I happened to take a look at your HN profile and realized you don't post much, which leads me to believe this is REALLY bothering you.
I can relate. My grandfather, who had been a math teacher and actually got me into computing way back in the beige toaster Macintosh days, religiously checked his email and practiced his Spanish on Rosetta Stone for decades. I had to update from Win 7 to 10 for the desktop I built for him, and that was a big struggle for him. That would probably be many times harder now considering the sad shape of Windows. It was heartbreaking watching him struggle with one of the few simple joys he had left towards the end of his life.
I'm very sorry you're having to deal with that and your anger is warranted.
To chime in, arranging things in fixed locations on the desktop has proven to be quite helpful for elderly people when doing support ime. It is easier to remember/tell "the globe icon in the top right" than "Type 'Firefox' in the search bar".
Also has the nice side-effect of avoiding MSN news on Windows.
What you're describing is what's known as an "end to end" model that takes in image pixels and outputs steering and throttle commands. What happens in an AV is that a bunch of ML models produce input for software written by human engineers, and so the output doesn't come from an entirely ML system, it's a mix of engineered and trained components for various identifiable tasks (perception, planning, prediction, controls).
This is a pretty old idea that goes back to debates over David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage in the early 1800s.
> “Free trade is God’s diplomacy. There is no other certain way of uniting people in the bonds of peace than by the bonds of interest.”
- Richard Cobden
This topic is covered in the book "Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest" by Gerard Degroot.
As I remember it, the author says that Eisenhower was focused on strategic value of investments into space, and he felt that the US had a large lead in areas that mattered (ICBM technology) and chose not to invest in what might be considered vanity projects.
I believe he also claims that letting the Soviets be first to launch a satellite was intentional, since it allowed the Soviets to establish the precedent in international law that it was OK to send satellites over your neighbors, and if the US had been first the USSR might have protested.
I guess there is a "that which is seen vs. that which is not seen" (Bastiat) argument to be made, but government investment into engineering research seems to be a pretty good deal.
I saw a quote the other day I liked: "If the rest of the world wants to emulate the US model, they should do as the United States actually did, not as they say they did".
I realize he can't even open Steam without getting bombarded by ads from MSN in the start menu.
I'm angry at Microsoft for this. Instead of being good stewards of "computing", they provide an environment that's poorly designed and exploitative.
Shame on the people at Microsoft responsible.