In other news today...
-
@Applied-Mediocrity Read it at the source then, that other website is not worth the pixels it's displayed on:
-
@JBert Why don't you like jokes?
-
@JBert Ah, there it is. Knew it.
The Washington State Patrol charged the man with reckless endangerment, hit and run, driving under the influence and felony eluding.
Awww...
As for the dog, Axtman said the "very sweet girl" was taken to the animal shelter after her owner was arrested.
-
-
@JBert said in In other news today...:
a pit bull was sitting in the driver's seat while the suspect steered
And who was operating the pedals?
-
@Mason_Wheeler The dog's favorite brick.
-
-
-
-
@hungrier One more reason for the newfound popularity of pirating. Video players like VLC allow zooming, cropping and stretching of the video.
-
-
@dkf Sugars. Of course.
-
-
@Zecc said in In other news today...:
@dkf Sugars. Of course.
Well of course. Pretty much all normal viruses do it. What's interesting is that it isn't using a very heavy layer of them, so the underlying more-highly-conserved protein shell is also a reasonable binding target for antibodies.
-
@dkf said in In other news today...:
Dude's like, "hey look over there" as he jumps on your just washed hand that is now going to touch your face.
-
Which of these highly anticipated sci-fi future technologies is now available to the general public?
Time machines
Haha, nope
Flying cars
You wish
Tamper-proof pizza boxes
-
@hungrier Huh, and here I thought that you could always get a sealed pizza by ordering a "calzone"...
-
@JBert said in In other news today...:
@hungrier Huh, and here I thought that you could always get a sealed pizza by ordering a "calzone"...
No, a seal pizza can only be obtained off the Antarctic ice shelf, and Greenpeace will get all up in your grill if you do.
-
-
@hungrier said in In other news today...:
Flying cars
You wish
I don't. I see far too many idiot drivers on an ordinary day who simply can't be trusted with the two dimensions they already have to ever think that giving them a third would be a good thing!
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in In other news today...:
@hungrier said in In other news today...:
Flying cars
You wish
I don't. I see far too many idiot drivers on an ordinary day who simply can't be trusted with the two dimensions they already have to ever think that giving them a third would be a good thing!
If they're self-driving... Wait... Oh why not. By the time we have flying cars, the self-driving thing should be figured out.
-
@dcon said in In other news today...:
By the time we have flying cars, the self-driving thing should be figured out.
There are two key requirements:
- A magic power source (or antigravity bullshit) to make flying cars energetically sane. Which is utter science fiction.
- Self-driving/piloting. Which almost exists for quadcopter drones and cars already. Seriously, we seem to be a few years out on that at most.
Flying cars are a hard nope because of reason #1.
-
@da-Doctah said in In other news today...:
@JBert said in In other news today...:
@hungrier Huh, and here I thought that you could always get a sealed pizza by ordering a "calzone"...
No, a seal pizza can only be obtained off the Antarctic ice shelf, and Greenpeace will get all up in your grill if you do.
And preferably only after a night of clubbing.
-
@dkf said in In other news today...:
@dcon said in In other news today...:
By the time we have flying cars, the self-driving thing should be figured out.
There are two key requirements:
- A magic power source (or antigravity bullshit) to make flying cars energetically sane. Which is utter science fiction.
- Self-driving/piloting. Which almost exists for quadcopter drones and cars already. Seriously, we seem to be
a few yearsproper near-location beacon net (for figuring out your local GPS error - get centimeter-accurate positioning), proper co-ordinate accurate maps, and a proper traffic control system (think air traffic control - the cars all effectively fly blind right now) out on that at most.
Flying cars are a hard nope because of reason #1, and also because directing a turbine exhaust downwards in the middle of a city causes havoc. Even VTOL fighter jets avoid vertical take-offs if they can.
FTFY
-
-
Is the Russian public transport that bad that this seemed like a good idea?
-
@JBert Back in school I knew two guys who did a similar thing. They also left an acquaintance on the bank with a camera, so it all got filmed: them boarding a large slab of ice, their uneventful sailing, and their sudden rescue by very angry people on a motorboat wearing bright orange jackets. They got their 15 minutes of fame after they mixed in the Pirates of the Caribbean theme and put it somewhere on the Internet.
-
@acrow said in In other news today...:
proper co-ordinate accurate maps
Nobody's ever going to rely on that. Any self-driving or self-flying aircraft must have sensors to survey the surroundings in real time. No map can ever do that. And for navigation, the maps we have are good enough at least in the more developed areas.
