Sydney Siege

Last Sunday, a gunman who has since been identified took 17 hostages. This happened at a Lindt Chocolate Factory in Sydney.



The hostages were held for 16 hours. During that time, many hostages were forced to stand in the shop windows and hold flags with messages reading “There is no God but Allah",



and "Mohammed is the prophet of God”.



Although, several news agencies reported that this was an ISIS flag and that ISIS was doing this.

During this time, at least 6 hostages escaped.



And on Monday (the next day), after 16 hours, police activated what they called an emergency action plan and stormed the café in the middle of the night.



There was a brief firefight which resulted in 3 deaths, which included the 50-year-old gunman, a 34-year-old man, and a 38-year-old woman.





2 women and 1 police officer were also hospitalized with non life-threatening injuries.



And after all this there are a few things I want to say:

1. To the man behind this, whose picture I will not show, I will say your name one time, Haron Monis, fuck you, I'm glad you're dead. He was a man who was charged with 50 counts of indecent exposure and sexual assault. And as an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife who was stabbed and lit on fire in Sydney last year.



He was also convicted of sending offensive letters to the family members of dead soldiers.

And I hate this man! I don't hate all Muslims or any group of people that just happen to also have something in sync with this man.

It made me sad that as soon as this situation happened, Muslim leaders had to brace for violence. It made me happy but also very sad that the hashtag #illridewithyou even had to be a thing.



A hashtag where Sydney commuters volunteered to ride by Muslim side to make sure they were safe. That makes about as much sense as hating all Christians, or people that believe in Christianity; because someone from that group bombed an abortion clinic.

These outliers are the worst. There are people that agree with them but know those few do not speak or act for the many. The many who want peace, not death. The many who promote the good of all people; who can look at the situation and feel for the hostages, those who went through this and were killed; who agree this is a travesty, it's terrible, it cannot stand. So many people are united by that anger, and this despair.

And it's on that note that I'm going to end this topic.

Google Self-Driving Cars: Technology Advance and Humans

In the not-too-distant future, there will be a fleet of self-driving cars that'll take people to different destinations.



I read an article on TechCrunch that predicted a future: 2023.

The concept that I don't actually have to drive while I'm in my car; maybe I could get more work done; maybe I could sleep, or anything; it's nothing short of amazing. It's absolute awesomeness.



It's not that crazy of an idea, Google Ventures is already an investor, and Uber, which is a car-service. I imagine legislation has been put into place where a human driver doesn't really need to be in the car, with a self-driving car (across locations). You can then use your handy-dandy Uber app, the car shows up, and there's no driver, the car would drive you to wherever you want, you input it. You won't even need to have any unwanted conversation, there's probably Wi-Fi in the car, you click to browse, and it's apparently safer because the technology has advanced so far. So far that the car can drive you to the airport and then drive itself back home, to take your lady to the grocery store.



It's all amazing things, except for the guy that'd normally have driven that car. Looking back, it's kind of history at this point: technology taking place of humans. That guy who'd normally have that job to support his family, no longer has that option.



And it ultimately wouldn't stop at taxi drivers, proportionately all transportation. So, you'd make the obvious jump to truck drivers. Literally, these guys can travel across a country with no sleep.



Basically, these truck companies won't have to pay self-driving trucks overtime (which is how human truck drivers feed their families). At the end of the day, your end result is a business owner who does not have to pay human employees; pay their health insurance; worry about their leave and their schedule; and you have a bunch of people out of their jobs.

Realistically, you (assuming you're the one in charge of the truck company with self-driving trucks) wouldn't be able to fire everyone, but you'd fire pretty much all of your drivers, and then hire a few other people to keep track of trucks.

The way I see it, in the future, affirmative action will no longer be about hiring a specific color or race. It'd definitely be about having a minimum amount of humans working on your force.