OT: Arizona Coyotes Lounge XIV - Life, The Universe and “Marvel Studios kicks DC Comics’ ass.”

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awfulwaffle

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Elon has some good ideas, but not all of Elon's ideas are good ones. I don't think his tunnels with reduce traffic congestion at all. Has anyone done the analysis of how many cars one tunnel line could remove in an hour? It looks like a really inefficient system. Much less efficient than just a regular subway, which LA already has.

It's this thought that pushes back any kind of progress. Like solar energy. It's too costly to build and how much energy can be stored for peak times? The end goal is what is important.
 

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It's this thought that pushes back any kind of progress. Like solar energy. It's too costly to build and how much energy can be stored for peak times? The end goal is what is important.

Convince me. Let's see the analysis of how much Elon's tunnels will reduce traffic and at what cost. Cost does matter, because there are alternatives.
 

awfulwaffle

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Convince me. Let's see the analysis of how much Elon's tunnels will reduce traffic and at what cost. Cost does matter, because there are alternatives.

What alternatives? Elons companies are private, what does it matter what the cost is? He put the technology on their cats out in public for a reason. To help the community as a whole. If there was an underground tunnel compared to a light rail to the Coyotes arena, I'd take the tunnel every day.
 

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What alternatives? Elons companies are private, what does it matter what the cost is? He put the technology on their cats out in public for a reason. To help the community as a whole. If there was an underground tunnel compared to a light rail to the Coyotes arena, I'd take the tunnel every day.

Alternatives are many. The purpose is to move people from point to point. We currently have many options, and in the future many believe transportation as a service and autonomous vehicles will do much to reduce traffic congestion.

Elon's small test tunnel, with crappy cement and a top speed of 50 mph, was built with Musk's own funds and resources he took from Space X, a company he does not soley own.

To scale the project so that it makes any meaningful impact on traffic will cost billions. You either need private investors (which would be very rare for a public works project), or the money comes from tax payers.

Confused as to why you don't think cost matters.
 

awfulwaffle

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That speed is better than stop and go traffic. Cost matters sure, but the thought of it's too expensive to implement is why progress gets stagnated. Seeing la traffic, it could be a benefit to people. Because it is expensive to implement isn't a very good argument in my eyes.
 

TheLegend

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Maybe.... If the Coyotes are still at GRA in the year 3000...

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MIGs Dog

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Maybe.... If the Coyotes are still at GRA in the year 3000...

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No need to go to a stadium in 3000. Watching the game in VR will be identical to being there. In fact, the players won't be there either. The game will be played in VR and completely indistinguishable from the real thing. A stadium won't be needed.
 
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MIGs Dog

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Flying cars are not the solution for 80% of the people.
The need for public transportation is still needed in the near future.
flying cars are only the relocation of traffic from ground to air. If everybody flys we will have traffic jams in the air. So thats not the solution.
Affordable transportation can only be by public mass transit. And trains are perfect for that. Flying cars can complement the train, but will not make them obsolete.
A train can transport much more people for an affordable price, so they will still be here in the future. And we can build them already, so the argument that the future will hold a solution for a problem of the present is bs.
just my 2cents.

Are you in Germany? The trains work great over there. They are plentiful, clean, run on time, and for the two years I lived there I never had the need to own a car, but in most U.S. cities trains will not be the answer. It's not that they would not work (they already do in some places), but rather the lack of will of the taxpayers to fund projects on a large enough scale to make a difference. Phoenix is a good example. The light rail is nice, but not even close to making a dent in the traffic, nor will it for many decades to come if ever.

Autonomy could make a huge difference. Level 4 automation could provide a scenario where once you enter a highway or other designated roadway for level 4 operation, you set the self-driving function and the car then maintains speed and interval. If enough cars on the road have this feature it will allow traffic to move faster, with less interval, and much less chance of accidents. Even without reducing the number of vehicles on the road, this level of autonomy would pack more vehicles on the existing highways and have them moving at faster and safer speeds.

The technology to do this already exists and some aspects such as lane assist and adaptive cruise control are already available.

 

BlazingBlueAnt

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Autonomous cars do have some hurdles to overcome. Tracking isn't good in adverse weather conditions as systems are still really heavily reliant on visual processing. Lidar is used a lot as well, but lidar has been known to have interference issues with other lidar systems which is something that needs to be overcome. Id imagine it's limited to highways for the most part and the bottleneck is still going to be human drivers unless we create special road systems only for autonomous vehicles.

