bleed air leak and signal fire in seconds, saving the engine and potentially a lot more. We like to think of the pilots, but maintainers deserve a lot of credit.
Maintenance crew are highly trained people that in strange situations can pause their work to figure out a fix and ask experts what to do.
Very different from how a pilot has to handle strange situations. Being ready for anything in an airborne plane without a pause button is so much harder, impossibly hard, and not every air authority tries as hard to reach the impossible.
To be fair, it is ridiculous to advocate that the solution to a broken system is circumventing the laws. Fix for the problems for copyright and intellectual property systems can't be "heroic" VPN companies.
Kim Dotcom become filthy rich by selling access to copyrighted materials and turned into folk hero of the alt-right. He was selling other peoples work per the kilobyte when kids were persecuted for copyright infringement, videos taken down for using a few second of music or a clip from another video . That is not a fair system.
Of course there’s, it’s just that anti-Trump people don’t care as much and are not as brave as the pro-Trump people. MAGA people stormed the capitol, anti-Trump people just write well thought concerns on the internet. MAGA people for years endured deplatforming and being outcasts but developed methods to deal with it, the anti-Trump people are scared to lose what they have and are too concerned about their differences within and they are unable to build anything. It’s people with nothing to lose and everything to gain vs people with everything to lose and nothing to gain from having a fight.
Those who stormed the Capitol did it because they were against the current course of affairs. Are the anti-Trump people ever going to do something like that if they are against the current course of events? I don’t think so.
Consequently, Trump will win. That’s why people who control the capital are aligned with MAGA.
People are out there protesting right now even though ICE and the police have a history of shooting unarmed protestors. Leftists protestors are and always have been more harshly treated by this government than the other side.
If anyone is doubting this, look at how the police treat "ecoterrorists" versus mass shooters. Ecoterrorists in quotes because the real ecoterrorists are those polluting and destroying the planet for money, not a group of people that stop a machine from raping the land.
> People are out there protesting right now even though ICE and the police have a history of shooting unarmed protestors
I never understand what's the point of those protests. They should be taking over power by force or GTFO. Notice that successful revolutions storm the HQ, destroy some building of iconic significance or kill/capture the leader, not just enduring the atrocities of the foot-soldiers of the people who they are against.
The peaceful protest thing works when the people in the HQ care about what you think about them, which means it only works if those protesting are their people and not the opposition.
The lefties should start taking notes on what works and what the far right did to gain so much power and start stealing their methods. Display of dissatisfaction isn't going to work, if anything that dissatisfaction is satisfaction to the right wingers. They feel giddy when see the people they hate protesting, their only complain can be that the protests are not big enough.
> I never understand what's the point of those protests.
For one, it's about showing politicians just how unpopular these policies are. If you can convince a large enough swath of Republican congressmen their seats aren't so secure, they may start to break with the administration.
On the more extreme end: I doubt many of the protesters are familiar with it, but there is a 3.5% rule[1] in political science that states when nonviolent protestors grow to about 3.5% of the population, authoritarian regimes become likely to fall from power.
The pro-Trump group don't think about consequences is the thing. The anti-Trump group do, and that's a big reason why they're slow to respond. Performing a siege on the Capitol was a stupid, angry, and impulsive reaction with no thought of the consequences afterwards. That's the way the entire pro-Trump group tends to act. Meanwhile the anti-Trump group think about knock-on effects and long term consequences because they understand that nothing is an island and that everything is connected to everything else, even through degrees of separation. It makes them hesitant to do anything right away because they first have to consider what the ripples are going to affect outside of the area of their immediate focus. One group is reactive and the other is proactive, and being proactive is always going to be slower.
I don't think that's it. It has more to do with something to lose or not.
"The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose"
Liberals are generally more empathetic towards others and have good intentions when protesting. However if they have a comfortable life they will back down very quickly when faced with force. Just my opinion, could be wrong.
They are headed for complete fascist take over. Going through a phase that Europeans went through a century ago, end up destroying themselves.
It’s very concerning that they have nukes. JD Vance said something about the risks UK and France owning nukes, I think he just wanted to start the conversation because I think he believes that it’s actually US that is the risk. We know that the guy is not actually a Trump ideology zealot from his pre-Trump alignment.
