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the teste
Nov 22, 2002
54,225
20,003
Sleazattle
I've been working here since 7 AM. Read 35 musculoskeletal radiology films (and a bunch of other stuff). I had noticed there was an MSK radiologist sitting in the corner reading outpatient studies (as opposed to inpatient or emergency ones).

I thought he was there on his own volition, catching up on the outpatient list.

Well, it turns out that he is here on call as a 3rd person. All those studies I read should have been read by him. This misunderstanding would be less galling except that I actually walked over and asked him about one such study. At that time it'd been nice for him to pipe up with something like "oh, I see that's an ER MSK film. Those should go to me" but no such words emanated from his mouth, only advice on what type of fracture it was, and I continued to blithely do much of his work for him.
Did you let him know how his actions would impact your ability to research your next car purchase?
 

Toshi

Harbinger of Doom
Oct 23, 2001
38,029
7,549
Carelessly curbed a wheel this morning. Curb was the perfect height, tire sidewall + rim lip. Gah.

 

Toshi

Harbinger of Doom
Oct 23, 2001
38,029
7,549
Just ordered this.

Snapper XD 82V MAX Electric Cordless 21-Inch Self-Propelled Lawnmower Kit with (2) 2.0 Batteries & (1) Rapid Charger, 1687914, SXD21SPWM82K



It’s the Amazon Gold Box deal of the day. I figure that with Amazon’s return policy I’ll give it a shot (and in the worst case just use my fancy Honda gas one), since lawn mower emissions are probably quite high in my household’s total mix given our efficient house and the non-Land Cruiser vehicles.
I finally unpacked it, charged up those two batteries (charger sounds like a jet engine!), and bolted on the handle. Didn't have much grass to mow but still did the back lawn with it just to see how it handles.

Verdict: Going back to Amazon. (As I picked "Didn't want item" as the reason I'll pay for return shipping, but at $52 and change picked up from my doorstep for a bulky 81 lb box I won't complain one whit.)

It felt cheap in every detail, but most annoyingly in that its self-propulsion is full on or full off, with no modulation at all. It felt like a $100 Home Depot bargain basement mower, just with a slot for an electric battery atop it. Very similar design to the Kobalt one I had tried before, too–must be a standard design all the Chinese factories are cranking out.

The trusty plastic deck Honda started up on the 3rd pull after sitting all winter with some gas (and Startron) in its tank, so I'll just revert to it, in all its well-built, powerful, noisy, vibrating, gas-smelling glory.
 

Toshi

Harbinger of Doom
Oct 23, 2001
38,029
7,549
Today marks Open Enrollment, wherein we confirm that the American health insurance system is all manner of backwards: people with higher paying jobs tend to have employers that subsidize more of their health insurance costs.

This year the family high deductible health insurance option costs $1,530.50/month. My employer covers all but $19 of that–that $19 has been a constant as they vary their subsidy to always hit that point.
 

Toshi

Harbinger of Doom
Oct 23, 2001
38,029
7,549

Absolutely amazing. Double pit stop. Action starts about 15 seconds in, so give it a second.
 

Toshi

Harbinger of Doom
Oct 23, 2001
38,029
7,549
Watching the Tesla autonomy live stream now.
Some highlights from the portion I was able to catch:


New FSD system on a chip outperforms their old Nvidia hardware handily at 80% the cost. My 3 will get this as a retrofit as I paid up for the still-promissory Full Self Driving package.

What we’re going to explain to you today is that LIDAR is a fool’s errand, and anyone relying on that is doomed

-Elon Musk
Andrej the software guy showing some corner cases seen from real world data. Underlying point is that simulation is tough.



We have a mechanism where we ask the fleet for more images like this

-Andrej
This is powerful as then humans annotate them and they are used to train the CNN.





This is the level of redundancy I and regulators would expect: Since Oct 2016 power steering, data lines, aux power all redundant. With the FSD computer now that’s redundant internally, too.

Finally, some very optimistic timeline predictions:



Robotaxi in 2020? I’d love for my car to earn me money but that seems insanely optimistic due to regulations if nothing else.



Tesla will take 20-30% of the revenue per Elon Musk.
 

Toshi

Harbinger of Doom
Oct 23, 2001
38,029
7,549
Hot off the presses!


Good weather, well marked roads, but in this setting it looks promising!
 

Toshi

Harbinger of Doom
Oct 23, 2001
38,029
7,549
@SkaredShtles you see post #8494? The future is potentially near!

(With hands by wheel, ready to take over at any time. I don't think that part will go away for some years yet due to unreliability. But I will accept that as it's better than anything else for now and shall amuse me.)
 

Toshi

Harbinger of Doom
Oct 23, 2001
38,029
7,549
Waymo to build Waymos (Waysmo?) in a repurposed automotive factory in Detroit:

https://medium.com/waymo/making-waymos-in-motor-city-76c2af165165

I have no particular loyalty to Tesla besides the merits of their product. If Waymo lets me buy my own self-driving shuttle to work, riding, and the mountains I'd be all up in their grille.



The logical follow-up question would be "why not Uber everywhere then?" And the answers would be:

1) Wait time
2) Inconsistent quality of vehicles and drivers, to phrase it gently
3) Bike rack/ski rack issues (although there is Uber Ski now for the ski storage issue)
4) No guarantee a ride back from the mountains is available
5) At a certain level of usage it'll be cheaper to own such a vehicle

The unlikely but potential perk of generating revenue through setting the vehicle to use as a robotaxi (but who cleans up the vomit?!) while I work or sleep is intriguing, too.
 

