I'm back from recording videos, and my voice is tired! I recorded ten today. The staff laughed at many of the jokes, and told me I'm a better presenter than most other faculty. When I explained I treat it as a performance, they got it. Videos which are interesting do better than those which are not.
Last night I tried to powerwash my back patio with my battery operated power washer. Verdict: it works fine, but runs out of juice before the gas powered run runs out of gas. Although that might be a feature, not a bug, as I get tired of doing it. My daughter took a turn, and really enjoyed it. It's not hard.
I gotta get paperwork done before I leave. The Dean's office wants a report updated by the end of next week, but it's run on an internal VPN, so I can only do it in my UD office! 🙄
On the subject of safety: this came across my phone just the other day and I thought it was interesting. My first husband subscribed to Car and Driver and I always enjoyed reading it.
That's exactly right. I don't want AI on my phone, or AI agents in software, or home automation systems, or any of that. I want a car with push buttons and dials for radio/air and classic gear shifters and spare tires you can change yourself without having to push the button for Elon to come fix. Heck, I like my 2016 4Runner that still requires using the key. I'm lucky I'm recently out of the software business, because I'm behind the times and don't think I have the enthusiasm to get with it.
We tend that way too. Partly because over time the darn charging cables become unreliably intermittent. It may be the ports (at either end) are dirty, or the cable is frayed, or the software in the car just, well, sucks. Whatever the reason, we find the CarPlay connects and disconnects itself. Bluetooth seems better.
I test drove a new Xiaomi SU7 in China. Voice commands for everything, phone connects and charges wirelessly...all that stuff.
This is the car Apple Computer would make; it's flawless. And, it's <$30k. Farley, the CEO of Ford Motor, imported one and that's his car. We're not allowed to have them. It's Chinese, and therefore a national security threat.
Even my Tacoma pickup had all that stuff. I now have a TRD off-road version of the RAV 4. 2024. All that and more: adaptive cruise control, rain sensitive wipers, auto bright lights.
Hi all: On my way to the office to record some videos for UD. Yawn! My daughter was offered the phlebotomist position, so if any of you need jabbed in Richmond, IN, I've got your person for ya!
It's full time at Reid Hospital. 3 days a week 4am-4pm. So she'll get an education on getting up real early!
Good morning. 82 degrees here already, enroute to another 90 degree day, the third in a row here. A few cloudbursts last night which missed the house.
The mothership is covering the start of the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands. The FP is headlining the apparent (subject to ranked choice vote tallying) win of the socialist, pro-Palestinian candidate Zoltan Mamdami.
It got me thinking about several other layers of the “internet of things” (IoT) as regards cars. For one, cars have so many sensors that there’s a serious question as to if or when consumers demand useful diagnostic data on their own vehicles. What carmakers do now is jealously guard such data as their own private property. It wouldn’t take much of a consumer movement to threaten them with rules and regs the carmakers would rather not have.
Another is if and when the safety monitoring electronics are marshaled for a lot more “features” that take away driver autonomy. For instance, as they are now doing in Europe apparently, cars could automatically throttle cars’ top speeds according to the posted speed limits.
Once self-driving cars become viable, it shouldn’t be too long before regulations require all cars to be self-driving—all in the name of safety, of course. The industry’s tech enthusiasts already firmly believe self-driving technology will be far superior to human drivers anyway.
As I understand it, the technology is now at a state where we could all have self-driving cars tomorrow IF ... we all had self-driving cars tomorrow.
The problem is that can never happen, which means that the automakers have to create a vehicle that can exist in a hybrid world (combination of self-drivers and human drivers) and having to deal with the number of complex use cases involving humans is really, really hard!
I always think of a four-way stop as an example. In programming terms, it's a fairly straightforward problem to solve. Sensors measure every car's arrival time at the stop, communicate the order to the cars, then the cars obediently travel through the stop in the correct order.
However, humans are supposed to be able to do the same thing. "Supposed to be" being the operative word, because the reality is that most of us learn quickly that other drivers can't count, aren't thinking, and don't care - so they will happily go through the intersection whenever they feel like it (at which point they will collide with a self-driving car which has been zealously following the rules and KNOWS that it's its turn to go).
There are many other scenarios like this where the developers have to plan for the reality that human drivers are likely to do unpredictable things at unpredictable times. This is why it's taking so long.
As many old cars on the road, it will be hard to demand they all be self-driving. Car collectors, etc. But who knows? I wonder if future race cars will be self-driving?
