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I read somewhere that it's a huge money loser for Amazon. Alexa being such a big part of Amazon's identity, could they shut it down without losing face though?


I wish I could upvote you more than once. I'm not a bus driver but a truck driver though lol.


It's all garbage collector.


Seems like more like a scaled-up garbage producer than garbage collector...


I did this 15-20 years ago. I had a small internet/consulting business that I ran out of my house, with a full T1 mind you lol. Got tired of staring at the walls and tired of the f'king servers that chained me down.

An error message from a server while in the car going on a small vacation triggered the change. I had enough. So on the spot I thought of my options and decided on becoming a trucker.

My first aim was to do long haul but I never went that way. I got hired to do local LTL deliveries/pick ups and I loved it. For me it's hard to beat driving a truck when it's nice outside. Winter can be a bitch but you learn manage.

Constantly going in and out of the truck got me and keeps me in shape. I lost 100lbs and feel much better than the fat slob I used to be, tied to the keyboard. It also help that I bike to work (not in winter though).

Took a real pay cut but I would never go back. I don't think I can anyway. I started programming again a couple of years ago on personal projects and I love it. I realize that my skills are greatly diminished but it's still fun to find solutions to problems, fix the damn bugs lol, and be proud of the final product.


Intersting - I have a CDL, but would never go back to that lifestyle unless absolutely needed.

It is amazing how much of a difference physical movement on a daily basis will do.


This is my dream. Tell me more. Did you take classes? What was the investment. I feel chained to this desk.


I took classes, not the fancy 6 months full time course, but a part time 6 or 8 (can't remember) weeks course that showed me the basics. I like to drive so this was not a hardship for me. Did not buy my own rig. I just got out of self employment and did not want to go back to that.

Finding a job as a newbie was not easy at the time (because of the insurance they were saying) so I went the agency route and they found me work right away. Worked there for 2 years then found a job closer to home. Been doing that for about 15 years already.


Check your local community college - they may have a CDL course, probably $5-10k.

That way you can ease into it, the other option is to go for one of those "we pay to train" places, but that involves more upfront commitment.


Chances are that the site will be hosted outside the US and the DMCA is a US only copyright law afaik. I don't think it's applicable outside the US.


In those cases, you can send one to DDG and Bing, which are in the US. It won’t affect the actual website or other search engines, but it’s better than nothing.


Indeed you can. I've had similar issues before (a site scraping content, though apparently from dev.to instead of my own domain and a YouTube channel making a 'video' with text and TTS from a post).

In the first case, I sent a DMCA to Google & Bing as well as to Cloudflare. Cloudflare responds by giving the name of the actual host, and I sent another DMCA to that host (they were US based, otherwise YMMV). The content was delisted (not the site, even though it was made up entirely of verbatim scraped content) from search engines and from the site.

Bottom line is you can send a DMCA notice to search engines and it appears to be effective. Actually, in case search engines demote sites like this in some way, I would send the DMCA notice to search engines _first_, because if the content gets removed from the original site they may not be able to verify the duplicate content.


Ianal, but I think ddg could come back and claim that their service doesn't copy the content or that their abstract is fair use, so a dmca wouldn't apply to them.

If that happens I'd use language about the exclusive "public display" right that you have over your work.

I'm not aware of this claim being used for a dmca, but I'd like to see how such a claim turned out.


IANAL either, but the DMCA has been used (by the RIAA, MPAA, and friends) to takedown pirate content on Google. I’d assume the same arguments would apply here. It can’t hurt to try.


Linking to a site that infringes copyrights may make the linker liable on the grounds that they are committing contributory copyright infringement. It's cheaper for search engines to delist sites than fight that battle--particularly if their corporate masters also rely on licensing media for distribution themselves.


IANAL but could this be what the spam site has done to get OP delisted?


You get that kind of response anytime the subject matter is vi or vim. Still more if it mentions nvim, nano or, god forbid, emacs(!)


Saying it' maths is simplifying it a bit. They use simulations. They can simulate how an object orbits and eventually fall down to earth. They can test those simulations everyday by predicting where a know object in orbit will be in the future. Multiply that by a billion and you can predict that earth's rings would have fall down eventually.


Trucker with a CS degree here. I'm very skeptical of the feasibility of autonomous highway trucks that can drive outside very tightly defined parameters or ideal situations. That being said, it just occurred to me, how will these trucks react to or let alone detect tire blowouts or break failures/fires on the trailers?

Edit: I know from experience that getting a project to what we think is 95% there is relatively easy compared to the last 5% that make the product/project 100% viable. The real life testing will kill you if the edge cases don't. (I don't mean that literally, although...)


Side question - mind sharing a bit about your story? Some questions popped immediately to mind when I read your comment:

Which came first? Trucking or the CS degree?

Why trucking if you have the degree required to get a job sitting behind a computer vs sitting behind the wheel?

What're your general thoughts about the two industries/jobs?


CS came first. At the end I had a small internet business at home that chained me to the computers. An alarm about a defective RAID just as I was starting a short vacation triggered the career change. I couldn't see myself go back into a cubicle and I always liked to drive so I decided on the spot to become a trucker. So I sold the business, took a course, pass the license and here I am 15 years later, 100 pounds lighter because I'm no longer behind a desk getting fat. I'm doing local and regional deliveries with a 53ft and have a 20km bike commute. I probably make 1/3 of what a computer job would pay but to me money is not everything. To tell the whole truth, I was simply burned out. I just came back to programming on personal projects just a couple of years ago and I love it.

As for comparing industries, I don't know, how can you compare when one has really small margins, has no technology besides tracking and logistics, is really change averse and has basically an un-educated cheap labor force and the other has hopefully good margins, a well paid skilled labor force and creates technology.

One thing for sure, a good or a bad boss is the same in both industries lol.


Yeah, and what about theft? If the truck is programmed to stop if there's a person in front (one would hope so), then how can you stop thieves lifting the whole thing?


How is that prevented now? Also, a relatively common form of theft now is the human driver absconding with the trailer. Also, a self driving truck would presumably be generating high resolution 3d scans of any potential hijacker.


>How is that prevented now?

people are generally a lot less brazen towards other humans compared to how they interact with automations or things that are remotely surveilled rather than with a human attendant.

trains with unarmed guards generally don't get robbed.


>high resolution 3d scans of any potential hijacker.

Hijackers will be 3d printed and their facsimiles imprisoned


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