They straight up banned horning in Shanghai when I was there in 2017 using some kind of camera system IIRC, it was quite jarring when I continued onto Nanjing and the usual cacophony resumed. They also banned lane changing over solid lines with the same camera system IIRC
Ya, China has no problem using camera/recognition tech to its fullest. I wonder if other societies will eventually be outcompeted (cheaper law & order costs means Chinese cities will be more efficient) or if there is some huge cost (privacy violations that lead to economic consequences) to this that will make it less competitive.
Looks like London is on track to deploy similar technology. They did a trial in Croydon recently that was considered a huge success. From what I understand they actually ended up with pretty decent buy in from the locals as it had a noticeably positive effect on the community.
We'll probably eventually see it in more western cities as time progresses. Unsure what to make of it tbh.
I've driven many cars over the years. Not once has a vent ever broken. Which cars are you driving where they break often?
I don't know what kind of breakage was the parent talking about. My experience is that as the car gets older it is common for the vents to lose the capability to stay pointed where I place them. As in: you point them where you want and they flip back all the way to one side as soon as you let go. (Hot climate here, with several months of "a/c set to max during the whole trip" per year)
I’ve been in many cars where they don’t stay pointed and where the moving mechanism plastic broke off from where it’s connected so it doesn’t move the vent fins at all.
They straight up banned horning in Shanghai when I was there in 2017 using some kind of camera system IIRC, it was quite jarring when I continued onto Nanjing and the usual cacophony resumed. They also banned lane changing over solid lines with the same camera system IIRC
Ya, China has no problem using camera/recognition tech to its fullest. I wonder if other societies will eventually be outcompeted (cheaper law & order costs means Chinese cities will be more efficient) or if there is some huge cost (privacy violations that lead to economic consequences) to this that will make it less competitive.
Well I think it’s just like any other authoritarianism, benevolent with a benevolent leader but harmful with a malicious leader
While I don't dismiss your general point, I will say that anyone who says "how hard can it be" really needs to consider they are falling victim to the Dunning-Kruger Effect. In my experience, that phrase is (typically) a red flag for the latter.
This strikes me very much as one of the things where the answer is probably very simple but also very difficult . I would also guess (completely un-informedly) that because the simple (and probably correct) answer is very difficult, a lot of companies are trying to avoid it by doing things that are more complicated but also easier. And because they are more complicated, it is not immediately obvious why they won't wo…
My ideal car: - No Internet connection - No touchscreens - No LCD dashboard; I like dials. - 100% user-repairable; there should be no need to go to a dealer if one can easily fix a problem themselves or one wants to go to an independent mechanic (often cheaper!) - Buttons and (analog, not digital) dials for the media center - Media center with ONLY Bluetooth, CD player, and radio media center - Analog locks (not soft…
Apologies, everyone, for the poor formatting by the way. It seems HN does not in fact support markdown lists.
My ideal car: - No Internet connection - No touchscreens - No LCD dashboard; I like dials. - 100% user-repairable; there should be no need to go to a dealer if one can easily fix a problem themselves or one wants to go to an independent mechanic (often cheaper!) - Buttons and (analog, not digital) dials for the media center - Media center with ONLY Bluetooth, CD player, and radio media center - Analog locks (not soft…
Same. This is why I am rooting for Slate ( https://www.slate.auto/ ) to succeed. I hope everyone in this ridiculous software war loses and in the end they realize that there is a huge market for just basic no-frills car.
While I definitely hope Slate is a huge success and I really love its premise, it's a shame that, judging from their homepage images, the dashboard is an LCD screen, no dials.
My ideal car: - No Internet connection - No touchscreens - No LCD dashboard; I like dials. - 100% user-repairable; there should be no need to go to a dealer if one can easily fix a problem themselves or one wants to go to an independent mechanic (often cheaper!) - Buttons and (analog, not digital) dials for the media center - Media center with ONLY Bluetooth, CD player, and radio media center - Analog locks (not soft…
What you're describing is a 1990's car, except for the bluetooth part. I would buy one like this too, assuming it's half the price that is. I've never used the mapping software on any of my vehicles, google maps on my phone is way better.
I do like me a good 90s car. Honestly, though, my above-listed criteria would be my ideal car. But, a good number of cars up through the 00s would be enjoyable for me, if not exactly perfect. For example, the 2007 Dodge Charger is pretty good. :)
As someone who works professionally on embedded software devices that update over the internet, car companies are stuck not because they can't get software talent, but because they have no ability to actually build the electronics alongside the software, which is ultimately what constrains embedded software. Without the right hardware, the constraints are just insurmountable, you can not do X feature because board A…
>>> But you can not just roll all your own electronics in a year. Naturally, there must be some scale threshold where this is true, so I don't doubt your experience. And my workplace doesn't make anything as elaborate as a car, or with such stringent reliability specs. But my experience is that hardware is always finished before software.
I mean the EEs / MEs can certainly turn out a board and housing in under 6 months, certainly on a yearly cycle. Though for the current automakers, they don't have a team for this so it would take them probably 3 iterations to get good enough to actually scale it to a mass market car, and that is if their team has good talent and strong leadership.
As someone who works professionally on embedded software devices that update over the internet, car companies are stuck not because they can't get software talent, but because they have no ability to actually build the electronics alongside the software, which is ultimately what constrains embedded software. Without the right hardware, the constraints are just insurmountable, you can not do X feature because board A…
> But you can not just roll all your own electronics in a year. Why? A year is a long time and it's a solved problem. In any case even if you allow the "a year is not enough" argument why didn't they start 5 years ago?
When you design electronics you have to produce millions of, it takes a couple of dev 'spins' and usually a couple of prod 'spins' to get to the mass market board. Usually the PMs, EEs, MEs and SWEs get together and spec out a schematic, then the EEs will create the first draft of the board. There is usually extra connectors and test points on this board to ease testing and development. Once they verify it powers on, I as an embedded software engineer, start producing the software to get it running, or 'brought up'. While that is happening EE testing is going on for all sorts of things like EMI, power, communication speeds, etc. Besides the software I actually write, the chipset vendor's drivers need to be added and tested as well, there are always little things that take longer than they should. I've lost a lot of schedule to very subtle issues with chips.
As we progress along, the schematic or layout gets updated and new versions are produced. Maybe the traces need to change to reduce EMI, maybe a chipset isn't workign well or we find a cheaper equivalent and swap it out. Then once everything looks good we move to a production version, all the test points are removed, and we start putting in orders for the parts we need in volume. If you want a million of something you usually have to order in advance. Then you start bringing the factory online, helping with factory test software...and well the point is the cycle time for all this is like 6 months for a tight ship. More like a year if the kind of thing your making is novel to the team since you need a longer dev time.
As someone who works professionally on embedded software devices that update over the internet, car companies are stuck not because they can't get software talent, but because they have no ability to actually build the electronics alongside the software, which is ultimately what constrains embedded software. Without the right hardware, the constraints are just insurmountable, you can not do X feature because board A…
Why not just use iPads or some Android tablet? Why some shitty embedded system and not a real computer?