Self-Driving Cars

YouTube is going to need a thousand more servers for all the “Look, ma! No hands!” videos once self-driving vehicles become a reality. By some estimates, there will be 10 million self-driving cars by 2020. Shit, if it’s only _half_ that many.

You know the first thing a new owner is gonna do is record video while the car drives itself down the road. People will be eating and drinking (and fucking? Porn.hub gonna need more servers, too).

I’ve seen some amazing technology come along in my 68 years (moon landings, internet, Roombas) but none seem quite as impossible as self-driving cars. If these actually happen, the timing is almost perfect for me. With any luck at all, this tech will be ho-hum by the time I need it.

I am having a little trouble imagining how these vehicles will manage our steep hill when it’s covered in snow and ice but some really smart women and men (with slide rules have thought of that)

As for those “Look, ma!” videos… they’ll get boring soon enough and disappear, replaced by The Next Big Thing.

Software eating jobs

“What happens when (Google’s self-driving cars) finally make their way onto American highways en masse? (Which, to be fair, Kurzweil predicted for 2019 back in 1999.) What happens if and when it turns out that they’re much safer than human drivers? Insurance costs will make human driving very expensive, and fewer vehicles will be sold–partly because cars will last longer, partly because fractional ownership of a pool of self-driving vehicles will make more economic sense than having your own.”

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