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Coast-To-Coast Autonomous Tesla Trips 2-3 Years Out, Says Elon Musk (google.com)
Jalopnik reports that Elon Musk's predicted window for being able (for Tesla owners, that is) to call up your autonomous car and have it find its own way from New York to California, or vice versa, is astonishingly close: 24-36 months from now. From the article:
As far as the summoning feature is concerned, Tesla plans for the 33-foot range to greatly expand—soon. Within two years, Musk predicted that owners will be able to summon their car from across the country.
“If you’re in New York and your car is in Los Angeles, you can summon your car to you from your phone and tell the car to find you,” Musk said. “It’ll automatically charge itself along the journey. I might be slightly optimistic about that, but not significantly optimistic.”
In getting from one place to another, Musk said autopilot “is better than human in highway driving, or at least it will be soon with machine learning.” If it’s not already better than human, Musk said it will be within the coming months.
But right now, Musk said the car still needs a human around, just in case.
“The car currently has sensors to achieve that cross-country goal,” Musk said. “But you’d need more hardware and software, you’d need more cameras, more radars, redundant electronics, redundant power buses and that sort of thing.
you know it will happen.
Their "self parking car" can just barely back itself out of a garage (limited to up to 39 feet) without anyone in the car. It seems unlikely that they'll transition from this to true autonomous long distance operation in 3 years.
Hey investors! My teleporter is 2-3 years out, give me money, thanks.
The law may not be ready that quick and what happens with some thing goes wrong in driver less mode with no one in the car?
Will the car even try get out of the way of a road block with out even trying to due it (just that base don't crash mode)
I want a car that will drop me off at the store or the movies, go park itself and when I'm ready it will come to me in front of the store. The endless walking around in parking lots trying to remember where I park the car is a giant pain in the ass.
Another day closer to redwood heaven
Your Tesla will drive itself onto an autonomous ocean-going barge which will set off around the Cape of Good Hope to dock on the other coast where the barge will disgorge a smouldering heap of wreckage.
It's like with cops and robbers. The thief needs to get lucky every single time, the cops only need to get lucky once. With AI it's even more unfair, not only does the AI only need to learn to drive once, after which it is always better -- but it can be incrementally improved besides, and possesses fundamentally superior perception and reaction time.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Whether or not Tesla is able to get the car to self drive that distance is not in any way shape or form related to whether it will be legal.
Personally I think that it would be extremely unlikely for self driving cars to not become a reality. There is too much money being spent on it by too many smart people. It may be that the US ends up being late to the game though due to the nature of the US legal system.
That's a good one. And I'm sure Elon Musk is going to be launching rockets and flying them back to land softly on a pad for reuse.
Oh, wait...
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Yes it is related when he says OWNERS WILL BE ABLE TO in 2-3 years. They won't be able to, legally or technically.
Don't worry, the car makes stops in Colorado where a load of weed is added to resell when it hits LA.
Not to mention that when you summon the car an Uber alert pops up asking if anyone wants to go to your destination.
Hey, someone has to pay for the R&D.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
For very good reasons that nobody has been able to satisfactorily answer.
This is just the latest in a long trend of overinflated and impossible marketing claims used to skyrocket a company to the top of an industry by conning regulators and investors.
In the near term future, say 3-8 years, accident injuries and deaths will plummet as this technology is adopted. The notion of letting just anybody drive with minimal training will seem as barbaric as surgery without washing your hands first. The cost savings in both human suffering as well as dollars will have us scratching our heads on why we didn't mandate this earlier. I fully expect my grandchildren to be both amazed as well as slightly horrified that I drove along with millions of others at high speed despite the risk of drunks / sleepy / distracted drivers killing us.
...hack a persons account and you'll soon be able to steal his brand new Tesla!
"No officer, I didn't steal it, it followed me home... all the way from Florida!"
Why should they wait for "laws to be ready"? If every innovator would do that, we'd be still riding around on horses. When the car was invented, there for sure were no vehicle liability insurances. I'm sure that got sorted out soon enough after the first accidents though. Here the same. Let it happen. Of course the auto makers will do their utmost best for no accidents to happen (it's part of their business model after all), but it will happen, and then we'll see.
Things will be sorted out soon enough. First figure out who is liable for the accident - I bet most of the times it is not the autonomous car. But if it is the autonomous car, it will be up to the courts to find liability, and it's going to be insurer from one side versus manufacturer on the other side. The courts will hand down a judgement, maybe a few more such incidents, and there's precedent. Laws may be updated or amended it the court ruling goes against what the public wants, and that's it.
