* Posts by John Robson

5174 publicly visible posts • joined 19 May 2008

US watchdog opens probe into Tesla's Autopilot driver assist system after spate of crashes

John Robson Silver badge

Re: A solution looking for a problem

It maintains awareness, that awareness might not be perfect, but I'll wager it's better than the vast majority of people with a license.

After all we've never had a human crash into a lorry, or a skip, or a police car, or an ambulance....

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Really...

Because calling it a spate of crashes is a fucking stupid clickbait headline.

There have been some, but fewer than would be expected in terms of miles driven. And most of those we hear of were likely easily avoidable by the driver doing what they are meant to be doing - paying at least some attention to what's going on. We simply never hear about other vehicle crashes, because they are so common it's not news... The fact that we still hear about these is a testament to how rare it is.

There are plenty of dashcam clips available showing autopilot avoiding crashes, frequently side traffic failing to yield, or accelerating out of the way of a vehicle about to rear end them. So maybe we should be looking at their safety in the context of:

a) Safety assessments of any safety critical hardware/software irrespective of whether it's on a road

b) Cost/benefit analysis

And that is data that Tesla have, and should be forced to share (on site, with an NDA bound official of relevant inspectorate). The reported information should be detailed enough for the inspectorate, and a public version (further redacted) should be made available occasionally.

For one improvement suggestion: I'd like to see a HUD with a computer vision overlay so that the driver can have longer to ascertain that the vehicle hasn't got something ahead correct.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: It's harder than you think

Compared with not using autopilot - either just the standard aids, or even worse without those on either.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Cyclists don't stand a chance

Whereas I have far more confidence in their ability to spot me than I do a significant proportion of motorists.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: A solution looking for a problem

Autopilot never tires, never gets distracted, never stops doing what it is trained to do.

It maintains continuous 360 degree awareness (not in the hand wavy is it AI way, but in the sensor suite based ML way).

It learns from all incidents driven, by all drivers (machine and otherwise) in the entire fleet of Tesla vehicles (since AP is always making decisions, it just gets to say “oh, I’d have handled that differently” and upload).

It therefore has millions of miles more experience than any human could ever hope to achieve.

You don’t add the flaws together, you basically entirely eliminate one set. When I see a report that a Tesla was weaving across the street because it went to a back street charger for some hallucinogenic electrons then we can have a different discussion.

Yes fundamentally all AP errors are human errors because we made it, but the number of them in vanishingly small. Can you imagine a proper full scale air crash investigation into each and every fatal rti (let’s just limit this to fatal for the moment). Combined with grounding all cars between investigations?

Would be great, the streets would be empty of tin boxes and motons, leaving people to move around.

Douglas Adams had a character name themselves Ford Prefect and try to introduce themselves to a car…. They do appear to be the dominant life form on the planet.

Is Autopilot a level 5 system? No

Does that mean it’s inherently bad? No

Does that mean we shouldn’t eliminate the cause of all accidents? Absolutely not.

Do people hold it to a higher standard than a human? Yes, despite the fact that widespread deployment would already make roads safer - not to mention more accessible for more people.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: A solution looking for a problem

The problem that a self driving car solves is that almost all road injuries/fatalities are caused by human error.

There are very, very few incidents caused by anything else.

Edgy: HPE's first message from the International Space Station to Microsoft's Azure? 'hello world'

John Robson Silver badge
Coat

Appropriate message

Given where the information started...

GSMA and Euro-telcos argue for exemptions from big tech tax crackdown laws

John Robson Silver badge

Surely the call should be...

To remove one of the TST or similar sector specific taxes, or just not to offshore profits to low tax regions.

Have your headquarters in a low tax environment, but the costs to your subsidiaries in higher tax environments should be proportional to the costs, not massively inflated licensing fees.

Pi calculated to '62.8 trillion digits' with a pair of 32-core AMD Epyc chips, 1TB RAM, 510TB disk space

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Guiness World Records

Since there are relatively easy methods of calculating any individual digit of pi without having to go through all the previous digits...

