Undefined discussion subject.

FeersumEnjineeya said:

WhisperingOracle said:

moonshine said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

eek said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Uber’s fraught and deadly pursuit of self-driving cars is over

Uber is selling its autonomous vehicle business to Aurora Innovations, a San Francisco-based startup founded by the former head engineer of Google’s self-driving car project, the two companies announced Monday.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/7/22158745/uber-selling-autonomous-vehicle-business-aurora-innovation

Full self driving cars are still miles away, despite the $10bns spent on the research on them.

So now they’re nothing but a massively loss-making taxi company.

The sell off of the self driving car business, to another company with the same major shareholders, looks to me like the investors putting their hands in their pockets to prop up Uber for another year.

I’ll stick my neck out and say we’ll not see self-driving cars for years, except in very controlled environments.

I’m not sure if it Was it here or elsewhere that I pointed out that self driving cars isn’t a 98/2% problem but a 99.99998% / 0.00002%

Because automation beyond a point removes the needs for the driver to concentrate the actual point at which you can say an automated car is safe is actually far, far later than everyone thought.

Not everyone. Quite a number of us on this site have been pointing out for ages that automated cars are, for exactly this reason, still a long, long way off other than in controlled environments (e.g. motorways, perhaps). What I find it hard to fathom is why the people tasked with working on these projects and their investors seem to take so long to reach the same conclusion.

You have this the wrong way around. What most people have failed to fathom is that an automated car does not have to work on every road in every circumstance to hold a multi trillion valuation and to provide the associated level of customer utility / societal disruption.

Tesla’s current autopilot offering requires you to hold onto the wheel and stay alert and there’s plenty it still doesn’t even attempt to do. And yet an estimated third of new Tesla owners still buy the software at a price of $10k. Just wait until it “only” allows hands off - no observation driving on motorways. Quite a game changer for the value of those vehicles, and for global logistics you will agree.

Personally I think almost everyone has this wrong. I have a long standing bet that we’re going to see driverless vehicles approved somewhere before the 2022 World Cup kicks off. I expect I’ll probably now lose that bet but not by much.

There are other issues too, though, concerned with the commercially-driven overestimation of how far AI has come more broadly. The 1970s and early 1980s saw something quite similar, before expectations settled down into a more realistic pattern.

In other areas, AI has led to striking advances. Voice recognition, for example, has come on enormously over the last couple of decades, as has machine translation.

Agreed. First generation Siri was absolutely useless in my opinion. Overhyped garbage. But now I regularly while driving or in some other situations eg control my music or do other things by speaking to my phone.

WhisperingOracle said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

WhisperingOracle said:

moonshine said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

eek said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Uber’s fraught and deadly pursuit of self-driving cars is over

Uber is selling its autonomous vehicle business to Aurora Innovations, a San Francisco-based startup founded by the former head engineer of Google’s self-driving car project, the two companies announced Monday.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/7/22158745/uber-selling-autonomous-vehicle-business-aurora-innovation

Full self driving cars are still miles away, despite the $10bns spent on the research on them.

So now they’re nothing but a massively loss-making taxi company.

The sell off of the self driving car business, to another company with the same major shareholders, looks to me like the investors putting their hands in their pockets to prop up Uber for another year.

I’ll stick my neck out and say we’ll not see self-driving cars for years, except in very controlled environments.

I’m not sure if it Was it here or elsewhere that I pointed out that self driving cars isn’t a 98/2% problem but a 99.99998% / 0.00002%

Because automation beyond a point removes the needs for the driver to concentrate the actual point at which you can say an automated car is safe is actually far, far later than everyone thought.

Not everyone. Quite a number of us on this site have been pointing out for ages that automated cars are, for exactly this reason, still a long, long way off other than in controlled environments (e.g. motorways, perhaps). What I find it hard to fathom is why the people tasked with working on these projects and their investors seem to take so long to reach the same conclusion.

You have this the wrong way around. What most people have failed to fathom is that an automated car does not have to work on every road in every circumstance to hold a multi trillion valuation and to provide the associated level of customer utility / societal disruption.

Tesla’s current autopilot offering requires you to hold onto the wheel and stay alert and there’s plenty it still doesn’t even attempt to do. And yet an estimated third of new Tesla owners still buy the software at a price of $10k. Just wait until it “only” allows hands off - no observation driving on motorways. Quite a game changer for the value of those vehicles, and for global logistics you will agree.

Personally I think almost everyone has this wrong. I have a long standing bet that we’re going to see driverless vehicles approved somewhere before the 2022 World Cup kicks off. I expect I’ll probably now lose that bet but not by much.

There are other issues too, though, concerned with the commercially-driven overestimation of how far AI has come more broadly. The 1970s and early 1980s saw something quite similar, before expectations settled down into a more realistic pattern.

In other areas, AI has led to striking advances. Voice recognition, for example, has come on enormously over the last couple of decades, as has machine translating.

Indeed, but just as in the 1970s and 1980s, these are much less challenging than the promised domestic robots that would run your house and take care of all functions. The disappointing result for many were mini Tomy robots which would wheel up and down carrying a mug of beer, until they hit unforeseen walls.

You mean we're not going to get Jetson's style Rosie the Robot or flying cars that transform into a briefcase?

These advances are very specific. They don't require integrating the knowledge of Siri with running a household or driving a car many hundreds of miles, to help answer her questions or perform those tasks, for instance.

WhisperingOracle said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

WhisperingOracle said:

moonshine said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

eek said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Uber’s fraught and deadly pursuit of self-driving cars is over

Uber is selling its autonomous vehicle business to Aurora Innovations, a San Francisco-based startup founded by the former head engineer of Google’s self-driving car project, the two companies announced Monday.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/7/22158745/uber-selling-autonomous-vehicle-business-aurora-innovation

Full self driving cars are still miles away, despite the $10bns spent on the research on them.