To summon your car from the East coast and have it drive.....empty..... to the West coast...what a waste of energy.
I don't think any sane person would bother summoning their car from across the country, unless they're moving one-way and didn't want to drive it.
I predict that most people who summon their car will have parked it nearby already, such as people leaving a concert, a play, or the mall, or perhaps people who want to get picked up from their home airport after returning from a trip.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Musk was saying two years several months ago. He should be saying 18 months not doubling it to 3 years.
I in no way believe autonomous cars will replace humans in all everyday driving situations until all generic visual captchas (not specific algorithms for specific types) can be solved better than humans. If Google can't read plainly visible obvious to human house numbers 4% of the time in no way are they ready to put a real autonomous car on the road.
we will see fancy parking, fancy highway cruise control, and many many many more similar behaviors before integration of these into a complete functioning system is achieved. 20 years out easy before simple residential driving, 40 years plus with no law changes before they can handle things like New York pedestrians.
You forgot "In Soviet Russia,"
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
The law may not be ready that quick and what happens with some thing goes wrong in driver less mode with no one in the car?
I don't know, but the lawyers already have dollar signs in their eyes and they are rubbing their hands together in anticipation of the law suits.
The first funny problem is when you are in NYC and you accidentally bum dial your LA car to come get you. You arrive back in LA to find your car "stolen" so you bring up you app to find that it is getting its kicks on route 66.
The other is when you move from NYC to LA but still haven't updated your contact list to say that "Home" is in LA not NYC. You drunkenly get into your car and say, "Home James" it then proceeds to take you to your old address in NYC. You are hung over so you don't wake until 2pm, 12 hours after leaving. It has been doing a fairly steady 70 for 12 hours, putting you over 800 miles from home. Also this translates to a 12 hour ride to return.
insurance will be all over this like a cheap suit, once functioning, full autonomous driving will be practically mandated by insurance companies.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Meh, this is hardly breaking news. Im sure I saw this done back in the 80's by a Mr Michael Knight.
Personally I think that it would be extremely unlikely for self driving cars to not become a reality. There is too much money being spent on it by too many smart people. It may be that the US ends up being late to the game though due to the nature of the US legal system.
Eventually. Like speech recognition, which also seemed to always be 3-5 years out until it finally went mainstream a few years ago. But I'm thinking more like 2030 or 2040 than 2020 at least around here, from what I can tell they haven't even begun to test snow and ice. I totally understand why they start with making it work under optimal conditions, but it also means they have a looooooooong way to go with non-optimal conditions.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Different manufacturers (Lexus, BMW) have done automated highway driving for years. Highway driving is the easy one. I know you think Tesla invented the idea, but they really didn't. It isn't hard to make a car follow lane markers on a highway and avoid other cars. The hard part is the 20% of the rest. Get a grip on how complex non-highway driving is.
The big difference between speech recognition and self driving cars is there is serious serious money in the cars. And seriously massive impacts on transport infrastructure that will absolutely make governments sit up and take notice.
My own theory is that cities will start to put an autonomous zone around their centres meaning cars that enter that ring either have to be in self drive mode or pay a significant toll. The increased flow rate, the ability to control pathing, and the wider impacts that would have on the traffic network are huge. That way it also means the cars don't have to be designed to handle billy bobs self built driveway in the middle of nowhere.
I think you need it, because, um, you do. You don't think you can drive non-approved vehicles on public roads do you? You need Federal approval of kids car seats! You need state approval as well depending on the road you are on.
It's not rocket science.
Come on Elon. You think coast-to-coast autonomous car is possible in 2 years but you can't give us a 40K car in 2 years?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
As long as in the worst case you are ready to due some hard time as you are the owner / the one who requested the car and when it hit the school bus well the local Officer Barbrady things you just ran off after crash.
criminal liability? Tickets?
As for tickets there are ones that go to the car and other ones that go to the driver (points) how will that work? What about the courts? What about must show up court tickets?
In what situation would you ever need to do this? So you fly to NY, then decide you'd like your car there and wait for it to drive itself to you? I can see this being a really neat perk for when you buy the car online or something, but if someone wants there car somewhere normally they'd just prefer to drive it there I think. Musk is starting to remind me of Michael O'Leary the CEO of Ryanair, making crazy claims that help people make small talk at parties. It's just marketing, and it works.