I think it'd be a mistake to assume that JD Vance is not exactly what he portrays himself as at this point. He certainly seems onboard with everything thats happening and is happy to defend it and push the boundaries for more lawlessness.
My read is that Vance may be a pure opportunist. He may be doing what he has to in order to stay in Trump's good graces, because that's where power is right now. But I've seen him put out very quiet "yeah, that's the administration's position, but I don't actually agree with it" messages once or twice.
I don't think he's someone who is under sway of the Trump cult of personality. I suspect that Vance's agenda is Vance.
I wonder if ubiquity doesn’t effect the lidar performance? Wouldn’t the systems see each other’s laser projections if there are multiple cars close to each other? Also is
LIDAR immune to other issues like bright 3rd party sources? At least on iPhone I’m having faceid performance degradation. Also, I suspect other issues like thin or transparent objects net being detected.
With vision you rely on external source or flood light. Its also how our civilization is designed to function in first place.
Anyway, the whole self driving obsession is ridiculous because being driven around in a bad traffic isn’t that much better than driving in bad traffic. It’s cool but can’t beat a the public infrastructure since you can’t make the car dissipated when not in use.
IMHO, connectivity to simulate public transport can be the real sweet spot, regardless of sensor types. Coordinated cars can solve traffic and pretend to be trains.
LIDAR systems use timing, phase locking, and software filtering to identify and eliminate interference from other units. There is still risk of interference, resulting in reduced range, noise, etc.
I'm not a self-driving believer (never had the opportunity to try it, actually), but I'd say bad traffic would be the number one case where I'd want it. I don't mind highway driving, or city driving if traffic is good, but stop and go traffic is torture to me. I'd much rather just be on my phone, or read a book or something.
Agreed that public transportation is usually the best option in either case, though.
To me any kind of driving is torture. I don't want the responsibility, the risk, the chance of fines if I miss a speed sign somewhere. And if my car could self drive I could spend the time usefully instead of wasting it on driving. It would be amazing.
Right now I don't even have a car but for getting around outside of the city it's difficult sometimes.
Yeah, I feel ya. I don't mind it, but I'm far from loving it. What particularly stresses me out is how I can be screwed even doing everything correctly, if someone else screws up.
All reasons why I think public transit is the better solution over self driving cars. They're generally much safer, and also you get to do something while you're on the go. Pretty nifty, I think.
Yes that's why I don't own a car. In a big city public transit is amazing. I spend 20 bucks a month on unlimited travel. That won't even buy me a headlight bulb for a car these days lol. When I still owned one I had to pay for the car, insurance, road tax, fuel, maintenance, parking, tolls. It felt like it was dragging me down the whole time. It's insane how much costs add up.
I love public transport and an added benefit is: I don't have to go back to where I left it. I often take a metro from A to B, walk to C and then get a bus back to A or something. Can't do that with a car, as such I tend to walk a lot more now. Because it's a hassle-free option now. The world seems more open for exploration when I don't have to worry about returning to the car, or having a drink, or the parking meter expiring. I really don't get that people consider cars freedom.
Of course once you go outside the city it's a different story, even here in Europe. Luckily I don't need to go there so much. But that's something that should be improved. On the weekend here in the city the metro runs 24/7 and the regional trains really should too but they don't.
Unfortunately in my region highway traffic is quite congested, and so called "adaptive cruise control" is a game changer. I find it reduces fatigue by a lot. Usually the trucks are all cruising at the speed limit and I just hang with them. I only change lanes if they slow down or there's an obstruction etc.
There are regular 100+ car pileups in the central California valley due to fog. Cars crash in a lot of situations because the driver simply can't see. We need something better than vision to avoid these kinds of accidents.
Coordinated cars won't work unless all cars are built the same and all maintained 100% the same and regularly inspected. You can't have a car driving 2 inches from the car in front, if it can't stop just as fast as the car in front. People already neglect their cars, change brake compounds, and get stuck purchasing low quality brake parts due to lack of availability of good components.
Next time you see some total beater driving down the road, imagine that car 2 inches off your rear bumper, not even a computer can make up for poor maintenance. Imagine that 8000lb pickup with it's cheap oversized tires right in your rearview mirror with it's headlights in your face. It's not going to be able to stop either.
