Via Paul Constant, #Romneyzingers. My favorites so far are “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what your country will bring on the Chinese market.” and “Excuse me sir, but I PAID for this election“….
The New Yorker ran a Benjamin Netanyahu Caption Contest. Number three’s pretty good, but I think we could’ve done better.
And at the Atlantic, Conor Alexis C. Madrigal speculates on how “Driverless Cars Would Reshape Automobiles *and* the Transit System“:
When I’ve thought about driverless cars, which if you believe Sergey Brin, will be available within “several years,” I’ve tended to think of them as a drop-in replacement for our current automobiles…
But maybe that’s not what would happen at all. Changes in transportation technology have tended to be accompanied by changes to transportation systems, too. Long-time technologist Brad Templeton argues that this will, in fact, be the case. And he’s even got an idea of what the big shift might be. We could enter the age of the “whistlecar.” If one can hire a cheap specialized ‘robotaxi’ (or whistlecar) on demand when one has a special automotive need,” Templeton writes, “car users can elect to purchase a vehicle only for their most common needs, rather than trying to meet almost all of them — or to not purchase at all.”
This vision is kind of stunning: imagine the Kiva Systems logistics robots that now speed around major warehouses, but for people. Transportation-as-a-service models could really take off in a world of hyperoptimized robotaxis. Not only would the robotaxis be built differently from normal cars, but people’s private vehicles (if they had one) would change as they realized how they could use the new system more effectively….
Templeton’s theorizing could also answer some of the critiques from transit-oriented environmentalists who see driverless cars as perpetuating the doomed auto-heavy American system. Don’t think about the driverless car as a fossil-fuel powered car replacement; think of it as one mode of a radically more efficient system: what could you do now within a system that now has free-floating semi-autonomous people transporters? …
Apart from rude japes and futuristic speculation, what’s on the agenda for the end of the weekend?
dmsilev
Just about done with round 2 of this year’s edition of Operation Cake, the perpetual search for new and interesting Thanksgiving dessert recipes. Just need to pull the current test item from the pan once it cools and make some whipped cream tomorrow morning.
My coworkers really love me this time of year…
Baud
Sleep, then work.
MikeJ
Speaking of zingers, CNN reports that Obama won’t be relying on cheap laffs.
Violet
I would love to have a self-driving car. It would be especially useful for older people, who might still be able to live in their homes if they had some form of transportation available to them. Public transport doesn’t work for all older folks because they have to walk too far to access it and/or too far once they get to the destination. A self-driving car would be excellent.
Violet
@dmsilev: Yum! What sort of cake(s) are you making?
Baud
@MikeJ:
I think there was some trolling going on with the Obama people:
Romney drinking game, anyone?
Baud
If a robot can win the Republican nomination, I don’t see why one can’t drive a car.
beltane
@MikeJ: The best comeback to whatever lame zingers Romney throws would be for Obama to remain deadpan, like “OK, dude, whatever.”
dmsilev
@Violet: Traditionally chocolate is a key ingredient; we combine that with my Mom’s once-a-year apple pie and that’s enough for dessert. The one sitting on the cooling rack right now is pretty close to a soufflé, with some additional flavorings from coffee and rum.
MikeJ
@Baud:
You have to play with Wonderbread and lukewarm tapwater.
Pen
I’ve got a 50 minute commute each way for work and my parents live an hour away. As long as it can handle country roads I’d consider a self-driving car a major free time godsend.
dmsilev
@Baud:
My liver hasn’t fully recovered from the GOP primary debates, thank you very much.
JoyfulA
As Atrios said, with self-driving cars, we’d still have rush hour traffic jams.
Political Observer
Mitt Romney only down 4 in the latest Ohio poll (PPP), and that’s a DEMOCRAT pollster.
Hopey McChangey’s approval rating is also down in Gallup, and his lead is declining there as well.
Looks like Obambi peaked too early.
Violet
@dmsilev: Sounds delicious. You’re not making the Cherpumple or Pumpple, are you?
Political Observer
Romney also down only 2 in the latest ARG Virginia poll.
Again, Hopey peaked way too early. And this is BEFORE the debates.
The Libya Coverup is also going to have major ramifications. What did he know? When did he know it? Should Susan Rice resign? It’s either incompetence or lying, either way, this could be the October Surprise.
Pen
@JoyfulA: yeah, and? The choice is still between being stuck in traffic driving, and being stuck in traffic doing something else. I’m willing to take that trade.
Alison
@beltane: Or maybe a “Cool story, bro”.
Yutsano
@Political Observer: Please let your gallus gallus domesticus fornication continue apace. There is also a poll that has him up by nine. So uhh yeah, learn the term outlier.
Litlebritdifrnt
Norman (my Mum’s partner) and I spent the day fixing the leaking downstairs toilet. We bought all new hardware for inside of the tank which boasts “15 minute installation!” what they don’t tell you of course is that it is going to take three fucking hours getting the rusted bolts that attach the tank to the bowl out of there, then another hour or so getting the old hardware out of the tank (because it also appears to have frozen in time), and then another hour because a certain party (not me) put the seals on the wrong way round which ended up with the toilet leaking like a damn sieve the first time we tried to flush it. My back now feels like it has been trampled by donkeys. I wanted to take a bath to ease the muscles but discovered to my disgust that the damn stopper to the bath no longer functions correctly (yet another thing to fix). Le sigh.
Baud
@Yutsano:
Ha! You fed the troll first. You lose.
Violet
@Litlebritdifrnt: Done this for two toilets recently. Total lie that it’s 15 minutes. Both took several hours. One is still leaking water into the bowl and I do not have the energy to take it apart again to figure out why. Total pain.
jwb
@Political Observer: Weak tea, man, very weak tea. Get yourself an upgrade and come back with something real. Then perhaps we can talk.
Pen
@Political Observer: yay. My first PO sighting! Is this the new and improved troll model I’ve been hearing so much about? It seems as clueless and sure of itself as the last couple models to be honest.
WaterGirl
@Violet: A self-drivng car would scare the crap out of me.
And I don’t think it’s just the old twilight zone episode about the car with no driver that’s scaring me.
Baud
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Sounds like you followed the Mitt Romney Guide to Toilet Repair: False promise of an easy fix followed by hours of thankless labor.
arguingwithsignposts
Okay, AL, I appreciate all the open threads you toss up at odd hours around here, but this:
is just wrong.
There have been numerous commenters bringing that twitter hashtag up over several threads for at least two days now. Do any of you FPers besides DougJ even read this blog?
ETA: And no, I didn’t mention the hashtag, so I’m not tooting my own horn here.
dmsilev
@Violet: Heh. I’m pretty sure my mother would disown me if I even hinted at wanting to make something like that. Never mind the hideousness of the final product, who the hell has the time for something that elaborate on the day before Thanksgiving?
jwb
@Pen: I think this is one specially designed for the BJ community. It’s still going through development, so we’ll have to give it some time to get under our skins.
PsiFighter37
@Political Observer: fuck you and the magical unicorn you worship.
