Nobody is saying it's an epidemic. It's just a major outbreak that's unprecedented in recent decades. Measles is unlikely to become an epidemic in the U.S., because most of us have been vaccinated and the vaccine provides lifelong immunity. Only very foolish people (or people with foolish parents) are contributing the the measles outbreak.

And had you done that in the case of TDAP, you would have gone ahead and had her get the injection anyway, because there are no statistics that suggest or would even hint at what you're claiming was an adverse effect.

The data is publicly available. It's just not all that statistically significant. The reports are all self-selecting; that is, many people who might have experienced an adverse effect do not report it, and many people who think they have experienced an adverse effect do report it, even though they're wrong about the cause. All VAERS does is gather reports. It's up to doctors and scientists to decide whether there is any validity to the reports. VAERS itself draws no conclusions.

A lot of subway trains are essentially autonomous, yet they still have operators in the event of some kind of failure state.

I buy Waymo's assertion that the actual driving is fully autonomous. Remember, you will never go to a dealership and buy your own Waymo. The whole project is designed as a service, not the future of private car ownership.

In San Francisco, getting to the airport generally means taking the freeway. Although Waymo has permission to test its vehicles on the freeway, I don't think it's begun doing so. There is probably a way to get to the airport without the freeway, but it would take a very long time and it would mean boing outside of Waymo's service area. Effectively, going to the airport is not a use case for Waymo in San Francisco.

You're thinking of Teslas. There's a sign on the Waymo steering wheel warning passengers never to touch the controls.

OK, but scientific studies don't typically take the entire world into consideration. They tend to focus on one specific area of research. I have anecdotal evidence that Waymo cars also corner exceptionally well, accelerate and brake efficiently, and do a great job of observing traffic rules and laws ... but this study didn't look at those things.

California has just about any time of bad weather you want, from scorching desert heat to snowstorms and hail ... so Waymo doesn't operate in those areas.

But companies can be held liable for defective products. This type of case would proceed as a wrongful death suit in civil court, for monetary damages.

What army is that? There is a team that can "provide information" to the car, but there is no remote control. The actual driving is totally autonomous. In a worst-case scenario, an operator can instruct a car to pull over and wait for assistance. More info here.

Actually, that's not true. But it's the least safe area that tourists have easy access to, or would have any reason to visit.

Yes, I've lived in the City by the Bay for 30 years.

"Descended into a lawless hellscape"... sure.

Time to turn off AM talk radio and live a little.

OK, so this is a device with a tiny e-ink screen that functions like a phone but costs 4x as much as the lowest-priced Kindle, and as much as 10x as much as a basic dumbphone.

I'll say it's "distraction-free." It doesn't do anything. I guess you can play chess with it? Or use it like a pocket calculator?

The elephant in the room is that none of these companies that are betting their futures on "AI"—whatever they mean by that—has yet to prove that consumers are interested. Last I heard, Apple Intelligence wasn't exactly driving up iPhone sales figures, either. They say the new MacBook Pros have it, too ... great?

I was at Best Buy the other day, and I saw an electric toothbrush that claimed to clean your teeth with AI. It cost $360. Does anybody buy this stuff? Even as gifts? I just can't see how slapping some mostly-meaningless tag onto a product that people are already familiar with, then upping the price, is going to be of interest to any average person.