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

Waymo in Dallas

waymo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

701–710 of 754 posts

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#701

Post by bluGill »

andrewmutz wrote: post #163
epolanski wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very interesting, because on one side we have clear data showing that autonomous cars at the Waymo level are safer than humans. On the other hand we don't give technology the same pass we give to humans, meaning that we don't tolerate machine incidents the same way we tolerate human ones. Which means that self-driving cars need to be a magnitude of order safer than humans. And even though a self-driving car will…

> On the other hand we don't give technology the same pass we give to humans, meaning that we don't tolerate machine incidents the same way we tolerate human ones. I completely disagree with this. I don't "give a pass" to humans killing other humans with a car. Every year that skeptics delay adoption of autonomous driving is another year where tens of thousands of deaths could be prevented.

I'm still waiting to see independent analysis of the data. Autonomous driving has the potential to be better, but without data I have no idea if it is really better, or even worse.

I've seen lots of people talking, but when I dig in I quickly discover they either don't have access to the full data; or they have reason to be biased and so cannot be trusted. There are many ways to "lie with statistics". You don't even have to be that smart to make some educated guesses. (for starters all drivers include drunk drivers who are a tiny minority and yet make up for an outsized share of issues. As someone who doesn't drink at all their statistics should not compare to me personally)

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#702

Post by Yizahi »

bluGill wrote: post #641
Yizahi wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing one thing. Logic can be faulty AND observation can be faulty just as well (it's just more rare usually). Especially in the financial reporting. I've seen enough to immediately doubt and try to find intentional tricks in any level of financial reporting or analysis. The tools are endless - simple faking, reclassifying specific inflows and outflows to the different time frames or divisions or even separ…

When you step back you can see that suburbs have existed since 1880 (street car suburbs), and most of them are still around. The roads have been replaced several times since then in most - they don't last for 140 years so they must have been. Likely the first ones didn't even have water/sewage pipes, but they all have that now so somehow they added them. We know how long pipes in the ground last (both average and max…

Sure. But you are assuming that somehow all those expenses come strictly from those same suburbs. Or if there is the is an external inflow (also known as debt) it is not larger than for the similar population low rise blocks. And I say that is far from fact, even without giving my own opinion.

Basically you are making correct observations but only for part of the picture. And if the discussion is about finances and economics, I would say that the part about where money comes from is pretty damn important, no? :)

Also, even from across the pond, I also saw historical photos of the old USA. Those suburbs from before WW2 were way closer to the Europe really. There were more small businesses everywhere, there were commerce blocks etc. And pre-WW2 infrastructure was much cheaper and less complex that contemporary one. So sure, old suburbs were probably much healthier economically.

As for the moderns suburbs (from 50s and up) you can view more knowledgeable people than me if you really wish to uncover facts and truth. I won't post spoilers, but you may guess them from the context easily.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#703

Post by bluGill »

xnx wrote: post #563
tptacek wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems about as common as it ever was? (I'm very bullish on Waymos here).

You're right. I remembered some headlines about road salt usage and took them at face value, but the long-term trends are not clear.

Road salt means I can drive as if it was summer a few hours after the snow stops falling. While the snow is falling I still have to be careful. Ideally I would never drive when the snow is falling, but I live where that happens often enough that we cannot shutdown life for a little snow/ice so we try to make it work - as a result people go in the ditch a lot.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#704

Post by bluGill »

xnx wrote: post #698
thelastgallon wrote: post #363

I wonder when Waymo will roll out to Indian cities.

Unfortunately, probably not for 5 years. Economics probably don't make sense. England and Japan are next.

There are other considerations though. What are the laws in England or Japan (I do not know, but this is critical). Also India has a lot of engineers, they may hire a bunch and then open the system locally just because everybody can go outside and see how they work.

If profit is the primary motive than India makes no sense, but that isn't the only motive.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#705

Post by redox99 »

xnx wrote: post #695
redox99 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cybercab would be almost perfect if it weren't for it's low height. It's easier for the elder to get into and out of taller vehicles.

The Waymo Ojai is great for this: large entry, low floor, high ceiling, high seats

Yeah it's definitely better in that regard, but it has the other disadvantages: oversized for single passengers, and also personally it feels like public transport, it's the opposite of luxurious.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#706

Post by pnt12 »

pyaamb wrote: post #141

Elon may have been technically correct about 'if humans can do it with vision only then theres no reason why vision-only cannot work' but turned out to be the wrong strategy for learning how to get there. lidar gives you a constant stream of data to check your vision yourself against and interatively learn. Once trained you turn it off. whereas teslas strategy ended up having to rely on human drivers for error feedba…

"Humans can do x, therefore non humans can do it too", says the guy with a degree in philosophy! Surely not formal philosophy:)

Jokes aside I always thought this was a crap argument. If you can get more useful signals into a system, it's likely to perform better. Duh!

