A Tesla spokesperson released a moment by moment description of what happened in the 40 seconds before the crash.
After 15 seconds of what was described by Tesla as "visual warnings and audible tones," the autopilot began to disengage because the driver's hands were still not on the wheel.
About 25 seconds before the crash, "Autosteer began a graceful abort procedure in which the music is muted, the vehicle begins to slow and the driver is instructed both visually and audibly to place their hands on the wheel," according to the company.
Tesla said the driver responded 11 seconds before the crash by retaking the wheel, turning it toward the left and pressing on the accelerator.
"Over 10 seconds and approximately 300m later and while under manual steering control, the driver drifted out of the lane, collided with a barrier, overcorrected, crossed both lanes of the highway, struck a median barrier, and rolled the vehicle," according to Tesla's account.
So, the man never made the decision to disable autopilot. Instead, the car turned off the autopilot on its own. So, Musk could say with a straight face that autopilot was off. But how can a safety mechanism be allowed to turn itself off under any circumstances? Talk about the exact opposite of fail-safe.
So, when the robot detected a moving child, why TF didn't it just stop? Kids that age move unpredictably when faced with the unexpected. I always stop in circumstances like that. A toddler can dodge a stationary obstacle better than I can dodge a dodging toddler..
The indications from the robot company are that the robot records indicate that it did stop. The child's parent said that the robot ran over the boy but haven't actually claimed to have seen the incident. The robot is designed to move at 1 mph, so it is not designed to dodge anything but rather to stop, which is apparently did. An adult can be expected to dodge a 300-lb robots. A 16-month old toddler can be expected to do unexpected and irrational things, like running backwards into a large robot.
I already figured that the robot didn't sense that it was traveling over the kid's foot, or it would have stopped, so a record of the robot's sense impressions is not all that useful. The injuries to the child are a better guide to what actually happened, since it appears there's confusion there.
The indications are the robot stopped. The injuries to the child are not necessarily indicative of an out-of-control robot. Any parent of a small child can realize how common it is for a small child to acquire injuries and bruises when playing with stationary objects.
The mom said, "The robot hit my son's head and he fell down - facing down - on the floor, and the robot did not stop and it kept moving forward." This is in direct contrast to what the robot company said, so one of the accounts is not accurate.
The robot company also said, "The machine veered to the left to avoid the child, but the child ran backwards directly into the front quarter of the machine, at which point the machine stopped and the child fell on the ground." To make a statement about the orientation of the boy requires video (or at least some other electronic detection). Furthermore, the company said, "The machine’s sensors registered no vibration alert and the machine motors did not fault as they would when encountering an obstacle." So, there is some form of an electronic record of what the robot sensed.
Did the parents or any other human claim to have seen the moment of impact? I don't read any direct claim of an eyewitness account.
I do drive a Tesla Model S (S90D) with autopilot - EVERY time you engage it, it displays a warning on the dash display to keep your hands on the wheel, plus if there is ever an issue/ambiguity (it works by actually seeing the lines on both sides of the car....so if one of those lines is faded or missing, the car with either get confused/drift or completely disengage autopilot with an audible warning) ANOTHER display will pop up telling you to keep your hands on the wheel.
It's entirely possible that the average Tesla driver pays greater attention to warnings compared to the general population. However, from looking my own personal experience as well as those people that I have driven with, start-up warnings are basically useless and exist mainly to attempt to protect manufacturers from lawsuits. Real-time pop-up warnings are probably more effective but must be very conservative to avoid false positives. This looks like the case with these Tesla accidents. Was there a pop-up warning for the Harry Potter guy?
If safe autopilot operation really requires keeping one's hands on the steering wheel, there there should be an active system to enforce that requirement.
You may have the idea that "Autopilot" means the plane flies itself. Nope. Typically autopilot on the plane means it will fly straight and level until ordered otherwise. The autopilot on a plane absolutely will fly straight into another plane even, the human pilot is expected to take care of that sort of thing.
Technically autopilot implementations on airplanes do exactly what you said and require a measure of continued vigilance on the part of the pilots. However, that is not what the term means in common language. The English idiom of putting something on autopilot means that something will work without any continued vigilance. In a way, this is a brilliant marketing strategy. The term connotes self-driving while denoting strictly not self-driving. A perfect marketing term.