So now they’re nothing but a massively loss-making taxi company.

The sell off of the self driving car business, to another company with the same major shareholders, looks to me like the investors putting their hands in their pockets to prop up Uber for another year.

I’ll stick my neck out and say we’ll not see self-driving cars for years, except in very controlled environments.

I’m not sure if it Was it here or elsewhere that I pointed out that self driving cars isn’t a 98/2% problem but a 99.99998% / 0.00002%

Because automation beyond a point removes the needs for the driver to concentrate the actual point at which you can say an automated car is safe is actually far, far later than everyone thought.

Not everyone. Quite a number of us on this site have been pointing out for ages that automated cars are, for exactly this reason, still a long, long way off other than in controlled environments (e.g. motorways, perhaps). What I find it hard to fathom is why the people tasked with working on these projects and their investors seem to take so long to reach the same conclusion.

You have this the wrong way around. What most people have failed to fathom is that an automated car does not have to work on every road in every circumstance to hold a multi trillion valuation and to provide the associated level of customer utility / societal disruption.

Tesla’s current autopilot offering requires you to hold onto the wheel and stay alert and there’s plenty it still doesn’t even attempt to do. And yet an estimated third of new Tesla owners still buy the software at a price of $10k. Just wait until it “only” allows hands off - no observation driving on motorways. Quite a game changer for the value of those vehicles, and for global logistics you will agree.

Personally I think almost everyone has this wrong. I have a long standing bet that we’re going to see driverless vehicles approved somewhere before the 2022 World Cup kicks off. I expect I’ll probably now lose that bet but not by much.

There are other issues too, though, concerned with the commercially-driven overestimation of how far AI has come more broadly. The 1970s and early 1980s saw something quite similar, before expectations settled down into a more realistic pattern.

In other areas, AI has led to striking advances. Voice recognition, for example, has come on enormously over the last couple of decades, as has machine translating.

Indeed, but just as in the 1970s and early 1980s, these are much less challenging than the promised domestic robots that would run your house and take care of all functions. The disappointing result for many then was mini Tomy robots which would wheel up and down carrying a mug of beer, until they hit walls.

In our image we made robots for our slaves...

https://youtu.be/fBkvcQEGq9k

Nigelb said:

WhisperingOracle said:

moonshine said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

eek said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Uber’s fraught and deadly pursuit of self-driving cars is over

Uber is selling its autonomous vehicle business to Aurora Innovations, a San Francisco-based startup founded by the former head engineer of Google’s self-driving car project, the two companies announced Monday.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/7/22158745/uber-selling-autonomous-vehicle-business-aurora-innovation

Full self driving cars are still miles away, despite the $10bns spent on the research on them.

So now they’re nothing but a massively loss-making taxi company.

The sell off of the self driving car business, to another company with the same major shareholders, looks to me like the investors putting their hands in their pockets to prop up Uber for another year.

I’ll stick my neck out and say we’ll not see self-driving cars for years, except in very controlled environments.

I’m not sure if it Was it here or elsewhere that I pointed out that self driving cars isn’t a 98/2% problem but a 99.99998% / 0.00002%

Because automation beyond a point removes the needs for the driver to concentrate the actual point at which you can say an automated car is safe is actually far, far later than everyone thought.

Not everyone. Quite a number of us on this site have been pointing out for ages that automated cars are, for exactly this reason, still a long, long way off other than in controlled environments (e.g. motorways, perhaps). What I find it hard to fathom is why the people tasked with working on these projects and their investors seem to take so long to reach the same conclusion.

You have this the wrong way around. What most people have failed to fathom is that an automated car does not have to work on every road in every circumstance to hold a multi trillion valuation and to provide the associated level of customer utility / societal disruption.

Tesla’s current autopilot offering requires you to hold onto the wheel and stay alert and there’s plenty it still doesn’t even attempt to do. And yet an estimated third of new Tesla owners still buy the software at a price of $10k. Just wait until it “only” allows hands off - no observation driving on motorways. Quite a game changer for the value of those vehicles, and for global logistics you will agree.

Personally I think almost everyone has this wrong. I have a long standing bet that we’re going to see driverless vehicles approved somewhere before the 2022 World Cup kicks off. I expect I’ll probably now lose that bet but not by much.

There are other issues too, though, concerned with the commercially-driven overestimation of how far AI has come more broadly. The 1970s and early 1980s saw something quite similar, before expectations settled down into a more realistic pattern.

I don't think there'll be a 'settling down'. People overestimate the short term, and massively underestimate the longer term.

But in between, hugely overvalued companies, projects and shares, for instance, are more realistically priced.

We'd be better joining this than worrying about an illusory US trade deal ?
But would we accept the compromises on sovereignty ?

https://twitter.com/yicaichina/status/1336216941460066305

Nigelb said:

We'd be better joining this than worrying about an illusory US trade deal ?
But would we accept the compromises on sovereignty ?

https://twitter.com/yicaichina/status/1336216941460066305

Truss has started moves towards getting the UK to join CPTPP.

Yes it would be an acceptable compromise on sovereignty. Its an FTA which the UK is OK with, not a political union like the EU.

In the last couple of days I've had two 'BT' phone calls, wanting to reset my Broadband service......against which of course BT warns one. When I've said no thank you..... quite politely...... the scammers have become quite abusive.
Can't think that's the way to worm their way into ones confidence. Are they getting desperate?

rottenborough said:

SouthamObserver said:

Philip_Thompson said:

William Shakespeare has been vaccinated, second person to be vaccinated.

Only in Britain. Imagine the puns if he'd been first.

William Shakespeare from Warwickshire, no less!

Who the hell is running this vaccine programme? Why didn't they make him first? Imagine the headlines.

Just another example of the mismanagement of this crisis.

Covid: All's Well That Ends Well......

SouthamObserver said:

Philip_Thompson said:

William Shakespeare has been vaccinated, second person to be vaccinated.

