If the weather is bad enough, people choose not to go out in it. Unless someone has a gun to your head, you always have a choice.

Heh, there's some validity to that. Human drivers are a daily rolling disaster that society tolerates only because there hasn't been any reasonable alternative. If-and-when autonomous vehicles actually become cheap and reliable enough, I suspect that human driving will gradually start to be curtailed -- not necessarily by banning it outright, but by making licensing requirements more restrictive, by making insurance costs more onerous, and/or by "nerfing" the cars such that they simply refuse to perform dangerous maneuvers.

And they probably skew overwhelmingly into the elderly demographic. ... and, for that matter, mostly voted for the wannabe-dictator-in-chief whose minions are trying to pull this sort of garbage.

Hey, I'll be happy if ALL of the web ads transition to "viewable by AI only". They're not gonna impact me, in that case...

It seems like the fight goes back and forth about "just cameras" vs "cameras + sensors", when all I can make of it is that the REAL answer lies in how good the hardware and software is processing the incoming data?

Tesla, for example, scrapped the cameras + lidar idea, largely out of frustration that both inputs often led to the computer interpreting the scene in conflicting ways. "Camera visual seems to indicate that's just a light pole on the side of the road but lidar image shows it may be a person starting to walk into the road." (Maybe that's a poor specific example, but I heard talks about it saying things along these lines were the struggle.)

If Waymo is arguing humans can only do so much with our eyes, so "superhuman levels of driving" require more? Again, it seems to me like more CPU power and better software is that "more"? Computers can do math FAR quicker than my brain can... and that's been true for decades. Superhuman levels of driving safely seem like they could happen with systems just using cameras OR systems collecting data from multiple sources?

You're right, but the problem is going to be location in many cases. Would a former data center make a great public library? Technically, it might. But when it was built out in the middle of some farm land, where they originally got a good deal on the land by buying some farmers out who were willing to sell? Now, it might not make so much sense.

Or as an example closer to home for me? Our own city is fielding requests to construct data centers right now. There are rumors about our now closed-down steel plant being a potential site. Great for the guy who owns the property and wants to unload it. But a data center there would mean tearing out and removing an existing environment that was good for manufacturing. If you said ok -- no more steel made here but we could do cement, or process glass? That would be an equivalent replacement that would bring back the lost jobs. A data center really won't ... and if it closes? I'm not sure people would want it as office space in that part of town.

I think the Rivian approach is the best. They're basically copying the Tesla model of having their fleet send the sensor recordings back and then using them as training data. While they're far behind right now, they'll catch up quickly, as they can copy a lot of the basic technology that's now established instead of having to invent everything from scratch and make wrong decisions along the way. The difference is Rivian is including lidar, so they just include the matched video and lidar recordings as a larger training data set. I'm convinced that if the price of lidar was more like it is today back when Tesla started selling FSD in 2016, then that's exactly what Tesla would have done, but Tesla is now stuck with their solution with ten million cars already on the road.

But in clear weather conditions, I don't think lidar really helps that much. Most human accidents would be avoided if drivers had better situational awareness and didn't have gaps in paying attention, and the cameras solve that.

What this country needs is a good two-dollar red-team AI, that will try to create an exploit based on a submitted bug report and use the exploit to compromise a Mac in the QA lab. If it succeeds, the bug report is definitely genuine and should be prioritized.

Reality is? The places that allow new data centers where they interfere with the existing population are just going to wind up with regrets.

They remind me a bit of the battles over putting in new landfills/dumps. Everyone knows we need them, but it's always "not in my back yard"!

The thing is? The need for more data centers is questionable. If all this AI growth turns the corner and companies decide much of it was just overblown hype? Then those data centers will quickly wind back down again.

Even in "best case" scenarios, they don't employ many people once they're constructed, and they use large amounts of resources -- which tend to be sold at discounted rates as part of the deals struck when they move into an area. Everyone else gets stuck covering any losses by way of rate increases.

A landfill may smell bad, but it's not using up the lion's share of available electric power in my town or using a big portion of available clean water.

I don't understand how the entire concept isn't just outlawed and thrown out? The core reason we have a stock market is to allow business growth/prosperity. Company owners trade off their original ownership of a successful business for a chance to get investor income flowing in to make the business more successful than they could make it on their own.

Prediction markets are nothing more than gambling. There's no "investing" in a business happening at all with this.

It was to pay my final bill of $0.01 (not kidding)

They used to have decent phone support, but for the last couple years at least it's been actively horrible. As in "getting a root canal without anesthetic" horrible. We stuck with them for a while, but seriously - you do occasionally need to contact support, and it's hard to imagine how ANY company could have worse phone support people than T-Mobile does right now.

We're trying out US Mobile, an MVNO, right now. I gotta say their support people are a clear step above T-Mobile's.

To be fair, cellular data is really poor in quite a few places in America, when using ANY of the "second tier" reseller carriers. (Won't speak for other countries.)

EG. We have Spectrum Mobile right now (mostly due to a bundle deal with our broadband at home), and while voice calls work pretty much as expected, anywhere I go? The data is terrible! They say they're using Verizon's towers but it's obvious Verizon is throttling the heck out of them and/or only allowing them on SOME of the towers in a given area.

When I had T-Mobile for a few years previously? It had bad holes in coverage areas, but it worked quite well where it was built out (usually your bigger cities).

I don't care how much "cost savings" they claim it brings to eliminate retail stores. As one of only a few "major carriers", it's pathetic to offer only online interaction with customers. And honestly? I'm not even sure I would have a big issue with the FCC pulling some of the dedicated frequency spectrum they were allowed to purchase. I'm pretty sure there was an assumption made that as one of the "big 3" cellular providers in the USA, T-Mobile would ensure any potential customer had the ability to buy a phone with them and get the help needed to use it. I imagine there are quite a few elderly or handicapped people around who don't find it very functional to do all of that via an app.

I agree that has historically been the case, but OTOH Trump is deteriorating so rapidly (both psychologically and in terms of his level of popular support) that after November's bloodbath (and whatever Trump's unhinged response to that will be), the remaining Republicans may well decide it's in their own interest to get him out of office sooner rather than later.

We've reached the "Pope is selling indulgences" phase of the American government's decent into blatant corruption.