Yes, this article is probably longer and fluffier than it needs to be but there are some real truths here.
Payments are one of the original service orientated architecture systems, in production your payment is processed by at least three or four parties each of which will call several systems or sub-systems to process a payment.
This method clearly works for Uber, who have a lot of payments going through their systems most of which are of a relatively small value. Dropping a payment and either asking the user to pay via a different option or simply writing off the revenue for a handful of transactions is probably workable for them.
I have the opposite, the number of transactions we process is relatively low, but the average value of these transactions is high, well in excess of 1000 USD. This leads to the following issue:
1. Screwing up a payment and asking the user to try again can be a big hit to user confidence.
2. We can't write off even a single payment/transaction, they're too high value to write-off.
3. Processing fees and refunds for making test transactions in production are too expensive. If a test costs more than $10 (to test in production we must test with production transaction values) that's going to rack up quickly.
Some of the gallery images are fantastic. Showing some really interesting, highly specialised applications that fill a very specific need in an exacting manner.
The motor winding and water supply modelling applications are especially interesting.
I think this idea makes some sense, in a mixed-traffic world where some vehicles are autonomous and others are not, some indication that a vehicle is driving autonomously is useful information to everyone around them. Additional situational information, provided it is not overly intrusive or overwhelming is generally beneficial.
As for the colour, clearly Mercedes requested Turquoise for brand reasons.
I wonder if there is a better colour to be adopted as a standard?
External indicator lights of any kind seem like something that needs to be standardised before we end up with a whole mess of different colours on the roads causing confusion.
> some indication that a vehicle is driving autonomously is useful information to everyone around them
I'm genuinely curious - what are you thinking when you say this?
I don't know what I'd do with that information. It shouldn't make me drive differently - e.g. not be aggressive to see if I can invoke reaction(s) in the autonomous system, and I should already be driving w/ due care.
I've driven near Waymo vehicles, which are distinctive. Their behavior is quite a bit from the norm, and I'll make more room for them if they signal a lane change, because they wait for an engraved invitation before coming over. And if behind one, I know they won't use the shoulder to get to an offramp, so I'll need to be more patient, if we're both heading to the same exit on a congested freeway. Etc.
Being able to distinguish between a mercedes driven by a mercedes driver and one driven by a mercedes automation is going to help predict behavior of the car. Of course, one needs to be ready for anything, but when I can predict behavior of other cars, it increases my planning window.
> if you see the teal lights, you know the car is using automated driving, so it’s less likely for other motorists to be shocked and concerned when they see the occupants looking away from the road, plus emergency services have a better understanding of what to do if medical assistance is needed. It will also be super helpful for law enforcement, so cops hopefully won’t pull you over for watching TikToks on your infotainment screen when it’s perfectly allowed by law.
> I'm genuinely curious - what are you thinking when you say this?
As a pedestrian, I always try to make eye contact with drivers before crossing in front of them. It would be nice to know that the car is doing the driving.
It would be nice if autonomous cars could emit a "yielding to pedestrian" light. I suppose it could be an addressable strip around the whole vehicle where only the section closest to the ped actually illuminates, so the ped can know that the car sees them specifically. The equivalent of eye contact with a wave. Otherwise, the ped will be caught in a game of chicken wondering if the apparent yield is for them or for something else that will finish sooner (like a stop sign with no interfering vehicular traffic).
I do this on my bike in the city. I used to have so many scary incidents until I started doing this. It's funny how differently people treat you when they look you in the eyes.
For the same reason they have the signs that say Student Driver. It lets everyone else know that this car might do something totally unexpected as the car is being controlled by a totally inexperienced operator.
I hope that if we do end up with most/many cars recording everything (with several sensors) we will at least get a “report reckless driver” button that will send the recording to highway patrol and be allowed as evidence.
So the new colour would let you know the car will move in entirely predictable ways based on billions of km driven, unlike the cars driven by crazy humans
I assume you would drive differently if you noticed the driver you were overtaking was looking at their phone and their hands were not on the wheel?
Like the article hints at, a true self driving car lets the driver behave in ways that would normally be reckless and illegal. Best to avoid ambiguity.
