jayjay71

I thought about that shortly after posting my comment. I could still see it being used by consumers for low quality videos, or maybe for medium quality depending on how much can be salvaged from software stabilization. But then just thinking about the weight alone for decent cameras and how much more they weigh than this entire platform!

I see it mostly as a cool research project right now. Like most research projects it will likely never see mass commercialization, but it's still really cool. And maybe something they learn from this will be useful for something else entirely.

I also actually know one of the professors who worked on this, as he taught my first programming course way back when. He just loves to build cool robots.

Neat. I wonder how much work it will take before it can hover. I just spent too much time on YouTube watching people crash drones (often into people). I could see some applications for this filming at crowded venues once it's more developed.

dang changed the article so now this comment thread is a little confusing. The original article incorrectly claimed that total production increased 250%.

This article is wrong. The output per employee changed to 250%. So by reducing the staff to 10%, the total output is roughly 25% compared to what it was before.

http://monetarywatch.com/2017/01/chinese-factory-replaces-90...

edit: added original source courtesy of dmoy http://en.people.cn/n/2015/0715/c90000-8920747.html

This is great data. I'm curious what will happen with all of the talent that recently left Google, including various startups for self-driving cars. That said, Google is doing better than I thought. Kudos to them.

Any idea how to benchmark this against humans quantitatively? Also, any idea how trivial or significant a disengagement is?

Google's "perfect" record on freeways lends credence to my theory that trucks are just a few years away from being fully automated. I actually suspect the laws will trail the technology there.

I wonder if this decision will be final, or if either party will appeal. Facebook has stated they will appeal, but Zenimax has threatened an injunction. While an injunction seems unlikely to achieve fruition, just the chance that it might (which would completely halt VR for Facebook) seems enough of a risk to just move on.

http://uploadvr.com/verdict-zenimax-oculus/

Then again, what do I know about giant corporations suing each other. I've always found it comical how much money Samsung and Apple spent suing each other, but they seem to make money just fine.

I think the separation between HN and politics is intentional. In fact, not too long ago they strictly banned any political submissions for a week (although they cancelled it early because nobody could agree on the definition of political).

I think your best bet in the short term is to create a custom subreddit, invite a bunch of people from HN, and see how that goes. Since you have the early momentum from the audience you want you can set up the mods early and set the tone for the future. Later on you can create your own website if reddit becomes problematic.

I find videos of robots failing amusing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKMysMDK8wU

I'm sure by now they've gotten it to work though as it's a pretty simple process. I'll have to head over to the mall and check it out.

Honest question - has Elon written any of the code for Tesla or SpaceX? Or has he designed any of the electrical or mechanical systems? I know he used to code at past companies, but a quick google search doesn't tell me he still does this.

I'd like to hear more. Can you be more specific about what you think led to the fall of the Soviet Union?

Overall I like Elon Musk (although I've never met him), but people seem to think he's the über-engineer when really he's the über-salesman.

I saw a comment on HN about this recently where someone suggested a 100% inheritance tax. I wonder what society would be like if we were able to implement this effectively.

This is great news. Quanergy was supposed to be selling solid state sensors by now, but they missed their deadline and have changed their answer to "soon." Regardless, so long as somebody is selling the sensors for cheap, it's fantastic news for robotics. It also opens up possibilities for selling to consumers as there could be phones that include these sensors (or more likely they're sold separately as dongles). Suddenly your phones would be able to do SLAM and make 3D maps of your surroundings. That would make furniture shopping a lot easier. I could also see some cool applications with augmented reality.

It's refreshing to see an article like this among the many other articles predicting self-driving cars will be here in ~2 years. Volvo has committed to selling level 4 vehicles by the end of this year (in limited locations) - I'd love for them to follow through and see how good their technology really is. I suspect the transition will be far more gradual than most people are willing to admit, and take decades instead of years. Keep in mind, serious research into self-driving cars started in the 80's, and then there was a huge increase in interest in the 2000's because of the DARPA challenges. After that Google took interest, and recently the major automakers have become serious about it as well. But it's worth noting that originally Chris Urmson had predicted Google would be selling fully autonomous cars today, and instead Google lost a lot of their talent in the last year including Urmson and there is no public deadline for selling a product.

