grmarcil

> systems from 2016 would usually pass your "go there without touching the wheel or pedals" test

Can you give an example? I'm not aware of anything in 2016 that would consistently pass this test.

With 35 years experience, I expect that you have a pretty wide professional network - consider whether you're using those connections to get warm introductions and pointed to good-fit jobs to the greatest degree possible.

My apologies if this is stating the obvious, but if your applications are starting with just a resume, you're already at a disadvantage at any age. And I suppose that effect only increases with years of experience and seniority of positions applied to.

Interesting, I did not realize square drive was uncommon in the UK. It's a really nice screw head to work with, and as someone mentioned elsewhere in the thread, becoming more common in certain woodworking applications in the US.

I think from your comment you may be from Europe, so in that case for added context, you may be underestimating how uncommon Pozidriv screws and screwdrivers are in the United States. I have never seen a Pozidriv screw on any manufactured product other than Ikea furniture in the US. You cannot buy Pozidriv screws or drivers at major hardware stores (try searching "Pozidriv" on Lowes, Home Depot, or Ace Hardware), with the exception of one or two drivers that are in stock online only.

So consider that this is an extremely rare fastener format in the US market, and which looks almost identical to Phillips (the most common US screwdriver). I think many people like myself who are interested in tools and hardware are aware of Pozidriv and can identify it easily, but I can completely see why the average US consumer mistakes it for Phillips.

You're not wrong, but it is more complicated than that. Lidar gives you an array of 3D points and intensity, corresponding to where the lasers bounced back, and how strong the reflection was. Roughly speaking, from there you have to decide 1) which sets of points belong to the same object, 2) what those objects are, and 3) what those objects intend to do in the future.

So yes, a lidar-equipped AV completely not sensing a pedestrian would be surprising, but you can see how it might have incorrectly classified the pedestrian, or misunderstood the pedestrian's intent.

In the consumer/household space, sure. 3D printing is huge in prototyping and hardware R&D though. High-end printers are even good enough for mass production runs now.

I was a member at TechShop RDU for a couple years. It started as an independent makerspace, got acquired by TechShop in 2011, then closed in 2013. It was a really cool place and I miss it. A lot of interesting characters there.

As others have said in this thread, I think TS had a tough value proposition to build a business model around. Classes were a pain and a fairly big start-up cost for new members, but inevitable to satisfy insurance requirements. The monthly membership fee was fairly cheap considering the awesome equipment they had, but expensive if you could only manage to go a few days a month. Plus whatever storage fees for larger projects and/or the hassle of carting your stuff around.

On top of that, management at both locations I used (RDU and Arlington) seemed a bit chaotic. Sad to see them go out of business either way.

Make a point of frequently going to art museums and sculpture gardens. Read the placards and learn to recognize certain artists, spend time looking at the pieces that grab your attention and think about them. Don't feel like you have to enjoy every piece. This will build your appreciation/understanding for two reasons:

1) Like all things, art depends on context. A piece is often in conversation with other works by the same artist, contemporaries, predecessors, or historical events.

2) Sculpture in particular depends on scale, perspective, and physical detail. You'll never get to appreciate these qualities through a photograph - you have to be there in person and walk around the sculpture. Look at it from different distances, different angles.

Same boat here, I greatly prefer Square Cash (money goes directly between checking accounts so there is no second step to empty your balance), but the network effects of Venmo are too strong at this point. The all-transactions-private setting is easy to turn on.

Not that anyone believes that this car is really going to production anytime soon, but as an additional datapoint: the car in the first image is sporting $40,000 worth of lidar on the roof (5 x Velodyne VLP-16).

I'm sure GM is getting a healthy discount off retail from Velodyne, but production-ready lidar is still eye-wateringly expensive by OEM standards. Some solid-state lidar units (Quanergy) out there in the hundreds of dollars (and one from Velodyne in the works for 2018 release), but the fact that Cruise is still using spinning Velodyne units suggests to me that solid-state lidar needs a few more generations to come up to par.

"Our brains just possess superior perception."

This is the kicker. Lidar allows companies to make up for a lot of the current shortcomings of state-of-the-art computer vision.

As to how easily Uber could advance state-of-the-art computer vision, CV is an academic field with decades of research efforts built up already. To be fair, CNNs are still young-ish in terms of producing results, but Google, FB, etc all have better teams than Uber in this area. The fact that every major self-driving car project except Tesla is using lidar says a lot about how insiders see the first-to-market strategy playing out. Relying on pure CV at this point is kneecapping yourself.