PeterScott 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Tom Lehrer, Still Awesome, Releases Lyrics Into The Public Domain

    PeterScott ( profile ), 24 Oct, 2020 @ 06:30am

    Good Fallout music...

    I am replaying Fallout 3 recently (GoG DRM free), and this seems like very good Fallout 3 music.

  • On the post: Canadian Man Arrested For Not Being A Terrorist

    PeterScott ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2020 @ 11:32am

    Zero sympathy. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

    Usually I agree with Techdirt.

    But IMO, making terrorist hoaxes should be a crime. The end goal is likely the same. Fear.

    Obviously the punishment should not be (and isn't) as severe as real terrorism, but this isn't a game that should be condoned.

  • On the post: Latest Denuvo Version Cracked Again By One Solo Hacker On A Personal Mission

    PeterScott ( profile ), 11 Jul, 2018 @ 04:16pm

    He is going to end up with mad code debugging skills.

    Fighting his way through purposefully obfuscated code, will give him extremely good skills debugging unintentionally obfuscated code, that lives in too many old large code bases.

    GOG is my only source of games, and CDPR have shown that the best way forward is respecting your customers.

    While I won't use his product. I cheer the dismantling of DRM, in hopes that more companies can see the light on respecting customers and selling DRM free games at GOG, which is the only way I will buy them.

  • On the post: Bob Murray Sends Judge Whiny Letter Saying That Losing Case To John Oliver Is Making People Say Mean Things To Him

    PeterScott ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2018 @ 02:53pm

    Wow. That's like preschool level whining.

    Johnny is is still making fun of me...

    Did his mother never tell him about "Sticks and Stones"?

  • On the post: Uber's Video Shows The Arizona Crash Victim Probably Didn't Cause Crash, Human Behind The Wheel Not Paying Attention

    PeterScott ( profile ), 23 Mar, 2018 @ 10:57am

    Re: Re: Re: This is a watcher problem

    Why are we calling them the "safety driver" then? It seems to me that it's exactly what the public expects of them. "Normal drivers" aren't necessarily "engaged" either. You don't get away with killing someone because you had cruise control on, or Telsa's autopilot.
    Misnomers and bad assumptions don't change the realities of human reaction. The person in the seat, is NOT the driver. The car is doing all the driving. The person is monitoring the car. We should call them Autonomous Vehcile Monitors. AV Monitors are effectively passengers. If an emergency happens, the car is supposed to handle it. The monitor is not pressing the brakes every time the AV gets close to something. They are really assuming the AV will hit the brakes because the AV is driving. If an emergency happens an AV monitor would have to: 1: Recognize it. But since they are in relaxed passenger mode, it would almost certainly take longer than an actual driver, who would be more engaged. 2: Recognize that the car isn't going to handle. Because they are used to the car doing all the driving and handling all the situation, this could be a long pause. 3: Shift into driving mode, grab the controls and take action, and this will take time because unlike a normal driver, they aren't already using the controls. Regardless of how you try to legislate this, there are many more cognitive and physical steps for an AV monitor to take than a regular driver, an it will take them a multiple of the time a regular driver would to react. Thus considering them a safety element in any fast developing emergency is absurd. As I said in a previous post: If an AV isn't considered safe enough to operate on it's own without a backup/safety driver, then it should not be considered safe enough to operate with one, because the difference between those two is mostly illusory. IMO, given the failure by this Uber platform, it does NOT meet that safe enough standard, and shouldn't be permitted on the road with or without a backup/safety/monitor in the seat.

  • On the post: Uber's Video Shows The Arizona Crash Victim Probably Didn't Cause Crash, Human Behind The Wheel Not Paying Attention

    PeterScott ( profile ), 23 Mar, 2018 @ 09:50am

    Re: BMW/Mercedes/Audi infrared would have spotted this cyclist

    None of the thermal systems apply brakes for collision avoidance.

    They just put a video image on a screen. Thermal cameras tend to be too low resolution to provide meaningful data for self driving cars.

  • On the post: Uber's Video Shows The Arizona Crash Victim Probably Didn't Cause Crash, Human Behind The Wheel Not Paying Attention

    PeterScott ( profile ), 23 Mar, 2018 @ 09:32am

    Re: Re: Uncharacteristically poor slanting by techdirt.

