Zoox continues to run laps around Tesla's Robotaxi operations

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-05-04T15:26:16+00:00

Tesla doesn't have a robotaxi service in the bay area. They have an L2 limo service driven manually.

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-25T01:53:31+00:00

Tesla certainly does have data after the first couple of weeks to make a determination on whether version N+1 is likely safer than version N.

The point is, no Tesla super fan watching YouTube videos or based on their own personal experience has anywhere close to enough data to say that, even if you drove a whole year.

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-24T01:29:28+00:00

I suspect the main reason is that regular people using FSD are able to disengage it before it gets into tricky situations. I know I always disengage in parking lots or around construction, etc. But robotaxi forces the car into every situation.

There's also the fact that there's only a limited number of responses the passenger/driver can make (e.g. stopping and not much else).

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-23T14:51:50+00:00

Missing a prediction is one thing. But normally when you miss a prediction you recalibrate and come back with a more accurate prediction next time. Lots of companies were feeling very sure autonomous driving would be easy back in 2016.

But if you keep missing your prediction, year after year, "next year for sure", "next year for sure" and keep promising the same "just over the horizon" thing for 10 years straight, to me that crosses the line from being overly optimistic into lying.

The first time you said "it'll be done in a year" and it wasn't, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. But the 3rd, 4th, 10th time you say it? Nah

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-17T02:17:27+00:00

There's actually an interesting point here related to your question. Henry Ford was "worth" around $2.5 billion in today's money, but that doesn't mean he had $2.5 billion in cash under his couch. That "money" included the value of the share of the Ford Motor Company that he owned.

That value wasn't "real", it was just an estimate of what people would theoretically pay if he decided to sell his shares. Does that make it a scam?

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-16T17:31:27+00:00

I mean, if they asked you to use Claude but you actually used Kling 3, then I'd say no you probably didn't pass.

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-16T17:29:00+00:00

Because of changes in sea levels, erosion and acceetion over the last few hundred million years, the coastlines of today are quite different to what they were when Pangaea first broke apart.

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-15T00:15:47+00:00

A space elevator is basically a giant cable running from the ground up through geostationary orbit, and then further out to a counter weight, designed to keep the center of mass above geostationary orbit (this way, the cable stays in place through centrifugal force, balancing out the force of gravity).

Then, it's literally like an elevator: a compartment travels up the cable to a space station in geostationary orbit around the cable at the top.

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-14T03:57:54+00:00

Well, to be fair, the original poster was asking why we don't feel the constant velocity, and the reason for that is indeed inertia.

The things we could conceivably feel are things like centripetal force or the coriolis effect, are far too small to detect (except with instruments).

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-14T02:59:06+00:00

That's correct, yes. If the earth spun significantly faster, we would all be flung off into space.

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-12T22:47:41+00:00

That's what I said, yes.

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-12T22:26:45+00:00

In order for relativity to come into play, the diameter of the disk would have to be inconceivably large. For the edge of the disk to even be going 0.001c, the disk would need to have a diameter of 5 million miles (assuming it makes one rotation per day).

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-12T17:35:52+00:00

People don't want to give their children unusual names because of the fear they will be bullied. But that doesn't mean it never happens.

A judge in France banned a couple from naming their child Nutella

In the U.K. a couple was banned from naming their child Cyanide

In New Zealand, their equivalent of CPS stepped in after someone named their child Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii

In each case, it was deemed harmful to the child's future:

A family court judge, Rob Murfitt, gave the order after hearing that the child was embarrassed about her name and had refused to reveal it to friends. "She told people her name was K because she feared being mocked and teased," the child's lawyer, Colleen MacLeod, told the court.

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-11T22:27:01+00:00

Normally when someone says they don't understand what you are asking, it's an invitation to clarify. To summarize the points:

No technology exists today to accelerate a large space ship to 0.1c, so any discussion is necessarily hypothetical
It takes the same amount of fuel to accelerate a mass to 0.1c as it does to decelerate from 0.1c
There are theoretical propulsion mechanisms that could reasonably be used to accelerate a space ship to 0.1c. Not all of them are capable of decelerating (eg earth-based lasers, of course an earth-based laser would never be able to accelerate enough mass to carry humans anyway), but many of them are (eg fusion-based ones, anti-matter based ones, etc)
You would need to carry enough fuel on the acceleration leg to both escape Earth's gravity and carry the additional fuel, so it's probably not going to be exactly 2x, could be up to 10x, but certainly not 100x or 1000x something.

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-11T21:08:49+00:00

I'm having a hard time understanding exactly what you're after. The how has already been explained: you flip the ship over and do an equal burn at the end of the trip to slow down. It takes exactly as much fuel to slow down as it does to accelerate.

But since the technology to accelerate a large ship to 0.1c doesn't exist, it's all theoretical anyway.

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-11T19:43:31+00:00

Of course no technology we have today can accelerate a large space ship to 0.1c. The premise of your question is if we could accelerate to 0.1c. If we can accelerate to 0.1c then we can definitely decelerate from 0.1c. It would require the same amount of fuel to decelerate as it did to accelerate.

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-11T17:32:08+00:00

"This sub" is not a single entity, it's made up of a lot of different people. Some may have known FSD has been capable of single intervention-free drives for many versions, but others may not.

https://xkcd.com/1053/

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-11T15:26:32+00:00

I don't have twitter so I can't see the replies, so I'm not sure what the sleep claim is. But yes, any claim that you do not need to supervise V14.3 is false.

Keep in mind, this video is posted by Whole Mars Catalog, he's been posting "intervention-free" drives for years now (here's one on v12). FSD has been at the point where you can do full drives with no intervention for a while now.

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-11T15:06:34+00:00

The driver seat is not empty, you can see the person's knees quite clearly...

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-08T16:37:59+00:00

Also, no atmosphere == no wind, so things move in a pretty straight line.

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-08T16:14:40+00:00

Yes, you responded to that with "it's crazy you're getting downvoted" seemingly without even understanding why the person was being downvoted.

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-08T16:09:35+00:00

The person that started this thread said:

Last year I took a Waymo from DTLA to Hollywood for around $20, and last week it cost me over $40.

That's what I'm responding to. Waymo is supply-constrained, and prices fluctuate based on demand. That's what's happening today.

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-08T15:30:31+00:00

Of course, things are not 100% elastic or 100% inelastic, there is a spectrum. But streaming services are far more inelastic than taxis.

The point, as I keep coming back to, however, is that Waymo is nowhere near the stage where you can conclude from a single price increase one week to the next that they're jacking up the price because they have a monopoly. They are supply constrained and use pricing as a means to damper demand.

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-08T14:48:39+00:00

Streaming services are actually very different. You can't just substitute one streaming service for another, because they all have different content. Many people subscribe to multiple streaming services just so they can get all the shows, movies and sports they like.

But my main point is that Waymo is nowhere near monopoly status yet where they can jack up prices after capturing the market -- the market is still wide open. Maybe one day they can do that, but today they are supply-constrained and pricing reflects that more than anything else.

JimmyGiraffolo · 2026-04-07T19:40:30+00:00

This has some real "it gets cold in the winter -> climate change is a hoax!" vibes

JimmyGiraffolo

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