@acrow said in In other news today...:
turbine exhaust downwards
Turbines, as jets, are not energetically sane. They won't be part of the solution in any case. Helicopter rotors are optimal as far as aerodynamic lift from standstill goes, but they have their own safety issues. Sets of still large ducted fans may be an option.
@acrow said in In other news today...:
Even VTOL fighter jets avoid vertical take-offs if they can
No, VTOL fighter jets avoid vertical take-offs mainly because they can't actually do them with tanks full and ordnance at hardpoints.
Only V-22 and AW609 can take off vertically on most practical mission profiles, but they have pairs of tiltable rotors, not jets. And even they can take more load if they can get rolling take-off, as can helicopters. Because rotors produce more lift for given power when moving at least around 30 knots.
-
@Bulb said in In other news today...:
Helicopter rotors are optimal as far as aerodynamic lift from standstill goes, but they have their own safety issues. Sets of still large ducted fans may be an option.
Quadcopters with the fans ducted will address most of the safety issues, but they're still not energetically sane by comparison with staying on the ground and not needing any energy at all to stay in place. (I'd also wonder whether there'd be noise pollution issues. Not enough data to be sure about that.)
-
@dkf said in In other news today...:
Quadcopters with the fans ducted will address most of the safety issues
Will they? The helicopter rotor can be high enough that hitting humans directly is not a concern. The main concern is the violent shower of splinters that would occur if it hit something, like a street lamp, and the resulting violent crash of the vehicle due to vibrations of the now unbalanced rotor. And the duct can only prevent such crashes at very, very low speed, and something can still get into the rotor from above or below with just as catastrophic results.
Quadcopters are also still less efficient, and then you have to question of failure handling. Normal helicopter with cyclic control can autorotate to landing when the engines fail, but a quadcopter without cyclic or differential collective can't, so it would have to be able to produce enough lift with one engine failed, and that either means common drive shaft (like twin-rotor helicopters have) or even more extra power as the opposite side would also have to reduce power to keep it balanced.
@dkf said in In other news today...:
they're still not energetically sane by comparison with staying on the ground and not needing any energy at all to stay in place
Actually while staying in place in the air is really inefficient, the fuel consumption per passenger-kilometer for car and airplane are quite close. With caveats that:
- The airplane has the benefit of scale; it's comparison between airliner and car. Bus is way ahead.
- It's for a fixed-wing airplane, which are significantly more efficient than anything with vertical take-off.
-
-
@Bulb said in In other news today...:
Actually while staying in place in the air is really inefficient,
And yet bumblebees (which as any fule kno can't fly) do it all the time.
-
@da-Doctah said in In other news today...:
@Bulb said in In other news today...:
Actually while staying in place in the air is really inefficient,
And yet bumblebees (which as any fule kno can't fly) do it all the time.
And burn epic amounts of energy doing so (relative to their mass). Same with hummingbirds. So yeah, inefficient. But useful.
-
@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
And burn epic amounts of energy doing so (relative to their mass). Same with hummingbirds
And have an epic heart rate, too.
-
@topspin Bees don't exactly have hearts. (There's something vaguely similar, but their circulatory system is so different from the way it works for vertebrates that it's hard to draw any sort of apples-to-apples comparison.)
-
@Mason_Wheeler Wait, are we now literally talking about the birds and the bees? This is a bit of a strange turn for the news thread.
-
Meanwhile in Little Britain:
-
-
@Bulb said in In other news today...:
@acrow said in In other news today...:
proper co-ordinate accurate maps
Nobody's ever going to rely on that. Any self-driving or self-flying aircraft must have sensors to survey the surroundings in real time. No map can ever do that.
Teslas have shown that machine vision is insufficient. And a LIDAR gives up if there's snow falling. So the only practical sensing options left for staying on the road (that I know of) are GPS, and guide signal wires over/under the road. Also maybe this: https://hackaday.com/2020/04/06/navigating-self-driving-cars-by-looking-at-whats-underneath-the-road/
(Sensing other vehicles is a separate problem.)And for navigation, the maps we have are good enough at least in the more developed areas.
The maps we have are mostly off by meters to tens of meters. That's not quite good enough for navigating blindly on GPS.
@acrow said in In other news today...:
turbine exhaust downwards
Turbines, as jets, are not energetically sane. They won't be part of the solution in any case. Helicopter rotors are optimal as far as aerodynamic lift from standstill goes, but they have their own safety issues. Sets of still large ducted fans may be an option.
