Hacker News Reader

Comment by hyperbovine | Hacker News Reader

I think the point is that dozens of other tools online let you do those things. Name somebody else making a serious go at autocars, AR glasses or cheap fiber.

View on HN

> Name somebody else making a serious go at autocars

Kinze plans to release their fully autonomous agriculture tractor to the buying public later this year. I realize the field is not quite the highway, but it is still pretty exciting to see this kind of stuff come into production already.

I think Google may have stolen Steve Jobs reality distortion field if you seriously think Google is the only company making a serious go at all three of those.

Oh really? What's the other company that's making a serious go at all three of those?

My mistake in implying there was one company making a go at all three, google may be alone in that category, but there are quite a few companies that have been around longer doing research on each individually.

And just because Google is putting money behind all three doesn't mean it's doing any good. Until they release a product or share their research, it's all vaporware. And I'm not saying that to hate on Google, I actually like that Google is pouring money into these projects, but it doesn't change the fact that Google is getting preferential treatment from the media making it sound like Google is the organization trying to make advancements in these areas, no different than the way the media treats Apple during its product releases.

Cheap fiber? I'm pretty sure Google's prices are not far off from Fios with a smaller channel lineup.

A 50Mbps connection with Verizon costs about $75 / month. Google's 1000Mbps connection costs $70 / month. It's not even close.

(I'm strictly comparing internet speeds, not TV channel lineup).

It's even worse than that.

First, the connection you're talking about is 50/25 Mbps, while Google is a symmetric 1 Gbps. Second, Google includes 1 TB of Google Drive, which Google normally sells at $50/mo.

Granted, it's cheaper for them to give you Google Drive if you're a fiber customer. And, of course, you might not even want it, but it's one hell of an extra if you want even part of it. I wonder if that's one of the things they're testing with Google Fiber: What do people do with a lot of cloud storage they have fast access to (at least at home)?

Even on the TV side, the comparison isn't that bad once you realize Google is throwing in a DVR (with 8-way recording??). They lose some ground because of the bundle savings (unless you count the Nexus 7 / local storage towards that), but the competing high-end plans are so expensive (~$200/mo for FiOS) and still a lot slower (3x download, 15x upload) that it's no contest, assuming you want the speed.

Please. You act as though Google is doing something revolutionary. It isn't.

Everyone from universities to BMW and Mercedes are working on self driving cars, Google Glasses aren't AR and better attempts have been made previously and as for cheap fibre well countless countries have in reality what Google is just talking about.

In many respects Google is like Apple - taking existing ideas and making them more polished.

"Revolutionary" is such a subjective term. Very, very few ideas are actually novel. In fact, dreaming them up is usually easier than pulling them off, so give Apple & Google some credit. While they aren't inventing the future from scratch, they certainly deserve credit for bringing the future into the present. Multi-touch interfaces and tablets have been around for years and the ideas for them even longer (see: Star Trek), but no one has been able to figure out how to successfully pull it off and popularize it. Apple did. Automated cars have been the future since the Jetsons, and we're going to see it become a reality in the next decade, thanks to Google. We've been talking about "digital libraries" and having the world's knowledge at your fingertips for the last 100 years. Wikipedia figured that one out.

The future is (mostly) already laid out, the roads just need to be paved to get everyone there. That is what Apple & Google are doing, along with some others.

Edit: Just realized we actually used to have (dumb) automated cars. They were called horses.

Perhaps what the parent was getting at is that other companies seem more risk averse. Google isn't afraid to fail in public. I can't remember the last truly exciting thing I heard about from BMW or Mercedes that was being tested in the real marketplace. Rear facing cameras in the bumper? A car that parallel parks itself? A 650 BHP V12? I throw your "please" back at you.

A recent luxury vehicle has so many "assist" systems it could drive itself if only the manufacturer wanted to deal with the liability. Calculating the route? Trivial. Traction while braking, cornering, accelerating? Done. Staying in lane? Sure. Staying a safe distance behind car in front? Yup. Braking when pedestrians enter unsafe zone around car? Covered too. And yep, it'll parallel park at your destination.

Google's real test will be putting their wundermachines on the market and standing behind them when the liability suits inevitably come in. That's not to say the vehicles themselves will malfunction, but that won't stop some people.

Edit: here are some dates.

- Staying in lane, 2003, Honda Inspire provides up to 80% of required steering torque: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lane_departure_warning_system#T.... Want to bet why it wasn't 100%?

- Traction assist in cornering, 1995-1997 (notably retrofitted onto the Mercedes A-class in 1997 after it was beaten by a Trabant in the elk test): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_stability_control#In.... Early forms of braking traction assist available as ABS starting in 1971.

- Following the car in front, at any speed from 0 to 100 km/h, 2006, Lexus LS 460, with first systems becoming available 1997-2000: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_cruise_control#Availab...

- Standard roadside traffic sign recognition, currently implemented for speed limit and overtaking restriction signs, 2008, BMW and GM, soon followed by others http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_sign_recognition

- Blind spot detection, circa 2006, second generation Volvo S80: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_detection

- Pedestrian detection, circa 2010, Volvo: http://www.popsci.com/bown/2010/product/volvo-pedestrian-det...

Surely the revolutionary act is making something happen, not in having the ability to make it happen but not doing it. There's nothing Che Guevara did that I physically can't do, but I'm not a revolutionary because of what I've chosen to do.

Yeah, absolutely, huge credit to Google if they do put a self-driving car on the customer market. I was just responding to parent's question about the last truly exciting thing that was being tested in the real marketplace, which I felt trivialized existing technology and somewhat implied only Google is working on new automobile technology these days.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com