    First, Uber should be on the road if the car is at least as safe as the human driver that they allow on the road.
    There is no evidence that Uber AV's are safe. You fail to grasp the "watcher" problem, that makes a human observer much less effective than a normal human driver.
    Second, the human driver isn't a scapegoat, he/she is there to make sure the car is at least as safe as a human driver (which is the standard the law holds us to). If the car was less safe than that standard, it's the human driver's fault.
    As someone already posted. The human backup is NOT required under Arizona law. So you can't claim her role is to intervene and make it safer. The role of such backup/safety drivers is mostly about providing the illusion of safety. A real driver that is already operating the controls of a car, will usually take ~1.5 seconds to react to an emergency. Someone who isn't actually driving the car is obviously going to take MUCH longer to react to an emergency, so there is no way this backup driver can be as safe as a normal driver. If an AV isn't considered safe enough to operate on it's own without a backup/safety driver, then it should not be considered safe enough to operate with one, because the difference between those two is mostly illusory.

  • On the post: Uber's Video Shows The Arizona Crash Victim Probably Didn't Cause Crash, Human Behind The Wheel Not Paying Attention

    PeterScott ( profile ), 23 Mar, 2018 @ 07:25am

    Re: This is a watcher problem

    Thanks for getting it. The reaction time of an actual engaged driver to a surprise event is something like 1.5 seconds.

    It will obviously be worse from someone who is essentially monitoring the car. So it would be completely unfair to expect them to react as a normal driver would.

  • On the post: Uber's Video Shows The Arizona Crash Victim Probably Didn't Cause Crash, Human Behind The Wheel Not Paying Attention

    PeterScott ( profile ), 23 Mar, 2018 @ 07:50am

    Disingenuous expert?

    “If I pay close attention, I notice the victim about 2 seconds before the video stops,”

    I have checked this, and that claim seems very disingenuous. I used a stopwatch and timed it on multiple runs.

    I get 1.0 seconds average from the time I see the first visible indication, and when the video freezes.

    1.0 and "about 2 seconds" are significantly different. Different enough, that I question the motivations of "Expert" that is that far off from the truth when making public statements.

    Check it yourself.

    Normal driver reaction time to a surprise event it 1.5+ seconds. There is no way in hell an average normal driver would even touch the brakes before hitting her.

    I am not trying to exonerate Uber. The Car should NOT be limited to visible beam of the headlights. LIDAR should have picked her out of the shadows. The car failed. The fleet should be grounded indefinitely.

    Hopefully the official investigators will ignore the media circus around this.

    It probably would have been best to say nothing, and not release video until after the investigation was concluded.

  • On the post: Uber's Video Shows The Arizona Crash Victim Probably Didn't Cause Crash, Human Behind The Wheel Not Paying Attention

    PeterScott ( profile ), 22 Mar, 2018 @ 06:50pm

    Re:

    The whole point is to be a scapegoat when something goes wrong?

    Because if you are watching a car drive, you are really in no position to take over fast enough if something like this goes wrong.

  • On the post: Uber's Video Shows The Arizona Crash Victim Probably Didn't Cause Crash, Human Behind The Wheel Not Paying Attention

    PeterScott ( profile ), 22 Mar, 2018 @ 05:46pm

    Re: Re: tl;dr

    The paper is wrong.

    Here is the streetview, with a X in green to show the accident location. You can see the accident location from 45 MPH limit sign:
    https://i.imgur.com/oN57tu2.jpg

    Bottom Right corner of the image, is the vidcap from a video uploaded yesterday, showing that Limit sign is still 45 MPH.

    And here is the Video uploaded yesterday, Sign is visible around 26 seconds.

    https://youtu.be/1XOVxSCG8u0?t=24s

    I don't see how that can be a 35 MPH zone with a clearly marked 45 MPH limit sign right in front of it.

  • On the post: Uber's Video Shows The Arizona Crash Victim Probably Didn't Cause Crash, Human Behind The Wheel Not Paying Attention

    PeterScott ( profile ), 22 Mar, 2018 @ 05:05pm

    Re: Re: Uncharacteristically poor slanting by techdirt.

    I saw a video shot after the accident. The posted limit is 45 MPH.

  • On the post: Uber's Video Shows The Arizona Crash Victim Probably Didn't Cause Crash, Human Behind The Wheel Not Paying Attention

    PeterScott ( profile ), 22 Mar, 2018 @ 04:47pm

    Uncharacteristically poor slanting by techdirt.

    Techdirt:
    Check your own previous story. The chief didn't say darted.

    She said "based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway."

