Regardless of whether private people participate, the actual robotaxi network they are running is real and growing quickly. Are you saying that self driving taxis are not going to be popular? Or is it just that the private citizen program will not materialize?
Regardless of whether private Tesla owners end up participating in the robotaxi market it does seem obvious that self driving taxis are going to be huge. Waymo and Cybercabs are growing quickly and will almost certainly completely dominate the market. Why would you ride in a Uber with a stinky driver (and pay more) when you could ride in a self driving taxi without a driver for cheaper?
Self-driving cars should be required to use sensors that directly and accurately measure distances to objects. Just guessing the distance using parallax is stupid.
I and many millions of other Americans will happily ride in them. Your particular political view does not even represent 50% of the country. Even if you say 50% of Americans will boycott the company purely for political reasons, that's still a market of 150M people.
Do you not trust any human drivers? They only have 2 eyeballs and cannot precisely measure the distance to any objects.
My guess is that you have ridden in an Uber or Lyft before and were comfortable enough to rely on their eyeball based system even though they weren't able to measure the distance to objects.
Regardless of whether you personally trust a camera-based system, the data do seem to show that it is possible to build a camera-based self driving system and have it be safer than human drivers.
The CEO of a company saying and doing batshit crazy things for no reason, leading to a 50% (or 25%, or even 10%) global boycott, does not instill confidence in the company as an investment opportunity.
If you book a cybercab the price is significantly cheaper than an Uber or Lyft. You can book one to get across Austin for literally half the price of the competition.
I took screenshots of the prices I have paid because I was so happy with only having to pay $7 to get across my city.
Apple killed their car program years ago. I know because I work there.
>aren’t interested in supporting musk anymore.
That may be your personal political take, but there is no evidence that politics are slowing their growth in a meaningful way. There is still strong interest in Tesla products, products like Starlink are growing at an incredible rate, Starship launches command huge livestream viewership, there's an entire industry of Youtubers which break down and discuss the engineering and logistics of SpaceX rockets.
> but there is no evidence that politics are slowing their growth in a meaningful way.
Musk got a lot of favors and basically his way with the out going power holders, its why he spent so much so the party wouldn't end.
One I was just reading about (while looking for Hinojosa's first plans, cleaning up the education department); was there was a quiet deal being worked on for spaceX to buy a beachfront state park [0] and that she remarked about Texas no longer being for sale.
I wouldnt be surprised if all the investigations into his companies deals happen. The attorney general got ousted for a democrat too who already said there will be a massive overhaul to how the office is used -- no more being maga's private law firm. Lets hope Musk and his companies did everything above board when working the massively corrupt outgoing gang.
I have ridden in a cybercab several times and they are omnipresent in my city. They work extremely well and are scaling quickly. "No prospects for growth" is a pretty wild take given the obvious new things they are building.
My electricity bill is 50% higher than this same month 1 year ago. My friends and neighbors in my city have said that they also have greatly increased electricity bills. Whether or not that increase is due to a specific data center, it's extremely easy to blame it on the increased electricity usage of data centers, no foreign propaganda required.
My electricity cost per kWh has just about doubled over the last 3 years, but afaik, it's mostly related to legislated changes to the energy mix and increases in fuel costs.
Fuel costs are up for lots of reasons, more demand for electricity could certainly be one of them... Inflation is certainly another component.
If the problem is demand outstripping supply then the obvious thing to insist on is that if they want to build, they should add more supply than they're consuming, so that they're fronting the money to make your electric bills go down.
Whereas instead we keep seeing proposals to ban them outright, which is the thing you'd expect to be pushed by someone with a different interest than domestic electric bills.
Right, so why is the proposal to prohibit "data centers" instead of the thing you're objecting to? Make them add more in non-fossil fuel generation than they're consuming.
Yeah that point no longer really applies because bad food is cheap. And also fast, people that work a lot don't have the time to spend an hour cooking.
A chief reason to put orbital data centers in space is the free, limitless power from the Sun. Based on the schematic SpaceX released, each of its AI1 satellites would have solar panels encompassing about 600 square meters, or about 1.5 times the size of a basketball court. These solar panels would generate 150 kW of peak power and 120 kW of average power for computing.
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It's "easy" (as far as launching a rocket is "easy") to put a satellite into space. The scale needed to replace a single data center is what's being questioned.
The proposals talk about tens of kilowatts for a satellite - a fraction of a rack.
Individual data centers get measured in gigawatts.
xAI has its Southaven data center under construction and estimated to consume 2.0 GW. If we assume the SpaceX planned satellites and the 120 kW of average power - that's 17,000 satellites to replace one data center.
... and that's assuming that you're putting all of them in the sun synchronous dawn dusk orbit so that you can get 100% solar availability. If you put in in a different orbit you're getting 50% sun and need some combination of more capacity (more satellites), more battery (more mass), and more solar (more mass to charge the battery to supply power).
Scott Manley's video is an excellent "can you" given the power for a single satellite based on Starlink in space. The answer is yes - you can put 10 kW of compute in space without too much difficulty.
Can you put 2 GW of compute in space to offset one data center on Earth?
Making it difficult to shut down AI’s is very important. There’s a real chance we end up with a regulatory capture cartel that’s enforced because of “safety”.
But there are solid engineering and logistical advantages. Not having to deal with nimby’s, permitting, data center blowback is a big advantage. It’s difficult to spin up new power infrastructure in western countries, and putting up a satellite with direct 24/7 solar power means you can skip the headache of building new power infrastructure. My electricity bill has increased by 50% in the last year and most of that increase is likely because of data centers powering AI. If we can instead directly power that compute in orbit from the sun then it will not increase demand on existing power infrastructure.