Human drivers and autonomous systems drive differently. So if you’re trying to predict how the car will behave in order to e.g. anticipate possible hazards (which I think we all do when driving?) then you may wish to take it account whether it’s being autonomously driven or not.
Humans are pretty good at pattern recognition. Any experienced human driver learns to predict the behavior of other drivers using subtle cues. With time I'm sure they'll all learn to use this information in many nuanced ways as well. Self driving cars likely will as well.
Sometimes extremely subtle. There was a highway exit I used to take all the time (and pass nearly as often) to get to where I was living. It has two exit-only lanes, both of which begin as onramps. I developed a very good sense for which drivers were going to realize that they were about to miss their exit (and move right) or be forced to exit (and move left). It didn’t last full-strength for much more than a year or so after I moved elsewhere in the same metro area.
I can’t clearly articulate what it was I was seeing, but doing it two or three times a day, I got very good at it.
It shouldn't make you drive differently, but in the real world human drivers do drive in unsafe ways, so a cue might help. Might also be ignored or not understood, of course.
> It shouldn't make me drive differently - e.g. not be aggressive...
It's quite the opposite... if there's a tiny gap between two cars in the other lane, you usually don't squeeze in between them, becaus the rear driver in that lane could be distracted and wont brake and let you in in time, or might intentionally not widen the gap, to net let you squeeze inbetween. With automated cars, you can slowly swerve into the too-narrow gap, and the safety mechanisms on the self-driving car will automatically make room for you :) There are many dangerous maneuvers that agressive drivers can't do now, because there will be a crash if the other drivers don't notice them and brake in time, and the self-driving cars will always notice and make room for the either bad or intentionally agressive driver.
Having an exocage on your vehicle also allows this. Even just good bullbars and some bush rash that shows you are not as worried about scratching your paint. You can pretty much force your way into lanes because your vehicle is immune to damage from other drivers and they don't want damage to their car so they just let you in lmao.
I have an old shitty car, if he scratches my side/door/..., I will get it repainted for free by his insurance, while his insurance gets a lot higer for the next few years.
Don't know why I'm being downvoted, there was an accident recently near where I live where a motorist hit a pedestrian in a roadway. He stopped his car and pulled into the opposite lane and turned on his flashers to prevent traffic from running over the guy who was lying in the road. An autonomous vehicle stopped, seeing the car in its lane, but a driver behind it pulled out and passed the vehicle unaware of the pedestrian, running over the injured guy who subsequently died from his injuries.
My understanding is the actual goal of the indicators is more for police than other drivers.
I.E. If you're watching a TV show on the center screen it could be illegal if you don't have the system (not like that stops anyone today anyways -_-).
It's true, car dealers "can't sell" EVs. Not because people don't want EVs, but because dealers either don't want to sell them, or don't know how to sell them.
I've owned 3 EVs since 2016 and I've been to franchise dealerships each time. I've been to dealerships both with and without dedicated or specially trained EV sales reps.
Sales reps who've not had any specific training on selling EVs, working in dealerships with no dedicated EV showroom space are _terrible_ at selling EVs IME. At best they're disinterested in making a sale, at worst they actively discourage you with all the common EV related FUD.
Showrooms with dedicated space to showcase EV product offerings, information about EVs and which have marketing material actively incentivising the benefits of an EV, also have sales reps who are knowledgeable, helpful, and actively seeking to close a sale.
If you think inserting a plug into a socket is "cumbersome" perhaps. Plus you can do it at home, while you sleep. If you're on a long trip the range is long enough now that is a good reason to stretch your legs and hydrate.
When you can't charge over night, then standing for an hour on a charger is absurdly inconvenient. Like returning from touchscreen phone to rotary phone and screaming progress.
It already doesn't take one hour to charge most new cars - rather half, unless you insist on charging also for the last 15-20% which is slower to protect the battery. And this is a baseline from which we're steadily improving year after year. DC Fast charging was 50kW, then 150, now 350kW chargers are being deployed (admittedly not many current, and very few older cars can take advantage of the full speed) and will keep getting even faster over time.
