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Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

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Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#281

Post by kovek »

ablekh wrote: post #129
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love it when job interview pitches fall flat like that. Many years ago, I had a job offer from IBM for a class of server I wasn't familiar with. The guy explained it to me like this: "You see, desktops these days are running Linux, and mainframes are running (IBM OS something?). We represent a class of server bigger than desktops but smaller than mainframes. It's an exciting space. The desktop class of PCs are hand…

If my guess is correct, it seems that you have missed a chance to work on relatively popular AS/400 servers ... :-)

Could you explain why are AS/400 relatively popular? I don't read much about these mainframes, and am a user of Personal Computers (macbook, thinkpad) and EC2 instances (something that runs Linux?) , so I am not sure what AS/400 servers are, but I'd love to learn more!

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#282

Post by Fordec »

Apocryphon wrote: post #85
khazhoux wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of their execs literally pitched me this very vision when I turned Uber down for an eng mgr position several years ago. I thought it was comical that his pitch was "The reason we're going to be successful at Problem 1 (taxis) is because we're going to be successful at ridiculously-difficult Problem 2 (self-driving) which we're not close to solving". Pass.

Not to mention, a ridiculously difficult problem that can't only be solved by technical breakthroughs, but also relies on legal and social advancements in order to see widespread adoption.

As time goes on I find more and more parallels with designers and legal/policy writers.

One just builds a specification of a technical system while the other builds a specification of a societal system.

Societal systems just have much more legacy code and inertia with very little in the way of mechanisms for in house testing at scale. There's no development server, just keeping tabs on competitors (ie other countries) to see how the change in production (ie a new law introduced) had second order effects.

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#283

Post by [deleted] »

Fordec wrote: post #282
Apocryphon wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention, a ridiculously difficult problem that can't only be solved by technical breakthroughs, but also relies on legal and social advancements in order to see widespread adoption.

As time goes on I find more and more parallels with designers and legal/policy writers. One just builds a specification of a technical system while the other builds a specification of a societal system. Societal systems just have much more legacy code and inertia with very little in the way of mechanisms for in house testing at scale. There's no development server, just keeping tabs on competitors (ie other countries…

[deleted]

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#284

Post by Dylan16807 »

arcticfox wrote: post #224
dekhn wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One pedestrian death due to cars occurs on average every ~200 million car-driven miles. Is that really bad? (the math is based on # of US miles driven in 2017 divided by the number of car-caused pedestrian fatalities in the same year)

Is that right? That seems phenomenally bad. I feel like I have normal American driving habits and I drive a standard 10k miles per year... So I'm going to kill a pedestrian every 100 years? Assuming I drive normally for ~50 years, 500k miles, I have a 50% chance to kill a pedestrian?

Did they change the number? The comment says one pedestrian death per 200 million miles right now, which is in the right ballpark and gives you a chance of 0.25%

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#285

Post by marcinzm »

dekhn wrote: post #183
LeoPanthera wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I never understand is what happens when a new situation that the system did not previously train for happen? This happens to human drivers all the time, and humans are really bad drivers even in situations that have happened before. I fully expect AI drivers to be safer than human drivers.

One pedestrian death due to cars occurs on average every ~200 million car-driven miles. Is that really bad? (the math is based on # of US miles driven in 2017 divided by the number of car-caused pedestrian fatalities in the same year)

I mean only counting the 5000 pedestrian deaths ignores the 137000 emergency room visits by pedestrians due to cars. Many of which probably involve massive suffering and lifelong disability. It also ignores the 38000 car occupants that die every year due to accidents. And the 3,000,000 injuries to car occupants each year of which 2,000,000 include permanent injuries.

So cherrypicking the smallest number seems very disingenuous to me.

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#287

Post by [deleted] »

Fordec wrote: post #282
Apocryphon wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention, a ridiculously difficult problem that can't only be solved by technical breakthroughs, but also relies on legal and social advancements in order to see widespread adoption.

As time goes on I find more and more parallels with designers and legal/policy writers. One just builds a specification of a technical system while the other builds a specification of a societal system. Societal systems just have much more legacy code and inertia with very little in the way of mechanisms for in house testing at scale. There's no development server, just keeping tabs on competitors (ie other countries…

[deleted]

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#288

Post by rabuse »

azylman wrote: post #253
deeeeplearning wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to pay your execs and engineers insanely bloated Tech salaries on Taxi profit margins. It's a bubble ready to pop.The guy saying they will profitable in the next year is delusional.

"The guy" - the CEOs of both companies? You're essentially stating that the CEOs of Uber any Lyft are lying to their investors, which is a crime. That's a serious accusation and some actual evidence is needed.

This is hilarious, honestly. Who was arrested at Helios Matheson with the joke that was MoviePass?

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#289

Post by chairmanwow1 »

kajecounterhack wrote: post #229
chairmanwow1 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who worked in the industry, there are a couple of different approaches, incredible amounts of hype, and disappointing amounts of progress to fully autonomous vehicles. * Tesla driver assistance features that they market as self-driving features. You need a driver that is alert and monitoring the vehicle because it can return control to the driver without warning. * Waymo has launched limited L4 pilot in th…

> In my opinion, Comma is going to crush it in the next 2 years, Tesla will keep refining their AP tech, but still won't be FSD. I think autonomous robotaxis will be the norm eventually but not until after 2025. Curious why you think Comma is going to crush it vs all the other companies working in this space?

I think Tesla and Comma are by far the best positioned for the consumer tech. Trucking is not something I feel qualified to comment on, because I don’t have a sense for the economics. But I know a bunch of R&D is going on here.

Most players in the space made investments in driver replacement tech which is multiple years from profitability. I think the places that this kind of tech makes sense is in licensing it to TNCs or operating a fleet of vehicles that you list on a TNC’s network.

On the other hand, driver assistance features are the only systems that can generate meaningful revenue today. One of Tesla’s finest selling points is their AP software.

In this vein, Comma is the Android to Tesla’s tightly integrated iOS. They are profitable today and ultimately have a larger TAM (new cars vs Tesla owners).

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#290

Post by remir »

boh wrote: post #99

Is it possible that just having an app doesn't make you a tech company? Anyone else ready to think Uber might just be an overvalued taxi company?

Where I'm from, the government bought back the taxi licenses from taxi drivers and changed the law so now Uber doesn't have an advantage over traditional taxi companies.
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