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Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

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Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#161

I'm surprised that self-driving technology is focusing on replacing the driver as an autonomous actor, processing visual and radar/lidar signals in order to know about its surroundings. I've always thought we'd get further faster by having automobiles also talk to other vehicles nearby, and design roads to support the computer driven vehicles. Two examples are: 1) If the vehicle is talking to the cars in front of it,…

It's interesting that this NHTSA statement doesn't mention car-to-car communications at all. There are parties pushing for that, but Google's Urmson was against it. His point is that the troublesome roadway obstacles, from kids to road debris, won't be on the net. So you have to have good sensors, and they can see other cars just fine.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search for the "unconstitutional conditions doctrine". Government can't get around constitutional limits via contract requirements.

Since when was choice of brick colour a constitutionally protected right?

Above, someone suggested they consider the color of the bricks on their house free speech, which is a constitutionally protected right. I don't necessarily agree (although, I don't think some shitty HOA should be able to dictate the color of my damn house), just clearing up your confusion.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems suspiciously like government getting something right... with regards to a quickly-evolving new technology market... has this ever happened before?

Yes. There's been a decades-long smear campaign against public management of common infrastructure.

What do you call a smear campaign against a target that's actually incompetent?

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#164
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were to guess, once self-driving cars are widespread, cars won't be pulled over any more for driving-related issues (ie, cops won't radar any more). However, they will probably be required to have a kill switch that can pull it over for other reasons (ie, if the cops thought your car was the getaway vehicle from a bank robbery) This is of course once almost all cars are self-driving so it'll be interesting to se…

> If I were to guess, once self-driving cars are widespread, cars won't be pulled over any more for driving-related issues There will still be black people in cars

No problem, they'll just unload .45 rounds into the vehicle until they hit something that makes it stop.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> autonomous vehicles should definitely not be legislated on a state-by-state basis. Why do you say that? I have no opinion either way, just curious

Cars move. Splitting the laws by state would mean also splitting the market, and allowing cars on the road which would be illegal to e.g. drive into Texas. Really, it should be international.

States rights is more important for progress than you might think. Each state is an incubator for ideas.

single choice monopolies impede progress, whether governmental or corporate. It's better to have states naturally group together than to force it with some top down measure.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#166
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest thing is that we can't run software with unencrypted PHI on physical hardware that is simultaneously running other people's code. In practical terms this means that we have to pay AWS some $ to get dedicated instances and also we can't use ELBs in the standard (easy) way. There are some other things as well.

That seems like a fairly reasonable thing given you're talking about encrypted PHI... it's some extra $ for a considerable reduction to overall attack surface when processing the most sensitive type of personal data. I don't think this meets OP's definition of "wrong".

In practical terms I don't agree that the threat of someone doing all of the following things is worth worrying about (in comparison to many other more likely failures):

1) determine what physical hardware in aws the target is running code on

2) somehow get the aws virtual machine manager to let the attacker run their malicious code on the same hardware

3) somehow pierce the protections of the virtual machine to read memory being used by the target application

4) figure out how the data is stored in memory in order to make sense of anything that was read

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#167
What is it about self-driving cars that has HN readers so incredibly excited? Sorry if it's a little off-topic.

The reason I ask is there are plenty of other countries in the world where cars just aren't that important, let's take Netherlands for example. If you have automatic cars, society here is not just going to be that excited AFAIK. Public transport here is great and most people cycle everywhere, because it's fun, easy and good exercise. Not to mention a lot of people are employed as drivers.

Same for many Asian countries where population density is high, people just don't have the money/room for cars. Scooters are the way to go because of traffic congestion.

Besides, don't people enjoy driving? I don't own a car but when I get behind the wheel, it's a lot of fun. Will people really be able to handle the car doing the speed limit?

I understand technologically it's pretty interesting, but we've had commercial airliners that fly themselves (mostly) for a long time, same for ships and drones and we don't marvel over those things all the time, though I agree they are great innovations.

So apart from the tech what is the actual excitement about?

- Concern for those who will lose their jobs.

- Concern for others safety.

- Privacy concerns.

- Excitement about the safety benefits.

- Economic opportunity.

- Fundraising hype.

- All of the above?

As a Silicon Valley outsider sometimes I read HN and it feels like some context is missing. Sure it's going to change industries, but is this really good progress, necessary progress, or just the next thing we're told we need? I mean can a self-driving car really replace a delivery person yet, a person who can do things like leave packages with a neighbor and build relationships, trust etc?

Sorry if this is a little off-topic, but I'm genuinely curious because it's hard to understand, to me as an outsider, it really looks like some kind of ride-sharing turf war hype battle more than anything else?

I dare to say it, but it's the same for machine learning, a lot of it is fascinating, interesting, exiting tech, but how many product recommendations does one need? How good do my friend recommendations have to be? How smart does Siri need to be? Will a patient really feel better without being treated by a human? Are we really going to trust these things handling nuclear warheads?

Maybe I live a strange life and have unusual views, but I just don't really see the need most of these things when so many problems could be solved using other means. Using this stuff to help people is great, but how much of this effort is actually being put towards that end?

If I'm a little naive, apologies. I'm not having a go but these are just honest questions I often find myself asking when reading HN lately. Agreed this might not be the place to ask but I'm prepared to wear the down votes :)

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#168
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were to guess, once self-driving cars are widespread, cars won't be pulled over any more for driving-related issues (ie, cops won't radar any more). However, they will probably be required to have a kill switch that can pull it over for other reasons (ie, if the cops thought your car was the getaway vehicle from a bank robbery) This is of course once almost all cars are self-driving so it'll be interesting to se…

> If I were to guess, once self-driving cars are widespread, cars won't be pulled over any more for driving-related issues There will still be black people in cars

Solution: since you don't need to see out of the car anymore, all windows have 0% VLT tint unless it's stopped.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#169

From the regulations: "Fall back strategies should take into account that—despite laws and regulations to the contrary—human drivers may be inattentive, under the influence of alcohol or other substances, drowsy, or physically impaired in some other manner." NHTSA, which, after all, studies crashes, is being very realistic. Here's the "we're looking at you, Tesla" moment: "Guidance for Lower Levels of Automated Vehic…

For the Tesla comment, what more could you expect from them right now? If you have auto pilot on your hands have to be on the wheel or it vibrates and then it starts slowing down e eventually since it knows it's not safe.

People can work around any system for this, but stuff like this makes it have to do it consciously. Seems pretty reasonable on Tesla's part.

Re: Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

#170
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some HIPAA regulations that pre-date the rise of shared virtual servers in "the cloud" are quite outdated and cause quite a bit of trouble for no real benefit. What HIPAA regulations are you talking about? Other than HITECH guidance (which can sort-of be seen as a "HIPAA regulation"), HIPAA regulations don't generally specify technologies at all, and I can't think of any that I would describe as outdated or trouble…

The biggest thing is that we can't run software with unencrypted PHI on physical hardware that is simultaneously running other people's code. In practical terms this means that we have to pay AWS some $ to get dedicated instances and also we can't use ELBs in the standard (easy) way. There are some other things as well.

> The biggest thing is that we can't run software with unencrypted PHI on physical hardware that is simultaneously running other people's code.

There is no, AFAICT, no regulation under HIPAA or related law that requires this. Certain service providers may have determined that they cannot provide guarantees of privacy/security without this technical restriction.

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