Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 391 posts

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#381

Post by planteen »

endofcapital wrote: post #302
pwthornton wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to point out that what he says here about autonomous vehicles and the limits of their sensors applies to humans too. It is just socially acceptable to drive in averse conditions with limited visibility, and if you hit another car, person or something else, you just blame it on the weather. It's not socially acceptable for an autonomous vehicle to just wing it in bad conditions. I find it curious that we are…

I've been driving in intense blizzards and ice and steep bad roads of Colorado for 20 years now. Still never had an accident or even gone off the road. That's the standard. Anything less and I'm completely uninterested, because it's just bad tech. When your engineers say the problem is "too hard to solve" you need to hire better engineers, because those engineers are lying to you. Just because everyone is racing towa…

Don't you think part of that experience is luck? What can you do if you are stopped at a red light on an icy road, someone comes in hot and rear ends you, causing you to collide with the vehicle in front of you? You will be at fault for the vehicle you hit. Such accidents are common when it's icy. I have never been in one personally, but lots of friends and co-workers have.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#382

Post by AlanSE »

zbentley wrote: post #295
AlanSE wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the cars of the future won't be able to drive on all roads at all time, I don't see how it would matter all that much. Of course there will always be forms of rural driving where the terrain is unknown and there are limited options for sensor fusion available. But that's not what's important. What's import is DC, LA, and many other metro cities that can't build more roads, but still need population and econom…

> What's import is DC, LA, and many other metro cities that can't build more roads, but still need population and economic growth. > People don't need a car to drive them anywhere at any time. They need a reasonable option to get to work in the places where the jobs are. Mass transit. We know it works, and works well in circumstances you described. We know it increases in effectiveness in response to investment and a…

It works well in some circumstances, but not in those circumstances. In places where it does work, urban development had to change to accommodate transit. All of the existing development and infrastructure is so inflexible that these particular metro areas have no choice but to have the transit system change to accommodate.

The requirements seem pretty clear to me. The system has to be on-demand, able to accommodate sprawl, and lose little in terms of average speed compared to old expectations of personal car transit, and most importantly, it can't demand new physical roadway infrastructure.

I see how it's dubious that autonomous vehicles will fit this bill. Or it may be very challenging and take many decades. But let's be honest about the situation - it's the only option on the table.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#383

Post by maxxxxx »

planteen wrote: post #380
simonh wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Against which you have to balance the risk of taking the NASA job, but not getting paid for a few weeks or months every year.

JPL is still at work during the current shutdown...

They also get backpay so they are not really losing money.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#384

Post by endofcapital »

planteen wrote: post #381
endofcapital wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been driving in intense blizzards and ice and steep bad roads of Colorado for 20 years now. Still never had an accident or even gone off the road. That's the standard. Anything less and I'm completely uninterested, because it's just bad tech. When your engineers say the problem is "too hard to solve" you need to hire better engineers, because those engineers are lying to you. Just because everyone is racing towa…

Don't you think part of that experience is luck? What can you do if you are stopped at a red light on an icy road, someone comes in hot and rear ends you, causing you to collide with the vehicle in front of you? You will be at fault for the vehicle you hit. Such accidents are common when it's icy. I have never been in one personally, but lots of friends and co-workers have.

Yeah, that exact scenario has happened to me twice. I like to glance at the rearview if I'm the last car in line to avoid some drunk ramming me, and it definitely saved my life once.

Once I just saw someone coming in a little too hot and was able to pull forward a bit to make room as they were standing on the brakes. Not a big deal.

The lifesaving situation was different though, I was the only car in the right lane and one of those massive F250 trucks was barreling up behind me, not appearing to slow down at all. I was kind of boxed in because the cross street had heavy, fast traffic, and I couldn't pull forward or to the left since there was another car stopped next to me there. So I just quickly scanned the sidewalk to my right to make sure there were no pedestrians, and hopped up the curb to drive on the sidewalk/grass. I wasn't sure if this would work in my tiny car with small wheels, but I figured it would be better than dying.

Worked great. The truck blew through the light and T-boned a Tesla. The guy had 37 empty Coors Light cans scattered around the floor of his truck.

Have any of the self driving car companies even gotten started on the "when should I drive on the sidewalk" subroutine? No, of course not, they are still mired in the bad, early days of the tech where they can't deal with a missing double yellow. It's laughable, the engineers can do much better instead of just repeatedly lowering the bar.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#385

Post by bredren »

fipple wrote: post #63
bredren wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you mentioned it, I just added the Apple / Blackmagic eGPU to my 2018 Macbook Air and holy smoke it is a major change for docked 4k workstation with a mac laptop. This eGPU is underrated bigtime.

