Interesting Links for 04-12-2014

[andrewducker]

• Stephen Colbert explains why the new lightsaber is awesome, and the haters are just wrong
  (tags: starwars )
• Laser pointers are obsolete - we have a new ultimate kitten toy
  (tags: cats lasers awesome )
• Medical histories, movies, and a script from Breaking Bad's creator - the Sony Pictures hack is as bad as it gets
  (tags: hacking sony epicfail

Comments

Driverless cars

[drdoug]

a) driverless cars will one day seem as strange a way of describing them as horseless carriages. I can't believe I've only just clocked that.

b) One pilot is in MK, near where I live! I desperately want to be a test driver. Hold on ... they are not going to need test drovers.

Re: Driverless cars

[andrewducker]

They might need "test people to sit in them" though :->

And yes, I reckon that five years after generic driverless cars are available you'll start to see a massive societal switchover.

Re: Driverless cars

[naath]

Yeah, a few years of "too expensive for most people" before they get really going. I'm expecting it to get harder and harder to get (or keep) a license to actually drive a car the easier it becomes to get a car that doesn't need a driver.

Re: Driverless cars

[andrewducker]

Oh, I don't expect to _own_ one.

I expect driverless taxis to be the norm very quickly, and be around half the price of the kind with drivers.

Re: Driverless cars

[naath]

Eventually. Once some company has bought them, and people trust them enough to use them and etc.

I kinda want one, although I can see that hiring it by the hour would be cheaper.

Re: Driverless cars

[andrewducker]

I think that for some people, owning one will make more sense. If you live a fair way out of town, and so ordering one would take a fair amount of time, or need one of a specific size that has a carrying capacity, or have other unusual needs, then owning a car would make sense.

Re: Driverless cars

[naath]

I sorta want to buy one as soon as it's possible, to show that there *is a market* dammit also to have my very own robot car. But I really only have about half a dozen trips *per year* that I'd want a car for, and always with loads of notice... so really I don't want to buy one at all.

Re: Driverless cars

[andrewducker]

Once your local robotaxi service starts, you could make sure you're a regular user and persuade all your friends :-)

[kalimac]

I also was pleased to see that MK was one of the test sites. A less walkable city I've never been in, and that includes LA. Driverless shuttle cars would be a really good idea there.