Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver II: How we doing?
615 Responses
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Moz, in reply to
You may be confusing the underlying blockchain tech with its first example, bitcoin. Other methods are sprouting.
From a quick skim round the web my understanding seems to be common.
If they don't have the mining element, they're very hard to distinguish from generic cryptographic signing, where for example the ye olde PGP is used to sign a document that includes new content plus a summary or hash of previous content, thus proving the chain. It does that automatically in my email client (which I've been using with this feature since before blockchain was invented). An answer on Quora suggests that approach was devised around 1991.
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Alfie, in reply to
...this crap about driverless cars is just a red herring from Uber, it basicly says do what we want in the way of removing regulations or we will let lose driversless cars on you.
I wouldn't be so sure. Uber is conducting tests with driverless cars in Pittsburgh and elsewhere with Ford and Volvo. They've just bought into Otto, an autonomous truck company formed by ex-Google staffers. And Toyota is investing an undisclosed sum in Uber. They're serious about this shit.
While some may see autonomous cars as science fiction, I reckon they're inevitable in the not too distant future.
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goforit, in reply to
Uber is conducting tests with driverless cars in Pittsburgh and elsewhere with Ford and Volvo. They’ve just bought
Not true, when one reads this statement fully a driver is still in the car to take over when/as requied, the article goes on to say driverless cars cannot handle weather related conditrions like snow covering road markings etc.
I think we all agree driverless cars are coming but fully driverless cars are years away.
I still stand by my statement the driverless cars are use as a threat and or cover knock backs of Uber to divert attention. -
Of course they have people in the cars during testing but you'd have to be naive to ignore Uber's end-game. You're welcome to view this as merely a bluff from Uber, however the world's media seems to be playing along with their game. How Uber plans to put its own drivers out of business provides yet another example.
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BenWilson, in reply to
you’d have to be naive to ignore Uber’s end-game
It could be that their end-game is naive. They literally are relying on making a technological break through. I wouldn't want to be banking on that. Definitely not if I was an investor, and definitely not on the very long history in this particular field of massively overpromising and underdelivering.
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One has to give Uber full marks for showmanship, looks like they are putting all their eggs and the investors money into one basket
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Interesting point, if Uber does end being a driverless operation and as service stations are now help yourself, how is petrol going to be put into driverless cars as one would presume these cars are will be continuously on the road.and where they end up at the end of each ride could be anywhere.
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Stephen R, in reply to
If they can make the whole get-in-get-out process not involve any sort of manual payment, I suspect it would be a piece of cake for an Uber driver-less car to rock up to a participating petrol station, be filled up, and drive away, and all the payments happen in the back-office and get amortised across all the people who rode in it that day...
Seems pretty easy, really.
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you missed the point, as the car is driverless and no one in attenance on the forecourt who is actually going to put the pump nossle into the car.
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Just read a bit more on these driverless cars, there will be two people on board to run the thing, one driver just in guide the car when required and an geek to run the computor that operates the car. Watch Uber drivers they be looking for more in commissions to fund this LOL
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just read anotheer what I would think is insulting to the Uber drivers, in the past Uber drivers where called "Partners", now the drivers are just "dudes" that cost Uber to much money.
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not for long
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Sacha, in reply to
inductive charging coils in the road.
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Alfie, in reply to
Just read a bit more on these driverless cars, there will be two people on board to run the thing, one driver just in guide the car when required and an geek to run the computor that operates the car.
Only during the testing phase. Which is sensible.
Picking up on driverless cars refueling, it's hard to see petrol being a thing for too much longer and proximity electrical recharging would be ideal for autonomous vehicles.
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Oh god the geeks beleive their own bulls**t LOL
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Sacha, in reply to
Some of em like our friend Juha, yes.
As Ben has noted, there is no forseeable substitute for separated rail or busways to move large amounts of people. And the ethical and legal issues with self-drive are greater than the tech ones.
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BenWilson, in reply to
And the ethical and legal issues with self-drive are greater than the tech ones.
Depending how you prioritize things, of course. Since the ethical issues are essentially externalized, they don't cost the developers much. But I think the tech is going to cost them far more than they think. Since it's entirely outside of the organizational expertise of Uber, I think they're going to just get burned on this. They've got the legal and ethical side under control (they just ignore it).
At the moment, they look like delivering something that people just won't want to use, any more than you would choose to talk to an annoying voice operated automatic call center over a person for anything but the most mundane task.
This ain't the tech you're looking for. Something genuinely useful might spin off from it, though. I just can't predict what that will be.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
Depends: what are the ethical issues with selling a car with drum brakes? - at the limit, they're going to fail to stop and crash into people in circumstances where ABS disks would have pulled the car up in time. The defence is that the transport authorities have decided they are an adequate cost/safety trade off. Same with self driving cars, the transport authorities will define minimal standards (as they do with self-driving aircraft and trains).
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
There are some identity political people who will find your use of the term 'geek' offensive. As a reclaimed term of abuse, it can only really be used from within the geek community: so you shouldn't be using it without unless you either have a BSc in a technical subject or have reached a fairly high level on a canonical online game.
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Don't have energy to find links but plenty of stories this year about self-drive emergency ethical challenges like deciding whether to run over multiple pedestrians to preserve the single passenger.
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Do any of the self driving technologies have any real success dealing with the secondary roads that make up much of NZ (and I'd assume most countries)'s roading networks?
Without knowing anything useful about the technology it seems that we surely must be some way from having a safe technology that would allow say a milk tanker or sheep truck to merrily drive down a windy, single lane gravel road, like which my home area has in spades.
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I've sort of assumed that this kind of technology would be designed for broad, well designed and laid out motorways, or roads that can easily be embedded with sensors or have other identifiers.
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Moz, in reply to
I've sort of assumed that this kind of technology would be designed for broad, well designed and laid out motorways
That would be where assume makes an ass, then. The old DARPA challenge was almost all off road, for example, and the current problems mostly involve situations where many human drivers struggle (and fail). Stuff like driving into a setting sun, black ice, heavy rain. Where humans are "better" is mostly in taking risks/"knowing" that other human drivers will do certain things. Where AI is better is not driving the wrong way on the motorway and other trivia.
We're not at the stage where you can leave the steering wheel at home, but 289 people died last year because we're not at the stage where the steering wheel is enough to operate the vehicle safely. I still find it bleakly amusing that we refer to that as "the road toll", I have a mental image of feeding people into a Pink Floyd style meat grinder at a toll booth on the road. Maybe if we did that people would take it more seriously?
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
technology would be designed for broad, well designed and laid out motorways, or roads that can easily be embedded with sensors or have other identifiers.
Anything could happen…
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BenWilson, in reply to
I’ve sort of assumed that this kind of technology would be designed for broad, well designed and laid out motorways, or roads that can easily be embedded with sensors or have other identifiers.
Yes, I would not deny that if the entire roading infrastructure were to be altered, different technology could be enabled. For instance, if special corridors were created with small roads made of steel, then large vehicles carry hundreds of people could race along them to work. In highly built up areas, these could be taken under the ground, although you'd probably want to invent some kind of moving staircase that could get the passengers up to the ground level. One day, in NZ, we will get this. I feel sure of it.
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