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U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

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Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#31

Post by rando444 »

criticalpotato wrote: post #23
FriedPickles wrote: post #13

If both rotors spin the same direction, what keeps the aircraft body from rotating the other direction? Is there a tail rotor?

Good questions, even better question would be how did we figure out quantum theory etc but couldn't figure that twice the vertical lift from 2 rotors is more than lift single rotor? How's this something credited to Uber? Dunno.

Tandem rotors have been around for almost a century.

What they're doing here is stacking rotors on top of each other, not for lift, but apparently because it's quieter and allows for 'better performance' .. whatever that means.

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#32

Post by akhatri_aus »

Bobbleoxs wrote: post #20

Isn't it ironic whilst Google's engineers are mass protesting against military contracts, Uber already signed a whole bunch without any moral dilemma whatsover. Tells a lot about the company ethics there. On a separate note, could someone enlighten how stacked co-rotoring (moving towards the same direction) may make the aircraft silent and not noisier?

More like Google was ready to deal with the PR and spun the story of just a few engineers resigning..

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#33

Post by tossaway1 »

epanchin wrote: post #29
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Google's engineers are mass protesting" ~12 Google employees resigned. Out of ~4,000 signers to the petition. Out of ~74,000 total employees. A drop in the bucket. Clearly the vast majority of google employees don't care, rationalize away, or excuse the fact that they work for the military industrial complex.

5.6% of staff signed a petition and 1.6% resigned. In comparison, the largest petition in the US was 4.6 million signatures, a mere 1.8% of the working age population.

0.016%, not 1.6%

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#34

Post by dan-0 »

criticalpotato wrote: post #21

Or would it be time to give up on Uber and finally admit that they're neither a technology company nor anything else "groundbreaking" that Valley thinks they are. "Technology" for the company has been coming up with a mobile app to connect drivers and potential customers - something hardly groundbreaking. Probably the most groundbreaking technological thing coming from these guys has been the multiple evasion softwar…

> "Technology" for the company has been coming up with a mobile app to connect drivers and potential customers - something hardly groundbreaking.

> And while their efforts to "disrupt" the taxi economy have been "great" in all honesty they've only created room for their competition to benefit on this - Uber has simply managed to take a business (taxis) and run it to chaos while what would've been the logical step was to run a similar application by the taxi companies for ride hailing.

These two statements are contradictory.

While I'm not a fan of many things Uber does, this was something that was groundbreaking at the time, less than 10 years ago. If you lived in a big city before Uber/Lyft/etc you have fond memories of getting ripped off and taken advantage of, taking bad routes, dangerously manuvering through traffic, and either having to walk to a main thoroughfare or wait 30 minutes for the taxi that was supposed to be dispatched in 10 when you called for one. And good luck having anything come out of a complaint to the city over violations of passenger rights laws.

Now, regardless of what the complaints are against Uber, you can get a way more affordable ride, at a fixed price, on a mapped route, whose livelihood actually depends on how good they are (ratings), and know when/where your ride is almost as soon as you order it.

Even now where you'd expect taxi companies to take a stance to provide better services, they're devoting more resources to lobbying local government to control "ride share" companies. Mean while, all they'd have to do is provide a rating system, fixed prices over mapped routes, and an app to order a taxi and I'd be happy. Just enforcing that they use some direction service that can route around traffic would probably be enough for me. Instead, it seems they prey on locations full of non city tourist (like airports, train station, and attractions) that don't know any better.

Uber has undoubtedly done bad things, but to say they aren't a technology company and that what they did (and still are doing) isn't groundbreaking is wrong.

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#35

Post by dao- »

RealityVoid wrote: post #30
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Google's engineers are mass protesting" ~12 Google employees resigned. Out of ~4,000 signers to the petition. Out of ~74,000 total employees. A drop in the bucket. Clearly the vast majority of google employees don't care, rationalize away, or excuse the fact that they work for the military industrial complex.

I think your comment is a little bit unfair seeing as only a very very small subset of those ~74.000 employees work for the "military industrial complex" and even that on a subset of the problem that is not directly aimed at killing people.

I don't understand how you're trying to spin this. If you only want to look at the people working directly on military projects (a restriction that I'm not sure makes sense in the first place), the number of people who signed the petition and resigned from Google will also go down. How exactly does this back Bobbleoxs' comment?

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#36

Post by adventured »

RealityVoid wrote: post #30
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Google's engineers are mass protesting" ~12 Google employees resigned. Out of ~4,000 signers to the petition. Out of ~74,000 total employees. A drop in the bucket. Clearly the vast majority of google employees don't care, rationalize away, or excuse the fact that they work for the military industrial complex.

I think your comment is a little bit unfair seeing as only a very very small subset of those ~74.000 employees work for the "military industrial complex" and even that on a subset of the problem that is not directly aimed at killing people.

People like to say that because of the military industry complex having a small role in the funding of research that Sergey Brin was part of while he was at Stanford. Back in reality, the government has had its hands all over funding programs like that since the 1940s and it amounts to nothing more than routine government sponsorship of science & research, which all nations do.

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#37

Post by doktrin »

epanchin wrote: post #29
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Google's engineers are mass protesting" ~12 Google employees resigned. Out of ~4,000 signers to the petition. Out of ~74,000 total employees. A drop in the bucket. Clearly the vast majority of google employees don't care, rationalize away, or excuse the fact that they work for the military industrial complex.

5.6% of staff signed a petition and 1.6% resigned. In comparison, the largest petition in the US was 4.6 million signatures, a mere 1.8% of the working age population.

>> ~12 Google employees resigned. Out of ~4,000 signers to the petition. Out of ~74,000 total employees.

> 5.6% of staff signed a petition and 1.6% resigned.

1.6% would be almost 12,000, not 12. I'm not familiar with this case but a quick search corroborated that it was a dozen employees that walked out.

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#39

Post by rdtsc »

epanchin wrote: post #29
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Google's engineers are mass protesting" ~12 Google employees resigned. Out of ~4,000 signers to the petition. Out of ~74,000 total employees. A drop in the bucket. Clearly the vast majority of google employees don't care, rationalize away, or excuse the fact that they work for the military industrial complex.

5.6% of staff signed a petition and 1.6% resigned. In comparison, the largest petition in the US was 4.6 million signatures, a mere 1.8% of the working age population.

> 1.6% resigned.

So more than 1 in 100 of Google's employees resigned because of the contract? That doesn't seem right, do you have a source for that. That would be huge news. Was it 1% of one particular department only?

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#40

Post by 1369ic »

criticalpotato wrote: post #21

Or would it be time to give up on Uber and finally admit that they're neither a technology company nor anything else "groundbreaking" that Valley thinks they are. "Technology" for the company has been coming up with a mobile app to connect drivers and potential customers - something hardly groundbreaking. Probably the most groundbreaking technological thing coming from these guys has been the multiple evasion softwar…

> The US defense collaboration we can only speculate on

Or you could ask. I work for the lab's parent command. The easy answer is that, if you look at the Army's top modernization priorities, future vertical lift (better helicopters) is right near the tippy top. And if you search up "ARL open campus," you'll see what the lab has been up to with respect to partnering. And that's just the lab. We have six research, development & engineering centers who are also partnering with people all the time.

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