Fingerprinting is a nice analogy, Buttle. How can we be sure that all that pollution, CO2 levels, nitric oxide levels and cow farts are A) our fault, and B) actually causing changes in climate?

We cant be sure unless we predict, and then wait a few decades and keep measuring, can we? So we have to say, along with the man falling from the skyscraper, everything OK so far!

So the hysteria about nuclear weapons was a bit silly, beacause we would not all die in an all-out nuclear war. Because people high on hillsides on the far side of New Zealand with food and water and seeds and medical supplies for a couple of years would make it fine. They would not freeze, it now turns out.

Then maybe climate change will be OK too.

Yeah, he hits the tee, but he ONLY hits tee. If you freeze frame the moment before impact, you can see the club head is well below the ball, if he'd made any contact, at best the ball would have gone nearly straight up.

The flat lighting makes it hard to tell, but it also seems the ball's shadow disappears as soon as it starts to move.

Oh.
Could have been funny if only it was 1)acted better, 2)written better 3) not been horrible quality with freezes and out of sync audio and 4) ended after <30 seconds. As it was, I couldn't sit through all 3:47

I think my work's 15" MBP (Retina; early 2013) has that NVIDIA crash problem (e.g., a Kernel panic from last year but never saw them again], display freezes [think I can get out of it if I put it to sleep and wake it up, but need to retry it for the next crash to confirm], but it is SO rare that it crashes.

The freeze frame at 2:12 says:

*the number changes depending on which source you're reading from, but it's roughly around that

Also, did you know:
"Britain" comes from the latin: "Britanus Denticus" - which translates as "realm of ecellent teeth and outstanding dentists". We have excellent dentistry in Britain. It's right up there with our world-famous cuisine and love of public speaking.

Shall we get back to the video?

The inherently chaotic event that exists in the otherwise predictable / trainable environment of driving a car is the unplanned / unmeasured disturbance. In control systems that are adaptive or self learning, the unplanned disturbance is the killer - a short duration, unpredictable event for which the system is unable to respond to within the control limits that have been defined through training, programming and/or adaptation. The response to an unplanned disturbance is often to default to an instruction that is very much human derived (ie. stop, exit gracefully, terminate instruction, wait until conditions return to controllable boundary conditions or freeze in place) which, depending on the disturbance, can be catastrophic. In our world, with humans behind the wheel, let's call the unplanned disturbance the "mistake". A tire blows, a load comes undone, an object falls out of or off of another vehicle (human, dog, watermelon, gas cylinder) etc.

The concern from my perspective (and I work directly with adaptive / learning control systems every day - fundamental models, adaptive neural type predictors, genetic algorithms etc. ) is the response to these short duration / short response time unplanned disturbances. The videos I've seen and the examples that I have reviewed don't deal with these very short timescale events and how to manage the response, which in many cases is an event dependent response. I would guess that the 1st dead person that results from the actions or inaction of self driving vehicles will put a major dent if not halt to the program. Humans may be fallible, but we are remarkably (infinitely?) more adaptive in combined conscious / subconscious responses than any computer is or will be in the near future in both appropriateness of response and the time scale of generating that response.

In the partially controlled environment (ie. there is no such thing as 100%) of a automated warehouse and distribution center, self driving works. In the partially controlled environment where ONLY self driving vehicles are present on the roadways, then again, this technology will likely succeed. The mixed environment with self driving co-mingled with humans (see "fallible" above) is not presently viable, and I don't think will be in the next decade or two, partially due to safety risk and partially due to management of these short timescale unplanned disturbances that can call for vastly different responses depending upon the specific situation at hand. In the flow of traffic we encounter the majority of the time, would agree that this may not be an issue to some (in 44 years of driving, I've been in 2 accidents, so I'll leave the risk assessment to the actuaries). But one death, and we'll see how high the knees jerk. And it will happen.

My 2 cents.
TB

In the guys (very slim) defense, he looked surprised to see the dogs, they appear to be great danes, and he could have a crippling fear of dogs. I don't even mean a phobia; I used to be so afraid of dogs when I was younger that my legs would freeze up and feel like jelly.
Everything else is his fault, of course, but the whole thing is strange. I think most public services schedule a time/day to lock pets in for safe access to the property, (but that's probably the kind of change they hope to encourage with this video.)
The other thing that bothers me is why the wife didn't yell at the guy. Was she afraid for her safety? Suffering from a case of suburbanitis?

I thought maybe they were spinning it so the edges didn't freeze up and stop it spinning...and then I realised I was spinning my logic in circles too.

Here in Victoria it RARELY gets below freezing. If the sun's out, T-shirts are fine any time of the year out on the course.

FORE!

He listed at least one reason, that because they are often single track systems, a single breakdown freezes the entire system.

Once it's assumed that it's not reliable or, worse, that there's a decent chance of being stuck in a suspended/elevated train until the whole system can be evacuated (requiring specialized rescue from every train that didn't stop in a station, then being 'down' until the breakdown is fixed or removed), people won't use it, and it will fail.

That doesn't explain why they don't just make all systems 2 track systems like the German one to solve that issue for a bit more money (but not double the money), but it does explain why some failed. It seems to me that they could still be a decent solution in some congested areas where light rail only adds to congestion, and they look neat.

You just know he's getting a little brain freeze.

Holy Crap! I better get my ass down there and claim that 1/5 that's left. It might not be too long before it's useable land, perhaps the most inhabitable land left, certainly the most inhabitable unclaimed land on the planet....unless, that is, the ocean currents stop, then it might actually get COLDER there.

That's not science fiction fantasy or a problem we might face a thousand years down the road, it's a real predicted possibility in the near future...right now, in the middle of winter, it's well above freezing in the Arctic,

and it's cold arctic water that drives the ocean currents. If there's no cold water in the arctic, there's no ocean current, and the oceans 'die' fairly quickly, with everything else to follow shortly thereafter from toxic gasses if not starvation.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/05mar_arctic/

Here's an informative piece about the storm in the Northern Atlantic that is predicted to push temperatures above freezing at the North Pole this week:

https://t.co/Qn6aeOWbdN

@eoe, I have a question for you.
What do you do about insects like ants in your home, or on your body? Do you kill them, or live and let live?
If you kill them, poison them, or toss them outside in the freezing weather, you can stop pretending you care about all animals and realize you only care about the one's you think are worth caring about, and only to the level you think is proper....just like all those meat eaters.
If you live and let live, good for you for living your convictions, but stay away from me with your bugs. ;-)