How in the world a car company can attract ( let alone provide environment or infrastructure etc ) sufficient software talent to achieve this ?
In most of Europe, software engineers are paid the same as other highly skilled engineers. And Europe has plenty of engineering talent. What it doesn't have, though, is people willing to take and fund bold projects. But building the safest cars in the world[1] is not considered bold at Volvo. That's how they differentiate themselves in the crowded premium car market from Audi, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW. [1] http://www.t…
Aren’t the Tesla Model S/X the safest cars in the world, though?
I am pretty sure laptops (and other computers) are a vanity project for Apple at this point. They need some way for people to be able to write iPhone apps, and the history of Apple kind of makes it difficult to say "buy the latest version of Windows and use our Visual Studio plugin", so they make Macs. But I'm not sure it's a good business decision. The number of people that use a computer outside of work seems to be…
Yes, because Apple doesn't completely dominate the market of computers above $1000 or nothing... It's just stupid people like us that buy their computers... Stupid people like engineers at actual first tier tech corporations. First tier arts and entertainment companies and individual artists.
The point is that that market is tiny compared to the people that buy iPhones. I also think Apple is doing good things on turning the iPad into a general purpose computing device. For my use cases (ssh somewhere to do work), it is way easier to manage than a laptop, and smaller. I imagine that as the product improves more people are going to make the jump, leaving MacOS in a weird place. (I switched from a Surface Pro 4 to an iPad Pro as my "laptop" and I am much happier. I still use a Windows workstation for everything that can't be done by ssh-ing to a Linux box, though, and of course prefer dual monitors and a mouse when I'm not travelling.)
Maybe Apple doesn't want to pursue a dream which, as far as we know, can only have a limited outcome? They don't really like such compromises in products. Check this: https://medium.com/s/story/self-driving-cars-will-always-be-... > Waymo’s CEO, John Krafcik, has admitted that a self-driving car that can drive in any condition, on any road, without ever needing a human to take control—usually called a “level five” au…
From the Medium-article you posted:
> In short, sensors on autonomous vehicles don’t work well in
snow or rain—and that may never change.
With that attitude, you are stuck in the past and don't want to make progress with technology.
In most of Europe, software engineers are paid the same as other highly skilled engineers. And Europe has plenty of engineering talent. What it doesn't have, though, is people willing to take and fund bold projects. But building the safest cars in the world[1] is not considered bold at Volvo. That's how they differentiate themselves in the crowded premium car market from Audi, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW. [1] http://www.t…
Aren’t the Tesla Model S/X the safest cars in the world, though?
He ment crash saftey :) If you are in a collition, Volvo is world leading. Tesla is only safer because is can break in advance.
> you shouldn’t have to harvest lots of data for intelligent AI. Er.... that's not how it works. As a Valve employee put it (a talk about ML recognising cheaters), machine learning is just an equation: y = f(x) where you can actually derive the FUNCTION f if you have enough x/y pairs. Without those pairs then most of the successful techniques in machine learning fail to function. Yes you can generate your own data bu…
Not true. You can code your prior knowledge into the model, and make do with way less x/y pairs. Data is a substitute for doing engineering by hand. If you do the latter, you require less data.
I don't see how it makes my statement untrue. The most effective ML techniques are more effective the more x/y pairs you have. Sure, you can get a leg up if you partially define F yourself but then you're no longer being as hands off as before. In practice the WHOLE of F() will likely be a blend of machine learning as well as heuristics as a product of various layers that are one or the other.
In most of Europe, software engineers are paid the same as other highly skilled engineers. And Europe has plenty of engineering talent. What it doesn't have, though, is people willing to take and fund bold projects. But building the safest cars in the world[1] is not considered bold at Volvo. That's how they differentiate themselves in the crowded premium car market from Audi, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW. [1] http://www.t…
Aren’t the Tesla Model S/X the safest cars in the world, though?
I can almost guarantee that doubling the number of engineers working on the keyboard would make the problem worse, rather than better.
Well there has to be a reason, people are assuming it’s resources, because incompetence which isn’t noticed and fixed by management is hard to understand
If management isn't competent, they won't be able to discern competence from non-competence.
In most of Europe, software engineers are paid the same as other highly skilled engineers. And Europe has plenty of engineering talent. What it doesn't have, though, is people willing to take and fund bold projects. But building the safest cars in the world[1] is not considered bold at Volvo. That's how they differentiate themselves in the crowded premium car market from Audi, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW. [1] http://www.t…
Aren’t the Tesla Model S/X the safest cars in the world, though?
No
Volvo XC90 is
Teslas are safest for the NHTSA tests, but not the European tests, which, IIRC are better measures of safety