My recent road trip to Chicago was my first in a vehicle that had the complete current suite of driver assistance technologies, namely adaptive cruise control with autonomous braking, lane departure warning with lane keep assist, and blind spot monitoring. To be honest, it make the trip significantly less stressful and much more pleasant.

I had the adaptive cruise control on for the entire trip, with it typically set to give me four seconds of spacing between me and the vehicle in front of me. At full highway speeds, it seems that the four seconds is the right amount of spacing to give maximum flexibility for emergency maneuvering.

We’ve been talking a lot about driverless cars, but my experience illustrated the limits of automation in cars. Frequently drivers would see the space between me and the car in front of me and move over. The systems adapted in a less fluid way. While in manual mode, I would simply lay off the acceleration. Instead, the system stuck to its spacing requirement and braked, which may be unexpected for the driver behind me. Driver assistance systems always err on the side of safety, but human drivers to not.

When a car in front of me moved out of the way, the cruise control was also fairly slow on the acceleration. I could tell this also caused consternation with some drivers behind me, some of whom zoomed around to pass on the right. Slower acceleration is clearly preferable from a mechanical and fuel economy perspective, but humans are seldom rational when behind the wheel.

I’ve concluded that autonomous systems aren’t fully compatible with manual drivers. They may be excellent at forward collision mitigation, but I can easily foresee an increase in rear collisions by drivers who aren’t anticipating its abundant caution.

Playing Flight Simulator with my son is fun.

The Netflix auto-play preview while browsing is a crime against humanity.

Watching Jack Ryan. Haven’t heard much about this show since the release last year.

Running shoe inserts are a joke.

Apparently teachers don’t want to work during the months of April and May. All of my normal hangouts are overrun with field trips!

I 100% agree with the new WSJ policy of comments only on a few select articles. To be honest, I’d like for them to kill comments entirely. This is a good start.

I’m in favor of ordinances that restrict builders from clear-cutting raw land during site development. A percentage of trees (50%?) should be incorporated into the lot design. So much waste for little gain.

It looks like The Wall Street Journal has turned off almost all commenting on articles. Good for them!

Brave Browser on iOS finally supports bookmark syncing. I visited 3 websites and it blocked 239 ads and trackers. Brave is my new default web browser.

The sound of thunder is incredible.

This Meg Meeker book is all that it’s cracked up to be.

My normal routine is to get up early in the morning and walk while my family sleeps. I spend my walking time listening to various podcasts. I didn’t do very much walking in the past six weeks, and my backlog of podcasts is longer than it’s ever been. At times, I was tempted to declare podcast bankruptcy, but instead I chose to preen the podcasts to which I subscribed.

Honestly, the main criteria I used when deciding to keep or dump a podcast was its advertising. I’d prefer if podcasts were like library books, free for the public. I understand why some are ad-supported, and its clear there are many different ways to do ads. I prefer for ads to have good levels and sound mixing, but low amounts of production. I want it to feel like its a conversation, not a pitch.

I think that Manton and Daniel on Core Intuition do the best job with podcast ads. There’s a little jingle before and after the ad, which helps me mentally follow along with the whole timeline of the episode. They read the blurb that’s prepared for them, and then they talk about the products. Since they actually use the products that they’re advertising, it’s a very comfortable and fluid experience. It flows naturally.

I don’t think that Rene Ritchie on Vector does as good of a job. Vector is a video podcast, but he also shares the audio feeds. He slides the ads in without a break or audio cue, which I find to be disjointed. I’m also not sure if he personally uses the products he’s advertising, which lowers the trust for me.

The podcasts from the Wall Street Journal are about as good as a mass-market podcast can do. There’s an opening ad, and an ad somewhere in the middle. Not always relevant, but voiced by the normal WSJ voiceover people, and always clearly marked.

The podcasts that I unsubscribed from had not just too many ads, or overly produced ads, but ads that didn’t even make sense. I was subscribed to a podcast on espionage, and they advertised for Sherry’s Berries. That kind of stuff drives me nuts.

Podcasts present a great medium for the sharing of knowledge and ideas, but the ad format can make or break a show. If you must do them, please only advertise for products that you use yourself and make it as conversational as possible. Talk about how you use the product and why you enjoy it. Make it authentic and natural.

Google’s Advisory Board Crash and Burn - WSJ

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joseph Dunford, who is usually circumspect in public, last month said Google’s work “indirectly benefits” the Chinese military. AI in China, he said, will “help an authoritarian government assert control over its own population” and perhaps help China steal U.S. technology.

This is an opinion piece, but the quote is from the news division.