Interesting! For long journeys I typically do a small-changes analysis. Say I'm going 200km (as I do fairly frequently for family events). The speed limit is around 100km/h average (some 90, some 110), so it takes about two hours. If I raise my speed by 10km/h, then I've gone 20km further in two hours. At 100km/h, that's about 12 minutes saved.
Obviously it's not spot on but it's close enough that the error falls below noise from traffic lights, slow drivers etc. and it's easy to do in my head.:)
Man, talk about selective quoting, why'd you miss out the massive bit at the end where he said "BTW I'M A TROLLOLOLOL no seriously I was making a funny."
It will never be worthless. The US Treasury Dept only accepts US dollars for tax payments, so we need to have dollars to pay our taxes, or we go to jail.
I strongly agree. I think, in addition, it should be mandated to use a certified, safety-rated system which physically disables the motive force behind the car. None of this "it's a digital input into the car's central control computer" bullshit, it has to disable the ignition, disconnect traction batteries, whatever is required to remove the car's ability to accelerate, and it has to do this even if the car's central computer disagrees.
Throttle position sensors can be potentiometer based, Hall effect based, or optical encoder based. Potentiometers can fail in ways other than open or closed circuit - for instance, if a pot gets partially wet, the resistance reading can be affected without taking the measured resistance outside of expected values.
Electric vehicles used to legally require an emergency stop, at least in Australia, but apparently that's no longer the case. Either way, a big red button on the dashboard would be a lot more comforting to me than some smug showroom guy telling me "oh don't worry, it never ever fails."
I wonder how much force it would require on the brake pedal to stop the car, assuming full throttle and no power assist? I wouldn't be surprised if it was beyond the capacity of some drivers. Have you ever tried to stop a car with the braking assist not working? It takes lot of force to slow you down even gently.
From the link you posted:
Analyses conducted in the mid to late 1990s on Jeep Cherokee and Grand Cherokee vehicles concluded that hundreds of reported sudden accelerations in these vehicles were likely caused by an undesired current leakage pathway that resulted in actuation of the cruise control servo. When this occurred, typically at shift engage (moving the shift lever from park to reverse), the engine throttle would move to the wide open position.
That's not 'dangerous stupidity', that's 'dangerous design flaw' even if it's technically possible for the driver to correct if he they know that the fault is about to occur.
Exactly. For a mechanical throttle that gets stuck, there are multiple ways in which you can prevent the undesired outcome (ie. uncontrolled acceleration). You can blip the throttle, or physically pull the accelerator pedal up, to try and unjam it. You can turn it off at the ignition. You can push in the clutch. You can shift the car to neutral. Any one of those, even if the others fail, can prevent uncontrolled acceleration.
In a drive-by-wire car, all of those are controlled by the computer. There's no physical input with which the driver can disconnect the drive train. There's no physical switch in the ignition that cuts power to the spark plugs. Unless the problem is an accelerator pedal which is physically stuck down, which the driver can pull up, EVERY recourse that you had in your Corolla has been removed and replaced with "ask the car's computer very nicely to stop doing that."
My fear in this case would be that the black box would say "The accelerator pedal went down 30 seconds before the crash and stayed there on full throttle. No brakes or other inputs were supplied." Their lawyer would then say "See, the driver did it deliberately" and that's likely to close the case right there.
People have a scary scary tendency to believe a machine over a person, even if there's no evidence it's not operating in some failure mode. In this case, say there was a design flaw which made some sensor boxes partially short out, just enough to shift the accelerator pedal range from 0-100 to 80-100 say. In that case, the central computer would be receiving believable signals that the pedal was pressed down, even though the driver was doing nothing.
Home electric car conversions have always required a prominently placed e-stop switch that physically disconnects the battery from the motor. Factory cars (electric or otherwise) with fly-by-wire throttles and transmissions should require the same. Building a large, powerful machine without an authoritative stop switch is madness.
