Yandex’s on-demand taxi service debuts its self-driving car project • Hacker News Board

Re: Yandex’s on-demand taxi service debuts its self-driving car project

#31

Post by salimmadjd » Tue, May 30, 2017, 7:38 PM UTC

ex3ndr wrote: post #27

salimmadjd wrote: post #15

Yandex has some of the best programmers in the world. This was a surprise to me, but in the past 5 years, I've been spending few months a year in Belarus with various engineering team and have been learning a lot about this region. Yandex has it's own school within the universities where they recruit the best minds early on and train them. I've heard from programmers who now work at FB. That they could pass google's…

Most of the Yandex developers are not that good or not loyal to a company. This classes in universities is a scam: instead of teaching people of real world things, they teach how to work with yandex tech stack. Yandex lost almost all good developers and it is continue even further. Companies rent offices near yandex and find yandex developers in the restaurants around this buildings and convince them to leave. This i…

I agree with you regarding their maps and products. I stopped using google maps here in these area because of all the inaccuracies, but at the same time the UI/UX of Yandex is horrible. I do not understand why they could not create better product with better UX. It's so frustrating to use their product and it's such a shame how they manage their team based on what you're telling me. I've been told by current CS/infomratic students here that, Yandex school teaches their student a lot about heavy math CS concepts instead of a specific language.

Re: Yandex’s on-demand taxi service debuts its self-driving car project

#32

Post by Dolores12 » Tue, May 30, 2017, 7:57 PM UTC

ex3ndr wrote: post #27

salimmadjd wrote: post #15

Yandex has some of the best programmers in the world. This was a surprise to me, but in the past 5 years, I've been spending few months a year in Belarus with various engineering team and have been learning a lot about this region. Yandex has it's own school within the universities where they recruit the best minds early on and train them. I've heard from programmers who now work at FB. That they could pass google's…

Most of the Yandex developers are not that good or not loyal to a company. This classes in universities is a scam: instead of teaching people of real world things, they teach how to work with yandex tech stack. Yandex lost almost all good developers and it is continue even further. Companies rent offices near yandex and find yandex developers in the restaurants around this buildings and convince them to leave. This i…

> This classes in universities is a scam

Wow, calling Yandex classes scam is bold accusation. Are you saying that the tech stack the Yandex is using is not from real world?

> Answer was simple - user then will use this apps instead of yandex.

Yandex is a business, not charity. It is the same reason why google will never use encryption in their email. Because they will not be able to scan for email content to display relevant advertisement.

Overall i find your reply very negative and zero value. You didn't pass yandex test, right? :)

Re: Yandex’s on-demand taxi service debuts its self-driving car project

#33

Post by wordupmaking » Tue, May 30, 2017, 8:31 PM UTC

Dolores12 wrote: post #32

ex3ndr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the Yandex developers are not that good or not loyal to a company. This classes in universities is a scam: instead of teaching people of real world things, they teach how to work with yandex tech stack. Yandex lost almost all good developers and it is continue even further. Companies rent offices near yandex and find yandex developers in the restaurants around this buildings and convince them to leave. This i…

> This classes in universities is a scam Wow, calling Yandex classes scam is bold accusation. Are you saying that the tech stack the Yandex is using is not from real world? > Answer was simple - user then will use this apps instead of yandex. Yandex is a business, not charity. It is the same reason why google will never use encryption in their email. Because they will not be able to scan for email content to display…

> Overall i find your reply very negative and zero value. You didn't pass yandex test, right? :)

That cuts both ways - you don't see a problem with the needy practices of pretty much all major and many minor tech players, right? You don't get sick with all this mediocrity adorned with euphemisms, all this crap called awesome and all the greatness in life belittled? Do you honestly know not a single person that does quality work they can be honest about for a fair price that you would assume it's either "business" or "charity"?

> Overall i find your reply very negative and zero value.

The "argument" that "it's a business so hey" could justify anything, including robbing people, as long as you don't get caught. You know that providing value for society is one of the reasons societies let corporations operate at all, right? Modern business seems to think now that the bath tub is filled nicely (for them), there's no need for the plug anymore.