A combination of cameras, lidar, ridar, ultrasonic fused together have a strong sense of perception since they fill in each other's gaps. (short, long, different spectrums of electro-magnetic spectrum / sound).
The good news is they're all commodity hardware prices now.
Tesla removing radar and parking ultrasonic sensors was a self own. Computer vision inference is pretty bad when all the camera sees is a while wall when backing up.
Fog - Radar will perceive the car. Multi car crash, long range radar picks it up.
Bright glare from sun, lidar picks it up. Lidar misses something, camera picks it up.
Waymo has the correct approach on perception. Jam with sensor so they have superhuman vision of environment around.
They're wideband EM devices, so the problem of congested spectrum can be dealt with by the same sort of techniques used by WiFi and mobile phone services.
i imagine seismic has already well solved a lot of that.
you know a lot about the light you are sending, and what the speed of light is, so you can filter out unexpected timings, and understand multiple returns
Maybe the general rule should be like, if something isn’t in the users control and the user doesn’t want it anymore or can no longer function despite not being damaged, then the company should take back the hardware and refund the user.
So the company still have two options, either refund or open-source the systems needed for the device so that the user or third-party can continue supporting it.
Lots of convicted criminals were pardoned already. People with connection to January 6 United States Capitol attack are all pardoned, some got promoted. There's something going on with Ghislaine Maxwell's situation too. US just abducted the president of a sovereign country and international law no longer means anything too. The president himself is also a convict. He is also implicated with many sexual assaults(allegations at this stage)
What exactly makes you think that this time is different? I just saw a clip from Fox, justifying the killing of this woman because she had pronouns on her profile.
I think it may be different because firstly it's clearly murder or an unlawful shooting if you watch the video, and secondly because being shot by a masked officer for trying to drive down the road could happen to pretty much any American so I imagine they'll complain. That doesn't apply to the Jan 6th people or Maxwell - it's not part of people's everyday life.
If you pay attention to what they are saying, people with pronouns are destroying America, immigrants are destroying America, women without kids are Destroying America, divorced women with kids are destroying America, All kind of people are destroying America.
At this very moment the MAGA types are explaining why it was the right move to execute this woman. Weren't they also relentlessly explaining why it was OK for a police to step on the neck of this black dude that end up dying some years ago? Weren't they relentlessly explaining why it was OK to shoot and kill looters?
Maybe in a year or two shooting people who destroying America will be the norm. Maybe soon someone will ask why just shoot looters and women with pronouns who run away from the law enforcement? why not kill everyone who destroys America? Are fat kids destroying America less than women with pronouns? Then wouldn't be patriotic to exterminate people with bad genes and improve nations genes?
BTW this is happening everywhere with persecuted people. Assailants feel trigger happy, they trust the system that will protect them from actual consequences. Most of the time there's some benefit of doubt that can be attached to the action and even when everything is clear and well documented they end up getting special treatment, they become heroes and they are looked after in prison or after the prison.
I really hope you are right, but I fear you aren't. The conservative media bubble has already congealed on "She was trying to run over everyone and deserved to be shot".
If someone wants to believe that ICE is the good guys and people protesting ICE are bad, they'll be pretty quick to adopt any narrative that will justify the actions of ICE. You can see that in this very thread.
This might sway a few people, but I really think the Trump "I could shoot someone on 5th avenue" is simply a truth.
> People with connection to January 6 United States Capitol attack are all pardoned
Hah, many of them have been hired by ICE since.
> The president himself is also a convict.
Funnily enough, Florida made an exemption for him that allowed him to vote, despite their laws against convicted felons voting. They decided that since he had only been found guilty, and not sentenced, that he was not, yet, a convicted felon.
I wonder how many other people in Florida in the same situation could vote, or whether they'd be laughed at.
US looked like the next stage of humanity, if you are ambitious you go to USA. Anyone can become American and didn't feel like betrayal to the country or the people who raised you. Whatever you achieve in USA it will be available to all the humanity.
Fast forward to mid 2020s, now USA feels like old style European country that is rich as f and about to go through stages of great suffering to eventually become a nation. It's not even like Dubai or something, its straight out time travel. You don't go to USA to be treated fairly and climb to the top in a meritocratic system anymore, its all about race, identity and paperwork now. It looks like a shitty European country, why would you go to a shitty European country? You can have that experience at home in most places in the world and you don't have to suffer the part of being far away from your friends and family. I'm sure a lot of people will still go to USA but their profiles will be different.
