10 ms·

I rode in a Waymo recently and was amazed at how good it was. It was easily in the top 5 best drivers I have ridden with. Really really impressive. It wasn’t

by mulmen 2y ago

I rode in a Waymo recently and was amazed at how good it was. It was easily in the top 5 best drivers I have ridden with. Really really impressive. It wasn’t nearly as cautious or timid as I expected it to be. But it also wasn’t reckless. I would describe it as assertive, but I’m sure some people would call it aggressive. It knows the rules and what’s going on around and acts accordingly. This really should be the norm. For the first time in a decade I’m excited about an emerging technology. The future is bright.

meiraleal 2y ago
> The future is bright. We have been there. The internet and then Google, Facebook were the same. Big Tech can't be trusted.
- mulmen 2y ago
  I think the Internet is pretty great. It’s not perfect but I’m not ready to throw out the frictionless communication baby with the cynical bathwater.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Big Tech can't be trusted Trust, trade and mutually-beneficial coëxistence need not go hand in hand.
  - rglullis 2y ago
    > mutually-beneficial coëxistence Their side is benefiting a lot more than ours, and the few benefits that we might end up seeing come with a good amount of harm inflicted by them.
    - tim333 2y ago
      I like my tech toys - the usual macbook, iphone, internet etc. provided by big tech. I'm not sure how they are supposed to have harmed me?
      - rglullis 2y ago
        This is the type of comment that makes you look either like a privileged elite that is part of Big Tech, or just a clueless moron whose day at the barrel is yet to come. Do you really need a list of ways how Big Tech has harmed society? If things like "Surveillance Capitalism" is not enough, maybe: - the collapse of quality journalism, because SEO and content farms made impossible to maintain a financially sustainable team of independent reporters? - The absolute destruction of people's ability to read a piece of text for longer than 15 seconds? - The mental health crisis in teens and even young adults caused by social media? - Planned obsolescence and the removal of our right to repair things on our own? - The normalization of the "gig economy" not just for young kids who are looking for some extra cash, but as the main source of income for grown up adults, with actual families to support? - (Google and Facebook mostly) adopting the absolutely anti-competitive practice of "when we get a competitor, we buy them out as early as possible or just keep offering our stuff for free until they eventually run out of money"? - Apple outright refusing to let people install alternative app stores, because they know that without this artificial scarcity they would not be worth 1/10th of what they are today? Seriously, get out of SV bubble.
        tim333 2y ago
        I'm not in SV and was trying to think of ways it had harmed me personally. I haven't really been affected by any of the above. Maybe the app store thing a bit as I wrote an app and dealing with Apple was hard work. But then I wouldn't have been able to make an app without some company making the device for me to do it on. Re society, I grew up pre internet and I'd say there are pros and cons. On the plus side you have access to the world's information and video and text communication for free across the planet which you didn't have before. On the minus side that's led to people spending a lot of time staring at their devices and less interacting with each other. Nothing's perfect I guess.
        rglullis 2y ago
        You don't need to live in SV to be in its bubble. > I wouldn't have been able to make an app without some company making the device for me to do it on. If you are not asking yourself why should you need to ask permission to develop an app, I'm sorry but you are lost beyond repair. Stockholm's Syndrome is real.
- rowanG077 2y ago
  How does trust factor into it. I would not say trust is even applicable to a corporation.
rglullis 2y ago
The whole thing with self-driving cars is that it feels like the story of NASA's space pen. All this money being poured into a technology that would not be needed if the richest country in the world had the common sense of simply getting rid of its car dependency and developed proper public transit infrastructure.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > the story of NASA's space pen As an example of an urban legend/facile pop science take being treated as fact [1]? > if the richest country in the world had the common sense of simply getting rid of its car dependency and developed proper public transit infrastructure Is there a single developed economy that doesn't make significant use of trucks and cars? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen#Uses_in_the_U.S._and_Soviet_space_programs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen#Uses_in_the_U.S._and...
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    Depends on your population density. Tokyo does pretty well with purely public transport. There’s still cars of course, but you don’t use them for travel into the city proper if you don’t hate yourself.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > Tokyo does pretty well with purely public transport. There’s still cars of course, but you don’t use them for travel into the city proper if you don’t hate yourself Japan has .67 vehicles per person, almost 80% America's .85 [1] and above many European countries. They travel about a fifth as many miles per capita as America [2]. But again, four fifths and a fifth. Nowhere close to zero. There isn't a developed economy that wouldn't see a significant quality-of-life improvement from self-driving cars. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_motor_vehicles_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territor... [2] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar4.htm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar4.htm
