3 ms·

The remote control claim never made sense anyway. "There is no computer driver, it's all fake, they're paying teams of drivers in India" only sounds plausible t

The remote control claim never made sense anyway. "There is no computer driver, it's all fake, they're paying teams of drivers in India" only sounds plausible to anyone who's never encountered lag in a video game.

netsharc 8mo ago
Plenty of people believe since Covid is a virus, just like software viruses it was being transmitted by 5G base stations. I've mentioned to a friend that humans are monkeys, but which are capable of building an Internet. But maybe plenty of us are closer to monkeys...
Noumenon72 8mo ago
What is their claim about latency here? > Our vehicle-to-RA connection is also as fast as the blink of an eye. Median one-way latency is approximately 150 milliseconds for U.S. based operations centers and 250 milliseconds for RA based abroad. That's still not fast enough for remote control, but are they implying they only send the RAs screenshots, since sending video would take seconds, not milliseconds?
- AlotOfReading 8mo ago
  Their claim is talking about latency, not bandwidth. What you're talking about is throughput, which can usually be solved by throwing more money at the problem.
- xnx 8mo ago
  They had to throw something in about speed even though the gating factor is the RA's ability to interpret the situation and decide a course of action. I wouldn't be surprised if actions required agreement between decisions by two independent RAs.
- gruez 8mo ago
  >That's still not fast enough for remote control, but are they implying they only send the RAs screenshots, since sending video would take seconds, not milliseconds? Their earlier blog post has screenshots (?) of the UI that the "fleet response" people have access to. It seems to be a video feed combined with yes/no questions, along with some top-down UI to direct where the vehicle should go. https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response
- meatmanek 8mo ago
  You can stream video with milliseconds of latency, provided you have enough bandwidth for the video stream. Videoconferencing and cloud gaming both work on this principle. That said, I would argue that their focus on one-way latency is misinformation meant to make the picture look rosier than it actually is. Round-trip latency is what matters here -- the video feed needs to get to the assistant, then the assistant needs to react, then their response needs to get back to the car. If one-way latency is 250ms, then round-trip latency would presumably be 500ms, which is a very long time in the context of driving. At highway speeds, you'd travel ~44 feet / 13 meters in that time.
  - gruez 8mo ago
    >That said, I would argue that their focus on one-way latency is misinformation meant to make the picture look rosier than it actually is. Round-trip latency is what matters here -- the video feed needs to get to the assistant, then the assistant needs to react, then their response needs to get back to the car. If one-way latency is 250ms, then round-trip latency would presumably be 500ms, which is a very long time in the context of driving. At highway speeds, you'd travel ~44 feet / 13 meters in that time. Right, which is why the blog post is titled "Advice, not control ..." and goes to explain that they're not relying on the "remote assistance" people to make split second judgements.
  - Retric 8mo ago
    They don’t do human in the loop at highway speeds. Further the cars need to safely stop in an emergency without human intervention. There’s no way for the car to first notice a problem, then send a message to a call center which then routes to a human, and for that human to understand the situation, all fast enough to avoid a collision. Even 50ms is significant here let alone several seconds.
