rkbabang

What year will Uber go completely driverless? My prediction 2027.

Yes this is going to ruffle a lot of feathers, there are probably more political issues to overcome than technical ones at this point.

That is hilarious. The major car companies will be the last ones to invest in anything that changes the status quo. If you are under 70 years old you will live to see all of these companies go out of business. They will never even produce a viable electric vehicle, never mind an autonomous one. They will never abandon their ICE vehicle/dealership model with anything that will change how they do business. The last thing they want is for autonomous vehicles to cause fewer cars to be sold. Thus the other large impediment to autonomous vehicles will be political pressure by the existing auto manufacturers (except Tesla) and dealerships. We already see the dealerships wielding their political muscle trying to stop Tesla from selling their products to people who want them (to protect the consumer of course :P).

The mining industry is the perfect industry for this, because the trucks don't have to deal with human drivers. The most difficult part of getting autonomous cars on the roads is going to be dealing with human driven vehicles doing stupid things. I know when I first got my license I was taught the rules of the road, but what no one told me is that other people don't follow these rules. I got in a number of accidents before I realized that you just have to assume that the people around you are going to do asinine/totally insane things. I rear-ended an old lady once that was stopping on a busy street (45mph speed limit) to let someone pull out of his driveway. I was almost killed recently by an 18-wheeler blowing through a red light at full speed a long time after my side turned green. If I hadn't waited and looked after my light turned green my daughter and I would have both been killed. I can't wait for autonomous vehicles. The more humans it gets off the road the better. Driving is one thing the majority human beings are not good at and many thousands of people die every year as a result. It cracks me up when people say that they are afraid of the safety of autonomous vehicles.

There will certainly be people who own their own vehicle, but I think this will be at the wealthier end of the spectrum. For most people it won't make sense. Even for people who can afford it many will opt not to bother. If you work 50 miles from home does it really make sense to have your car bring you to work then drive 50 miles back home empty to drive your kids to school, then drive 50 miles empty at the end of the day to pick you back up? I think that as much as people above a certain age like driving and owning cars, it is more of a cultural thing that will not last very long (especially with younger people) if the economics doesn't make sense. My son is 15 and I was talking with him about it and it'd be fine with him if driverless cars were available now and he never had to learn how to drive. He'd rather watch youtube and let the car take him where he wants to go. Sort of like now with me driving :) Younger people simply don't have the same cultural attachment to cars and driving that people over 35 have. I agree with you for the most part but I think there will be things that slow it down. First off public transportation just isn't as comfortable or clean as most people prefer their own vehicles to be. I think most of us would prefer to ride in our own cars over a typical taxi. People prefer their own space to communal spaces. Many a soccer mom will choose to transport their kids in a known clean vehicle than risk whatever disease the previous occupants of the week may have had. Many people have hobbies or work requirements that a fleet of vehicles will be slower to provide. Hauling golf carts, four wheelers, kayaks, bicycles, home improvement supplies, and pets, and landscaping all to some degree require special equipment that will require specialized services. Certainly niche services will provide some of these, but there will always be atypical transportation needs. We also enjoy the level of customization that comes with our own vehicles. Always having the seats adjusted just the way you like it, the presets on the radio, and other little creature comforts like heated seats. I also think working from a car would be much easier if it's customized to your liking. Not to mention entertainment I can imagine cars set up with wraparound IMAX type of entertainment systems or whatever else is used for entertainment in the future. I think the tremendous savings will make penetration over 50% and will cause virtually every family to use them some. But I think the best correlation is probably traveling commercial vs. a private jet. Most of us can't afford a private jet, but the private car will be much more attainable for the middle class and possibly just as desired as the private jet is for the wealthy. I think you are correct it will always be better to own your own (I'd love a private jet) and for us who already own multiple vehicles, having only one will save us a ton of money already. I'm just thinking about the average younger person who comes of age in the age of driverless cars. As a college student then a young professional, then starting a family, buying a home, etc, there may always be something better to spend tens of thousands of dollars on than a private vehicle. I tend to think private ownership will be an expensive luxury that many will aspire to, but fewer and fewer will be able to justify. I think transportation companies will have different levels of service (think Uber black) that will guarantee nicer vehicles and state of the art entertainment. Why buy your own which will be obsolete in 3 years, when the nicer car service companies always have the latest rides? Have a car with a desk pick you up if you want to work, have a car with a wrap around screen pick you and the kids up for a long trip. Have a small car bring you to the hardware store and have a truck pick you up from the hardware store (or better yet have a truck pick up what you ordered from the hardware store and meet you in your driveway without you ever leaving home). Same with the grocery store, you order the stuff you need online and have a vehicle go pick it up for you. It will certainly be interesting to see what actually happens.