PF37 +5
You’re the worst. I will drink your tears on Election Night and do my morning beer-fueled dump in your vicinity so you can smell the rotten stank of defeat when you wake up.
scav
@JoyfulA: Depends. There could be a lot more coordinating of individual cars with common software that could re-route them effectively. Also, if they’re on-demand, there could be cost-benefits included to drive up ride sharing (also automated so could be implemented more generally).
TG Chicago
Any chance we could get the ActBlue thermometer for Elizabeth Warren on the front page tonight? I believe there’s a filing deadline at midnight.
Yutsano
@Baud: Does this mean I have to buy the pizza? :)
(I really didn’t want to cook anyway…)
JoyfulA
@Pen: No difference to me. I’ve been working in an office down the hall from my bedroom for 30 years. Before that, I took a trolley to work.
arguingwithsignposts
PO is already gone. don’t waste your pixels.
Baud
@Yutsano:
You have to host the BJ Election Night Party, where the secret identity of our resident troll will be revealed.
Political Observer
I see no one wants to talk about the Libya Coverup. It’s a huge foreign policy scandal and Obambi is going to get pummeled with it next week.
Romney in the lead in either Ohio or Virginia in the polls by next Saturday.
You can count on it. Obambi peaked early, just like Carter in 1980.
WaterGirl
@Baud: The same words jumped out at me when I read the Obama statement, but my first thought was “beer and soda”, neither of which mormon’s can drink.
PsiFighter37
@arguingwithsignposts: that’s sad, because I like doing my best Rude Pundit impression on his sorry ass.
Spaghetti Lee
@Baud:
the secret identity of our resident troll will be revealed.
(Pulls off mask.) “Old Man Jenkins?!”
Speaking of spooky things, does it mean I have no taste if 666 Park Avenue looks kind of intriguing?
Southern Beale
This story is bizarre:
Does a gun safe just explode? I’m kinda wondering how much life insurance Mrs. Wood carried.
arguingwithsignposts
@Baud:
fixed.
Political Observer
@PsiFighter37:
LOL u mad, bro? You’re the one whose going to by whining and crying on election night. Pack your bags for Canada while you can.
jeffreyw
@Yutsano: Here ya go, I have some leftover sausages.
Gozer
Spent the day cleaning the house with Dr. Mrs. Gozer then studied French while she returned to writing her tenure book. I am now enjoying a tasty Dogfish Head Festina Pêche malt beverage and thinking about what I’m going to eat for dinner.
arguingwithsignposts
@PsiFighter37: oops, spoke too soon. Apparently, the Romney campaign dropped a little more UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH! in his mom’s paypal account.
PsiFighter37
@Political Observer: It really doesn’t take much weak tea and other hallucinogens to give you peak wingboner.
dmsilev
@arguingwithsignposts: I wonder whether it’s paid by the hour or by the comment?
Pen
@JoyfulA: damn do I envy you. I look the fuel chunk of my mint.com expenses pie,chart every month and cringe. That’s what I get for being born in, and staying in, a small jobless town 30 miles from the nearest decent employer.
PsiFighter37
@Political Observer: I’m not mad. I just think it’s funny someone is trying to beat Dick Morris in the anti-prognostication business without getting paid for it. Dumbass.
Southern Beale
Also, here’s a weird story: the man who attacked Lindsay Lohan in her hotel room is a staffer for Illinois Republican Congressman John Shimkus.
WTF.
Chyron HR
@Political Observer:
That’s right, dear. You just sit at your computer, sobbing and wailing, “Messiah Romney is only losing by five points!” Whatever makes you feel better. You can even go jerk off to your faded Romney posters in your childhood bedroom.
Political Observer
@PsiFighter37:
True the vote, the Super PACs, the debates, the Libya Coverup, an Iran-Israel War…there are tons of ways for Romney to win this thing. And he will.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
We Democrats can talk in code too. ;-)
arguingwithsignposts
@dmsilev: well, I’m not sure, but it’s certainly not paid by the grammar. And I surmise it only gets a deposit monthly, because it disappears for weeks on end but shows up, strangely enough, right around the first of the month.
Wonder what it will do after Nov. 7th? go back to /b/?
TG Chicago
@Violet: Would self-driving cars also be self-parking cars? I wonder how that would work. If they could park themselves, then they could let you off at the front door (helpful for older folks), then come pick you up when you’re ready. But that seems pretty complicated. Would you program in the GPS coordinates of every fire hydrant to ensure legal parking?
Roger Moore
@Violet:
Another obvious use case is people who enjoy drinking. It would be a lot more fun to hang out at a bar if your car can serve as designated driver.
Baud
@Spaghetti Lee:
Don’t know anything about 666 Park Avenue, but I agree the title is intriguing. Sounds like one of those shows that will be either awesome or really lame.
@arguingwithsignposts:
Agreed. Much better.
scav
@TG Chicago: Certain fire depts probably already have the coordinates in data layers.
BGinCHI
For the Bibi contest:
“3, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, I’m serious here. 1, 1, 1, it’s a bomb with a lit fuse, people.”
JoyfulA
@scav: True, Scav. These are not things I worry about in my home office, but whistling one up on demand would enable me to go without owning any vehicles whatsoever.
It would also do away with a couple of scourges: drunk driving and confiscating the car keys from the elderly too infirm to keep driving.
Peter
Really PO? ‘He’s only down by halfway to a landslide!’ Is the best you can do?
Spaghetti Lee
I don’t like the idea of self-driving cars, for no other reason than I have a deep and impervious fear of robots. You just know one day you’ll get into one and it will do the whole “I’m sorry, Dave” bit.
James E. Powell
I spent a good part of the weekend reading everything published by the know-it-alls and big shots of the political world. There is a consensus setting in on the race and I hate when a consensus sets in on anything because it usually bad or wrong or both.
But if Romney doesn’t give a bunch of pundits star-bursts in the debate this week, they are going to start ridiculing him openly. What can he do to help himself? What will he do if it doesn’t work?
No one seems to want to talk about that second question.
Roger Moore
@PsiFighter37:
You sure it’s not being paid for trolling here?
Baud
Ich bin ein caymaner. #Romneyzingers.
Hill Dweller
@Political Observer: It’s only been a few weeks since the Libya attack, and you rocket scientists are claiming a cover up?
Once again, the wingnuts are trying to exploit something without thinking ahead. It will backfire…again.
Xecky Gilchrist
@WaterGirl: “beer and soda”, neither of which mormon’s can drink.
Pop is OK, so long as it’s not caffeinated. I was living here in Utah when Pepsi Free debuted, and the Mormons went completely nuts buying that stuff.
Before that, Sprite mixed with Kool-Aid was a major staple of Mormon potlucks, like the notorious Funeral Potatoes. Probably still is.
PsiFighter37
@Political Observer: You’re a moron. Not going to spoil any more of my Sunday night football wasting it on a delusional piece of worthless shit like yourself.
Seanly
I love our trolls! They need to stop checking out unskewedpolls.com
Another Halocene Human
I envision: more people losing their jobs.
Also, some really horrific crashes. No computer-controlled system is complete without them.
What if you order a whistlecar … and it’s not empty?
And who can afford it?
Watch this service become the excuse to dismantle transit and paratransit, even though most of the people on paratransit don’t have the means to own a car or even call a taxi and most of the people on transit can’t afford a car either or at least can’t afford to park it daily.
dance around in your bones
I’m (re)watching “To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar!” which is funny but not as good as “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”.
