Why don't they call it 'the Matrix' and should i prepare for the plugs?
The Waymo World Model
541–550 of 699 posts
Re: The Waymo World Model
#542Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's worth noting that, at least for bart, the reason that it is facing bankruptcy is precisely because it was mostly rider supported and profitable, and not government supported. When ridership plummeted by >50% during the pandemic, fixed costs stayed the same, but income dropped. Last time I checked, if Bart ridership returned to 2019 levels, with no other changes, it would be profitable again.
You can't say that BART "is facing bankruptcy is precisely because it was mostly rider supported and profitable, and not government supported" when it is very obvious that BART would be in a much worse situation if it had had more government support... because all those governments are facing massive budget deficits right now. BART has already been bailed out by the state, twice . It has already failed, twice. It ver…
> You can't say that BART "is facing bankruptcy is precisely because it was mostly rider supported and profitable, and not government supported" when it is very obvious that BART would be in a much worse situation if it had had more government support... because all those governments are facing massive budget deficits right now.
I don't think this follows. Government budgeting isn't zero based. A hypothetical Bart with 2x the government funding in 2019 would have faced cutbacks, but likely has more money today than what we have now!
> or seek other forms of revenues while we wait to see if ridership returns.
Yes, this is called "taxes".
> If ridership never returns, then we ought not continue throwing good money after bad
Agreed if it was stagnant, but ridership is up more than 10% y/y and that was also true last year. It's on track to be revenue neutral again in a few years. Gutting services today would be exactly opposite of what you'd do for something like a startup showing clear path toward profitability.
> Obviously the main problem here is that it's literally illegal to just build high density corridors directly adjacent to the transit stations... which is what we ultimately need to prioritize
While sure it's hard, there's lots of these that exist. There's new stuff in oakland basically constantly, and were even seeing midrise stuff along Bart in SF, but it's units being built now, so they won't be available until 2027, which is when your proposed service cuts would hit.
Re: The Waymo World Model
#543Every time I'm in town I use a waymo. It's still a little weird to be a passenger with no driver
Re: The Waymo World Model
#544Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taxes? The same place tons of other stuff we buy as a society comes from. I expect the ballot measure this fall will pass, worst case they file bankruptcy and will probably need to reduce service
I mean, sure? I'd prefer to have a system that has a system built in that raises and lowers the level of service in accordance with the number of people using the system rather than having to have random elections that decide whether or not we're going to effectively scrape a large parts of the system.
I think there's two important things here:
1. You want to be forward looking, not backwards looking. Cutting services means less ridership means less revenue means cutting services means...etc. Bart is super useful for me during the week because headways from SF to West Oakland are often 5m. As I'm writing this (11 on a Friday) I missed a train and had to wait 20 minutes. Every seat on the car is also full, and while not packed, it's standing room only. If my choice is to wait 20 mins for the next train, other ways of getting places become a lot more appealing.
2. Government services should be good. This is good both because it makes people interested in using them (see 1) and because people who don't have other options deserve good services. The point of government is, at least in part, to serve those who can't serve themselves. I don't expect Bart to be revenue neutral for the same reason I don't expect CalFRESH to be.
Re: The Waymo World Model
#545Suddenly all this focus on world models by Deep mind starts to make sense. I've never really thought of Waymo as a robot in the same way as e.g. a Boston Dynamics humanoid, but of course it is a robot of sorts. Google/Alphabet are so vertically integrated for AI when you think about it. Compare what they're doing - their own power generation , their own silicon, their own data centers, search Gmail YouTube Gemini wor…
Google has been doing more R&D and internal deployment of AI and less trying to sell it as a product. IMHO that difference in focus makes a huge difference. I used to think their early work on self-driving cars was primarily to support Street View in thier maps.
Use your own sh*t is one of the best way to build excellent products.
Re: The Waymo World Model
#546Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who lives in the Bay Area we already have trains, and they're literally past the point of bankruptcy because they (1) don't actually charge enough maintain the variable cost of operations, (2) don't actually make people pay at all, and (3) don't actually enforce any quality of life concerns short of breaking up literal fights. All of this creates negative synergies that pushes a huge, mostly silent segment…
> they (1) don't actually charge enough maintain the variable cost of operations Why do you expect them to make money? Roads don't make money and no one thinks to complain about that. One of the purposes of government is to make investment in things that have more nebulous returns. Moving more people to public transit makes better cities, healthier and happier citizens, stronger communities, and lets us save money on…
> Roads don't make money and no one thinks to complain about that.
Between toll roads, and the toll lanes, they do?
Re: The Waymo World Model
#547Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they (1) don't actually charge enough maintain the variable cost of operations Why do you expect them to make money? Roads don't make money and no one thinks to complain about that. One of the purposes of government is to make investment in things that have more nebulous returns. Moving more people to public transit makes better cities, healthier and happier citizens, stronger communities, and lets us save money on…
> Roads don't make money and no one thinks to complain about that. Between toll roads, and the toll lanes, they do?
If they paid for themselves then the DoT wouldn’t have a multibillion dollar highway budget, and that’s not even including all the state funding.
Re: The Waymo World Model
#548Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sensor fusion is an issue, one that is solvable over time and investment in the driving model, but sensor-can't-see-anything is a show stopper. Having a self-driving solution that can be totally turned off with a speck of mud, heavy rain, morning dew, bright sunlight at dawn and dusk.. you can't engineer your way out of sensor-blindness. I don't want a solution that is available to use 98% of the time, I want a solut…
> Waymo had no choice but to solve the expensive problem of "Always Available and Safe" And it's still not clear whether they are using a fallback driving stack for a situation where one of non-essential (i.e. non-camera (1)) sensors is degraded. I haven't seen Waymo clearly stating capabilities of their self-driving stack in this regard. On the other hand, there are such things as washer fluid and high dynamic range…
Hence why both together make the solution waymo chose. The proof is in the pudding, Waymo's have been driving millions of miles without any intervention. Tesla requires safety drivers. I would never trust the FSD on my model 3 to be even nearly perfect all the time.
Lidar also gives you the ability to see through fog and as it scans, see the depth needed to nearly always understand what object is in front of them.
My Model 3 shows "degraded" or "unavailable" about 2% of the time i'm driving around populated areas. Zero chance it will ever be truly FSD capable, no matter the software improvements. It'll still be unavailable because the cameras are blinded/blocked/unable to process the scene because it can't see the scene.
While you're right, washer fluid works usually on the windshield, it doesn't on the side cameras, and yea hdr could improve things, it won't improve depth perception, and this will never be installed on my model 3..
Lidar contributes the data most needed to handle the millions of edge cases that exist. With both camera and lidar contributing the data they are both the best at collecting, the risk of the very worst type of accidents is greatly reduced.
I don't see these stats https://waymo.com/safety/impact/ happening for tesla anytime soon.
Re: The Waymo World Model
#549Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't solve the "Coyote paints tunnel on rock" problem though.
IIRC, that was only ever a problem for the coyote, though. Source: not a computer vision engineer, but a childhood consumer of looney toons cartoons.
Time for a car company to call itself "ACME" and the first model the "Road Runner".