    That is a direct quote from the previous Techdirt story.

    What the chief said in that previous story is a fair characterization of what happened in the video. She does appear right out the shadows when the headlights hit her.

    First: the victim certainly did cause this collision. She is casually crossing a 45 MPH road, in the dark while wearing dark clothes. It's fatally reckless to do that. You don't count on car to stop for you in broad daylight on a 25 MPH road, it's suicidal to do on 45 MPH road in the dark.

    Second: Ubers Vehicle shouldn't be on the road if they can't pick out one person crossing an empty road. All the blame belongs to the pedestrian and Uber.

    Third: The Safety driver would have no chance to react in time, even if she was paying attention. She still isn't driving. Reaction time would be longer than typical 1.5 seconds of someone actually driving, instead of watching. Also, I strongly dispute anyone would have seen the victim a full 2 seconds before impact. You don't get to rewind the video multiple times real life until you see what you are expecting. The first time I watched that video, it was "shit- boom", and I knew it was coming.

    The safety driver is in an impossible situation and should not be a scapegoat for a fatally reckless pedestrian and poor Uber technolgy.

  • On the post: Sequel To 'Man From Earth' Released On Pirate Sites By Its Creators

    PeterScott ( profile ), 20 Jan, 2018 @ 07:09am

    Re: Proof peoole will watch anything.

    @Valis Some of us like slower, thought provoking SciFi. TMFE has an 8.0 on IMDB. But you can stick to Michael Bay movies, if you want more action. I loved the original Man from Earth. Watched it with friends many years ago and thought it was a hidden gem we stumbled upon. I never heard the story of how it leveraged file sharing. Unfortunately TMFE:Holocene isn't getting great reviews, and it really seemed that TMFE, really was a movie that shouldn't have a sequel.

  • On the post: Canada Copyright Troll Threatens Octogenarian Over Download Of A Zombie War Game

    PeterScott ( profile ), 31 Oct, 2016 @ 12:32pm

    Stephen Harpers legacy lives on.

  • On the post: Billionaire Backer Of Palantir & Facebook Insists He's Bankrupting Journalists To Protect Your Privacy

    PeterScott ( profile ), 16 Aug, 2016 @ 10:17am

    Laughable to call Gawker journalism.

    What they did with Hogan was right up there with revenge Porn.

  • On the post: Apple Punishes iFixit For Doing A Tear Down On Apple TV

    PeterScott ( profile ), 06 Oct, 2015 @ 11:08am

    Re: iFixit is in the wrong

    Agreed. I read techdirt a lot but seldom comment.

    But this time the headline is one sided, and misses the basic truth here.

    iFixit violated an agreement that allowed them early access to hardware.

    That is what they are being punished for.

  • On the post: Wil Wheaton Discusses TV, Cord-Cutting, Piracy… And Trying Desperately To Make Sure Fans Can Watch His Show

    PeterScott ( profile ), 07 Jun, 2014 @ 05:43am

    Cost a lot of money to make?

    I like Wil Wheaton, I love him on TBBT, and his writings on Nerd stuff.

    But this show was pretty bad. It's him standing in front of a green screen for the whole show (cheaper than a real studio with a desk/chair), with one bad bad static computer graphic as his background. Content is covering SciFi with really bad humor layered on top.

    It is really, quite bad.

    Sorry Wil.

  • On the post: DailyDirt: You're Eating That Fruit All Wrong…

    PeterScott ( profile ), 06 Dec, 2013 @ 08:41pm

    On the Apple. Apples are one of the most pesticide laden fruits and the great concentrations are in the top/bottom. I don't eat those parts at all.

    On Banana peeling. WTF? Pulling the stem back is how I get started peeling it. How do you start it cleanly from the bottom?

  • On the post: Time To Change Your Fingerprints: Apple's Fingerprint Scanner Already Hacked

    PeterScott ( profile ), 23 Sep, 2013 @ 06:45am

    @"Yeah smart guy, how about your prints are all over your phone. "

    Borrow a friends phone and try to lift any clean print off it (let alone the exact one you need). You are watching too much CSI if you think you can pull that off.

    This "hack" starts with the owner providing them a perfect smudge free print on a clean glass.

    I know it is fashionable for some to bash Apple at every turn, but I hoped we could have a reasoned discussion about how likely it is someone could pull this off in the real world, by surreptitiously trying to pull a print from a phone or other surfaced in the home/office.

    I would say that chances are approaching zero.

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