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Comment by thegrim000 | Hacker News Reader

You can find basically exact duplicate of stories like this from multiple years ago. Similar type of claim in the headline, similar type of article that praises some particular company that plans to deploy driverless trucks soon. The company gets some press attention, makes some money from investors, then cashes out, then in a couple more years the company no longer exists and you see another clone of this story about company Y that plans to deploy driverless trucks soon. Repeat ad nasueum. Honestly comes across as a straight up grift. I wonder if the author or publication has any stake in these companies.

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The original author likely works for one of these companies, with the listed author trading a little credibility to save a lot of effort an extremely common thing in journalism these days.

If you look around you can often find waves of this kind of article pushed by various PR firms. The sudden influx of articles trying to get people back into the office post COVID being a recent example when an industry realized it was at a major crisis point.

Reminds me of this piece from '05:

https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Most assuredly. The thing is the they're always coming until one day they're actually here. Some sort of paradox/axiom

Thing is, when a technology is actually almost here, people stop talking about it. Those on the cusp of making it happen don't want anyone else to know as they don't want to attract competition that might beat them to the punch.

If you're reading articles about how some new tech is "almost here", you can be sure it's not. When radios start to go silent, that is when you might want to take notice.

I don't think you read the same article that I did, because you are impugning Trisha Thadani and/or the Washington Post for grift and conflict of interest with zero evidence. The tone of the article does not at all strike me as praising Aurora Innovation, Kodiak Robotics, or Daimler Trucks. The subtitle warns that they are "speeding ahead of federal regulations," and if you look at her history she has written several articles focusing on the risks of testing autonomous vehicles on public roads.

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