Didn't Woz's example basically boil down to "hit the 'set' button on the cruise control at 85mph, cancel it, slow down to 35mph, then hit 'resume' and observe 'woah scary acceleration!!!'"? That trick works on every cruise control unit I've used, although likewise, even the 22-year-old cruise control on my Toyota will deactivate if you touch the brake or clutch.
It doesn't look like much from the picture. The only supporting statement in the article is:
its two points set in perfect alignment with the setting sun on a midsummer's day.
I'd like a little more supporting documentation before getting all excited about this.
Exactly. "Carefully aligned solar observatory"? I'd accept 'sundial' maybe but all it implies is that they had some idea of when the "middle of summer" was (not surprising for nomadic gatherers) and some concept of "where the sun sets".
Why would you expect the government to be less short-sighted than business? You can be the CEO of a company for 20, 30 years if you play your cards right. You can only be President for 8.
Food isn't a luxury item. Meat is, though (to an extent). Sure, unless you put some effort into eating a balanced diet, your nutrient intake will be a little less than awesome - but it's perfectly possible to live without. I agree with your comparison with medicine, though. And as with medicine, for a while it'll be the big brands making all the dough but after a few years the generic manufacturers will be churning out exactly the same product for 1/5th the price.
More likely they'll just perfect the techniques and patent them.
Pretty much. Look at all the companies who, 20 years ago, sold film and photo processing. What do they sell now? Digital cameras, memory sticks and glossy colour printers. Growing meat in a lab may well require so much in the way of artificial stomachs, intestines, muscle-exercise machinery, nutrient fluid pumping and other apparatus that you may as well wrap it in leather and call it a "cow". If it turns out to be more profitable than traditional farming, then the meat producing and processing industries will adapt by adopting it.
Yeah, much as people try to deny it, practicing something like that over and over does structure your responses. That's the basic principle of any kind of training. It's also why games like Burnout (where you crash frequently and, while it's somewhat realistic, you instantly reset with a shiny new car) are dangerous - because they're training people who play them to believe, on some level, that crashing at high speed is a minor inconvenience rather than an often life-changing disaster. (Not that I don't love playing Burnout... but I watch myself very carefully when driving after doing so.)
Interestingly, I had a similar but opposite effect after the first time I played GTA 2. After spending about four hours at a party with everyone laughing ourselves silly while taking turns at trying to get gourangas (yes I went to those sorts of parties), the next day I jumped every time I heard a car behind me, expecting it to try and run me over for points and lulz.
Interestingly, PTSD is highly correlated with "having actual experiences in the real world". Gaming more than 3 hours a day is, by and large, negatively correlated with "having experiences in the real world", and as such, must be negatively correlated with PTSD.
Get out of your room, out of your house, and live a little, and there's a higher chance you'll experience some kind of trauma. That doesn't mean it's not worth doing!
He's referring to the lost wax method of making casts. Usually, you would need to make a rubber mold of the screw, then use that to make a wax mold, then pack your heat proof casting material around _that_ to make the final mold. The liquid metal burns the wax out as you pour it in, hence 'lost wax'. If you're going into mass production, then you're right, it's probably cheaper and quicker to print a mould for the wax, but if you only need one then you can print the wax itself and save a step.:)
i agree, it's little different from wifi, but i don't understand why it's better than wifi? It doesn't sound cheaper to install. It's definitely not faster. It doesn't work through drywall. It doesn't sound like it's friendly to portable systems.
It is new and therefore good.
Seriously though, I'd guess that in high-density accommodation or work areas, it'd be good to have a system that won't interfere with neighbours. It's pretty niche though. Also, during non-cloudy days at least, the signal to noise ratio is immediately obliterated the moment the signal leaves the building. (Might not be so great if you have a window near your desk though.)
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Interesting! For long journeys I typically do a small-changes analysis. Say I'm going 200km (as I do fairly frequently for family events). The speed limit is around 100km/h average (some 90, some 110), so it takes about two hours. If I raise my speed by 10km/h, then I've gone 20km further in two hours. At 100km/h, that's about 12 minutes saved.
