Not sure why you're being downed. The Corvette E-Ray was one of the most impressive cars I've ever seen from design and styling to it's incredible performance, at a price point well below many cars it could stand toe-to-toe with. A big part of that impressiveness is that I can open Chevrolet's website right now, and find one to actually buy.
The demos for the future tech are fun for sure, but the Cybertruck and Tesla Semi started this exact same way. The Cybertruck arrived incredibly late, wildly missing even conservative estimates of it's capabilities, and at damn near double the price they teased, AND the units that have shipped have been a fucking mess, to such a degree where Tesla seemingly can't even give them away. And the Tesla Semi has still failed to materialize at all.
So yeah it's a bit of a joke to me to have them hocking a flying car, when their pickup truck can't even drive up a steep unpaved hill, that even my old clapped out F-150 on it's SUV tires would manage just fine.
Edit: and to clarify, I know that it can do that, because I helped a friend move some exercise equipment he bought at auction back to his house, and he has an open-back basement. We backed my truck with trailer down the hill, unloaded it through his basement patio door, and the truck then had to climb back up to the road. And I was a little nervous to be honest, but it did do that, despite as I said having SUV tires on 22-inch rims LOL
F-150s are quite amazing in their ability to climb and maintain an even footing. But you never ever want to get near the point where it will start to roll because of the high ground clearance it is very hard to recover from that. I pulled a bunch of kids with their car out of a Colorado mountain pass near Ft. Collins that had gone 'off roading' in their parents car and it was borderline, almost ended up rolling my own car because of the drag of the other vehicle. Still, it worked and I was even more impressed by the F-150 than I was before then. I live in Europe now and such a vehicle would be completely out of place here but if I would ever end up in the sticks that's the car I would want.
> next time op comes up for air is when he finds out their employer replaced them with a college student making $10/hour.
I mean numerous firms seem to already be doing this, and they're making HN's front page regularly for week-long downtimes, blog posts tearing them apart for shockingly shit engineering practices, and their userbase in open rebellion from the sheer STATE of the product.
My employer has absolutely no interest in cutting any engineering staff in favor of AI. But we're also not a VC-funded human misery mill, and we have a sustainable business model involving selling actual products, so these facts may be related to that.
> blog posts tearing them apart for shockingly shit engineering practices, and their userbase in open rebellion from the sheer STATE of the product
So far I've seen relatively little anger of that level, except perhaps aimed at MS for the state of Windows. And unfortunately for the humans most companies high on AI juice are more likely to follow the path of finding better ways to use AI (or switching to what they think is a better model) rather than re-engaging with the meat workers, is such a user revolt seems imminent.
My DayJob is riding high on AI AMT, though quality is not currently falling (in fact by some metrics there is an improvement) because people are properly reviewing everything that comes out of it. I'm still planning on not touching the stuff though, if it comes to a choice of “AI or be redundant”, I'll be redundant, but even the Luddite that I am can see there is a benefit if it is used well.
If it is indeed impossible to vet all the traffic passing through your networks, then perhaps your networks' existence is itself the issue. Maybe it is indeed not possible to vet 30 billion ads, just like it's difficult for Facebook to moderate all 3 billion users.
Perhaps the actual problem then are these monolith platforms that have done such a good job "eating the world" that they can no longer properly function.
If you really read what I wrote above - there is no "monolith" (and yes, Google is everyone's favorite Boogeyman). AdTech is a primordial pool all kinds of actors, each of which has found a profitable niche to "add value" (or to bullshit partners about "adding value").
I spoke of the network in specific. Whether we're discussing one firm dumping industrial quantities of sewage into the internet, or 10,000 tiny ones, doesn't really change at all that there's industrial quantities of sewage.
I'm critically uninterested in the fictions of the business idiot class. I'm sure for many purposes it's important for all the papers to have the proper LLC's on them. For the purpose of burning it to the ground though, it's not overly important.
Except that engagement is not free. All of these things require money, and they require time that isn't already set towards the goal of making money to survive. And one of the selling points of AI is explicitly the redundancy of numerous workers, including ones parallel to myself.
