• blame [they/them]
    ·
    21 minutes ago

    pretty sure more than 15,000 people need to get to work in the morning

    • FunkyStuff [he/him]
      ·
      2 hours ago

      It's a self driving taxi startup. It doesn't drive itself reliablh. It relies on call center workers in the global south to take control of the cars when they run into trouble. They already have killed several people and are programmed to only avoid specific objects they identify, if they identify you as 'other' they'll just run you over (yes this has already happened)

      Anyway, paying a bus driver and building rail infrastructure is completely unthinkable and inefficient dontcha know?

  • Beaver [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 hours ago

    conservative 12 year average life of the waymo

    ...what? Taxis do like 50k+ miles a year of hard city driving, they get replaced every 3 to 6 years. So even his "conservative" math is fucked.

    • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]
      ·
      4 hours ago

      His sole piece of evidence for the longevity of an urban taxi cab is the one driven by Earnest Borgnine in Escape from New York

  • 7bicycles [he/him]
    ·
    6 hours ago

    SF public transit sits at half a million per day ridership so I'm looking forward to being crammed into a car with about 333 other people

  • Hime [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    5 hours ago

    Tom Nicholas did a good video on how this company buys up science youtubers to pump their company to others as a thinly veiled "cool science video on AI cars" and it's pretty damning. Veritasium crying now che-smile

    https://youtu.be/CM0aohBfUTc

    • neo [he/him]
      ·
      5 hours ago

      The one veritasium video I watched was about the Incompleteness Theorem. Since it was just about a math topic I don't think there was anything to shill, and I thought it was well done (not a mathematician, cannot assess it in that way). But then I see the other videos recommended now and again and they typically look like bait 'n bro.

      • Speaker [e/em/eir]
        ·
        4 hours ago

        Theorem: Any lay explanation of Gödel's incompleteness theorems is either incomplete or inconsistent.

        Proof: :made-it-the-fuck-up:

        I'm only sour about these because it's one of those things like string theory or "0.999...=1" that attracts almost exclusively cranks who want to use whatever details they internalized from the NATOpedia page and use it to explain why orgones are real or whatever.

      • FunkyStuff [he/him]
        ·
        2 hours ago

        His channel has settled into a rhythm of doing 1 really good, gorgeous video on math or physics, then a horrible slop video that's often just a commercial for some company. If you can pick up on the vibe of which one you're watching at any time, you need only waste 30 or so seconds before you skip the ones that aren't worthwhile.

      • Hime [she/her]
        ·
        4 hours ago

        I'd heard he was good but my first taste was that video and it's like 💀 not even subtle shilling.

        • FunkyStuff [he/him]
          ·
          2 hours ago

          If you're a very math oriented person I think you probably wouldn't like anything he makes for being too surface level. If you're interested in math but haven't done math beyond maybe an undergrad level, his math history videos are both gorgeously animated and pretty compelling in narrative so they help carry across the concepts. All the other videos tend to be slop.

          • Hime [she/her]
            ·
            2 hours ago

            Yeah it would probably be lost on me but it's absolutely something my bf would love so I'm recommending it to him halal

  • dkr567 [comrade/them, he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    5 hours ago

    Anytime a tech bro/company suggest a novel way of x (where x is transportation or etc.), it's always something that's either not really better than what currently exist or just a worse version but have their horseshit techtalk terms attached to it to sound novel/cool.

  • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    5 hours ago

    I've stopped reading after the first sentence and am just letting the idea of 15,000 waymos in one place marinate in my mind

  • VHS [he/him]
    ·
    5 hours ago

    https://humantransit.org/2016/07/elon-musk-doesnt-understand-geometry.html

  • chungusamonugs [he/him]
    ·
    6 hours ago

    Good points here on operating costs. Want to add, there is no way one of those is 120k. The shitty jaguar truck it's based on is at least 60k alone delivered and then it needs to get totally disassembled to install the arrays and sensors to make it run over pedestrians on purpose drive.

  • QuillcrestFalconer [he/him]
    ·
    6 hours ago

    Against:

    • Ridiculously more energy inefficient

    • Incredibly space inefficient

    • Incredibly throughput inefficient

    • Will be much more expensive than using public transport.

    • Will cause a lot more traffic

    • Will cause a lot more accidents

    • There's no way those operating costs are correct

  • DragonBallZinn [he/him]
    ·
    6 hours ago

    Because that’s what California needs! More traffic! Does it come with a free AI generated printed image of a crying train too?

    Can other STEM disciplines get as smug as CSers are? I’d love to have a civil engineer and an urban planner laugh at these dipshits for claiming we should abolish public transport for their technoslop.

    • TraschcanOfIdeology [they/them, comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 hours ago

      Can other STEM disciplines get as smug as CSers are? I’d love to have a civil engineer and an urban planner laugh at these dipshits for claiming we should abolish public transport for their technoslop.

      Oh they can, in my experience mechanical and aeronautical engineers do it a lot. Not to mention chemical engineers who have a very material reason to be kissing big oil and big processed food's ass.

      Engineering school is where humility goes to die, the worst part about chemical engineering school was dealing with the overinflated egos of everyone, from professors to freshpeople.

      • DragonBallZinn [he/him]
        ·
        50 minutes ago

        Shit sucks, engineering sounds like you'll either come across the best people you'll ever meet, or ghouls who knew they were smart enough for something beyond MBAs.

    • AnarchoAnarchist [none/use name]
      ·
      6 hours ago

      Electric cars do require much less maintenance, but 8K a year would barely pay for someone to keep the windshield wiper fluid topped off much less the kind of issues that would pop up in a fleet of 15k vehicles.

      I wonder what would happen to traffic with 15,000 extra vehicles within the city limits. Something tells me it won't relieve congestion or make the streets any safer.

      But it would make a couple of vulture capitalists a lot of money.

      • TheEgoBot@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        3 hours ago

        I mean, even on top of maintenance the entire system is basically just on rails, it has to be mapped out manually, every car has a 'guy in the chair' that can control the car remotely if necessary, they also got guys in unmarked vans that follow the driverless cars in case of emergency, and on top of that every car is constantly collecting data and that storage is insane, all of that falls under operational costs completely independent of maintenance issues

    • Ishmael [he/him]
      ·
      5 hours ago

      Wouldn't even cover the human fluids cleanup costs of 15,000 autonomous taxis

    • context [fae/faer, fae/faer]
      ·
      6 hours ago

      yeah it sounds like that dril tweet about needing help with his budget but for coming up with operating cost assumptions for a business plan

      dril please help why won't any venture capitalists fund me?

  • Leon_Grotsky [comrade/them]
    ·
    7 hours ago

    Wild how at this point we are arguing for busses instead of bazinga rental scams; when less than a century ago busses were the bazinga scam getting rid of trams, railcars, and trolleys.

  • kittin [he/him]
    ·
    7 hours ago

    Instead of 1000 buses what about 15,000 smaller buses without routes or schedules that would be much more efficient

    • regul [any]
      ·
      7 hours ago

      Surely 15,000 smaller buses can fit into the same space without any issues!