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The Lowdown on Lidar

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Re: The Lowdown on Lidar

#181

Post by timdierks »

DanBC wrote: post #159
timdierks wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I submitted the link with the title you note for the following three reasons: 1. Josh Bloch is an author of particular interest to this community. 2. When I searched to see if the page had already been submitted, I noted that recent HN posts on LIDAR were on technical laser ranging (e.g. in mapping applications), not on speed enforcement. 3. I thought it was an article that would be of interest to HN readers, so I th…

"The Lowdown on LIDAR (Josh Blochs presentation)" is 47 chars and would probably have been kept. Your title is link-baity. "Beats speeding ticket" and "with science" are obvious link bait. I'm kind of surprised that you thought your replacements would stick.

How would a reader know that this has to do with speeding radar, and not LIDAR use in ranging / mapping?

And I think it's relevant that the content of the presentation is scientific/analytic, rather than related to using legal strategies to invalidate a speeding ticket, for example.

Re: The Lowdown on Lidar

#182

Post by Fomite »

saosebastiao wrote: post #45
growse wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly because the cost/benefit just isn't there. In the UK, the data shows that speeding (excessive speed for the conditions above the speed limit) is the primary cause in single digit percentage of accidents. I believe there's data from 1996 and 2007 for this, will dig it out when I'm not on mobile. If you want to spend money on accident prevention, there's much better things to target than speeding.

I have yet to get into an accident, but I actively avoid walking across several streets in Seattle because of a combination of entitlement thinking (This road is mine because I'm in a car!), and pervasive speeding. I'm not the only one...I recently found out almost nobody on my side of a local road will cross the road due the same problem. The road, therefore, has become a barrier to commerce and has split a communit…

I feel this way in the vast majority of Maryland.

Re: The Lowdown on Lidar

#183

Post by joncrocks »

darksim905 wrote: post #53
joncrocks wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think all he way trying to say that there are ways that a LIDAR gun could give a false reading, and there's no current incentive for law enforcement/manufacturers to ensure accuracy. In fact there's an incentive for both the manufacturer to emphasise accuracy based on successful prosecutions, and for police to emphasise accuracy to prevent large-scale contesting of tickets. They are used for law-enforcement, but pr…

Where are you people getting your information that they aren't available for public scrutiny? Has no one ever heard of Guys of LIDAR? http://www.guysoflidar.com/ Granted, they can't dump the firmware these devices use but they are very telling in what these detectors can pick up, can't, real world examples, and so on.

I hadn't realised they were commercially available as well. No I hadn't heard of guys of LIDAR, good to know there's someone out there fighting for the little guy.

Re: The Lowdown on Lidar

#184

Post by ksikka »

dmoo wrote: post #17
justinsb wrote: post #9

Can anyone tell me why speeding tickets aren't enforced with video cameras (like red-light tickets are)? It would seem to be much more accurate, much easier to enforce, and much harder to dispute. Irrespective of the rights or wrongs of speed limit laws, I do believe that consistent and efficient enforcement can only be a good thing.

In Ireland we have a system where you can contest any of these automated fines in court. The problem is that the fines and penalty points double should you contest and lose. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penalty_points_in_Ireland

It's funny that they make it like a game. Actually it's a lot like challenging a word in scrabble.

Re: The Lowdown on Lidar

#185

Post by robert_tweed »

kudu wrote: post #83

Why do HN mods keep changing the title from meaningful ones, which make the reader interested in the content, to generic, vague ones? You'll see that there's definitely a correlation between the moment that HN mods change the title and the post dropping off the top frontpage spot.

A few days ago I commented about how an HN title had made me expect that the Amazon 3D printing store was 3D printing as a service, which alas, it is not.

The mods changed the title, which in that case made it less misleading, but they didn't leave any comment to say what the old title was. My comment no longer made any sense, and because a few hours had passed, I couldn't edit it to add a footnote for confused readers (and plus, I couldn't remember the precise wording of the original title).

I can understand why the titles are sometimes changed and most of the time I think it's for the better (although this time I agree it was a bad choice). What I would like to see added is a changelog feature, so that whenever the mods change a title, a footnote appears directly below the summary, before comments, showing who changed the title, what it had been, and optionally the reason it was changed.

Re: The Lowdown on Lidar

#186

Post by bmurphy1976 »

curtis wrote: post #109
kudu wrote: post #83

Why do HN mods keep changing the title from meaningful ones, which make the reader interested in the content, to generic, vague ones? You'll see that there's definitely a correlation between the moment that HN mods change the title and the post dropping off the top frontpage spot.

I'd really like to see more transparency when it comes to title changes. The most recent case where one of my submissions had a title change mirrors what kudu is describing here: a meaningful (and I think accurate) title changed to a generic and vague one -- followed by a rapid decline in the rate of upvotes. I think there are legitimate reasons for title changes, and I think that the Hacker News mods generally do go…

> I'd really like to see more transparency when it comes to title changes

So would I. Last time I mentioned this I got my head bit off (that's how it's always been!!). I don't care. It could AND SHOULD be better and WILL be if we demand it.

Re: The Lowdown on Lidar

#187

Post by BrandonMarc »

kudu wrote: post #83

Why do HN mods keep changing the title from meaningful ones, which make the reader interested in the content, to generic, vague ones? You'll see that there's definitely a correlation between the moment that HN mods change the title and the post dropping off the top frontpage spot.

Agreed ... the title mentioning a guy using LIDAR (and Science!) to dispute a traffic ticket is completely different from a title that says "here's how LIDAR works". I agree, some transparency, or at least a history of previous titles, would be helpful.

Hell, lots of times I'll load 10 HN threads in my browser, to read later ... and then later when I get to them I refresh to start with the latest comments, look at the headline, and think "Um? When did I click on this? And where's that thread about ___? I think I clicked on that before ..."

Re: The Lowdown on Lidar

#188

Post by dzhiurgis »

Perhaps anyone can explain me why Lidar is not dangerous to sight?

Whenever you see anyone working with lasers they'd wear protective glasses. Now I realise Lidar uses infrared wavelength which is not visible to us, but that does not mean it's not dangerous, or does it?

Re: The Lowdown on Lidar

#189

Post by krapp »

DanBC wrote: post #154
Alupis wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd really like to see more transparency I agree. From the random weighting down of certain articles, to title changes, to just flat-out removing/flaging some posts... it seems HN is becoming a "whatever the Mod who happens to be on today feels like" site -- which really detracts from the awesomeness of HN -- I'm not looking for a gatekeeper news site - if I wanted that, I'd go to CNN or something.

You're saying mods are responsible for some things that are user actions.

If dang is concerned about the noise being caused by users complaining about the effect of certain actions (either by mods or users,) that could probably be cleared up in the UI. Something as simple as an asterisk or an automatically generated note mentioning whether a mod changed a title or user flags killed a story would possibly clear up confusion.

Although the logical outcome of this would be some kind of graph generated for each thread that plots upvotes, downvotes, mod actions, user edits etc. over time but that would be insane...

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