mstade 2y ago
I was just in CA for a few weeks and drove in SF quite a bit. There are Waymo cars everywhere and from the perspective of a driver I was more than a little cautious driving behind or next to one of them. I would rate their driving as quite good, but their signaling of intent was terrible. More than once did I see them use turn signals, only to never actually turn. Turn the signals on, then off again, then on again, eventually turn perhaps but not always. Humans are terrible at this too, but we also use more subtle and inadvertent signals like the slight movement to the line telling me they're likely about to switch lanes, only to see the signal go on halfway into it. Those subtle signals are easier to pick up on than a robot driving more or less perfectly straight while signaling, turning of signals, turning them back on again, and so on. Also super creepy with empty driver seats, and no one responsible to make eye contact with. But the actual driving wasn't bad, as it turns out. Never had or saw a near miss, anything reckless or otherwise remarkable. I can see myself getting used to this tech and I would love for it to succeed, because man driving for anything but fun really sucks.
- mulmen 2y ago
  Good point about intent. As a passenger I appreciated how smooth it was but I can see how the lack of “body language” could be disorienting for human drivers. The Waymo driving style is almost passive-aggressive. It has superhuman situational awareness and knowledge. I wonder if it isn’t using blinkers effectively but it’s everyone else that’s technically wrong. It’s also not perfect so who knows. There’s probably still bugs to work out.
  - necovek 2y ago
    That sounds great for Waymo: I'd love to experience a ride in one and I'll make sure to catch a ride next time I am in CA. I wonder what it does in common situations, like stop-and-go traffic with two streets joining at an angle, where one has to yield? In that case, if everyone simply followed the rules, the cars in the yielding street would never get through. While I am passive-aggressive myself as a driver, I religiously follow alternating one-by-one from either street "rule", even if I am in a street that has right of way, to ensure traffic moves for both of those and reduce chances of someone overly aggressively moving in from the yielding street. If it is still passive aggressive in that case, it will work ok while there are other passive human drivers in the road, but would quickly fall apart when everyone drives the same.
kiba 2y ago
It's impressive and all, but my reaction to self driving cars are completely different. It's a great technical feat, but it's not ever going to be efficient as public transportation. The form factor of the car works against it.
- mulmen 2y ago
  Make a self driving bus then. I take Ubers to bus stops today. Doesn’t seem like much of a leap.
  - agumonkey 2y ago
    and with dedicated bus lines and predictable behavior that could be easier to do
  - crazygringo 2y ago
    This is definitely going to be coming. You'll be able to pay more to take a single dedicated vehicle the whole way, or less that includes a self-driving bus or two for most of the middle segment of your journey. But the bus "routes" will be totally dynamic based on demand, and will only stop occasionally, and you won't have to wait long. It's going to be a complete revolution in public transit.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > I take Ubers to bus stops today Same for trains. I wouldn’t take the LIRR to JFK or Caltrain to SFO if I had to bike with my luggage or whatever. And I’m not adding an hour to my trip for the bus.
- fragmede 2y ago
  Once the technology exists and is proven, the only thing stopping public transportation from being automated with the same technology is their union.
  - shafyy 2y ago
    I doubt that the reason public transport is not as prevalent e.g. in the US as in some European countries is the cost of the driver. The fixed costs of operating a train or a bus must be many many times more.
heroprotagonist 2y ago
> The future is bright. Ask the 2.3 million employed drivers in the United States how the future looks. Because pretty soon, they'll all need to be doing something else. And I don't see a technology that will open up 2.3 million jobs for them to move into, or training initiatives to support them while they shift professions. The future _could_ be bright, if we approach AI right, and build the social safety net to soften the massive amount of transition that will be necessary. But we're not. We're looking at cuts everywhere in the near future. And long term, it seems we have no strategy. Which makes it more likely that a lot of people will be harmed.
- Panzer04 2y ago
  2.3m people we don't need to pay any more. Jobs'll open up, that money will go somewhere else.
  - jazzyjackson 2y ago
    Sure but building yachts is skilled labor, there will have to be a massive retraining operation
- anal_reactor 2y ago
  Hard agree. Soviet Union built its economy around making sure that everyone had a job and, as a result... oh wait, nevermind.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - tim333 2y ago
    That was one of the few aspects of their economy which was probably good.
    - anal_reactor 2y ago
      At some point my country started borrowing lots of money and spending it on social programs, which eventually led to its bankruptcy. Some people still think that the guy in charge back then was a great leader.
fragmede 2y ago
But does this absolve Google for killing Reader?