A sampling check would be sufficient for a world record.

I wonder whether they have ECC on their storage?

John Robson Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Engineering approximation

On the basis that I was an a physics lecture where the lecturer said:

"This function is about point four, which is nearly a half so we'll round it to one"

To be fair rounding it to zero would have been rather catastrophic, since it was part of a long string of functions that were being multiplied... but the logic nearly had me snorting my morning beverage.

Branson sews cash parachute for Virgin Atlantic with $300m Virgin Galactic share sale

John Robson Silver badge

Re: a private-equity firm

Or you need to just keep the airline afloat whilst others fail, then make profit once the pandemic's effects on travel are reduced

In Search of Lost Time: GNU Grep 3.7 released with fix for 'extreme performance degradation'

John Robson Silver badge
Thumb Up

Interesting...

Enjoyed the link to the "why is gnu grep fast" mailing list...

The UK is running on empty when it comes to electric vehicle charging points

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Hmm....

It's more - we don't drive as many long distances as we thought, but the milage each year is the same...

Besides you are again complaining that a new car costs more than an end of life car. This petrol stuff will never catch on. It doesn't run on oats, and my 35 year old horse is cheaper.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Hmm....

You appear to assume that an HGV is just a leaf with a tow bar.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Hmm....

Or you are assuming that electric drivetrains are as horrifically inefficient as ICE ones...

250Wh/m is pretty easily achievable for cars, since that was what being discussed, and the mileage figure I quoted was for cars.

A gallon of gasoline (so probably a US gallon) contains approximately (and I'm rounding up) 40 kWh, and will move a car ~40 miles (yes, some cars are more efficient, and some are less efficient - this is a guess at my end and it makes the maths easy.)

That guesstimate puts an EV drivetrain at four times the efficiency of an ICE one, so you can divide all your numbers by four easily (my assumption here is that the same saving would be achieved on a larger vehicle as well, which isn't unreasonable - though larger engines do tend to be marginally more efficient, the difference in scale is actually fairly small amongst road vehicles).

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Hmm....

Nope - my figures are based on the current national average mileage (rounded up), then 250Wh/m, which is not a particularly difficult figure to achieve if you don't drive like an arse - I even manage it most of the time in my MG ZS, which is about as aerodynamic as a brick.

So no... I don't think my maths is out by a factor of two.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Hmm....

I said heat pumps, not necessarily air source ones. But one house taking more than average amount of energy to heat doesn't mean that it took more energy to heat because it was using a heat pump. A ferrari takes more fuel than the average car to travel a mile, that doesn't mean it isn't better without a hole in the fuel line.

In fact: "As soon as the temperatures start to drop below 3C, we notice a difference in the ambient temperature in some of cooler rooms, which we have put down to insulation, because the flow temperatures are still at 45C."

So the loop was fine, it was the insulation that wasn't - put a hole in the fuel line of any vehicle and it will use more fuel.

To get less energy out than you put in would be a remarkable feat indeed (though well designed heat pumps often do dump the waste heat externally)

We all have heat pumps that work at extracting heat energy from a location with a temperature significantly below freezing - it's called a freezer. Their peak efficiency is found with a relatively small delta between the temperatures, but that's all we really need...

If you live in an area where the air temperature is routinely 30 below then you probably want ground source rather than air source, since ground temperature is generally significantly warmer (in the winter months) and cooler (in the summer months) to allow easy reversal of the heat pump.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Hmm....

Heat pumps are easily 400% efficient, EVs don’t need to be charged to full from empty every night, an average car does 20 miles a day (7400/year) so you need ~5kWh a day.

Really, people just don’t like change so they. That’s the problem here.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Perhaps a hybrid would be a better solution?

Ah yes the my fourteenth hand petrol car is cheaper than your new electric car.

Well, D'uh.

20 miles a day is more than most people drive on average, so isn't an unreasonable target.

When you compare a new petrol car with a new electric car... then you end up with a much smaller difference in initial cost, and the running cost is still much cheaper than for the EV than an ICE - It's also significantly cheaper in terms of environmental costs, both globally and locally.