According to this review, they are far better than the competition.
As far as I understand, you cannot miss the warning. It's not like an EULA with walls and walls of text.
I imagine it's like the warning on all dedicated GPS systems. At the start, you have to hit a button and maybe also wait a few seconds to ostensibly read the text. I ignore it every time and occasionally violate the warning by hitting a button while driving. My guess is that the Tesla warning has the same efficacy.
When one attempts to make something idiot-proof, nature builds a better idiot. Not necessarily true, but we live in world where innovators are hampered by the chance of being sued by idiots who just-don't-listen.
"Fire is hot", "peanuts may contain peanuts", "online play not rated", "cruise control is not auto-pilot", "autopilot is experimental", etc.
I don't drive a Tesla, but the only message I heard about Tesla's Autopilot was the name. Yes, there are safety warnings in the manual and when you start up the car, but who actually pays attention that that? The same people who read EULAs? There's a reason the product is called Autopilot and not assist or level-2, and the reason is that they want to implicitly convey the idea that they are better than the competitors with mere assist or level-2. The name is not accidental.
Just take a look at the state of scientific paper review. Just what is accepted as true and relevant is debatable among "experts". And that is even before considering the quagmire of how to use that set of "truths".
You realize that traffic fatalities are a multiple-times-daily occurrence in the USA alone, right? That's not some fuzzy guesstimate, it's about as statically sound as you could hope for. 94M miles (the number Tesla gives per fatal accident in the US, which is a better comparison than the idiot submitter and CNBC author chose to display) is nothing in a country with over 2.5 times that many vehicles.
This is a matter of statistics and sampling. What I'm wondering about is the statistical confidence interval for the stated numbers. It's not at all clear that the confidence intervals are non-overlapping and that they would pass a statistical hypothesis test. Are you aware of additional data that would allow such hypothesis testing?
But more importantly, I conjecture that the underlying populations being sampled are significantly different. For example, my guess is that there are very few if any under-25 Tesla drivers and that such drivers account for a disproportionate amount of the fatalities in the general population. There are probably other such demographics that are prone to fatal accidents that are not representative of the Tesla population.
That's still pretty impressive if it's twice as safe as letting a human drive.
Even more so after seeing all the videos on youtube with people in the back of the car letting tesla drive.
It's not clear to me that the Tesla system is safer than a human based on the quoted numbers. First, the incidents are very unlikely for either human or Tesla, so it's not clear that once in 130e6 or once in 60e6 miles is statistically different. Second, the populations for the two numbers are definitely different. Tesla owners are clearly not representative of the general population, so the more apples-to-apples comparison is between Autopilot and manual driving for the same type of drivers, probably characterized by income, education, age, race, tendency to drive/party late at night, tendency for drunken driving, etc.
Yeah and the US is large. But New York city has a higher population density than Tokyo, yet only a fraction of the internet speeds. So while you can argue that there is a large area with no or low speed access, you can't excuse crap service in prime areas
It would be really interesting to see the distribution of ISP speeds by country. For example, the Akamai report shows that while South Korea's average speed is 29.0 Mbps, the majority (58%) of South Korean connections are slower than 25 Mbps. Thus, there are perhaps some very high speed connections that somewhat inflate the average. Absent some representation of the distribution, perhaps the median speed would be more representative.
It's also interesting to note that the study methodology is significant. For example, Akamai's methodology and results starkly differ from the FCC's findings, which estimates the average speed in the US at 31 Mbps in 2014 and quickly increasing.
The distribution of speeds is dependent not only on technical infrastructure but also on pricing. A very large percentage of Americans have very high speed internet access offered in their area, but many may choose lower speeds due to economic affordability or the realization that higher speeds are not needed due to personal usage patterns or the existence of speed bottlenecks aside from the ISP (e.g., internet servers, multimedia protocols, etc.).
Billboards and other sources of ambiguous sensory input will be banned from roads.
When drivers don't have to look at their own dashboard, they are more likely to look at billboards and other sources of ambiguous sensory input.