Peter
@Hill Dweller: The ‘Libya Coverup’ is apparently what they’re calling that ridiculously ineffective attack about how Obama didn’t IMMEDIATELY run out and call the Libya attack terrorism.
I’m not sure why even a loony like PO would think that was a winner for Romney, though. All it can do is remind people of how on the day when American soil was under fire, Romney looked like Goofus and Obama like Gallant.
Another Halocene Human
If this driverless car thing comes to pass, I’ll have to leave my current career to go into social work, and I’m not a people person.
Fuck.
WereBear
I have dreamed of a world with Johnnycabs.
PsiFighter37
@Roger Moore: I’d like to think trolls on the Internet were still pure of heart, unable of being corrupted by the power of coin.
Roger Moore
@TG Chicago:
In the long term, you’d probably need smart curbs that told the cars about parking rules. That would let you deal with all kinds of stuff beyond just fire hydrants: loading zones, handicapped parking, time restrictions, meters (and meter rates), etc.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Another Halocene Human: All of this.
I don’t see these becoming feasible anytime soon. The low-tech similar thing I use that is actually pretty handy is the car share services, where you can rent a car for a few hours, and they just have them at various convenient places around town.
Gravenstone
@PsiFighter37: To be fair dude, you seem to drink everything else. Wingnut tears might be a new taste for you.
BGinCHI
@dance around in your bones: Best movies with a comma in the title?
arguingwithsignposts
If we’d gotten our jetpacks, like we were promised, we wouldn’t need robot cars.
Litlebritdifrnt
@efgoldman:
@violet
Yeah that is pretty much how it went, there were many “oh shit turn the water back off, now, get some bowls or something” moments in our day. We finally got it sorted about 7pm, but we have some containers under the tank just in case it all goes pear shaped overnight.
Another Halocene Human
@Violet: US law requires that shadow paratransit service be provided within a certain radius and on the same days and times as fixed route transit service. It is door to door and trips are either scheduled a day in advance or an hour in advance depending on whether they use paper or computer scheduling. By law they cannot charge more than twice the one-way fare on the fixed route service.
An older person who can afford a car can certainly afford trips on paratransit. You should let your friends know.
Pen
@Another Halocene Human: considering I just watched traffic get jammed up and redirected today because some moron in a pickup t-boned a motorcycle on the highway I’m not too terrible concerned with computer caused crashes. Humans are bad enough, and while I know we’ll hear about every.single.crash caused by ai the simple fact is they’ll probably still be safer than people. The issue isn’t that they’ll crack, it’s that I highly doubt people can handle the whole “I trust MY driving, but other people suck” becoming “I’m putting my life into a robots hands”. That loss of agency never goes well for the first generation. I imagine cruise control was treated in much the same way when items first proposed.
lacp
@Southern Beale: WTF was in that gun case? RPGs? Hellfire missiles? Maybe he’s one of those militia dudes, with the 500 firearms and 100,000 rounds of ammo.
dmsilev
@Peter: And apparently this scandal is supposed to require firing our UN Ambassador. Because argle bargle shut up, that’s why.
JoyfulA
@Pen: You, too, could work via the Internet (previously by mail, UPS, and Fedex) as long as you have high-speed Internet access (I’m nowhere big, but small towns a few miles away have dish only).
I make less money and get no precious bennies, but a way of making a living at home was a godsend when I needed it badly, and now I don’t think I could ever commute, work set strict hours, dress how I’m supposed to dress, and get along with everybody all the time.
dance around in your bones
@BGinCHI: Why, yes, as a matter of fact, yes, indeed!
PsiFighter37
@Gravenstone: I can’t wait to spike my craft beers with wingnut tears the evening of November 6th. I expect to experience the awesome hallucinations they enjoy on a daily basis.
Pen
@arguingwithsignposts: energy density’s a bitch. Me? I’ll take my mech armor suit over a jetpack any day if we can get the energy density storage required for both. Because let’s face it, Iron Man looks way cooler than Rocketeer.
Cassidy
Great. Just what we need. Another topic that the Apple fanboi’s and Anti-Apple hipsters can argue about.
“You only bought your car because it has the Apple symbol.”
“I bought it because it comes with an integrated customer experience that was designed way before Google.”
“Yeah, but I can do so much more with my robocar. Apple doesn’t do anything good, just okay across the board. Also the speakers in my Google car can project 4 db higher than the crappy Apple ones and shut up, that’s why”
BGinCHI
Ronald Reagan sold arms illegally to the Iranians, who were even more eviller than they are now (perception), to illegally supply a group of Central American revolutionaries.
Obama waits until they’re sure it’s a terrorist attack if they are going to say it is, for reasons that might be perfectly understandable.
We live in an asymmetrical universe.
Yutsano
@BGinCHI: “Good-bye, Mr Chips” is a top contender. To go all old school.
BGinCHI
@arguingwithsignposts: I blame Ed Begley, Jr.
Roger Moore
@PsiFighter37:
I think you left out the PF37 + ∞
BGinCHI
@dance around in your bones: Way better than Love, Actually, but not as good as What’s Up, Pussycat?
Spaghetti Lee
My God, this Eagles-Giants game is BORING!
Xecky Gilchrist
@Cassidy: LOL win
dmsilev
@BGinCHI: Once you realize that everything Ronald Reagan did was good and everything that Barack Obama has done is bad, it will all make sense.
Pen
@JoyfulA: Find me a logistics warehouse job I can do in one city while going to university in another, or a winery/brewery job I can do remote once I get my degree, and I’m game. Unfortunately neither my current skills o pr my interests are conducive to telepresence. I suppose I could always try my hand at self-publishing novels, but I’m pretty sure the military science fiction/urban fantasy genres are swamped atm.
As for the gun safe… What the hell was in that thing, C4?
Roger Moore
@Cassidy:
Except that, as the Google fanboys will tell you, it’s Google that’s been working on robocars for the past few years. Apple is way behind on this one.
lacp
@Xecky Gilchrist: Funeral Potatoes? That sounds ghastly.
Baud
@Cassidy:
Just wait until Apple uses this opportunity to repatent the wheel…
arguingwithsignposts
@BGinCHI: me too.
BGinCHI
@dmsilev: In 20 or 30 years when we have a transgender President, Obama will seem quaint.
(And no, I don’t mean President Coulter.)
Another Halocene Human
@Xecky Gilchrist: Car share services are pretty neat.
scav
@Cassidy: You’ve somehow escaped the Ford v. Chrysler, v. Volkswagon et. al. family battles? My lot even managed Deere v. FarmAll skirmishes.
PsiFighter37
@Roger Moore: sorry. +8 now, beeches
Liquid
how did I interpret “jude rapes” from “rude japes?”
Must be the booze.
BGinCHI
@arguingwithsignposts: I’ll bet you Jeff Goldblum does too.
BGinCHI
@scav: FarmAll rules. Don’t even bring an Allis Chalmers in here.
Hill Dweller
Only Stephen Colbert can get me to watch Oprah’s Next Chapter.
