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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

It’s actually harder to do nothing and just watch things, it’s its own special kind of fatigue. I wouldn’t be surprised if this doesn’t happen more often.

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A small anecdote, I learned/realised this when visiting CERN (many years ago) and seeing someone in the control room playing a computer game on a laptop next to his big displays. So I asked and they said something along the lines that yes, it's allowed because otherwise the people would fall asleep, especially during the night shifts when their job is just to sit there and let the experiment run an be ready to react if necessary.

This seems like a useful solution, but I guess it's hard to do as a policy as there is a fuzzy line between the game taking too much attention and not being interesting enough.

Same must apply to many control jobs, including nuclear plants. They can run themselves for most of the time. And it is probably preferable if there is no fiddling on going.

So we’re actually being told not to do this, even on night shifts, but I don’t think it’s actually being enforced. I did to some work on my PhD thesis while on shift, though.

Ok, thanks for the updated info, maybe it changed, it was over 10 years ago

For context, I was a private yacht chef for 7 years. On long legs of a trip I had to hold watch at the helm for 3 or 4 hour shifts while everyone else rested for their watch. Staying awake while using auto pilot was a special type of mental anguish.

I did delivers up and down the Atlantic in 2000s I remember it being awesome. Granted I was 20 and like the time we got too close to a us aircraft carrier and they launched a helicopter that did a fly over to check us out that was pretty great. We also always had lines out to catch fish and let me tell you when that line caught something didn’t matter if it was your shift or not it was “fish on” everyone jumping out of their bunks to help. Best fish tacos ever. I do remember the captain could be pass out drunk and still dock the 70 footer without issue and then stumble below to pass out. But yeah we slept a lot too but underway maybe 6-7 so plenty of time to fix or react big difference from an airplane or even autopilot car

We passed an aircraft carrier going up the East Coast while they were doing exercises. They radioed us and made it clear not to come close to the ship. I have video of fighter jets doing low passes over our yacht every 15 minutes or so using us as a practice target. Going South once, as we came towards the inlet at Fernandina Beach on the Florida, Georgia line, a nuclear submarine was leaving port. I was at the helm in the afternoon while everyone else was sleeping. Good thing I was awake because we were met with the Coast Guard helicopter with a mounted machine gun pointed at me and a Coast Guard response (defender class) boat with a .50-caliber machine gun also fixed on me while they sat off our bow. I communicated with them on the radio; they said I should hold my position and not move. The sub came out with two large ships on each side with blast shields on the each ship.

This is all very interesting and completely foreign to me!

> Coast Guard helicopter with a mounted machine gun pointed at me and a Coast Guard response (defender class) boat with a .50-caliber machine gun also fixed on me while they sat off our bow.

Why'd they do that?

> they said I should hold my position and not move.

Why?

> The sub came out with two large ships on each side with blast shields on the each ship.

...why?

> why?

Safety and security. A small boat can be a threat and cause damage to a larger boat if you let it get close enough. Small boats can easily capsize if they get too close to a larger boat.

I have be boarded by Coast Guard while entering US territorial waters. They will line up all boats moving from Bahamas towards Florida and have them hold speed and direction. Then they push an inflatable boat onto the stern and board with about 6 people all armed with fully automatic rifles. Mostly, they look under the floor boards for drugs and make sure the registration and documents are correct. The Coast Guard does not mess around.

When a $2,000,000,000 Ohio class submarine carrying ballistic missiles is most vulnerable leaving port moving towards water deep enough to dive in. The Coast Guard is tasked with keeping all potential threats away. The ships on the side would protect the submarine from RPG and similar attacks while the submarine is surfaced.

> captain could be pass out drunk and still dock the 70 footer without issue Brings up memories… This was same with my father, he stopped drinking later but when I was a teenager and stuck somewhere after midnight I would call home and he would say “sure buddy” and come pick me up. On the way back his eyes were almost closed and sometimes we would joke about how the car knows about the roads and can go way back home itself. He is too old now and actually has a 12 meter boat which can’t dock himself alone.