You mean, there will be no need to ban billboards because no advertiser will rent them.
Maybe some low-end car manufacturer will eventually find a way to pipe ads into a car in exchange for a lower upfront purchase price. Then the car becomes an advertising prison.
And garbage along highways will not be noticeable and therefore will no longer be illegal... well...
the third-worlder isn't all that much better off than before, and may actually be much worse off if they went from an agricultural job they had some control over their destiny to a dismal factory job where they have no control at all
This is a first world perspective. Control and quality of life are not concerns until subsistence is no longer a concern.
A computer built with hardware that was NOT made in China, that would be news.
If we're talking about high-end processors, then chips made in China would be news. How many Intel fabs are there in China? How about TSMC? How about Samsung? Foxconn assembly is not the same as fabbing a chip.
Technically, yes the original subject isn't correct when talking about a slowdown in smartphone shipment globally. However, the gist of the subject is correct:
There is an expected substantial slowdown in growth in the past few years, from 27% to 10% to a projected 3%.
The projected 3% is almost half of the 6% projection from just 3 months ago.
Some national markets, like Japan and Canada are expected to contract by over 6%.
iPhone shipments are expected to contract this year.
The important point is that overall shipment contraction is coming and coming soon, maybe not this year, but soon. And this is for unit shipments. Revenue contraction will probably arrive even earlier as average selling prices for Android, which at 80% market share and growing, are dropping.
Your point applies only if SDCs are centrally controlled. If they are each an independent node that communicates with each other in a P2P or C2C method depending on massively decreased reaction times and localized road information that makes them much less vulnerable to a single point of failure while still retaining the bulk of the advantages. I foresee a hybrid of the 2 systems being the end solution, but I also bought Betamax, and laserdisc so who knows
What about byzantine failures? Hopefully this type of distributed system can tolerate a single car computer that goes crazy. Perhaps more complicated is the ability to tolerate attacks where a car goes crazy on purpose to exploit bugs in either the protocol or the implementation.
Or, perhaps such car computers will be the world's first example of a bug-free software implementation. We can only hope and pray.
There are two reasons I have less than full confidence in self-driving cars: (1) These cars have yet to prove themselves in weird situations where human intuition would lead to greater caution and (2) the complexity of these software systems requires extremely high levels of reliability, and especially in this forum, we're all aware of why high reliability software is elusive.
This really is no different than the right to be forgotten except that the time scale is shifted. It's like a Catholic indulgence, with the right to be forgiven/forgotten for all sins in the past, present, and future.
Apple's profits are still up, only their sales are down.
No, profits are way down. Year-to-year from $13.6 billion to $10.5 billion or down 23%. Sequentially from $18.4 billion to $10.5 billion or down 43%.
Much more worrying than the one-quarter blip is the year-to-year revenue growth trend, which has trended down for the past three quarters and is likely to be down the next quarter. On the heels of the first ever year-to-year revenue drop, the next quarter is also projected to be negative.
No, Apple is not going out of business, but it's looking mortal. It's a chink in the armor of inevitable growth. The stock will take a hit, since it partially trades on perception. However, the biggest hit will be in product sales, which for Apple also partially trades on perception.
But the trends online are all moving in the opposite direction, to making people attach their real names to comments - the sole purpose for which is to make retribution possible.
Retribution, or at least the expectation of actual or potential retribution, is the important factor. I don't worry about government surveillance at all, not because the government isn't evil or capable of harm but because I have never (knock on wood!) personally experienced such retribution or personally known anyone who faced such retribution. And because of my past personal experience, I don't expect future retribution.
In contrast, I expect potential retribution from friends and strangers on social media and from my employer for any non-conformist ideas. In those forums, I heavily censor what I say and write. But for government surveillance, I don't censor my expressions at all (at least not yet).
Perhaps the more important question is how much of an impact these new devices will have on Apple's revenue growth. If Apple had designs on penetrating India's untapped market, the SE phone will probably be a disappointment due to pricing. Absent growth in India, where will Apple's revenue growth come from? Without compelling new features, will upgrades even sustain the previous rounds of purchases from existing owners? Can Apple find new buyers from the Android, feature, or no phone crowd? In a way, the answers to the sales success story are more interesting than the expected somewhat mundane technical improvements of the new round of devices.