But never argue with a CEO: their interest is profit, not honest conversations.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#707

Post by bluGill »

GuinansEyebrows wrote: post #194
phoghed wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They mean the rewards. You can get some % cash back with no annual fee. Effectively my credit card costs me nothing, comes from the same bank as my checking and savings, and gives me cash back.

the other end of this is that all of those rewards are paid for through merchant fees, which lead to higher prices at the register. it's not free money. it's a fraction of a percentage of the profit credit card companies receive in fees paid by the places you shop. i would not be surprised to learn that even with rewards points we spend more money now that those programs are commonplace.

> merchant fees, which lead to higher prices at the register

Only for merchants who have never done real accounting. They lose a lot more than merchant fees to cash. The clerk has to count and recount the money. Then the manager counts and recounts the till at the end of the shift. Then the manager counts all the money in the safe to prepare the daily deposit, and then they have to get that to the bank (at least the bank doesn't charge them after that, but the bank has costs handling their cash as well). This time is not free. That is before we get into the costs of theft, counterfeits - and all the equipment to keep cash safe.

Unless someone has actually added those costs up I'm going to remain convinced credit cards fees are cheaper than cash.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#708

Post by rurp »

xnx wrote: post #689
ultimoo wrote: post #275

I was talking with someone visiting from Florida the other day and they were talking about how Waymo is slurping money that would have otherwise stayed in the local economy. E.g. you pay an uber driver, the uber driver pays the grocery store, etc. This is something that had never occurred to me since I love taking Waymos here in the bay area. I guess Waymos operating in Florida need local labor to maintain and clean…

This is a clever talking point from Uber that doesn't get the same attention for any other nationwide company. Restrict Walmart, Home Depot, McDonald's, Verizon, Apple because they're taking money away from mom and pop: grocery, hardware, restaurants, mobile networks, and phone manufacturers.

Are you saying that Waymo spends a similar percentage of revenue on local salaries as a labor intensive business like Home Depot or Uber? That would be surprising to me.

I've seen Walmart and similar companies criticized countless times for driving local shops out of business. It has been a common attack for decades, IME.

This doesn't mean the big corporate option is always inherently bad, but it's weird to me that their defenders often attack the very notion that there could be tradeoffs and downsides.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#709

Post by staticman2 »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #630
irowe wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how environmental regulations induce that housing style? I struggle to see the connection

Basically every rule that tries to piecemeal outlaw the concrete jungle (muh setbacks, muh maximum impermeable area percentage, and so on) winds up introducing sprawl because you wind up wasting site plan space on whatever it is in your context.

I'm pretty sure you are confusing your state's zoning laws with federal environmental regulations.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#710

Post by klaff »

porphyra wrote: post #178
klaff wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have one of the most inefficient EVs and it's only 2.4x hungrier than the cybercab. It can comfortably carry 6 adults. I've been in Tesla 3s as Ubers before. They only need 31% more energy than the cybercab. If the cybercab was 1/5 the price it would be $14k. It won't be $14k.

The Waymo I-Pace is much less efficient than the regular roadgoing I-Pace. One X user posted a pic of the dashboard of a Waymo with 111,000 miles on the odometer, and it averaged 1.0 kWh per mile [1][2]. This is about 2.5x worse than the EPA rating of a normal Jaguar I-Pace. Probably the difference is because the Waymo has tons of compute and the sensors have a surprisingly large impact on aerodynamic efficiency. I w…

Regarding the dashboard pic - that's a trip computer display (see the "A:" and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAdzIuAB3-g) which can display a large range of values depending on the history since the trip was last reset. That fact is recognized in the article you posted but buried in the middle. Using the power estimates in the article won't get you to the inefficiency shown in the trip computer either and aerodynamic changes only make sense if the vehicle is making mostly highway trips, which maybe? My EV, less efficient than the i-Pace (because it's big tall van), in it's first 10k miles averaged 2.5 mi/kWh or 0.4 kWh/mile at an average speed of 36 mph. That works out to around 14.4 kW average load. Adding 3 kW to that for compute (upper end of estimate of one source in the article you linked) pushes that number to 17.4 kW, which would change my efficiency number to 2.1 miles/kWh - still double the i-Pace trip computer. So I don't trust that number as a foundation for any conclusions.

And if the cybercab is cheaper because it doesn't include the sensors needed to actually see the world around it, that's not great either.

Post reply on HN