Why would they drive slowly? I expect that they'd drive the way that the manufacturer sets them out to drive, and without a human at the controls they'd probably accelerate as quickly as the automaker figures the occupants will accept, and drive as fast as the occupants will accept.
If ICE cars can be rented for road trips, absolutely. For multi-car households, absolutely. For those that feel it is acceptable to stop at the modern-equivalent of rural diner and gas station to have the car charged-up while having a meal, absolutely.
Remember, electric cars have very little maintenance compared to fossil-fuel powered cars. There are simply less consumed lubricants, and many systems that use hydraulics or other fluids or mechanical processes are going to use electric processes. Even things like brakes will need less maintenance, as regen braking attempts to use wheel-motors in lieu of friction to slow the vehicle when possible. For the first hundred-thousand miles I expect that tires, alignments, and brakes will be the only major expenses unless something actually fails, and that the service-life of the vehicle will be based on a combination of the quality of the interior components and how they hold up, plus the longevity of the electric power train, weighed against battery replacement costs. A car with an interior that is in good shape and halfway through the expected longevity of its motor and any power transmission parts would probably have its batteries replaced even if they're expensive. A car with a worn-out interior or close to the end of the expected service life of the motor or transmission probably would not.
In the relationship between Uber and all of the other entities working on self-driving technology, I'm sort of reminded of the fictional work The Cryoptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. In the 1990s part of the story Goto Dengo represents the bulk of the entities trying to develop self-driving cars on their own, while Mr. Wing's part is played by Uber, trying to take without knowing/developing on one's own.
Now, obviously the backstory is entirely different, so the analogy entirely breaks-down if one looks at how the two entities started. That early relationship is more like Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan with Uber playing the role of Harding.
I don't expect autonomous cars to have ridiculously low speeds. 100hp can get you up to freeway speeds and conduct you at those speeds on flat terrain. 150hp with proper gearing is likely plenty for driving at-speed in hilly areas, assuming a reasonable amount of passenger weight.
Autonomous vehicles will not need 300hp to smartly merge onto the freeway and drive with-traffic at 70mph speeds.
I don't think we'll see too many vehicles equipped to let the occupants do things like bathe while in-motion simply because if there is an emergency there's no good way to protect the occupants from injury. I could see a degree of portable office or entertainment center being common though, especially for those who already have the option to telecommute or for those accustomed to streaming their television content on a schedule of their choosing.
It might even be common to have breakfast or to otherwise dine while in-motion, but I expect it'll be some time before we see more than microwave food prep in a vehicle underway on a public road. Either prepare your breakfast at home and take it into the car with you, or else plan to microwave something while en-route or eat a cold breakfast.
Comparing what people do on commuter-rail might be the best, discounting those services on rail that require an employee to perform.
You're looking at the situation like there's only one problem and only one solution.
Sport Utility Vehicles that are actual 4x4s with offroad capability, commercial trucks including light trucks (ie, pickups), and long-haul vehicles will probably retain the option of an internal combustion engine, as these vehicles are may all be used in situations where there's no access to electrical infrastructure to recharge batteries, where the mass for batteries is too cumbersome, or where the amount of time to recharge is unacceptable. As such there will be conventionally-powered or hybrid-powered vehicles capable of at least part-time autonomous operation on the roads.
An electric, full-time-autonomous vehicle is something like a 70% or 80% solution, as probably 70-80% of the time or for 70-80% of the population this vehicle completely meets their needs. The most common use of a vehicle is commuting to work, and most people drive the same commute day-in, day-out. An electric car that can do this plus 50% more range would satisfy the vast majority of people; it would meet their regular needs plus allow for side-trips or other routes that they may reasonably expect to need.
For the rest of the 20-30% other solutions are absolutely necessary. Other drivetrains, other modes of control, etc. Some people would choose to continue to drive themselves regardless. Some would choose to use a vehicle that is less-suited to commuting, as they already do, because of their personal reasons. Either way though, there will still be a sizable market for these customers and it will be filled.