I am wondering who will quit their 6-digit salary paying swanky job in the Silicon Valley, just because they do not agree with the law enforcement. Maybe 1 or 2 people with some screws loose upstairs, but no sane person would do such a thing.
The Founding Fathers of our country abandoned their cushy plantations so they could fight for their liberties. Giving up one comfy job out of principle doesn't seem so bad in perspective.
Standing up for one's morals is commendable, but what are the effects on the employees and on Apple?
Many/most of the employees probably could somewhat easily find comparable jobs without moving. But it's likely that some will struggle at finding a similar job with similar compensation and stability, given that Apple is near the high end of the spectrum for both compensation and stability. More importantly, there are likely some employees that will not seriously consider quitting. Not all employees are superstars. Some will have financial commitments that require high compensation and stability (e.g., someone who just just bought a $1.5 million house and is paying $6k/month). Some will have family members to consider (e.g., "Honey, I just quit my job due to an important moral imperative. I'm sure you and the kids understand...").
However, all of that is really tangential to the implied goal of quitting, which is to allow Apple to claim to the government that they no longer have the human resources to carry out the government's orders. What percentage of employees would have to quit to substantiate Apple's claim of inability to comply? 50%, 90%, or 100%? I imagine that Apple has redundancies and backup plans to carry on its operations in the event of significant loss of key employees. Any well-run company would.
Unless you are an executive, favor cash compensation, not equity. Make the decision for yourself how you want to invest your cash, if at all.
Does it matter? Assuming we're talking RSUs vs cash, I can always sell the stock immediately.
Work for a company that is making a profit, not wasting naive investors' money.
I've worked for companies that have done really well and companies that haven't. If my job stability is at stake, that's a genuine concern. However, that often wasn't the issue. Rather, for me, the problem was often a matter of perception, snide comments, personal pride, and maybe stock price. But aside from those mostly inconsequential things, many of those less profitable companies were great places to work. For example, I worked at Sun for a few years. Everyone got an office (small, but always with a door and often with a window). I liked my coworkers, boss, and work. Hours were totally flexible (i.e., breakfast and dinner with my family everyday). Those things are much more important than the amount of money earned by rich people I don't know.
If you can't save any money, you're not living comfortably. You're just getting by.
I agree. However, each individual has to do the math. They key is how much money one can save without sacrificing expected quality of living. But this depends on one's level of compensation and arrival date in the area. There are a lot of people doing quite well in Silicon Valley.
First, I would like to see time limits for moves eliminated. The computer can be augmented with extra hardware, higher clock frequencies, etc. to render time limits inconsequential for it, but the human cannot.
First, take away the computer's advantage over humans. Then we will start to see humans win again. Good point.
If it's core to the evaluation of the computational algorithm, keep the limitation. If it's a rule based on human vs. human competition, it should be examined. The latter type of rules weren't meant to give computers an advantage but rather to hinder humans in the name of competition.
Second, I would like to see how the computer fares against a consensus of experts.
Second, bring in a bunch of the 9th Dan play-by-play commentators who thought that AlphaGo was losing because of the inexplicable moves it was making early in the game. You know, the ones who now say that AlphaGo was playing in a way that is beyond human comprehension. The ones who say that some moves have never been made in the 1000+ year history of the game. The ones who say that the moves will now enter the Go canon. Have them vote on the next move. Another good point.
I doubt that any single one of the commentators is better than Mr. Lee. However, a bunch of them with a consensus opinion (and, of course, assuming the ability to communicate with sufficient time) is possibly better than Mr. Lee. This power of the consensus opinion is seen in many types of prediction games, such as for picking the winner of football games, stock performance, etc. Maybe it would also work for Go.
Slashdot Mirror
From a CNN report:
A Tesla spokesperson released a moment by moment description of what happened in the 40 seconds before the crash.
After 15 seconds of what was described by Tesla as "visual warnings and audible tones," the autopilot began to disengage because the driver's hands were still not on the wheel.