For what applications?

Everything in MacOS moves more smoothly on a 4k running in 2560x1440, from the dock hide/show to messages bubbles.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#386

Post by mohamedattahri »

zbentley wrote: post #294
mohamedattahri wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a world of difference between difficulty and impossibility. I can see your point when someone speaks of the former, but I don't think anyone should nor can state that something's impossible.

That completely removes all meaning from the term, then.

The term definitely means something. But it’s only useful when axioms and constrains have been established and verified.

To be honest, my biggest issue with it is that often those who use it don’t realize that the burden of proof falls on their shoulder. And it just happens that it’s much harder to proof that something is impossible than the opposite. In one case you to prove you’re right once. In the other, you have to exhaust all possibilities.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#387

Post by boyband6666 »

scarface74 wrote: post #226
boyband6666 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will still take up senior management and board time. THis is something recognised accross corporate governnce - see recently GSK spinning off it's over consumer health and the counter portfolio of drugs, to focus on what it's core business is; novel pharmaceuticals. Yes you don't want to be a total one trick pony, but if you do everything, you do nothing well.

Yes because the board is knee deep in the design of Mac hardware.

Phones, Tablets, Mac computers, Cars, iTunes Music, App sales, Headquarter building, Share price, tax strategy. There are a lot of things that take up bandwidth of senior management. We've all seen many companies where something doesn't get the focus it could were it not for other priorities.

Is this absolutely the reason the laptops are a bit crap? No, but it is plausible that the lacklustre offering in hardware comes from the lack of it being a priority for the company. It certainly doesn't feel like a priority for them, and the offering doesn't feel like a lot of strategy has gone in to how it has evolved over the last few years - contrast that with the iphone.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#388

Post by scarface74 »

boyband6666 wrote: post #387
scarface74 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes because the board is knee deep in the design of Mac hardware.

Phones, Tablets, Mac computers, Cars, iTunes Music, App sales, Headquarter building, Share price, tax strategy. There are a lot of things that take up bandwidth of senior management. We've all seen many companies where something doesn't get the focus it could were it not for other priorities. Is this absolutely the reason the laptops are a bit crap? No, but it is plausible that the lacklustre offering in hardware com…

Laptops have gotten attention, they made design mistakes but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. I doubt that the board would have been knowledgeable enough to know they were making a bad decision.

I wouldn’t touch a Mac laptop with a ten foot pole except for maybe the Air if I was desperate, but the iMacs and Mac Minis are tempting. I don’t do development anyway without at least two external monitors and my favorite keyboard/mouse combo.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#389

Post by bredren »

arvinsim wrote: post #155
bredren wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you mentioned it, I just added the Apple / Blackmagic eGPU to my 2018 Macbook Air and holy smoke it is a major change for docked 4k workstation with a mac laptop. This eGPU is underrated bigtime.

It's overpriced with a lot of cheaper alternatives. Unless silence is of the utmost importance.

I read this a lot in comments about this product but this is a really simplistic description of what this product is in comparison to building your own eGPU right now.

Very often "cheaper alternatives" have stability issues like crashing. Or plug / unplug problems. Stability is more valuable than the quiet although silence matters when the entire rest of your workspace is silent.

The build quality for these enclosures is obviously cheap and low quality. You can tell by when you work with the ports on them.

Also, none of these builds have been supported by Apple. This product was cooperatively designed with Apple so the support is excellent. You have one Thunderbolt 3 cable for all of the things to the mac.

So the price is actually good for what it is.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#390

Post by rthille »

simonh wrote: post #269
spacenick88 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So would we call it a loss of autonomy if a human occupant would only grant an override saying "Standing still is not an option!"? I guess you would want such a feature when there is no steering wheel, e.g. if there is a forest fire close behind you. While a computer can't judge that situation and doesn't "care" if it is destroyed it very well can keep driving no matter what.

A forest fire is a really good challenge scenario. The threat isn't really anything to do with driving or road hazards as such, it's an out of context threat. It's these out of context situations that are my long term issue with losing the steering wheel. A typical example would be arriving at a country fair and parking in a field. I want to park on the side of the field that's currently in sunlight, but over the nex…

As for parking in a field, I'd want it to drop me off closest to the entry and then head to wherever the site wanted it to park.
Post reply on HN