I think endgame is having cars networked together so they can communicate, but who knows how long that will take.
 
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YotesFan47

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Autonomous cars seems like the most likely solution given that they would require the least amount of change in current infrastructure but I don't know that it's sustainable. The amount of data and processing power required to keep everything safe would be monumental once most people conform. On top of that, maintaining that type infrastructure would be another monumental challenge, one which would come with a likely tax. Technology and the people who work with it are not getting cheaper either so you'd likely see that tax continue to rise with the number of autonomous cars on the road.

No one willing to conform would even accept that tax to help early adoption, and that's not counting people like myself who are not in a position to purchase an autonomous vehicle. Long haul, I think autonomous vehicles will cost us more than we are currently capable of handling as a main stream form of transportation.

I think we would be better off in the long haul adding train systems similar to the Amtrak in Washington. I just made this real quick and didn't set it up to align with things like Mesa Gateway but it will give you a rough look.

upload_2019-1-28_14-24-57.png


The red lines are the major lines with less stops. The yellow line is the one that can run from Flagstaff, through Phoenix, to Tucson. The blue dotted lines are the more minor railways with more stops. Each black circle is a main station. The minor railways could of course continue to be expanded on. This would reduce the number of cars on the road to begin with, if we followed this up with autonomous vehicles, the required infrastructure would lessen and those who wish to own them could pay an annual "subscription" license.
 

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MIGs Dog

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Autonomous cars seems like the most likely solution given that they would require the least amount of change in current infrastructure but I don't know that it's sustainable. The amount of data and processing power required to keep everything safe would be monumental once most people conform. On top of that, maintaining that type infrastructure would be another monumental challenge, one which would come with a likely tax. Technology and the people who work with it are not getting cheaper either so you'd likely see that tax continue to rise with the number of autonomous cars on the road.

No one willing to conform would even accept that tax to help early adoption, and that's not counting people like myself who are not in a position to purchase an autonomous vehicle. Long haul, I think autonomous vehicles will cost us more than we are currently capable of handling as a main stream form of transportation.

I think we would be better off in the long haul adding train systems similar to the Amtrak in Washington. I just made this real quick and didn't set it up to align with things like Mesa Gateway but it will give you a rough look.

View attachment 180241

The red lines are the major lines with less stops. The yellow line is the one that can run from Flagstaff, through Phoenix, to Tucson. The blue dotted lines are the more minor railways with more stops. Each black circle is a main station. The minor railways could of course continue to be expanded on. This would reduce the number of cars on the road to begin with, if we followed this up with autonomous vehicles, the required infrastructure would lessen and those who wish to own them could pay an annual "subscription" license.

I'm a big fan of trains, but autonomous cars will happen with or without any legislative action to tax and spend. The taxation part is why trains face an uphill battle everywhere they are proposed.

Level 2 autonomy is already here and available on many new cars, and the automakers are investing billions in level 4 with companies like Alphabet already operating level 4 test vehicles on public roads.

Ford rethinks Level 3 autonomy
 

Edenjung

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Are you in Germany? The trains work great over there. They are plentiful, clean, run on time, and for the two years I lived there I never had the need to own a car, but in most U.S. cities trains will not be the answer. It's not that they would not work (they already do in some places), but rather the lack of will of the taxpayers to fund projects on a large enough scale to make a difference. Phoenix is a good example. The light rail is nice, but not even close to making a dent in the traffic, nor will it for many decades to come if ever.




Hahahaha,

i am lying on the floor because of that. On time. good joke. :D
The inner city trains are on time, and clean. But the Deutsche Bahn? they are always late, the trains have big problems and they cost alot. And because of what? privatization or to clarify it, the german goverment made them a company (which is still owned by the government) and then tried to make the place look shiney to bring it into the stock market.
failed misserably, but they stopped spending money to keep the infrastructure in check, they cut down on maintance and even sold 2000km of railway in the last 12 years.
When the deutsche bahn was fully run by the government it was running smoothly. now they have old managers and politicians who are running the place that worked for diffrent industries (Airbus, banks, etc.), they don't know what they are doing.
At the moment there is a hughe shitstorm with that company, because they don't do enough for the trains. They just need more money. But with bad leadership nothing will change.