These newfangled petrol cars will never catch on, they don't run on oats, and my old horse is cheaper.

Internet Explorer 3.0 turns 25. One of its devs recalls how it ended marriages – and launched amazing careers

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Sadly, there were divorces and broken families and bad things

It’s possible that people at different stages in their careers/lives see the same environment differently.

As an early twenties bachelor I didn’t mind pulling late hours, but as a father of young kids it’s a lot less attractive.

NASA blames the wrong kind of Martian rock for Perseverance sample failure

John Robson Silver badge

Re: And no one has suggested sending Bruce Willis there to sort out the problem?

Can we send Bezos as an assistant?

John Robson Silver badge
Boffin

Re: The dangers of prior assumptions

So you're going to design a drill that simultaneously deals with all known rock types, and masses the same as the one they took?

Engineers work to open Boeing Starliner's valves as schedule pressures mount

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Doesn't inspire confidence

Turn it off and on again, hit it, take a blowtorch/heat gun to it…

Activist raided by police after downloading London property firm's 'confidential' meeting minutes from Google Search

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Loss of income? Inconvenience?

Not necessarily - preservation of evidence is likely a key determination of when people are arrested or just questioned - additionally there was pretty clear evidence that the files had been downloaded and shared.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Loss of income? Inconvenience?

No - the police appear to have done everything correct here.

The property company however...

Tesla battery fire finally flamed out after four-day conflagration

John Robson Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Extinguishers...

Thanks - hadn't done the maths, was really just commenting that the aim isn't to stop oxygen being available, but to keep the temperature down.

Water, as it turns out, is far more effective, as well as being much easier to handle - but does the same job in terms of temperature reduction/limitation

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Extinguishers...

I suspect LN2 would drop the temperature sufficiently to stop combustion.

SpaceX Starship struts its stack to show it has the right stuff

John Robson Silver badge

Re: "Mine is bigger than yours"

Depends on the size of your LEO object.

Otherwise you're complaining that an HGV is overkill for delivering a letter, so Royal Mail won't need any.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: I think Bezos was a little complacent

I think comparisons between Shepard and Glenn are probably optimistic.

Much heavier, much faster, even if you can, you don’t want to hover…

And of course you have to get to somewhere specific from an initially high lateral velocity.

I suspect they’ll manage it, and before long it will be routine. Skipping the F9 size is an interesting choice.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Unnecessary screed

Pretty sure the QD arm isn’t installed yet…

John Robson Silver badge

Re: "Mine is bigger than yours"

It’s all engineering over there. Need to make sure the things actually fit. They will need to tweak some stuff to make it fit properly.

They’re not going to waste a day when they could be mounting TPS tiles just to show off.

US govt calmly but firmly tells Blue Origin it already has a ride to the Moon's surface with SpaceX, thanks

John Robson Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Fly me to the moon

Plenty of pressure on Venus, maybe Mercury?

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Moon race 2.0

SuperHeavy launch of Starship, then refuel in elliptical orbit - then send dragon up to add crew.

Go to moon, return to elliptical orbit, go back to the dragon for reentry.

It's entirely possible that they could do that before SLS is ready - they are a long way behind, but running significantly faster.

Wanna use your Nvidia GPU for acceleration but put off by CUDA? OpenAI has a Python-based alternative

John Robson Silver badge

Re: The idea that ShotSpotter 'alters' or 'fabricates' evidence in any way is an outrageous lie

One in a million chance of a random member of the public having DNA matching this sample.

Unfortunately 10 million people pass through this space each day, so we’d expect ten matches…

Right to repair shouldn't exist – not because it's wrong but because it's so obviously right

John Robson Silver badge

Was going to link to the same video.

Colour coded screws (and spares in the case) modular bits and bobs (all reliant on USBc interestingly) modeluar replaceable components, and a motherboard that can be used outside the case as well...

Giant Tesla battery providing explosion in renewable energy – not as intended

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Smoke 'em if you've got 'em.