Re: Yandex’s on-demand taxi service debuts its self-driving car project

#34

Post by n0mad-1 » Tue, May 30, 2017, 8:43 PM UTC

ex3ndr wrote: post #27

salimmadjd wrote: post #15

Yandex has some of the best programmers in the world. This was a surprise to me, but in the past 5 years, I've been spending few months a year in Belarus with various engineering team and have been learning a lot about this region. Yandex has it's own school within the universities where they recruit the best minds early on and train them. I've heard from programmers who now work at FB. That they could pass google's…

Most of the Yandex developers are not that good or not loyal to a company. This classes in universities is a scam: instead of teaching people of real world things, they teach how to work with yandex tech stack. Yandex lost almost all good developers and it is continue even further. Companies rent offices near yandex and find yandex developers in the restaurants around this buildings and convince them to leave. This i…

> This classes in universities is a scam: instead of teaching people of real world things, they teach how to work with yandex tech stack.

Is that true? The sample curriculum [0] doesn't seem to support that.

[0] https://yandexdataschool.com/edu-process/program/data-analys...

Re: Yandex’s on-demand taxi service debuts its self-driving car project

#35

Post by clock_tower » Tue, May 30, 2017, 8:57 PM UTC

virtuexru wrote: post #6

Too bad most roads in Russia are a joke. This will never happen until Russian infrastructure improves; albeit this tech will stay in the huge provinces, Moscow & St. Petersburg.

I've always been skeptical of self-driving cars since they seem to be designed for Southern California conditions: clear weather and smooth, well-surfaced, well-marked roads. If Yandex starts out facing less optimized conditions, their self-driving efforts might produce something much more robust, safer, and more useful...

Re: Yandex’s on-demand taxi service debuts its self-driving car project

#36

Post by ansgri » Tue, May 30, 2017, 9:13 PM UTC

SXX wrote: post #24

wsinks wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the first most popular Taxi service? I haven't seen anyone using something different than Yandex.

There is local service called RuТaxi that had 1 million rides daily and recently merged with least one other service. I suppose it's could be less popular in Moscow, but according to RBC it's larger than Yandex, Uber and Gett together. Source in Russian: http://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/03/05/2017/5908a5de9a... Paywalled English version: http://www.unquote.com/cee/official-record/3004782/ufg-backs...

It's actually better then Ya.Taxi in Moscow, yet less well-known. They have had fixed-price rides long before yandex did (they have for a couple of months).

And then there are some people who use Uber, and them I really don't understand. AFAIU Uber has solved a problem nonexistent in many countries, and now tries to push its brand where there were better options long before Uber started in US.

BTW, yesterday I've seen an Uber Eats-branded byciclist, now that might be competitive.

Re: Yandex’s on-demand taxi service debuts its self-driving car project

#37

Post by ansgri » Tue, May 30, 2017, 9:23 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #11

That takes me back. That's about the level of performance we had with our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle in 1985. Driving around barrels is a basic test; we did that too. Ours worked OK at 15MPH, but faster than that we'd out-drive the LIDAR range. It's much easier now to get to that level - good multibeam LIDAR is available, GPS/INS integration is common and cheap, and powerful computers that will survive in the auto…

Well, I'm a driverless car developer (albeit for a very special use case, and definitely not in Yandex), please show me a decent "GPS/INS integration" which would be cheaper than, say, $1500 and would be of any use on the road and will be readily documented. With many sensors, the likes of Bosch make many good parts, but if you're not a giant auto maker, you won't be getting any documentation. And AFAIK even if you are a giant auto maker, Bosch will make the entire system for you, and you won't probably get access to implementation details.

Also, there aren't really any good high-performance industrial (dust and vibration proof) computers on the market, at least not to be bought easily. Please don't suggest NVIDIA -- starting with only a decent GPU is not an option, you'll need quite a few GFLOPs of general computing power to solve all that navigation, control, and, importantly, self-diagnostics.

By high-performance I mean at least a full four-core desktop i7 or Xeon, not some mobile CPU.

> Most of the hard problems today involve dealing with other road users.