And autonomouse cars will not solve the mass transit problem. A car can transport up to 9 people. But a train can move 200. And the people who take it pay less.
if you look into scifi most planets have flying cars but also mass transit (corusant, star citizen, etc).
it's just a great conxept.
 
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YotesFan47

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I'm a big fan of trains, but autonomous cars will happen with or without any legislative action to tax and spend. The taxation part is why trains face an uphill battle everywhere they are proposed.

Level 2 autonomy is already here and available on many new cars, and the automakers are investing billions in level 4 with companies like Alphabet already operating level 4 test vehicles on public roads.

Ford rethinks Level 3 autonomy
I don't disagree that autonomous vehicles will move forward with or without legislation, that's not the issue I see. Where I see a problem is adoption, and the costs associated with adoption, and the costs needed to maintain the level of safety and functionality we will all expect. How accurate the below article is I don't know, but if it is true then the public is in for a rude awakening unless we develop better ways to store information.

One autonomous car will use 4,000 GB of data per day

This article is from back in 2016 so coding and data storage may have improved for AV (had to shorten it) but it's still a tremendous amount of data. As a reference point, here is what Facebook is storing for social media, something not nearly as invasive to our physical well being as AV.

https://www.quora.com/How-many-bytes-does-Facebook-store-every-day

Now imagine the difference in data between each user vs each car, multiplied by the number of cars.... Facebook sees about 1.5 billion people log in per day (not the whole of data users and about 22% of the worlds population), the average person uses about 1 gigabyte of data per day (beyond Facebook). That's only 1.5 billion gigabytes or 1500 petabytes. By comparison if you were to have the same number of AV in the world, you'd be looking at 6 million petabytes. That's a rough estimate and f****** staggering. There would be a constant expansion of clusters to handle that data, which come with costs, on top of replacing failed parts, which also come with costs. This would all need to run on good tech, equipment like SSDs which when purchasing reliable, business capable variants cost a few hundred dollars a pop. A single terabyte drive can easily cost $300+ with the hot swap feature so lets assume $300 for the low end. That's $1.8 trillion, just in SSD. Once you factor in property, power and cooling, staff, servers, and any other costs associated then the number multiplies further. Who's going to pay for that?

Maybe my view point is because I don't work in the industry and don't have a real view of the numbers, but from my viewpoint today, this wont be a sustainable practice without buy in. I don't mean that just from a product standpoint but also from a tax/subscription standpoint. The funding for this is going to need to come from somewhere and companies like GM, Audi, and Ford wont be eating those costs.
 

MIGs Dog

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Hahahaha,

i am lying on the floor because of that. On time. good joke. :D
The inner city trains are on time, and clean. But the Deutsche Bahn? they are always late, the trains have big problems and they cost alot. And because of what? privatization or to clarify it, the german goverment made them a company (which is still owned by the government) and then tried to make the place look shiney to bring it into the stock market.
failed misserably, but they stopped spending money to keep the infrastructure in check, they cut down on maintance and even sold 2000km of railway in the last 12 years.
When the deutsche bahn was fully run by the government it was running smoothly. now they have old managers and politicians who are running the place that worked for diffrent industries (Airbus, banks, etc.), they don't know what they are doing.
At the moment there is a hughe ****storm with that company, because they don't do enough for the trains. They just need more money. But with bad leadership nothing will change.

And autonomouse cars will not solve the mass transit problem. A car can transport up to 9 people. But a train can move 200. And the people who take it pay less.
if you look into scifi most planets have flying cars but also mass transit (corusant, star citizen, etc).
it's just a great conxept.

My experience riding the Deutsche Bahn was mostly in the 1980s. Sorry to hear the system has degraded.

Regarding autonomous cars vs trains, the former is already happening, and the later will not happen in the States due to public opposition to the taxes required. That is just reality.

I like sci-fi too, but remember the "fi" stands for fiction. ;)
 

MIGs Dog

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I don't disagree that autonomous vehicles will move forward with or without legislation, that's not the issue I see. Where I see a problem is adoption, and the costs associated with adoption, and the costs needed to maintain the level of safety and functionality we will all expect. How accurate the below article is I don't know, but if it is true then the public is in for a rude awakening unless we develop better ways to store information.