Other than specific legal issues directly involving the Federal government, basically all cases that end up coming to the attention of the Supreme Court have to come up through either circuit courts or else through state-level courts prior to being considered for appeal at the Supreme Court level. The Supreme Court first gets to decide if there's any reason to hear the appeal (ie, is there something of-merit justifying a further examination or is the lower court ruling sufficient, or are there differing rulings between jurisdictions that need to be resolved) and then gets to decide on hearing the appeal if the existing ruling is correct, if a new ruling is correct, or if some position in between is correct as both sides might have some merit in their arguments.
Not everyone has the same needs. Besides, not every vehicle right now is expected to or is even capable of pulling a trailer anyway.
I fully expect those who use their vehicles for more than just passenger transportation will not find wholly-autonomous vehicles appropriate to their needs. For those there will continue to be other kinds of vehicles, and those other kinds of vehicles will probably offer both autonomous and conventional driving modes.
I don't think defining who should be friends is something easily boiled-down to an algorithm.
Case in point, my local fandom scene has at least two major groups of people whose principal hobbies are in-common. These two groups have large numbers of members that despise people in the other group. Certainly there are crossovers who participate in both groups, but even with significant common-interest, similar outlook on life, and similar age and common peers these people absolutely are not each others' friends.
I've seen similar situations in auto enthusiast groups, in social dance scenes, in clubbing scenes, in firearms enthusiast scenes, etc. It's tough to say what will make people get along and what will divide them, and in many cases the people themselves probably can't really say.
I don't expect autonomous cars to have ridiculously low speeds. 100hp can get you up to freeway speeds and conduct you at those speeds on flat terrain. 150hp with proper gearing is likely plenty for driving at-speed in hilly areas, assuming a reasonable amount of passenger weight.
Autonomous vehicles will not need 300hp to smartly merge onto the freeway and drive with-traffic at 70mph speeds.
That's actually a good point, in that vehicle performance matters a lot less when the occupant does not directly operate the vehicle. Performance is no unimportant; most people want to be conveyed to their destinations in reasonable amounts of time and don't like unnecessary waiting, but if one looks back on the late seventies during the fallout from the OPEC oil embargo, most full-sized cars had less than 200 horsepower while weighing in at over two tons and they still managed to sell. Even what were considered mainstream performance or sports cars of the '60s and early '70s have acceleration rates that can be met by most mid-market, "boring" cars today.
If true autonomous vehicles become the norm, I fully expect that the entire nature of auto body design will change. The traditional three-box design of sedans and coupes and two-box design of wagons, SUVs, vans will almost undoubtedly be re-examined as there will no longer be a need for the driver to face forward, and if powertrain efficiency continues to improve then there may be less need to continue streamlining. While autonomous vehicles and driver-controlled vehicles are mixed on the road I expect that autonomous vehicles will still have to pass crash-safety testing, but it may not be unrealistic to see fully autonomous vehicles start to re-examine traditional carriage design where occupants are able to face each other instead of everyone facing forward, and you could even see tabletops inside of vehicles that are intended for long over-the-road travel.
If petroleum-burning powertrains continune to increase in efficiency, then it's not unreasonble to consider relocating a smaller, barely-adequate powertrain to under the passenger compartment rather than in front of it, similar to the old Skateboard concept that GM worked on in the early noughties, especially if they do a more thorough job of divorcing the duties of the body control module and the powertrain control module such that some bolts and a single umbilicle connect the passenger body from the chassis. Service would be rolling the car into a bay, securing the lift to the body, unbolting the body and the umbilicle, lifting the body off, and having room to work on the chassis. Boxer-type horizontally-opposed engines would fit this chassis well. Obviously electric drivetrains would be even easier.
Future vehicle development would probably center on the configuration of the passenger compartment along with amenities, while attempting to define vehicle exteriors that meet expectations but don't necessarily have to exceed them for most buyers. If one looks at vehicle design now and historically, everyone follows each others' leads anyway, so it would be no stretch to assume that future autonomous passenger cars would continue to follow suit where everyone mimicks everyone else with the occasional halo-car coming out to stir-up interest.
It'll be interesting to see what happens long-term.
That's not true that no one has batted an eye, and it's also not entirely true that airlines have been doing exactly this either.