Cassidy
@Roger Moore: None of that matters. Apple always has an integrated customer experience that was designed way before [blank].
Roger Moore
@Pen:
Probably just a few thousand rounds of ammo, and maybe a few pounds of powder and a bunch of primers for reloading. I had a great aunt who reloaded rounds for the local police department as a hobby. Her plan in the event of a house fire was to run like hell and then warn the fire department of what they were getting into.
Another Halocene Human
@Pen: If it was the pickup running a light, the driverless car should fix that problem (probably). If it was the motorcycle running the light, wouldn’t a skilled human driver have a higher chance of preventing it?
One of Metro’s ugliest crashes happened because the train was running on computer control but the signal system failed. The system was built to operate faster than the line of sight allowed, meaning that when the human operator saw the ghost train it was already too late to prevent the crash.
A human can tell when they’re approaching a stale green… can the robot car tell? A human (trained human, natch) can check for red light runners–does the robot car?
I suspect the Google car has the safety parameters tuned for Granny-drivin’, and good for them.
As for cruise-control, car companies are trying to create a cruise that adjusts to slow down if a slower car gets in front of you, so you don’t have to keep flipping in and out of cruise. Cool, huh?
And there are already cars that parallel park for you. That’s relatively easy.
Xecky Gilchrist
@lacp: Funeral Potatoes? That sounds ghastly.
They can be; they’re really just a sort of lowbrow cheesy potato casserole. The name comes from the Mormon sense of occasion where every kind of ceremony, even funerals, is followed up by the same kind of potluck dinner. It’s a weird mashup of Western Frontier and ultra-suburban life.
PsiFighter37
@BGinCHI: oh, snap. That kind I comment would get troll-rated at GOS, but I applaud it here.
I am drinking too much for a workday that starts at 6:30 tomorrow morning.
Another Halocene Human
@dmsilev: This.
Pen
@Roger Moore: the question then becomes both how long they had their munitions stored and what, precisely, caused an auto-ignition. Modern rounds simply sent supposed to do that, and unless someone was jack hammering the darn thing even the components should have been perfectly stable.
Hill Dweller
@Pen: They were probably cooking meth.
Ben Franklin
I dunno about captions, but this pic is worth a thousand words.
http://972mag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/shira-glezerman.jpg
Gin & Tonic
Was away from a computer while visiting the in-laws. I know anecdotes don’t make data, but my in-laws are 86-87 years old, with poor hearing and a functional although fairly limited grasp of English. They’re also more or less Archie Bunker-style bigots, and they voted for Reagan. Just to set the stage. I seldom talk politics with them, as it just takes too much energy. But today’s gem from MIL: “Romney. He’s the one who wants to end Social Security.”
The highlights of their week are Sunday coffee in the church basement and Wednesday lunch at the senior center. Average age at both events must be well north of 70, and I’ll bet a six-pack of very good beer that they are just sharing the prevailing view.
If these people aren’t voting Romney, he has a real problem.
Litlebritdifrnt
@PsiFighter37:
You and me both but to be honest after the day I have had I think I earned it. Britty +3
JoyfulA
@Pen: I’m where I81, the PA Turnpike, and I83 cross (& near major Norfolk Southern yard), with millions of sqft of warehouses and more going up. There are also a dozen or so commutable colleges, although graduate programs are not so great, just two law schools, a lot of education and public administration grad programs, that I’m aware of (but I haven’t been in the market since I got my master’s in 1982, so who knows).
Pen
@Another Halocene Human: a situationally responsive radar system should, in theory, have a higher response time than even the best human driver. As for how the crash went down I couldn’t say, all I know is the intersection was down and surrounded by cops. I either event though this’ll definitely be one of those situations where the statistics may say one thing but people will probably think another. It’s kind of the “afraid to fly but driving’s fine” belief, only with your own car.
We’re fast approaching, or at, the point where ai algorithms can out-perform humans but people still see a computer, no matter how skilled, as a “dumb box”. I’m not sure that’ll change until we have a generation of kids browning up with ai playmates, to be honest.
freelancer
@Xecky Gilchrist:
I didn’t know they were called that. I LOOOVE the cornflake cheesy potato cassorole! I’m half Irish, and I like any form of spud, but that’s my preferred way to have them.
Pen
@JoyfulA: born and raised in a around la crosse, wi here. I keep trying to convince the wife to move to Madison or the twin cities after I graduate in 3 years but so far I always get the “but our family is here” response. Don’t fete not I love small towns but I’ll always envy you “I can walk to work” types ;-)
JoyfulA
@lacp: In this area, we have funeral pie—raisin pie—which could be made in February or March, when old folks succumbed to pneumonia and no fresh fruit was available.
1badbaba3
So four years of relentless, incessant, obsessive anti-Obama fapping has brought us this: Hopey McChangey. Hopey McMotherfuckin’ McChangey?!?!
I can’t even come up with a snappy comeback for that one. They really are going to put the Onion out of business.
trollhattan
@WaterGirl:
I prefer sharing the road with a self-driving car over jousting a Buick or Avalon with a continuous left turn signal.
Just sayin’.
Xecky Gilchrist
@freelancer: I’m likewise wrt the Irish and spud-loving bits. I also like these casseroles a lot, but had to cut way back on such things with the dreaded hereditary cholesterol troubles and all. Getting older kind of bites.
Honus
Electoral-vote.com has only 5 states in play in its latest map IA VA NC FLA and CO. All are leaning slightly for Obama. If Romney wins them all, Obama still has 270 electoral votes. Libya coverup True the Vote October surprise my ass.
oldswede
@lacp:
It’s Idaho.
karen marie
This self-driving car thing sounds ridiculous to me. The only difference between them and advanced public transportation is that everyone gets their own private compartment and it’s door-to-door.
I don’t see how it would be affordable for another 100 years or better. We can’t manage to build high-speed rail or even light rail infrastructure in this country, how are we going to build the kind of infrastructure that would be necessary for self-driving cars? There would have to be dedicated lanes, if not entire roads, to accommodate them. It would be difficult to have a system where you’re mixing self-driving and person-driving vehicles.
trollhattan
@1badbaba3:
I haz a sad the teabaggers ran out of steam to do rallies at the state capitol, because I miss the photo-ops. To your point, they’ve not progressed one iota since the heady days of 4.15.09.
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4029/4525186416_bdc9590597_z.jpg
They’re simply not that bright.
Litlebritdifrnt
@freelancer:
I am English, if a formal (ie Sunday or Christmas) meal does not include at least TWO potato dishes then it is considered a failure, my favorites are a) mashed and b) roasted in the meat juices.
Oh BTW watched Dr. Who on demand this morning (went to bed too early to watch it last night), I thought it was a brilliant conclusion to the Amy and Rory story, just absolutely and utterly brilliant. There really was no other way that it could end and I thought it was some of the best acting of the show from Karen and Arthur. I LOVED IT. That is all.
Joel
I cannot wait for my ED-209.
maya
@Roger Moore: It was being leased out as Bibi’s bomb repository. He was right afterall.
jwb
I love the PPP polls tonight. They asked whether Republican voters thought the polls were purposefully skewed by pollsters in the favor of Obama: NC 77/9 that polls are skewed; OH 72/14.