Only in Britain. Imagine the puns if he'd been first.

William Shakespeare from Warwickshire, no less!

William Shakespeare from Warwickshire with a goatee beard and moustache, no less!

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13413274/william-shakespeare-covid-jab/

https://twitter.com/FinancialTimes/status/1336226545166413825?s=20

OldKingCole said:

In the last couple of days I've had two 'BT' phone calls, wanting to reset my Broadband service......against which of course BT warns one. When I've said no thank you..... quite politely...... the scammers have become quite abusive.
Can't think that's the way to worm their way into ones confidence. Are they getting desperate?

My new scam call yesterday was a robocall claiming to be from HMRC stating that there was a warrant for my arrest for tax evasion and fraud. Lol, no.

FeersumEnjineeya said:

Nigelb said:

WhisperingOracle said:

moonshine said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

eek said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Uber’s fraught and deadly pursuit of self-driving cars is over

Uber is selling its autonomous vehicle business to Aurora Innovations, a San Francisco-based startup founded by the former head engineer of Google’s self-driving car project, the two companies announced Monday.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/7/22158745/uber-selling-autonomous-vehicle-business-aurora-innovation

Full self driving cars are still miles away, despite the $10bns spent on the research on them.

So now they’re nothing but a massively loss-making taxi company.

The sell off of the self driving car business, to another company with the same major shareholders, looks to me like the investors putting their hands in their pockets to prop up Uber for another year.

I’ll stick my neck out and say we’ll not see self-driving cars for years, except in very controlled environments.

I’m not sure if it Was it here or elsewhere that I pointed out that self driving cars isn’t a 98/2% problem but a 99.99998% / 0.00002%

Because automation beyond a point removes the needs for the driver to concentrate the actual point at which you can say an automated car is safe is actually far, far later than everyone thought.

Not everyone. Quite a number of us on this site have been pointing out for ages that automated cars are, for exactly this reason, still a long, long way off other than in controlled environments (e.g. motorways, perhaps). What I find it hard to fathom is why the people tasked with working on these projects and their investors seem to take so long to reach the same conclusion.

You have this the wrong way around. What most people have failed to fathom is that an automated car does not have to work on every road in every circumstance to hold a multi trillion valuation and to provide the associated level of customer utility / societal disruption.

Tesla’s current autopilot offering requires you to hold onto the wheel and stay alert and there’s plenty it still doesn’t even attempt to do. And yet an estimated third of new Tesla owners still buy the software at a price of $10k. Just wait until it “only” allows hands off - no observation driving on motorways. Quite a game changer for the value of those vehicles, and for global logistics you will agree.

Personally I think almost everyone has this wrong. I have a long standing bet that we’re going to see driverless vehicles approved somewhere before the 2022 World Cup kicks off. I expect I’ll probably now lose that bet but not by much.

There are other issues too, though, concerned with the commercially-driven overestimation of how far AI has come more broadly. The 1970s and early 1980s saw something quite similar, before expectations settled down into a more realistic pattern.

I don't think there'll be a 'settling down'. People overestimate the short term, and massively underestimate the longer term.

I'm not sure what you mean by longer term, but let's say 50 years for the sake of argument. What do you think we now have that wasn't envisaged 50 years ago? And, conversely, what don't we have that, 50 years ago, people expected we would have?

The problem is different people 50 years ago had different expectation, but I think in 1970 most people expected a much faster developing space programm, so at least regular visits to the moon with a moon base. Travel has been much slower than was expected. We have no passenger supersonic travel. And many people would have expected widespread personal 3d transport such as jet packs or air taxis.

While the computer networking has developed as well as most people could wish for, things like delivery of products is little better for the consumer than it was 50 years ago (I admit that the behind the scenes logistics for the delivery companies have improved massively).

Mysticrose said:

Also on a tangent, but one that SeanT might find interesting from his travels, a piece from CNN about the huge synthetic drug production in the Golden Triangle of SE Asia:

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/07/asia/laos-ban-mom-port-zhao-wei-intl-hnk-dst/index.html

That's something we could get involved in post Brexit. No need to worry about regulators or customs barriers.

https://twitter.com/sarahchurchwell/status/1336231537575153665

Re Boris.

If the trade discussion differences are insurmountable then what was the walk out and return of a few weeks all about ?

nico679 said:

Automated cars are a huge safety concern and should not be allowed bar exceptional circumstances for disabled people .

Human driven cars are a huge safety concern!

Foxy said:

SouthamObserver said:

Foxy said:

SouthamObserver said:

Philip_Thompson said:

William Shakespeare has been vaccinated, second person to be vaccinated.

Only in Britain. Imagine the puns if he'd been first.

William Shakespeare from Warwickshire, no less!

C'mon. If your surname was Shakespeare and you had a son it would be very hard to resist the name William!

Typical that left-wing luvvies from the arts establishment have managed to elbow their way to the top of the list!

Was the great Bard a left winger? I have never really considered his politics in modern terms.

I suppose a recurrent theme of his plays is how power corrupts, and brings despotism. Is he an early advocate of anarcho-syndicalism?

Plenty of antisemitism in some of his plays, so should have fitted right in with Corbyn's lot.

eristdoof said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

Nigelb said:

WhisperingOracle said:

moonshine said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

eek said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Uber’s fraught and deadly pursuit of self-driving cars is over

Uber is selling its autonomous vehicle business to Aurora Innovations, a San Francisco-based startup founded by the former head engineer of Google’s self-driving car project, the two companies announced Monday.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/7/22158745/uber-selling-autonomous-vehicle-business-aurora-innovation

Full self driving cars are still miles away, despite the $10bns spent on the research on them.

So now they’re nothing but a massively loss-making taxi company.

The sell off of the self driving car business, to another company with the same major shareholders, looks to me like the investors putting their hands in their pockets to prop up Uber for another year.