by mulmen 2y ago

meiraleal 2y ago

> The future is bright. We have been there. The internet and then Google, Facebook were the same. Big Tech can't be trusted.

mulmen 2y ago
I think the Internet is pretty great. It’s not perfect but I’m not ready to throw out the frictionless communication baby with the cynical bathwater.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Big Tech can't be trusted Trust, trade and mutually-beneficial coëxistence need not go hand in hand.
- rglullis 2y ago
  > mutually-beneficial coëxistence Their side is benefiting a lot more than ours, and the few benefits that we might end up seeing come with a good amount of harm inflicted by them.
  - tim333 2y ago
    I like my tech toys - the usual macbook, iphone, internet etc. provided by big tech. I'm not sure how they are supposed to have harmed me?
    - rglullis 2y ago
      This is the type of comment that makes you look either like a privileged elite that is part of Big Tech, or just a clueless moron whose day at the barrel is yet to come. Do you really need a list of ways how Big Tech has harmed society? If things like "Surveillance Capitalism" is not enough, maybe: - the collapse of quality journalism, because SEO and content farms made impossible to maintain a financially sustainable team of independent reporters? - The absolute destruction of people's ability to read a piece of text for longer than 15 seconds? - The mental health crisis in teens and even young adults caused by social media? - Planned obsolescence and the removal of our right to repair things on our own? - The normalization of the "gig economy" not just for young kids who are looking for some extra cash, but as the main source of income for grown up adults, with actual families to support? - (Google and Facebook mostly) adopting the absolutely anti-competitive practice of "when we get a competitor, we buy them out as early as possible or just keep offering our stuff for free until they eventually run out of money"? - Apple outright refusing to let people install alternative app stores, because they know that without this artificial scarcity they would not be worth 1/10th of what they are today? Seriously, get out of SV bubble.
      - tim333 2y ago
        I'm not in SV and was trying to think of ways it had harmed me personally. I haven't really been affected by any of the above. Maybe the app store thing a bit as I wrote an app and dealing with Apple was hard work. But then I wouldn't have been able to make an app without some company making the device for me to do it on. Re society, I grew up pre internet and I'd say there are pros and cons. On the plus side you have access to the world's information and video and text communication for free across the planet which you didn't have before. On the minus side that's led to people spending a lot of time staring at their devices and less interacting with each other. Nothing's perfect I guess.
        rglullis 2y ago
        You don't need to live in SV to be in its bubble. > I wouldn't have been able to make an app without some company making the device for me to do it on. If you are not asking yourself why should you need to ask permission to develop an app, I'm sorry but you are lost beyond repair. Stockholm's Syndrome is real.
rowanG077 2y ago
How does trust factor into it. I would not say trust is even applicable to a corporation.

rglullis 2y ago

The whole thing with self-driving cars is that it feels like the story of NASA's space pen. All this money being poured into a technology that would not be needed if the richest country in the world had the common sense of simply getting rid of its car dependency and developed proper public transit infrastructure.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> the story of NASA's space pen As an example of an urban legend/facile pop science take being treated as fact [1]? > if the richest country in the world had the common sense of simply getting rid of its car dependency and developed proper public transit infrastructure Is there a single developed economy that doesn't make significant use of trucks and cars? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen#Uses_in_the_U.S._and_Soviet_space_programs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen#Uses_in_the_U.S._and...
- Aeolun 2y ago
  Depends on your population density. Tokyo does pretty well with purely public transport. There’s still cars of course, but you don’t use them for travel into the city proper if you don’t hate yourself.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Tokyo does pretty well with purely public transport. There’s still cars of course, but you don’t use them for travel into the city proper if you don’t hate yourself Japan has .67 vehicles per person, almost 80% America's .85 [1] and above many European countries. They travel about a fifth as many miles per capita as America [2]. But again, four fifths and a fifth. Nowhere close to zero. There isn't a developed economy that wouldn't see a significant quality-of-life improvement from self-driving cars. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_motor_vehicles_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territor... [2] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar4.htm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar4.htm