If I understand Uber and its ilk, the amount of time between booking a ride and taking the ride is short, minutes to hours, to the point that it's essentially a single act. By contrast, the amount of time between booking an airline seat and taking the flight is usually days or weeks, and sometimes even months, and since airlines themselves are financially tied to the aircraft (either leasing or outright ownership) they are paying for the the vehicle in addition to the staffing and everything else; the airline takes on the financial risk. Fares start low-ish to attract travelers, rise as time to the flight shortens, then may plummet reasonably close to the flight to try to fill-in seats, then skyrocket in the last couple of hours to profit off of demand for last-minute bookings before getting even cheaper as standby passengers are booked.
I do not care for how airlines price fares, but since airlines are the entity bearing the financial burden of the entire aspect of the flight then I am less annoyed by it. Uber doesn't own the cars, doesn't pay salaries to the drivers whether they're driving or not. If Uber is pushing the financial aspect of the risk to the drivers then it shouldn't claim one thing to the passenger and another thing to the driver.
The summary does not exactly make it clear how this pricing works. It almost sounds like pay to have your OS run (ie, "for the first 90 days") but then it's immediately contradicted by stating that updates will be available for six months.
Is there any corporate use of OS/2 anymore, anywhere? Without corporate adoption I don't know how they can make enough money to keep this project viable as a for-profit venture.
I was talking about remaining on Windows 7, not about patching the installbase of Windows 7 as updates come out. If you're th AC that I replied to, heaven help you.
Where did I say anything about taking a citizen's job?
I was curious if, besides illegal entry, he did anything wrong. He did. Based on what additional information you've provided I wonder if he close to leave the scene of an accident because of fear of being deported again if he spoke with police, during this particular episode of illegal entry.
This is why taxi companies have to post rates and those rates are based on a combination of time and odometer, at least in many jurisdictions it's mandatory for them to do this.
Uber is once again demonstrating why we have passenger livery laws, and in this case it might well be the first time that flouting it has a strong effect that's really felt by the customer.
You've obviously never worked enterprise IT. You don't roll-out new versions of anything until they're thoroughly tested, and sometimes you find that you can't roll-out a new version of some software because other mission-critical software is not compatible with whatever new thing you're trying.
Case in point, all of those ATMs and Point of Sale systems that are still running XP, that Microsoft is still supporting.
Windows 7 has more support for legacy applications than 8/8.1, and Windows 10 has even less support than 8/8.1. If those legacy applications provide the profit or are otherwise of primary importance to the organization then it does not make sense for the organization to change software. The operating system is merely a means to an end, not the end itself.
The whole point of Uber is to try to have enough of a passenger-livery company when self-driving tech becomes viable to become profitable. They're currently not profitable, and if they don't manage to ditch the albatross around their neck to the satisfaction of the court then they might be denied the use of any self-driving technology that they don't purchase from the open market, which would probably mean the end of the company entirely.
The point of "returning" them is to prove what the party of the second took from the party of the first. They're not returned because the party of the first no longer has them, but to demonstrate what the party of the second took from the party of the first, so that the party of the second is not able to use what was taken. I expect that if Google/Alphabet/Waymo has evidence of what was accessed then they have a good case for denying Uber the ability to use the contents of those, and to block doing any development by anyone that has had access to that material.
I also expect that until Uber "returns" the content to essentially come-clean, Uber won't be allowed to do any self-driving development of any kind, and if they are discovered to have done so they'll find themselves facing even stronger legal problems.
I'm a bit curious as to this guy's history given the technology used to find him. Seems like a questionable use of resources to nab a busboy. Given that they didn't tell us why he was deported the previous two times I'm curious if they used it simply because he simply was two-time deportee that keeps coming back, or if he had any history of criminal activity involved in any of his deportation orders.
Maintain a local mirror. update that mirror after testing packages on a test box, using the test box's own saved packages as the source to pull from for the mirror.
Could well be. Unfortunately given the differences in company policy and attitude it may not really be possible to compare Tesla to other automakers in this regard.
The organization's main vehicle maintenance facility is based here, so the fleet vehicles are serviced there. At least one of the calls was because of a workplace injury, I think an employee fell off a ladder that was being used to get to a vehicle that was positioned up on a lift.
Slashdot Mirror
Why would they drive slowly? I expect that they'd drive the way that the manufacturer sets them out to drive, and without a human at the controls they'd probably accelerate as quickly as the automaker figures the occupants will accept, and drive as fast as the occupants will accept.