There will certainly be people who own their own vehicle, but I think this will be at the wealthier end of the spectrum. For most people it won't make sense. Even for people who can afford it many will opt not to bother. If you work 50 miles from home does it really make sense to have your car bring you to work then drive 50 miles back home empty to drive your kids to school, then drive 50 miles empty at the end of the day to pick you back up? I think that as much as people above a certain age like driving and owning cars, it is more of a cultural thing that will not last very long (especially with younger people) if the economics doesn't make sense. My son is 15 and I was talking with him about it and it'd be fine with him if driverless cars were available now and he never had to learn how to drive. He'd rather watch youtube and let the car take him where he wants to go. Sort of like now with me driving :) Younger people simply don't have the same cultural attachment to cars and driving that people over 35 have.

"Driving in the Networked Age" by Reid Hoffman

Sort of... you can't tell it how fast you plan on driving and then have it plan the proper route for you. It can set you out down a path and then only later tell you that you won't make it unless you slow down. It's not quite what they advertise it to be. What would be nice is if the computer learned how fast you typically drive on certain roads at certain times of the day, and use that info to get better and better at planning your routes. It could also use the info to predict how fast you are likely to drive on roads that you have never driven on yet using your past driving on similar types of roads. Also use facial recognition to have a profile for every driver of the car and plan the route based on who will be driving. Maybe even have an option to tell it "I'm in a hurry" or "No rush I won't be driving as fast today".

I agree with you, I'm just not willing to put a guess on the time frame. I hope you are correct.

Of course, but it is still possible to make some reasonable predictions. I think car usage would increase dramatically, but the number of insured cars would be much less than now. You wouldn't need 2-4 cars per family anymore, a transportation company could serve thousands or tens of thousands of people with hundreds of cars. Also while people will always prefer riding in cars rather than trains/buses, there is still the fact that if everyone wants to get to work by 9AM the roads will be congested in the morning. Autonomous cars can ride closer together and do not rubber neck accidents on the other side of the highway, or freak out because they saw a break light in front of them, but there is still a limit to how much traffic a road can handle before things slow down. And all it takes is one or two human drivers on the road to screw everything up. I wonder if human drivers will even be allowed? I don't think we will be completely rid of traffic (which means some people will still use public transportation such as commuter rail) until we have autonomous flying people carriers. There is plenty of room in the air to carry everyone where they want to go if the machines are smart enough not to crash into each other. Also there might still be room for long distance bus/train transportation for cost reasons. I'm sure it will be much cheaper to take a bus from Boston to NYC than a car. Especially if the car company doesn't operate in both locations. Things this will kill is roadside gas stations, airport transportation companies, taxis, intra-city buses/subways.

Why not just wait for the new Roadster in 4 years... http://i.stack.imgur.com/mNA4dm.jpg

Short term not much, longer term 10-30 years, I think the entire industry will change significantly. I don't think the economics will favor owning your own car for 98+% of people. A car is a huge expense and spends the vast majority of its life sitting in a driveway, garage or parking lot while it depreciates. If you could quickly and easily get a car to pick you up (in minutes) and only pay for the time you actually spend inside one that just seems to make more economic sense. Therefore what insurance companies will be insuring is the corporate fleets of the large car sharing companies.

Looked at MIDD a couple years ago, really liked the ROIC, ended up passing. Obviously I should have bought :) Congrats on your successful long-term investment! Thanks. I just looked it up I first bought it in 2005, so I guess it has been 10 years not 12. I bought it for $44 ($7.33 split adjusted), increased my position further in 2008 by converting it all to OVEN right before the buyout which reduced my cost basis even further, then sold the bulk of it unfortunately around a split adjusted $33. I still have enough that it is 8% of my portfolio today, but I should never have sold.

Speaking of MIDD: U.K. Stovemaker Aga Sells to Middleby to Escape Pension Hole "For Middleby, the acquisition will provide “meaningful growth opportunities,” Chief Executive Officer Selim Bassoul said in the statement. Middleby has spent about $2.8 billion on deals since Bassoul took over as CEO in 2004. Its stock price has jumped more than tenfold in that period, valuing the Elgin, Illinois-based company at about $6.8 billion."

