Yeah - I do offroading, many times on dirt roads that have a hundred or more foot drop, if I stray too far. And too far isn't very far. Narrow enough that there is a schedule - on the half hour, go down, on the hour, go up. I'm certain these Waymo cars couldn't do that type driving. And I'm glad you wrote about it too, because someone will try to chime in that I'm talking an edge case. Well, if there are edge cases like your's and mine where we are better able to run them ourselves, then no, Waymo cars are definitively not better than human driven cars, unless they do that cherry picking. The cost of simple mistakes in some of my driving are immediate, deadly, and I always keep my life insurance updated.

BTW, I have most of the modern driving hardware on my Jeep already. Know what I do when one mistake will kill me? I turn them off, put it into 4-lo, traction control off, and enjoy the adrenaline rush.

Certainly at present, but the goal of eliminating humans from vehicles will mean that unless we can get people to travel at those urban speeds means the self driving cars will be going faster.

Exactly. The problem is that any pure 'ism will pretty quickly destroy itself - with one exception. Pragmatism. Pragmatism is not pure anyhow, it selects for what works. Not what it has been told should work.

Interesting you bring up China. Because they have been selecting bits here and there of what works. Just like we have done here.

The problem we have now in the US is that many people fell for believing what they heard. This has ended up punishing certain groups - like farmers, who are very conservative. But also have reaped much money reward from the farm bill, a completely socialistic bill, that even pays some for leaving their fields empty.

Along comes Trump and his merry band of crooks, telling the farmers and other groups that they are going to get rid of those people sucking up the tax dollars, or whatever these people want to hear, then wreck their celebration of "finally getting someone in Washington who will make America great again. Get rid of them ferners, and other BS. A very expensive lesson being learned, when people believe that incompetents who just figure out the soundbites, yet deliver nothing of substance, only failure.

Reminds me of the old Tea Party and one of their slogans that turned up from time to time at their rallies, "Keep Government's Filthy hands off my Medicare and Social Security!" The mid- to far right hates socialism except when their own socialism is cut, or that people cannot afford to buy their product, when tariffs reduce their foreign sales because other countries stopped buying their products.

So how do you feel about the economic structure of the USA. Because it is in no way, shape or form capitalism.

Usually, the statement "I hate capitalism" is a dog whistle for "I hate the USA." But that's a requirement here in slashdotland.

What we have here in the US is a number of different things, all layered together. We have socialism, where people with low incomes can get things like computers, cell phones, housing assistance, food assistance, immunizations, Special free food programs for women infants and children, heating oil assistance, free transportation for certain groups like elderly and poor, medicaid and others. Road clearing and repair for everyone. State parks - we have some real beauties here in PA, where BTW, EV chargers are being installed. Freaking awesome.

That is anti-capitalism. Closer to socialism. There is absolutely no profit in this. I generally support all of that.

There is a top layer of corporatism which is not capitalism. Sometimes people confuse that. There is a general propaganda fueled consensus that there are a few wealthy people here, the large majority are staving in the street, because capitalism.

But here's the catch. In order to provide the semi - socialistic products provided, there needs to be (cover the children's ears everyone) - money available to do that stuff.

So we have taxes. But you need profits to pay those taxes. In irony, much of the taxes comes from people who make a living from those corporations. Our corporatism fuels our socialism. The money has to come from somewhere.

And that was a big problem for the communists. Their people didn't make enough money to support the grand idea "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.

I would like to propose a question to the people who want to eliminate human drivers. Since humans are unsafe, and Waymo's are apparently the best thing since multiple orgasm, does it not follow that all safety equipment like seat belts, air bags, roll cages, crumple zones - the entire safety shebang should be eliminated? because apparently once we are all driving without a human having any control over the car, the number of accidents will be so low, as close to zero as is possible - that it makes no sense to have safety equipment, it will just be an added cost, without benefit, and never used. A human death will become national news.

City boy! Your stupid hick model is interesting. Meanwhile I travel a lot on back roads, and I come across a lot of people who drive 25 in a 45. 30 in a 55 zone.