We don't need to buy new cars, but if/when we replace them we should do so with a far less environmentally damaging EV.

A pedal cycle would be better, and they are easily capable of the typical 20 miles/day that a car manages.

Good news: Jeff Bezos went to space. Bad news: He's back

John Robson Silver badge

What he is is a man with a vision, who has made extraordinary wealth and is now spending vast amounts of that wealth on projects which further that vision.

Bezos wailing that he needs an enormous bung from congress is pitiful, I think we can all agree with that.

Electrification of transport, it's not a new idea - but Tesla has done more to make it mainstream than most others, by lighting a fire under existing manufacturers, showing what can be done.

Space travel - SpaceX nearly collapsed, but then they managed to get an F1 to orbit, and then developed the F9, and then started bloody landing the boosters and flying them again, and again, and again.

There is still a good chance that SLS/Orion will reach orbit before Starship, but if you count doing 85% of a lap as basically orbit then it will be a close run thing - if the first starship booster flight goes without a hitch then they'll get there first, if not then SLS has a chance in November - though SpaceX might turn up for a second launch by then...

Yes - much of their funding comes from NASA, but that's part of the commercial supply services which anyone can bid on and supply.

The boring company - Yeah, not sure I see the value in this vision particularly. But I don't expect everything he touches to be fairy dust.

John Robson Silver badge

Using maths developed by Newton, and your point is?

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Worse than vanity

Absolutely it could - the point was very badly made...

We need to be decarbonising the grid as a whole, not just individual operations.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Worse than vanity

I celebrate both, as well as spaceX.

But realistically claiming that BO don't dump carbon is ignoring that they are dumping water vapour high into the atmosphere, which is also a reasonably effective greenhouse gas...

And I am not aware that they are shouting about it being carbon neutral hydrogen

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Worse than vanity

The likelihood of that hydrogen being completely zero carbon is relatively small.

And of course the power that was used could have supplied other things on the grid.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Nyah-nyah-nyah!

Celebrate them all - I just struggle to see what blue origin have been doing - they have been around two years longer than SpaceX and are yet to send anything to orbit.

It's not as if Mr Bezos is short of money to fund their development programme.

Virgin Galactic have always been about the tourism, and Virgin Orbital have put payloads into orbit (yes, different companies, VO spun out of VG), despite being two year younger than spaceX.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Ban it!

So you would also ban all long haul flights on the same basis...

John Robson Silver badge

No - he is spending money to get to other planets, not just to get to space for a brief visit, but to have long term colonies on other planets.

It's virtually aiming for the stars (technically only one of the wandering stars, but the sentiment of the phrase applies), and in building that capability SpaceX have become a prolific and successful launch provider.

Russia's ISS Multipurpose Laboratory Module launches after years sitting on a shelf, immediately runs into issues

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Strange

Simple and reliable - but horrible to handle

Happy 'Freedom Day': Stats suggest many in England don't want it or think it's a terrible idea

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Spoke with worried NHS staff

Really?

I've never seen any correlation.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Spoke with worried NHS staff

Not everyone has had the chance yet - so we’re not even down to those who should be tied down and jabbed.

(Assumption that there is no pork product or similarly religiously restricted substance - there isn’t as far as I am aware of.

Being anti-Vaxxer isn’t a religion.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Odd...

Masks were never about protecting the wearer - that's why the concept of leaving such measures (for wearing a mask is not a restriction) to "personal responsibility" doesn't make any sense at all.

It's not a matter of personal responsibility, it's a matter of societal safety.

Thales launches payment card with onboard fingerprint scanner

John Robson Silver badge

Re: "There are concerns over using fingerprints as an authentication system"

Well - depends what they're doing.

If they're increasing the limit when you pay by poke rather than PIN, and again if you pay by PIN over wafting the card near a reader... then it is requiring a higher degree of security at each stage (nothing, 1/10k, 1/100k maybe)

That's not an entirely unreasonable approach.

The old New: Windows veteran explains that menu item

John Robson Silver badge
Coat

Re: Always an important consideration

Surely that should be goml?