JoyfulA
@Pen: I’m here (and bored) because elderly family members are here, after a few decades in Philly, and I know what you’re saying.
Another Halocene Human
@Pen: Well, if you have a hybrid or any other sufficiently superior braking system it could make up for not being able to model the distant and peripheral action. The human brain actually creates a model of what it believes to be around it, of course subject to inattention, bad driving habits, and at least 1.8 seconds of perception-reaction delay.
If anything good comes of this, maybe it will be creating leverage to take the wheel away from a) the drunk and b) that 15% of drivers causing 80% of crashes. FACE IT, YOU SUCK AT DRIVING.
/angry commercial driver
Pen
@karen marie: they’re reactive driving systems that coexist with existing vehicles, no new infrastructure necessary. As for not for 100 years… I run a crew at work that includes 3 autonomous fork lifts and our inventory is completely automated. I play games every day with ai that regularly strategically out-thinks and tactically outflanks my team. I interact with an ai search system that regularly, and accurately, extrapolates what I’m looking for no matter how much I mangle my sear. And, most impressively, my son had a major medical problem diagnosed by an ai algorithm looking over his charts and his survival depended on a robotically assisted microsurgery that wouldn’t have been possible with only human hands. The future’s here now.
None of these systems at general, “do I have a soul?” AI, but they’re still damn good at what they do.
Another Halocene Human
@Pen: We’re fast approaching, or at, the point where ai algorithms can out-perform humans but people still see a computer, no matter how skilled, as a “dumb box”. I’m not sure that’ll change until we have a generation of kids browning up with ai playmates, to be honest.
GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT
Can a computer see as well as a human? No? Oh well, then.
freelancer
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I’m trying to duck Who spoilers because I just started Series 6. Moffat makes the best monsters and I’m going as the eleventh doctor for Halloween.
arguingwithsignposts
@Pen: Not to harsh on your mellow, but by the same token, ai algorithms helped bring the world economy to its knees in 2008, and continues to fuck with us all through the Wall Street cas1no.
ETA: I’m happy there are machines that are supposed to make our lives better, but at some point, we’re going to have a lot of people with nothing to do, and that’s going to be an ugly place.
1badbaba3
@Ben Franklin: That is so awesome it should be shunned by decent society.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
Gotta pack a suitcase. Looks like the team going to Mexico on Tues will be 2 people and one might be me. I stashed my leftover Pesos just in case. Dunno what city yet but I hope that compared to Puebla it has less rain, a good hotel and no earthquakes.
Damn. Debate. Someone please post a link to a livestream of the debate in case I’m out of the US on Tues. I can get here from hotel internet and I’d hate to miss the debate fun.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Halocene Human: Can a human get a several-hundred-pound bomb traveling at near-supersonic speeds down the chimney of a house? No? Oh well, then.
Gin & Tonic
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist: The debate is Wed, not Tues.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Gin & Tonic: “Use the Force, Luke”
Pen
@Gin & Tonic: This.
We don’t need general AI for driving. They don’t need to be able to see what color the house down the street is, laugh at the little kid’s badly spelled lemonade sign on the corner, or see the homeless by the lights. No, they need to be able to perform object detection and follow GPS/cellular tower mapping directions mind react accordingly. This is no small task and even 10 years ago it w pure science fiction, but not any more.
A general vision system for robots is the holy grail precisely because of how useful it would be. Me, I think it would put pretty much all blue-collar workers out of a job, but thankfully it’s not needed for something as relatively simple as driving.
Gin & Tonic
@arguingwithsignposts:
That’s what people have said about every major advance in manufacturing technology.
JustAnotherBob
@TG Chicago:
Think about the value of self-driving taxis for people who live in the “wrong” part of town or who have the “wrong” skin color. If you’ve got a valid account the taxi will pick you up and take you home.
Think about how it would make EVs very usable as taxis. If they need a charge then they can take themselves out of service for a few minutes and “central control” can send one with adequate range.
Think about how it can solve the parking problems in urban downtowns. Only a certain number of units would be standing by, extra units could move themselves out of the crowded area to parking lots.
Want to ride somewhere in a private vehicle? Enter your destination and pickup time on your phone/pad/puter. If you’ve got a number of people or a mattress to move then enter ‘special needs’. You can be notified two minutes/30 seconds/whatever before the taxi pulls up.
If people had access to this sort of service I suspect many would be willing to give up their personal car and use these plus public transportation.
Self-driving cars can travel safely much closer together. And they will change lanes “politely”. We’ll be able to cut down on commute traffic jams because cars can move more efficiently, even self-select less crowded routes.
dance around in your bones
I remember as a kid reading a schoolbook (this was in the late 50’s? early 60’s?) that was predicting what we would be doing in the future.
The self-driving cars were big, and microwaves, but the microwave was a handheld device that you would point at a sink full of dishes, which would kinda boil them and Bingo! clean!
Nobody predicted the microwave oven.
Bill Arnold
@Political Observer:
If you genuinely believe that your postings here have predictive value, go make a killing on Intrade buying Romney futures. 4 to 1 returns in a little more than a month. Just saying…
jrg
Anyone who’s concerned that autonomous cars will worsen the fossil fuel problem is an imbecile. Besides the obvious advantage of more efficient routes, traffic knowledge integration, and drafting (a computer’s response time is so fast it could brake immediately if the car in front of it did – if the two cars were networked, the braking could happen concurrently), driverless cars would also allow pools of cars to be upgraded to newer, more efficient fuels far more rapidly.
Pen
@arguingwithsignposts: ever read Manna by Marshall Brain? It gets utopian (ok, a lot) at the end but the basic premise is both plausible and depressing as all hell. We’re in for a world of hurt when our tech is capable of auto-assembly and most people don’t need to work to live. Our society simply isn’t built to handle the whole “you don’t actually need to work” thing and I’m not sure our capital/trade system could accommodate it without devolving into serfs and resource barons.
Maude
@Roger Moore:
There was a barn with barrels of gunpowder and it blew up. You could hear it for miles and miles. The road was closed for two weeks.
Pen
@Gin & Tonic: and they weren’t wrong. We had a world war and a generation banking bubble to prop up the system the last time automation shrunk the needed workforce. What do we have to do the same this time? Me, I’d rather not go the war route again because let’s face it, no matter how much the neocons might be chomping at the bit those guys are morons.
Litlebritdifrnt
@freelancer:
That is why I wanted my opinion to be as generic as possible and not give anything away. I hope it did that.
piratedan
@Pen: another concept would be to embed “sensors” in the road itself that would work as touchstones offering data to the road network. It would mean that they would gauge things like the temperature, moisture, traffic. The thing would require loads of jobs and could be worked into state budgets as they resurface and repair the existing roads (I know in Az, they chip seal roads about every other year). If Eisenhower could start the project for the Interstate system, why not this?
zattarra
Yeah, anyone who thinks we’re getting mass production driverless cars inside of a decade is pretty clueless. Not really surprised to see someone like Sergey Brin saying it though, these silicon valley guys have no clue how automobiles are produced, what goes into them, any concept of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards or the true scale of vehicle on the road.
