4 ms·

His point of point to point 1 hour deliveries (edit: transport was his word, but deliveries would be a prerequisite, no?) anywhere on earth seems pretty dismiss

by ianai 4y ago

His point of point to point 1 hour deliveries (edit: transport was his word, but deliveries would be a prerequisite, no?) anywhere on earth seems pretty dismissive. Also much of the space section is about mars. But there’s a lot more going on in space than mars. JWST started its science mission around July 2022. Researchers get a year of study time before their data are released. So we can expect to see an increase in research releases from JWST until at least that point. I suspect this will continue to remind the world space has more than mars in it. There’s the psyche asteroid mission that I really wonder about long term. There’s also this seemingly unexpected opening to discuss and research UAP and interstellar objects from the last several years. I think the count is at two objects that the Avi Loeb and his group will look to recover soon. Then there’s the research RocketLab appears poised to open up. They’re planning to launch a probe to Venus in March, for instance. Lowered launch costs could make this sort of thing do-able by universities. While those projects won’t have NASA kind of funding, they also won’t have NASA/congressional kind of bureaucracy. I could probably go on, but it’s an ok list if a little missing something. Edit-on cars, it appears the news nowadays is all things electrifying. But his points are almost exclusively self driving. Where’s the discussion of battery tech? Charging infrastructure? Charging infrastructure is probably low-lying fruit for someone trying to describe the future as it’s a pretty straightforward engineering problem-with a known scale, for instance.

morelisp 4y ago
> But his points are almost exclusively self driving. Where’s the discussion of battery tech? In 2018, "everyone" was saying perfect self-driving was only a few years away (I recall a highly-rated HN comment saying humans would likely be banned from roads by 2025), and nobody was interested in battery tech.
- AtlasBarfed 4y ago
  I think we would have automated intercity highway driving if all the companies weren't chasing drive thru taco bell self driving. Some convergent infrastructure (sensors, warning network, etc) and route specific learning would have helped. Oh well. I mean you could have a "dial a remote operator if uncertainty threshold reached" dropouts, better pull over spots or shoulders , etc.
  - morelisp 4y ago
    > intercity... infrastructure (sensors, warning network, etc) and route specific learning... You could also just build trains, like much of the rest of the world.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      There are a lot of scenarios where it's low volume/you want a car at the other end/you're not going to a city center/etc. I don't necessarily disagree that it would be nice if there were better passenger train service in the US but most of the long distance highway driving I do wouldn't be remotely served by train. Plenty of people drive cars in Europe too.
- Animats 4y ago
  > In 2018, "everyone" was saying perfect self-driving was only a few years away. Yes. Having been involved in the DARPA Grand Challenge 20 years ago, I didn't think it would take this long. I thought we'd at least have automated rental car pick-up and return at airports by now. At least lots of automated shuttle buses on campuses and at airports. Waymo is getting close.[1] It's worth looking at the accident reports and news stories with complaints about Waymo. People complain about Waymo cars clogging their street, which is happening because SF marked a few nearby streets as "slow streets", and Waymo's planner is optimizing routes around them. There's a recent news story where a Waymo car reached a construction trench in a street and stopped. Didn't go into the trench. Someone had to intervene remotely to back it out of the construction area. There was a collision on Geary Boulevard where a Waymo vehicle detected a speeding car during a left turn and stopped, rather than accelerating to escape. That's their worse accident so far, and the other driver was at fault. There are not stories about Waymo cars making sudden lane changes and causing multi-car collisions. [1] https://waymo.com/sf/ https://waymo.com/sf/ [2] https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/self-driving-car-stops-at-sf-construction-site-waymo-responds/ https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/self-driving-car-stops-a...
  - boulos 4y ago
    Disclosure: I work for Waymo. > There was a collision on Geary Boulevard where a Waymo vehicle detected a speeding car during a left turn and stopped, rather than accelerating to escape. That's their worse accident so far, and the other driver was at fault. You're thinking of Cruise.
    - Animats 4y ago
      Right, that was Cruise.[1] The most common single problem with serious autonomous vehicles right now is being rear-ended by human vehicles while cautiously entering intersections. The usual sequence of events is, autonomous vehicle approaches intersection where the view of the cross street is obstructed, autonomous vehicle starts to enter intersection, detects cross traffic, stops, and is rear-ended. There are dozens of those in the California DMV reports. This will probably get better as more vehicles get automatic radar-controlled braking, which is good at preventing low-speed rear-ending. [1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/file/cruise_060322-pdf/ https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/file/cruise_060322-pdf/
sfpotter 4y ago
Re: batteries: bear in mind the purpose of his scorecard. It's about things which were dramatically overhyped.
- ianai 4y ago
  I definitely missed or forgot the overhyped target.

