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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

#301

Post by Ghostp4ntsRex »

freeone3000 wrote: post #291
kovek wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

"Popular" was a touch sarcastic. AS/400s were most recently called the IBM system I, and are now a discontinued product. IBM still sells mainframes, and they have discontinued the AS/400.

They are most certainly not a discontinued product. We just purchased a brand new Power9 server at work. The model we purchased was just released. Everyone at work still calls it an AS400. They are bulletproof and run many large businesses today. They are also not mainframes but are a class of machines called minicomputers.

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

#302

Post by z3rgl1ng »

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)

Pretty terrible that it takes that long; Uber managed to do it in just over 6 million miles!

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

#303

Post by bo1024 »

howlgarnish wrote: post #243
cmsj wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"turned out"... it's been starkly obvious since day one that true self-driving is a problem that requires general intelligence to solve. All you have to do to know that is drive a car and think about what's actually required to successfully drive from A to B in the real world.

Waymo is running self-driving cars with paying passengers and no backup drivers right now in Phoenix, and last I checked we don't have general AI yet. https://www.reuters.com/article/waymo-autonomous-phoenix/way... Sure, you can move the goalposts and say it's not "true" self-driving until it can handle all environments and weather conditions and whatnot, but self-driving cars are here. The question is how fast they'…

This doesn't prove that the technology is ready or safe. It only proves that Waymo thinks it's a worthwhile gamble. This is the same place where Uber's self-driving car killed a person with no repercussions to the company.

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

#304

Post by WatchDog »

sorenjan wrote: post #57

Car companies doesn't make their own airbags, they buy them from Autoliv. They don't make their own brakes, they buy them from Brembo. They buy transmissions from ZF, tires from Michelin, ECUs from Bosch, etc. Why should car manufacturers develop their own self driving technology instead of letting others, like Bosch [1] or Veoneer [2], do that and buy it from them? Spread the investment over more cars, it makes sens…

That model really only makes sense if there are multiple compelling autonomous driving products.

If a company builds an autonomous driving capability and is able to hold on to a monopoly over it, they would either simply drive uber out of business, or license the tech to them in a way that would leave them with very thin margins.

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

#305

Post by mkoryak »

dboreham wrote: post #47
mkoryak wrote: post #33

I don't understand the current state of self driving cars. First we have tesla which already has a self driving car. They were the first to build one and now everyone is playing catch up, or are they? Waymo has been building something for a really long time too but I have no idea how close they are to an actual product. Now there is this new company that gets a bunch of money to build something. It feels to me like t…

Put down the kool aid. There are no self-driving cars.

To be fair, I started with "I don't understand the current state of self driving cars".

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

#306

Post by akira2501 »

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?

1 out of 6 traffic fatalities is a pedestrian. Roads are designed poorly, ice exists, cities are built on steep hills, and people walk at night on the side of county highways.

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

#307

Post by fastball »

maybeiambatman wrote: post #276
fastball wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Uber selling a portion of its business be relevant to Uber employee unvested stocks? Do you mean Uber ATG employees? Were they getting stock packages for ATG or for Uber?

I meant the ATG employees. And they were getting Uber stock as part of their compensation. Source: me, a former Uber ATG employee.

Right, so if you are getting Uber stock, presumably nothing happens? Or I'd assume it's the same as if you'd been fired.

This is not a liquidity event for Uber. Uber is selling a portion of its business, not being sold.

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

#308

Post by pclmulqdq »

_coveredInBees wrote: post #121
st1x7 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big bets and promises for the future was all they had. Trying to be a solid profitable business in a dying industry isn't going to work out well for them.

Wait, how is ride-sharing / cabs a dying industry? People are always going to need to get from point A to point B, and if anything, the younger generations are less likely to own cars. Public infrastructure is never going to fill the gap except in certain urban areas.

The younger generation is always more likely to go to cities. As they get older they move out. And buy cars.

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

#309

Post by nmfisher »

bo1024 wrote: post #303
howlgarnish wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo is running self-driving cars with paying passengers and no backup drivers right now in Phoenix, and last I checked we don't have general AI yet. https://www.reuters.com/article/waymo-autonomous-phoenix/way... Sure, you can move the goalposts and say it's not "true" self-driving until it can handle all environments and weather conditions and whatnot, but self-driving cars are here. The question is how fast they'…

This doesn't prove that the technology is ready or safe. It only proves that Waymo thinks it's a worthwhile gamble. This is the same place where Uber's self-driving car killed a person with no repercussions to the company.

"Ready" or "safe" are matters of opinion, though.

It's ready/safe when governments ("the people") decide it's such.

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

#310

Post by howlgarnish »

bo1024 wrote: post #303
howlgarnish wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo is running self-driving cars with paying passengers and no backup drivers right now in Phoenix, and last I checked we don't have general AI yet. https://www.reuters.com/article/waymo-autonomous-phoenix/way... Sure, you can move the goalposts and say it's not "true" self-driving until it can handle all environments and weather conditions and whatnot, but self-driving cars are here. The question is how fast they'…

This doesn't prove that the technology is ready or safe. It only proves that Waymo thinks it's a worthwhile gamble. This is the same place where Uber's self-driving car killed a person with no repercussions to the company.

It's obviously ready and safe enough for Waymo to roll it out (and they've been a lot more conservative than Uber here).

As for safety, all we really need is for them to be safer than the average human driver. As evinced by the ~40,000 road deaths every year in the US, that's really a pretty low bar. I'd even argue that full autonomous is/will be less risky than halfway houses like Tesla Autopilot where neither side is really in full control, but that's another story.

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