Like the “mostly self driving” car systems where the driver is expected to pay attention well enough to take over if needed

This is the worst of both worlds, I would (and do) rather just drive “manually”

Having done both, there’s just no going back to boat or car without autopilot.

Definitely slept a bit while doing night passage (alcohol). Would be impossible in a car given how much driver monitoring is out there.

Driving cross country in a car is actually the worst when you're in stop and go traffic, or cars keep slowing down and then speeding up. I can't wait to get my hands on adaptive cruise control because I get so aggravated and tired from having to shift and adjust speed. If I can just sit in one position and listen to comedy podcasts and audio books I do so much better

I finally got a car with adaptive cruise control and lane assist a couple of years ago. It is the best. Driving feels relaxing. I actually feel less fatigued. I can just listen to music /podcasts /audiobooks and not care about how others are driving. Feels like sitting in the passenger seat and watching the road.

I wouldn't feel safe if I wasn't listening to something that kept me engaged though. I would totally nod off.

I don’t have good “lane centering” but knowing that it has the lane departure warning and will automatically bounce me back into the lane if I slip up for a moment is enough to make driving less stressful.

I was excited to get adaptive cruise control, but I’ve found I don’t like using it very much. It’s too aggressive with hitting the breaks to maintain the following distance instead of being able to ease off the gas to fall back like a human driver would. Assume some brands are better at this than others, but anyway I didn’t buy a Mazda to not drive it. So I use that only intermittently for long drives as a bit of a break for my right foot.

> I wouldn’t be surprised if this doesn’t happen more often.

From context I guess you meant either "I wouldn’t be surprised if this happens more often" or "I would be surprised if this doesn’t happen more often." (https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=273 has many fun examples of this sort of thing)

Oops. And this is what happens when you accidentally double your negatives, thanks for the point out even if it’s too late to edit.

I cannot deny that your comment couldn't have failed more to displease me. Cheers,

One of the reasons the current "Self Driving" cars kinda suck. Majority of the time you're just not doing anything, but still have to be 100% attentive.

I've found the self-steering of new cars to be not at all useful for the stated use case. In my car, the self-steering pushes back a bit and deviates from the course ever so slightly so that you have to keep your hands on the wheel. I'd rather steer it myself.

But in those moments where I'm trying to find the UI for adjusting some climate setting, and I don't have my eyes on the road, that's when the self-driving is useful.

Maybe technology creates its own problems. To be fair, the radar cruise control is nice for long drives.

I think sweet spot is probably somewhere with adaptive cruise control and light lane assist. Too much beyond that and you have to be fully autonomous in all situations.

It really is comically reversed. Robots are far better than humans at watching for a long time and jumping in to help instantly with an acute problem when needed (like braking or swerving to avoid an obstacle). Humans are better at interpreting a complex scene and making a high level plan.

And this is basically what most other manufacturers’ driver assists do.

My wife’s car has adaptive cruise. It just needs to watch constantly and adjust your speed to ensure the distance between you and the car in front remains relatively constant.

It has lane keeping assist and lane departure alerting. It constantly tracks where the lines on the road are and either gently nudges you back in the lane, or beeps at you if you cross a line.

It has emergency braking, it’s constantly watching and if it sees you approaching something at a rate or distance that suggests you are likely to hit it, it will alert you. If you continue, it will apply the brakes for you.

If you’re stopped for a period of time (like at a light) and the car in front of you pulls away and you don’t after a brief moment, it will ding to get your attention and let you know traffic is moving.

Pretty much all of this is making use of the strengths of the computer (uninterrupted attention, quick reaction times) to make up for the weaknesses of the human (distractable, slower reaction times) instead of trying to do the reverse.

In the case of Waymo, you're sitting in the back seat and don't have to pay attention to the driving if you don't want to.

> still have to be 100% attentive.

Starting absolutes is poor.

This just an oxymoron. Highways are designed to take attention off.

On a chill highway drive I’d guess most drivers are no more than 50% attentive, driver assist or not.

Perhaps you could interpret "100% attentive" as "at the same level of attentiveness as being without the current generation of 'self driving' technology"?

Yeah, pedantic attacks like this just end up trolling the conversation rather than helping it.

So is comments from users who never used it

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