I’ll stick my neck out and say we’ll not see self-driving cars for years, except in very controlled environments.

I’m not sure if it Was it here or elsewhere that I pointed out that self driving cars isn’t a 98/2% problem but a 99.99998% / 0.00002%

Because automation beyond a point removes the needs for the driver to concentrate the actual point at which you can say an automated car is safe is actually far, far later than everyone thought.

Not everyone. Quite a number of us on this site have been pointing out for ages that automated cars are, for exactly this reason, still a long, long way off other than in controlled environments (e.g. motorways, perhaps). What I find it hard to fathom is why the people tasked with working on these projects and their investors seem to take so long to reach the same conclusion.

You have this the wrong way around. What most people have failed to fathom is that an automated car does not have to work on every road in every circumstance to hold a multi trillion valuation and to provide the associated level of customer utility / societal disruption.

Tesla’s current autopilot offering requires you to hold onto the wheel and stay alert and there’s plenty it still doesn’t even attempt to do. And yet an estimated third of new Tesla owners still buy the software at a price of $10k. Just wait until it “only” allows hands off - no observation driving on motorways. Quite a game changer for the value of those vehicles, and for global logistics you will agree.

Personally I think almost everyone has this wrong. I have a long standing bet that we’re going to see driverless vehicles approved somewhere before the 2022 World Cup kicks off. I expect I’ll probably now lose that bet but not by much.

There are other issues too, though, concerned with the commercially-driven overestimation of how far AI has come more broadly. The 1970s and early 1980s saw something quite similar, before expectations settled down into a more realistic pattern.

I don't think there'll be a 'settling down'. People overestimate the short term, and massively underestimate the longer term.

I'm not sure what you mean by longer term, but let's say 50 years for the sake of argument. What do you think we now have that wasn't envisaged 50 years ago? And, conversely, what don't we have that, 50 years ago, people expected we would have?

The problem is different people 50 years ago had different expectation, but I think in 1970 most people expected a much faster developing space programm, so at least regular visits to the moon with a moon base. Travel has been much slower than was expected. We have no passenger supersonic travel. And many people would have expected widespread personal 3d transport such as jet packs or air taxis.

While the computer networking has developed as well as most people could wish for, things like delivery of products is little better for the consumer than it was 50 years ago (I admit that the behind the scenes logistics for the delivery companies have improved massively).

Space 1999, made in the mid 70s, is a good example.

Space travel and a moon base.

With a single computer and with people still using typewriters.

Philip_Thompson said:

Dura_Ace said:

Sandpit said:

Really interesting video about how electric cars will interact with classic cars in the future.

TL:DR almost everyone buying an electric car now, is doing it for the tax advantages. Classic cars that drive few miles have almost no effect on CO2 emissions.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1CUA2imRYRM

Harry is a dreadful old poseur but he's right about classic car values going to the moon.

My 'investment' picks:

E36/E46 M3 (these are already getting rare, if you seen one then buy it)
E39/E60 M5 (wish I had one of each)
964 911 (maybe a 3.3S, there is no value left in the RS or Cup cars)
Honda S2000
Ferrari F430 (this was peak V8 Ferrari as it was the last one with a gated manual but didn't have a derivative of the 50 year old Dino engine)

1st gen Gallardos are on the move upwards but a) relatively poor aftermarket support (unlike the Porsche and Beemers) and b) Johnson had one so fuck that.

Usual rules: no mods, manual, no sunroof, never red

The issue with classic cars is going to be how do you get fuel for them once nobody else uses fuel?

Petrol stations will go the way of Kodak film retail and processing shops.

Same way preserved railways still get coal for steam trains.

There will be a niche market for small-scale heritage hydrocarbons for decades to come.

You might even get it Amazoned to your door.

https://twitter.com/BarristerSecret/status/1336228353586630656

eek said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Uber’s fraught and deadly pursuit of self-driving cars is over

Uber is selling its autonomous vehicle business to Aurora Innovations, a San Francisco-based startup founded by the former head engineer of Google’s self-driving car project, the two companies announced Monday.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/7/22158745/uber-selling-autonomous-vehicle-business-aurora-innovation

Full self driving cars are still miles away, despite the $10bns spent on the research on them.

So now they’re nothing but a massively loss-making taxi company.

The sell off of the self driving car business, to another company with the same major shareholders, looks to me like the investors putting their hands in their pockets to prop up Uber for another year.

I’ll stick my neck out and say we’ll not see self-driving cars for years, except in very controlled environments.

I’m not sure if it Was it here or elsewhere that I pointed out that self driving cars isn’t a 98/2% problem but a 99.99998% / 0.00002%

Because automation beyond a point removes the needs for the driver to concentrate the actual point at which you can say an automated car is safe is actually far, far later than everyone thought.

A self-driving car is utterly useless until it can take me to work, then go back empty and take the kids to school, then pick me up from a bar in the evening and deliver me home.

“We have gone from punching above our weight to bragging above our weight,” says a former cabinet minister. “Serious people around the world don’t like braggarts. I get the feeling people are sad for Britain, not angry. They know there are wondrous institutions and people — many want their kids to go to university in the UK — but they view our politicians as lower grade hucksters. Everyone knows Covid has been handled badly; they see Boris Johnson as cut from the Trump cloth but without the power, they think Brexit is being done without a clue. All of them think Britain is in trouble and don’t see where the renewal is coming from.” As for Joe Biden’s incoming White House team, “they all think Johnson behaves like a cad”.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/wholl-want-to-do-a-deal-with-us-after-this-dn9t37ltz

What happened to the British stiff upper lip?

https://twitter.com/GMB/status/1336228418149625858

Philip_Thompson said:

another_richard said:

Re Boris.

If the trade discussion differences are insurmountable then what was the walk out and return of a few weeks all about ?

The walkout happened because the EU said that they were not going to compromise anymore and it was for the UK to compromise.

