Jump to content

DrWho

Heritage Members
  • Posts

    16210
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by DrWho

  1. By definition, my exact position in space is the center of the universe.....there is an "observation sphere" that grows out from our own personal perspectives that propagates at the speed of light. That is the sphere of our own personal reality. Not to totally derail the point, but maybe people aren't crazy when they think the world revolves around them....from their own perspective, it does (and must). Totally a different subject, but I can't help but wonder if there isn't some semblance of that at the very core of the crazy ideas. Like the rain dances of the ancient egyptians? They were aware that there were forces affecting nature....today we call it weather and try to describe it with equations. Back then they tried to describe and control it with pictures and dancing. Ya, they were totally idiots - but then I don't think we realize just how dumb we are today (in much the same way).....again, totally way off topic, but a fun thought to think about (and please forgive the rudimentary examples....this is a much more fleshed out though if you start digging into it deeper).
  2. What is the model number of your TV? It's hit or miss, but many TVs will have an analog output on the TV - often with two RCA jacks. You just need a converter to go from stereo male RCA cables to a female 1/8" plug....assuming your TV has analog outputs. They come in various lengths....probably better to use one that can reach to the floor or table under the TV. Here's a picture showing a TV with an analog output: https://www.lifewire.com/connect-tv-to-stereo-system-3135127
  3. nCore versus UcD is like Jubilee vs Khorn....don't waste your time with the UcD amplifiers. The "first watt" performance of the nCore is still better than UcD, even though it has more output capability. You'll hear the difference at the top end of the frequency range. UcD output impedance is problematic for frequency response, but even when that's compensated there's a fuzziness to the high-hat and snare that goes away with the nCore. I've never played around with the ICE amplifiers.
  4. So why does the parallel scenario work on a car, but not a plane?
  5. So on one hand you're arguing a computer doesn't perform better than humans (and you sensationalize those humans). Then on the other hand, you're arguing that automation works better than humans (and you sensationalize those machines). I don't see how you can have it both ways - and ironically you sensationalize the machine that currently has way less automation? Do you not see the contradiction here? And more importantly....if you're going to openly admit to being an unequipped driver, then why aren't you taking lessons to improve your driving skill? You expect your pilots to be trained right? I find your moral arguments concerning safety in automation to be quite hypocritical if you're not going to make the effort to equip yourself as a driver first. Perhaps that lack of equipping is why you think automation is so simple?
  6. Well that's definitely marketed as audiophile, complete with large price tag.....but some of the specs lead me to believe it's not as "audiophile" as I think would be necessary to convert some of these tube/analog guys over to an active xover setup. I really like the Yamaha SP2060, but it doesn't quite hit that target either. I haven't come across anything that on paper could make the tube/analog/horn fanatics happy. I'm actually not sure it's even feasible...it's one thing to create specs, but it's another to deliver on them. Now that I'm at Google, I actually have more time to spend on these things. There's a very particular sound to those strictly analog setups that I've never heard from a digital signal path. Don't get me wrong, I totally prefer the digital signal path, but I would like it more if it preserved that analogy thing that is so hard to quantify. During my time at Shure I came to realize that a lot of these standard measurements don't fully capture what is actually happening in converters. We glean insights into what is happening, but the mechanisms and resultant solutions aren't obvious. That said, the DSP horsepower in the DEQX units is amazing....I just don't think it'll convert guys like Marion to an active xover setup. That in my mind is where the need in the market resides. Bruno knocked it out of the park with the nCore amps....kinda takes the fun out of it really.
  7. I've been thinking of picking up one of the 4 channel Nord amps.....I've been dragging my feet on building my own Class D amp - I think I'd rather just buy one at this point. However, I'm still planning to roll my own active crossover. There still doesn't seem to be an audiophile solution in the market. What's the crossover all you Jubilee guys have settled on? Is it the Xilica?
  8. But you're okay with an "automobile autopilot" dealing with a flat tire? An engine out on a plane has a much longer safe transition time back to human control than a tire on a car. I'm also not convinced a damaged engine is that hard of a problem to address on a plane, but nobody here is an engineer in the avionics industry so its just speculation. I just know planes don't crash in tenths of seconds after a failure.....it takes a long time to fall out of the sky
  9. Interesting....who told you that? I thought the RSW-15 had an analog signal path (thus no latency), no?
  10. So what's the benefit of landing a rocket using rocket thrust?
  11. I'm not sure I agree with that. The paradigm will be the same for anyone living in the city without a car. Having an uber/taxi take you around is no different than an AV taking you around. Half the time you don't even recognize the existence of the driver - could be a robot for all you know. This type of lifestyle is already experienced on a rather large scale. I think it's very clear from this thread that personal ownership of an AV is not the 90th percentile solution.
