Blasphemy to ignore the last crusade, arguably a better movie than raiders. Odd though they billed it as "3" without releasing a second. Also comforting in this day and age they didn't pump the cash cow with some years later nostalgia fests that would probably tie in a mish mash of popular topics like aliens or time travel.

They're rolling it out on Mars first. Solve the tough problems first!

Never read Children of the Sky? Didn't feel quite the same, and left it open at the end to continue, but it does exist

They're self driving until they get stuck. I've taken 35-40 trips and gotten stuck once where they actually came online to get the car moving (there was someone talking). After friend got stuck on a low viz corner in my neighborhood, I noticed more cars with drivers showing up the next few days, guessing to get more data on it.

I think the real test is how long it takes to get operational in a new city. Like after LA & Austin, how long will it take the next 20 cities (outside of building the cars, logistics and facilities etc). How well do they need to understand the roads via detailed mapping to launch a new area?

You aren't allowed to sit in the driver seat, so there is no one operating the vehicle. Its done under full license with the state. AFAIK the cops can't actually issue a ticket to one (there's a different agency over it, at least in CA), but they also don't speed, always use the blinker, don't swerve in lanes etc so not much of a reason to.

The prices are often comparable, the wait times can be longer from what I've found -- with the caveat that Waymo tends to be more accurate on their wait times since they’ve just assign a car and there's no pesky human deciding not to pick you up.

I wouldn't say overly cautious, but they do follow the speed limit which Uber drivers won't often do. They also don't get on the freeway that I've observed. I've had once instance of getting stuck behind a parking car where they’ll really needed to just cut someone off behind them. But no issues pulling around slow vehicles, pulling out into traffic, lefts on green yields, right on red, etc. Its also a smoother ride than someone with their foot on the gas, no jerky or sudden stops or whatever.

Maybe I'm zeroing in too much on this "ONCE self-driving reaches the point that it is as good as the median driver, then I believe that it should be authorized to be on the roads. " Should they not be authorized to be on the road?

"More roads" is a scaling problem, but I think at this point it's more regulatory and financial than anything else. It's not like the roads in Sacramento or San Jose or Topeka are going to be harder to navigate. (Ok, maybe Boston :)

I'm confused by a lot of people in this article talking in future terms, like there aren't thousands of people summoning a self-driving car in AZ and CA every day. Waymo is handling dense urban traffic, confusing roads, and pedestrians every day in SF - one of the hardest tests possible. So for your prognostications of what should happen 'at some point' - they're well past the mark. Perhaps every article should come with a link to a primer on "where are self driving cars now" so people can catch up.

By "configure" do you mean "turn it off". Because if its talking to towers I have some bad news for you...

"actually" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Can you define what conditions need to be met for that to happen? I've heard "working in extreme weather" as one, but not sure what else we're talking about here. Certainly for a self-driving car ride hailing company like Waymo things aren't "decades" away as they're operating right now with the public, and its not them dragging their feet on expansion.

Call a Waymo.

Also (sorry, I don't know anyone personally with one yet) for the windowing thing - I tend to just have a lot of web windows and terminals open on my desktop. I rarely even open a native application for work aside from a terminal program. Would this be possible?

Since it sounds like you're a real owner, what about eye/neck fatigue, + it getting warm? How long can you realistically wear it? Can you go 6-8 hours (with some breaks) at a time?

Nope, it's a bootstrapping system. You hook in the useful idiots with the obvious bullshit (QAnon, etc) and now you have 1-2% of the electorate sure...SURE..they are on the inside. There's no one more zealous than a recent convert. Now you come in with the deep fakes, the semi-plausible, grade A crypto-bullshit and if all the sudden hundreds of thousands of people are posting about it everywhere you see...well, its gotta be true, right? That many people can't be wrong!

But the G is an A? MAAAN, ANAMA, MANAA. All these could be one. Also these last two sentences were for the caps filter, its like YELLING.