If ICE cars can be rented for road trips, absolutely. For multi-car households, absolutely. For those that feel it is acceptable to stop at the modern-equivalent of rural diner and gas station to have the car charged-up while having a meal, absolutely.
Remember, electric cars have very little maintenance compared to fossil-fuel powered cars. There are simply less consumed lubricants, and many systems that use hydraulics or other fluids or mechanical processes are going to use electric processes. Even things like brakes will need less maintenance, as regen braking attempts to use wheel-motors in lieu of friction to slow the vehicle when possible. For the first hundred-thousand miles I expect that tires, alignments, and brakes will be the only major expenses unless something actually fails, and that the service-life of the vehicle will be based on a combination of the quality of the interior components and how they hold up, plus the longevity of the electric power train, weighed against battery replacement costs. A car with an interior that is in good shape and halfway through the expected longevity of its motor and any power transmission parts would probably have its batteries replaced even if they're expensive. A car with a worn-out interior or close to the end of the expected service life of the motor or transmission probably would not.
Reluctance to use the power at one's disposal an the power itself are not the same thing.
I've seen people in 5-series BMWs obstruct traffic, and people in 116hp 1990 Mazda Miatas set the pace.
In the relationship between Uber and all of the other entities working on self-driving technology, I'm sort of reminded of the fictional work The Cryoptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. In the 1990s part of the story Goto Dengo represents the bulk of the entities trying to develop self-driving cars on their own, while Mr. Wing's part is played by Uber, trying to take without knowing/developing on one's own.
Now, obviously the backstory is entirely different, so the analogy entirely breaks-down if one looks at how the two entities started. That early relationship is more like Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan with Uber playing the role of Harding.
To quote myself,
I don't expect autonomous cars to have ridiculously low speeds. 100hp can get you up to freeway speeds and conduct you at those speeds on flat terrain. 150hp with proper gearing is likely plenty for driving at-speed in hilly areas, assuming a reasonable amount of passenger weight.
Autonomous vehicles will not need 300hp to smartly merge onto the freeway and drive with-traffic at 70mph speeds.
I don't think we'll see too many vehicles equipped to let the occupants do things like bathe while in-motion simply because if there is an emergency there's no good way to protect the occupants from injury. I could see a degree of portable office or entertainment center being common though, especially for those who already have the option to telecommute or for those accustomed to streaming their television content on a schedule of their choosing.
It might even be common to have breakfast or to otherwise dine while in-motion, but I expect it'll be some time before we see more than microwave food prep in a vehicle underway on a public road. Either prepare your breakfast at home and take it into the car with you, or else plan to microwave something while en-route or eat a cold breakfast.
Comparing what people do on commuter-rail might be the best, discounting those services on rail that require an employee to perform.
You're looking at the situation like there's only one problem and only one solution.
Sport Utility Vehicles that are actual 4x4s with offroad capability, commercial trucks including light trucks (ie, pickups), and long-haul vehicles will probably retain the option of an internal combustion engine, as these vehicles are may all be used in situations where there's no access to electrical infrastructure to recharge batteries, where the mass for batteries is too cumbersome, or where the amount of time to recharge is unacceptable. As such there will be conventionally-powered or hybrid-powered vehicles capable of at least part-time autonomous operation on the roads.
An electric, full-time-autonomous vehicle is something like a 70% or 80% solution, as probably 70-80% of the time or for 70-80% of the population this vehicle completely meets their needs. The most common use of a vehicle is commuting to work, and most people drive the same commute day-in, day-out. An electric car that can do this plus 50% more range would satisfy the vast majority of people; it would meet their regular needs plus allow for side-trips or other routes that they may reasonably expect to need.
For the rest of the 20-30% other solutions are absolutely necessary. Other drivetrains, other modes of control, etc. Some people would choose to continue to drive themselves regardless. Some would choose to use a vehicle that is less-suited to commuting, as they already do, because of their personal reasons. Either way though, there will still be a sizable market for these customers and it will be filled.
What slower cars?
