361–370 of 456 posts
I was in SF a few weekend ago and rode both Waymo and normal Lyft style taxi cars. the Waymo was a better experience in every single way. One of the Lyfts i was in drove on the shoulder for a while like it was a lane. The Waymos were just smooth consistent driving. No aggressive driving to get you dumped off so they can get to the next fair.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm surprised by all the uncynical compliments for the service, by so many on this site. We're just in the pre-enshittification days of this service. It's fine to enjoy it now, but it will definitely get worse once all the competition has been put out of business. Please enjoy these mandatory ads while we drive you to your destination...
There's no way for this technology not to be funded by multibillion companies, for now at the very least.
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Drivers rarely owned the medallion. They leased the cab for 8-12 hours and drove it on behalf of the medallion owner.
What a stupid process. It bothers me that farmers rarely own the land too. We can't shake our tendency to let wealth turn us into tiny little kings that live off the rent. (not so tiny in the case of farms, but you get it).
You will be glad to learn that most farmland is farmer owned:
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/land-use-land-v...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Drivers rarely owned the medallion. They leased the cab for 8-12 hours and drove it on behalf of the medallion owner.
What a stupid process. It bothers me that farmers rarely own the land too. We can't shake our tendency to let wealth turn us into tiny little kings that live off the rent. (not so tiny in the case of farms, but you get it).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and I also felt like it chose extremely boring routes $$ opportunity: pay $10 extra and Waymo will choose more exciting route.
Or "pay $10 extra and it'll drive extremely aggressively" (in the acceleration/braking/taking turns at speed sense, i.e. only ways that don't affect safety, not "cutting people off"). The sane default is obviously "boring", as it projects an image of safety and control, is comfortable, and reduces wear on the car... but if the user pays for the wear and wants an uncomfortable ride, why not?
The gap between Waymo's service and Tesla's public beta test keeps getting larger.
While I'm not sure that is true, it's fun to watch the bets that were made, unfold. And who's going to take spot #3?
Cola market share: Coke: 69% Pepsi: 27% 3rd: ???
I have seen a Waymo do a very stupid thing where it darted across a busy street, and it left very little margin of error for the oncoming traffic, which happened to be a loaded dump truck that could not have stopped. The dump truck driver was clearly surprised. It was a move that I never would have made as a driver. Did they dial the aggression up? I'm sure they're safer than humans in aggregate as there are some dum…
That reminds me of the Feb 14, 2016 collision in Mountain View [1] (sorry for pdf, but it has the best images of articles I saw) between a Google self-driving car and a VTA articulated bus. TLDR, the software and the safety driver thought the bus would move out of the way because it was a big vehicle and a professional driver. From the report: > Google said it has tweaked its software to "more deeply understand that…
This is a huge sign of confidence that they think they can do this safely and at scale... Freeways might appear "easy" on the surface, but there are all sorts of long tail edge-cases that make them insanely tricky to do confidently without a driver. This will unlock a lot for them with all of the smaller US cities (where highways are essential) they've announced plans for over the next year or so.
> “Freeway driving is one of those things that’s very easy to learn, but very hard to master when we’re talking about full autonomy without a human driver as a backup, and at scale,” Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov said
and
> While many assume freeway driving is easier, it comes with its own set of challenges, principal software engineer Pierre Kreitmann said in a recent briefing. He noted that critical events happen less often on freeways, which means there are fewer opportunities to expose Waymo’s self-driving system to rare scenarios and prove how the system performs when it really matters.
Both point to freeway driving being easier to do well, but harder to be sure is being done well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and I also felt like it chose extremely boring routes $$ opportunity: pay $10 extra and Waymo will choose more exciting route.
Or "pay $10 extra and it'll drive extremely aggressively" (in the acceleration/braking/taking turns at speed sense, i.e. only ways that don't affect safety, not "cutting people off"). The sane default is obviously "boring", as it projects an image of safety and control, is comfortable, and reduces wear on the car... but if the user pays for the wear and wants an uncomfortable ride, why not?
https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/waymo-gets-a...
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/how-te...