For many things this is true nowadays. Where I live walking in nature or swimming in the ocean is still free. In Dubai nature as in a green park might raise an entry fee.
Why not? They are doing many things right, and unlike in many parts of the west, their leadership are investing heavily in their own citizenry and nation, and have a long term vision.
It's wild to me that if you wrote a fictional account of a vassal state that was constructed in the center of "hostile" territory, who exercised brutal violence on all it's neighbors, including strictly for the purpose of territorial acquisition, who was funded and supplied implements of war from it's super-state that vastly exceeded it's own production capabilities, which it used to win every conflict it found itself in, and who's officials regularly make the news for calling for outright genocide, everyone would call them the bad guys. Meanwhile in the real world we just call that Israel, and waive vaguely at "complicated politics."
Or if we are to be historically correct, Israel is a result of nation building as a result of breaking a British empire, just like 35 other countries across Asia, the Carribean and the Middle east.
That includes India, Pakistan, Jordan, Iraq, Qatar, UAE, Yemen and others.
> Livestreams himself gratuitously raping & killing innocent children on Oct 7
That literally never happened. No matter how much as they (& you) claim it did, and want it to be true, not a single shred of evidence ever substantiated those claims. In fact the prisoners of war that were captured all claimed they were treated fairly, even given the squalid conditions their captors were forced to live in.
Genuinely the least they could do for what a pox they are on so many industries, on consumers of electronics, on local municipalities, on the environment...
I mean I can't speak for most people, but if the people I read are any indication, a whole lot of regular people are sick and tired of tech companies announcing their presence in our society and then immediately setting about making daily life worse for everyone but them.
So you'll have to excuse me but I'm not even getting the tiny violin out of the case for this one.
> So what? Who cares what you and a bunch of regular people are tired of?
Anyone in a position of power who doesn't want to end up killed? Like I'm not advocating for violence here, I'm just saying the list of political figures who "didn't care what regular people thought" and the list of political figures who were then subsequently murdered in public acts of political violence are a venn diagram that's practically a circle.
> That doesn't mean you get to take over private companies and start telling them where to spend their money.
I didn't advocate anything like that.
> But I like America, freedom, capitalism.
And I like people being able to live a good life, which Capitalism and lately America itself seem to be opposed to. Do you have an actual counterpoint to make or just more chest-beating?
My point has been reiterated several times, I'm sorry you missed it: you don't get to translate your bad feelings into seizing/directing private companies and how they distribute their compute.
You can say you do, by threat of death for disobedient politicians, but...well, that's bullshit. The people murdering & attempting to murder politicians don't fit the description of "regular people." And you're almost entirely incapable of directing policy with that tactic.
> How can a car be dangerously slow if all the other cars stick to the speed limit as well?
Because the other cars are speeding too.
> Notably, any reduction in danger that flows from breaking the speed limit is only for the car and other cars breaking the speed limit, in no case it is for pedestrians, cyclists or other non-vehicle participants in traffic.
Correct.
Speed limits in a vacuum are largely about revenue generation. There's ample evidence backing numerous practices that actually slow traffic, things like using traffic circles instead of intersections, reducing the width of lanes to promote slower travel, speed humps, separating traffic that's going a distance (roads) at speed, from slower traffic preparing to enter residences/businesses (streets). Lots of stuff.
Limits though? I mean they probably don't do nothing but they aren't nearly as effective unless you pair them with a regular police presence. And even then, mixed effects. I'm pretty sure the entirety of the Chicago Loop is capped at 55 mph, but if you actually do 55 on that thing, you're gonna die.
As to the topic of the thread: truthfully, IMO, parents should be barred from ferrying their kids to school. Not only is it just a "commute but worse" in terms of ecological impact (the car goes, drops the person, returns home, then returns later, picks up, and returns home. Literally 2x the normal traffic impact) but also it's ridiculously inefficient for similar reasons. School traffic everywhere I have ever lived has been a goddamned nightmare. I would rather be stuck on the highway jam ten times than be trying to navigate around a school full of stressed, harried parents driving big stupid SUVs, who themselves are surrounded by children, who themselves are entering and exiting vehicles at random.