On the positive side I think self-driving will give freedom to a lot of seniors, and a lot of disabled people, so I encourage its growth.
What would be the point of self-driving race cars?
ETA: Even if it started out as a battle between engineering and tech, it would eventually devolve into a battle of AI implementation. Or so it seems to me.
Coincidentally, my daughter met her future husband when both worked for Uber in the autonomous vehicle program. She got an advanced degree at Carnegie Mellon and took the Uber job in Pittsburgh, where they still live. Uber terminated the AV program and both now work in different places. The son in law (as a side gig) has been consulting on drone technology that has been deployed by Ukraine. He sleeps well at night. I would too.
Watching it, and riding in a driverless taxi, makes it clear that it works flawlessly. The cars know what to do. Humans are the problem.
The taxi's are equipped with a lot of outside mounted camera equipment that folks wouldn't like. So, there's that argument against it, but it does work.
Driving for seniors here in New York State is changing right now. My mother-in-law (age 93) isn't going to be able to drive anymore after this year, because people 87 years old and older are going to have to take not just an eye test, but a ROAD TEST, every single year. My mother-in-law can safely drive to church and to her daughter's house. But she can't possibly pass a road test.
After living in a city (Wuhan) with hundreds of self driving taxi's, I can clearly see that all cars being self-driving would be much safer and traffic would move much more efficiently. Orders of magnitude safer. Humans are a built in defect.
I vigorously oppose requirements for all cars being self-driving. I think it's called cognitive dissonance, isn't it?
Are humans large bags of mostly water to be protected during shipping or are they individual entities with rights of self-determination?
Requiring self-driving cars in certain locations for traffic management is one thing. Taking away driving privileges (it is a privilege...) across the board to make people safer is another.
Modifying a person's sense of agency changes their approach to risk taking. In our time and place, a broad revocation of driving privileges would carve a huge chunk out of our humanity.
(If safety is that important than get serious about teaching driving skills and make the effort to get a driver's license match the consequences of being a bad driver).
My current mental state has me believing most humans are large bags of mostly water, with the exception being our increasingly inhuman political leaders being very large bags of hot gas.
I am in an awkward position of having lived in China and experienced the apparently competent management of a vast complex society...a society that has problems and complexities orders of magnitude greater than America. Everyone rolls out the anti-Commie platitudes they've been trained to repeat, but it falls apart upon actual experience.
I like the idea of democracy, but am increasingly in the same frame of mind as Aristotle, who insisted it was one of the stupidest of all governance structures.
This has my mind going in more directions that I have time to sort out.
One question does come to mind: is there do-gooder-ism in China? So much of the US was rural prior to WWI and so local government could just wing most things. But so many of the "improvements" that came later left many people feeling imposed upon (usually only when they disagreed, no doubt). The city educated vs the country experienced. "Who are you to tell me what to do? You don't know anything about me or about what I do or how we do things around here."
When you work in a large, well-run company those types of improvements are just the mechanics that make things work smoothely. There is enough practicality for it to be less a matter of ego.
From what you have said, it seems that China's long history of an administrative state and far longer continuity of community results in "government interference" being seen more as ordinary company infrastructure.
Re democracy: How do you limit voting to knowledgeable, intelligent people who know when and when to listen?
Is there a book on the history of China you would recommend?
I find the thrust of the article puzzling. Does anyone buy a car based on the entertainment system? As long as the car has Bluetooth, what’s important is the “entertainment system” on your smartphone, be it Apple or Google.
But this issue shows how miserably ridiculous US “privacy” laws are. basically, they can violate your privacy however you want as long as they disclose their (anti-)”privacy practices”.
I'm back from recording videos, and my voice is tired! I recorded ten today. The staff laughed at many of the jokes, and told me I'm a better presenter than most other faculty. When I explained I treat it as a performance, they got it. Videos which are interesting do better than those which are not.
Last night I tried to powerwash my back patio with my battery operated power washer. Verdict: it works fine, but runs out of juice before the gas powered run runs out of gas. Although that might be a feature, not a bug, as I get tired of doing it. My daughter took a turn, and really enjoyed it. It's not hard.
I gotta get paperwork done before I leave. The Dean's office wants a report updated by the end of next week, but it's run on an internal VPN, so I can only do it in my UD office! 🙄
On the subject of safety: this came across my phone just the other day and I thought it was interesting. My first husband subscribed to Car and Driver and I always enjoyed reading it.
