Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco • Hacker News Board

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#411

Post by thechao » Wed, Jun 26, 2024, 4:30 AM UTC

elbasti wrote: post #405

hyfgfh wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And mingle with the masses? in SF? Maybe if they re-invent trains or buses again

> Maybe if they re-invent trains or buses again You joke, but I've heard more than one argument about how self-driving cars will drastically improve traffic because, for inter-city travel, they will be able to drive very close together on the highway in a long convoy, leaving almost no space between cars...

150 cars long! 90000 horsepower! May Immortan Joe live forever!!! To the Vineyards!

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#412

Post by nmeofthestate » Wed, Jun 26, 2024, 4:41 AM UTC

jazzyjackson wrote: post #396

barbariangrunge wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does. It uses a specific band on the electro magnetic spectrum commonly supported by most receivers

hm? Are you mixed up with Transit Signal Priority where Muni can request the light stay green a little longer? I've never heard of the lights transmitting their timing This article from SFMTA erroneously states that the busses use "GPS to communicate with the traffic signal", lol, what is the actual band used ? https://www.sfmta.com/blog/green-lights-muni

I think the commenter was alluding to the 430 terahertz band.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#413

Post by lynx23 » Wed, Jun 26, 2024, 4:58 AM UTC

prasoonds wrote: post #14

I highly recommend everyone try it out if you're in SF. It's an incredibly smooth and sure ride. The cars are really nice too (Jaguar I-Pace electric cars), clean and spacious. The first time you ride in one, it feels truly sci-fi. But within 5 minutes, you're almost bored of it - that's how good it is. If I had to choose between an Uber of questionable cleanliness and driver temperament and a Waymo with a slightly l…

I will prefer a human driver (for several reasons) for a long time to come. I would even pay more for a a human driver.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#414

Post by Fricken » Wed, Jun 26, 2024, 5:01 AM UTC

itsoktocry wrote: post #215

prasoonds wrote: post #14

I highly recommend everyone try it out if you're in SF. It's an incredibly smooth and sure ride. The cars are really nice too (Jaguar I-Pace electric cars), clean and spacious. The first time you ride in one, it feels truly sci-fi. But within 5 minutes, you're almost bored of it - that's how good it is. If I had to choose between an Uber of questionable cleanliness and driver temperament and a Waymo with a slightly l…

I love how we've gone from "Taxis are gross and dirty, that's why I love Uber!" to "Ubers are gross and dirty, that's why I love Waymo!" in the span of 5 years. What do you think comes next? These cars are literally unsupervised.

Motor vehicles are gross and dirty, that's why I ride a bicycle.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#415

Post by olalonde » Wed, Jun 26, 2024, 5:03 AM UTC

itsoktocry wrote: post #215

prasoonds wrote: post #14

I highly recommend everyone try it out if you're in SF. It's an incredibly smooth and sure ride. The cars are really nice too (Jaguar I-Pace electric cars), clean and spacious. The first time you ride in one, it feels truly sci-fi. But within 5 minutes, you're almost bored of it - that's how good it is. If I had to choose between an Uber of questionable cleanliness and driver temperament and a Waymo with a slightly l…

I love how we've gone from "Taxis are gross and dirty, that's why I love Uber!" to "Ubers are gross and dirty, that's why I love Waymo!" in the span of 5 years. What do you think comes next? These cars are literally unsupervised.

Self-driving + self-cleaning cars obviously.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#416

Post by Mockapapella » Wed, Jun 26, 2024, 5:07 AM UTC

consumer451 wrote: post #167

bangaladore wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only selling point of FSD (Supervised) is that it (can) work "everywhere." This is because it only relies on navigation information and what the car can see. Waymo and similar companies all use HD Mapping. Ignoring the specifics, it can be thought of as a centimeter-level perfect reconstruction of the environment, including additional metadata such as slopes, exact lane positions, road markings, barriers, traffic…

> The only selling point of FSD (Supervised) is that it (can) work "everywhere." I seem to recall Musk saying in the last couple years that "full self driving will basically require AGI." This appeared to me to be extremely honest and accurate, though I believe that in the moment he was trying to promote the idea that Tesla was an AGI company. Does anyone happen to remember when he said that?

Would have been at one of their AI days in the last few years

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#417

Post by forgetfreeman » Wed, Jun 26, 2024, 5:08 AM UTC

Schiendelman wrote: post #249

Fatnino wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I rode in one, admittedly a long time ago when cruise was still operating in sf too, the waymo car pulled over for a firetruck. However, the firetruck was merely crossing the road we were on and it was 3 streets away. And the waymo pulled into a bus stop to do this. The safety driver had to nudge it back into traffic.

The rate at which these systems are improving makes it almost useless to compare even six months ago.

Prove that. Because last time I checked in there wasn't a self-driving system in play that wouldn't faceplant into wet cement, blow through crosswalks, or find itself trapped in a cleverly deployed ring of salt. Additionally, by their own admission Waymo is nowhere near level 5 autonomy, which means they still haven't reached parity with what a mediocre human driver is capable of.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#418

Post by jessriedel » Wed, Jun 26, 2024, 5:09 AM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #126

jessriedel wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have several phases before they open fully: safety driver no passenger testing, safety drivers with employee passengers, driverless with employee passengers, limited rollout to paid passengers under NDA, wider rollout but with waitlist, and finally getting rid of the waitlist. It's certainly true that they need to do a bunch of extensive mapping for each city, but I don't think we should expect their roll-out…

It will get faster definitely, but how much faster is the question. We've only seen full rollout to two cities so far, so hard to extrapolate.

My argument is based on theory. We know that a lot of the learning is facing unusual situations (trucks delivering traffic lights, etc) that can happen in many places. And we have some idea of how long the mapping takes.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#419

Post by browningstreet » Wed, Jun 26, 2024, 5:10 AM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #360

tmpz22 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These cars are literally unsupervised. Unsupervised in what sense? There's internal cameras that are periodically checked. Weight and seatbelt sensors that give alerts if a passenger is or puts objects in the drivers seat, or if too many individuals get in the car. I'd be shocked if a similar or greater level of observability doesn't also exist outside the car.

> Unsupervised in what sense? Unsupervised in the sense that there's no driver there to clean the car when it gets dirty. At the same time, presumably part of the odor of an uber comes from the driver, so that helps. I wonder if waymos roll down the window (weather permitting) between riders, to air it out. Might be dangerous at a red light, since people could throw stuff in or even dive in through open windows.

Or, maybe.. when the Waymo cars return to the depot periodically during the day.

https://youtu.be/3QZ3e7mWD9E?si=CbP063vAtrnOTihp

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#420

Post by jessriedel » Wed, Jun 26, 2024, 5:12 AM UTC

kajecounterhack wrote: post #135

jessriedel wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spreadsheets are the best and most open way to share data because it lets other people analyze it. But they put out plenty of their own research if you want to read that. I'm really not sure what you mean by "infrequently". They release new raw data every 3 or 6 months or something, and every single accident is trumpeted in the news. What other industry has more publicly accessible safety data?

Every software release is a totally new driver. If they release software at a cadence of say, 6 or 8 weeks, would you feel comfortable riding? You don't know how safe the car was during that time -- any part of the driver can regress. You're basically trusting that they know how to do simulation, that they bore the cost of running that simulation, and that their simulator is realistic enough to yield trustworthy stat…

I’m quite confident in it and personally ride it monthly. Happy to bet it will turn out to be no more than twice as dangerous as the median driver today, ie, as dangerous as driving in the 1980s. In the long term it will be vastly safer, obviously.