About 25 seconds before the crash, "Autosteer began a graceful abort procedure in which the music is muted, the vehicle begins to slow and the driver is instructed both visually and audibly to place their hands on the wheel," according to the company.
Tesla said the driver responded 11 seconds before the crash by retaking the wheel, turning it toward the left and pressing on the accelerator.
"Over 10 seconds and approximately 300m later and while under manual steering control, the driver drifted out of the lane, collided with a barrier, overcorrected, crossed both lanes of the highway, struck a median barrier, and rolled the vehicle," according to Tesla's account.
So, the man never made the decision to disable autopilot. Instead, the car turned off the autopilot on its own. So, Musk could say with a straight face that autopilot was off. But how can a safety mechanism be allowed to turn itself off under any circumstances? Talk about the exact opposite of fail-safe.
So, when the robot detected a moving child, why TF didn't it just stop? Kids that age move unpredictably when faced with the unexpected. I always stop in circumstances like that. A toddler can dodge a stationary obstacle better than I can dodge a dodging toddler..
The indications from the robot company are that the robot records indicate that it did stop. The child's parent said that the robot ran over the boy but haven't actually claimed to have seen the incident. The robot is designed to move at 1 mph, so it is not designed to dodge anything but rather to stop, which is apparently did. An adult can be expected to dodge a 300-lb robots. A 16-month old toddler can be expected to do unexpected and irrational things, like running backwards into a large robot.
I already figured that the robot didn't sense that it was traveling over the kid's foot, or it would have stopped, so a record of the robot's sense impressions is not all that useful. The injuries to the child are a better guide to what actually happened, since it appears there's confusion there.
The indications are the robot stopped. The injuries to the child are not necessarily indicative of an out-of-control robot. Any parent of a small child can realize how common it is for a small child to acquire injuries and bruises when playing with stationary objects.
The mom said, "The robot hit my son's head and he fell down - facing down - on the floor, and the robot did not stop and it kept moving forward." This is in direct contrast to what the robot company said, so one of the accounts is not accurate.
The robot company also said, "The machine veered to the left to avoid the child, but the child ran backwards directly into the front quarter of the machine, at which point the machine stopped and the child fell on the ground." To make a statement about the orientation of the boy requires video (or at least some other electronic detection). Furthermore, the company said, "The machine’s sensors registered no vibration alert and the machine motors did not fault as they would when encountering an obstacle." So, there is some form of an electronic record of what the robot sensed.
Did the parents or any other human claim to have seen the moment of impact? I don't read any direct claim of an eyewitness account.
I do drive a Tesla Model S (S90D) with autopilot - EVERY time you engage it, it displays a warning on the dash display to keep your hands on the wheel, plus if there is ever an issue/ambiguity (it works by actually seeing the lines on both sides of the car....so if one of those lines is faded or missing, the car with either get confused/drift or completely disengage autopilot with an audible warning) ANOTHER display will pop up telling you to keep your hands on the wheel.
It's entirely possible that the average Tesla driver pays greater attention to warnings compared to the general population. However, from looking my own personal experience as well as those people that I have driven with, start-up warnings are basically useless and exist mainly to attempt to protect manufacturers from lawsuits. Real-time pop-up warnings are probably more effective but must be very conservative to avoid false positives. This looks like the case with these Tesla accidents. Was there a pop-up warning for the Harry Potter guy?
If safe autopilot operation really requires keeping one's hands on the steering wheel, there there should be an active system to enforce that requirement.
Funny thing, Autopilot is what this is.
You may have the idea that "Autopilot" means the plane flies itself. Nope. Typically autopilot on the plane means it will fly straight and level until ordered otherwise. The autopilot on a plane absolutely will fly straight into another plane even, the human pilot is expected to take care of that sort of thing.
Technically autopilot implementations on airplanes do exactly what you said and require a measure of continued vigilance on the part of the pilots. However, that is not what the term means in common language. The English idiom of putting something on autopilot means that something will work without any continued vigilance. In a way, this is a brilliant marketing strategy. The term connotes self-driving while denoting strictly not self-driving. A perfect marketing term.