Eventually. Like speech recognition, which also seemed to always be 3-5 years out until it finally went mainstream a few years ago
Speech recognition didn't go mainstream because it improved, it went mainstream because someone found a use-case for it (essentially, the UI on phones is so much more painful than a computer that it's worth trying speech-to-text, whereas on a computer it's easier to type).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Well, on the highways that the Feds pay for ... Yes, you do. These things will never be certifiable, as they're bragging about machine learning which is non-deterministic and therefore no responsible certifying body will approve it for life safety critical applications.
Sure they will be certifiable. There are no standards that will prevent it.
NHTSA issues the FMVSS, which establish minimum performance requirements for safety systems; anything not required by a FMVSS standard is outside NHTSA's jurisdiction, in regards to manufacture and import of vehicles, So no issue there, since there is no current law requiring certification of the Autonomous Vehicle Machine-Learning software; there is no requirement that operation be provably deterministic.
I think you need it, because, um, you do. You don't think you can drive non-approved vehicles on public roads do you?
What is unapproved about the vehicle itself brainiac? It's totally street legal. What do you think street legal refers to anyway....
It just at times has no driver.
Think before you post please.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Really?
Speech recognition in the 1990s, or even the 2000s, was awful. It didn't lack use cases; it lacked truly massive storage and processing power, and (for the best recognition) the always-on-nearly-everywhere network infrastructure to support shipping off sound samples to the the sites where that storage and processing lives. Until processors and infrastructure reached that tipping point, it just didn't work well enough to be useful outside of niche cases.
Now, I can tell my Samsung S5's to-do app "get Mott's applesauce", and watch it spell out "get mods", then "applesauce", then go back and erase "mods" and replace it with "Mott's", appropriately capitalized and punctuated. That's... better than most people posting on the Internet can do, frankly. Why? Because it can match what I might have said against an enormous corpus of things other people have said or written, and do an excellent job of adapting to context. Good luck implementing that with 1990s technology.
You might want to get a better grip on reality. Tesla Autopilot is already 80% of the way there, and the other 20% may not be available to consumers yet, but it has had millions of miles of testing...
It seems that Slashdot has been infested with willfully ignorant ball-less trolls. This is supposed to be a site for nerds. There is no greater nerd than Elon Musk. He is infused in sci-fi. He builds rockets...he designed much of the first SpaceX rocket (Falcon-1) himself. He builds arguably the best car in the world, and certainly the most technologically advanced (the Model S). It has the most advanced auto-driving features of any production car in the world. He literally bet the entire fortune he made from the sale of Paypal (200 million dollars) on Tesla and SpaceX after the 2008 market crash; most so called capitalists in our elite would never take such risks. Any libertarians amongst the readership here should worship Musk. He is more the Ayn Randian superhero than anyone I can think of. And if they return that Musk has taken some government help (like money for building the Dragon capsule to ferry cargo to the Space station for NASA or a $7500 subsidy for clean energy vehicle purchases), I would ask them what they think of defence contractors such as Lockheed Martin who receive 75% or more of their income from government contracts, or oil companies who have literally had wars fought in their name by governments. If those so-called libertarians don't denounce such things, then they are the worst type of corporate troll hypocrites.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Yes, but when would you say Speech tech actually reached primetime? Even if you said it wasn't ready in the 90s, Siri was released properly by Mai 2012.
That means Speech Tech was primetime ready somewhere between 2000 and 2011.
And thats ignoring if there was firms that had solutions that was waste ahead during the 90.
I definitely want to pay a steep premium to purchase my own tiny little train car. I especially can't wait until the release the software update that automatically drives me to the police station if the computer hears me say anything seditious.
The funny part is snow and ICE conditions only really depend on loop tuning. In many regards this seems like one of the easier problems to solve but at the same time one that will quickly show how much safer self driving cars can be while at the same time pissing off the users of these cars once they learn what "driving to conditions" actually means.
After all we already have a plethora of systems that attempt to make driving on the snow similar to driving on the normal road by taking control away from the user (abs, traction control, etc) which already outperform a classic driver's abilities.