CBJ

year old fart
Mar 19, 2002
12,860
4,154
Copenhagen, Denmark
Just watched the whole presentation and thought it was very impressive. Like how they are trying to completely change what it means to own car and develop a car. The self driving tech is closer than I thought it would be. Still not seen anything close to this from other companies?
 

SkaredShtles

Michael Bolton
Sep 21, 2003
65,375
12,529
In a van.... down by the river
Just watched the whole presentation and thought it was very impressive. Like how they are trying to completely change what it means to own car and develop a car. The self driving tech is closer than I thought it would be. Still not seen anything close to this from other companies?
This was from 2016: https://money.cnn.com/2016/10/25/technology/otto-budweiser-self-driving-truck/index.html

It drove down I-25 from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs, which is a route that NEVER has light traffic. I was impressed.
 

Toshi

Harbinger of Doom
Oct 23, 2001
38,029
7,549
Just watched the whole presentation and thought it was very impressive. Like how they are trying to completely change what it means to own car and develop a car. The self driving tech is closer than I thought it would be. Still not seen anything close to this from other companies?
Lots of companies have done demos. Waymo, Cruise, Uber. Apple is known to be developing and testing, too.

None seem close to market, as they're cautious. See Uber running down the pedestrian pushing a bicycle across a dark road in Arizona.

Tesla, for better or worse, is not cautious, so they seem to plan to push self-driving features (albeit with supervision still required) to the whole fleet as soon as possible, provided the owners have ponied up for the Full Self Driving software package as I have.
 

ALEXIS_DH

Tirelessly Awesome
Jan 30, 2003
6,147
796
Lima, Peru, Peru
Tesla, for better or worse, is not cautious, so they seem to plan to push self-driving features (albeit with supervision still required) to the whole fleet as soon as possible, provided the owners have ponied up for the Full Self Driving software package as I have.
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/04/25/tesla-is-offering-insurance-to-leverage-its-autopilot-technology.html

With Tesla now offering insurance, the logical step to bypass the liability issues... I think they are very close to market.
24 months at most, is my bet.
 

ALEXIS_DH

Tirelessly Awesome
Jan 30, 2003
6,147
796
Lima, Peru, Peru
that might be take a while.

a few months ago I had a serious business conversation about this very same topic with some big cheeses in Stuttgart; and they (the germans at least) dont see it in the near future.

liability, not technical issues; are the main problem to implementation.
i have an idea on whats in the pipeline for the next 4 years... and fully autonomous cars are not there yet

i understand telsa wants to enter the insurance business; which pretty much is the only solution i see to the liability problem from the manufacturer/suppliers side.

thing is... if the insurance business were to be combined with the manufacturing business (at least for passenger cars), that´d be seppuku for the car industry.
passenger cars are sold pretty much at cost, with margins made on parts, mostlly on collsion parts, mostly paid by insurance companies.
take insurance in-house, and you move the price war to, yet, another turf.
I dont see that happening very soon... manufacturers will fight to death to delay that.
Re-thinking a point made about a year and a half ago.

Several huge mergers have happened in the tier 1 suppliers for the auto-industry in the last 2 years.
the lattest, ZF (maker of soon to be obsolete transmissions) buying Wabco (HD brake systems) and TRW is like Samsung buying Panasonic or another giant..
Mahle (another huge player, known for combustion engine parts) has made very aggressive bids for electric-component suppliers. Schaeffler/BorgWarner/Magnetti Marelli/Behr/Continental have all made big portfolio changes since then.

I was a trade show in sao paulo a few days ago... and the big players are gearing up for the next fight.
I originally thought it was 10 years for mainstream autonomous cars. I think it will be half that now.
 

Toshi

Harbinger of Doom
Oct 23, 2001
38,029
7,549
Now that the Land Cruiser has returned to my life it's apparent that I could have kept it, the RAV4 EV, and the wife's PacHy. Short range EV with hitch for commute + biking. Land Cruiser for Land Cruiser things and skiing. Minivan for wife since she likes it.

That would have been a bit cheaper than the route I took with a similar basic functionality.

:D

But then I wouldn't have zoom zoooooom, an all-electric ski day option when not with the full family, or Autopilot/future Full Self Driving/autobrake features. The RAV4 EV's lack of official warranty support out of California was a huge issue looming on the horizon, too. Just as well. Stimulating the economy, I am.
 
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CBJ

year old fart
Mar 19, 2002
12,860
4,154
Copenhagen, Denmark
I think its clear the 3 was designed for robotaxi from day one when you see the design of the interior. As for cleaning I am sure you that will be an offered service too where the car drives to the cleaning station by itself. Come on @Toshi be a little creative :-) Also if you know who booked the car you know who fucked up the car too and I am sure Tesla will find ways to go after bad passengers or exclude them from the system as the booking will go through their network. I would be very surprised if Tesla doesn't already have a team working on the business plan for all of the robotaxi business tapping into the taxi business could be what will make the company profitable.
 

Toshi

Harbinger of Doom
Oct 23, 2001
38,029
7,549
Just had to file a protest with the Denver Assessor. They claimed for property tax purposes that my house had appreciated by $124k since I had it built at the end of 2015. I countered with my formal assessment from October 2018 that showed that it had only appreciated by $58k. Not sure which one is closer to reality on the ground, but for tax purposes I’m going 100% with the lower figure.
 

Toshi

Harbinger of Doom
Oct 23, 2001
38,029
7,549
Costco had Founders KBS. I vaguely recall the beer-fans here liking Founders products so I picked up a 4 pack.

Quite tasty, this.