To be fair, the article is trash. There's details in other publications, like Reuters:

"Waymo said its vehicle was at a complete stop at a four-way intersection when a large truck crossed the intersection in its direction. At its turn to proceed, the Waymo car moved forward.

However, the cyclist, who was obscured by the truck which the cyclist was following, took a left turn into the Waymo vehicle's path. When the cyclist was fully visible, the Waymo's vehicle braked heavily, but wasn't able to avoid the collision, the company said."

Drafting through an intersection is not very safe (I really should stop doing it myself) because of this exact visibility problem. Heck, it seems our cyclist friend cut left because they couldn't see the waymo car either.

Watch out when crossing busy intersections, folk! Cars are bulky and opaque. Yield when encountering busy intersections.

There are good parking garages and bad parking garages. What makes a good parking garage? I'd say good garages must be:

• Located away from attractions and venues. The garage should not operate as a way to funnel cars into a popular area but rather as a way to store cars for those unfortunate enough to be unable to arrive by alternative means.
• Located close to public transit. The garage should operate as a gateway into a local community, hence should have access to bike paths, trains and trams, buses, etc to carry their passengers into a community.
• Be priced to cover the garage cost. Garages are expensive and the hourly/daily fees with average occupancy should pay for the garage in 10 to 15 years.
• A tool to remove on-street parking and minimum parking requirements.

Bad garages are ones that break the good rules. They are:

• Are free or too cheap to pay off their construction cost and land value in a reasonable time period.
• Located inside downtown areas.
• A method to increase the capacity of car storage in downtowns.

It's also possible for a good garage to become a bad one. Say a small town installs a parking lot on the edge of town, but then the town grows. That lot should be removed due to the increased land value it occupies. The new medium sized town can consider adding a parking lot or garage again, but certainly not in their popular, profitable, and active downtown.

Let us window gaze then!

PUBLIC offers some nice internally geared city bikes and beach cruisers. Their 8i series is their top end. It's steel, has a 8-speed internal geared hub, fenders included, and with handles set for upright riding. Their optional rack looks like it pairs well with the frame. 8i series drive train gearing is something on the order of 28 to 86 gear inches. The cheaper 7i series is approximately 33 to 82 gear inches. Both are quite reasonable for city gearing with the 8i being easier for going up hills and an extra gear for better cadence matching.

Trek makes a beautiful city bike: the District 4 Equipped and has a step through version. Dynamo hub for always on lighting and the rack is included. Capable gearing at approximately 30 to 92 gear inches. IMHO, the best part is a Gates CDX carbon belt drive. Belt drives are even lower maintenance than a traditional bike chain. Never lube a chain again, battle with rust or road gunk, or become sad mid-ride with sand, mud, or ice fouling.

Speaking of belt drives, Priority specializes in them and has a big selection of commuting and recreational bikes. They even have a folding bike, which can be nice if you're stuck needing to drive or take a bus for one leg of a trip.

Handsome makes frames and will build a bike to your spec. For example, you can spec their mixte bike ("She Devil") with a Shimano Alfine 8-speed. Sellers like these are a great option, but I recommend finding a LBS willing to take a shipment and do final assembly work on it. Shipping completed bikes is expensive and you'll still need tune-ups now and then.

I'm sure there's more out there, but that's enough shopping for me today. Who else has thoughts? Or perhaps other neat finds?

The closest production bike available in the US similar to omafiets would be the beach cruiser. They're available as a single-speed with/without coaster brakes, or internally geared, have wide handle bars, step-through or stylish but still easy mounting frame, and often have color-matched basket and rack options.

Careful with what you wish for. Omafiets and cruisers work where there aren't significant hills. Heavy single speeds really suck when you're faces with even a moderate 4% grade. Practical urban bikes in the US really need some gearing.

The advice is good (steel and aluminum are much underappreciated) yet this op-ed is weird and mean spirited. Yeah, carbon fiber bikes are expensive and quirky. They're a specialty bike for racers squeaking out tens of seconds to a minute or two of time. No one is seriously advising new riders to get a 10 grand bike. Why the gatekeeping? Let racers spend their money on their favorite, healthy, and engaging hobby.

There's a whole suite of vaccines which do not provide what you're asking for: sterilizing immunity. That's the penultimate ability of a vaccine. It's incredible we're even able to create anything of that character given we're fighting against living, evolving things.

Setting the minimum bar to "I must never get sick" instead of "won't find myself in a grave" or "I wasn't able to work for a month and was stuck in a hospital for three weeks" is a crazy thing to hang onto.

A friend of mine explained why it's important to his kids: they can't chat with a group of their friends.

Why? Because parents don't want to install WhatsApp or other group chats due to legitimate concerns about scammers, pedophiles, and other child predators. SMS chat fills that gap, but it breaks horribly for groups bigger than 10 people. Hence if some kid is on Android, they break their chat. Given the penetration of Apple devices, it's the kids with Android who are considered at-fault. "Just get an iPhone!"

Welcome to anticompetitive practices targeted at your children.

Spot on!

Sometimes even cheaters could be dealt with without an admin in those days. Servers would have fun game settings and odd maps that would break cheating gameplay.

My brother and I often played CS in the same room, on opposing teams because we didn't like being cheated and didn't want to be cheaters. We found an empty server with a sniping-only map. Made for great fun and someone joined in about 15 minutes later. They seemed really good, so we joined together to see if we could make it challenging. The new guy was just too good, so we decided to swap back and forth with the new guy to see if one of us could make a 1v2 miracle happen. That's when we figured out he was impossibly aim hacking. Bummer, our fun game was toasted.

Then we realized the map settings had friendly fire on and a 5 second start delay. Aim hacks don't target your own teammates. A perfect trap was available: we'd headshot TK the cheater at game start and then 1v1 each other. The cheater tried swapping to the other team only to find my brother using the same TK tactic. Our cheating friend found himself without a chance to grift. Needless to say, he didn't hang around for long.

As is typical, this science reporting isn't great. It's not only that AI can do it effectively, but that it can do it at scale. To quote the paper:

"Despite these models achieving near-expert human performance, they come at a fraction of the cost, requiring 100× less financial and 240× lower time investment than human labelers—making such privacy violations at scale possible for the first time."

They also demonstrate how interacting with an AI model can quickly extract more private info without looking like it is. A game of 20 questions, except you don't realize you're playing.

This is a regulated area, one that the SEC oversees. They've prosecuted insider trading on crypto: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-98

Q3 just ended. These layoffs are because the books are not looking good. Everyone is hurting with inflation and higher interest, tech being particularly vulnerable to high interest rates.

I can only hope the execs cut correctly. A second round of layoffs at a company can destroy morale enough to sink the company. Who wants to continue working at a place that fired your close peers, wondering if you're next?

I'm not sure there is much slack to pick up. Local broadcasters put out informational messages, emergency services are active, and mobile cell towers are being deployed. While deadly, the fire itself affects a small area, so you won't hear large amounts of HF traffic in/out of Hawaii.

Hawaii ARES has been activated and, as to be expected with a local disaster, is leaning heavily into VHF/UHF. Their current status is here: https://bit.ly/HAM-UPDATE

We'll probably get reports to read about their part in the coming months.