Chozo

2009 was the date the article was posted.

The fleet of cars is summoned back to the HQ to have the update installed, so it causes a temporary service shutdown until cars are able to start leaving the garage with the new software. They can't do major updates over the air due to the file size; pushing out a mutli-gigabyte update to a few hundred cars at once isn't great on the cellular network.

They've already been testing on private tracks for years. There comes a point where, eventually, something new is used for the first time on a public road. Regardless, even despite even idiotic crashes like this one, they're still safer than human drivers.

I say my tax dollar funded DMV should put forth a significantly more stringent driving test and auto-revoke the licenses of anybody who doesn't pass, before I'd want SDCs off the roads. Inattentive drivers are one of the most lethal things in the world, and we all just kinda shrug our shoulders and ignore that problem, but then we somehow take issue when a literal supercomputer on wheels with an audited safety history far exceeding any human driver has two hiccups over the course of hundreds of millions of driven miles. It's just a weird outlook, imo.

After an investigation, Waymo found that its software had incorrectly predicted the future movements of the pickup truck due to “persistent orientation mismatch” between the towed vehicle and the one towing it.

Having worked at Waymo for a year troubleshooting daily builds of the software, this sounds to me like they may be trying to test riskier, "human" behaviors. Normally, the cars won't accelerate at all if the lidar detects an object in front of it, no matter what it thinks the object is or what direction it's moving in. So the fact that this failsafe was overridden somehow makes me think they're trying to add more "What would a human driver do in this situation?" options to the car's decision-making process. I'm guessing somebody added something along the lines of "assume the object will have started moving by the time you're closer to that position" and forgot to set a backup safety mechanism for the event that the object doesn't start moving.

I'm pretty sure the dev team also has safety checklists that they go through before pushing out any build, to make sure that every failsafe is accounted for, so that's a pretty major fuckup to have slipped through the cracks (if my theory is even close to accurate). But luckily, a very easily-fixed fuckup. They're lucky this situation was just "comically stupid" instead of "harrowing tragedy".

I wasn't asking about the car's logic algorithm; we all know that the SDC made an error, since it [checks notes] hit another car. We already know it didn't do the correct thing. I was asking how else you think the developers should be working on the software other than one thing at a time. That seemed like a weird criticism.

So their plan is to fix one accident at a time…

Well how else would you do it?

I still want to go some day. Even if it is overly expensive, Akiba seems like such a cool town to experience.

I've heard Akihabara is a bit of an overpriced tech/gamer tourist trap, and that if you want to actually shop there are neighboring cities that are far cheaper.

The device connects to a Game Boy or portable CD player (yup, not a Nintendo DS or iPod — apparently the Pedisedate also transports you to 1996)

I wonder if the writer realized that he would be transporting future readers to 2009 by referencing a DS and an iPod.

I kinda want to see this as a new speedrun category.

This is a really awesome article that explains the technical aspects in a way that makes sense to non-coders, without having to over simplify. I feel like this sort of writing should be much more appreciated. Also, the graphic at the top has no business being that good, this whole piece is a banger.

Keep in mind, the drivers for these apps often take these jobs because they can't hold down a normal job. Either due to disability, mental health, or just plain unemployable personality traits keep them from maintaining a normal 9-5. Many of these people can't find other work. They sign up for these apps because they don't have any boss to answer to, they don't have a schedule to follow, and they don't have any real rules that they need to adhere to.