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The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car

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Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car

#231

Post by mildbow »

phaemon wrote: post #214
mildbow wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give me some examples of what google might reasonably do with my data that can negatively affect my life to the same magnitude as what the police/government might reasonably do? Ideally, maybe no one should track my every move. But to talk about police and google in the same sentence in terms of ramifications is so far off I can't be anything but incredulous :)

Police and Government should be two different entities, but if you're living in a police state then you're probably right. Otherwise, what Google could do is, say, record your dangerous driving (maybe that one time you were rushing a friend to hospital and ignored some speed limits). And then, every time a potential employer googled your name, they would see this "dangerous driver" notification. And you have no way o…

again, my point wasn't so you could think of what Google "could do". But, rather contrast what Google might reasonably do and contrast with what the police might reasonably do.

But hey, feel free to over-react on google, but not about lack of gov. oversight.

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car

#232

Post by mildbow »

aidenn0 wrote: post #153
mildbow wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. The most google can do: send you ads for shovels. The most police can do: pull you in for murder because they correlated your car to where and when some body was buried.

The police can subpoena Google's records, and now Google is just a proxy for the police.

Sure. But that requires atleast a subpoena. So there is atleast some expectation of due process. Which means Google or any other company can push back. Failing that, something like Snowden can happen.

Contrast that with police collecting that data and not requiring any, however made-up, oversight.

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car

#233

Post by JshWright »

pluma wrote: post #225
devsquid wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Srsly, it amazes me when ppl don't get out of the way for emergency vehicles. IMHO one random day out of the year, you should be equipped with heavy machine guns and allowed to blast anyone in your way. A simple solution for a simple problem.

As a pedestrian I think the thinking generally is "if the ambulance runs me over, at least there's already an ambulance around to patch me up". As a driver... well, I guess they're just being selfish idiots.

While that's true... here's hoping we weren't on the way to someone who needed an ambulance 5 minutes ago...

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car

#234

Post by mildbow »

oldmanjay wrote: post #164
mildbow wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give me some examples of what google might reasonably do with my data that can negatively affect my life to the same magnitude as what the police/government might reasonably do? Ideally, maybe no one should track my every move. But to talk about police and google in the same sentence in terms of ramifications is so far off I can't be anything but incredulous :)

farfetched and unrealistic at the moment , but totally plausible: compile a list of destinations you visit on some sort of schedule, commit some physical crime along that path during a time you can be shown to be in the area, and frame you for it, potentially by including things like relevant search data, falsified emails... lots of possibilities here.

Hahaha.

And you think this is something google might reasonably do?

Fuck. If you are around the NoVA/DC area let me know. I'll buy you a drink just so I can get a good laugh :)

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car

#235

Post by thrownaway2424 »

branchan wrote: post #221
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your can downvote me for days but that won't make your statements correct. In the 2000 Bay Area Travel Survey, driving was a minority share of trips for people in the bottom income quintile. Walking, biking, transit, riding as passengers in cars, and "other" are 50% more popular than driving.

Jokes on you. My account cannot downvote people yet. See, that's the thing with Hacker News. A lot of people here think Silicon Valley is the center of the world and everywhere is just like us, when the fact, we are living in a little bubble and a lot of the US operates very differently.

It doesn't matter how big the empty part of the United States is. The Bay Area is as populous as Sweden and therefore big enough to do things its own way. It may in fact be true that the poor person in Pecos County, Texas, drives around in his own car, it is also an irrelevant fact on a population-weighted basis.

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car

#236

Post by branchan »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #235
branchan wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jokes on you. My account cannot downvote people yet. See, that's the thing with Hacker News. A lot of people here think Silicon Valley is the center of the world and everywhere is just like us, when the fact, we are living in a little bubble and a lot of the US operates very differently.

It doesn't matter how big the empty part of the United States is. The Bay Area is as populous as Sweden and therefore big enough to do things its own way. It may in fact be true that the poor person in Pecos County, Texas, drives around in his own car, it is also an irrelevant fact on a population-weighted basis.

So when you said "It's a myth that poor people drive."

You really mean "It's a myth that poor people drive in heavily populated cities.", in that case, you would be correct lol.

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car

#237

Post by chrismealy »

pdxandi wrote: post #40
xnxn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can already stop traffic by doing this. Why not give it a go? ;) On a serious note: I'm sure strolling into highway traffic will be approximately as legal as it is presently.

All joking aside, that's exactly how traffic works in Portland.

How many people on foot and bike are killed and maimed in Portland every year? It's not zero.

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car

#238

Post by platinum1 »

drhodes wrote: post #32
tablatom wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking the same thing. If Google start logging license plate numbers (and, hey, it's Google), they could build a database of known dangerous vehicles and automatically give them a wide berth.

At that point they'd necessarily have some way to quantify dangerousity. There will be a ranking. Somewhere deep in the bowels of google, there will be a list, Top Ten most dangerous drivers. Google is about to get into the car insurance business.

https://google.com/compare

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car

#239

Post by afarrell »

darkmighty wrote: post #160
happyscrappy wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a table saw that stops the blade the instant it senses the capacitance of a finger. It completely ruins the saw but saves the finger. Something like that could work here if the car could see the pedestrian far enough in advance to stay within parameters. Ruins the road and the car not the pedestrian.

If you stop the car instantly that's equivalent to a crash for the car occupants.

It is in fact a pretty jerkish thing to do.

Re: The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car

#240

Post by john61 »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #157
john61 wrote: post #63

The driver is not the problem of cars. It is the fact that in average 1,5 t and 10 m2 are used to transport 100 kg and 1 m2. Driverlessness does not change the bad physics of car transportation decisively.

It sorta kinda might, if the cars have high utilization and don't need to park at their passengers' destinations.

There is already working car sharing. No driverlessness needed.
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