The Presidency of the Joes, part II: lol documents

I have a suspicion that one of Biden’s problems is that he spent a ton of energy and political capital on COVID stuff and doesn’t have much in the tank to use on anything else.

Well good thing hes done such a great job there.

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feels a bit like people saying those who know how to use a typewriter will remain valuable bc gen x doesn’t know how to use one

My sense from bogleheads is at FAANG you top out around $400k - $500k as an individual contributor. If you move into management the sky is the limit but those are incredibly demanding jobs with tons of politics involved.

I’ll have you know I was born in '71 and I learned to type on a manual typewriter in 9th grade, so there. I still hit the A key harder than I have to because of the extra oomph you needed from your pinky on those, lol.

Regarding self driving trucks, driving on interstates is easy and commercialization of it is not far off. What I could see happening is that trucks drive between bays outside cities and drivers there take each one over for the last x miles. Drivers would also possibly be required between cities in bad weather conditions. There are many steps in between fully human driving and no humans required that will sharply reduce the number of truck driving jobs.

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Getting this approved, at least in the US, is 10-20 years away. It will happen a lot of other places first (Singapore a particular leader the last time I really dove into this)

Fascinating stuff. Thanks.

This system will probably work a whole lot better in Australia since you have a whole lot more empty space out there.

Riverman curating news from the Villages and posting from Bogleheads is a huge contribution to his VORP, which as we know is off the charts.

Have you ever driven on an interstate in the US Northeast? Do you think there’s political will to vastly improve the US interstate infrastructure for the purpose of eliminating trucking jobs?

I have been on interstates in the Northeast, but it was years ago and I don’t remember what they were like. But so what? My whole point is this is not an all or nothing proposition. You can automate on routes that are suitable for it and not on ones that aren’t.

I don’t think there’s any major interstate in the Northeast that’s maintained in good enough condition to allow a self-driving vehicle with today’s technology, which is to say nothing of the weather. Doing what you say would require the political will to keep large stretches of the interstate system maintained for self-driving trucks and/or installing infrastructure to allow self driving vehicles to more easily navigate them. I just don’t see that happening unfortunately.

Yeah. The Pennsylvania Turnpike is probably the most important east west trucking road in the country and it’s borderline impassable for humans like 20 times a year. Massive elevation changes and curves with awful winter weather. I can’t imagine any self-driving working on I-95 from Boston to DC either.

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Definitely this.

ChrisV would probably be onto something in Aus. Based on 1min of fucking around with google maps, it looks like you could drive from Sydney to Perth or Adelaide to Darwin and not hit many populated areas at all.

While I totally agree that the tech for driving on our shitty highways isn’t exactly around the corner, it’s not the next cold fusion either. I could see it happening in the 15-20 year time frame.

You can, but the roads you’re talking about are nothing like US interstates. They are mostly one lane each way and not freeways, they mostly go straight through the middle of towns. Despite this, I think Adelaide to Perth and Adelaide to Darwin are huge candidates for automation, because they are very very long (29 and 31 hours respectively) and you have to negotiate virtually zero turns (perhaps literally zero for Darwin?) and light traffic.

Sydney to Melbourne (outskirts to outskirts) on the Hume Highway is about 7-8 hours and mostly freeway standard, so that would be another candidate, despite the fact that it’s obviously one of the most trafficked interstates in the country. Automation would be a ways off for any other route I think - although Melbourne to Adelaide? Maybe.

in 5 years we are going to be closer to ai-assisted driving for commercial, and another 10-20 away from actual self-driving cars.

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