shutup!

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/06/700801945/uber-not-criminally-liable-in-death-of-woman-hit-by-self-driving-car-says-prosec

RIP self driving cars.

US prosecutor has determined that Uber is not criminally responsible for the death of a woman struck and killed by their self driving car. The prosecutor, lapping at the boots of her corporate gods, has instead accidentally put a bullet in the head of their future business model. By choosing to potentially prosecute the human occupant for the deficient software and negligent safety practices of the manufacturer, she is sending a powerful signal to anybody who might consider purchasing one in the future: don’t. Are you ****ing dumb? Don’t buy one. Google will ****ing murder someone, make you watch, and then send you to prison for it. Just, like, don’t.

ahahah. I saw that article and hadn't thought about it in that light. Kinda scary to think about.

In other news,



it looks like good old Musky boy has managed to catch the attention of the Pentagon for smoking weed on Joe Rogan, and his security clearance is "under review". Lmao

Tech companies are amazing at avoiding responsibility and liability.

wtf

(Apparently he is referring to this paper.)

Haven't actually read the paper, but I'm kinda curious now if it's because the data scientists forgot to train their facial recognition algorithms on any races outside their own race (versus the sillier explanation).

Edit: authors didn't find evidence for the "silly" explanation, in section 4.3.2:

So... yeah, it looks like self-driving cars are kinda racist.

but they trained it on a comprehensive data set of Bay Area workers and porn actresses???

when your self-driving cop cars kill more black people, too

Well, in this case the driver wasn't just a passenger, he was supposed to pay attention. I just hope he isn't the only one that'll be held responsible. Wouldn't it be nice if the actual people disabling all the safety protocols were held responsible for the death instead of a faceless corporation that will just get a fine?

I think in general these self-driving car companies would prefer they or their employees take the blame rather than the driver, regardless of the penalty. Charging occupants/nominal operators with manslaughter is a corporate death sentence in the long term. Indemnity agreements can work around almost any other slow moving regulatory issue, but you can’t indemnify for criminal charges.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. Uber and Alphabet deserve corporate death. Others, too! Lots of them! The hubristic villains who work there perhaps don’t, but anybody unethical or incompetent enough to put these cars on the road right now does deserve a lifetime ban from working on software.

Shipping goods will be far more profitable without drivers. We will be getting self-driving cars whether they are safe or not.

What's the most American image you can think of?

This idea has already been appropriated by advertisers:

Yeah this probably wins. Especially if it's an AR.

I find this kind of ad interesting. It's like trying to put an ironic distance between itself and trashy American stuff, but while also being for that same stuff. Which, according to Zizek, is often how we ideologically work today. Irony is at the core of our daily institutions working normally.

Anyone else think people underestimate Walmart relative to Amazon? It's not like everyone's going to stop going to stores ever, and Walmart is expanding its ecommerce pretty rapidly. They're also now a grocer on top of being a general bull**** seller. 2018 was a good year for them.

Can anybody defend "mandatory minimum sentencing"? Is there really a point to this kind of barbaric and expensive policy?

[quote=Ken White]Congress has given Ellis the power to give people like Manafort a break, but has denied him that power when the defendant is accused of many blue-collar crimes. Last year, Ellis sentenced a 37-year-old man named Frederick Turner to 40 years in federal prison for methamphetamine distribution. He had no choice: Congress passed laws making 40 years the mandatory minimum sentence.

