Is there some tight coupling on autonomy + electric cars? Seems the only 2 viable hands-free car companies are Tesla and Rivian. I don't see myself ever getting an electric car, but it doesn't seem like the big car companies are anywhere near this.
I know this ain't a bitch-about-bluecruise thread but it's crazy to me they shipped it as is, it disengages silently as a matter of course - only indication is an animation on the speedometer. You basically have to keep your hands in the wheel just in case, not to mention shouting at you to pay attention when you glance over at the radio. Handsfree but keep your eyeballs facing front !
> Mercedes Drive Pilot is classified as L3 which is better than Tesla or Rivian.
"DRIVE PILOT can be activated in heavy traffic jams at a speed of 40 MPH or less on a pre-defined freeway network approved by Mercedes-Benz. DRIVE PILOT operates in daytime lighting conditions when inclement weather is not present and in areas where there is not a construction zone." [0]
The range is fine today, the problem is charging infrastructure now. There aren't enough high speed chargers, and we can't build more because of the same reasons we can't build more AI datacenters: power. Tesla can build tons of them because they're backed by large grid batteries that suck up the power peaks from fast charging so that they can install their charging stations anywhere that has somewhat reliable power. If you don't have the batteries to act as a peak shaver, then it's really hard to install high speed charging where people need it most in residential and commercial areas that are already oversubscribed.
It's not fine for all use cases. There are many people who are holding out because it's either not fine for their main use case, or even just a use case that occurs infrequently, but still important to them.
I'd like to see data on the distances people drive on a regular basis. For America where I am from, I think that a vast majority of people could use EVs today with the ranges they have today. I didn't see any EVs with ranges below 200+ miles and most had 260+. If you have to go further than that on a regular basis, I think that most cars won't work for your specific needs, let alone EVs. The whole range argument seems like some FUD to me that was made up by the ICE industry, honestly, because EVs have had these same ranges for a decade now.
I'm speaking out of personal experience as an EV owner in Los Angeles that takes occasional road trips. It's those occasional road trips that are preventing me from going full EV. And I'm like 99% certain I'm not a tiny minority.
Worthless comment. Of course it's not an issue for city driving. It's an issue for long trips and rural driving. No one said EVs don't serve many use cases. I have one myself.
Worthless human. More range is not needed and mark my words, mainstream EVs will not bother going beyond ~300 miles. Even the 400mi in a model s is a lot. More charging stations maybe, though we have plenty here in CA so roadtrips in a Tesla have never been a problem.
appreciate the compliment. I'm one of those Californians with a Tesla, and we keep a gas car for certain trips that would be very difficult with a Tesla. I'm not just making something up here. But whatever you say.
The coupling is more with cost than drive train, but consumers most likely to pay extra for autonomy are the same ones willing to pay extra for electric.
Which is why you see it on the Mercedes ICE vehicle. Because it's a high cost vehicle to start with.
The reason for this is Rivian and Tesla bet big on software defined platforms… ie every piece of hardware talks to a small number of central computers instead of many independent systems. This gives them a huge leg up in developing software than can actually take all the available input and use it to control all aspects of the vehicle.
Downside is all the buttons are on a screen. But I’ve grudgingly decided it’s worth it for software upgrades.
It's not real L3, it's marketing department L3. Two years after launch it's still only supported in two US states. Now that Mercedes got their headline, it's effectively abandonware.
If it was real L3, Drive Pilot would be considered the vehicle operator for legal purposes. Mercedes would take full responsibility for any driving infringements or collisions that occur during its use. In reality, Mercedes cannot indemnify you from driving infringements, and for collisions they only promise to cover "insurance costs" which probably doesn't include any downstream reputational consequences of making an insurance claim.
> In industrial scale software development, gaining access you are fully entitled to can sometimes take weeks.
4 years in consulting. I've spent the first WEEKS of a project twiddling my thumbs waiting for a laptop, just to spend more weeks waiting on access to source code, tooling, etc.
My friends on the strategy side could start and finish entire projects in that time.
Alternatively, there is no justice, and even the truth is lost to partisan politics. I have a strange feeling this benefits foreign intelligence, not harms it. Mossad, for example, knows who slipped through the cracks. Knows how much worse the "truth" is beyond the code names and vague emails. Now they have more power, not less.
This kind of thing can only exist in a climate of apathy and nihilism. The powerful want you to think the situation is hopeless and nothing will change. But remember this: at no point in history has a steady state been maintained for significant periods of time. Ever.
We are at a dangerous point in history. I personally believe that inequality is inevitably going to end in violence and we're beyuond the point of avoiding this with electoral politics. People are struggling to eat and survive at a time where we'll likely mint our first trillionaire in our lifetimes. This simply can't continue.
I'm personally for outing wealthy and powerful pedophiles who are meaningfully making all of our lives worse to accrue completely unnecessary extra wealth.
I meant that this event, like many events in American history, will be remembered through the lens of the party in power. At least for a long time. Only now are we beginning to understand Vietnam and Watergate, for example. I suspect the truth about Epstein will never come out, but what will come out will be made partisan by those releasing it, now or in the future.
I like this post, ofc we could all benefit from direct, and vulnerable, conversations. But one thing I never understood, even through Brené Brown, is that this direct and vulnerable communication style leads to its own set of baggage, its own unspoken agreements about what something meant.
> “I’ve been feeling a low-level tension between us, like maybe we’re quietly annoyed at each other but trying to stay polite. Is that just me?”
I'm sure in many cultures, and in many friend groups, this would go over fine. If I said this to someone, they would go into shock. They're unspoken thought would be "wow if he's saying that to me, I must annoy the shit out of him". Maybe not! Maybe that's my own unspoken understanding! But I do think this leaves a "scar" even a small one. "Direct" conversations are not without their own damaging effects. I think part of my social contract is to "deal" with things silently. Maybe in other cultures that's not the case.
If someone said that to me, I would be happy to have that conversation, but I would be on pins and needles around that person, and possibly overthinking how "annoying" I'm being, and I would have at least a small amount of resentment for the person saying it – "I have lots of friends I don't annoy, what's wrong with this person"
Just to be pretentious, this also reminds me of a conversation in Infinite Jest, where the canadian and the american spy argue about whether its right to teach their young what right and wrong is, or whether its right to discover it. The example is eating candy.
I think in the US, if you tell a kid not to eat candy, they will eat candy as soon as their guardian isn't watching. I'm not sure that's true elsewhere, for a myriad of reasons. By extension, if you tell me I'm annoying you, I might go through the motions of "repairing" the relationship, while I actually just distance myself. Ofc, that depends on who says it
Very cool idea, and helps promote owning your own data, and it being highly interoperable (plain text!)
I do wonder if we need a term for shoe-horned dogfooding though. Like sure, you can do this. You could do this in Figma! Or in Notion! Or in LEETCODE if you wanted to.
At least with Zed though, its plain text. If you find another way to collab realtime on plain text, you're not bound to 1 vendor.
I have had the opposite experience. I've never had Gemini give me something useful in sheets, and I'm not asking for complicated things. Like "group this data by day" or "give me p50 and p90"