  12. I don't think you realize just how much automation goes into the "manual controls" to which you speak. Everything is going through a control system because everything is drive-by-wire. Pilots can't get anywhere close to this level of control with truly manual controls. Deciding where to fly is a relatively arbitrary task....most of that real-time flight adjustment is related to picking new flight paths based on new weather information. It's amazing how much less turbulence we experience today than just 10 years ago. It's to the point that it's a rare occurrence to experience turbulence. I remember when it was rare to have an entirely smooth flight. This is due to better weather prediction / monitoring, and better automation on the planes. It's actually possible for the sensors to have more immediate feedback than what the pilot is able to experience. Sometimes sensors are faster than humans - sometimes slower. I grow tired of this thread always assuming all sensors are always faster than humans. I've worked on some of these sensor systems - I can tell you that some of the sensors (especially automotive) are much slower than humans, and it's not an issue of cranking up clock rates or throwing money at it. It's fundamental to the method of sensing. The best way to solve this problem is with infrastructure exterior to the car (built into the roads). As far as system failures and sensor failures, and all of that stuff.....that is precisely why I don't think automation makes sense for a personal owner of a vehicle. The liability and maintenance requirements simply don't make sense. This is why there is a huge maintenance team on aircraft with incredibly regular inspection and repair. Sure, the cost of automation screwing up on a plane is much higher.....but I still stand by the notion that it's a much simpler design problem than the automotive scenarios. When all systems are fully functional, the automated plane will have a lower failure rate. No doubt about it, and the proof is in the air today. There is a reason cars refer to it as "auto-pilot" and not "auto-driver". Planes got to it first - and that's because it's an easier problem to solve. It's also worth noting that planes have a much longer safe hand-off period between "sensor issues, turn off auto-pilot" and "human takeover". In a car, that could be fractions of a second. You often have minutes when in a plane.
  13. I have a buddy who works for Amtrak and I've pressed him on this issue for years.... The devil is in the details, and the amount of detail is quite overwhelming. I still think this stuff should be fixed, but the costs associated with it are enormous. I wouldn't underestimate the effort that is required - and it would be helpful to be reminded that all passenger trains in this country operate at huge losses. The only reason they exist is because the government mandates them. The only trains that make money are freight, and all of the political capital is spent debating how much more freight can be added by removing the commuter trains. I think you'd be better off focusing on suing the freight companies, but then the loss of life is extremely low there....
  14. You familiar with the Stealth Bomber? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit#Avionics_and_systems "In order to address the inherent flight instability of a flying wing aircraft, the B-2 uses a complex quadruplex computer-controlled fly-by-wire flight control system, that can automatically manipulate flight surfaces and settings without direct pilot inputs in order to maintain aircraft stability.[91] The flight computer receives information on external conditions such as the aircraft's current air speed and angle of attack via pitot-static sensing plates, as opposed to traditional pitot tubes which would negatively affect the aircraft's stealth capabilities.[92] The flight actuation system incorporates both hydraulic and electrical servoactuated components, and it was designed with a high level of redundancy and fault-diagnostic capabilities.[93]" That was 1989. Computers were very basic back then. There are countless examples of similar systems, and all large commercial jets have autopilot now.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot "Autopilots in modern complex aircraft are three-axis and generally divide a flight into taxi, takeoff, climb, cruise (level flight), descent, approach, and landing phases. Autopilots exist that automate all of these flight phases except taxi and takeoff. " It's interesting to note that they don't do autopilot for taxi (driving)....this is because taxiing is not a closed system and requires a human to identify objects. There is definitely more to automate on a plane, but that doesn't make the autonomy more difficult. You guys are thinking like humans....the complexity of automation isn't the same as what is complex for humans. Handling multiple systems in parallel is very easy for computers. The complexity is in the feedback system and how to know what you want the final result should be. Getting the controls to the final result is easy - it's the defining the end goal that is complicated. In flight, the end goal is very straightforward to detect and determine. The misconception of complexity is what concerns me about the legal space. Non-technical people will judge the merits of systems based on a human perspective. This is simply the wrong way to understand automation.
  15. You don't want an anechoic room....they exist, and they're horrible for listening to music.
  16. Just outta curiosity - have you phase/time-aligned your subwoofer with your khorns? And what xover frequency are you using? I forget the path-length of the khorn bass bin, but you should artificially add distance in your receiver to account for that. If you haven't been doing that, then it should tighten things up quite a bit. Not saying it's as good as the horn loaded bass you're thinking about, but might as well get the most out of our existing systems....