You can barely get people to buy an adaptive cruise control option these days, the cost makes it prohibitive on anything but a high end luxury car, the sensor technology currently available limits where you can mount it on vehicle and the tuning work is long, difficult and expensive. Now you want to add turning? You want people to start driving these in cities? Do these people really understand what you have to do to tune out sensitivy to road objects and watch out for things other than the car right in front? And then start adapting this with stability control – that’s one darn expensive controller you’re putting in there and a whole lot of cost.
Silicon Valley’s current attempt to mass produce a car and all the delays and re-forecasting of production volumes should tell you all you need to know about when these geniuses decide they know better than people who have done it for decades how to do something they’ve never tried before. There estimates and plans are smacked pretty hard by the real world.
Gin & Tonic
@Pen: They were wrong. The Jacquard loom was disastrous for employment (of humans) in the weaving industry. But it prompted Charles Babbage to think about computation. Would we have the Internet otherwise? I don’t know and neither do you.
It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.
SiubhanDuinne
@JustAnotherBob:
But no more high-speed chases? What will Fox do for sensational programming?
arguingwithsignposts
@Pen:
Yeah, that’s my take. And I’m a little more pessimistic about it than “not sure” given humanity’s track record.
Mike in NC
Soppppp
Litlebritdifrnt
Oh and BTW the guys on the east coast of The Fogbow blogosphere are having a meetup in Myrtle Beach this coming weekend. We are going to be spending the entire weekend together and eating dinner at Molly Darcy’s either on Friday night or Saturday night (agenda still fluid at this point), anyone here in the region who would like to join the number one birther debunking gang on the web please feel free to contact me for the details.
Andrey
@karen marie: We’re mixing self-driving and person-driven cars right now. Self-driving cars are not a theoretical point; they are on the road in Nevada and California as we speak. They require no infrastructure. Even the “whistlecar” concept would not need anything we don’t have – a central dispatch service (taxis use this already), some parking garages to store the cars as they wait (Japan even has robotic parking garages that pack cars tighter than a human can), some car-to-car interface system (you can use radio, wireless, even direct optical connections).
@Another Halocene Human: Actually, a computer can see much better than a human. Humans don’t have a built-in 360-degree LIDAR detector. A computer is not as good at specific tasks that humans have adapted to – like detecting faces – but a car doesn’t need faces to drive, it needs relative position data and obstacle detection. RADAR + LIDAR are much better than simple visible-light for that, and they can operate in pitch darkness, fog, rain, etc.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Halocene Human:
Can’t and don’t want to edit my own post from earlier. But from publicly available information (probably understated) the KH-12 spy satellite has a resolving power of 5 inches from an altitude of 200 miles. Do you?
Maude
@SiubhanDuinne:
Blue screen of death.
zattarra
By the way, and I mean no offense here, but the theories being thrown out here for what to do with an automated car network are very far removed from how these vehicles will work. You’re thinking stuff from science fiction novels with road sensors, traffic control computers and stuff. That has nothing to do with how these vehicle will operate using existing or even stretch technologies. Think self contained vehicles with at most GPS and 3G external communication to tell on onboard system where the vehicle is. But that “where” knowledge won’t do much good and won’t be used to tell the vehicle how to drive or exactly where to turn.
Pen
@arguingwithsignposts: I was being generous. My usual take on it is “gated community and armed guards manning the gates” mixed with feudal Europe. The plot may be unrealistic, but the basic sociological imbalance displayed between the Capital and the districts in Hunger Games doesn’t strike me as particularly impossible given a sufficiently advanced manufacturing sector.
It’s always a fools errand to predict the future of tech, but the growth curves are there and when you combine them with man nature it doesn’t paint a reassuring future.
Pen
@zattarra: and this is different than what I’ve been talking about how, exactly?
zattarra
@Pen: Sorry, addressing a majority of people and the linked articles. Yeah, some people might understand this ain’t coming soon but the article listed and the link to Sergey Brin – pure fantasy that way too many people are buying into. I do this stuff for a living, I know where the tech is now, I know where it’s going to be in 5 years and I know how this stuff works and how things get released to market and adopted.
JustAnotherBob
@Pen:
It’s a problem that we will have to solve.
Clearly we are dis-inventing the need for labor, both skilled and unskilled.
We could get a head start with a Constitutional amendment that takes person-hood away from corporations so that we, the people, get to decide how to apportion work and goods.
It has been calculated that when we were hunter-gatherers we worked only a few hours per day. Much less than we do now. We evolved to deal with leisure time.
What if we restructured for a four day work week and twenty years to retirement? That would spread existing jobs over twice as many people and free up people after they matured a bit. Put younger folks to work and keep them out of trouble.
Anne Laurie
@arguingwithsignposts:
Believe it or not, there are readers who never dig down into the comments here. (I do my best to read all the front-page posts, but I can’t do better than all responses to my own posts and maybe 60-75% of the full comment threads.)
So I checked to make sure none of the other front-pagers had already posted the twitter link, and then I gave those of you who’d already exhausted its possibilities another couple topics to
bitch aboutdiscuss.sharl
I see that the FPer formerly known as DougJ has taken the advice of commenters on an earlier post. GIVE IT UP for Metrosexual Manichean Monster DougJ!
freelancer
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Success achieved, I’ve already been spoiled that it is the end of an era.
Violet
@sharl: Good catch.
Hill Dweller
Obama was apparently ridiculing Willard’s zingers during his rally in Vegas tonight.
Violet
Interesting reading all the self-driving car comments. I’d just like a car that takes me from my home to where I’m going, whenever I want it and that costs only as much as, and preferably less, than owning a regular car.
@Another Halocene Human: Thanks for the info. I had never even heard of paratransit before. I’ll look into it and let people who might benefit from it know.
jenn
@Gin & Tonic: OT, but have you read The Philosophical Breakfast Club? Babbage was one of the members. Terrific book.
arguingwithsignposts
@freelancer: EVERYBODY DIES! DEXTER DID IT, AND THE METH-PRODUCER CHEMISTRY TEACHER IS BURIED IN NEW JERSEY BY THE BUTLER FROM DOWNTON ABBEY!
Gin & Tonic
@jenn: No I haven’t, but I’ll look into it, thanks. I’ve gotten some good book recs here.
SiubhanDuinne
@Hill Dweller:
What did he say?
Even better — link?
arguingwithsignposts
@SiubhanDuinne: maybe obama’s anger translator showed up.
MikeJ
@Gin & Tonic:
All those ultra impressive Hubble pictures people love? Hubble was a second or third best KH series sat available at the time, and there have been several new one since then.
JustAnotherBob
@Another Halocene Human:
Can a human ‘see’ an object moving into the path of a car and react as fast as a computer? Nope.
Do humans stay focused on the task of detecting objects moving into the path of a car every second? Nope.
When I was eleven I got hit from behind while walking well off the road. The driver was looking at flowers in bloom on the other side of the road and failed to notice that they were veering off the road and into Bob.
amk
kenyan muslin – Now that you’ve got in your much practiced zingers governor, can we move on to more serious things in life? As I was saying….
SiubhanDuinne
@arguingwithsignposts: That would be pretty awesome.
@JustAnotherBob: Yikes!