More than half of federal prisoners received a mandatory minimum sentence. Congress has passed mandatory minimum laws for drugs, guns, child abuse, and child porn. President Trump pushed for harsher mandatory minimum laws for immigration cases. These laws reflect America’s judgment about which people are so irredeemable that federal judges should not have the discretion to show them the sort of lenience Ellis showed Manafort. That judgment favors the rich at the expense of the poor.[/quote]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/03/what-manafort-sentence-reveals/584452/

JAYsus Christ, we shoulda run HILLARY agani

[quote=The New York Times] The sharp left turn in the Democratic Party and the rise of progressive presidential candidates are unnerving moderate Democrats who increasingly fear that the party could fritter away its chances of beating President Trump in 2020 by careening over a liberal cliff.[/quote]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/09/us/politics/bernie-sanders-2020-election-democrats.html

lmao:



https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/1/23/18184192/kamala-harris-president-campaign-criminal-justice-record

SCOTUS: "California, your overcrowded prisons are an unconstitutionally cruel and unusual form of punishment."

The Office of AG Kamela Harris: "We'd love to follow the 8th Amendment but can't because we'd like to continue violating the 13th Amendment."

Amazon isn't an e-commerce company. They're a retailer, and their strategy is and always has been working toward predictive upselling. Their long-term vision is training time-poor professionals to trust Amazon to automatically make purchasing decisions for them.

You're an office worker, and you go home after a long day and the stuff you were thinking about buying is already there on your front step. And then you literally never go another store ever again.

That's what those stupid buttons were about, that's what Alexa is about. Amazon hasn't been hiding this from anybody.

So, yeah, sure, people underestimate Walmart's e-commerce operation. It's well known in the tech industry that Walmart punches above their weight in e-commerce, and they've caught up to Amazon in all of the areas that matter. Amazon's not special for being a retailer with an e-commerce platform. But at the same time, Walmart's strategy isn't even on the same map as Amazon's. They aren't even really competitors, so comparing them at all is foolish.

judicial activism for me, not for thee

Harris would lose in the general election. Hard.

Didn't check your link but generally, no.



Of course. It's a somewhat knee jerk reaction to judges that give insanely minimal sentences to people that have committed heinous acts. So now people that have committed minimal acts get insanely heinous sentences!

Yee haw, if there are two things conservatives love no matter where they're from, it's politicizing the courts and passing sentencing laws to work around the problems they created by politicizing the courts.

Well, courts are political. They don't need to be politicized to make that true. Just like how people can beat their case, to paraquote the intellectual giant R Kelly, I imagine bad judicial sentencing is a negative side effect of our system. Perhaps a streamlined recall process is a good remedy, if not already in place. Perhaps this issue somewhat depends on what type of convictions your concerned about.

That's a pretty pedantic reply. Of course courts are part of the political system so they're political in that sense. But clearly that's not what was meant.

It may not be but other than blaming conservatives there's not much else clear about his post.

Also not what was written, but I don’t expect even that much from him

youre the only “people” doing it, so who else would I blame?

Doing what, precisely? If you're talking about minimum sentencing rules then maybe. I don't know. If you're talking about politicizing the courts, that's a lie.

I'm sure everything looks politicized when you're as far up your own ******* as today's conservative, but from a socialist who's probably more sick of liberal **** than you are, let me promise you something: you don't know what you're talking about.

I'm honestly not sure any evidence exists which could convince you otherwise. "Conservatives didn't do anything wrong, and even if they did liberals did it too".

I love this quote if only you fix a few words:



Just like in 2016, lol.

but by adopting key republican pillars it will encourage moderate republicans to vote for democratic candidates. similarly, by adopting key coca-cola ingredients, it will encourage moderate soda fans to drink rc cola

Believe it or not, and it might have been a bit from a post of yours, but I have been thinking about the liberal v. socialist thing. I am honestly sorry that my apathy/lethargy on this stuff inhibits fully engaging in these sorts of talks. I think I get a lot more where you're coming from now. Kind of sad, actually. I know we've all aged and we're a bit different now but if you had cared less about trolling people you wanted to distract you might have been able to better influence many people here. I mean that genuinely.



Wow, who said that?

Defense mechanism against cognitive dissonance?

No, not at all. Sincere.

Everybody ni the world who disagrees with Jon`C has severe cognitive dissonance because socialism is literally true. Michael Savage was right: liberalism really IS a mental disorder

(I think?)