An 80% charge at 350kW would take under 10.5 minutes even for a semi-large 75kW/h battery*, you'd barely have the time to hit the bathroom and order a fast food meal to consume in the car - and this will gradually become the new baseline, from which you can expect further improvements down the line.
* it would actually take more if you showed up with a completely empty battery - the first 10ish % needs to be slower, to protect the battery - but in reality you would NOT plan to reach a charger with such little range remaining, so it would actually take you quite a bit less. A 15% to 80% charge on a 75kW/h battery at 350kW would take 8m21s.
That's all nice theory, but from my experience as BEV owner:
* 350kW chargers are rare, cars able to take the charge even more. (I have Enyaq, charge is capped around 150kW, never saw it charging faster). The most common charger in the wild is around 50kW
* 100kW+ chargers are insanely expensive. It is cheaper to drive ICE than charge on those.
* Chargers are often broken
* You are assuming that there is nobody in front of you. Good luck getting your 8 minutes with 2 other cars waiting to charge as well.
* 8 minutes is still slower than getting a gas to an ICE
Enel X - Charging points in Italy: 0,69€/kWh for AC charging points, 0,89€/kWh for DC charging points up to 150 kW and 0,99€/kWh for DC charging points over 150 kW (HPC)
• Charging points outside Italy: 0,70€/kWh for AC charging points, 0,95€/kWh for DC charging points up to 150kW and 0,99€/kWh for DC charging points above 150kW
Those are just two charging network known for high power chargers on European highways, which I can get top out of my head.
It’s not for everyone. If you can charge at home with average electric rates and you’re not regularly traveling more than 5 hours at a time then it’s probably a good option. If you travel more frequently, get a Tesla. If it’s still not for you, then it’s not for you. If you’re just angry and mad other people like them, I’ve got no recommendations.
To be fair, if you have only driven a Tesla, you potentially have no idea how bad, and yes, cumbersome, charging can be. My ex has 8 apps on her phone, to allow charging in some (not even all) of the many separate networks accessible in Germany. Some apps are atrocious, some demand network connectivity in an underground garage, some return unexplainable errors which even the provider can't help you with, and which persist even after a phone wipe. Happened with Lidl, the solution was to switch the iPhone's language from British English to US English. Probably their website barfed on the Accept-Language: en-gb header.
Fortunately legislation is coming to force all of them to take credit/debit cards, and standards like Autocharge will also help.
> Plus you can do it at home, while you sleep. If you're on a long trip the range is long enough now that is a good reason to stretch your legs and hydrate.
Oh it's so easy and convenient!
You are being short sighted, yeah in ideal conditions, it's OK. But what about.
You're pulling into your home just about on empty, plug it in walk inside, then a get a phone call from your dad who lives 2 hours away "Mom just had a terrible accident, and is in the hospital, were not sure she can make it, get to the hospital as soon as your can!" Now your dumb ass has to sit and panic and stress while you wait for your stupid EV to charge. On top of that now your playing this guessing game, "What is the least amount of charge I need to get to the hospital, what if I underestimate just a bit and run out of charge 10 miles out, then I would be even later than if just let it charged a bit more".
What if you car is low on charge, you go plug in it, then a storm comes ripping through, electricity is out, it's out for days, your fucking stuck, sorry.
I think people are vastly under estimating the "I HAVE TO LEAVE RIGHT THE FUCK NOW" value you have with a combustion engine.
Emergencies happen, electricity goes out, I would happily pay more for a vehicle that didn't have these terrible drawbacks.
What is “calling a car”? Like taxi? By the time it’s gets there you might as well just waited for your car to charge.
And yeah, God forbid you move from something with more flexibility and freedom (a combustion engine), to something with less (an EV).
I don’t wish anyone ever go from more to less freedom and flexibility.
The “derp it’s only 20 min to charge” is a bad argument. You are asking me to go from 2 min or less to 20+ min. That’s a 900% increase and is totally unacceptable.
You’re right. You should have a helicopter fueled up and ready to go. Seeing your mom quicker in case this scenario presents itself is the driving motivation for your vehicle type. /s
This is a perfect example of the mental gymnastics people will go through to convince themselves that EVs are not viable.