:)
Obviously it's not spot on but it's close enough that the error falls below noise from traffic lights, slow drivers etc. and it's easy to do in my head.
She can be his shining anything-she wants. It's a wildcard. ;)
(I've never met anyone who says "asterisk dot asterisk" instead of "star dot star" when talking about a wildcard file search.)
Man, talk about selective quoting, why'd you miss out the massive bit at the end where he said "BTW I'M A TROLLOLOLOL no seriously I was making a funny."
It will never be worthless. The US Treasury Dept only accepts US dollars for tax payments, so we need to have dollars to pay our taxes, or we go to jail.
What if your income in US dollars is zero?
I strongly agree. I think, in addition, it should be mandated to use a certified, safety-rated system which physically disables the motive force behind the car. None of this "it's a digital input into the car's central control computer" bullshit, it has to disable the ignition, disconnect traction batteries, whatever is required to remove the car's ability to accelerate, and it has to do this even if the car's central computer disagrees.
Throttle position sensors can be potentiometer based, Hall effect based, or optical encoder based. Potentiometers can fail in ways other than open or closed circuit - for instance, if a pot gets partially wet, the resistance reading can be affected without taking the measured resistance outside of expected values.
Electric vehicles used to legally require an emergency stop, at least in Australia, but apparently that's no longer the case. Either way, a big red button on the dashboard would be a lot more comforting to me than some smug showroom guy telling me "oh don't worry, it never ever fails."
From the link you posted:
Analyses conducted in the mid to late 1990s on Jeep Cherokee and Grand Cherokee vehicles concluded that hundreds of reported sudden accelerations in these vehicles were likely caused by an undesired current leakage pathway that resulted in actuation of the cruise control servo. When this occurred, typically at shift engage (moving the shift lever from park to reverse), the engine throttle would move to the wide open position.
That's not 'dangerous stupidity', that's 'dangerous design flaw' even if it's technically possible for the driver to correct if he they know that the fault is about to occur.
Exactly. For a mechanical throttle that gets stuck, there are multiple ways in which you can prevent the undesired outcome (ie. uncontrolled acceleration). You can blip the throttle, or physically pull the accelerator pedal up, to try and unjam it. You can turn it off at the ignition. You can push in the clutch. You can shift the car to neutral. Any one of those, even if the others fail, can prevent uncontrolled acceleration.
In a drive-by-wire car, all of those are controlled by the computer. There's no physical input with which the driver can disconnect the drive train. There's no physical switch in the ignition that cuts power to the spark plugs. Unless the problem is an accelerator pedal which is physically stuck down, which the driver can pull up, EVERY recourse that you had in your Corolla has been removed and replaced with "ask the car's computer very nicely to stop doing that."
My fear in this case would be that the black box would say "The accelerator pedal went down 30 seconds before the crash and stayed there on full throttle. No brakes or other inputs were supplied." Their lawyer would then say "See, the driver did it deliberately" and that's likely to close the case right there.
People have a scary scary tendency to believe a machine over a person, even if there's no evidence it's not operating in some failure mode. In this case, say there was a design flaw which made some sensor boxes partially short out, just enough to shift the accelerator pedal range from 0-100 to 80-100 say. In that case, the central computer would be receiving believable signals that the pedal was pressed down, even though the driver was doing nothing.
Home electric car conversions have always required a prominently placed e-stop switch that physically disconnects the battery from the motor. Factory cars (electric or otherwise) with fly-by-wire throttles and transmissions should require the same. Building a large, powerful machine without an authoritative stop switch is madness.
I just have to wonder that if it IS indeed driver error, why so many more incidents with this make?
The error in question was choosing to drive this make? :P
Didn't Woz's example basically boil down to "hit the 'set' button on the cruise control at 85mph, cancel it, slow down to 35mph, then hit 'resume' and observe 'woah scary acceleration!!!'"? That trick works on every cruise control unit I've used, although likewise, even the 22-year-old cruise control on my Toyota will deactivate if you touch the brake or clutch.
