It is very rare that I don't shut down my computer properly overnight. So I want to simply turn off automatic reboots completely. The second thing I don't like is when I turn on my computer in the morning, I need to wait a minute while it is applying updates. When I say "update and shutdown", why can't the computer update, shutdown, restart, fully apply all updates, and shut down again when done?
I see. That makes sense. Would it therefore not make sense to have some turbines in a wind farm that can deal with high winds (even though they do not turn at all at normal wind speeds) so that power can always be produced? I think this would make sense once a country starts relying on renewable energy for a large proportion of electricity demand as it would reduce the volatility of the energy produced.
Not really, lithium ion batteries are pretty efficient and don't lose too much energy in the process of charging and discharging the battery. However, batteries are expensive. Too expensive to be able to be used for more than overnight storage (at a large scale of course). Even lead acid batteries are quite efficient (maybe 80-95%) but are still too expensive.
Wouldn't a transmission with different gears be able to solve this issue? Probably none of the experts have thought of this, whilst I can come up with it sitting in my armchair. So, let me rephrase: Why would a gearbox not be able to solve this?
Interesting, never thought about using an instant messenger this way. Which messengers support this? I use Hangouts, Signal and WhatsApp. No more desktop clients as I use too many devices; my BBM, ICQ and Skype accounts are inactive. None of those allowed scheduled delivery IIRC.
320 kbps are clearly enough so that no one can distinguish this from CD quality (even when it is MP3, and even without VBR). Personally, I use Vorbis with q5.5 as the quality setting, which averages around 175 kbps, and which is in my view as good as CD quality. The reason for getting uncompressed music files is to be able to convert to any format you desire later. Converting 320 kbps MP3 to 320 kbps Opus would probably not result in CD quality anymore, but if you rip your music as FLAC, you do not have this problem.
As a driver you have the responsibility to read the manual, especially when it comes to functions like these. I certainly read the description of the self-parking feature of my car very carefully, and I would review even more carefully than that with any function that automates driving at speed. Just because a lot of people don't read the manual in a normal car without assistance systems doesn't make it right not to do read the description for the various autopilot functions. I'm not saying that Tesla is handling everything right (I think they should be more aggressive ascertaining that the driver is attentive and focused on the road) but would still put most blame on the individuals that trust this technology to drive automatically (and allow them to speak on the phone while driving) despite all the warnings displayed on the dashboard and explained in more detail in the manual.
It might well be unrealistic, but I just wanted to highlight that the autopilot worked as described in the manual (or actually did not work, as described).
I mentioned it above, but so that you are aware as well: Maybe it should handle the situation, but the manual is very clear that this exact situation is one that cannot be handled: "Warning: Traffic-Aware Cruise Control can not detect all objects and may not brake/decelerate for stationary vehicles, especially in situations when you are driving over 50 mph (80 km/h) and a vehicle you are following moves out of your driving path and a stationary vehicle or object, bicycle, or pedestrian is in front of you instead. Always pay attention to the road ahead and stay prepared to take immediate corrective action. Depending on Traffic-Aware Cruise Control to avoid a collision can result in serious injury or death."
Maybe it should handle the situation, but the manual is very clear that this exact situation is one that cannot be handled: "Warning: Traffic-Aware Cruise Control can not detect all objects and may not brake/decelerate for stationary vehicles, especially in situations when you are driving over 50 mph (80 km/h) and a vehicle you are following moves out of your driving path and a stationary vehicle or object, bicycle, or pedestrian is in front of you instead. Always pay attention to the road ahead and stay prepared to take immediate corrective action. Depending on Traffic-Aware Cruise Control to avoid a collision can result in serious injury or death."
It's possible because the Tesla self-drive / auto-drive / drive-assist feature DIDN'T SPOT THE OBSTACLE, DIDN'T APPLY THE BRAKES IN TIME and therefore DIDN'T DO WHAT IT CLAIMS.
It did do what it claims. What happened in the accident was exactly the same as a description of a limitation in the manual: "Warning: Traffic-Aware Cruise Control can not detect all objects and may not brake/decelerate for stationary vehicles, especially in situations when you are driving over 50 mph (80 km/h) and a vehicle you are following moves out of your driving path and a stationary vehicle or object, bicycle, or pedestrian is in front of you instead. Always pay attention to the road ahead and stay prepared to take immediate corrective action. Depending on Traffic-Aware Cruise Control to avoid a collision can result in serious injury or death."
No "ACAS" won't result in an automatic "turn and raise altitude". The only available ACAS system that is widely used is TCAS. First, TCAS only gives an advisory to the pilot and does not link into the autopilot. So if you are on autopilot and TCAS tells you to change altitude the human pilot will actually need to effect this change. Secondly, TCAS only advises to change altitude. Eventually, they want to be able to advise turns as well to increase clearance, but this is not feasible yet due to (I believe) limited horizontal resolution.
