I came to the exact opposite conclusion — finally some hard data, as Muni made sure their staff logged all incidents. 12 incidents in over 6 months. That’s an astonishingly good record, far better than I would have expected. The anecdotes were making us wonder, but Muni, which was motivated to find problems could…

Wow, that was a really hard hitting interview.  You challenged Marx’s assumptions, dug into the issues, made them defend their positions so well.  Oh wait, no, you just started every question agreeing.

Tesla has actually said a robotaxi service is one of the main goals.   Presumably they believe they can decide on pickup/dropoff spots without mapping them -- which is actually a more credible claim because you see them up close, while driving at speed with no map requires mapping the road quickly at long distances.

This is a common opinion, but any car that imagines it can make a map while it drives can also make a map incredibly cheaply.     If you think you can get halfway to driving without a map, you can make maps scale just fine.   You still have to deal with a map that’s out of date, but only very rarely, unlike a car that…

This has been discussed extensively for a long time. Charging is best done slowly at night, so chargers need to go where people park cars overnight — homes, hotels, apartment parking lots and some curbs — though office parking lots also work for those who can’t charge at home.

I am disappointed in the maps team.   Google has data on the flow of cars over every road going back a decade.   It has weather data.   It can note what roads rarely get any traffic, or what roads get zero or extremely slow traffic in bad weather, and when it finds such roads are the only route it can say, “Sections…

As you said, “except for a Tesla.” Tesla’s charging network is large and reliable, though it needs more in a few areas. Tesla drivers regularly have long road trips with minimal issues.  You can buy the CHAdeMO adapter to get the benefit of both networks, but the Tesla network is your first choice and the adapter…

Not a great choice.    You almost always want a meal at a supercharger, and the food quality varies.  Harris Ranch isn’t bad per se, but it’s the only choice there -- a more expensive sit-down restaurant for a long meal, or an OK quick counter, but that’s it.   You really want more.

So to understand - currently Google Fi customers can receive and make calls and SMS using their Google Fi account and number using Hangouts on desktops or tablets. Are they going to lose this extremely useful ability or does it move to another tool?

Minor factual correction. The Astounding award, won by Jeannette Ng last year when it was called the Campbell award, is not a Hugo award and was not renamed by the WSFS which bestows the Hugo awards. It is bestowed by Dell Magazines, which is the successor publisher of Astounding magazine (for which John Campbell was…

The author gets it right that robocars are not inherently safer than human driving, but that’s not what any smart person said.

One piece of math left to do.   How much extra energy does it take to air condition the car if you leave it out in the sun rather than park it in the shade?

Talk about a headline to “jam up” people.   This is not the “industry.”  The article, written by a non-expert, refers to an “official” saying this ridiculous thing, but doesn’t name the official or why anybody would listen to him.  He puts in quotes from Rosekind, who would not say this sort of thing, but does not…

What’s the source that Lior made only $20,000 on the Otto deal? Surely he had a very large percentage of Otto stock, and since he was not fired, he should have vested a large chunk of the Uber stock that this was traded for.

When I first got involved with the Hugos, publishing commercially what would many years later become the free Hugo packet, I was surprised to see how few people nominated and voted, and impressed that generally it was not gamed that much. It's a small community and a bit like the small town where nobody locks their…

Why instrument the road? Waze built a tool to do this with people's phones, it measures traffic on all the roads, not just special ones, and tells people about it. Not a dime of public money, and good enough that Google paid a billion to buy it.

Please, not "driverless" car. It is driven, by software. Driverless cars are those things that roll down hills and over cliffs.