One autonomous car will use 4,000 GB of data per day

This article is from back in 2016 so coding and data storage may have improved for AV (had to shorten it) but it's still a tremendous amount of data. As a reference point, here is what Facebook is storing for social media, something not nearly as invasive to our physical well being as AV.

https://www.quora.com/How-many-bytes-does-Facebook-store-every-day

Now imagine the difference in data between each user vs each car, multiplied by the number of cars.... Facebook sees about 1.5 billion people log in per day (not the whole of data users and about 22% of the worlds population), the average person uses about 1 gigabyte of data per day (beyond Facebook). That's only 1.5 billion gigabytes or 1500 petabytes. By comparison if you were to have the same number of AV in the world, you'd be looking at 6 million petabytes. That's a rough estimate and f****** staggering. There would be a constant expansion of clusters to handle that data, which come with costs, on top of replacing failed parts, which also come with costs. This would all need to run on good tech, equipment like SSDs which when purchasing reliable, business capable variants cost a few hundred dollars a pop. A single terabyte drive can easily cost $300+ with the hot swap feature so lets assume $300 for the low end. That's $1.8 trillion, just in SSD. Once you factor in property, power and cooling, staff, servers, and any other costs associated then the number multiplies further. Who's going to pay for that?

Maybe my view point is because I don't work in the industry and don't have a real view of the numbers, but from my viewpoint today, this wont be a sustainable practice without buy in. I don't mean that just from a product standpoint but also from a tax/subscription standpoint. The funding for this is going to need to come from somewhere and companies like GM, Audi, and Ford wont be eating those costs.

Adoption will happen through regulatory fiat. The autonomous features will be forced on us in the name of safety, the same way seat belts and air bags were. First it will be emergency automatic braking, and then lane assist, and then something else. Yes, our vehicles will cost more, but we will not have a choice.

Regarding the data and bandwidth problem, technology will evolve and figure it out. If back in the 1980s someone would have said "within 20 years people will carry in their pocket a computer more powerful than the Space Shuttle", who would have believed it?
 
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YotesFan47

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Adoption will happen through regulatory fiat. The autonomous features will be forced on us in the name of safety, the same way seat belts and air bags were. First it will be emergency automatic braking, and then lane assist, and then something else. Yes, our vehicles will cost more, but we will not have a choice.

Regarding the data and bandwidth problem, technology will evolve and figure it out. If back in the 1980s someone would have said "within 20 years people will carry in their pocket a computer more powerful than the Space Shuttle", who would have believed it?

Slow day at work for me and this is interesting.

As for the cost, that's why you'll need a good form of public transportation in place. Those who can't adopt take public transit. If you can't supply a satisfactory form of public transit allowing people to get to where they need to be without taking forever (a current issue with our system in Phoenix today) then people will leave. I'll be fortunate enough that in 3 or so years time I'll be able to buy a $120,000 car outright but right now I can barely afford to pay for new tires. There are a lot of people in the "I can't even afford tires" category that will require public transit. You can't force those people because they couldn't buy an AV if they wanted to.

As for the advancement of technology, you're correct but the ability to roll this out is still dependent on the costs associated with the technology. We are working on AV now but it could still be 20 years before they have developed enough to make it possible for the general population beyond level 2 autonomy.

Cell phones were a business device for 10+ years and were not a consumer product until the 80s. They also cost $4,000 to buy. It wasn't until 20 years later that it became a realistic consumer product as cost came down and technology advanced enough that it could actually fit in your pocket. Move another 10 years into the future when Apple and Android changed everything and a sustainable product was finally built. That's a 30 year time table.

You will see business adoption over 10+ years for level 4 from the drop date (lets say 2023), followed by 10+ years of sub sustainable AVs for consumers, and finally someone will perfect the technology in a way that the general public will be able to get on board with. We are 24+ years away from that today. I'll be 55 years old.. Cell phones should be the dankest s*** by then though! I'm sure I'll elect for the contacts, brain implant, ear implant, and finger sensors. :laugh:

Public transit needs to be the #1 priority to remove congestion, AV is not the answer now or in the near future.

Also I know you used cell phones as a way to show we are capable of achieving this, I'm not trying to counter that. Just wanted to add my two cents.
 