My EV is on average “fuller” than my diesel was since my commute uses 10% per day and it gets recharged every night, whereas my diesel would wait until 1/6th full at least until a fill up.
That not every customer wants an EV or that an EV is not the best car for every customer is no excuse for sales reps being subpar when it comes to EVs. Especially when the car industry does not take sales rep performance into account when evaluating EV sales at dealerships.
I don't see how you agree with the poster when it seems like for you, an EV is quite viable.
The reality is that each has different constraints. Sitting around waiting for a charge on road trips seems annoying. Never having to "get gas" for local trips seems awesome.
That's the wrong way to look at it. Regardless of how much you're driving, most folks in dense urban non-Californian areas are getting at best a Level 2 charge.
Who has the time to sit around or park their car for an hour for every 20 miles they drive?
If you take NYC for example, EV parking spaces are big bucks and for the few available public infrastructure places, most of the spots are being occupied full time by city parks department vehicles that rarely if ever leave the charger.
As far as taking your question literally, you should talk to people in the midwest more -- I know lots of folks in the Dakotas and Wyoming with crazy schedules and 4hr commutes because that's literally the closest work.
I don't want an EV. Well, I'm not opposed to an EV, but I am opposed to a car that phones to someone's server somewhere. That excludes (AFAICT) all EVs and non-EV cars of recent vintage.
Except its right there in the transcript. It used to be a self-service SaaS application, to enterprise sales.
Nearly all features are gated behind an enterprise-sales "contact us" box with no transparency in pricing.
They're not selling to developers, they're selling to business executives, they give a nod to the fact developers are the end-user of this product, but all the material on the site is as executive-oriented as it gets. Listing other brands they've sold the product to, big stats about ROI and increased sales and revenue and "white-papers" which are really just fluff-pieces to hype up the product.
As a developer, I need to see transparent pricing up-front.
It's no good telling me about features, APIs without a way to figure out what it'll cost because that cost might easily be orders-of-magnitude out of range. Look at the pricing for Algolia - $499/mo and you don't actually get any of the features that separate it from products like ElasticSearch which are available as open-source downloads or as a much cheaper hosted service. You get tooling to make integrating search easier than the open-source alternatives, but now you're bound to the tooling provided by that service and its capabilities, or writing your own tooling anyway.
Either give me a monthly cost I can use to determine if its worth suggesting a product, or give me usage-based pricing that lets me start out cheaply, and lets my bill grow as the value I gain from your product grows.
(Sylvain from Algolia speaking) Thanks for sharing, our pricing & its transparency is actually something we are working on right now to address this perception. We've been iterating a few times already over the past 7 years, but this is one more signal for us to act!
The reality is that based on the number of objects you want to search in, your search traffic, your searches' complexity and your index/relevance configuration; the underlying resources can vary soo much, it's hard to have a single pricing that fits all use-case.
This has always been a major deterrent to me wanting to use Algolia. It's basically impossible for me to know whether for x number of users doing y number of searches Algolia will cost $100/month or $1,000/month or $10,000/month. It amazes me that anyone commits to investing development effort in using Algolia (with lock-in, to boot) when you have no idea whether it's something you can even afford.
It's very easy to start with so from time investment it will always be a good choice. I looked at several options for doc search and since I didn't want to invest more than 2 hours I just setup a Drone CI job to scrape and update index every night and added that search bar :) quite happy so far although self hosted solution would be preferable
As with all usage-based product, when you start it is cheap (much cheaper than building on your own), then as you grow your resources will hopefully scale with the number of users.
If your resources don't scale with usage, yes, you have a problem, but I'd say not limited to algolia
What's different is that with other products, i.e., those that have clear and understandable pricing, you can forecast the future costs and make a decision about whether it's an affordable solution for the particular product/business you're building. With Algolia, you can't.
Why would I want to build a product/business that uses Algolia technology as a key component when I have no idea whether the eventual cost of Algolia will be acceptable? I wouldn't, which is why despite Algolia's extremely attractive features, I have time and time again been unable to recommend its use.
Btw, part of this pricing rework is also about removing some of the feature gating. It's an approach we've taken to really get the feature right, first releasing it to a smaller set of (larger) customers before opening it up to the whole mass.