I think progress is great and self-driving cars are awesome, but I don't believe they're just around the corner.

How much do you like the Golf R? Is the 4WD worth the price increase over the GTI?

You readily acknowledge "Our Institutions have failed us" multiple times, but you're arguing they can't fail us again because of "The long history" - I think you're arguing against yourself. And while this is digging further into the past, you left out The Trail of Tears from your list - an iconic example of the president ignoring the law because he can. That man is now on our $20 bill, so it seems he's been rewarded by history.

Saying injustices happen and are eventually rectified is one thing (which seems to be your argument), saying injustices can never happen again is something completely different.

> I'm confident our institutions are strong enough to prevent something that blatantly unconstitutional from happening

I say this in all seriousness: why?

> Most economists no longer believe that these kinds of situations are automatically self-correcting through "trickle-down economics", in which just getting out of the way of wealth-creation at the top inevitably lifts all boats.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but did many economists ever take this idea seriously? I always thought trickle-down economics was just political rhetoric.

I find the history of Atari and all things connected to it fascinating, but this was particularly insightful in terms of marketing to your audience:

"The reason for doing the animals, believe it or not, was not for the kids. It was meant to be a head fake for the parents. Kids are really smart at knowing how to play their parents. and the kids knew that if they said, 'I want to go to Chuck E. Cheese and play the games' the parents would just see themselves spending money. But if they said, 'I want to go see Chuck E. Cheese entertainment -- and it's free,' they'd be good to go," Bushnell said. "The other thing was that we wanted the parents to have something to amuse themselves while the kids were in the game room. If you listened to the dialogue, it was fun, edgy stuff, kinda like Toy Story, written as much for the parents as the kids."

I can agree that many investors will assume that because other firms invested, that is a "signal" that they use to invest themselves, and in that sense raising money can give you momentum. But I disagree that that is the same thing as the sunk cost fallacy. What I am claiming is that investors are not likely to reinvest once they realize the company is not performing as expected. It's only if they've spent their own money, and then put more money in a subsequent round that they are prey to the sunk cost fallacy.

"Now, for the first time, we have official confirmation that GDP (in China) has been fabricated."

How much have the numbers been changed?

How often do institutional investors fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy? If you don't meet your milestones, you're probably not getting more money from the same investors. VC's make a lot of mistakes, but throwing good money after bad seems pretty rare to me.

I've noticed the more nuanced of a statement I make on HN, the more likely I am to be attacked for it. It's getting worse as the site becomes more popular as well.

> (Amazon) didn't need huge outside cash injections like Uber

Amazon and Uber are very different companies, but this wildly oversimplifies the financing of Amazon. Amazon has taken on many billions of dollars in debt over the years in order to operate. If you add it all up, Amazon has taken (in very different terms) about as much money as Uber.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-02/amazon-se...

Even so, Tesla should be able to tell whether or not you're driving on a highway with all of the data they collect. Why not compare that data to the Autopilot data? This report wasn't made by Tesla, it was made by the NHTSA. So why not do a more meaningful comparison?

It's weird.

So they're comparing miles driven manually before a certain date to miles driven manually and automatically after a certain date? It certainly implies that Autopilot is safer, but why not separate it properly (Autopilot vs manual) and give us far more accurate information?

It just seems...odd.

> I mean how much more are the prices going to go

People have been saying that for years, and yet they keep going up.

But how do you know you have a great product before you ship? Until you have paying customers, you don't have a real feedback loop.

Is there a reason you didn't want to join Oculus and continue working on the same (or similar) technology with your colleagues?

What makes you say that?