    - mcny 8mo ago
      That's not an achievement. Even a non intelligent low to mid end compact SUV such as a 2024 Mazda CX30 has cruise control that can detect cars stopped ahead to slow down, stop if necessary, and continue when the car in front starts moving. I'm just saying that "it avoids a collision" by not ramming into people or cars is table stakes and it makes us look incompetent if we tout it as a flagship feature.
- fragmede 8mo ago
  They could get rid of that latency by hiring Americans.
  - fooker 8mo ago
    Any American within a good distance of a large city to mitigate latency issues can make about 4-5x driving for Uber or delivering food. And latency to small towns in the middle of nowhere is not significantly better than latency to Philippines. You can expect something in the ballpark of 70ms in both cases.
    - pythonaut_16 8mo ago
      Not realistic but a remote work Uber driver is kinda an interesting (if dystopian) concept.
      - ben_w 8mo ago
        I'm semi-seriously expecting remote-work Optimus driving to be a thing in the near future. Well, more so than it already is. A factory in the US* staffed entirely by humanoid robots has the same impact on US employment opportunities regardless of if the robots are controlled by AI in the sense of software or in case where the "Actually Indians" meme still applies. It's just that in the latter case your "illegal aliens" who are "stealing our jobs" are managing to do so without actually crossing the border, making it very difficult to deport them, and denying them access suddenly becomes a freedom of speech issue. * I'm in Europe, I don't think we'll be tolerating "new" "exciting" "opportunities" from Musk any time soon. I don't think China or Russia will be either. Or indeed more than half of the G20 nations. He'll be told to prove it, and get told "no" a lot because experiments based on his rhetoric and vision are no longer worth the downsides without solid proof both that it works as advertised and that he won't cut things off when he has a hissy fit.
  - jeffbee 8mo ago
    People don't like to work in the middle of the night.
shadowgovt 8mo ago
Interestingly, the round-trip latency from the West Coast to continental Asia isn't nearly as long as I'd assumed (60ms to 250ms, depending on who's measuring). Not nearly fast enough for real-time highway remote operation IMHO, but surprisingly fast. That's what I get for underestimating how fast light and electric fields can go.
Aurornis 8mo ago
It reminds me of the claims that your phone's microphone is always on and feeding your conversations to Facebook so they can serve you ads, even when the app is closed. Anyone who has experience with apps, permissions, or even basic reverse engineering or network activity monitoring would realize that this couldn't be true without someone having found evidence. Yet even on HN you find die-hard believers that it's true. I think these stories tickle the conspiracy theorist part of some people's brains and they want to believe it's true. If it's true, it means they were smart enough to see through the facade unlike the other sheep in the world.
- ben_w 8mo ago
  > I think these stories tickle the conspiracy theorist part of some people's brains and they want to believe it's true. It's more than just that, there's also the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon, i.e. we talk about something and then notice it mysteriously suggested to us on YouTube or whatever. And then assume this was causal rather than coincidence. I got that yesterday, though I can't even remember now what the video or the topic of discussion was.

