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[wierd]

Microsoft announces feature nobody wants.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/7/17089850/microsoft-windows-10-s-mode-changes-2019

Place your bets-- place your bets.  According to Verge, MS intends this for corporations, schools, and other "lockdown preferred" environments, but how much do you want to bet that it will be insanely pervasive in the tablet and cloudbook space, and that it will be the bane of everyone's existence except microsoft?

[Tack]

I mean i could name at least someone who is not a murderer, but could easily become a Luddite terrorist.

... ludo-terrorism?

[nenjin]

nenjin's frothing rage isn't confined by mere thread boundaries.

My cup overfloweth.

[martinuzz]

A self-driving car from Uber Technologies hit a pedestrian crossing the street in Phoenix, Arizona. The woman died in hospital somewhat later.
According to the police, the car was driving in autonomous mode at the time of the accident, with a human test driver present behind the wheel.
For now, Uber Technologies has put all of it's programs for self-driving cars in the US and Canada on hold.

[Starver]

Ah yes. The Bridget Driscoll effect.

[Egan_BW]

Alright, failed once. Let's not, I dunno, try to learn from this? Improve the design?

[Egan_BW]

People aught to start instead hitting traditional car makers with lawsuits over deaths that could have been prevented by putting an AI in charge. :p

[PTTG??]

How do we know that the car wasn't trying to save more lives in a trolley-question-style philosophical dilemma?

[smjjames]

Given the fact that there was an individual behind the wheel, I'm betting that their cars are in the "let's just try not to hit stuff" phase rather than making any weighted decisions about what to hit and what not to hit.

Apparently having someone behind the wheel wasn't enough to stop the car in case there was something wrong this time.

Not sure how feaseable, but maybe one way to test is to stick the sensors and stuff onto a car, but run it in simulation mode and not have it control the car while the driver does their thing. Seems like one way to test it out without risking other peoples lives too much. If it fails, then at least it won't drive over the pedestrian.

Though yeah, I'd agree perhaps slowing down the progress or at least more controlled testing.

The only other way to absolutely guard against pedestrian hits is to completely separate the road space from the walking space, but that'd require a complete redesign of our cities.

[martinuzz]

Developing self-walking pedestrians before developing the cars might work

[scourge728]

Are we sure the person in the car actually attempted to stop the car, for all I know they were asleep...

[IcyTea31]

A good question would be, would a human driver in the same conditions have made the same mistakes and hit the pedestrian? If the pedestrian suddenly started jaywalking from behind a parked car or something, you can't really say the accident happened because the car wasn't driven by a human. On the other hand, if the pedestrian was visible from literally a mile away, wearing a hi-vis vest and crossing the street on a green light with a red light for the car lane...

[Starver]

The most I've heard about it (mere snippets) was that it was a non-crosswalk crossing, i.e. no pedestrian right-of-way. Now, jaywalking may be akin to a capital crime, over there, but it does leave unsaid (in anything I've glanced at, though it's surely noted somewhere) how the victim/offender got within the 'anticipation zone' without already being fully-enough anticipated.

It could go from full on suicide-dash, through extremely unpredictable change of direction, via mere carelessness and over onto a mere excusable inattention that unfortunately clashed with the car's undiagnosed blindspot (visual, like turning into a side-road with cars parked all round the corner, or computational in that there was overconfidence about 'missing' LIDAR responses). When I get time, I may go seek answers to resolve my so far hypothetical scenarios, but I know that greater minds than I (including, but not limited to, ones closer to the incident in legal ways) are already doing this and I doubt I could add much more to their insights.

[smjjames]

Sounds like the testing method I mentioned above might actually help them as it deals with unpredictable situations while in simulation mode.

[Zangi]

Driverless car kills its first pedestrian.
Humans: "Oh no!  I'm gonna jump to conclusions and say driverless cars are not as safe as human drivers!"