For example, the Dark Star central computer is really just a janky version of HAL. In 2001 HAL wishes happy birthday to a sunbathing Frank Pool. In Dark Star, you have Pinback on a lawnchair using a jerry-rigged sunbathing lamp, later complaining that no one remembered it was his birthday. Both have scenes that feature explosive bolts. Also both have scenes with the astronauts getting sandwiches (chicken or ham?). Both have a mission control guy, with the one in Dark Star being completely useless. There are probably more references but these come to mind.

Love that movie.

This is standard predatory behavior. Child abusers hanging out with kids, weirdos hanging out near the women's clothing department, etc.

It's usually a clear indication of the sort of people you don't want to associate with in your online community. They bring a net negative to the table.

Changes like this will help keep developers honest and accountable. Yeah yeah bad apples will still find ways to screw us.

If you want to publish an app to a global scale ecosystem, is it really too much to ask to give some ID?

Mere customer satisfaction, or lack thereof, is not enough to justify a BFOQ defense, as noted in the cases Diaz v. Pan Am. World Airways, Inc. and Wilson v. Southwest Airlines Co. Therefore, customer preference for females does not make femininity a BFOQ for the occupation of flight attendant. However, there may be cases in which customer preference is a BFOQ – for example, femininity is reasonably necessary for Playboy Bunnies. Several breastaurants like Hooters have also used such requirements of femininity and female sex appeal under a BFOQ defense. Customer preference can "'be taken into account only when it is based on the company's inability to perform the primary function or service it offers,' that is, where sex or sex appeal is itself the dominant service provided."

So basically the question to ask it "Is it a bona fide occupational qualification that the driver be female?" Seems like a high standard to reach. Arguments based on "feels" as in "I don't feel safe around this kind of person/employee" seem like the very kind of discrimination that the law has tried hard to eliminate. It's pre-judging someone based on sex, and deciding that they aren't safe even though they haven't done anything. I understand that women are often harassed, but the law already has a process for dealing with harassment.

I predict this kind of thing (apps that allow customers to discriminate on the basis of protected class) will spread and eventually be challenged in court. Curious how this will all play out and become settled law.

Can someone explain to me how this is (or isn't) legal under Title VII?

It seems if this is fully legal because it's the customer making the decision, then pretty much any form of "in app" discrimination is legal as long as it's the customer doing the discrimination. How long till "I don't want a black/white/gay/etc driver" options show up?

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." — George Orwell, Animal Farm

I read somewhere that nostalgia is just bitterness towards the present. It's an emotional trap and best not to linger in nostalgia too long. Change is inevitable, we can't go backwards.

My understanding is that for extremely large black holes the tidal forces are negligible near the event horizon. So things should function pretty much the same other than you can't move in reverse and get out.

If two rockets fall past the horizon at the same time, one accelerating forward towards the singularity, and the other accelerating backwards away from the singularity, then shouldn't the distance between the rockets increase, even though they are both moving inexorably forward?

If the tidal forces are low, I'd assume that my muscles are still strong enough to "slow down my hand enough" to move it above my head.

It was a great car at a great price, zero problems.

I don't understand why cars have gotten so much more expensive in the last 20 years. There is definitely room at the bottom for entry level vehicles.

I suspect the problem may be the increasingly strict emissions laws that push the OEMs into preferring certain segments at the expense of others. It might be that it doesn't make sense for the OEMs to pursue the low end market, it's not worth the trouble.

1) They don't want to invest in building vehicle software ecosystems as it's expensive, time consuming, and not exactly in their wheel house. Wireless and cloud connectivity just aren't their language.

2) They don't want to work with existing proprietary off the shelf ecosystem solutions -- they feel that because it's "their vehicles" they should "own" the technology and IP. They don't want vendor lock in, so they avoid existing proprietary solutions they can't "take over". And by "take over" I mean "have the vendor give their proprietary stack to them for free, so they can then share it with their other suppliers".

3) They expect the vendor base to "partner" to develop "open" software stacks for free -- which most vendors aren't keen on doing as there is little upside for the vendor to spend their own internal NRE building a system that their competitors benefit from and can quickly undercut them on. They generally refuse to pay for the development of a stack that they can own and build upon.

The root cause seems to be magical thinking from the higher ups - "Hey connectivity stuff is everywhere, it can't be hard, why should we pay for this?"

They don't want to build it. They don't see the value in paying for it. So of course open source is the obvious solution. Hey, just have the nerds build it! They love doing that kind of work for free.

It's the relationship between order and chaos that matters. Everything interesting always happens on the boundary between the two.