Absolutely, but renaming "autopilot" to "driving aid that works quite well in most cases but can kill you if something unexpected happens and you don't brake in time" wouldn't have helped in this case as the driver was well aware of the limitations of the autopilot. Which is really an exception as you would not expect most drivers to be as aware of the technology in their car as much as Josh Brown was. Which really means that the name doesn't matter. What matters is that after using the system for a while you realise that it works reliably. You then start dozing off, and even then it still is reliable mostly. But at some point an accident will happen.
Does the Tesla have these transmitters and receivers? Clearly, there is technology that could be used but if it is not in a Tesla at the moment, the computer can't use it. I think LIDAR is the way to go, especially if solid state LIDARs become reality.
I don't think that would have helped. The radar return would have been pretty much the same. There is some vertical aperture of course, but that was already sufficient to detect the truck (and is sufficient to detect overhead signs). The problem is that a significant part of the radar were not returned which suggests to the system that the way is clear enough. In my view, radar is simply not enough for an autonomous car, which the Tesla isn't. There is a reason why Google spends a lot of money on the LIDAR for its self driving cars. If Radar was sufficient they wouldn't go through that trouble.
LIDAR would have been better, but is much more expensive at the moment. Solid state LIDARs are expected soon though, which would make them much cheaper.
That's a big effing problem!! It's already led to one death, and can easily lead to many more.
The terminology did not lead to the death. The killed driver was very aware of the limitations of the autopilot and that you need to be aware of your surroundings. He said this in his YouTube videos and the comments.
Yes I agree that "autopilot" is a horrendous choice of name because "auto" and "automatic" imply autonomy, no matter how many clickthrough EULA's you shove in front of someone.
I agree. I got in my car the other day and while driving, I remembered it is actually an automobile so I let go of the steering.
How would the car have been able to do this? The radar used does not have any vertical resolution, you only get a certain proportion of the radar that is returned, similar to what you get from a overhead sign. The camera would have been able to see the size of the gap but it did not detect the truck either as it was the same colour as the sky.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really. With Oxford comma, for it to mean A or B or (C or D), it would have been written as "A, B, or C or D".
It is very rare that I don't shut down my computer properly overnight. So I want to simply turn off automatic reboots completely. The second thing I don't like is when I turn on my computer in the morning, I need to wait a minute while it is applying updates. When I say "update and shutdown", why can't the computer update, shutdown, restart, fully apply all updates, and shut down again when done?
A fixed bug even... Maybe worth checking before submitting a story like this!
I see. That makes sense. Would it therefore not make sense to have some turbines in a wind farm that can deal with high winds (even though they do not turn at all at normal wind speeds) so that power can always be produced? I think this would make sense once a country starts relying on renewable energy for a large proportion of electricity demand as it would reduce the volatility of the energy produced.
Not really, lithium ion batteries are pretty efficient and don't lose too much energy in the process of charging and discharging the battery. However, batteries are expensive. Too expensive to be able to be used for more than overnight storage (at a large scale of course). Even lead acid batteries are quite efficient (maybe 80-95%) but are still too expensive.
Wouldn't a transmission with different gears be able to solve this issue? Probably none of the experts have thought of this, whilst I can come up with it sitting in my armchair. So, let me rephrase: Why would a gearbox not be able to solve this?
Doesn't seem to be possible on WhatsApp without third-party apps. I don't use the other messengers you mention.
Interesting, never thought about using an instant messenger this way. Which messengers support this? I use Hangouts, Signal and WhatsApp. No more desktop clients as I use too many devices; my BBM, ICQ and Skype accounts are inactive. None of those allowed scheduled delivery IIRC.
Doesn't seem like a crucial feature to me. What would you use it for?
320 kbps are clearly enough so that no one can distinguish this from CD quality (even when it is MP3, and even without VBR). Personally, I use Vorbis with q5.5 as the quality setting, which averages around 175 kbps, and which is in my view as good as CD quality. The reason for getting uncompressed music files is to be able to convert to any format you desire later. Converting 320 kbps MP3 to 320 kbps Opus would probably not result in CD quality anymore, but if you rip your music as FLAC, you do not have this problem.
As a driver you have the responsibility to read the manual, especially when it comes to functions like these. I certainly read the description of the self-parking feature of my car very carefully, and I would review even more carefully than that with any function that automates driving at speed. Just because a lot of people don't read the manual in a normal car without assistance systems doesn't make it right not to do read the description for the various autopilot functions. I'm not saying that Tesla is handling everything right (I think they should be more aggressive ascertaining that the driver is attentive and focused on the road) but would still put most blame on the individuals that trust this technology to drive automatically (and allow them to speak on the phone while driving) despite all the warnings displayed on the dashboard and explained in more detail in the manual.
