171–180 of 376 posts
Also a good reminder why exceptions and optionals exist. Bonkers that "I didn't get a response" defaults to 0.
A bit of an off-topic: I only ever saw white traffic lights in the US and Canada (specifically, pedestrian traffic lights) and they confused me a lot at first - the rest of the world uses green. The icons displayed (hands) are confusing too: the rest of the world uses an icon of a man walking or standing.
Just figured I'd mention that.
In the self-driving context, this reminds me strongly of Tesla Autopilot. Good enough to work most of the time, but likely would end up in greater overall injuries/accidents per mile if actually enabled at scale. Waymo, Cruise, Aurora, and others are doing it the right way.
I have no idea why (something in the compass integrated in the car? was GPS being hacked?). But the thought I kept having was "If I had a self-driving car, what would be the impact of this?". All I could think of was horrendous disasters for me and the other cars around me on the road.
A bit of an off-topic: I only ever saw white traffic lights in the US and Canada (specifically, pedestrian traffic lights) and they confused me a lot at first - the rest of the world uses green. The icons displayed (hands) are confusing too: the rest of the world uses an icon of a man walking or standing.
Don't know about Eastern Canada, but over in Western Canada, the only white signal light is the walking person symbol for cross walks. Otherwise, it's Red, Yellow, Green lights for the traffic, and a red hand or white walker for crossing the street. Just figured I'd mention that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The hand is to mimic that of a traffic cop. When they want you to stop, they hold up their hand to indicate that you need to stop. It used to be that you had to know english in order to understand them as well...many of the signs used to use the words "walk" and "don't walk"
I guess my point is that it was still confusing. It took me a day or two to acquire a reflex. It obviously doesn't matter in the long run - you just get used to it - but I wonder why would US & Canada go a different way with regards to so many small things (think turn signals on cars being red for american cars as another example)? What would be the rationale? It's as if the western hemisphere was completely cut off…
Seems like you understand it fairly well. I can't speak for Canada, but the U.S. mostly ignores how other parts of the world do things.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The older I get and the more systems I encounter, the more I'm convinced everything is in a state of failing. The question is only how long before it becomes noticable.
One of the consequences of this is when something goes very wrong, and the people involved say it really shouldn't have because something like 4 separate things have to fail at the same time for that to have happened. What they don't realise is that, thanks to the FFT, 2 of those 4 things actually failed over a year ago and the system has been continuing to work ever since without anyone ever noticing. One of the oth…
Just because you're paying someone to go check and they don't find anything 99% of the time, you don't get rid of that. If you do, there goes the pnly sensor capable of propagating that signal to the rest of the control network. Applies equally well in electronics/circuits/or human domains.
A bit of an off-topic: I only ever saw white traffic lights in the US and Canada (specifically, pedestrian traffic lights) and they confused me a lot at first - the rest of the world uses green. The icons displayed (hands) are confusing too: the rest of the world uses an icon of a man walking or standing.
I may be biased because I am used to the hand but I find the walk and hand shapes are very distinctive compared to the walk and stand. However green on walk would be nice.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess my point is that it was still confusing. It took me a day or two to acquire a reflex. It obviously doesn't matter in the long run - you just get used to it - but I wonder why would US & Canada go a different way with regards to so many small things (think turn signals on cars being red for american cars as another example)? What would be the rationale? It's as if the western hemisphere was completely cut off…
>I wonder why would US & Canada go a different way with regards to so many small things (think turn signals on cars being red for american cars as another example)? In many cases the US were the first to mass-manufacture things to some kind of standard, so the question is really: why did the rest of the world choose a different standard. Often they have a good reason (better design, maybe), but the US also has a good…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you suggesting I'm doing worse on Google Captchas because I consider pedestrian crossing lights as a form of traffic lights but Americans don't?
Best choices to pick on captcha are not what you think is pictured but what you think most people think is pictured.
In the end the known unknowns aren't that bad, just assume laziness and choose whatever checks the least boxes. But the unknown unknowns are regular culture shocks. Like pedestrian lights not being considered traffic lights.