It doesn't look like much from the picture. The only supporting statement in the article is:
its two points set in perfect alignment with the setting sun on a midsummer's day.
I'd like a little more supporting documentation before getting all excited about this.
Exactly. "Carefully aligned solar observatory"? I'd accept 'sundial' maybe but all it implies is that they had some idea of when the "middle of summer" was (not surprising for nomadic gatherers) and some concept of "where the sun sets".
Interesting idea... sorta like branch prediction but for evolution. :)
:P
Bring on Felis Sapiens!
Why would you expect the government to be less short-sighted than business? You can be the CEO of a company for 20, 30 years if you play your cards right. You can only be President for 8.
Food isn't a luxury item. Meat is, though (to an extent). Sure, unless you put some effort into eating a balanced diet, your nutrient intake will be a little less than awesome - but it's perfectly possible to live without. I agree with your comparison with medicine, though. And as with medicine, for a while it'll be the big brands making all the dough but after a few years the generic manufacturers will be churning out exactly the same product for 1/5th the price.
More likely they'll just perfect the techniques and patent them.
Pretty much. Look at all the companies who, 20 years ago, sold film and photo processing. What do they sell now? Digital cameras, memory sticks and glossy colour printers. Growing meat in a lab may well require so much in the way of artificial stomachs, intestines, muscle-exercise machinery, nutrient fluid pumping and other apparatus that you may as well wrap it in leather and call it a "cow". If it turns out to be more profitable than traditional farming, then the meat producing and processing industries will adapt by adopting it.
Yeah, much as people try to deny it, practicing something like that over and over does structure your responses. That's the basic principle of any kind of training. It's also why games like Burnout (where you crash frequently and, while it's somewhat realistic, you instantly reset with a shiny new car) are dangerous - because they're training people who play them to believe, on some level, that crashing at high speed is a minor inconvenience rather than an often life-changing disaster. (Not that I don't love playing Burnout... but I watch myself very carefully when driving after doing so.)
Interestingly, I had a similar but opposite effect after the first time I played GTA 2. After spending about four hours at a party with everyone laughing ourselves silly while taking turns at trying to get gourangas (yes I went to those sorts of parties), the next day I jumped every time I heard a car behind me, expecting it to try and run me over for points and lulz.
Don't you? O.o
Interestingly, PTSD is highly correlated with "having actual experiences in the real world". Gaming more than 3 hours a day is, by and large, negatively correlated with "having experiences in the real world", and as such, must be negatively correlated with PTSD.
Get out of your room, out of your house, and live a little, and there's a higher chance you'll experience some kind of trauma. That doesn't mean it's not worth doing!
They would but I don't think even the U.S. Postal Service can deliver angry letters to God.
He's referring to the lost wax method of making casts. Usually, you would need to make a rubber mold of the screw, then use that to make a wax mold, then pack your heat proof casting material around _that_ to make the final mold. The liquid metal burns the wax out as you pour it in, hence 'lost wax'. If you're going into mass production, then you're right, it's probably cheaper and quicker to print a mould for the wax, but if you only need one then you can print the wax itself and save a step. :)
Swap you a copy of Jessica_Alba_17.tar.gz for it? ;)
Where's the 'print' button?
i agree, it's little different from wifi, but i don't understand why it's better than wifi? It doesn't sound cheaper to install. It's definitely not faster. It doesn't work through drywall. It doesn't sound like it's friendly to portable systems.
It is new and therefore good.
Seriously though, I'd guess that in high-density accommodation or work areas, it'd be good to have a system that won't interfere with neighbours. It's pretty niche though. Also, during non-cloudy days at least, the signal to noise ratio is immediately obliterated the moment the signal leaves the building. (Might not be so great if you have a window near your desk though.)
...and the rest of the dominoes fell like a house of cards. Checkmate.
Very sneaky, Zapp, but I see what you did there.