That sentiment seems to fail the test with reality, because you have people following the rules and behaving perfectly normally (like the subject in this story) who end up getting scrutinized anyway. That's a recipe for increasing anti-social behavior. After all, why bother following the rules if it doesn't keep me out of trouble?
It’s a fine line. Periodic demonstrations of arbitrary state power over your personal life can enhance the coercive effect. TSA checkpoints serve this purpose.
No one in Congress, no TSA administrators, no President, and no judge has ever consciously had the thought that airport security was beneficial to them because it enhances state authority.
The TSA exists because it
1. Made some people look good
2. Made some people money
3. Was thought necessary by some true believers
The incentive structures aren’t aligned in a way that any individual cares about reinforcing state power like that. Mostly the people in charge care about getting reelected, keeping their jobs, making money, or in some cases doing good.
TSA lines suck because you have a bunch of hourly workers directing a a crowd of clueless people through a multi step process.
I just got back from Disney World with the family. We flew out of an airport with TSA, went through dozens of security lines at the parks, and flew out of an airport that doesn’t use TSA.
There was no meaningful difference interactions with any of the security personal. Some were nice some were annoyed, some were bordering on mean.
All of this airport security, all the searches, the screenings, the cameras, the questions, it's just one more way of reducing your liberty, and reminding you that they can fuck with you anytime they want.
Excessive coercion eventually leads to the population “giving up”: voluntary unemployment/underemployment rises, productivity falls off a cliff, accidents increase, and corruption skyrockets. Unless there’s an outside benefactor nation both capable of and interested in carrying the weight, the society falls apart and you’re likely to get a revolution. This limits the amount of coercion that can be applied.
>Excessive coercion eventually leads to the population “giving up”: voluntary unemployment/underemployment rises, productivity falls off a cliff, accidents increase, and corruption skyrockets.
Sooo, what we're seeing the early stages of in the US right now?
Early stages, possibly. Depends on how/if things escalate or if we deviate towards reform. We’re still a long way from the most brutal totalitarian regimes of the last century.
If anything TSA checkpoints are constant advertisement of the failures of the state apparatus as they spend labor resources on suspicion my golf balls are a 12 rack of grenades.
Because they're the exception, not the norm. These systems generally do what they're supposed to do, at least if implemented correctly. The key isn't efficacy; you need to be emotionally prepared to oppose privacy violations even if they're doing exactly what they advertise.
Because it's not about helping you, it's about control. These people are literal anti-humanists, they just want to control all aspects of society. If people are suffering from the consequences of a massive publicly mandated surveillance state, well that's the price of progress if you listen to the anti-humanists.
Pretty sure the person you're responding to sees that clearly and may in fact be trying to point it out.
The original view presented by the quote is a child's view of authoritarians: they force you to behave the way they want you to.
The other commenter is pointing out how they work in practice, how they'll work with this, is by making noncompliant behavior the accepted norm and then enforcing it selectively based on their changing goals and targets.
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
This is an ironic choice of trite quote when contrast with the limitless HN comments one can reference (or have your AI of choice dig through) from the "big data era" during which HN was very, very, very fond of these "we'll slap up 1984 and it'll be great because nobody will speed or litter or install a mailbox post without calling 811" sorts of schemes.
But of course now that the tech of choice is AI and it's threatening everyone's jobs and status it's a bad thing.
People like to throw out that one line from the blog comment because it is a wonderful partisan critique of the modern Republican party. But I think it is more interesting with the first part of the comment [0]:
"There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc.
There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.
There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely."
This is always the classic defense whenever Israel is discovered to be doing something nefarious. Used to deflect criticism. Do we have any evidence that other nations are doing this? If we did we did, then that other country would get criticized in the exact same way. They are not being held to a different standard.
An example would be Cambridge Analytica, they got more bad press for doing similarly evil things and they are not Israeli.
Yes other countries do things that are similar, like China. But China doesn't have a "special relationship" with the US like Israel does, they aren't our "greatest ally" like Israel is purported to be, and they don't have staff and representatives at the highest levels of the US government like Israel does.
I would rather eat a bug than debate Israel vs. NATO on HN (or anywhere else), but these threads about Israeli spyware firms are actively misleading about something HN generally covers (CNE and security). I don't care what you think about Israel. I do care that people genuinely believe that these kinds of things (ad-driven spyware feels like it's on the tame side of what we talk about) are somehow distinctive to Israel.
Boiled down to its essence, your argument ("Everyone does it") reduces the quality of discussion. Part of it is stripping nuance, and also part whataboutism, and thought-terminating cliché.
If someone comments that "Qatar produces a high amount of greenhouse gases", a reply that says "Every country on Earth produces some greenhouse gases" is low quality; can we instead talk about CO2 production, compare trends, dig into why Qatar's per capita emissions are so damn high, and what can be done - if anything - to achieve the idealized version of the world with less climate change.
If you say so. Someone made a claim, suggesting that Israel is somehow the world leader in spyware. That's definitely not true. Seems worth clarifying!
You do Israel a big disservice honestly. If you are going to defend them, try to do it well. Israel has a PR problem right now, and it’s because discussions are shut down or subverted. Please don’t be a part of that.
I could give a fuck about Israel. I'm a practitioner in this field, and the notion that Israel somehow leads it or is distinctively engaged in it is misleading and dangerous.
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