netsharc 8mo ago

Plenty of people believe since Covid is a virus, just like software viruses it was being transmitted by 5G base stations. I've mentioned to a friend that humans are monkeys, but which are capable of building an Internet. But maybe plenty of us are closer to monkeys...

Noumenon72 8mo ago

What is their claim about latency here? > Our vehicle-to-RA connection is also as fast as the blink of an eye. Median one-way latency is approximately 150 milliseconds for U.S. based operations centers and 250 milliseconds for RA based abroad. That's still not fast enough for remote control, but are they implying they only send the RAs screenshots, since sending video would take seconds, not milliseconds?

AlotOfReading 8mo ago
Their claim is talking about latency, not bandwidth. What you're talking about is throughput, which can usually be solved by throwing more money at the problem.
xnx 8mo ago
They had to throw something in about speed even though the gating factor is the RA's ability to interpret the situation and decide a course of action. I wouldn't be surprised if actions required agreement between decisions by two independent RAs.
gruez 8mo ago
>That's still not fast enough for remote control, but are they implying they only send the RAs screenshots, since sending video would take seconds, not milliseconds? Their earlier blog post has screenshots (?) of the UI that the "fleet response" people have access to. It seems to be a video feed combined with yes/no questions, along with some top-down UI to direct where the vehicle should go. https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response
meatmanek 8mo ago
You can stream video with milliseconds of latency, provided you have enough bandwidth for the video stream. Videoconferencing and cloud gaming both work on this principle. That said, I would argue that their focus on one-way latency is misinformation meant to make the picture look rosier than it actually is. Round-trip latency is what matters here -- the video feed needs to get to the assistant, then the assistant needs to react, then their response needs to get back to the car. If one-way latency is 250ms, then round-trip latency would presumably be 500ms, which is a very long time in the context of driving. At highway speeds, you'd travel ~44 feet / 13 meters in that time.
- gruez 8mo ago
  >That said, I would argue that their focus on one-way latency is misinformation meant to make the picture look rosier than it actually is. Round-trip latency is what matters here -- the video feed needs to get to the assistant, then the assistant needs to react, then their response needs to get back to the car. If one-way latency is 250ms, then round-trip latency would presumably be 500ms, which is a very long time in the context of driving. At highway speeds, you'd travel ~44 feet / 13 meters in that time. Right, which is why the blog post is titled "Advice, not control ..." and goes to explain that they're not relying on the "remote assistance" people to make split second judgements.
- Retric 8mo ago
  They don’t do human in the loop at highway speeds. Further the cars need to safely stop in an emergency without human intervention. There’s no way for the car to first notice a problem, then send a message to a call center which then routes to a human, and for that human to understand the situation, all fast enough to avoid a collision. Even 50ms is significant here let alone several seconds.
  - mcny 8mo ago
    That's not an achievement. Even a non intelligent low to mid end compact SUV such as a 2024 Mazda CX30 has cruise control that can detect cars stopped ahead to slow down, stop if necessary, and continue when the car in front starts moving. I'm just saying that "it avoids a collision" by not ramming into people or cars is table stakes and it makes us look incompetent if we tout it as a flagship feature.
fragmede 8mo ago
They could get rid of that latency by hiring Americans.
- fooker 8mo ago
  Any American within a good distance of a large city to mitigate latency issues can make about 4-5x driving for Uber or delivering food. And latency to small towns in the middle of nowhere is not significantly better than latency to Philippines. You can expect something in the ballpark of 70ms in both cases.
  - pythonaut_16 8mo ago
    Not realistic but a remote work Uber driver is kinda an interesting (if dystopian) concept.
    - ben_w 8mo ago
      I'm semi-seriously expecting remote-work Optimus driving to be a thing in the near future. Well, more so than it already is. A factory in the US* staffed entirely by humanoid robots has the same impact on US employment opportunities regardless of if the robots are controlled by AI in the sense of software or in case where the "Actually Indians" meme still applies. It's just that in the latter case your "illegal aliens" who are "stealing our jobs" are managing to do so without actually crossing the border, making it very difficult to deport them, and denying them access suddenly becomes a freedom of speech issue. * I'm in Europe, I don't think we'll be tolerating "new" "exciting" "opportunities" from Musk any time soon. I don't think China or Russia will be either. Or indeed more than half of the G20 nations. He'll be told to prove it, and get told "no" a lot because experiments based on his rhetoric and vision are no longer worth the downsides without solid proof both that it works as advertised and that he won't cut things off when he has a hissy fit.
- jeffbee 8mo ago
  People don't like to work in the middle of the night.

shadowgovt 8mo ago

Interestingly, the round-trip latency from the West Coast to continental Asia isn't nearly as long as I'd assumed (60ms to 250ms, depending on who's measuring). Not nearly fast enough for real-time highway remote operation IMHO, but surprisingly fast. That's what I get for underestimating how fast light and electric fields can go.

Aurornis 8mo ago

It reminds me of the claims that your phone's microphone is always on and feeding your conversations to Facebook so they can serve you ads, even when the app is closed. Anyone who has experience with apps, permissions, or even basic reverse engineering or network activity monitoring would realize that this couldn't be true without someone having found evidence. Yet even on HN you find die-hard believers that it's true. I think these stories tickle the conspiracy theorist part of some people's brains and they want to believe it's true. If it's true, it means they were smart enough to see through the facade unlike the other sheep in the world.

ben_w 8mo ago
> I think these stories tickle the conspiracy theorist part of some people's brains and they want to believe it's true. It's more than just that, there's also the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon, i.e. we talk about something and then notice it mysteriously suggested to us on YouTube or whatever. And then assume this was causal rather than coincidence. I got that yesterday, though I can't even remember now what the video or the topic of discussion was.