It might well be unrealistic, but I just wanted to highlight that the autopilot worked as described in the manual (or actually did not work, as described).
I mentioned it above, but so that you are aware as well: Maybe it should handle the situation, but the manual is very clear that this exact situation is one that cannot be handled: "Warning: Traffic-Aware Cruise Control can not detect all objects and may not brake/decelerate for stationary vehicles, especially in situations when you are driving over 50 mph (80 km/h) and a vehicle you are following moves out of your driving path and a stationary vehicle or object, bicycle, or pedestrian is in front of you instead. Always pay attention to the road ahead and stay prepared to take immediate corrective action. Depending on Traffic-Aware Cruise Control to avoid a collision can result in serious injury or death."
Maybe it should handle the situation, but the manual is very clear that this exact situation is one that cannot be handled: "Warning: Traffic-Aware Cruise Control can not detect all objects and may not brake/decelerate for stationary vehicles, especially in situations when you are driving over 50 mph (80 km/h) and a vehicle you are following moves out of your driving path and a stationary vehicle or object, bicycle, or pedestrian is in front of you instead. Always pay attention to the road ahead and stay prepared to take immediate corrective action. Depending on Traffic-Aware Cruise Control to avoid a collision can result in serious injury or death."
It's possible because the Tesla self-drive / auto-drive / drive-assist feature DIDN'T SPOT THE OBSTACLE, DIDN'T APPLY THE BRAKES IN TIME and therefore DIDN'T DO WHAT IT CLAIMS.
It did do what it claims. What happened in the accident was exactly the same as a description of a limitation in the manual: "Warning: Traffic-Aware Cruise Control can not detect all objects and may not brake/decelerate for stationary vehicles, especially in situations when you are driving over 50 mph (80 km/h) and a vehicle you are following moves out of your driving path and a stationary vehicle or object, bicycle, or pedestrian is in front of you instead. Always pay attention to the road ahead and stay prepared to take immediate corrective action. Depending on Traffic-Aware Cruise Control to avoid a collision can result in serious injury or death."
No "ACAS" won't result in an automatic "turn and raise altitude". The only available ACAS system that is widely used is TCAS. First, TCAS only gives an advisory to the pilot and does not link into the autopilot. So if you are on autopilot and TCAS tells you to change altitude the human pilot will actually need to effect this change. Secondly, TCAS only advises to change altitude. Eventually, they want to be able to advise turns as well to increase clearance, but this is not feasible yet due to (I believe) limited horizontal resolution.
Absolutely, but renaming "autopilot" to "driving aid that works quite well in most cases but can kill you if something unexpected happens and you don't brake in time" wouldn't have helped in this case as the driver was well aware of the limitations of the autopilot. Which is really an exception as you would not expect most drivers to be as aware of the technology in their car as much as Josh Brown was. Which really means that the name doesn't matter. What matters is that after using the system for a while you realise that it works reliably. You then start dozing off, and even then it still is reliable mostly. But at some point an accident will happen.
Does the Tesla have these transmitters and receivers? Clearly, there is technology that could be used but if it is not in a Tesla at the moment, the computer can't use it. I think LIDAR is the way to go, especially if solid state LIDARs become reality.
I don't think that would have helped. The radar return would have been pretty much the same. There is some vertical aperture of course, but that was already sufficient to detect the truck (and is sufficient to detect overhead signs). The problem is that a significant part of the radar were not returned which suggests to the system that the way is clear enough. In my view, radar is simply not enough for an autonomous car, which the Tesla isn't. There is a reason why Google spends a lot of money on the LIDAR for its self driving cars. If Radar was sufficient they wouldn't go through that trouble.
LIDAR would have been better, but is much more expensive at the moment. Solid state LIDARs are expected soon though, which would make them much cheaper.
But there was enough space in-between the wheels. These could have just been the pillars holding the sign.
That's a big effing problem!! It's already led to one death, and can easily lead to many more.
The terminology did not lead to the death. The killed driver was very aware of the limitations of the autopilot and that you need to be aware of your surroundings. He said this in his YouTube videos and the comments.
Yes I agree that "autopilot" is a horrendous choice of name because "auto" and "automatic" imply autonomy, no matter how many clickthrough EULA's you shove in front of someone.
I agree. I got in my car the other day and while driving, I remembered it is actually an automobile so I let go of the steering.
How would the car have been able to do this? The radar used does not have any vertical resolution, you only get a certain proportion of the radar that is returned, similar to what you get from a overhead sign. The camera would have been able to see the size of the gap but it did not detect the truck either as it was the same colour as the sky.
OK, I see. I wonder whether it would apply to companies like Google with headquarters outside the UK but with a UK office.