IMHO the predominant feeling towards USA is disappointment, not even anger. It wasn't supposed to end up like that.
"We live in an era of fraud in America. Not just in banking, but in government, education, religion, food, even baseball... What bothers me isn't that fraud is not nice. Or that fraud is mean. For fifteen thousand years, fraud and short sighted thinking have never, ever worked. Not once. Eventually you get caught, things go south. When the hell did we forget all that? I thought we were better than this, I really did."
I agree with your points about how the USA used to be viewed globally, and that the predominant feeling is disappointment (or in my case, sadness).
However, your characterisation of European countries as “shitty” is unfair IMO. I’m reminded of the saying “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other ones). Europe is FAR from perfect, but the long arc of history factors large in their politics and humanistic predilections (relative to other countries that is). They have living memory to just how devastating divisions on the continent can be. So yes, the EU may be the shittiest form of government... except for all those other ones (acknowledging that this paraphrase only makes sense if your values are similar).
Sorry, I should have written it more clearly. What I ment by a "shitty European country" was in the context of pre-democracy, something like fast developing country that sees lots of advancement in science and technology but the population suffers greatly due to inequalities and lack of rights or regulations against unfair labor practices. This used to be the case of UK for example. It's also the case for many developing countries today.
I wish the crumbling of the empire will bring some humility to one of the most entitled and ignorant-about-the-world culture that ever had the chance to rule the world. Jesus, some of your comments are insufferable and it’s hard to feel pity for whatever is going on over there.
Also, the USA has stopped being the land of the free in the mid 70s for the rest of the world, but it’s clear that within your borders your post-war propaganda is still very effective to this day.
It's much more than that, it's a mass population and politics control device thanks to Twitter. They can choose what everyone knows about the world and how they know it. Also, they have the ability to produce the thing that the people will know and limit competing ideas or contradicting information. Think of it as full censorship and full moderation of information flow that is automated by AI.
IMHO EU politicians are way behind the EU public in this regard. They are incapable of thinking of Europe without USA and are terrified that it will hurt the economy or something.
However the public is much more ready to break clean of US and endure the perceived short term pain for the perceived dignity and opportunities.
Screw this up too and EU will lose all its mainstream pro-US politicians and they will all be replaced with extremes as long as those extremes promise getting rid of USA.
Whatever Trump is doing its going to be as successful as his private business ventures.
Europeans are vengeful, Tesla never recovered from Musks behavior. USA will also not recover, all those 2T market capitalization companies will have to start justifying those valuations without the EU market and likely without the rest of the world too because it will only accelerate China's influence in the other parts of the world as US will cement its position as dangerous imperialist that better stay away.
All that capital that US has will mean nothing at war time, intellectual properties and royalties will cease to be valuable. If the EU rich flee to USA they will not be taking the factories with them, extremist war time governments will take away their properties.
Relationships will be forged without US influence, working with Russia and Iran for energy and working with China will become much simpler as many of the issues between EU and these nations stem from USA's grip on Europe.
> Relationships will be forged without US influence, working with Russia and Iran for energy and working with China will become much simpler as many of the issues between EU and these nations stem from USA's grip on Europe.
It doesn't make sense to cut ties with colonialists, only to buddy up to other colonialists. Instead, the remaining countries of the free world must urgently unite and do everything to protect the rule of law. And also possibly work with likeminded people in slipping democracies to prevent further destruction and harm.
As a European I believe that USA taking over Greenland by force will trigger massive rally around the flag effect in Europe, will crack the jingoistic European nationalism and hasten federalization of Europe.
I don't believe that there is going to be much cooperation with Russia, unless it will stop being imperialistic itself, which is unlikely. However Iran and China are on EU's naughty list only because USA want it to be so.
If Europe isn't willing to send troops to Greenland, it's clearly already lost. Why are they not doing that already? If Europe wants to claim they can defend Greenland then this literally seems like the test.
Europe (Denmark) has forces in Greenland currently.
But Europe as a whole also has no chance to defend Greenland no matter what they do if the US really decides to take it by force.