If you're flying cross-country, would be cool to send your car off a few days earlier and have it pick you up from the airport when you arrive.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
I have a nice shiny new BMW - it's even bespoke! I'm pretty sure that there's some automated driving bits available if I ever figure out the menu and wanted to enable it. The missus figured it out at one point? Basically, you tell it to try to drive with traffic but only go so fast. Then you tell it to stay in the damned lane and it seems to do that too. I gotta tell ya, I have no idea and can't imagine why I'd have bought a BMW only to have it drive itself. I find the very idea an abomination but I'm pretty sure it does a bunch of things. It'll slow down if it sees something that's going into the road or near it - the HUD will even alert you to it.
At any rate, I sure as hell didn't buy a BMW, manual shift, with two turbos and some ~450 ponies to have it drive itself. Unfortunately, no amount of begging could get it without some of the bells and whistles so I told 'em to cram 'em all in there. *sighs* I don't even want to use most of those things. The HUD is kind of nice and it is well done. I pretty much have to either stop or wait until a break in traffic to go adjusting things - I still don't know where half the things are and what a quarter of them do. If I could have picked it up with a much more mundane control system then I would have. I offered to pay quite well for it but the most I could get was directed to an after-market company who *might* be able to do so but it would void all warranties. I guess it's possible to tweak another ~200 HP out of it, though the same after-market, and they go ahead and strip out a whole bunch of things to make it lighter, they lower it a whisker, and they tighten up the suspension and put in five point restraints. That... That seemed just a bit excessive. Fun? Yes, but excessive.
I was invited to go to the factory and see it being built. They were gonna let me drive around Germany for two weeks and then they'd ship it here to the US. I wasn't even going to have to pay extra for shipping. I thought about it but declined. We've fine roads here and I watch enough documentaries to know how my car was made. I can always go back to Germany (I've been before) and just rent something, it's not even obscenely expensive. You can even rent something fancy, a coach, and hit the Nurburgring for not a whole lot of money. The best part is, if you crash then you don't even ruin your own vehicle. Drive it like you stole it, they've got insurance. I spent about a week, took some course work, spent some time with a coach, and spent a day each with a McLaren, Porsche, and Nissan on the track. I want to say that the whole thing was less than 20,000 Euro? A nice outfit - called RSR by the way. If you get the chance - jump on it. Well worth every penny but, holy shit, I digress...
What was the topic again? Oh... Yes... So, no, I didn't go see it getting built. I also don't see fully autonomous vehicles, for private passengers, any time soon. It just doesn't seem likely. The car I have with me does, sort of, have some autonomous capacity but I don't actually use it. I find the very idea of it an affront to my sensibilities! If you're gonna make an autonomous vehicle, do it to a Honda, a Ford, or something. If you're buying a BMW and you want it to drive itself, you probably shouldn't have bought a BMW. It's about as silly as an automatic transmission in a sports car. Sure, the automatic can actually perform better than a human now - but sometimes it's about the how and not about the destination.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
You know, Ayn Rand wasn't so much a Libertarian, right? Aside from that, I'm a Libertarian and I like Musk just fine. I don't even care if part of his success is due to government intervention/assistance - but that's because I *am* actually a Libertarian. I know, no true Scotsman but the Randians are just plain idiots who, for whatever reason, decided to co-opt the term. You can safely ignore them. Well, maybe not. Feel free to mock them but at least *try* to learn a little about Libertarianism before lumping us all in together. Thanks.
Seriously, if you can read then try just the first four or so paragraphs on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, we can't really kick the Randians out and it's a rather big umbrella. But no... No... Not all Libertarians are like them and, if you want to have a day or two long conversation then I'll show you why I don't think they are all that suited to be called Libertarians to begin with. Suffice to say, they're idiots. You probably can't safely ignore them, as they might gain a little power, but you can safely mock them. Just try to not paint with a broad brush, please? *sighs* I, for one, have been involved in the party for about forty years and I'm probably further to the left of any elected politician (except maybe Bernie). I just hold those views because of different reasons than the typical left.
So yeah, if you're legitimately curious - I'll actually answer any question that I can, as best as I can. 'Cause your comment doesn't look much different than one that says "$minority does $bad_things." (Why yes, yes I'm also an ethnic minority - namely Amerindian, of the Micmac tribe. Those damned Injuns getting drunk and shooting up the town with arrows and raping the white womens!")
