81–90 of 101 posts
It is both amazing and sad to see China is literally in the future compared to the US in terms of infrastructure and social development. A trip to one of the major cities in China made it clear to me that they are ahead of the world right now. The amount of tech and the level of integration are unbelievable. In comparasion, the streets of SF, one of the crown jewels of the US technosphere, are just so "normal" I find…
I’m currently in a part of the world where helicopter delivery is so cheap and common that locals are complaining. “It should be more expensive…” someone told me last autumn. The helicopters (and drones!) are loud and annoying. Until these problems are solved, locals will resist converting all airspace into the equivalent of a loud, high-speed roadway.
Which part of the world is that?
I’m currently in a part of the world where helicopter delivery is so cheap and common that locals are complaining. “It should be more expensive…” someone told me last autumn. The helicopters (and drones!) are loud and annoying. Until these problems are solved, locals will resist converting all airspace into the equivalent of a loud, high-speed roadway.
Which part of the world is that?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are many reports of international students having their statuses, i.e. permission to stay in the US, revoked for being involved in legal matters. The wording of the revocation is vague so nothing is certain but these students reported they have never done any crime except DUIs/DWIs/traffic incidents. The status revocations are sudden and opaque. The students do not have an opportunity to appeal nor explain. The…
Thanks, I hadn't heard about DUIs being used as a justification for revoking status. (I'm all for treating DUIs seriously, but using a one time offense as justification for such serious consequences seems over the top to me; obviously the lack of transparency and due process make the whole thing much more troubling as well.)
I think it remains to be seen whether they will ever be a viable mode of transport. Helicopters have been used, usually by the very rich, for quite a while. They need serious infrastructure and have very high associated costs.
It is both amazing and sad to see China is literally in the future compared to the US in terms of infrastructure and social development. A trip to one of the major cities in China made it clear to me that they are ahead of the world right now. The amount of tech and the level of integration are unbelievable. In comparasion, the streets of SF, one of the crown jewels of the US technosphere, are just so "normal" I find…
It is also amazing and sad to see positive comments on such technological developments in China where similar developments in e.g. the USA would be lambasted on this very same site: Flying taxi drones? They'll fall out of the sky on the heads of the elderly and Musk should stay away from this . Tech and integration? Big brother getting even bigger and no I don't want Musk to be part of this . Is it just that the neig…
Most large US cities have, "bad neighborhoods." It's not specific to blue states.
The US cities with top highest violent crime rates are more likely to be in red states:
https://www.police1.com/community-policing/articles/where-ar...
I am no fan of the two-party system but your view of the parties is almost 20 years out-of-date and is ignoring some pretty glaring issues.
I definitely don't want to belittle the achievement, but I would imagine that creating safe self-driving helicopters is much easier than creating safe self-driving cars. (At least as long as the skies are just as empty as they are today. Once it's full of things like the roads, that will be a different topic)
I get what you are thinking. Detection, maneuvering and trajectory planning are all much easier than on a road. If you mandate built in transponders collision avoidance is also easy.
But what you are forgetting is everything that isn't normal operations. What do you do if anything fails? A car can just stop, break failures, even steering failures can all be reasonably mitigated. This is not the case when you are in the air. Any failure mode needs fast and accurate reactions, even when critical systems have failed. That is why a passenger plane has two pilots. A modern passenger plane can do most of the flying by itself, yet the pilots need to be there.
Aerospace standards are higher and more difficult to adhere to, ensuring any kind of reasonable safety is extremely difficult. How many of these flying into sky scrapers are acceptable?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you tell me more? I visited Shenzhen few months ago and wasn't that astonished. Pretty normal city. Well, I was surprised about few things, like overall lack of traffic jams in the 17-million city, roads seems to be well planned, but I could just be lucky. And that's me coming from Kazakhstan, which is not exactly first-world country. Life seems kind of the same, taxi apps, map with reviews, delivery guys, etc. A…
I think you used the wrong map app. Everyone in China use gaode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoNavi . This is the best map app I ever seen.
I definitely don't want to belittle the achievement, but I would imagine that creating safe self-driving helicopters is much easier than creating safe self-driving cars. (At least as long as the skies are just as empty as they are today. Once it's full of things like the roads, that will be a different topic)
No they are not. I get what you are thinking. Detection, maneuvering and trajectory planning are all much easier than on a road. If you mandate built in transponders collision avoidance is also easy. But what you are forgetting is everything that isn't normal operations. What do you do if anything fails? A car can just stop, break failures, even steering failures can all be reasonably mitigated. This is not the case…
With all that, it’s “just” a software problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No they are not. I get what you are thinking. Detection, maneuvering and trajectory planning are all much easier than on a road. If you mandate built in transponders collision avoidance is also easy. But what you are forgetting is everything that isn't normal operations. What do you do if anything fails? A car can just stop, break failures, even steering failures can all be reasonably mitigated. This is not the case…
This thing has 8 motors. It’s easy to imagine that it could have 8 independent batteries and could be able to perform a controlled descent if two fail. Similarly, it could have redundant sensors and use commodity “majority rules” logic circuits where all calculations are run three times. On top of that, they can already cut over to ground control if the computer can’t proceed. With all that, it’s “just” a software pr…
Most of these are a total nightmare to implement. There is no such thing as a "controlled descent" into a dense urban center. Even keeping maneuverability with a single defective motor is a hard task, you need to develop and test for this.
>On top of that, they can already cut over to ground control if the computer can’t proceed.
So ground control can do what? The only reasonable way these could ever safely operate is with a high degree of sensor fusion, information about nearby crafts, their trajectories, obstacles, etc. combined together. You can not put a human into that system and have him make split-second decisions.
>With all that, it’s “just” a software problem.
Passenger plane automation is also "just" a software problem. It is just an enormously difficult software problem with exceedingly high stakes. The problem is not that it is "impossible", but that it is extremely difficult and not worth the risk getting it wrong.
Again, what is the acceptable failure rate for these things crashing into sky scrapers? If it is zero, we are very far away from them being able to take flight.