The talks resumed when the EU said they could compromise afterall and were willing to start working on a legal text (which they'd refused until then).

However the official policy since walkout, as still maintained on the gov.uk website, is that the UK will be trading on WTO terms from January and business needs to prepare for that.

I doubt many businesses have prepared for WTO trade because they think the politicians are playing the usual pantomime and will agree a deal.

another_richard said:

eristdoof said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

Nigelb said:

WhisperingOracle said:

moonshine said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

eek said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Uber’s fraught and deadly pursuit of self-driving cars is over

Uber is selling its autonomous vehicle business to Aurora Innovations, a San Francisco-based startup founded by the former head engineer of Google’s self-driving car project, the two companies announced Monday.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/7/22158745/uber-selling-autonomous-vehicle-business-aurora-innovation

Full self driving cars are still miles away, despite the $10bns spent on the research on them.

So now they’re nothing but a massively loss-making taxi company.

The sell off of the self driving car business, to another company with the same major shareholders, looks to me like the investors putting their hands in their pockets to prop up Uber for another year.

I’ll stick my neck out and say we’ll not see self-driving cars for years, except in very controlled environments.

I’m not sure if it Was it here or elsewhere that I pointed out that self driving cars isn’t a 98/2% problem but a 99.99998% / 0.00002%

Because automation beyond a point removes the needs for the driver to concentrate the actual point at which you can say an automated car is safe is actually far, far later than everyone thought.

Not everyone. Quite a number of us on this site have been pointing out for ages that automated cars are, for exactly this reason, still a long, long way off other than in controlled environments (e.g. motorways, perhaps). What I find it hard to fathom is why the people tasked with working on these projects and their investors seem to take so long to reach the same conclusion.

You have this the wrong way around. What most people have failed to fathom is that an automated car does not have to work on every road in every circumstance to hold a multi trillion valuation and to provide the associated level of customer utility / societal disruption.

Tesla’s current autopilot offering requires you to hold onto the wheel and stay alert and there’s plenty it still doesn’t even attempt to do. And yet an estimated third of new Tesla owners still buy the software at a price of $10k. Just wait until it “only” allows hands off - no observation driving on motorways. Quite a game changer for the value of those vehicles, and for global logistics you will agree.

Personally I think almost everyone has this wrong. I have a long standing bet that we’re going to see driverless vehicles approved somewhere before the 2022 World Cup kicks off. I expect I’ll probably now lose that bet but not by much.

There are other issues too, though, concerned with the commercially-driven overestimation of how far AI has come more broadly. The 1970s and early 1980s saw something quite similar, before expectations settled down into a more realistic pattern.

I don't think there'll be a 'settling down'. People overestimate the short term, and massively underestimate the longer term.

I'm not sure what you mean by longer term, but let's say 50 years for the sake of argument. What do you think we now have that wasn't envisaged 50 years ago? And, conversely, what don't we have that, 50 years ago, people expected we would have?

The problem is different people 50 years ago had different expectation, but I think in 1970 most people expected a much faster developing space programm, so at least regular visits to the moon with a moon base. Travel has been much slower than was expected. We have no passenger supersonic travel. And many people would have expected widespread personal 3d transport such as jet packs or air taxis.

While the computer networking has developed as well as most people could wish for, things like delivery of products is little better for the consumer than it was 50 years ago (I admit that the behind the scenes logistics for the delivery companies have improved massively).

Space 1999, made in the mid 70s, is a good example.

Space travel and a moon base.

With a single computer and with people still using typewriters.

Kubrick's 2001 was a little better - with a fair stab at an Ipad IIRC.

Philip_Thompson said:

another_richard said:

Re Boris.

If the trade discussion differences are insurmountable then what was the walk out and return of a few weeks all about ?

The walkout happened because the EU said that they were not going to compromise anymore and it was for the UK to compromise.

The talks resumed when the EU said they could compromise afterall and were willing to start working on a legal text (which they'd refused until then).

However the official policy since walkout, as still maintained on the gov.uk website, is that the UK will be trading on WTO terms from January and business needs to prepare for that.

In practice, trading on WTO terms will make many businesses non-viable, so preparing for WTO means winding up the business.

NickPalmer said:

eristdoof said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

Nigelb said:

WhisperingOracle said:

moonshine said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

eek said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Uber’s fraught and deadly pursuit of self-driving cars is over

Uber is selling its autonomous vehicle business to Aurora Innovations, a San Francisco-based startup founded by the former head engineer of Google’s self-driving car project, the two companies announced Monday.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/7/22158745/uber-selling-autonomous-vehicle-business-aurora-innovation

Full self driving cars are still miles away, despite the $10bns spent on the research on them.

So now they’re nothing but a massively loss-making taxi company.

The sell off of the self driving car business, to another company with the same major shareholders, looks to me like the investors putting their hands in their pockets to prop up Uber for another year.

I’ll stick my neck out and say we’ll not see self-driving cars for years, except in very controlled environments.

I’m not sure if it Was it here or elsewhere that I pointed out that self driving cars isn’t a 98/2% problem but a 99.99998% / 0.00002%

Because automation beyond a point removes the needs for the driver to concentrate the actual point at which you can say an automated car is safe is actually far, far later than everyone thought.

Not everyone. Quite a number of us on this site have been pointing out for ages that automated cars are, for exactly this reason, still a long, long way off other than in controlled environments (e.g. motorways, perhaps). What I find it hard to fathom is why the people tasked with working on these projects and their investors seem to take so long to reach the same conclusion.

You have this the wrong way around. What most people have failed to fathom is that an automated car does not have to work on every road in every circumstance to hold a multi trillion valuation and to provide the associated level of customer utility / societal disruption.

Tesla’s current autopilot offering requires you to hold onto the wheel and stay alert and there’s plenty it still doesn’t even attempt to do. And yet an estimated third of new Tesla owners still buy the software at a price of $10k. Just wait until it “only” allows hands off - no observation driving on motorways. Quite a game changer for the value of those vehicles, and for global logistics you will agree.

