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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

#291

Post by ctoth »

sofixa wrote: post #224
pirate787 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your Luddite take is profoundly wrong, and has been consistently proven wrong at every single technological turn in history. We have more robots than even today, and yet a labor SHORTAGE. Eliminating the tedious and dangerous task of driving is an enormous benefit to humanity that will save 30,000+ lives a year in the US alone. We will end the misery caused to millions from injury and tragedy, and the billions of dol…

> We can rethink our cities and move parking to the periphery Just moving parking to the periphery won't make American cities better or more walkable. > Eliminating the tedious and dangerous task of driving is an enormous benefit to humanity that will save 30,000+ lives a year in the US alone If you're assuming that self-driving cars will be perfect and segregated, conditions will always be perfect (e.g. no pedestria…

There's a phrase you should probably learn. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#292

Post by samstave »

taeric wrote: post #280
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…

I was a daily biker in San Francisco for more than a decade... no car....

I had ZIPCAR and one month I took one on a trip and on several other excursions - and the bill for ZIPCAR that month was $850.

for like minimal time...

NO WAY was that "an affordable option"

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#293

Post by samstave »

kalleboo wrote: post #259
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,…

This is why Tesla was valued beyond the top 10 car companies combined - the idea was to kill the idea of people just buying their cars and make it an overpriced subscription

Dont we call those "leases"

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#294

Post by ghaff »

ryandrake wrote: post #289
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,…

There seems to be a growing, invisible force working against us, nudging us toward owning less and less and renting more and more. Don't own and maintain your own car! Pay me every time you need a ride somewhere! Don't own your own single family home! Move to the city and rent an apartment from me! Don't own your own computer! Do everything in "the Cloud" and pay me every month for it! Don't own your own media! Pay m…

I'm not sure there's a particular virtue in owning vs. renting or vice versa. It's all situational. I'm certainly going to own my car at home (which I also own). But if I take an even fairly lengthy trip it probably doesn't make sense to buy those things at my destination (though it may make sense to have a more extended arrangement than a typical night-by-night one).

If I'm going to watch a movie once it's not clear why I have to own it.

I think some people make ownership vs. rental much more of a value-laden decision than it needs to be.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#295

Post by samstave »

pirate787 wrote: post #149
3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The realization a self-driving car is not infinitely exciting is how bubbles pop. This particular bubble was formed mostly by Tesla hyping up the coming of their fleet of millions of robotaxis that will turn every other car immediately obsolete, “like owning a horse”, and Teslas will 100x in price, and Tesla will be the most valuable company in the world. And all that, over a product they still can’t ship (and won’t)…

Your Luddite take is profoundly wrong, and has been consistently proven wrong at every single technological turn in history. We have more robots than even today, and yet a labor SHORTAGE. Eliminating the tedious and dangerous task of driving is an enormous benefit to humanity that will save 30,000+ lives a year in the US alone. We will end the misery caused to millions from injury and tragedy, and the billions of dol…

The job shift should go toward reducing waste and environmental impacts of our technological trash that we produce en mass due to global consumerism...

We should have every petroleum company on the planet employing people to recover and capture their waste(s) in all formats.

Honestly - we need to kill the capitalist oil industry - its a global need that should simply be communized not capitalized. (just like nuclear energy)

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#296

Post by alephnerd »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #275
kick_in_the_dor wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ne…

According to HN, every app in the world could be supported by a single ARM EPYC server with a SQLite backend and some weird WASM magic.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#297

Post by tchaffee »

EGreg wrote: post #285
tchaffee wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Past results are not an indicator of future performance. Sure, but we can't predict the future, so it's the best model we have. > Today, both sexes work long hours just to afford a tiny apartment, they have to switch jobs every couple years and even started doing the gig economy on the side to get by. What you've missed is that productivity (as measured by GDP) has gone way up. Someone captured those profits. Which…

> What you've missed is that productivity (as measured by GDP) has gone way up. Someone captured those profits. Which is why we see such massive wealth gaps. Exactly! That is what happens under capitalism. Which is why we need safety nets in place that can grow and be funded by taxes on automation. The safety nets should redistribute money equally to all citizens. We can also fund them by other pigovian taxes, like t…

> AI that can replace humans at most tasks within a couple years of R&D hasn’t happened before.

We've seen absolutely massive automation in manufacturing, and as you noted even in farming. And no massive unemployment as a result. I just won't believe that AI will do anything more than hugely increase productivity until I see the unemployment. People have predicted massive unemployment with every new technology advance. They were wrong every time.

> The ones unionizing are the labor producers, so not a valid analogy.

They are also the consumers. How are the wealthy supposed to get that way or even stay that way with no consumers?

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#298

Post by 3cats-in-a-coat »

mannykannot wrote: post #215
3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would’ve been nice if your comment had any specific argument except a verbose take on “you’re wrong, because reasons”.

It's more like "you're wrong, because your theory does not even correspond to evidence we have around us." The reasons why your doom-laden prognostications did not inevitably come to pass are not, however, reducible to a paragraph or two. As for being verbose, compare it to the post I was replying to.

Once again you forgot to even hint what evidence you’re talking about.

It’s like you’re eager to win an argument, you want that reward, so you’re posting, but you’re too lazy to actually make an argument. So you kind of keep posting half way and declaring yourself a winner because “everything around” proves you right about… something. It’s kind of funny.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#299

Post by tchaffee »

pb7 wrote: post #288
tchaffee wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pens…

>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 Exactly the point I was making. They’re making $100K which is decidedly not almost $200K. This isn’t to say that it isn’t good, but every well paying job includes pension or 401k matching, paid time off, health insurance, sometimes education reimbursement, etc. It’s (intenti…

I would rather use TC because health plans and pensions vary from company to company. So the number I'd go with is around $150,000.

Right of you to call out the rounding up though. The article was exaggerating with $170k, and to remember that number I had mentally noted almost $200k. I looked for the article later to refresh my memory. You're right that any discussion on this deserves more accuracy than I started with.

The important thing to me is for us workers to recognize how to get a fairer share of the increased productivity. Unions have delivered throughout history.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#300

Post by taeric »

samstave wrote: post #292
taeric wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I was a daily biker in San Francisco for more than a decade... no car.... I had ZIPCAR and one month I took one on a trip and on several other excursions - and the bill for ZIPCAR that month was $850. for like minimal time... NO WAY was that "an affordable option"

You would be surprised what people are regularly paying for a car. 850 is probably on par with what the parking/storage costs alone are. Those are almost certainly "priced in" to most houses, but there is no reason you couldn't work to reclaim a lot of that space.

More, I don't know enough about ZIPCAR to know how they price in the costs to refill the vehicle between drivers, but depending on how the fuel was managed, that is a 20% chunk of that, easy.

Concretely, googling "average monthly car payment", shows that "The average car payment for a new vehicle is $725 monthly, according to first-quarter 2023 data from Experian." So, not as incomparable as I could hope it is.

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