On a more serious note, I'm not kidding - I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have. Take a look at the Wikipedia article and, while I prefer the moniker of classic Libertarian, I'm probably best called a Socialist Libertarian. Once upon a time, the Libertarian was known as the "loony left." Propaganda (and idiots) have pretty much ensured that not many people have actually looked at the platform and philosophy. It also doesn't help that we're a bunch of lazy bastards who will let most anyone have the microphone. In our defense, we were probably quite stoned at the time. I don't think we ever expected anyone to take us seriously and, before we knew it, pow! We're Randians and on the Right-wing, conservative, side - and we didn't even do anything. Funny enough, I kinda like taxes and what they get me. Hell, I probably should pay more.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
until all generic visual captchas (not specific algorithms for specific types) can be solved better than humans.
Oh, we're almost there then. I'm human and I regularly fail at CAPTCHA's.
while at the same time pissing off the users of these cars once they learn what "driving to conditions" actually means.
This is essentially the major hurdle that self driving cars has to get past.
Human drivers tend to overestimate their ability and be vocal about it. They take pride in being able to drive without a margin to handle all situations, not understanding that they are taking a risk.
I imagine that some people will be pissed at the car that temporarily slow down a bit under the speed limit just because the view was obstructed.
The human driver "knows" that there never is anything there, except once or twice, but things worked out then.
The thing that will make people accept self driving cars is that the drivers can say "Well, I enjoy driving, but the commute is so damn boring so I'd rather have it take a few more minutes and catch some extra sleep."
One thing that I'm a bit curious about is if self driving cars will make people accept living a longer distance from work. You typically need an hour to wind down after work before you have some quality time anyway so if you can start relaxing on your way home you might still feel that you get enough time in the evenings.
Don't give them any ideas. Let them finish the Model 3 first before getting distracted by cool new snow chain droids.
Human learning is non-deterministic as well, yet they've issued hundreds of milliions of diver's licenses. If they can thoroughly demonstrate the cars driving at least as well as humans, they'll get approval.
Oh silly you. I don't own it to impress you - I own it because I want it. I have a bunch of cars, actually. The BMW is just one tool for one particular job. I don't expect you to recognize the value of an old Volvo, a really old Jeep, or a Saab from the early 1990s. It's okay - I'm not trying to impress you. I'm enjoying myself. Silly you. You think your opinion matters in regards to my purchasing habits. Nope. The BMW is an awesome driver's car and a bunch of fun. It's even low-key. Unless you recognize it as what it is, you'd not have a clue how fast it goes or how much it cost. That's one of the reasons I bought it - I don't *want* your approval. I want *my* approval. Silly rabbit.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I find it somewhat odd that you're getting into the nitty gritty of what "libertarian" means and you continually capitalize the word. Most people who talk about such things take "big L" Libertarian to mean the (widely derided--even amongst libertarians) Libertarian Party in the US and "little l" libertarians to mean those who subscribe to a libertarian philosophy.
I don't think most Objectivists ("Randians" as you call them) would consider themselves libertarians. That's kind of the point of Rand's philosophy--she wanted a defined moral philosophy, not a loosely defined political goal. Her books have, however, been enormously popular and influential amongst libertarians (and non-libertarians) of all stripes. You don't have to be an Objectivist to find merit in Rand's writings, and you can be a libertarian without enjoying Rand's writings. It goes both ways.
Ultimately, if the "libertarian" label is meaningless enough to socialists, anarchists, and some fairly traditional Republicans and Democrats, it doesn't seem to make any sense to complain about Objectivists (who themselves don't want to be called libertarians) being in the tent. I prefer to define libertarian much more narrowly and with the full knowledge that I exclude some (like you) who would consider themselves libertarians.
I exclude socialists and those who _generally_ want more government involvement.
I exclude anarchists and those who _generally_ want no government.
I exclude one-issue libertarians (the traditional example was marijuana legalization).
What's left (big IMHO) is the core libertarian--people who generally want more person freedom and personal responsibility, who generally want victimless laws and regulations repealed, and who generally prefer smaller political structures to bigger political structures. Still kind of broad...
I would consider myself a green libertarian. I want people to basically be able to do whatever they want, with the caveat that earth is a shared resource, and when you consume / emit these shared resources you are effectively using force on others. I think I'm fairly alone in my views here, but I would be more loose about many regulations while far more stringent in regulations of things like noise regulations, small motor emissions (noise and co2), bright lighting at night, etc. Somewhat like Switzerland.
I'm also fully aware that my stand on some of those issues would make many say that I'm not any kind of a libertarian!
At first blush, I'd think you fit just fine. Even though I use the term "Socialist Libertarian" it's more about effect than about the method. I do not, for example, want more government. I'd prefer less but I'd prefer more effective government. An example: I do not mind taxes. I mind them being used to bomb little brown men who are no threat to my country.