Personally I think almost everyone has this wrong. I have a long standing bet that we’re going to see driverless vehicles approved somewhere before the 2022 World Cup kicks off. I expect I’ll probably now lose that bet but not by much.

There are other issues too, though, concerned with the commercially-driven overestimation of how far AI has come more broadly. The 1970s and early 1980s saw something quite similar, before expectations settled down into a more realistic pattern.

I don't think there'll be a 'settling down'. People overestimate the short term, and massively underestimate the longer term.

I'm not sure what you mean by longer term, but let's say 50 years for the sake of argument. What do you think we now have that wasn't envisaged 50 years ago? And, conversely, what don't we have that, 50 years ago, people expected we would have?

The problem is different people 50 years ago had different expectation, but I think in 1970 most people expected a much faster developing space programm, so at least regular visits to the moon with a moon base. Travel has been much slower than was expected. We have no passenger supersonic travel. And many people would have expected widespread personal 3d transport such as jet packs or air taxis.

While the computer networking has developed as well as most people could wish for, things like delivery of products is little better for the consumer than it was 50 years ago (I admit that the behind the scenes logistics for the delivery companies have improved massively).

Interesting discussion. Near-universal internet were not that widely-predicted - I was 21 50 years ago and remember individual PCs being non-existent (my university computer filled a room) and little sense of the coming internet. 10 years later, there were still serious commentators predicting that the internet would only be used by scientists and businesses.

But arguably it's sexual values that have changed most in the west. I was warching Industry last night, and reflected that my parents, who were reasonably open-minded, would have been incredulous that two blokes having sex would be shown fairly graphically on a BBC channel. More generally, the idea that virtually everyone likes to have had lots of varied sexual experiences with different people and marriage is something that comes and goes fairly easily were very much fringe theories then.

I remember a guy who was studying computer science when I was at university (2004) and iplayer was rumoured, rubbishing the idea because there would never be sufficient data bandwidth for people to stream video into their homes. Very smart guy, now making big bucks at Google, but he couldn't comprehend, despite having expertise in the area, the massive advances in both bandwidth in residential networks and improvements in video compression. Must tease him about that... iPlayer launched the following year.

I actually thought it probably would be possible, but only because in a physics lecture the year before we'd worked through the bandwidth savings of a digital TV signal compared to analogue and that kind of mind boggling efficiency advance made me realise that huge changes can happen quite quickly. My lack of understanding of the difficulty of the task made me more confident it could happen than someone with much more expertise.

dr_spyn said:

Peak Guardian.

https://twitter.com/ProfTimBale/status/1336224204627320832

Banging.

'“Oh, is that your whippet?” someone asked on a work call recently. “Yes,” I lied. “He’s very playful, sorry.”'

TheScreamingEagles said:

What happened to the British stiff upper lip?

https://twitter.com/GMB/status/1336228418149625858

Traditionally people say it died in 1997. I suspect it was a myth anyway.

.

FeersumEnjineeya said:

Nigelb said:

WhisperingOracle said:

moonshine said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

eek said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Uber’s fraught and deadly pursuit of self-driving cars is over

Uber is selling its autonomous vehicle business to Aurora Innovations, a San Francisco-based startup founded by the former head engineer of Google’s self-driving car project, the two companies announced Monday.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/7/22158745/uber-selling-autonomous-vehicle-business-aurora-innovation

Full self driving cars are still miles away, despite the $10bns spent on the research on them.

So now they’re nothing but a massively loss-making taxi company.

The sell off of the self driving car business, to another company with the same major shareholders, looks to me like the investors putting their hands in their pockets to prop up Uber for another year.

I’ll stick my neck out and say we’ll not see self-driving cars for years, except in very controlled environments.

I’m not sure if it Was it here or elsewhere that I pointed out that self driving cars isn’t a 98/2% problem but a 99.99998% / 0.00002%

Because automation beyond a point removes the needs for the driver to concentrate the actual point at which you can say an automated car is safe is actually far, far later than everyone thought.

Not everyone. Quite a number of us on this site have been pointing out for ages that automated cars are, for exactly this reason, still a long, long way off other than in controlled environments (e.g. motorways, perhaps). What I find it hard to fathom is why the people tasked with working on these projects and their investors seem to take so long to reach the same conclusion.

You have this the wrong way around. What most people have failed to fathom is that an automated car does not have to work on every road in every circumstance to hold a multi trillion valuation and to provide the associated level of customer utility / societal disruption.

Tesla’s current autopilot offering requires you to hold onto the wheel and stay alert and there’s plenty it still doesn’t even attempt to do. And yet an estimated third of new Tesla owners still buy the software at a price of $10k. Just wait until it “only” allows hands off - no observation driving on motorways. Quite a game changer for the value of those vehicles, and for global logistics you will agree.

Personally I think almost everyone has this wrong. I have a long standing bet that we’re going to see driverless vehicles approved somewhere before the 2022 World Cup kicks off. I expect I’ll probably now lose that bet but not by much.

There are other issues too, though, concerned with the commercially-driven overestimation of how far AI has come more broadly. The 1970s and early 1980s saw something quite similar, before expectations settled down into a more realistic pattern.

I don't think there'll be a 'settling down'. People overestimate the short term, and massively underestimate the longer term.

I'm not sure what you mean by longer term, but let's say 50 years for the sake of argument. What do you think we now have that wasn't envisaged 50 years ago? And, conversely, what don't we have that, 50 years ago, people expected we would have?

I was thinking more two years vs a decade or so.

NickPalmer said:

CarlottaVance said:

More on that “Florida data scientist raided by State Police” story:

https://twitter.com/CuomoPrimeTime/status/1336157469622538240?s=20

What exactly is she alleging?