I don't drive a Tesla either.
According to this review, they are far better than the competition.
As far as I understand, you cannot miss the warning. It's not like an EULA with walls and walls of text.
I imagine it's like the warning on all dedicated GPS systems. At the start, you have to hit a button and maybe also wait a few seconds to ostensibly read the text. I ignore it every time and occasionally violate the warning by hitting a button while driving. My guess is that the Tesla warning has the same efficacy.
When one attempts to make something idiot-proof, nature builds a better idiot. Not necessarily true, but we live in world where innovators are hampered by the chance of being sued by idiots who just-don't-listen.
"Fire is hot", "peanuts may contain peanuts", "online play not rated", "cruise control is not auto-pilot", "autopilot is experimental", etc.
I don't drive a Tesla, but the only message I heard about Tesla's Autopilot was the name. Yes, there are safety warnings in the manual and when you start up the car, but who actually pays attention that that? The same people who read EULAs? There's a reason the product is called Autopilot and not assist or level-2, and the reason is that they want to implicitly convey the idea that they are better than the competitors with mere assist or level-2. The name is not accidental.
Just take a look at the state of scientific paper review. Just what is accepted as true and relevant is debatable among "experts". And that is even before considering the quagmire of how to use that set of "truths".
You realize that traffic fatalities are a multiple-times-daily occurrence in the USA alone, right? That's not some fuzzy guesstimate, it's about as statically sound as you could hope for. 94M miles (the number Tesla gives per fatal accident in the US, which is a better comparison than the idiot submitter and CNBC author chose to display) is nothing in a country with over 2.5 times that many vehicles.
This is a matter of statistics and sampling. What I'm wondering about is the statistical confidence interval for the stated numbers. It's not at all clear that the confidence intervals are non-overlapping and that they would pass a statistical hypothesis test. Are you aware of additional data that would allow such hypothesis testing?
But more importantly, I conjecture that the underlying populations being sampled are significantly different. For example, my guess is that there are very few if any under-25 Tesla drivers and that such drivers account for a disproportionate amount of the fatalities in the general population. There are probably other such demographics that are prone to fatal accidents that are not representative of the Tesla population.
That's still pretty impressive if it's twice as safe as letting a human drive.
Even more so after seeing all the videos on youtube with people in the back of the car letting tesla drive.
It's not clear to me that the Tesla system is safer than a human based on the quoted numbers. First, the incidents are very unlikely for either human or Tesla, so it's not clear that once in 130e6 or once in 60e6 miles is statistically different. Second, the populations for the two numbers are definitely different. Tesla owners are clearly not representative of the general population, so the more apples-to-apples comparison is between Autopilot and manual driving for the same type of drivers, probably characterized by income, education, age, race, tendency to drive/party late at night, tendency for drunken driving, etc.
The UK is pretty small.
Yeah and the US is large. But New York city has a higher population density than Tokyo, yet only a fraction of the internet speeds. So while you can argue that there is a large area with no or low speed access, you can't excuse crap service in prime areas
It would be really interesting to see the distribution of ISP speeds by country. For example, the Akamai report shows that while South Korea's average speed is 29.0 Mbps, the majority (58%) of South Korean connections are slower than 25 Mbps. Thus, there are perhaps some very high speed connections that somewhat inflate the average. Absent some representation of the distribution, perhaps the median speed would be more representative.
It's also interesting to note that the study methodology is significant. For example, Akamai's methodology and results starkly differ from the FCC's findings, which estimates the average speed in the US at 31 Mbps in 2014 and quickly increasing.
The distribution of speeds is dependent not only on technical infrastructure but also on pricing. A very large percentage of Americans have very high speed internet access offered in their area, but many may choose lower speeds due to economic affordability or the realization that higher speeds are not needed due to personal usage patterns or the existence of speed bottlenecks aside from the ISP (e.g., internet servers, multimedia protocols, etc.).
Billboards and other sources of ambiguous sensory input will be banned from roads.
When drivers don't have to look at their own dashboard, they are more likely to look at billboards and other sources of ambiguous sensory input.
You mean, there will be no need to ban billboards because no advertiser will rent them.