I like the idea of a social safety net, of single payer health care, and inexpensive but good education. Why? A society that's educated, healthy, and able to take risks is more likely to be better able to enjoy their liberties. If you're unable to buy a printing press then you're not really as capable as you might be to utilize your freedom of speech. I prefer that people be able to make the most out of their lives, enjoy the things that I enjoy, and have an equal opportunity to try to reach those things.
Unfortunately, that doesn't really fit on a bumper sticker and it's way too long for Twitter. But yeah, you'd fit under the tent based on what you expressed. Quite a few people would happily fit under the tent but many people are stuck at the door thinking that the party is full of ultraconservatives, selfish, maniacal, idiots. To be fair, quite a few people expressing themselves and claiming to speak for the party do fit that description. It'd be a bit antithetical to kick them out or take away their microphone.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Can I keep it?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Musk is a businessman first, nerd second. And this is a site for nerds - nerds most of whome probably drive and can see the huge number of situations in which a self drive car is going to exhibit behaviour very very far from the optimal, all of which have been mentioned in other posts so I won't re-iterate. If you want to swallow the musk kool aid thats up to you, but those of us who see beyond the blantant marketeering and angling for investment cash might hold off on the congrats for a while.
Hmm... I'd have thought the exclamation point would give that away. My bad, tone isn't conveyed well in text. Everyone gets a "bespoke" version unless you pull it off the lot. It's basically just getting some options that weren't already on the lot and, more often than not, there's that same thing on the lot but just with colors you don't want. Thus the ! and way I expressed it. Meh, I'd thought the tone was there. :/
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
A couple of obvious gotchas... 1. What if your Tesla suffers a mechanical failure like a puncture whilst en route? Will it simply phone the nearest Tesla-approved repair centre? What about access to move the vehicle to make a wheel swap safely? Will the repair technician be granted access? 2. What about the pranksters? In the days of rail freight we've had the local hoodlums sat on a bridge with a rifle and a box full of ammo... What is to stop the same jokers prancing Tesla owners by shooting out the windows of an unaccompanied car? 3. What about insurance? Say your Tesla does get hit by pranksters such that it does the journey but when it reaches you it has been badly damaged? Will insurance companies have to treat that like a hit-and-run? Don't get me wrong, this has some potential benefits, but I would be concerned that owners would end up picking up the cost from all these unforeseen events, like it or not...
Speech recognition existed many years ago and it had practical applications. It is just that talking to a machine feels awkward.
Who doesn't hate those answering machines that ask you to tell them what you want rather than using a keypad menu or an actual human operator?
It was more about making socially acceptable rather than a technological problem.
Absolutely. Doing things that I enjoy for reasons other than impressing you is certainly a douche move. I should always seek approval, conform, and base my spending habits and hobbies on things that impress other people rather than give me pleasure.
I suppose, it's a good time to actually demonstrate how to deal with trolls. Don't get angry, love them. They make you think. Use them as a chance to express yourself. Revel in the attention they give you. Lord over them the fact that you get to control the discourse. Enjoy the moment and be, for a time, their master. Why? They've given you the power to control them. Do not get angry, treat them like the children they are...
The reality is, unless you heard it start and were very enthusiastic about automobiles, you'd not even recognize it on the street. There's no flashy lights, bravado paint, decals, or insignia that anyone other than an enthusiast would recognize. Oh, you do find the people who know - they pull up along side and give you a thumbs up or stuff like that.
Hmm... How do describe it? Alright, I can disable traction control, go along at 60 MPH, drop a gear, and smoke 'em. I don't - but I can. I have the 640 with all the goodies, including the larger engine and the dual turbos, and it's pretty low-key. I guess I can see how one might think that I'd buy (or do) such things for some sort of social approval and that might be true in some cases. However, in my case, I dare say that's not the reality at all. I can sling the ass around and do the Axl Rose Shuffle, I don't - but I can. I can do 0-60 in about 4 seconds, I don't - but I can. (I don't, meaning that I don't do so as a general rule. Sometimes I do.)
I suppose you'd call me a douche for owning a restored Jeep from 1973? How about for sending a 1982 Volvo out to get modified and restored? How about for having a Honda (a 1988 Accord LX) sent back to Japan for factory restoration? How about a 1992 Saab 900 Turbo set up and modified to rally with? I can tell you, that not one of those was purchased because I want your approval. Surely, that makes me a douche, right? I'm secure enough in my masculinity to not need your affirmation, thus I am a douche?