School busses are the safest vehicles on American roads, and starting kids on them early gets them comfortable with the idea of mass transit. Dictionary definition of a win/win.
> Limits though? I mean they probably don't do nothing but they aren't nearly as effective unless you pair them with a regular police presence. And even then, mixed effects. I'm pretty sure the entirety of the Chicago Loop is capped at 55 mph, but if you actually do 55 on that thing, you're gonna die.
I actually look forward to self driving taxis/etc doing the speed limit for this reason. It's going to be difficult to speed if there are always vehicles doing the speed limits in various lanes (where passing lanes don't exist, at least)
As a software engineer I have no desire to ever let any sort of computer drive my car, and I will happily do what is required to maintain my access to the wheel. I'm thinking stuff like, more stringent driver exams, more expensive license renewals, that sort of thing. I recognize I'm an edge case and am prepared to contend with that however required. I am however also incredibly looking forward to a whole lot of other people being in self-driving cars, because my goodness, a large chunk of our populace has no business being behind the wheel.
I am not so arrogant as to believe I'm better than other drives. My record is probably better than average, but only because I religiously do things like maintain an extra long following distance (you know the things they teach in drivers ed that nobody does once they pass their license exam)
> I am not so arrogant as to believe I'm better than other drives.
Perhaps not you (since I don't know your background), but in general do you feel training makes no difference?
Would you say a heart surgeon with decades of experience would be arrogant to say they are a better heart surgeon than Joe Blow on the street who has zero medical experience? No, they truly are better, because their education and experience.
So yes, people can train to become far better drivers than the average. Hardly anyone does, because it is not required and most people don't care. But it is very much possible.
I don't have more training than anyone else - as you say nobody bothers to get it unless forced. I passed my test at 16, I know of a couple changes to training since then but it is by accident since I didn't look and no effort is made to ensure drivers hear of changes. I know many several things in my training that it is obvious nobody is doing.
I think training could help. However I don't think it will. People think they are good enough and will write down answers to pass the test. Maybe if the training was mandatory behind the wheel with failure meaning you lose your license - but the voters won't stand for that.
Quantity of training =/= advanced skill. It's also not arrogance on my part to see people who struggle with even the basics like a four-way stop, and not assess them to be lower skilled than myself. Arrogance would be assuming it, I just wait for people to do dumb shit, then judge them for it.
The arrogance is thinking they are worse than you. Most drivers I know complain about "the other guy" who make a mistake, mean while their own issues are "honest mistakes".
Are they struggling with a 4 way stop - or did they just prevent a crash because someone else you didn't even notice just did something stupid? That someone else might be you not knowing you even did something wrong!
Of course I have no idea how you drive, how much training you have or the other important details. The above shouldn't be taken as a personal attack on your actual driving. The attack does fit every other driver I know though (including me - though it is hard to be honest about my own failings)
I live in NJ, and what I like to say is that the drivers here actually know how to drive safely and correctly, they simply choose not to. When push comes to shove or they realize they can't drive like a jerk, they immediately cooperate and things move efficiently. It's not a knowledge problem, it's an attitude problem.
Largely agree. As a fellow red blooded american, I love my freedoms as well, but looking at how other people drive on the road, I’ll know when self driving has been solved because insurance companies will charge very differently for cars driven manually than cars driven by software.
Maybe software will never get good enough, but that’s not a bet I would make.
I think the software will get good enough to be quite far ahead of the average driver here. They're not great and they're only getting worse in my experience.
That said I think a fair number of people, myself included, are fine to pay and do more to keep our hand-driven cars, and I'll happily drive next to (properly insured) robots.
Ok? When I was learning to drive, I was taught to drive safely, whether that was under the speed limit or not. As my dad put it, "would you rather be right or alive?"
The issue there is that everyone has an inflated sense of their ability to drive at speed, and it's "other drivers" that are the problem.