Helicopters are not very fuel efficient vs. distance traveled. If you transition to level flight as soon as possible after take-off, the total efficiency will beat helicopters if it's not a fairly short trip.
@acrow said in In other news today...:
Even VTOL fighter jets avoid vertical take-offs if they can
No, VTOL fighter jets avoid vertical take-offs mainly because they can't actually do them with tanks full and ordnance at hardpoints.
That's one reason. But even when they could in theory take off vertically, the jets will tear concrete and throw dirt, making them a hazard to anyone around and messing the airfield. Which is plenty enough reason to not do that.
V-22
The Osprey is also known for throwing enough dust around to clog its own engines.
-
-
-
@acrow said in In other news today...:
Teslas have shown that machine vision is insufficient. And a LIDAR gives up if there's snow falling.
Those issues will have to be fixed before we can have reliably self-driving vehicles.
@acrow said in In other news today...:
So the only practical sensing options left for staying on the road (that I know of) are GPS
No, that one is not practical, because it simply has no way to know that somebody dug up a big hole in the road an hour ago because the water pipe below ruptured. Unlike the above, which are likely fixable with enough tuning and debugging, this one is not fixable and therefore is irrelevant.
It is only relevant for knowing which road will take you to your destination, and for that current maps are good enough. Probably take you there, anyway, because of the mentioned issue—the system still has to be ready to detect issues and turn around and try another way when needed.
@acrow said in In other news today...:
and guide signal wires over/under the road.
Yes, but who's going to install them along every forest track?
@acrow said in In other news today...:
Turbines, as jets, are not energetically sane. They won't be part of the solution in any case. Helicopter rotors are optimal as far as aerodynamic lift from standstill goes, but they have their own safety issues. Sets of still large ducted fans may be an option.
Helicopters are not very fuel efficient vs. distance traveled. If you transition to level flight as soon as possible after take-off, the total efficiency will beat helicopters if it's not a fairly short trip.
Helicopters are not very fuel efficient, but neither are jets unless cruising at M0.8 at 36,000 ft long enough to offset the inefficiency of the climb up there. Anything for short trips has to involve large propellers to be efficient (as long as it relies on aerodynamics; magnetic levitation would be another matter).
-
@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
@da-Doctah said in In other news today...:
@Bulb said in In other news today...:
Actually while staying in place in the air is really inefficient,
And yet bumblebees (which as any fule kno can't fly) do it all the time.
And burn epic amounts of energy doing so (relative to their mass). Same with hummingbirds. So yeah, inefficient. But useful.
They also have the benefit of scale. Two benefits, actually:
- Due to scaling laws, they have lower weight to wing area and higher power per weight (weight grows with cube of size, but the other things just with square).
- They operate at much lower Reynolds numbers, which allows them to utilize dynamic vortex lift (that's why they ‘can't fly’—they use different aerodynamic phenomena only available at the lower scales, so early aerodynamicists were puzzled how they fly).
-
@Bulb said in In other news today...:
@acrow said in In other news today...:
So the only practical sensing options left for staying on the road (that I know of) are GPS
No, that one is not practical, because it simply has no way to know that somebody dug up a big hole in the road an hour ago because the water pipe below ruptured. Unlike the above, which are likely fixable with enough tuning and debugging, this one is not fixable and therefore is irrelevant.
Not quite. A properly calibrated GNSS is, in fact, centimeter-accurate. Comparing the sensor input to a sub-lane-accurate map position would have kept many Teslas on the road. As it happened, they drove into dead end lanes and dividers. Detecting potholes is one thing. Knowing where the dirt road is, is a much harder problem.
It is only relevant for knowing which road will take you to your destination, and for that current maps are good enough.
GPS could keep the car on the road. When sensors fail, at least.
@acrow said in In other news today...:
and guide signal wires over/under the road.
Yes, but who's going to install them along every forest track?
Installing just under the largest highways and freeways would already bring benefits. The last mile always needs human intervention, so escorting/driving to the major road is not a barrier to profits.
Forest and dirt tracks will never be handled well by a machine relying on sensors anyway (personal opinion); needs too much judgement on where the trail is.
-
@acrow said in In other news today...:
@Bulb said in In other news today...:
@acrow said in In other news today...:
proper co-ordinate accurate maps
Nobody's ever going to rely on that. Any self-driving or self-flying aircraft must have sensors to survey the surroundings in real time. No map can ever do that.