Search is fast, relevancy is awesome, it's hosted and I have analytics. So for that use case it's a clear and major win against installing, configuring and adding search analytics to Elastic.
This is the case for many, if not most, modern/high-tech cars, especially EVs.
The on-board systems have become very tightly coupled, if not monolithic to the point where a broken info unit will prevent the car from starting.
I had the infotainment system replaced in my e-Golf a few weeks ago, it took two technicians three days to install and configure to work with all the car's on-board systems.
Edit: If I _had_ to guess, I’d say this is because the car industry (especially electric) has been pushing to innovate features so rapidly that the time hasn't been available to engineer, test and prove decoupled systems.
There's anti-theft considerations at play with how car electronics are coupled, reducing part count for cost savings, and I think a bit of the classic right to repair vs corporate interests dynamic happening. Automakers have been known to intentionally make things difficult to work on.
Yes, electronics are highly coupled, but in the case of the e-Golf it will at least function as a car with no infotainment system (unlike the Tesla). And MIB replacement in the VW MQB platform is simple so I don’t understand what took the techs so long. It’s one unit in the glovebox and guided coding using ODIS, the VW dealer tool (which is also available to independent shops albeit at a $1000/year fee, which is stupid and should be illegal). The VW units do have Component Protection which keeps them from simply plugging in, but with the aforementioned dealer tool, so long as it is legally obtained, a subscription to VW’s anti theft coding service Geko is already included and the process is very straightforward.
Why won't they think about these things? Do they really don't care or is it that we don't understand something very important in making cars?! I want to know !
It reduces cost and makes it easier to give a nice user experience when people are test driving. It makes it easier to manage all the different aspects of the car from a single interface.
The primary reason the car is made, in the first place, is to be sold at a profitable price. That is priority #1.
It doesn't mention it because it isn't really relevant. The international app is still being censored according to the same rules as the app in China.
It still prohibits users from discussing topics the CCP doesn't want brought up. (e.g. Tiananman Square, Falun Gong, organ harvesting, and Xinjiang)
The main differences are that outside of China you're not bound by their laws requiring users to sign up using their legal name and provide identification to prove as such. In addition to which people aren't being disappeared or arrested for their posts.
Looks very helpful, a shame that it has to rely on Selenium/ChromeDriver.
Very frustrating that AWS SSO has no API, especially when every other AWS product is offered API-first, it makes this feature so very difficult.
While there are other ways to manage access across multiple AWS accounts within an organization, none are nearly as fully-integrated as AWS SSO, with the ability to create users/groups and then assign their roles within accounts.
There are other methods, but I've yet to find something which can let users log in using directory credentials, see a list of all AWS accounts they have access to, and have one-click sign-in to those accounts.
I've had a bit of a look and it appears that the bulk of this is undertaken in the Trace Context specification itself.
The data passed back for a trace includes a reference to the trace’s location within a tree. The root node for this tree should (perhaps must) be generated server-side, and the client-side can only send traces which are children of the root-trace given by the server.
Where 00 is the format version, 0af7651916cd43dd8448eb211c80319c is the root trace ID given by the server and b7ad6b7169203331 is the ID of the direct parent of this trace.
While this doesn't prevent a malicious user from polluting a single trace, it does limit their scope to the root trace they've been given. It should then be possible to discard the entire trace, though I think identifying tampered traces could be difficult.
Payments are one of the original service orientated architecture systems, in production your payment is processed by at least three or four parties each of which will call several systems or sub-systems to process a payment.
This method clearly works for Uber, who have a lot of payments going through their systems most of which are of a relatively small value. Dropping a payment and either asking the user to pay via a different option or simply writing off the revenue for a handful of transactions is probably workable for them.
I have the opposite, the number of transactions we process is relatively low, but the average value of these transactions is high, well in excess of 1000 USD. This leads to the following issue:
1. Screwing up a payment and asking the user to try again can be a big hit to user confidence. 2. We can't write off even a single payment/transaction, they're too high value to write-off. 3. Processing fees and refunds for making test transactions in production are too expensive. If a test costs more than $10 (to test in production we must test with production transaction values) that's going to rack up quickly.