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NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

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Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#271

Post by ChadNauseam »

habosa wrote: post #257

The technology is pretty amazing, but does anyone else feel like we (the public) got duped? What I wanted was for my own car to drive itself so I could relax and make better use of car time. I also wanted some new novel ways of interacting with cars to make them feel more like public transit that would be enabled by driverless technology. What we got was ... SciFi Uber. We are not going to be allowed to own the cars,…

I don't feel like the tech is there yet to start selling the cars to consumers. Waymo only recently got permission to start doing rides for money right? And in the early stages, scifi Uber makes way more sense than trying to sell the cars directly.

> hiring them for trips will not be any cheaper or easier than Uber

Why wouldn't they be? When the price of a business's inputs goes down, the profit-maximizing thing for them do is lower the price of their outputs.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#272

Post by tchaffee »

pb7 wrote: post #233
ForHackernews wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UPS drivers now get paid close to $200k. The key being that UPS drivers are unionized . If your argument is that the increasingly obsolete humans need to band together and take wealth back from the owners of the robots, then I agree.

The actual key being that they get paid somewhere around half that. Other industries don't calculate the overtime potential or benefits in the total compensation figure but of course this gets clicks and misinformation spreads like wildfire.

I was using this article for my source [1] which says:

"By the end of the new contract, full-time UPS delivery drivers will make an average of $49 per hour, which works out to nearly $102,000 per year, assuming a 40-hour workweek, 52 weeks a year. Those employees are guaranteed an eight-hour workday, a UPS spokesperson told CBS MoneyWatch.

Drivers also receive $50,000 in benefits that include health, welfare and pension contributions, the spokesperson said."

I think a base salary of $100k is a decent living for non-skilled labor. And the pension contributions, whatever they are, are reasonable to include. I'm also noting that the end of the new contract is in 5 years, so maybe it won't be as good of a living as I'm thinking, depending on inflation.

In any case the important point is that UPS cut earnings forecasts because of this which means that workers did capture more of the profits that would have gone to owners. I consider it a win. Could it have been a bigger win? If most other workers were organized, I think so. With so many workers negotiating as individuals in the US, companies still have the upper hand as a whole. Workers continue to underestimate their value to the economy both in terms of labor and as consumers. The rich need labor, the rich need consumers. We should be getting a bigger piece of the huge profit pie that productivity increases result in.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ups-drivers-170000-pay-benefits...

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#273

Post by enoch_r »

checkyoursudo wrote: post #209
prepend wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is everyone employed and happy? No Relatively speaking, it’s the best it has ever been in the history of humanity. Of course it’s hard to measure happiness and we’ll never be perfect but we have greater safety, lower violence, more food, more work, etc etc. I wonder if people had succeeded in stopping the tractor because it displaced workers. Of course it displaced workers. Workers who now do more valuable work. Or…

I don't disagree that we live in a relatively good time right now, but I do wonder if this is the best it has ever been in the history of humanity. We have more pollution (air, water, noise, light), more cancer, more heart disease, more obesity, more addiction, more suicide, much worse environmental impact, and so on (though these are the worst that I can think of off the top of my head). Your points about safety, vi…

I think you have your rose-colored glasses on when looking at the past.

Air pollution: down since the 1990s. [1][2][3]

Water pollution: down since the 1990s. [4][5]

Noise/light pollution: definitely up since the 1990s, agreed there.

Cancer: US deaths are way down since the 1990s, though it's cheating a bit since that was the top of the smoking-related spike in lung cancer. Still, other cancer deaths are way down since then too. [6][7] (Edit: worldwide this looks worse and things have increased lately, see: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-people-with-can...)

Heart disease: can't find long term stats on this quickly, but cardiovascular mortality is way down. [8]

Obesity, addiction, and suicide: certainly up.

"Much worse environmental impact," I think the decline in air and water pollution makes this debatable.

Climate change is a bit of a weird one, because it's definitely getting worse, but at the same time, the worst-case scenarios (greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated into the indefinite future) is becoming less likely. [9] So the derivative is bad, but the second derivative is good.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-air-poll...

[2] https://www.slowboring.com/p/wildfires-have-partially-revers...

[3] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-air-poll...

[4] https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-good-news-on-americas-clean...

[5] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/water-and-sanitation?ta...

[6] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-death-rates-in-the...

[7] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-death-rates?tab=ch...

[8] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5268076/

[9] https://www.slowboring.com/p/people-need-to-hear-the-good-ne...

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#274

Post by nradov »

habosa wrote: post #257

The technology is pretty amazing, but does anyone else feel like we (the public) got duped? What I wanted was for my own car to drive itself so I could relax and make better use of car time. I also wanted some new novel ways of interacting with cars to make them feel more like public transit that would be enabled by driverless technology. What we got was ... SciFi Uber. We are not going to be allowed to own the cars,…

You can own the car if you want to. Mercedes-Benz is about to start selling level 3 autonomous vehicles to consumers.

https://media.mbusa.com/releases/release-1d2a8750850333f086a...