That Florida is deliberately undercounting Covid deaths in its publicly available data.

https://twitter.com/scottygb/status/1336243008824553473

This is the kind of shithhousery you'd expect from a Mourinho team.

https://www.sportbible.com/football/news-the-incredible-moment-swedish-side-aik-kick-another-ball-on-the-pitch-20201208

kle4 said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

What happened to the British stiff upper lip?

https://twitter.com/GMB/status/1336228418149625858

Traditionally people say it died in 1997. I suspect it was a myth anyway.

Not in Scotland it didn't. The Scots were utterly horrified at the scenes of hysteria being beamed north by the BBC. Though it must have been great if you were a florist in London

HYUFD said:

Nigelb said:

We'd be better joining this than worrying about an illusory US trade deal ?
But would we accept the compromises on sovereignty ?

https://twitter.com/yicaichina/status/1336216941460066305

We currently export 19% of our exports to the USA, so more than the 13% proportion of the global economy of all those nations combined...

In the absence of a trade deal.
Would any conceivable deal the US might agree to actually improve that significantly ?

DavidL said:

Casino_Royale said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Dura_Ace said:

Sandpit said:

Really interesting video about how electric cars will interact with classic cars in the future.

TL:DR almost everyone buying an electric car now, is doing it for the tax advantages. Classic cars that drive few miles have almost no effect on CO2 emissions.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1CUA2imRYRM

Harry is a dreadful old poseur but he's right about classic car values going to the moon.

My 'investment' picks:

E36/E46 M3 (these are already getting rare, if you seen one then buy it)
E39/E60 M5 (wish I had one of each)
964 911 (maybe a 3.3S, there is no value left in the RS or Cup cars)
Honda S2000
Ferrari F430 (this was peak V8 Ferrari as it was the last one with a gated manual but didn't have a derivative of the 50 year old Dino engine)

1st gen Gallardos are on the move upwards but a) relatively poor aftermarket support (unlike the Porsche and Beemers) and b) Johnson had one so fuck that.

Usual rules: no mods, manual, no sunroof, never red

The issue with classic cars is going to be how do you get fuel for them once nobody else uses fuel?

Petrol stations will go the way of Kodak film retail and processing shops.

Same way preserved railways still get coal for steam trains.

There will be a niche market for small-scale heritage hydrocarbons for decades to come.

You might even get it Amazoned to your door.

I am going to resist to my dying breath Amazon becoming a verb.

You can pick up a copy of 'my dying breath' by Ben Reed on Amazon for delivery in the next few days, so you may not resist for long

Carnyx said:

kle4 said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

What happened to the British stiff upper lip?

https://twitter.com/GMB/status/1336228418149625858

Traditionally people say it died in 1997. I suspect it was a myth anyway.

Not in Scotland it didn't. The Scots were utterly horrified at the scenes of hysteria being beamed north by the BBC. Though it must have been great if you were a florist in London

It died in Scotland too as the scenes at the 2014 referendum of emotionally hysterical Yes voting Nats would have confirmed, the stiff upper lip largely died with the British Empire and the end of the War apart from a few pensioners who remember the war years and a few diehard monarchist Unionists

Scott_xP said:

https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1336244676542816258

CBA will employ around 50 people in Amsterdam by June, European director Wilco Hendriks told Dutch financial daily FD, while its London office would remain open with a four times bigger staff.

Not exactly disastrous.

Scott_xP said:

https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1336244676542816258

The Bank of Albania will be moving next, before Boris returns with his Albania-style deal.

Philip_Thompson said:

Scott_xP said:

kle4 said:

If nations see the value of the UK they will continue to deal with it even if our politicians are crappy. This is just another whinge which vastly overstates the impact of perception of individuals.

The whole point is the value of the UK is perceived through our politicians.

BoZo is prepared to rip up a deal he signed last year. His Government is prepared to break International law.

Who wants to sign another deal with him?

Shit happens Scott. We've done it before, we'll do it again.

People around the world are more understanding than you are of the concept of independence and shrug away the EU/UK spats as what they are and not relevant to them. Only days after muppets like you were chorusing to say "who would sign a deal with him now" the Japanese did exactly that. Then the Canadians did.

The wheel of time turns, you need to play catch up or be left behind like a Japanese soldier in the wilderness still fighting the war long after it finished.

AIUI the Japanese simply rehashed the EU deal.

Philip_Thompson said:

TrèsDifficile said:

Scott_xP said:

https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1336244676542816258

CBA will employ around 50 people in Amsterdam by June, European director Wilco Hendriks told Dutch financial daily FD, while its London office would remain open with a four times bigger staff.

Not exactly disastrous.

Many companies are doing the same thing. Opening a PO Box HQ in Europe and keeping the work done in London.

Except that's not how it will work, many countries will not allow that, they insist any company holding a banking licence must be a well capitalised company in that country. It is why I posted yesterday a link on why several UK banks are pulling their EU consumer operations for that very reason, with resultant job losses in the UK, and damage to UK GDP.

But you can tell you know more about the financial services sector than say me, who shall be very shortly entering his second decade in the sector.

Nigelb said:

HYUFD said:

Nigelb said:

We'd be better joining this than worrying about an illusory US trade deal ?
But would we accept the compromises on sovereignty ?

https://twitter.com/yicaichina/status/1336216941460066305

We currently export 19% of our exports to the USA, so more than the 13% proportion of the global economy of all those nations combined...

In the absence of a trade deal.
Would any conceivable deal the US might agree to actually improve that significantly ?

The obsession some people have for ever more trade deals without considering whether such trade deals benefit the UK is curious.

Some sort of 19th century nostalgia mixed with a misunderstanding of Thatcher probably lies behind it.

Philip_Thompson said:

TrèsDifficile said:

Scott_xP said:

https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1336244676542816258

CBA will employ around 50 people in Amsterdam by June, European director Wilco Hendriks told Dutch financial daily FD, while its London office would remain open with a four times bigger staff.