Teslas have shown that machine vision is insufficient. And a LIDAR gives up if there's snow falling. So the only practical sensing options left for staying on the road (that I know of) are GPS, and guide signal wires over/under the road. Also maybe this: https://hackaday.com/2020/04/06/navigating-self-driving-cars-by-looking-at-whats-underneath-the-road/
Erm, you do realize that you can combine several types of sensors? You also forgot about radar.
-
@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
@acrow said in In other news today...:
@Bulb said in In other news today...:
@acrow said in In other news today...:
proper co-ordinate accurate maps
Nobody's ever going to rely on that. Any self-driving or self-flying aircraft must have sensors to survey the surroundings in real time. No map can ever do that.
Teslas have shown that machine vision is insufficient. And a LIDAR gives up if there's snow falling. So the only practical sensing options left for staying on the road (that I know of) are GPS, and guide signal wires over/under the road. Also maybe this: https://hackaday.com/2020/04/06/navigating-self-driving-cars-by-looking-at-whats-underneath-the-road/
Erm, you do realize that you can combine several types of sensors? You also forgot about radar.
And SONAR, which is more relevant for cars.
-
@Carnage said in In other news today...:
@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
@acrow said in In other news today...:
@Bulb said in In other news today...:
@acrow said in In other news today...:
proper co-ordinate accurate maps
Nobody's ever going to rely on that. Any self-driving or self-flying aircraft must have sensors to survey the surroundings in real time. No map can ever do that.
Teslas have shown that machine vision is insufficient. And a LIDAR gives up if there's snow falling. So the only practical sensing options left for staying on the road (that I know of) are GPS, and guide signal wires over/under the road. Also maybe this: https://hackaday.com/2020/04/06/navigating-self-driving-cars-by-looking-at-whats-underneath-the-road/
Erm, you do realize that you can combine several types of sensors? You also forgot about radar.
And SONAR, which is more relevant for cars.
Erm, radar is already in widespread use. Most adaptive cruise control systems rely on that.
-
@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
@acrow said in In other news today...:
@Bulb said in In other news today...:
@acrow said in In other news today...:
proper co-ordinate accurate maps
Nobody's ever going to rely on that. Any self-driving or self-flying aircraft must have sensors to survey the surroundings in real time. No map can ever do that.
Teslas have shown that machine vision is insufficient. And a LIDAR gives up if there's snow falling. So the only practical sensing options left for staying on the road (that I know of) are GPS, and guide signal wires over/under the road. Also maybe this: https://hackaday.com/2020/04/06/navigating-self-driving-cars-by-looking-at-whats-underneath-the-road/
Erm, you do realize that you can combine several types of sensors?
I do realize. In my next post, I said that comparing the sensor input to calibrated GPS position and map would have kept some Teslas on the road.
You also forgot about radar.
No. I just don't consider them a viable sensor on the road. Radar are even worse than LIDAR in sharing the airspace, for one thing; thay're all effectively radio transmitters, and will hear each other if jammed to every car. They also pick up on every seam of the road and may cause a sudden stop in the middle of the road. Enough so that the radar-based auto-brake was switched off in that self-driving Uber car that killed a pedestrian.
Combining the radar with other sensors may work better. But let's remember that one Tesla that drove straight under a truck trailer. A white truck trailer looked like the sky. And a flat truck-side will likely seem a lot like a seam in the road to a radar...
-
@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
@Carnage said in In other news today...:
@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
@acrow said in In other news today...:
@Bulb said in In other news today...:
@acrow said in In other news today...:
proper co-ordinate accurate maps
Nobody's ever going to rely on that. Any self-driving or self-flying aircraft must have sensors to survey the surroundings in real time. No map can ever do that.
Teslas have shown that machine vision is insufficient. And a LIDAR gives up if there's snow falling. So the only practical sensing options left for staying on the road (that I know of) are GPS, and guide signal wires over/under the road. Also maybe this: https://hackaday.com/2020/04/06/navigating-self-driving-cars-by-looking-at-whats-underneath-the-road/
Erm, you do realize that you can combine several types of sensors? You also forgot about radar.
And SONAR, which is more relevant for cars.
Erm, radar is already in widespread use. Most adaptive cruise control systems rely on that.
Ah, that's true. Nevermind me then.
-
@acrow Someone better tell the companies selling adaptive cruise controls about how their sensors are not working, then.