So what if we eliminate some of the hard problems, like steering, traffic, pedestrians, and setup guided routes specifically for automated vehicles? All you would need to control is signaling and the throttle/brakes. You could even couple multiple vehicles together for more capacity! Seems like an idea ripe for implementation. /s
The self-driving car is a red herring
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Re: The self-driving car is a red herring
#32Self-driving cars, computer speech recognition and the collapse of the federal reserve system. Things that are going to perpetually happen next year since the inception of Hacker News.
Is "Linux on the Desktop next year" still a thing?
Sort of, now that Microsoft announced native GUI support coming to WSL2 next year!
Re: The self-driving car is a red herring
#33Self-driving cars, computer speech recognition and the collapse of the federal reserve system. Things that are going to perpetually happen next year since the inception of Hacker News.
Is "Linux on the Desktop next year" still a thing?
I think we called it a win on "The year of desktop linux" when it was clear that Linux was mainstream enough for Microsoft to tie it up with a bow and offer in their app store.
Jokes aside, we're at the point where everyone who wants linux on the desktop can get linux on the desktop without having to struggle. Big, known enterprise-friendly companies like Dell and Lenovo will sell you their flagship and business laptops and desktops running Ubuntu, and it's not uncommon for engineers at the 8000+ not-a-software-company I work at to casually have a Linux machine instead of a Mac or PC. It's not 2010, where you had to be willing to navigate UEFI and "will my broadcom wireless work?" to weed out the casuals from the true-believers.
Re: The self-driving car is a red herring
#34> And even if we do, spreading the technology beyond the Arizona suburbs will require costly retrofits to add navigational hardware to existing roads.
No it won't? Why would it? Plenty of companies are testing in other areas, and I haven't heard any suggest that they need special hardware on the roads themselves.
Yes, the Phoenix suburbs are the easiest place to start, but that doesn't mean you need special infrastructure in other places. The tech will keep improving, and I predict that this author will turn out to be incredibly wrong.
Re: The self-driving car is a red herring
#35I think this article actually makes quite a fresh and interesting point, after the first few paragraphs that sound like stock self-driving skepticism. The author is pointing out that imagining self-driving cars of the same form-factor and niche as the human-driven cars today is a fallacy on par with a 1990s futurist imagining the internet as simply a way to send letters faster. The point is that changes to the techno…
Yes, I think a lot of people here didn't read beyond the first third of the article, which is understandable because it tries to be very poetic and sci-fi and fails to actually make clear what it's talking about until more than halfway through.
Re: The self-driving car is a red herring
#36Classic anti hype cycle. Won't age well.
Well, the predictions 15 years ago that we’d have fleets of self driving cars on all our roads long before now didn’t age all that well either.
I remember a friend saying my kids would never need to learn how to drive. My eldest started her driving lessons last month.
Re: The self-driving car is a red herring
#37Self-driving cars, computer speech recognition and the collapse of the federal reserve system. Things that are going to perpetually happen next year since the inception of Hacker News.
But Elon says it's happening next year!
He's raised it to this year!
>“It’s almost getting to a point where I can go from my house to work with no interventions, despite going through construction and widely varying situations,” he said.
>“So this is why I’m very confident about full self-driving functionality being complete by the end of this year. It’s because I’m literally driving it.”
Though reading that it sounds more like the car can drive from A to B on it's own sometimes rather than with any reliability.
Re: The self-driving car is a red herring
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many nines of reliability do self driving cars need before they're safe? They have to operate in weather. Rain, snow, dark. They have to adapt to novel conditions. I put the self-driving car in the same category as the flying car and jet pack. This one just happens to have VC funding. I don't think we'll see these things for another decade, and when that next decade arrives we'll be saying the same. Another decad…
> How many nines of reliability do self driving cars need before they're safe? That depends on your perspective. I think most of us just wants it to be more reliable than a human driver that's not drunk or sleep deprived. But the liability challenges could mean you'll want more "perfect" reliability. > They have to operate in weather. Rain, snow, dark. They have to adapt to novel conditions. Seems like the solutions…
>I think most of us just wants it to be more reliable than a human driver that's not drunk or sleep deprived
That is a seriously low bar, and in no way do I think the majority of people feel that driving "better than a drunk" is good enough. In fact, I think it will be the opposite: people will want it to be almost flawless before it's accepted.
Re: The self-driving car is a red herring
#39Actual red herring here is developing new automobile technologies at all.
I have the greatest startup idea ever: Selling petrol-driven generators with a web interface for charging electric cars. Premium tier will include automatic refuel ordering. Of course the generators will be completely useless when the web is down or our hosting company goes out of business.
Re: The self-driving car is a red herring
#40> Some experts now predict that we may never achieve the original dream of a reliable fully self-driving car. And even if we do, spreading the technology beyond the Arizona suburbs will require costly retrofits to add navigational hardware to existing roads. This is a non-starter in the post-pandemic age of austerity. Most state and local governments now struggle to merely maintain a much simpler, yet more fundamenta…
In most population dense parts of the country where traffic is a problem, there is no “side of the road” to dig a ditch into. It’s all built up.
Even in the less dense areas, the side of the road is filled with buried utility lines (it’s cheap).
I’m also curious what the tolerances of these magical “wires alongside the road” have.