Not exactly disastrous.

Many companies are doing the same thing. Opening a PO Box HQ in Europe and keeping the work done in London.

Where is the tax paid?

Gallowgate said:

Philip_Thompson said:

TrèsDifficile said:

Scott_xP said:

https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1336244676542816258

CBA will employ around 50 people in Amsterdam by June, European director Wilco Hendriks told Dutch financial daily FD, while its London office would remain open with a four times bigger staff.

Not exactly disastrous.

Many companies are doing the same thing. Opening a PO Box HQ in Europe and keeping the work done in London.

Where is the tax paid?

I'm sure they'll do it wherever its most tax efficient to do it.

Same as any multinational ever.

Scott_xP said:

kle4 said:

If nations see the value of the UK they will continue to deal with it even if our politicians are crappy. This is just another whinge which vastly overstates the impact of perception of individuals.

The whole point is the value of the UK is perceived through our politicians.

BoZo is prepared to rip up a deal he signed last year. His Government is prepared to break International law.

Who wants to sign another deal with him?

The whole point as you put it is crap. Some value perhaps. Its just a self pitying whinge.

Philip_Thompson said:

Selebian said:

NickPalmer said:

eristdoof said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

Nigelb said:

WhisperingOracle said:

moonshine said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

eek said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Uber’s fraught and deadly pursuit of self-driving cars is over

Uber is selling its autonomous vehicle business to Aurora Innovations, a San Francisco-based startup founded by the former head engineer of Google’s self-driving car project, the two companies announced Monday.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/7/22158745/uber-selling-autonomous-vehicle-business-aurora-innovation

Full self driving cars are still miles away, despite the $10bns spent on the research on them.

So now they’re nothing but a massively loss-making taxi company.

The sell off of the self driving car business, to another company with the same major shareholders, looks to me like the investors putting their hands in their pockets to prop up Uber for another year.

I’ll stick my neck out and say we’ll not see self-driving cars for years, except in very controlled environments.

I’m not sure if it Was it here or elsewhere that I pointed out that self driving cars isn’t a 98/2% problem but a 99.99998% / 0.00002%

Because automation beyond a point removes the needs for the driver to concentrate the actual point at which you can say an automated car is safe is actually far, far later than everyone thought.

Not everyone. Quite a number of us on this site have been pointing out for ages that automated cars are, for exactly this reason, still a long, long way off other than in controlled environments (e.g. motorways, perhaps). What I find it hard to fathom is why the people tasked with working on these projects and their investors seem to take so long to reach the same conclusion.

You have this the wrong way around. What most people have failed to fathom is that an automated car does not have to work on every road in every circumstance to hold a multi trillion valuation and to provide the associated level of customer utility / societal disruption.

Tesla’s current autopilot offering requires you to hold onto the wheel and stay alert and there’s plenty it still doesn’t even attempt to do. And yet an estimated third of new Tesla owners still buy the software at a price of $10k. Just wait until it “only” allows hands off - no observation driving on motorways. Quite a game changer for the value of those vehicles, and for global logistics you will agree.

Personally I think almost everyone has this wrong. I have a long standing bet that we’re going to see driverless vehicles approved somewhere before the 2022 World Cup kicks off. I expect I’ll probably now lose that bet but not by much.

There are other issues too, though, concerned with the commercially-driven overestimation of how far AI has come more broadly. The 1970s and early 1980s saw something quite similar, before expectations settled down into a more realistic pattern.

I don't think there'll be a 'settling down'. People overestimate the short term, and massively underestimate the longer term.

I'm not sure what you mean by longer term, but let's say 50 years for the sake of argument. What do you think we now have that wasn't envisaged 50 years ago? And, conversely, what don't we have that, 50 years ago, people expected we would have?

The problem is different people 50 years ago had different expectation, but I think in 1970 most people expected a much faster developing space programm, so at least regular visits to the moon with a moon base. Travel has been much slower than was expected. We have no passenger supersonic travel. And many people would have expected widespread personal 3d transport such as jet packs or air taxis.

While the computer networking has developed as well as most people could wish for, things like delivery of products is little better for the consumer than it was 50 years ago (I admit that the behind the scenes logistics for the delivery companies have improved massively).

Interesting discussion. Near-universal internet were not that widely-predicted - I was 21 50 years ago and remember individual PCs being non-existent (my university computer filled a room) and little sense of the coming internet. 10 years later, there were still serious commentators predicting that the internet would only be used by scientists and businesses.

But arguably it's sexual values that have changed most in the west. I was warching Industry last night, and reflected that my parents, who were reasonably open-minded, would have been incredulous that two blokes having sex would be shown fairly graphically on a BBC channel. More generally, the idea that virtually everyone likes to have had lots of varied sexual experiences with different people and marriage is something that comes and goes fairly easily were very much fringe theories then.

I remember a guy who was studying computer science when I was at university (2004) and iplayer was rumoured, rubbishing the idea because there would never be sufficient data bandwidth for people to stream video into their homes. Very smart guy, now making big bucks at Google, but he couldn't comprehend, despite having expertise in the area, the massive advances in both bandwidth in residential networks and improvements in video compression. Must tease him about that... iPlayer launched the following year.

I actually thought it probably would be possible, but only because in a physics lecture the year before we'd worked through the bandwidth savings of a digital TV signal compared to analogue and that kind of mind boggling efficiency advance made me realise that huge changes can happen quite quickly. My lack of understanding of the difficulty of the task made me more confident it could happen than someone with much more expertise.

Great story.

People naturally have an element of inertia and its often easier to see reasons why things can't change than reasons why they can.

And being close to things mean that your mind is awash with all the detail and cannot take a holistic view.

It’s the same reason why almost every opinion on a company’s share prospects that I have heard from people actually working there has turned out to be a dud.