by ianai 4y ago

morelisp 4y ago

> But his points are almost exclusively self driving. Where’s the discussion of battery tech? In 2018, "everyone" was saying perfect self-driving was only a few years away (I recall a highly-rated HN comment saying humans would likely be banned from roads by 2025), and nobody was interested in battery tech.

AtlasBarfed 4y ago
I think we would have automated intercity highway driving if all the companies weren't chasing drive thru taco bell self driving. Some convergent infrastructure (sensors, warning network, etc) and route specific learning would have helped. Oh well. I mean you could have a "dial a remote operator if uncertainty threshold reached" dropouts, better pull over spots or shoulders , etc.
- morelisp 4y ago
  > intercity... infrastructure (sensors, warning network, etc) and route specific learning... You could also just build trains, like much of the rest of the world.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    There are a lot of scenarios where it's low volume/you want a car at the other end/you're not going to a city center/etc. I don't necessarily disagree that it would be nice if there were better passenger train service in the US but most of the long distance highway driving I do wouldn't be remotely served by train. Plenty of people drive cars in Europe too.
Animats 4y ago
> In 2018, "everyone" was saying perfect self-driving was only a few years away. Yes. Having been involved in the DARPA Grand Challenge 20 years ago, I didn't think it would take this long. I thought we'd at least have automated rental car pick-up and return at airports by now. At least lots of automated shuttle buses on campuses and at airports. Waymo is getting close.[1] It's worth looking at the accident reports and news stories with complaints about Waymo. People complain about Waymo cars clogging their street, which is happening because SF marked a few nearby streets as "slow streets", and Waymo's planner is optimizing routes around them. There's a recent news story where a Waymo car reached a construction trench in a street and stopped. Didn't go into the trench. Someone had to intervene remotely to back it out of the construction area. There was a collision on Geary Boulevard where a Waymo vehicle detected a speeding car during a left turn and stopped, rather than accelerating to escape. That's their worse accident so far, and the other driver was at fault. There are not stories about Waymo cars making sudden lane changes and causing multi-car collisions. [1] https://waymo.com/sf/ https://waymo.com/sf/ [2] https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/self-driving-car-stops-at-sf-construction-site-waymo-responds/ https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/self-driving-car-stops-a...
- boulos 4y ago
  Disclosure: I work for Waymo. > There was a collision on Geary Boulevard where a Waymo vehicle detected a speeding car during a left turn and stopped, rather than accelerating to escape. That's their worse accident so far, and the other driver was at fault. You're thinking of Cruise.
  - Animats 4y ago
    Right, that was Cruise.[1] The most common single problem with serious autonomous vehicles right now is being rear-ended by human vehicles while cautiously entering intersections. The usual sequence of events is, autonomous vehicle approaches intersection where the view of the cross street is obstructed, autonomous vehicle starts to enter intersection, detects cross traffic, stops, and is rear-ended. There are dozens of those in the California DMV reports. This will probably get better as more vehicles get automatic radar-controlled braking, which is good at preventing low-speed rear-ending. [1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/file/cruise_060322-pdf/ https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/file/cruise_060322-pdf/

sfpotter 4y ago

Re: batteries: bear in mind the purpose of his scorecard. It's about things which were dramatically overhyped.

ianai 4y ago
I definitely missed or forgot the overhyped target.