Since the current traffic infrastructure was built for human drivers with vision, you’ll probably need some form of vision to navigate today’s roads. The only way I could picture lidar only working would be on a road system specially made for machine driving.
Yes lidar has limitations, but so does machine vision. That’s why you want both if you can have it. LIDAR is more reliable at judging distance than stereo vision. Stereo vision requires there to be sufficient texture (features) to work. It can be thrown off by fog or glare. A white semi trailer can be a degenerate case. It can be fooled by optical illusions.
Yes, humans don’t have built in lidar. But humans do use tools to augment their capabilities. The car itself is one example. Birds don’t have jet engines, props, or rotors… should we not use those?
Most practical navigation systems employ some form of sensor fusion. It’s more the norm than not. I’m sure even Tesla’s FSD does too for fusing vision, inertial sensors, wheel speed, multiple etc.
It’s great that starlink is there, but it can still be shut down on the whim of its owner as seen in the past. So hurray for starlink! (unless the opportunistic tides of politics change)
You know, not everyone on this site has an absolutist binary opinion on the Elon. Some people can give him credit for what he gets right, while simultaneously calling bullshit on his bullshit.
In a way, America didn’t ask for what it got. America voted for a guy who claimed to have never heard of Project 2025. It got Project 2025.
Also, Trump ran on a populist message. Yet if you look at what he has done materially since he got into office, it seems his true allegiance is with the billionaire elite.
Squeeze Ukraine for rare earths and Venezuela for oil. Neither has nukes, easy targets. Give lucrative contracts to mining and extraction buddies, give pardons to financial criminals, get protection from powerful new allies after you leave office.
Ukrainian rare earths are a massive meme. The only argument that is reasonable is that post-war Ukraine will have below 0 environmental protections and accept Congo-style mining.
If it was not economical enough for USSR, it won't be for any actor that knows what ROI is.
A much better economic future for Ukraine as part of Europe would be to make it the breadbasket of the entire EU but it's political suicide given the farmer protests.
True, but both SK and Taiwan had always wanted to be more aligned with the West as they needed to be under the US defense umbrella. The liberalization could only come after gaining stability.
On the other hand, China has always sought to regain what it considers to be its rightful place as a first world power and to recover from its “century of humiliation.”
I think the CCP has been pretty consistent in this stance. Policy makers in the West that didn’t notice were blinded by corporate wishful thinking.
You’re confusing the faction leading the country with the people themselves.
South Korea and Taiwan as countries don’t have an inherent will to align with the West. The countries are made up people with different beliefs, some are more aligned to democracy (what you call the West) and some aren’t. Even today Taiwan has a political party that is pro-CCP.
The logic is not that the CCP will suddenly want to align with the West, it’s that the people will become more pro-Democratic as they become more developed (both economically and politically).
No, I’m intentionally speaking of the leadership. Yes there are dissidents in China (and Russia and NK…) but the governments have been able to make their work seem futile.
There are also some Chinese who are happy to live in a police state. There are also some US citizens who would like more of a police state, provided the police are on their side of the culture wars.
The fantasy is that capitalism automatically breeds liberal democracy. Sometimes it does, but don’t forget it can work the other way too. It was the excesses of capitalism in the gilded age that led to the rise socialist revolutions in the first place. Sometimes might say today’s billionaire capitalists are becoming like the robber barrons of the gilded age.
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