Other than specific legal issues directly involving the Federal government, basically all cases that end up coming to the attention of the Supreme Court have to come up through either circuit courts or else through state-level courts prior to being considered for appeal at the Supreme Court level. The Supreme Court first gets to decide if there's any reason to hear the appeal (ie, is there something of-merit justifying a further examination or is the lower court ruling sufficient, or are there differing rulings between jurisdictions that need to be resolved) and then gets to decide on hearing the appeal if the existing ruling is correct, if a new ruling is correct, or if some position in between is correct as both sides might have some merit in their arguments.
Not everyone has the same needs. Besides, not every vehicle right now is expected to or is even capable of pulling a trailer anyway.
I fully expect those who use their vehicles for more than just passenger transportation will not find wholly-autonomous vehicles appropriate to their needs. For those there will continue to be other kinds of vehicles, and those other kinds of vehicles will probably offer both autonomous and conventional driving modes.
I don't think defining who should be friends is something easily boiled-down to an algorithm.
Case in point, my local fandom scene has at least two major groups of people whose principal hobbies are in-common. These two groups have large numbers of members that despise people in the other group. Certainly there are crossovers who participate in both groups, but even with significant common-interest, similar outlook on life, and similar age and common peers these people absolutely are not each others' friends.
I've seen similar situations in auto enthusiast groups, in social dance scenes, in clubbing scenes, in firearms enthusiast scenes, etc. It's tough to say what will make people get along and what will divide them, and in many cases the people themselves probably can't really say.
I don't expect autonomous cars to have ridiculously low speeds. 100hp can get you up to freeway speeds and conduct you at those speeds on flat terrain. 150hp with proper gearing is likely plenty for driving at-speed in hilly areas, assuming a reasonable amount of passenger weight.
Autonomous vehicles will not need 300hp to smartly merge onto the freeway and drive with-traffic at 70mph speeds.
That's actually a good point, in that vehicle performance matters a lot less when the occupant does not directly operate the vehicle. Performance is no unimportant; most people want to be conveyed to their destinations in reasonable amounts of time and don't like unnecessary waiting, but if one looks back on the late seventies during the fallout from the OPEC oil embargo, most full-sized cars had less than 200 horsepower while weighing in at over two tons and they still managed to sell. Even what were considered mainstream performance or sports cars of the '60s and early '70s have acceleration rates that can be met by most mid-market, "boring" cars today.
If true autonomous vehicles become the norm, I fully expect that the entire nature of auto body design will change. The traditional three-box design of sedans and coupes and two-box design of wagons, SUVs, vans will almost undoubtedly be re-examined as there will no longer be a need for the driver to face forward, and if powertrain efficiency continues to improve then there may be less need to continue streamlining. While autonomous vehicles and driver-controlled vehicles are mixed on the road I expect that autonomous vehicles will still have to pass crash-safety testing, but it may not be unrealistic to see fully autonomous vehicles start to re-examine traditional carriage design where occupants are able to face each other instead of everyone facing forward, and you could even see tabletops inside of vehicles that are intended for long over-the-road travel.
If petroleum-burning powertrains continune to increase in efficiency, then it's not unreasonble to consider relocating a smaller, barely-adequate powertrain to under the passenger compartment rather than in front of it, similar to the old Skateboard concept that GM worked on in the early noughties, especially if they do a more thorough job of divorcing the duties of the body control module and the powertrain control module such that some bolts and a single umbilicle connect the passenger body from the chassis. Service would be rolling the car into a bay, securing the lift to the body, unbolting the body and the umbilicle, lifting the body off, and having room to work on the chassis. Boxer-type horizontally-opposed engines would fit this chassis well. Obviously electric drivetrains would be even easier.
Future vehicle development would probably center on the configuration of the passenger compartment along with amenities, while attempting to define vehicle exteriors that meet expectations but don't necessarily have to exceed them for most buyers. If one looks at vehicle design now and historically, everyone follows each others' leads anyway, so it would be no stretch to assume that future autonomous passenger cars would continue to follow suit where everyone mimicks everyone else with the occasional halo-car coming out to stir-up interest.
It'll be interesting to see what happens long-term.
That's not true that no one has batted an eye, and it's also not entirely true that airlines have been doing exactly this either.