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a64945529/cars-active-safety-systems-how-effective/
I am adamantly opposed to the entire IOT. I don't want or need sentient appliances.
That's exactly right. I don't want AI on my phone, or AI agents in software, or home automation systems, or any of that. I want a car with push buttons and dials for radio/air and classic gear shifters and spare tires you can change yourself without having to push the button for Elon to come fix. Heck, I like my 2016 4Runner that still requires using the key. I'm lucky I'm recently out of the software business, because I'm behind the times and don't think I have the enthusiasm to get with it.
I love this group, so many smart people teaching this yesgoodnik new things all the time! Thanks, Jay.
I use Apple CarPlay all the time. I wouldn't get a new car without it. I can't do without access to the thousands of tunes in my iTunes music library.
Exactly
Don't need it for my iTunes library. Bluetooth to the car system, play the music.
But the sound quality of music delivered via Bluetooth isn't nearly as good as tunes delivered directly via CarPlay.
I've heard that. On my 10 year old truck, it makes no difference. Most of the time I have the windows down anyway.
Is the same true for Spotify and Pandora? I think it is. I am not an iTunes guy.
I think so. For me, with a 2015 Xterra with zero modern enhancements, whatever is playing on the phone comes out the car speakers.
I think you're right. But as far as gps goes, I like having the big screen rather than looking at my phone on some kind of gooseneck doohickey.
That's the only argument for all the doohickeys that I agree with. The big screen is nice. I don't have one.
But, I have a gooseneck doohickey that works flawlessly. It's Chinese.
Oh, yes, they work, but the screen is still the phone and its small.
We tend that way too. Partly because over time the darn charging cables become unreliably intermittent. It may be the ports (at either end) are dirty, or the cable is frayed, or the software in the car just, well, sucks. Whatever the reason, we find the CarPlay connects and disconnects itself. Bluetooth seems better.
It IS better, for me anyway. CarPlay is buggy, unnecessary, and just gets in the way. And the cable thing...hassle.
I have a newer model car and it connects and charges wirelessly.
I test drove a new Xiaomi SU7 in China. Voice commands for everything, phone connects and charges wirelessly...all that stuff.
This is the car Apple Computer would make; it's flawless. And, it's <$30k. Farley, the CEO of Ford Motor, imported one and that's his car. We're not allowed to have them. It's Chinese, and therefore a national security threat.
Even my Tacoma pickup had all that stuff. I now have a TRD off-road version of the RAV 4. 2024. All that and more: adaptive cruise control, rain sensitive wipers, auto bright lights.
Hi all: On my way to the office to record some videos for UD. Yawn! My daughter was offered the phlebotomist position, so if any of you need jabbed in Richmond, IN, I've got your person for ya!
It's full time at Reid Hospital. 3 days a week 4am-4pm. So she'll get an education on getting up real early!
Good morning. 82 degrees here already, enroute to another 90 degree day, the third in a row here. A few cloudbursts last night which missed the house.
The mothership is covering the start of the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands. The FP is headlining the apparent (subject to ranked choice vote tallying) win of the socialist, pro-Palestinian candidate Zoltan Mamdami.
Thanks for this contribution, Jay.
It got me thinking about several other layers of the “internet of things” (IoT) as regards cars. For one, cars have so many sensors that there’s a serious question as to if or when consumers demand useful diagnostic data on their own vehicles. What carmakers do now is jealously guard such data as their own private property. It wouldn’t take much of a consumer movement to threaten them with rules and regs the carmakers would rather not have.
Another is if and when the safety monitoring electronics are marshaled for a lot more “features” that take away driver autonomy. For instance, as they are now doing in Europe apparently, cars could automatically throttle cars’ top speeds according to the posted speed limits.
Once self-driving cars become viable, it shouldn’t be too long before regulations require all cars to be self-driving—all in the name of safety, of course. The industry’s tech enthusiasts already firmly believe self-driving technology will be far superior to human drivers anyway.
As I understand it, the technology is now at a state where we could all have self-driving cars tomorrow IF ... we all had self-driving cars tomorrow.
The problem is that can never happen, which means that the automakers have to create a vehicle that can exist in a hybrid world (combination of self-drivers and human drivers) and having to deal with the number of complex use cases involving humans is really, really hard!
I always think of a four-way stop as an example. In programming terms, it's a fairly straightforward problem to solve. Sensors measure every car's arrival time at the stop, communicate the order to the cars, then the cars obediently travel through the stop in the correct order.