Maybe some low-end car manufacturer will eventually find a way to pipe ads into a car in exchange for a lower upfront purchase price. Then the car becomes an advertising prison.
And garbage along highways will not be noticeable and therefore will no longer be illegal ... well ...
the third-worlder isn't all that much better off than before, and may actually be much worse off if they went from an agricultural job they had some control over their destiny to a dismal factory job where they have no control at all
This is a first world perspective. Control and quality of life are not concerns until subsistence is no longer a concern.
40% of voters in Scotland voted to leave the EU. That may not be the majority, but it's a bit silly dismissing two fifths of the population.
How is ignoring 40% of Scottish Leave voters worse than ignoring 48% of UK Remain voters? Isn't flip-flopping the principle much more silly?
A computer built with hardware that was NOT made in China, that would be news.
If we're talking about high-end processors, then chips made in China would be news. How many Intel fabs are there in China? How about TSMC? How about Samsung? Foxconn assembly is not the same as fabbing a chip.
RUD = rapid unscheduled disassembly
So, a rocket experiences RUD, while a missile experiences RSD?
Technically, yes the original subject isn't correct when talking about a slowdown in smartphone shipment globally. However, the gist of the subject is correct:
There is an expected substantial slowdown in growth in the past few years, from 27% to 10% to a projected 3%.
The projected 3% is almost half of the 6% projection from just 3 months ago.
Some national markets, like Japan and Canada are expected to contract by over 6%.
iPhone shipments are expected to contract this year.
The important point is that overall shipment contraction is coming and coming soon, maybe not this year, but soon. And this is for unit shipments. Revenue contraction will probably arrive even earlier as average selling prices for Android, which at 80% market share and growing, are dropping.
Your point applies only if SDCs are centrally controlled. If they are each an independent node that communicates with each other in a P2P or C2C method depending on massively decreased reaction times and localized road information that makes them much less vulnerable to a single point of failure while still retaining the bulk of the advantages. I foresee a hybrid of the 2 systems being the end solution, but I also bought Betamax, and laserdisc so who knows
What about byzantine failures? Hopefully this type of distributed system can tolerate a single car computer that goes crazy. Perhaps more complicated is the ability to tolerate attacks where a car goes crazy on purpose to exploit bugs in either the protocol or the implementation.
Or, perhaps such car computers will be the world's first example of a bug-free software implementation. We can only hope and pray.
There are two reasons I have less than full confidence in self-driving cars: (1) These cars have yet to prove themselves in weird situations where human intuition would lead to greater caution and (2) the complexity of these software systems requires extremely high levels of reliability, and especially in this forum, we're all aware of why high reliability software is elusive.
This really is no different than the right to be forgotten except that the time scale is shifted. It's like a Catholic indulgence, with the right to be forgiven/forgotten for all sins in the past, present, and future.
Apple's profits are still up, only their sales are down.
No, profits are way down. Year-to-year from $13.6 billion to $10.5 billion or down 23%. Sequentially from $18.4 billion to $10.5 billion or down 43%.
Much more worrying than the one-quarter blip is the year-to-year revenue growth trend, which has trended down for the past three quarters and is likely to be down the next quarter. On the heels of the first ever year-to-year revenue drop, the next quarter is also projected to be negative.
No, Apple is not going out of business, but it's looking mortal. It's a chink in the armor of inevitable growth. The stock will take a hit, since it partially trades on perception. However, the biggest hit will be in product sales, which for Apple also partially trades on perception.
But the trends online are all moving in the opposite direction, to making people attach their real names to comments - the sole purpose for which is to make retribution possible.
Retribution, or at least the expectation of actual or potential retribution, is the important factor. I don't worry about government surveillance at all, not because the government isn't evil or capable of harm but because I have never (knock on wood!) personally experienced such retribution or personally known anyone who faced such retribution. And because of my past personal experience, I don't expect future retribution.
In contrast, I expect potential retribution from friends and strangers on social media and from my employer for any non-conformist ideas. In those forums, I heavily censor what I say and write. But for government surveillance, I don't censor my expressions at all (at least not yet).
