5 ms·
Surprisingly low hype for a company running perhaps the most advanced consumer-interactive robots. I’m quite fond of these machines and will periodically rescue
by arjie 3mo ago
Surprisingly low hype for a company running perhaps the most advanced consumer-interactive robots. I’m quite fond of these machines and will periodically rescue them when someone has misused them (door not closed, most commonly). Hope they do well. Very good road participants.
- cyanregiment 3mo ago[flagged]
- padolsey 3mo agoPeople seem so used to it now. I love them, I think they're probably one of the most exciting tech I've used in the last ten years. They're also like magical little rescue pods when socially overwhelmed in a busy city.
- 121789 3mo agothe easiest way to understand their value is to be a pedestrian. it is insane how quickly you realize how safe and careful they are vs. humans. the "bugs" with getting stuck in intersections and stuff like that means very little to me if I can bike or cross a crosswalk with confidence
- panick21_ 3mo agoEasiest to understand their value as a pedestrian in a place that doesn't care about pedestrian and looks at their deaths as irrelevant. We know a lot about how to improve road safety for pedestrians, but its just not valued in some places. Replacing 100s of millions of cars with smart robot is not safety solution. Actually improving road safety with cheap well proven methods is the solution.
- dtdynasty 3mo agoI agree if the money was given to organizations which would actually effectively use the money to make road safety changes. But with this form of claim I always come back to the idea this was originally funded by corporations. I don't think the opportunity cost of corporate funding is public infrastructure unless it's profit motivated. So if it makes safety improvements at low safety per $ I still support it because its opportunity cost is more likely ads or other corporate investments.
- 121789 3mo agoI feel like you have an overall rant about transportation you want to make so just make it instead of adding tangential comments to everything If you can't go down any street in any country and find people staring at their phones while driving, speeding through stop signs, and making routinely dangerous decisions then you are less aware of your surroundings than the people texting while driving. You are the person this technology is meant for. People who don't pay attention.
- panick21_ 3mo agoYou prevent speeding by structuring the road environment so to make speeding less. Comfortable, you narrow roads, you impact the visual field, you have speed bumps, raised cross walks, automatic cameras that hand out tickets when you speed, you change the road surface to create noise, you curve streets make it so cars can't go straight. Same of stop signs, if stop signs aren't overused people respect them more. Stop signs are an anti-pattern that should only very rarely be used. You constantly see people running stop signs because stop signs are badly placed. Where I live, its very rare that people run stop signs because there are far fewer of them. It still happens, but usually not when traffic is high, because most people do value their live. The US is well known for building roads that are great for driving fast on, then just slapping a bunch of stop signs down and a bunch of maximum speed limits (that are barely enforced) and then complain when people don't follow the law. People look at their phone because the roads are straight and wide and they think they can look at their phones. People react to intensives and to enforcement. Give them the right intensives and most people will follow them. And best thing is, these changes even work on Waymos too.
- Breza 2mo agoI totally agree with you. Here in DC they use a public charger that's on one of my running routes, so I interact with them more often than the average Washingtonian. I feel more comfortable around them than I do around human drivers.
- inigyou 3mo agoThey're also covered in cameras the police have access to, which have been used to track down legal protestors in the past. That's why there was a spate of people setting them on fire a few months ago. Basically, every Waymo car is a Flock camera.
- SR2Z 3mo agoStop spreading FUD. The police do not in any meaningful way "have access" to Waymo cameras. They can subpoena recordings and Waymo will call the cops on you if you commit a crime in one of their cars, but your statement implies Flock-like access which the police simply don't have.
- inigyou 3mo agohttps://gizmodo.com/waymos-driverless-cars-revealed-to-be-narcs-as-cops-use-them-to-probe-crimes-2000590426 https://gizmodo.com/waymos-driverless-cars-revealed-to-be-na...
- SR2Z 3mo agoDid you read your article? > Waymo does not provide information or data to law enforcement without a valid legal request, usually in the form of a warrant, subpoena, or court order. Waymo is no more required to turn over data to the government than you are.
- Zambyte 3mo agoI want trains.
- xnx 3mo agoI think you'd want them a lot less if you had to pay the full price in fare (often $30+/ride)
- Zambyte 3mo agoDo you think roads are free? Maintaining them? Parking lots? Gasoline / electricity? Required emergency services due to regular catastrophic failures? Cars are way more expensive if we're talking "full prices".
- panick21_ 3mo agoI live in Switzerland and it actually saves money for your society. Its universally considered a fantastic investment for the country and many people are happy to pay it, both in taxes and in ticket cost. You are simply applying two different standards for road cost and rail costs. Roads are fully tax funded and all land use decisions are made to support them. And then there is insanely huge subsidy in how parking lots work, not to mention tons of other regulation that forces the creation of parking, zoning and so on. Your statement only makes sense, because what your 'normal' is actually an insanely pro car, anti train normal.
- amazingamazing 3mo agoToo much capex
- oblio 3mo agoOk, self driving buses on fixed routes. Likely 10-1000x cheaper to implement than fully autonomous cars.
- amazingamazing 3mo agoNope. Fixed routes have chaos. You would have the same problem, converging on fsd. It’s the same reason Waymo isn’t deployed everywhere now. Not to mention buses are a couple orders of magnitude more expensive than a car and would be slower for any given median occupant compared to a car.