YotesFan47

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I may redact some of the info/time frames I posted assuming the evidence in this video are accurate.



If this has truths to it, the savings in many areas would help pay for the IT infrastructure.

Edit: Here is an additional video that seems to fall more in line with my thought process.

 
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BlazingBlueAnt

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Most of the data that gets processed from an autonomous car doesn't need to get saved. The car is taking in a constant stream of data, from video cameras, to temperature gauges, to moisture sensors, to lidar and radar systems. That is all data that gets processed to make decisions. However, that doesn't mean that the car has to store that date or otherwise transmit it. I'd imagine it would work something like a dash cam, where the car would store the data from the last couple hours and just continually rewrite over it.
 
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MIGs Dog

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Slow day at work for me and this is interesting.

As for the cost, that's why you'll need a good form of public transportation in place. Those who can't adopt take public transit. If you can't supply a satisfactory form of public transit allowing people to get to where they need to be without taking forever (a current issue with our system in Phoenix today) then people will leave. I'll be fortunate enough that in 3 or so years time I'll be able to buy a $120,000 car outright but right now I can barely afford to pay for new tires. There are a lot of people in the "I can't even afford tires" category that will require public transit. You can't force those people because they couldn't buy an AV if they wanted to.

As for the advancement of technology, you're correct but the ability to roll this out is still dependent on the costs associated with the technology. We are working on AV now but it could still be 20 years before they have developed enough to make it possible for the general population beyond level 2 autonomy.

Cell phones were a business device for 10+ years and were not a consumer product until the 80s. They also cost $4,000 to buy. It wasn't until 20 years later that it became a realistic consumer product as cost came down and technology advanced enough that it could actually fit in your pocket. Move another 10 years into the future when Apple and Android changed everything and a sustainable product was finally built. That's a 30 year time table.

You will see business adoption over 10+ years for level 4 from the drop date (lets say 2023), followed by 10+ years of sub sustainable AVs for consumers, and finally someone will perfect the technology in a way that the general public will be able to get on board with. We are 24+ years away from that today. I'll be 55 years old.. Cell phones should be the dankest s*** by then though! I'm sure I'll elect for the contacts, brain implant, ear implant, and finger sensors. :laugh:

Public transit needs to be the #1 priority to remove congestion, AV is not the answer now or in the near future.

Also I know you used cell phones as a way to show we are capable of achieving this, I'm not trying to counter that. Just wanted to add my two cents.

I agree there will always be a need for public transit.

Like the video you provided you'll likely have autonomous "uber" type of options that will cost less than a human powered Uber because there's no driver to take a cut.

I would call this a form of public transit
 

YotesFan47

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I agree there will always be a need for public transit.

Like the video you provided you'll likely have autonomous "uber" type of options that will cost less than a human powered Uber because there's no driver to take a cut.

I would call this a form of public transit

Yea after a run on some videos I got a better feel for the project. I (as usual) saw a money pit that would eventually degrade from a cool, shiny, "look at me!" toy into cut backs that would leave the system a shell of what it could have been until someone figured out how to properly monitize and market it.

After watching some some video, there are cool concepts at play. Would still require large scale buy in but it could be worth while.

The thought of turning my 25 minute travel time each way into opportunity to accomplish tasks I'm usually trying to fit into my day sounds appealing. I can answer a lot of emails in 50 minutes.

If it was done right and became affordable enough, solar powered/ electric AVs could make multi car families into single car families, saving a ton in gas, repairs, and insurance. It would increase the amount of time I could spend teaching my son things and possibly even become a solid public transit system. If someone had an app that allowed you to schedule your pick ups and even have the car assigned to a person for a certain amount of time if there are multiple locations they need to buy things at, it could be incredibly convenient.

It would definitely make getting to Coyotes games easier as I could eat on the way to the game from work, making one less stop if need to make.
 
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MIGs Dog

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Autopilot tested in snow. Guy almost lost it when the car drifted left into the built up snow.

 

Sinurgy

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I agree there will always be a need for public transit.

Like the video you provided you'll likely have autonomous "uber" type of options that will cost less than a human powered Uber because there's no driver to take a cut.

I would call this a form of public transit
It'll cost less until the human Uber is no longer a thing and then it'll immediately increase in price. Unfortunately one less person to take a cut is American for person at the top taking an even bigger cut.
 
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