umichguy

Simple answer: You want to do business in any country, you abide by their laws within their jurisdiction. Don't like it? Pull out. Simples.

Don't you think the U.S. would not have done the same (probably would've done much sooner) if a company was repeatedly turning up its nose and thumbing it?

Well, they can't/ shouldn't deduce that he had a burnout. That's something I know as a friend. He went traveling around the world, ticking off places from his list. It's a simple career break. People aren't/shouldn't be expected to work non-stop through out their lives.

That just sounds shady and wrong. Plus, I don't think anyone is really going to believe that a person who is actively looking for jobs has left his CV that sloppy. If it's a couple of months sure, but 1.5yrs? Hmmm..

Yeah, but they don't really seem to work well at all. A friend of mine who works in IT bought a bunch of these to test for work laptops, according to him they are all basically crap, with maybe one or two half decent. And they don't have the handy charging light indicator either, like on the old magsafe.

I dunno. Most of the windows laptops I've used all had mediocre touchpads, so if I was going to do some serious amount of work on them, always used the mouse. But for my MBPs, the thought never even occurs to me, the touchpad does the job quite well.

The UK? Not gonna happen.

What's the take on people who have had a career break of 1 to 2yrs? Through travel or medical situations or whatever. A friend of mine took a year and half off after having worked non-stop for ~15yrs (burnt out), went exploring and is now trying to get back into work but is having some difficulty for recruiters to call him back after applying. He never had any breaks in his work history before the recent and only one.

Not many non-UK (and even UK) people realize that the City of London is actually a separate entity from London. It has it's own administration, police force etc.

I think if Amazon pitches in with some funds and help them out with logistics software planning for increased efficiency, they will go a long way in buying some goodwill from the NY public. It's great publicity while helping out the city citizens.

Put all that ML and AI expertise to some public use.

Unlike the tube it's not zone based pricing. One price no matter the distance or time.

What's wrong with distance based pricing?

NYC and Chicago were the only two big cities I liked living in from a public transport perspective... Maybe that's why I ended up here in London!

Melbourne trams are awesome! Sure, they're not everywhere or go everywhere but for near the city center and some main routes they make so much sense.

Fair enough. Unless you're talking about lags for automated trading systems/ algos where even that single "I really can't measure this" sec difference counts.

I have to steal that idea next time someone talks about time delays and says "it's not a big deal!"

Awesome!

But Brits haven't completely abandoned them, have they? Maybe for educational, scientific and in manufacturing industries it's all metric but they still seem to use a blend of imperial and metric for day to day stuff. The distance is in miles, speed in miles/hr, they use lbs as well and deg.F from time to time (mostly deg.C tho),"pints" for beer, ft and in for height etc.

Theranos should be a case study of how not to, for a long time to come in tech firms - especially, those dealing with real-life humans in the healthcare arena.

Different approaches. Toyota has been taking the non-turbo + electric assist (hybrid) route, while others which aren't that heavily invested in hybrids have been taking the "let's put turbos across all our engines" route.

Gradually they are converging towards similar solutions.

They are. And will be inevitable, across the board, apart from low-end engines or very large displacement naturally aspirated engines.

When I said "et al," I meant NASA and the contemporaries in other countries including the Soviets.

Yep. Pretty much most of the current designs trace back to the Soviet days.

Oh yes, there was! I am not talking about simple things like NVH or other minor issues. I am talking about safety recalls like the wheel bearing failures which can cause your damn tires to fall off kind of variety!

I was a summer intern at Ford in 06/07 and they were still dealing with issues from the 2000-2003/04 cars.

A sample for you:

"2000-10-24 (Published by NHTSA on 2000-10-24) Recall Summary: VEHICLE DESCRIPTION: PASSENGER VEHICLES. THE REAR WHEEL HUB RETAINING NUTS CAN LOOSEN AND ALLOW THE LEFT REAR WHEEL AND BRAKE DRUM ASSEMBLY TO SEPARATE FROM THE VEHICLE. Hazard: THIS CONDITION COULD RESULT IN A VEHICLE CRASH."

Knock yourself out. And this doesn't include dealer fixes (called technical service bulletins -TSBs) which are not actual recalls.

https://www.autosafety.org/fords-trouble-prone-focus-hit-saf...

http://wemakeitsafer.com/vehicle-recall/Ford-Focus-Recall-50...

Yep. That's a fair point to say.

"The US car industry is notorious for poor engineering standards and quality,"

Engineering standards are * very broadly* similar, worldwide, as auto companies do have to design and sell a vehicle for multiple markets. What was lacking in the U.S. is the actual execution of the build quality. You can engineer something to be really good, but if you don't build it well, there's no point.

A very good example of this is the year 2000 Ford Focus. It was winning car of the year/ best quality awards in Europe, while it was noted for having the most amount of recalls in the U.S for a Ford. Broadly the same product with some localized differences, built separately in EU and the U.S. - completely different execution/ build quality.

I am a non-CS engineer - have a masters in Auto Systems - programming has always been part of all/most courses I took. Granted, I am probably pretty poor at things like JS and others as I never really used them, but we used a lot of things like MATLAB/ OCTAVE, Python and a few others in our coursework and work life. I have transitioned out of auto sector into consulting side (non-CS) of things, so now use a lot of data analytics and BI tools including Python, Tableau etc.

I was talking about advanced tech like no. of gears, dual clutch (DCTs are essentially manual type trans - quick shifting - Europeans are leaders) etc.

There is a difference between durability (the Japanese are good at this) and innovativeness (U.S./EU are good at this) of transmissions. EU/US transmissions are mostly all 8+ gears (now 10) in torque converter type (conventional), EU lead in DCT (dual clutch transmission), Japanese are only just catching up to this.

Japanese are of course, market leaders in CVT (continuously variable trans), but these are not that well liked in EU/US markets because of the way they "feel," though getting better.

The Russian RD-180 engine is a masterpiece.

NASA et al were true pioneers in uncharted territories with no prior guiding principles. Without them, a lot of current gen tech wouldn't even exist. Plus, remember they operated in times where you mostly used slide rules and hand calculations!

"They do this with motor assemblies too. Its not uncommon to see working sets of motors in japanese cars that are 30 years old where window motors and such would easily have failed in american sedans. potted, brushed high quality motors were a fixture on practically every japanese sedan in the 90s for even boring stuff like mirror adjustment."

I think a lot of that "over-engineering" gradually went away towards the 90s and beyond, as cost concerns and other aspects started to bite in. Plus, they also understood that people started to change cars more often than before, so why engineer something for such a long duration? A lot of that initial over-engineering was also because of the pressure on Japanese brands to try and establish themselves in markets like the U.S. and Europe, where there was a general feeling that these "puny" Japanese cars might not last long. In terms of over-engineering (I know, keep using this term), the true pinnacle for me was the first gen Lexus LS400 designed to compete with the Mercedes S-class. Now, that was something else.

Funnily enough, they have started lagging U.S. and European companies after the mid-2000s in terms of vehicle technologies like advanced transmissions, wider adoption of turbocharged engines, infotainment etc.

/just a few personal thoughts from my years working in the auto industry

It would've been perfect for what's going in recent times with Brexit and what not. It was one of the first Brit TV series I got into.