Since I want to drive around the speed limit, these stupid hicks who drive like the devil is chasing them? They find a safe point to pull over. Then I wave to thank them, and they wave back.

Are there numbnut hicks that drive too fast? Sure there are those, but the countryside has no monopoly on that, just like they occasionally pull someone over for going 30 mph over the speed limit on 25 mph on my street. And I live 2 miles from the urban center of my city. And the pocket rocket riders who have wheelie challenges on the major artery through the city, and the tuner people who apparently are fantasizing they are in the Lemans.

Not one of them in the countryside, we're talking urbane, sophisticated people, not hicks.

Claims. Waymo is attempting to prove a negative. Giving an actual number of crashes with injuries they didn't have?

Seriously this on the same logic level of asking "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?"

What is more, they have achieved the amazing data of how many lives they have saved through hypothetical accidents that did not happen.

In the intel world, that is called not knowing what you do not know.

There is a solution to the human driver as the dealer of death, the incompetent that must be removed from anything to do with the car. My vehicle has all the safety items needed but the final step. It has emergency braking that works, blind spot sensors, collision and pedestrian avoidance and lane assist - just not the final step. Lane assist can't be used for self driving because it will ping pong you, but it will pull you away from the center or push you back from the side.

And it works. Though the first time it saved my ass it was scary just how well it worked. You do not want to forgoe seat belts in a car with collision avoidance brakes.

As a side note, my Mac just upgraded/updated to Golden Gate 27.0 from Tahoe. A huge upgrade. Unlike my Windows machines it is working 100 percent after the upgrade and updates.

I query the group. What is a better computer, a Windows machine you can't even log into and use (although you can see ads on teh login screen. Or a Mac that continues to function like before, only with improvements. And if you are on a hard deadline? This isn't about some obscure software that only runs on one or the other OS - that goes both ways. This is about a computer that functions.

Ah, you beat me to it. I just commented much the same, while catching up on posts, but your post was last night. But yes, this whole thing sounds like fixing a problem that doesn't exist, and making problems.

I dunno - could be my perspective. I use LO spreadsheets to make things clear not obfuscate them.

And it occurred to me - I've spent a fair time in meetings with people that use excel to promote their proposals or progress. This hidden info in cells will make that useless, trust in the numbers gone, or at least a lot of time spent explaining and showing whatever they put in the single cell. I haven't used Excel in a while since I use LO, but sounds like I might be able to place an entire spreadsheet into one visible cell.

do you mean it destroyed the VM software? Or just restart it?

All that said, more and more computers are being rendered perfectly secure, because the minor bug they dutifully patched in the Quixotic quest to create perfect security creates that security by borking the computers.

Nothin' is as secure as a computer that is unplugged and in a closet because it doesn't work. At that time, it's doing forensics. Barely got my computer back in time for my tasking, after it got the 500 vulnerabilities patch.

Since Linux is heading down that path, let's hope they don't suffer the same issues Windows has.

And one that increases security by keeping the computer from booting on occasion. A couple weeks ago, the plethora of updates on my work computer borked my camera so no face login, wouldn't take my PIN or my password, wouldn't let me reset the password, rejected the question set.

It did however serve up ads on the login screen. Tied my IT guy up most of a week cuz it affected the one thing in the Bios I couldn't change. Security through bricking.

I'll agree when Linux updates act like Windows and render the computer inoperable. Had it happen twice on my work computer, which is managed by my employer. It got to the point where I installed the needed software on my Windows computer, which I manage.

As well is it not time we get away from the idea of perfect security be eliminating all the possible vulnerabilities until it is not possible to ever suffer any issues? I know the modern computer is aimed at people who don't have a clue. The present Paradigm is working great, is it not?

I predict Linux might start acting like Linux, we'll see, hope not, but my Mac doesn't seem to need hundreds of bugs fixed, and I've only had one update cause a problem - that was a jittery mouse, which was fixed a day later.