Oh, wait, next they'll be penis extensions! That's always a good one. See, I've posted pics (that's why I named those vehicles specifically) and had people that make that claim - more than once. I fail to see how a 245, with a 0 to 60 time measures in days, is a penis extension or how it can be even remotely confused for someone seeking affirmation.
The cold hard reality is that I'm happily retired and have a hobby. I love the automobile, all facets of it. In fact, I'll be getting a Tesla (Model S if you're curious) for the missus to drive - just so that I can play with it. The mechanics, the engineering, the fact that they contain (usually) an explosion timed just right is fascinating. I love the engineering, I love the driving, I love the machinery. I love it all and really don't give two shits if you approve of my choices or not. I dare say, the only reason I'm even responding is so that other people can see how to respond to morons such as yourself.
You're projecting. You do things for affirmation, to impress, or to seek approval from your peers. Not everyone is so insecure. Some of us just like nice things and really don't give two shits what you drive but we do hope that you have the capacity to appreciate driving. If you don't, then get off the road and let someone else do it for you.
I've invested so many dollars. So many... Not just on my collection but on learning. I actually have taken many, many advanced driving courses. See my initial comment about training for Nurburgring and then the cars that I got to take on that track. It's an acquired skill, an enjoyable hobby, and something where you can constantly push yourself to do better. So, not just dollars and more importantly, I've spent so much on learning and improving. I'm comfortable in anything and have yet to find one vehicle that I can not find some
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Ha! My largest post in a long, long time! Awesome! *snickers* That was almost as much fun as a BMW.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
There was another major problem. Speech recognition at home or in a private office had it's users, but in an open-plan office there was just too much background noise - and everybody now had to listen to you dictate what would previously have been typed.
On a computer, speech-recognition just never really worked in any environment where you were not by yourself. It made you feel exposed without privacy, and the computer's had a major challenge picking out commands from all the other conversations happening.
The phone solves a lot of those problems by it's very nature. It's a device you are used to speaking into, small enough that going to a corner when you want to discuss something private is feasible.
And still it has problems. So mine is almost always disabled because I use my phone via bluetooth to play music in the car. The moment your music is on speakers rather than headphones - guess what, the phone microphone picks it up and interpret it as commands to the music player so you get random skips forwards and backwards.
Speech recognition will only really reach it's peak if it can be adequately combined with *voice* recognition to reach the point where it can reliably pick out the operator's voice from other words being spoken (or sung) and tell when those words are commands to the phone and when they are directed at somebody else.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
If you default on the car loan, it can then repossess itself and just drive away.
playmoney.me - The free alternative to paper board game play money
My thoughts on autonomous driving and car enthusiasts like yourself has always been:
with more people being driving around in autonomous cars, driving on the road yourself could become a lot less frustrating (less idiots on the road, more predictable traffic).
Also I don't see the appeal of driving yourself when it's bumper to bumper traffic. Stop, wait, slow, stop, wait, slow... that is the kind of situation where you'd want to car to do the driving so you can do other things with your time. A lot of high end cars like Tesla and BMW can already do that I believe.
New things are always on the horizon
... from what I can tell they haven't even begun to test snow and ice. I totally understand why they start with making it work under optimal conditions, but it also means they have a looooooooong way to go with non-optimal conditions.
You can say that about most human drivers...
Liability should clearly be with the manufacturer if it is shown to be a defect or design flaw in the collision avoidance system. Otherwise, you will have a full set of sensor data to show if it is another drivers fault or no-fault due to road conditions.
> Like speech recognition, which also seemed to always be 3-5 years out until it finally went mainstream a few years ago.
I feel like it went mainstream but only for limited use cases. You can use Siri or OK Google for some very useful things but we still seem to be a long way from truly smart long-form dictation. "OK google, play music by David Bowie" feels like the equivalent of self-park...Truly useful, mainstream, and yet not nearly realizing the full potential of the technology.
My doctor's office is actually going back to human medical transcription, too many errors from the computerized system they use.
