Master Plan, Part Deux • Hacker News Board

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#301

Post by tdy721 » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 5:17 AM UTC

clintonb wrote: post #116

bane wrote: post #108

I'm always surprised when we get insight into Musk's plan, not because they're complicated but because they always come across as "no duh, why aren't we already doing these things? weren't we already on track to do these things decades ago?" As much as the Internet transformed society, I also can't help but feel like we were on the track to have achieved these things and got distracted by our global communications an…

Tesla and SpaceX required a lot of startup capital (relative to most other technology startups). Yes, their ideas are simple, but few people have the capital to implement those ideas. Additionally, the existing players in the rocket market didn't have much incentive to innovate given how few players there were. Your guess is as good as mine on why the automobile industry didn't continue much EV research after the 90s…

Tesla and SpaceX are specifically "Hard" technology... Most tech startups are Soft(ware). See: Uber

SpaceX market share (Tesla too for that matter) will NEVER have a "hockey stick" growth chart... The tech is too hard

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#302

Post by aschampion » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 5:18 AM UTC

dilemma wrote: post #284

thucydides wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 30,000 motor vehicle deaths in America each year. In perhaps 30 years, fully autonomous vehicles could cut all of that needless carnage to nearly nothing. And what about the hundreds of thousands of injuries we'll be spared? Worldwide, fully-autonomous vehicles will be a public health victory on the scale of vaccines or antibiotics.

>There are 30,000 motor vehicle deaths in America each year. In perhaps 30 years, fully autonomous vehicles could cut all of that needless carnage to nearly nothing. There is a huge assumption underlying this: That computer systems would be more intelligent than humans. I believe the opposite: Computer systems will be much dumber than humans, and increase the number of accidents if ever adopted on large scale.

It's not a question of intelligence, but of attention. Few crashes are caused by wrong inferences; most are caused by lapses in attention or impaired judgement. Computer systems do not necessarily suffer from those.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#303

Post by sp527 » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 5:18 AM UTC

jkestner wrote: post #271

sp527 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what we're concluding is that a company has difficulty remaining competitive unless it fully abuses the system within which it operates? Hmm...

Abuses? How about "utilizes"? The subsidy is there to get more electric vehicles on the road.

I don't trust the government to manipulate the free market efficiently. It's comprised of hapless morons who don't know what they're doing and whose favor is for sale to the highest bidder. Case in point are the tremendous number of bankrupt alternative energy companies built upon favorable treatment by the government. Market intervention doesn't suddenly become justifiable simply because the outcome of advancing the sustainability agenda is positive.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#304

Post by argonaut » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 5:18 AM UTC

bennyg wrote: post #247

argonaut wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. That car just does lane keeping - it doesn't even do turns or lane changes. This is all stuff solved 20 years ago. And even then it only achieves 98% autonomy on lane keeping - this is a task that needs 100% accuracy. You should not be running into the median every couple miles. Furthermore, they augmented the data with left/right-offset cameras to supplement the data with examples of "bad" camera views. This i…

> They collected all this data for one task, lane keeping. They subdivided the problem of autonomous driving, and managed to solve one small subproblem (the easiest subproblem of autonomous driving, solved for decades already). They avoided the need for annotators, but only because they used specialized purpose-built cameras to augment the data. So why not several autonomous subsystems that use specialized purpose-bu…

The solution was specific to that subproblem. The left/right-offset cameras were for the sole purpose of providing examples of what it would look like if the car was deviating off path. The same trick would not work for any other problems. Can you think of similar camera data augmentation tricks for obstacle detection, drivable path segmentation, bicyclist signaling/intention, pedestrian detection, and so on?

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#305

Post by setpatchaddress » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 5:20 AM UTC

swalsh wrote: post #193

jsprogrammer wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You know why Ford turns a profit? Because they've gotten those economies of scale. Ford was immediately profitable, was it not? Even before implementing an assembly line?

When ford came on the market, it only had to be better than a horse. A tesla has to be better than a masarati on the high end, a jaguar on the "medium" end, and a subaru on the "low" end.

That's not true. Other automakers existed before Ford; he had automotive competition.

In what world is a Jaguar a "medium" end car? The high end Jaguars extend into Maserati territory.

If Tesla wants to be better than a Maserati or Jaguar, they need to observe how much nicer the interiors of those cars are. Consumer Reports doesn't care about that above a certain level of basic competence, but a Maserati or Jaguar buyer does.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#306

Post by d23 » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 5:20 AM UTC

sp527 wrote: post #281

I'm genuinely surprised at the quality of Musk's writing and the presentation of certain ideas. He clearly insisted against copyediting, and that was probably a mistake judging by the output. I suspect that he was attempting to eschew the formality of typical press releases, but this 'Master Plan' (which is itself a somewhat juvenile moniker) feels like something that warranted rigor.

I can't figure out what you're trying to say. You think it's bad he wrote it himself, or good? Are you saying his writing it himself was a mistake, or wasn't? And it does or doesn't sound formal enough? It needs rigor and doesn't have it, or it does have it?

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#307

Post by tdy721 » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 5:21 AM UTC

eclipxe wrote: post #124

ancientworldnow wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then half you lose easy access for the half of seats not on the sidewalk side. There's not a good way to lose the aisle without condensing down to only a couple seats across.

One long bench

Toronto Style... Mass transit.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#308

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 5:21 AM UTC

seanp2k2 wrote: post #155

JeffL wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that would be a good thing? Without need for parking, commercial districts could get denser and denser, and people could have nice large homes far away for cheaper than ever. If the cars aren't causing pollution or gridlock, what's so bad about living in the suburbs?

Electric cars cause pollution; they run on mostly coal or natural gas and have very toxic-to-mine, manufacture, and dispose-of batteries. They also emit just as much particulate emissions as normal cars: http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/electric-car-particulate-m... The way to "save the planet" is to not drive. Driving a 5000# vehicle around thinking you're doing good for the environment is just the marketing genius…

[deleted]

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#309

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 5:23 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#310

Post by ams6110 » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 5:23 AM UTC

batiudrami wrote: post #137

thucydides wrote: post #23

> "When used correctly, [partially autonomous driving] is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves" If you're an American, you're twice as likely to die with a steering wheel in your hands as you are to die at the hands of a murderer. Human-driven vehicle deaths cause grave second-order suffering for families and friends - and hurt the economy. A shift to technologies safer than human-driven ca…

It's more that it's time consuming than boring, which obviously gets worse with urban sprawl. Sure, I can do all my "down time" entertainment, but I can't schedule anything else while I'm commuting which is the real issue. Though many US city demographics are different to anywhere else in the world due to white flight - the "wealth donut" around a poor inner city rather rather than people getting poorer as you move f…

Honest question: are any of the large European cities seeing the "white flight" phenomenon with the influx of poor middle eastern and african immigrants?