mstade 2y ago

I was just in CA for a few weeks and drove in SF quite a bit. There are Waymo cars everywhere and from the perspective of a driver I was more than a little cautious driving behind or next to one of them. I would rate their driving as quite good, but their signaling of intent was terrible. More than once did I see them use turn signals, only to never actually turn. Turn the signals on, then off again, then on again, eventually turn perhaps but not always. Humans are terrible at this too, but we also use more subtle and inadvertent signals like the slight movement to the line telling me they're likely about to switch lanes, only to see the signal go on halfway into it. Those subtle signals are easier to pick up on than a robot driving more or less perfectly straight while signaling, turning of signals, turning them back on again, and so on. Also super creepy with empty driver seats, and no one responsible to make eye contact with. But the actual driving wasn't bad, as it turns out. Never had or saw a near miss, anything reckless or otherwise remarkable. I can see myself getting used to this tech and I would love for it to succeed, because man driving for anything but fun really sucks.

mulmen 2y ago
Good point about intent. As a passenger I appreciated how smooth it was but I can see how the lack of “body language” could be disorienting for human drivers. The Waymo driving style is almost passive-aggressive. It has superhuman situational awareness and knowledge. I wonder if it isn’t using blinkers effectively but it’s everyone else that’s technically wrong. It’s also not perfect so who knows. There’s probably still bugs to work out.
- necovek 2y ago
  That sounds great for Waymo: I'd love to experience a ride in one and I'll make sure to catch a ride next time I am in CA. I wonder what it does in common situations, like stop-and-go traffic with two streets joining at an angle, where one has to yield? In that case, if everyone simply followed the rules, the cars in the yielding street would never get through. While I am passive-aggressive myself as a driver, I religiously follow alternating one-by-one from either street "rule", even if I am in a street that has right of way, to ensure traffic moves for both of those and reduce chances of someone overly aggressively moving in from the yielding street. If it is still passive aggressive in that case, it will work ok while there are other passive human drivers in the road, but would quickly fall apart when everyone drives the same.

kiba 2y ago

It's impressive and all, but my reaction to self driving cars are completely different. It's a great technical feat, but it's not ever going to be efficient as public transportation. The form factor of the car works against it.

mulmen 2y ago
Make a self driving bus then. I take Ubers to bus stops today. Doesn’t seem like much of a leap.
- agumonkey 2y ago
  and with dedicated bus lines and predictable behavior that could be easier to do
- crazygringo 2y ago
  This is definitely going to be coming. You'll be able to pay more to take a single dedicated vehicle the whole way, or less that includes a self-driving bus or two for most of the middle segment of your journey. But the bus "routes" will be totally dynamic based on demand, and will only stop occasionally, and you won't have to wait long. It's going to be a complete revolution in public transit.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > I take Ubers to bus stops today Same for trains. I wouldn’t take the LIRR to JFK or Caltrain to SFO if I had to bike with my luggage or whatever. And I’m not adding an hour to my trip for the bus.
fragmede 2y ago
Once the technology exists and is proven, the only thing stopping public transportation from being automated with the same technology is their union.
- shafyy 2y ago
  I doubt that the reason public transport is not as prevalent e.g. in the US as in some European countries is the cost of the driver. The fixed costs of operating a train or a bus must be many many times more.

heroprotagonist 2y ago

> The future is bright. Ask the 2.3 million employed drivers in the United States how the future looks. Because pretty soon, they'll all need to be doing something else. And I don't see a technology that will open up 2.3 million jobs for them to move into, or training initiatives to support them while they shift professions. The future _could_ be bright, if we approach AI right, and build the social safety net to soften the massive amount of transition that will be necessary. But we're not. We're looking at cuts everywhere in the near future. And long term, it seems we have no strategy. Which makes it more likely that a lot of people will be harmed.

Panzer04 2y ago
2.3m people we don't need to pay any more. Jobs'll open up, that money will go somewhere else.
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
  Sure but building yachts is skilled labor, there will have to be a massive retraining operation
anal_reactor 2y ago
Hard agree. Soviet Union built its economy around making sure that everyone had a job and, as a result... oh wait, nevermind.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- tim333 2y ago
  That was one of the few aspects of their economy which was probably good.
  - anal_reactor 2y ago
    At some point my country started borrowing lots of money and spending it on social programs, which eventually led to its bankruptcy. Some people still think that the guy in charge back then was a great leader.

fragmede 2y ago

But does this absolve Google for killing Reader?