Automated tire spike hubs have been around for quite a while now. It is a pretty easy engineering problem. Just more expensive when you don't have a use case for it.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Plus the whole "machine learning" thing he's counting on to make this work sounds more like a buzzword than any kind of reality. Machines don't learn. We don't even understand how we learn or how our brain works, and we certainly haven't made any serious progress in making a machine "learn". What we have done is come up with better statistical models and the ability to update those models and rulesets, which can allow the car to make better programmatic choices in a larger variety of situations, but really, there's no learning going on. Just humans continuing to refine and fine tune code that handles hard problems. If his humans can get the technology working in three years (which sounds overly optimistic to me too), then great, but it's not like you can just send the car to a driver's ed course and it will "machine learn" how to drive better while in the class.
And I do agree with others who are skeptical that the security implications of this have been worked out. I'm particularly not a fan of a car being able to go long distances without a human in it. I think the range should be limited to a couple blocks for parking convenience purposes, and that's it. Otherwise, you have the possibility of terrorists being able to construct car bombs in rural areas far from the eyes of the law, and then remotely command the cars to drive to populated areas and blow up while they sit undetected in safety somewhere. I don't think the human should necessarily have to be in the driver's seat, but there ought to be someone in the car to prevent these things from becoming autonomous warfare drones.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Speech recognition is still awful if you try it in any other language than english.
It's still as funny and as unreliable as when I first tried it in the 90's.
For any phrases that I try, there are at least 1 or 2 words that are not only wrong but are completely unrelated to the context.
Just like autocorrect, which sugeests me words that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever with what I'm trying to type.
Maybe in 10 years it'll be reliable (again, when not using english). But for now it's a complete joke.
Try it! Library of Babel
they haven't even begun to test snow and ice.
From what I've heard, they're not even able to tackle a road that hasn't been mapped in detail, including having recorded the position of every single stop sign, traffic light, speed limit, etc.
I don't even know if this google car can handle a police officer trying to direct traffic. Probably not...
Try it! Library of Babel
because the operator agreement for self driving vehicles would require it, and the AI won't drive without verifying current coverage.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Do you just wait for stories on any new technology so that you can post "what happens when the hackers get ahold of that?"? Do you have any idea how much that makes you look like a retarded Debbie Downer?
Exhibit (a). A troll. Can't really call him a corporate whore hypocrite troll because he didn't say much of anything. But I suspect he is.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
I even enjoy it when it's bumper to bumper. I really enjoy ever bit of it - until it stops, then I get a bit frustrated. I don't like when traffic is completely held up because of an accident. Other than that? Well, I modeled traffic. I kind of enjoy observing the flow. I kind of enjoy the interaction. I don't really ever get tired of it but, at the same time, I make it a point to not live where that is an issue. I'd grow weary of it if I had to deal with it constantly.
I go out to track days, I rent time on tracks, I've competed a number of times - I like rally racing, and I have gone to a whole ton of driving schools. I've taken pretty much every type of driving course out there - including asset protection, and really just enjoy it. It might not make sense to some people, and I can understand that, but I absolutely love it.
I also love the automobile. I'll probably get an autonomous vehicle when they come out. I'll probably be an early adopter. It won't be my primary choice but I can see it as having benefits - even if it's just for time when I'd rather use the travel time to do something else. The "purist" automobile enthusiasts don't seem to appreciate that I'm buying an EV either. I point to the instant torque and ask how they can not? How can they not want one?
My heart's big enough to have room for an EV too. I'll even make room for an AV if one tickles my fancy. I'll probably make it do horrible things that it wasn't meant to do, but I'll buy one. Now, if I can get an AV that allows me to control it at times then the machine and I will have time trials against each other. Some might ask how can I? I'd answer with, how can I not?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
You call your car to you across the state lines... and it shows up with a kilo of weed under the seat.
How did it get there? You don't know! It's a mystery. Maybe it fell in through the sunroof?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I hate to appeal to authority, but I live in Minnesota, and very likely know more about driving in snow and ice than you do. I've slid into intersections because I couldn't get enough traction to stop, and there wasn't a handy curb to run into, and it didn't look that slippery on the approach. I've spun out due to a sudden loss of traction. I've driven in snow such that I couldn't keep the car pointed in quite the right direction at all times. I try to get better at handling those things, and won't repeat some things I've done in the past, but snow and ice can get you even without turning.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I fully agree. I've done it too. Actually my first time driving a stick shift was on ice and I stalled it so many times we threw away the battery in the car the day after. Ice is nasty NASTY stuff. Sometimes it's impossible to see, far more dangerous than snow.
That's one of the reasons I'm grateful that things far better than us at handling the situation are slowly taking over.