The problem is, you won't get to dealing with those road users before you reconstruct the previous 20 years worth of technology in-house. It's not like there is some ready-to-use open source Stanley-level software.

Re: Yandex’s on-demand taxi service debuts its self-driving car project

#38

Post by codedokode » Tue, May 30, 2017, 9:23 PM UTC

ex3ndr wrote: post #27

salimmadjd wrote: post #15

Yandex has some of the best programmers in the world. This was a surprise to me, but in the past 5 years, I've been spending few months a year in Belarus with various engineering team and have been learning a lot about this region. Yandex has it's own school within the universities where they recruit the best minds early on and train them. I've heard from programmers who now work at FB. That they could pass google's…

Most of the Yandex developers are not that good or not loyal to a company. This classes in universities is a scam: instead of teaching people of real world things, they teach how to work with yandex tech stack. Yandex lost almost all good developers and it is continue even further. Companies rent offices near yandex and find yandex developers in the restaurants around this buildings and convince them to leave. This i…

Why add apps content into web search results? Using a website is much more comfortable than installing an app, checking its permissions, registering an account etc.

Re: Yandex’s on-demand taxi service debuts its self-driving car project

#39

Post by SXX » Tue, May 30, 2017, 9:44 PM UTC

ansgri wrote: post #36

SXX wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is local service called RuТaxi that had 1 million rides daily and recently merged with least one other service. I suppose it's could be less popular in Moscow, but according to RBC it's larger than Yandex, Uber and Gett together. Source in Russian: http://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/03/05/2017/5908a5de9a... Paywalled English version: http://www.unquote.com/cee/official-record/3004782/ufg-backs...

It's actually better then Ya.Taxi in Moscow, yet less well-known. They have had fixed-price rides long before yandex did (they have for a couple of months). And then there are some people who use Uber, and them I really don't understand. AFAIU Uber has solved a problem nonexistent in many countries, and now tries to push its brand where there were better options long before Uber started in US. BTW, yesterday I've see…

> They have had fixed-price rides long before yandex did

As far as I remember RuTaxi had it even 4 years ago, but I not sure when they got mobile app since I only ever used website.

> AFAIU Uber has solved a problem nonexistent in many countries, and now tries to push its brand where there were better options long before Uber started in US.

As person who lived in both Russian and UK / London I understand why it's makes sense. Uber model works in countries that have one of the problems: bad public transportation (like in Russia) or very expensive taxi (like in London). Also they solve usual tourist problems that local services can't solve because you have to invest time to know what local service in $countryname is good or bad.

I have no idea about other countries, but service provided by same RuTaxi for instance was worse: old dirty cars, sometimes even drunk and just scary drivers. Thanks for competition all my rides become much more pleasant in last couple of years.

Also in Russia rides was more expensive: rides that cost $8 (~250RUB) back in 2012 now cost $3-4 (~150RUB). Recently I used Yandex taxi for ~5 minutes ride and paid $0.7 (30RUB).

Re: Yandex’s on-demand taxi service debuts its self-driving car project

#40

Post by getsiu » Tue, May 30, 2017, 9:51 PM UTC

ex3ndr wrote: post #27

salimmadjd wrote: post #15

Yandex has some of the best programmers in the world. This was a surprise to me, but in the past 5 years, I've been spending few months a year in Belarus with various engineering team and have been learning a lot about this region. Yandex has it's own school within the universities where they recruit the best minds early on and train them. I've heard from programmers who now work at FB. That they could pass google's…

Most of the Yandex developers are not that good or not loyal to a company. This classes in universities is a scam: instead of teaching people of real world things, they teach how to work with yandex tech stack. Yandex lost almost all good developers and it is continue even further. Companies rent offices near yandex and find yandex developers in the restaurants around this buildings and convince them to leave. This i…

As a former employee of Yandex I totally disagree with what you said about 'not that good' developers and their loyalty.

It seems to me that the most common reason for leaving the company is immigration, which has nothing to do with Yandex itself. All my ex colleagues who left Yandex work abroad at Google, Facebook, MS and etc. Also I've seen many very good developers who cared a lot about their products. So my impression is somewhat opposite to what you described.