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#275

Post by ChadNauseam »

kick_in_the_dor wrote: post #262
Diffusion3166 wrote: post #197

Am I the only one finding it hard to be excited for this? It seems like automated taxis: 0. Encourage the use of cars in cities rather than public transit & walkability. 1. Centralize wealth by replacing payments to many drivers with payments to one large company. 2. Allow for further surveillance of individuates. It seems likely that Google will eventually create ad inventory by adding screens to the cars and incorp…

I feel like this is such a HackerNews take. Headline: Self-driving cars are actually a thing! "Yeah so here's why that's not very exciting and actually bad."

I can't think of a single technology other than relational databases that Hacker News actually likes. Nothing invented after 2000 certainly. Cell phones give everyone depression, LLMs are just stochastic parrots, crypto is just a scam, Uber is just an expensive unregulated taxi, AirBnb is just an expensive unregulated hotel, self driving cars are just going to lead to centralization of wealth and congestion, every new browser feature is just another way for websites to fingerprint you, discord isn't an improvement over IRC and makes everything ungooglable, also google sucks now, also they kill every product 6 months after launch, fusion is 20 years away just like it was 20 years ago, electron makes everything slow because devs these days are too lazy to write native apps, Github is just Microsoft applying EEE to open source, WSL is just Microsoft applying EEE to Linux. I don't see why everything needs to be so terrible all the time.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#276

Post by jefftk »

habosa wrote: post #257

The technology is pretty amazing, but does anyone else feel like we (the public) got duped? What I wanted was for my own car to drive itself so I could relax and make better use of car time. I also wanted some new novel ways of interacting with cars to make them feel more like public transit that would be enabled by driverless technology. What we got was ... SciFi Uber. We are not going to be allowed to own the cars,…

Different companies have different visions, but "driverless car that you own" is a goal some have. For example, if you buy a Mercedes with DrivePilot then in approved locations (including Germany, California [1], and Nevada [2]) you can legally and safely read, watch a video, or play a game while in the driver's seat. It's only Level 3, and can only do highways under 40mph (traffic jams), but it shows that this is still an active direction.

[1] https://media.mbusa.com/releases/release-1d2a8750850333f086a...

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/27/23572942/mercedes-drive-p...

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#277

Post by knallfrosch »

Diffusion3166 wrote: post #197

Am I the only one finding it hard to be excited for this? It seems like automated taxis: 0. Encourage the use of cars in cities rather than public transit & walkability. 1. Centralize wealth by replacing payments to many drivers with payments to one large company. 2. Allow for further surveillance of individuates. It seems likely that Google will eventually create ad inventory by adding screens to the cars and incorp…

0. Car use isn't actually bad, it not using cars that gobbles up space. Half of the car street space is wasted on cars that aren't in use - known as "parking."

1. Agree. But Taxi drivers are a relict of the past already. You can drive your own car and need no navigation skills. It's called Uber and it sucks hard already. Nothing much of value lost here (most of the economic value is captured by Uber anyway.)

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#278

Post by fnordpiglet »

rob74 wrote: post #150
fnordpiglet wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I watch a booster landing I get goosebumps. And robo taxis still amaze me.

Yeah, people sensitive to technology (and I guess there's a fair share of those on HN) find these things fascinating. Or things that are even more commonplace, like airplanes - that it's really possible to transport millions of people around the world with this speed and reliability is also fascinating if you think about it. But most people just complain about the lack of legroom and the bad food - and would probably…

Welllllll - no one likes being uncomfortable for long periods of time. Even if I went to the moon in economy class I would definitely be thrilled, but would complain about the leg room and the (no) food :-)

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#279

Post by BurningFrog »

danmaz74 wrote: post #239
BurningFrog wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A robo-taxi driving 24/7 replaces 24 cars driving 1h/day, 23 of which are parked on average. This would be a huge improvement in resource efficiency.

Only if there weren't rush hours.

Sure, human movement is unevenly distributed, but a robo-taxi can also be used for deliveries during non rush hours.

There is also probably 1 hour of service per day needed.

You won't get 24x efficiency, but 15x is good enough.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#280

Post by taeric »

habosa wrote: post #257

The technology is pretty amazing, but does anyone else feel like we (the public) got duped? What I wanted was for my own car to drive itself so I could relax and make better use of car time. I also wanted some new novel ways of interacting with cars to make them feel more like public transit that would be enabled by driverless technology. What we got was ... SciFi Uber. We are not going to be allowed to own the cars,…

On the other side of that, "hiring an Uber" even several times a month to do a longer trip that you can't manage in any other way is much cheaper than any ownership situation for the same cars. Heck, you almost certainly save in recovered space from not owning the car.

Going down the path, though, as someone that has extensively used public transit in every US city I've lived in for my adult life, I'm curious how you envision "more like public transit" looking? I get that you wanted better use of "car time", but I also have to confess I don't really know what that means. Even public transit is mostly a place for you to maybe read a book. If you are super hyper and have a long commute, you can consider some programming/drawing/writing. Most anything else, though, will be pretty difficult to pull off in a highly confined space.

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