Europe has inadequate long distance power-projection to put up any kind of a fight there (if not being assisted by the US, which of course it wouldn't be in this case).
I'm American, but this reply certainly isn't me being jingoistic or pro-American. I fucking hate what we are both doing and threatening under Trump with every fiber of my being and I think it ultimately is going to make America a far weaker failed empire within a world that is deeply unstabilized for no reason other than to stroke the ego of a malignant narcissist with no understanding of second order consequences.
What I'm saying is I think there's a decent chance the US wouldn't actually engage in significant combat over Greenland. What I think the US is betting on is that there simply won't be any meaningful military resistance at all. (They basically said exactly this.)
Therefore, if Europe sent enough forces and indicated they would actually fight instead of capitulating, that would probably be their best bet at preventing Greenland from being annexed. Realistically, this needs to be more than whatever tiny(?) amount of forces Denmark already has there. They'd probably need assistance from other countries. You essentially need to be reading headlines about warships from some European countries heading to Greenland for this to have an effect, IMO.
No. You make it seem like Europe has to just roll over and take whatever happens without even a proverbial fight. That's not how it needs to play out at all. There's a lot more they could do if you get a little creative.
Let me outline one possible way I think Greenland/Denmark/Europe could proceed here that doesn't require just capitulating:
- Station more forces right now to make it clear they would defend Greenland militarily. Get as many NATO countries to join as possible. Probably better to stay closer to their own civilians instead of going near American bases, I imagine. This is critical so that nobody gets a chance to claim they lost by default due to not even meaningfully attempting to defend the territory.
- If the US starts expanding its military activity... either ignore them and wait out this administration, or file a lawsuit in the US (and possibly elsewhere, wherever feasible) and see how courts respond, if for no reason than to put everyone on the official record. [1]
- If the US starts sending civilians to mine or whatever... send their own unarmed law enforcement to stop them, probably while livestreaming the whole thing globally. [2] File additional lawsuits every step of the way. [1]
- Wait for US courts to respond. Appeal immediately and get SCOTUS on the record. [1] If the response is negative then proceed to attempt enforcement under their own laws.
- If US law enforcement fires their first shot -- send their own armed law enforcement to respond. File more lawsuits as much as possible at every step and wait for courts to respond.
- If US military gets involved and starts firing -- send military (their own + as many other NATO countries as would be willing to join) to respond accordingly. Yes it will risk some lives, but there's a decent chance the US won't shoot NATO allies. The whole bet seems to be that there will be zero physical resistance to begin with. And if they do respond, it's important for everyone to actually see that.
If they play their cards right, I actually think it's quite likely Greenland/Denmark/Europe would win this fight, quite possibly before anyone gets injured. But they really need to play by the books and exhaust every single peaceful avenue available to them before letting combat power decide the matter.
FWIW, I can think of other ideas too. But I think this should be plenty enough to get my point across that this isn't a necessary loss.
[1] For whatever it's worth, the current US administration is still engaging the judicial system. As insulting as it might feel to other countries' sovereignties, utilizing this is currently their best option. They need to get the US on the record in domestic court about exactly which laws it recognizes and which ones it's willing to break. There needs to be zero ambiguity to everyone, especially Americans themselves, who exactly is breaking which laws in whose name.
[2] It needs to be on undeniable record who started whatever ends up happening.
I am not sure if I read you right but if you mean that there will be significant grass roots efforts in Europe to boycott anything from the US, I think you are right.
Right, IMHO there will be significant boycott targeting anything US or anyone advocating for US. Those who love their iPhones may stay with the iPhones but they will vote in people who will get rid of iPhones and get forced to switch to Korean or Chinese brand without being too upset about it.
Internet cables will be cut if that's necessary to get rid of US tech. Bank accounts will be frozen, data centers taken over and no one will pay attention to naysayers and those who preach profits and business opportunities.
Trump and anything he stands for is just too repulsive for anyone in Europe already. Europe's relatively weak startup culture doesn't come from regulations, it's not like Italians demand lab grown meat and the French demand long working hours but their usurper doesn't allow them. It's quite the opposite, Europeans demand a life with dignity above everything else and Trump is the antithesis of it.
The same happened with MCAS, the pro-Boeing argument was that if those were American pilots it would have been fine.
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