  17. I wanted to comment on this separately..... I'm fairly certain Wake Turbulence is the driving factor for aircraft separation. Turns out it's heavily studied by the FAA (I tried to look up a quick number, but it turns out to be incredibly complicated). Obviously there's a lot of pressure on the FAA to minimize safe distances for monetary reasons. The reports I've been reading seem to have very little to do with pilot skill, and more to do with the physics of turbulence and radar accuracy.
  18. I've argued for years that trains should be automated. That's a closed system and very easy to automate. I actually think it's a crime that those systems aren't automated already, but the main reason it hasn't is money - they still need someone on the train to get out and manually flip switches way out in the middle of nowhere. Planes are effectively a closed system - the weather stuff poses some challenges, but we measure a lot of that outside of the aircraft. The physics to keep a plane in flight are more complicated, but the control systems for automation are straightforward. I just don't don't have a context for how one could be fact driven if they think the automobile is easier to automate than an airplane. That's like claiming Bose is better than Klipsch....or the khorn is better than the Jubilee, hah!
  19. Automation in flight is a much much simpler task. Heck, I'm confident I could pull it off on my own. Much of the automation in factories and the like (including flight) is implemented with infrastructure outside of the "vehicle"....which is what I've argued for in regards to vehicles too. That's the safest way to do it.
  20. Haha, it'd also be a four million dollar car if they did one. Where did all those guys end up? I've only ever heard great things about their engineering teams.
  21. I was just thinking about this, and did want to throw a shout out for machine learning.....which is still a relatively new field, and way over-hyped. Regardless, an autonomous system with machine learning would have the benefit of sharing those experiences with every car in the fleet. This may be one of the reason Waymo has the best chance of success....because Google is probably the leading front runner in machine learning technology. I wonder how long it'd take to refine the learning algorithms across millions of cars before it started to compete with the culmination of your driving experience? Also consider that your current state of experience wasn't true some 45 years ago. We all had to start out fresh at some point. What I think will happen is that there will be all this hype around AV's....we'll wait years for them to fix it in software before we realize that we need to fix our infrastructure first. I wouldn't be surprised if the baggage we have with our infrastructure wouldn't result in Africa becoming the leading economic power in a hundred years or so....fresh clean slate and tons of untapped resources.
  22. While that's very true that everyone thinks they're a good driver, I would gladly challenge any AV to a holistic driving skill challenge. I'd put significant money down that I will be faster around a track, have faster reaction times to unexpected obstacles, and make better moral decisions. The AV might win a parking competition, although that will still be a fairly close race. I will be able to outmaneuver an AV in city traffic and on difficult mountain roads....even if the majority of cars on the road are AVs. Come up with any list of scenarios and the top 10% of drivers in the world are going to be better than an AV. That's not to say those drivers might not want an AV for a long boring drive through Iowa or Nebraska, but the peak driving skill will still be dominated by humans. If for no other reason that you can't develop an algoirthm that is better than your own understanding of vehicle dynamics - and if you've ever tried to automate vehicle dynamics, you'll notice that sensors are the limiting factor, and there are too many scenarios to hard-code around those limitations - never mind the cost-effectiveness constraints.
  23. ...and therein lies the false myth of "fix it in software". No Tesla on the road has sensor systems sufficient enough to actually solve the problem....which means the issue is forever possible. I don't think people realize just how blind these systems really are....
  24. And that precisely is my issue.....this level of autonomy is simply just dangerous because it inherently creates a false sense of security. There is no human awareness to how blind the system really is. No amount of manuals / warnings is going to overcome that psychological reality - and this is why anyone in the know considers this level of autonomy so dangerous. And why does this happen? Money. That's what makes me so sick. The marketing at Tesla is strong, and people are willing to justify death to defend a sexy cool image. Yes, shame on the people for not following directions - but our overly litigated world causes us to ignore such insane warnings - especially when they contradict with our perception of reality. And that perception is not the fault of the driver....especially in light of all the ridiculous marketing and social narrative surrounding this obnoxious ignorant feature.
  25. I have an Elise as a daily driver....I've had my eye on the Evora for the last year or so as my spine continues to compress from the brutal Chicago potholes. I absolutely love my car to death, but my body is starting to wear out, haha. I hear the Evora is bit more civilized - not to mention easier to get in and out.
×
×
  • Create New...