I've owned MIDD for about 12 years. It's a serial acquirer, does an excellent job integrating the acquisitions, cutting out the fat, finding and creating value every time.

That seems to be what most people are assuming and that assumption alone could drive up the price due to speculation. I think bitcoin will continue to be volatile and subject to large swings until it is more widely used.

If I had put 100% into one position I'd either have been fabulously wealthy, dirt poor, or earned around market returns, depending on what that one position was. For instance I first bought NFLX at $11, had I put everything into it, sold my house and put everything into it, then borrowed money to put even more into it, and held until today I would have done very well.

Another of my favorite authors for quotes is Robert Anton Wilson. I highly recommend reading everything he's written. Here are a few quotes: “belief is the death of intelligence.” “The normal is that which nobody quite is. If you listen to seemingly dull people very closely, you'll see that they're all mad in different and interesting ways, and are merely struggling to hide it.” “We're trapped in linguistic constructs... all that is is metaphor.” “When we meet somebody whose separate tunnel-reality is obviously far different from ours, we are a bit frightened and always disoriented. We tend to think they are mad, or that they are crooks trying to con us in some way, or that they are hoaxers playing a joke. Yet it is neurologically obvious that no two brains have the same genetically-programmed hard wiring, the same imprints, the same conditioning, the same learning experiences. We are all living in separate realities. That is why communication fails so often, and misunderstandings and resentments are so common. I say "meow" and you say "Bow-wow," and each of us is convinced the other is a bit dumb.” “Every fact of science was once damned. Every invention was considered impossible. Every discovery was a nervous shock to some orthodoxy. Every artistic innovation was denounced as fraud and folly. The entire web of culture and ‘progress,’ everything on earth that is man-made and not given to us by nature, is the concrete manifestation of some man’s refusal to bow to Authority. We would own no more, know no more, and be no more than the first apelike hominids if it were not for the rebellious, the recalcitrant, and the intransigent. As Oscar Wilde truly said, ‘Disobedience was man’s Original Virtue.” “Is," "is," "is"—the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment.” “Nothing of any importance can be taught. It can only be learned, and with blood and sweat.” “Little Tony was sitting on a park bench munching on one candy bar after another. After the 6th candy bar a man on the bench across from him said Son you know eating all that candy isn't good for you. It will give you acne rot your teeth and make you fat. Little Tony replied My grandfather lived to be 107 years old. The man asked Did you grandfather eat 6 candy bars at a time Little Tony answered No he minded his own f#cking business.” Some more here: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/2918.Robert_Anton_Wilson

+1 when I first clicked on it I expected it to be a story about a child or a teenager, but don't worry about it, I couldn't post in Italian.

"launched her company after "thinking about what is the greatest change I could make in the world."" "Holmes spends every waking hour in her office and doesn't even own a TV at home." "no longer devotes time to novels or friends, doesn't date, doesn't own a television, and hasn't taken a vacation in 10 years" "She abstains from caffeine, limits the amount of time she sleeps, and works seven days a week" Amazing indeed. While I am grateful that there are people like this in the world dedicating the entirety of their lives to the progress of mankind and making us all better off, I could never be that devoted to my work. The world needs more of these types of people, they are few and far between.

I haven't read it yet, but I did click on the link to start it, the moving graphics on the sides of the page are annoying and distracting. If I do go back to read it I think I'll cut and paste the text into a text editor. I first taught myself to code on my Commodore 64 when I was about 10 or 11. I'm a hardware guy, but I do a fair amount of coding at work. Mostly embedded C and assembly, and a fair amount of Python and Perl scripting as well.

Yeah, I'm sure they will. Really, the first time? I've cursed out loud reading the news many, many, many times.

Bad news: SpaceX Rocket Disintegrates After Launching

Sure here's a rough sketch to get you started: ____________________________________ | > | > | __________________________________________ >

SpaceX Is Hosting A Hyperloop Pod Competition And Will Build A Test Track "The Pod competition is open to anyone, and is geared towards university students and independent engineering teams. The competition is open until September 15, 2015, at which point submissions will be vetted by the company, and SpaceX hopes to build the one-mile test track near its Hawthorne, CA HQ by June of next year, at which time SpaceX hopes to host a head-to-head competition of pods from submissions"