Growing up in Australia, my dad pointed out two things to me, learning to drive: 1) that in my state at that time, you were required to drive at the maximum speed that was: within the limit, appropriate to the conditions and your ability to control the vehicle, and 2) that if it was to directly and imminently avoid an accident, a driver is permitted, for the minimum time possible, to ignore any road law (i.e. you cannot be cited for crossing over into oncoming traffic if it was to avoid traffic about to hit you. It was also commonly used for people cited for speeding while passing another vehicle - you'd appeal, and say "While I realize that I am still required to obey the speed limit when passing, as I was doing so, the vehicle I was passing adjusted its speed putting me in a situation where I felt the safest course to avoid an accident was to accelerate past them and then return to the speed limit").
But yes, as someone who was both a paramedic for 14 years, I've seen more than my fair share of drivers who think that they are safe (which, to be clear, is general commentary - I obviously don't know you).
No. They are driving unsafely, not you. Even if the speed limit doesn't seem to make sense for you, it may be there for a reason that's not obvious to you. It may also be there for non-safety reasons, such as noise reduction for the people living close by.
Also, people generally self-regulate down to a speed that "feels safe" for the road at hand. Sometimes this itself causes problems (the HUGE suburban streets near me constantly have speeding cars, because again, the street is huge and wide lanes make people confident to drive faster) but again, the issue there is that you need to make the road narrower, and then drivers will naturally slow down.
These mechanisms among others are much more effective at traffic calming rather than putting up more damn signs to clutter things up, and hiring more cops. But of course fixing streets costs money, and police issuing fines generates it, so it's not shocking that most municipalities go with option B.
Not fixing streets is 'free' and reduces the perceived safe speed. Letting the streets crumble is a win win.
This doesn't entirely work, eventually the street gets unusable and it's often much more expensive to rebuild it than it you had done timely maintenance.
Honestly using it less and less for exactly this reason. A lot of the time now even when I have a question for it, I think of the answer before I even send the question to it. And I just don't use it in IDE's at all anymore, period. Chat only.
I just don't understand the hype for this. "AI can do $x" quickly needs softening to "AI can try to do $x" which then becomes "humans need to verify $x has been done." If humans still have to oversee every part of the processes then what exactly is being automated!?
This would be like if we had our first factory producing cars but each car was like a die roll in terms of getting a car, a washing machine, a pile of scrap metal, or a baby. And people just asserting over and over that this was the future of making cars, no matter how much scrap metal keeps coming out.
I remember hearing that first mass manufactured weapons were like this. Horrible tolerances. So basically in assembly you tried different parts until you got something that fit together reasonably... It got better as tolerances got better. But I have some doubts if tolerances ever get there with AI...
> For an outright ban on "LLM, AI or agent assisted code contributions", they do very little to define what that means.
It means: did you use AI? If so, we don't want it.
Like come on. They don't like your new shiny toy and you're mad about it, but there's no need to be purposely obtuse.
You fire up an IDE, you write code, you submit it. That is not an AI contribution. You fire up Claude Code and prompt it, you submit it. That's an AI contribution.
Contributing to projects is a privilege not a right, and if you fail to contribute, be it because your PR was written like shit, be it your documentation wasn't complete, be it you didn't abide the style guides, or, yes, be it you used AI and they don't want AI, your submission doesn't go in. That's that. 2 + 2 = 4.
To be blunt it's wild that otherwise very intelligent people keep getting bluescreened by the fact that they occasionally must reckon with other intelligent people who do not necessarily believe the same things as them. Have y'all never gone outside or what?
The demos for the future tech are fun for sure, but the Cybertruck and Tesla Semi started this exact same way. The Cybertruck arrived incredibly late, wildly missing even conservative estimates of it's capabilities, and at damn near double the price they teased, AND the units that have shipped have been a fucking mess, to such a degree where Tesla seemingly can't even give them away. And the Tesla Semi has still failed to materialize at all.
So yeah it's a bit of a joke to me to have them hocking a flying car, when their pickup truck can't even drive up a steep unpaved hill, that even my old clapped out F-150 on it's SUV tires would manage just fine.
Edit: and to clarify, I know that it can do that, because I helped a friend move some exercise equipment he bought at auction back to his house, and he has an open-back basement. We backed my truck with trailer down the hill, unloaded it through his basement patio door, and the truck then had to climb back up to the road. And I was a little nervous to be honest, but it did do that, despite as I said having SUV tires on 22-inch rims LOL
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