Japan's response
Japan's NHK World tv went beyond the usual warning crawl and replaced normal programming with a full screen "take cover" page for something like 40 minutes.
641 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Aug 2009
I thought I knew the location of this trial but my suspected choice is just inside Vancouver, a Canadian Tire store with a Mark's underneath off a lower parking level. What made this interesting for me is that I won't use this CT store. instead driving further to one in North Van. The Vancouver store has put many items off regular shelves and out of view behind a service counter and has few staff in the public areas to provide directions or assistance. The North Van store is well staffed and well run. People matter and good employees and good management pay off. A robot can't fix this.
I think the important issue with AI is how and where it's used. To use the example of driving aids I fear the reliance of the current younger drivers on those aids diminishes both their skills and the necessary attention driving requires. The broader use of AI comes with the same risks. Be careful what you wish for.
The research and expenditure is going at the wrong target at this stage. It should be focused on traffic controls at this point instead of the cars. This may already be the case in areas of freeways and carriageways but my experience and intent is on city driving. My route to work and shopping goes through an urban area with a mix of traffic light intersections and pedestrian lights (also with cross-traffic induction loops). During rush hours the pedestrian lights should be synced to the intersection lights in the main direction of travel and the pedestrian and loops disabled. But this would mean expenditure by the city rather than a venture capital self-driving outfit so it does not happen.
in general work on making the cars communicate with the traffic control systems would yield more immediate results at this point in development.
Try learning from history. Chamberlain negotiated with Hitler. How did that work out? Putin is using the same playbook --- I want a piece of that country where they speak our language. Then he wants the reset of it.Then it's more countries.
The daunting lesson from WWII was the total defeat necessary over Germany and Japan to reform them into the democracies they are today. Russia is a vast country. Not a simple task.
Today NHK (Japan) had a report on the cyber war launched against Ukraine and the continuing war with white hat hackers and friends of Russia contributing back and forth. One does wonder if Canada as a major friend of Ukraine was targeted.
It also shows the danger of the vast majority of Canada's IT connectivity in the hands of only three giants and the unresolved issue of the Rogers-Shaw buyout which would make it worse.
Decades ago I was stopped at a red light and saw a woman ahead of me in the adjacent lane toss a cigarette butt out the window. I don't know what came over me because I'm usually pretty meek but I got out of my car, picked up the butt and offered it back to her, "I think you dropped something." She just gave me dirty look so I threw it back inside her car.
I always had difficulties fitting the screws correctly into the back cover of older Thinkpads because there were always at least one missing originally and one hole stripped. I eventually hit on white foam trays from my breakfast sausages. Turn upside down, use a Sharpie to mark features of the cover and then push the screws into the foam in the same place as on the cover. Screws don't get lost and you know where they go.
Blackberry Q10 lost on the drive to work in a rainstorm. I must have got out of the car to do something with a wiper. Found it over 12 hours later soaking wet on the road (luckily ir was a side street) and dried it out for several days. Used it for several more years. Clip off back and replaceable battery. Survivability does not require glue.
Having recently watched a detailed doc on Hitler/s rise to power I was waiting for the Reichstag fire, but Trump couldn't even get that right. You burn or blow up Congress at night and blame it on the opposition, not incite a bunch of losers to invade it. Thankfully Trumpolini can preen like Il Duce, but he's neither as smart or as capable as his predecessors.
from the PBS documentary “Chasing The Moon”:
”Chasing the Moon’s discussions of astronaut selection and early PR campaigns for Apollo highlight the overlooked story of Ed Dwight, a fighter pilot who nearly became the first African American astronaut. Dwight had an outstanding military record, and the Kennedy administration was keen for NASA to have an African American astronaut. After passing his medical exam, Dwight was sent to Chuck Yeager’s flight school, the testing ground for potential astronauts. According to Dwight and a later investigation from the White House, Yeager pulled all the instructors into a room and ordered them not to speak to Dwight, not to interact or provide advice to him, and not to socialize with him outside of the base. Yeager’s reason was that he didn’t want ‘a colored guy’ to be an astronaut.”