If I understand Uber and its ilk, the amount of time between booking a ride and taking the ride is short, minutes to hours, to the point that it's essentially a single act. By contrast, the amount of time between booking an airline seat and taking the flight is usually days or weeks, and sometimes even months, and since airlines themselves are financially tied to the aircraft (either leasing or outright ownership) they are paying for the the vehicle in addition to the staffing and everything else; the airline takes on the financial risk. Fares start low-ish to attract travelers, rise as time to the flight shortens, then may plummet reasonably close to the flight to try to fill-in seats, then skyrocket in the last couple of hours to profit off of demand for last-minute bookings before getting even cheaper as standby passengers are booked.
I do not care for how airlines price fares, but since airlines are the entity bearing the financial burden of the entire aspect of the flight then I am less annoyed by it. Uber doesn't own the cars, doesn't pay salaries to the drivers whether they're driving or not. If Uber is pushing the financial aspect of the risk to the drivers then it shouldn't claim one thing to the passenger and another thing to the driver.
The summary does not exactly make it clear how this pricing works. It almost sounds like pay to have your OS run (ie, "for the first 90 days") but then it's immediately contradicted by stating that updates will be available for six months.
Is there any corporate use of OS/2 anymore, anywhere? Without corporate adoption I don't know how they can make enough money to keep this project viable as a for-profit venture.
I was talking about remaining on Windows 7, not about patching the installbase of Windows 7 as updates come out. If you're th AC that I replied to, heaven help you.
Where did I say anything about taking a citizen's job?
I was curious if, besides illegal entry, he did anything wrong. He did. Based on what additional information you've provided I wonder if he close to leave the scene of an accident because of fear of being deported again if he spoke with police, during this particular episode of illegal entry.
This is why taxi companies have to post rates and those rates are based on a combination of time and odometer, at least in many jurisdictions it's mandatory for them to do this.
Uber is once again demonstrating why we have passenger livery laws, and in this case it might well be the first time that flouting it has a strong effect that's really felt by the customer.
You've obviously never worked enterprise IT. You don't roll-out new versions of anything until they're thoroughly tested, and sometimes you find that you can't roll-out a new version of some software because other mission-critical software is not compatible with whatever new thing you're trying.
Case in point, all of those ATMs and Point of Sale systems that are still running XP, that Microsoft is still supporting.
Windows 7 has more support for legacy applications than 8/8.1, and Windows 10 has even less support than 8/8.1. If those legacy applications provide the profit or are otherwise of primary importance to the organization then it does not make sense for the organization to change software. The operating system is merely a means to an end, not the end itself.
The whole point of Uber is to try to have enough of a passenger-livery company when self-driving tech becomes viable to become profitable. They're currently not profitable, and if they don't manage to ditch the albatross around their neck to the satisfaction of the court then they might be denied the use of any self-driving technology that they don't purchase from the open market, which would probably mean the end of the company entirely.
The point of "returning" them is to prove what the party of the second took from the party of the first. They're not returned because the party of the first no longer has them, but to demonstrate what the party of the second took from the party of the first, so that the party of the second is not able to use what was taken. I expect that if Google/Alphabet/Waymo has evidence of what was accessed then they have a good case for denying Uber the ability to use the contents of those, and to block doing any development by anyone that has had access to that material.
I also expect that until Uber "returns" the content to essentially come-clean, Uber won't be allowed to do any self-driving development of any kind, and if they are discovered to have done so they'll find themselves facing even stronger legal problems.
I'm a bit curious as to this guy's history given the technology used to find him. Seems like a questionable use of resources to nab a busboy. Given that they didn't tell us why he was deported the previous two times I'm curious if they used it simply because he simply was two-time deportee that keeps coming back, or if he had any history of criminal activity involved in any of his deportation orders.
Maintain a local mirror. update that mirror after testing packages on a test box, using the test box's own saved packages as the source to pull from for the mirror.
Could well be. Unfortunately given the differences in company policy and attitude it may not really be possible to compare Tesla to other automakers in this regard.
The organization's main vehicle maintenance facility is based here, so the fleet vehicles are serviced there. At least one of the calls was because of a workplace injury, I think an employee fell off a ladder that was being used to get to a vehicle that was positioned up on a lift.
I know that another one was a heart attack.
Not sure about the third one.