Andrey
I’m reminded of a particular anecdote regarding the self-driving cars. This may be apocryphal, but I recall a study done on how people reacted to two different questions. “Would you want a computer to be your doctor?” received almost universal “no”. “Would you want a computer to help your doctor?” received an almost universal “yes”.
Self-Xing X is not necessarily a strict switch over. The self-driving cars on the road right now still have a driver’s seat, and there’s generally a driver in it. It’s possible to take manual control whenever you feel like it. Will that always be the case? Perhaps not, but that part probably won’t change for a while – if only because it’s a lot cheaper to make a basic car with an auto-driver option than to build a separate car with no driver controls.
different-church-lady
@Pen: Mitt Romney is evidence against your theory.
different-church-lady
@Spaghetti Lee:
How you feelin’ about it now?
JustAnotherBob
Just about every time I go to town I see at least one dead deer along the highway. People don’t intentionally hit deer, you can get killed doing that.
Deer (at least ours) tend to travel in twos and threes. A doe with her one year old and her latest fawn commonly stick together. It’s very common for the doe to cross the road in front of cars, drivers tend to watch the crossing doe. They often do not look back to where the doe came from in order to see the next crossing deer.
Computers can look in all directions, all at the same time.
—
Apparently the largest reason for drivers to have accidents in Britain is guys watching women.
I’ve come close to being hit a few times (at low speeds) by people talking on cell phones and wandering out of their lane. Once was a guy.
Humans just aren’t good at staying on task…
A moocher
@Political Observer: I’ll take that bet. $100 at 10:1.
Put your money down, or go DIAF.
seaboogie
The ‘pubs are spending two months trying to program a robot to say “That’s what your Momma said last night”. If they programmed a self-driving car, it would be a Cadillac with the right turn signal permanently stuck on “on”…
pseudonymous in nc
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I will never stop regarding American toilets as fundamentally wrong: flapper valves, floor flanges, those bloody wax rings.
different-church-lady
@JustAnotherBob:
And then crash.
pseudonymous in nc
@A moocher:
Very-ass can’t afford to bet three months’ Team Rmoney Paid Troll salary; it barely pays for his Cheetos.
JustAnotherBob
@different-church-lady:
Sure.
If the computer crashes the car stops.
If the driver’s heart stops the car crashes.
pseudonymous in nc
As for Google and driverless cars, the point to remember is that we’re talking about a company with institutional high-functioning Asperger’s, and that it ends up built into everything they do. The whole “semi-autonomous people transporter” concept is being built by people who may take a bus into work, but it’s a corporate shuttle transporting nobody but Googlers.
different-church-lady
@JustAnotherBob: What if the car merely has a bug instead of crashing outright?
Neil Armstrong could have died a hell of a lot sooner than he did, because the computer on Apollo 11 was going to put them down in a boulder field. He landed the thing semi-manually. According to a PBS doc. I saw a number of years ago he wouldn’t have had a window to look out if the designers had their way, and Armstrong insisted they be able to see where they were going.
Yes, computers have come a long way since then, but I guarantee we will have experiences with learning how our computer driven cars figure out new ways for us to die in accidents. Maybe there will be fewer accidents, but if the design of my cell phone is any indication, it won’t be without some folks getting maimed and killed in fresh, surprising fashions along the way.
different-church-lady
@pseudonymous in nc: What they really want is for us not to have to look at the road so that our eyes will be on their ads at all times.
mbss
self driving cars are way too “fifth element” for me.
where are they taking me? skynet is in charge.
different-church-lady
@Baud:
Have you seen the way that robot has been steering his campaign?
JustAnotherBob
@different-church-lady:
I’ve been almost (seriously almost – days in ICU/fractured skull, crushed chest serious) killed twice by drunk drivers. And, as I reported earlier, I was hit while walking by a distracted driver. I have lost multiple friends to drunk drivers. I drove off the road and into a field one night when I went to sleep (cold stone sober).
When is comes to humans, they are not reliable. They crash and crash big time.
We will introduce computer driven cars gradually, bringing separate features in as we feel comfortable with them. We will build lots of redundancy into the systems. The default for any problem will be Stop the Car!. Computer driven cars will not run red lights or decide to try to beat the train to the crossing.
The Google cars now have accumulated 300,000 miles of crash free driving. The observer sitting behind the wheel has never had to take over control.
Their cars have been involved in two accidents. One was rear ended while stopped at a red light – hit by a human piloted car. Another got a dented fender when a human was driving it around the parking lot.
Armstrong flew with a very crude computer. You cell phone is probably far smarter.
JustAnotherBob
@different-church-lady:
Download an ad blocker.
What most of us would be doing if we weren’t driving is surfing the web….
Dennis SGMM
All Watched Over
by Machines of Loving Grace
by Richard Brautigan
I’d like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
Another Halocene Human
Teens seduce priest? (warning: Huffpo link)
WTF? Why would a teenager be interested in a nasty old priest? Okay, maybe there were one or two who weren’t completely horrible, but who sees a cassock (besides my wife, who is Jewish and a big fan of genre slash) and thinks sexay beast?
And then you read about priests plying teens with alcohol… same old, same old.
The gay music director was at our church for 30 years and never diddled any of the kids. Now, for one thing (I know this b/c we had some frank conversations about the whole gay-pedophile thing) he was not going to prison. And he said he knew someone with predilections towards kids who rationalized it and, well, ended up going to prison. But I guess when you’re a priest, the Vicar of Christ, all things are possible.
Yutsano
@Another Halocene Human: The Church can never be wrong. Their priests can never be impure. Therefore it MUST be the fault of the victims always and forever, in nomine Christi, amen.
Eric U.
@Another Halocene Human: huffpo helpfully put a slideshow of convicted priest child molesters after the article to illustrate how sexy they are.
Suffern ACE
@JustAnotherBob:
I would comment on that, but I might contradict a statement that I made somewhere after the only accident I’ve ever caused, so mum’s the word.
JustAnotherBob
@Suffern ACE:
Ogling drivers cause nearly one million crashes in Britain every year because they are too busy concentrating on members of the opposite sex, it emerged today.
Figures show distracted motorists cause an average of 2,525 crashes every day as they lust through their windows – the equivalent of 921,840 per year.
Researchers found drivers crash their cars into lampposts or shunt other vehicles more in the summer when men and women are wearing less clothing.
A study of 2,142 drivers found 60 per cent of men admitted being distracted by attractive women while 12 per cent of female drivers said they took their eyes off the road to leer at handsome men.
And 21 per cent of drivers also admitted that they couldn’t tear their eyes away from advertising billboards featuring pictures of picture perfect models were also a major distraction on the road.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2188191/Ogling-drivers-cause-nearly-million-crashes-year.html
Another Halocene Human
@JustAnotherBob: The Google cars now have accumulated 300,000 miles of crash free driving. The observer sitting behind the wheel has never had to take over control.
Instead of selling self-driving cars, Google ought to back up and sell traffic signal control units. Their track record sounds much better than the units now in use. Even though they have a master unit at the end which is supposed to “shut that whole thing down” when the brains send out what are known as “conflicting indications”, I HAVE SEEN SIGNALS WITH CONFLICTING INDICATIONS. What the actual fuck, right? Also, too, US signals waste a lot of fuel (through idling–it’s also high pollution–win/win) by not using fuzzy logic controllers like they do in Europe.