Perhaps the more important question is how much of an impact these new devices will have on Apple's revenue growth. If Apple had designs on penetrating India's untapped market, the SE phone will probably be a disappointment due to pricing. Absent growth in India, where will Apple's revenue growth come from? Without compelling new features, will upgrades even sustain the previous rounds of purchases from existing owners? Can Apple find new buyers from the Android, feature, or no phone crowd? In a way, the answers to the sales success story are more interesting than the expected somewhat mundane technical improvements of the new round of devices.
I am wondering who will quit their 6-digit salary paying swanky job in the Silicon Valley, just because they do not agree with the law enforcement. Maybe 1 or 2 people with some screws loose upstairs, but no sane person would do such a thing.
The Founding Fathers of our country abandoned their cushy plantations so they could fight for their liberties. Giving up one comfy job out of principle doesn't seem so bad in perspective.
Standing up for one's morals is commendable, but what are the effects on the employees and on Apple?
Many/most of the employees probably could somewhat easily find comparable jobs without moving. But it's likely that some will struggle at finding a similar job with similar compensation and stability, given that Apple is near the high end of the spectrum for both compensation and stability. More importantly, there are likely some employees that will not seriously consider quitting. Not all employees are superstars. Some will have financial commitments that require high compensation and stability (e.g., someone who just just bought a $1.5 million house and is paying $6k/month). Some will have family members to consider (e.g., "Honey, I just quit my job due to an important moral imperative. I'm sure you and the kids understand ...").
However, all of that is really tangential to the implied goal of quitting, which is to allow Apple to claim to the government that they no longer have the human resources to carry out the government's orders. What percentage of employees would have to quit to substantiate Apple's claim of inability to comply? 50%, 90%, or 100%? I imagine that Apple has redundancies and backup plans to carry on its operations in the event of significant loss of key employees. Any well-run company would.
Unless you are an executive, favor cash compensation, not equity. Make the decision for yourself how you want to invest your cash, if at all.
Does it matter? Assuming we're talking RSUs vs cash, I can always sell the stock immediately.
Work for a company that is making a profit, not wasting naive investors' money.
I've worked for companies that have done really well and companies that haven't. If my job stability is at stake, that's a genuine concern. However, that often wasn't the issue. Rather, for me, the problem was often a matter of perception, snide comments, personal pride, and maybe stock price. But aside from those mostly inconsequential things, many of those less profitable companies were great places to work. For example, I worked at Sun for a few years. Everyone got an office (small, but always with a door and often with a window). I liked my coworkers, boss, and work. Hours were totally flexible (i.e., breakfast and dinner with my family everyday). Those things are much more important than the amount of money earned by rich people I don't know.
If you can't save any money, you're not living comfortably. You're just getting by.
I agree. However, each individual has to do the math. They key is how much money one can save without sacrificing expected quality of living. But this depends on one's level of compensation and arrival date in the area. There are a lot of people doing quite well in Silicon Valley.
First, I would like to see time limits for moves eliminated. The computer can be augmented with extra hardware, higher clock frequencies, etc. to render time limits inconsequential for it, but the human cannot.
First, take away the computer's advantage over humans. Then we will start to see humans win again. Good point.
If it's core to the evaluation of the computational algorithm, keep the limitation. If it's a rule based on human vs. human competition, it should be examined. The latter type of rules weren't meant to give computers an advantage but rather to hinder humans in the name of competition.
Second, I would like to see how the computer fares against a consensus of experts.
Second, bring in a bunch of the 9th Dan play-by-play commentators who thought that AlphaGo was losing because of the inexplicable moves it was making early in the game. You know, the ones who now say that AlphaGo was playing in a way that is beyond human comprehension. The ones who say that some moves have never been made in the 1000+ year history of the game. The ones who say that the moves will now enter the Go canon. Have them vote on the next move. Another good point.
I doubt that any single one of the commentators is better than Mr. Lee. However, a bunch of them with a consensus opinion (and, of course, assuming the ability to communicate with sufficient time) is possibly better than Mr. Lee. This power of the consensus opinion is seen in many types of prediction games, such as for picking the winner of football games, stock performance, etc. Maybe it would also work for Go.