The optics are also really, really bad. I recall putting my bags through a scanner and walking through a metal detector when I visited Beijing in 2018. My first thought was “wow, must suck to live in a police state like this, can’t even take transit without being searched.”
“crime across the five boroughs is nowhere near the levels seen in the 1990s, and while there was a rise in 2022, those figures are already trending down this year.”
Your perception of your own personal safety is not an objective measure of crime
FTFY
Reported crime is not an objective measure of crime and should not form the basis of a policing strategy.
When police cease to act on reports of crime, people have no incentive to report crime (except for major property crime which might be covered by insurance, and things like murder).
This is why we can't trust the crime stats where I live (San Francisco).
Past policing strategy means that current crime stats are unreliable. These current crime stats should therefore not form the basis of a future policing strategy.
If we're optimizing for getting results today, policing strategy should not rely on the flawed crime stats we have today.
If we're optimizing for the long term, then sure rely on crime stats, but first make it easy to report crime.
If it's so difficult to report crimes, wouldn't that mean that the crimes that are reported represent the most egregious, since the people who reported them overcame the difficulty in reporting to report the crimes? And, therefore, current policing strategy should -- indeed -- focus on the reported crimes while making it easier to report them?
You have it backwards. The current policing strategy is the cause of the reported crimes mix.
People will report crimes that:
- they think the police will do something about, and/or
- they need to report in order to file an insurance claim
If your car window gets smashed and you're not going to report it to your insurer lest it raises your premium next year, and if you know the police aren't going to investigate, why would you report it?
Tracking the ownership of your Chrome extensions sounds exhausting, especially if you're someone who just wants to surf the damn web and are not some kind of super nerd.
I took a ride with an owner of a brand new BMW with glass cockpit and minimal buttons. He complained to the dealer about not being able to find any of the actions in the endlessly nested menus. The dealer's response: Use voice controls.
He tried it, and it's even worse than Siri in terms of reliability. Absolute unmitigated disaster.
Tell a Tesla to "go home" sometime, and it will respond what's obviously the best interpretation of your wish, namely playing Boney M's minor 1979 hit "Gotta Go Home" on Spotify. Fortunately, "stop wipers", "stop navigation" or in fact any kind of stop at all will instantly pause the disco assault.
Not all drivers can speak. Not all drivers speak in a way a voice control can reliably understand them. Not all drivers are in environments where voice commands can be easily understood, like loud music. If you are driving a car you likely have the ability to push a button.
And even when the driver can speak, use the language, be understood and the voice controls are reliable, sometimes they don't actually want to disturb the passengers sleeping in the car just to crack the sodding window open a bit!
I'm not entirely sure you've ever used voice controls.
I've never had experience with any car voice controls which didn't make me want to drive my car into a divider just to end the pain. Voice controls are so frustrating to use that I'm sure they are more distracting to use than even a touchscreen. I might be able to keep my eyes on the road easier with voice controls, but, my brain is going to be quickly annoyed and focused on trying to suss out why the voice control system is not understanding me, or am I using the wrong phrase, or do I need to put the windows up (impossible for me 6+ months of the year) so the car can hear me better?
It's like trying to pair bluetooth with a non-carplay (or non-android auto -- which I haven't used but heard good things about) with virtually all OEM and many aftermarket receivers. A uniquely frustrating experience which makes me wonder if QA departments at automakers actually exist.
> But the organization wants to see physical controls for turn signals, hazard lights, windshield wipers, the horn, and any SOS features like the European Union's eCall feature.
Those are exactly what is at issue.
This also needs to deal with multiple languages and regional accents for Europe.
If I, an American, rent a car in Germany, do I need to speak German in order to engage the windshield wipers? For that matter, navigating the on screen controls may also be problematic.
Yes, I have it. It's great. I much prefer a quick swipe on the side of the touchscreen to having a giant physical gear selector wasting a ton of space.
I honestly love just about everything about the UI of the refreshed Model S, from the yoke to the turn signal buttons to the on screen gear selector. Only thing I don't like is the horn button for the two times a year that I honk it.
Wasting what space? Sure, the gear selectors on a lot of cars are in the center console, and maybe I’d rather store something there. But I have never, in my entire history of driving cars, wanted to put anything right behind the steering wheel — first, it’s really awkward to get anything else there and second, any dangly thing there could tangle with the wheel, thus killing me.
So no, please keep the critical driving controls in fixed locations that are easy to access without looking away from the road or looking away. IMO that includes the horn, the turn signals, the wiper control, cruise control settings, and turn signals. And things I might want to adjust in a moderate hurry while driving should have fixed, tactile locations; climate control and sound volume are in this category.
My first car nailed all of this. Recent cars, not so much.
IMO, voice controls are good additional control modality, but not a good primary one, since the discoverability is zero. (And also they're usually just...not very good.)
Causing drivers to get road rage because they can't figure out the correct phrasing for voice controls probably also isn't a good idea.
Google Assistant still regularly misinterprets what I say <.<
Not to mention most voice assistants are fucking awful slow in language. It's like they pick a rural dweller as their speech model instead of a city slicker.
Just give me a button instead, it'll be quicker and less distracting.
Being able to honk the horn or turn the windshield wipers on from the back seat would certainly be an interesting feature, especially for people with kids.
I've heard some of the newer cars have pretty good voice controls, especially on the more expensive models. However, the companies tend to put these behind a subscription wall, which I hate. I don't want my car to be always connected to the cloud. I'll do my navigation via my phone, and nothing else requires connectivity (except perhaps if I had an EV and wanted to schedule charging stops).
Some reactions are instinctive and don’t require thought.
Imagine mid-sipping a drink and something falls out of a truck… garble garble garble —-crash.
Voice controls in an emergency wouldn’t work unless you require like 500 feet (maybe more) car to car separation. And then you have people with temporary voice conditions (losing voice) and permanent voice conditions (mute/dumb)
Like voice control is a reliable method of communication lol. Have an accent? Sorry can’t use your car.
Mute?
Cough?
Lost your voice at a concert?
Have the windows down?
Come on…
No, COVID-19 is not a type of flu. COVID-19 is caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, while the flu (influenza) is caused by different types of influenza viruses. Although both illnesses can cause respiratory symptoms such as fever, cough, and difficulty breathing, they are caused by distinct viruses with different genetic makeups and characteristics. Additionally, COVID-19 has been associated with more severe illness and a higher risk of complications compared to the flu in some cases.
Zoning restrictions on dense housing, car focussed sub/urban development, ignoring climate change, rampant low interest spending, and here we are. The middle class has no public infrastructure to fall back on. Transit is broken and not suitable for the aging population. Rents are rising faster than wages. Is it any wonder the birth rate is dropping?
After traveling in Europe with a young child, I concluded that a dearth of places for children to play outside, due to high population density, and the prevalence of public transit that is not well suited for young children, especially if you are trying to wrangle more than one, is a contributing factor to the low birthrates there.
If you’re referring to the USA, and if all these things are as severe and hopeless as you say then how do you explain that the birth rate has been rising slightly for the last few years?
How much is slightly? And the radioactive question - among which population are births concentrated? Isn't it usually recent immigrants who have the most?
What numbers are you looking at? There was a further decrease in the rate when COVID began, then a slight rebound from those depressed levels. The decline continued this year. Small fluctuations don't contradict a general trend.
