MystikIncarnate

Is it bad that I read that last section in the super fast barely intelligible voice they use in medication ads?

Ty

I'm out of the loop, who died now?

Where's my pitchfork?

IMO, the big strength with self driving cars, if we ever get there is that level of car to car communication. The vehicle will be able to communicate ahead and see the best possible route, and where there's congestion etc, then optimize the drive to avoid unnecessary delays.

A big problem with human drivers is the tenancy for ghost traffic jams to occur. There was a test they did with about 10-20 drivers of all varieties put into cars and told to drive a circle track, following eachother. No other instructions were given. All they need to do was keep distance in front of them and everything would be fine, what was observed was that some drivers went more quickly than others, and would brake to a near stop when they came close to the person in front. In doing so, everyone ended up basically in stop and go conditions.

IMO, that test exemplifies the problem with human drivers. Put enough of them on the same road and given enough drivers and enough time, traffic/congestion will create slowdowns that otherwise shouldn't exist.

Taking people out of the equation means that all of the cars can accelerate at the same time and travel in tight packs, so merges are effortless because the entire system is working together to ensure that merging vehicles are able to merge (allowing sufficient space for them to merge), and perhaps more importantly, the merging cars will match pace with the flows of traffic already traveling on the road. Those are the two main tenants of a zipper merge. Find space to merge into, and match pace with the vehicles in the lane you are merging into. Seems that a lot of people forget that last bit.

So rush hour nonsense will at least be reduced.

Well, the automotive industry has been working on making self driving a thing, and I recall when they first tried to tackle the problem of lane keeping.

The first proposal was to embed magnets or similar into the road surface that the car could have a set of sensors for to determine if it was drifting left or right in its lane.

Motherfucker, that's just a virtual track for your dumb four-wheeled mini-train.

It didn't catch on, but AFAIK it was implemented in small areas as a trial and it performed adequately given the technology of the time.

So I'm out here going, why the fuck are we pretending that vehicles are not just rail-free personal trains?

May hinder safety efforts?

I'm pretty sure this throws safety right out the window.

The fact is that these aggressively capitalist jerkwads know how much money people waste on buying, owning, customizing, repairing and otherwise operating their "personally owned" vehicles (since buying doesn't seem to be ownership anymore, I have to put this in quotations because that's what they call it; but it's not necessarily what it is).

So all emphasis is put on cars, cars, cars! Everyone else better get the fuck out of the way, or your life is forfeit. They tried this a long time ago with jaywalking. The charge of jaywalking is almost entirely stricken from legal records because it infringes on your freedom to travel under your own power in open and public spaces, which is constitutionally protected.

Sometimes you can, but it's rare.

Collective action and unions are the way for 99.9%

The 0.1% know who they are, and they're happy to throw their weight around. When the company pushes back and gets rid of them, they often end up bringing that person back as a consultant because they really cannot survive without their help

BuT tHeY pRoViDe JoBs

/s

This is both a blessing and a curse. For my line of work, IT, I'm often thinking of the possible failure scenarios because I'll have to deal with them if they happen. I want to make it easy on myself if the worst happens.

At the same time, having my manager saying "we need to chat" will have me basically getting fired 1000 different ways in my head before we walk the 18 steps to his office.

5, but it also depends on the circumstances. What liquid is used, temperature, viscosity, etc. There's some material science stuff that's far beyond the intended scope of this question.

This is exactly right. Musk is the Edison of the current era, and I mean that in all the worst ways possible.

He's just another trust fund schmuck with enough sense to pay someone smarter than him to do all the actual inventive shit, like Edison did (especially, but not exclusively to Nikola Tesla).

IMO, it's blasphemous that he owns a company named after Nikola Tesla.