Clearly the traffic controllers are due for an upgrade.
C’mon Google!
Another Halocene Human
@different-church-lady: Meh. To be fair, this is kind of a silly argument.
I’ve seen some of the electronics the Saturn V was sporting. Like another commenter said, your cell phone is smarter. That’s kind of an understatement, you understand. In the way a puppy is smarter than an earthworm.
Another Halocene Human
@JustAnotherBob: I realize that this is an emotional issue for you. The truth is that not everyone with a driver’s license should have one. And insurance statistics bear that out. It’s not that crashes are randomly distributed. They follow more of the 80/20 rule.
I’ve worked with guys who went 20, 30 years without an accident. It’s quite possible to drive safely and attentively–if that’s your job, and you have the right temperament and physical attributes. And you’re dreaming if you think computers have surpassed animal spatial processing in a real-world environment. Maybe some day.
Another Halocene Human
@JustAnotherBob: Bu bu but that would be so unfair!!!!! whine arglebargle
Have you ever noticed how the ruling class can stay
in powerat their desk until they’re 75, while working people are forced out (downsized, laid off, rightsized) or become disabled much, much sooner, and meanwhile if they get any assistance at all it’s much less?Our very “fair” entitlement system at work.
Oh, and raid that pension fund, Mitty my boy, mustn’t let the proles get too comfortable. They’ll start putting on airs.
Another Halocene Human
@Gin & Tonic: Right, so that’s relevant to objects closing in from the periphery how?
The robot car is going to use some sort of radar, like a bat. Static images from space aren’t much use here.
Another Halocene Human
@Andrey: I’ll give you the point on darkness and fog. Especially fog.
I think normal cars are getting prox sensors anyway, but rather than help with fog it will probably convince some rich pricks they can drive right through it.
Another Halocene Human
@zattarra: Heh, your rant is reminding me of Tesla, and all the assorted wankery that surrounded it. Before Jalopnik started sucking and sucking hard, reading their coverage of the Tesla and Fiskar soap opera was my go-to good clean fun.
TG Chicago
@Roger Moore: Smart curbs! I mean, you’re probably right, but that kind of infrastructure just seems like it’s way off in the future.
The kind of driverless taxis with their own lots that JustAnotherBob mentions — those are more plausible. Maybe the driverless taxi is a better way to do it than people owning their own driverless cars.
So rather than park the car when you’re at your destination, it would just drop you off and you’d hail another one when you were heading back home. Makes more sense.
Can driverless cars read detour signs?
JustAnotherBob
@Another Halocene Human: An emotional issue?
Crap. It’s a rational issue.
I’m aware of at least some of the limitations of the human sensory system. Your “guys who went 20, 30 years without an accident” cannot monitor the environment as efficiently and as consistently as a computer. They have a bit less than a 180 degree field of vision and the parts in the periphery have very little ability to resolve detail. They don’t have the ability to “see” warm bodies in the dark.
Bet they sneeze now and then. Bet at least one of them has swatted at a bee while driving. Bet they all get lost in thought from time to time.
JustAnotherBob
@TG Chicago: The Google cars are driving normal roads in normal driving conditions.
That means that they are following detour signs, stopping for school buses, pulling over for ambulances and fire trucks.
This is not closed course driving. It’s 300k ‘real world’.
JustAnotherBob
Automated braking, a limited version is already on the road. It’s in the Lexis LS.
“(Automated braking) is now fitted as an option on the newest version of the Lexus LS flagship sedan, which goes on sale next month. Going a step beyond the forward collision warning systems and even the pre-crash braking technology that slows a car before an expected impact, this new gadgetry will stop a car totally before a fatal mistake.
Bill Camp, who runs Toyota’s Lexus College (where dealers get their training), talked to journalists about the new system at an event in Birmingham, Mich., on Wednesday. He was careful to say that it wouldn’t avert all accidents. Toyota says it will stop the car as long as the driver isn’t going more than 40 kilometers per hour, or about 24 mph. I was driving faster than that on the test track in Japan—closer to 50 km/h.
And while the system, which uses a combination of microwaves and radar, can tell if the car is approaching a person or another car, Toyota isn’t ready to guarantee that it will stop for a deer or moose, Mr. Camp said.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/drivers-seat/2012/09/26/new-lexus-ls-safety-systems-include-automatic-braking/
The Lexus also has a self-parking feature as do nine other models including ones from Ford/Lincoln/Mercury and Toyota. (Seems like Porsche also has this.)
TenguPhule
Can someone get stock picks from PO, so we can short them?
Death Panel Truck
@lacp: It is Idaho, after all. I lived there for five years, and I can attest to the fact that those Idahoans who live in rural areas are pretty paranoid and gun-nutty. I remember seeing Helen Chenoweth on TV opining about the imaginary black “heelee-copters” hovering over the grazing allotments in Owyhee County, terrorizing those poor, put-upon cattle ranchers who grazed their herds on public lands for practically nothing. I shook that woman’s cold, limp hand in a receiving line in Nampa, and it was like shaking hands with death.
Andrey
@JustAnotherBob:
This is not entirely accurate. The 300,000 miles are not necessarily consecutive.
Robert Sneddon
@MikeJ: The big limit with spy satellites is the mirror size which defines the best resolution possible. There are hard limits beyond which noise defeats information and it’s been possible to achieve those limits in optical devices for decades.
Any new-family spy satellites in the US arsenal aren’t much bigger than the bus-sized KH-11 family as can be seen from the size of the fairings on the launch vehicles and the throw weights. The sensors are better, working in infra-red and probably UV, maybe with LIDAR illumination, better post-processing of the data to remove atmospheric effects and defeat light cloud cover but resolution is still dependent on the mirror size. They can probably read a newspaper headline in worse seeing conditions than older satellites could but they can’t read finer print.
gelfling545
When you get to be my age you begin to wonder about how much longer you’ll be in shape to drive and it would be a comfort to think that there was an alternative to driving. (Public transportation in my city is a joke.) So much of your independence is your ability to get where you want to go when you wish to go there independently so I can see a real market for the service among us oldies. Price could be an issue but car+fuel+insurance+upkeep is not exactly cheap either.
gelfling545
@different-church-lady: Of course there will be accidents. Every fresh technology has brought new dangers along with it – railroads, cars, airplanes, even bicycles – all with new ways to be maimed or killed. So either we stop here and keep the same number of accidents with the same transport options or take the chance that new developments may be safer in the long run. There is no way forward without risk and staying where we are has risks of its own.
brantl
@Political Observer: Funny, looks to me like RMoney peaked in about 2nd grade. Also,if you had self driving taxis, why wouldn’t you let it opt to pick up a second passenger for a reduction in charge? Segment the taxi to where 2 or more people couldn’t access each other, and you’ve got it beat.
JustAnotherBob
@Andrey:
Huh?
JustAnotherBob
@gelfling545:
I’m looking at the same issue. I absolutely love where I live but I can see a time when driving to town will be too much for me to handle and that could cause me to have to leave my little bit of paradise.