However, humans are supposed to be able to do the same thing. "Supposed to be" being the operative word, because the reality is that most of us learn quickly that other drivers can't count, aren't thinking, and don't care - so they will happily go through the intersection whenever they feel like it (at which point they will collide with a self-driving car which has been zealously following the rules and KNOWS that it's its turn to go).
There are many other scenarios like this where the developers have to plan for the reality that human drivers are likely to do unpredictable things at unpredictable times. This is why it's taking so long.
As many old cars on the road, it will be hard to demand they all be self-driving. Car collectors, etc. But who knows? I wonder if future race cars will be self-driving?
On the positive side I think self-driving will give freedom to a lot of seniors, and a lot of disabled people, so I encourage its growth.
What would be the point of self-driving race cars?
ETA: Even if it started out as a battle between engineering and tech, it would eventually devolve into a battle of AI implementation. Or so it seems to me.
It'd save money on hiring drivers! 🤦♂️
But but advertising! Endorsements!
Coincidentally, my daughter met her future husband when both worked for Uber in the autonomous vehicle program. She got an advanced degree at Carnegie Mellon and took the Uber job in Pittsburgh, where they still live. Uber terminated the AV program and both now work in different places. The son in law (as a side gig) has been consulting on drone technology that has been deployed by Ukraine. He sleeps well at night. I would too.
I am grateful for people like your son in law.
Watching it, and riding in a driverless taxi, makes it clear that it works flawlessly. The cars know what to do. Humans are the problem.
The taxi's are equipped with a lot of outside mounted camera equipment that folks wouldn't like. So, there's that argument against it, but it does work.
Driving for seniors here in New York State is changing right now. My mother-in-law (age 93) isn't going to be able to drive anymore after this year, because people 87 years old and older are going to have to take not just an eye test, but a ROAD TEST, every single year. My mother-in-law can safely drive to church and to her daughter's house. But she can't possibly pass a road test.
After living in a city (Wuhan) with hundreds of self driving taxi's, I can clearly see that all cars being self-driving would be much safer and traffic would move much more efficiently. Orders of magnitude safer. Humans are a built in defect.
I vigorously oppose requirements for all cars being self-driving. I think it's called cognitive dissonance, isn't it?
I don't think it is cognitive dissonance.
Are humans large bags of mostly water to be protected during shipping or are they individual entities with rights of self-determination?
Requiring self-driving cars in certain locations for traffic management is one thing. Taking away driving privileges (it is a privilege...) across the board to make people safer is another.
Modifying a person's sense of agency changes their approach to risk taking. In our time and place, a broad revocation of driving privileges would carve a huge chunk out of our humanity.
(If safety is that important than get serious about teaching driving skills and make the effort to get a driver's license match the consequences of being a bad driver).
Oooh, I like that large bags of water paragraph.
My current mental state has me believing most humans are large bags of mostly water, with the exception being our increasingly inhuman political leaders being very large bags of hot gas.
I have some sympathy with that, and am completely with you on political leaders.
I am in an awkward position of having lived in China and experienced the apparently competent management of a vast complex society...a society that has problems and complexities orders of magnitude greater than America. Everyone rolls out the anti-Commie platitudes they've been trained to repeat, but it falls apart upon actual experience.
I like the idea of democracy, but am increasingly in the same frame of mind as Aristotle, who insisted it was one of the stupidest of all governance structures.
This has my mind going in more directions that I have time to sort out.
One question does come to mind: is there do-gooder-ism in China? So much of the US was rural prior to WWI and so local government could just wing most things. But so many of the "improvements" that came later left many people feeling imposed upon (usually only when they disagreed, no doubt). The city educated vs the country experienced. "Who are you to tell me what to do? You don't know anything about me or about what I do or how we do things around here."
When you work in a large, well-run company those types of improvements are just the mechanics that make things work smoothely. There is enough practicality for it to be less a matter of ego.
From what you have said, it seems that China's long history of an administrative state and far longer continuity of community results in "government interference" being seen more as ordinary company infrastructure.
Re democracy: How do you limit voting to knowledgeable, intelligent people who know when and when to listen?
Is there a book on the history of China you would recommend?
I find the thrust of the article puzzling. Does anyone buy a car based on the entertainment system? As long as the car has Bluetooth, what’s important is the “entertainment system” on your smartphone, be it Apple or Google.
But this issue shows how miserably ridiculous US “privacy” laws are. basically, they can violate your privacy however you want as long as they disclose their (anti-)”privacy practices”.
2 words: burner phone.