Comment by jFriedensreich

Comment by jFriedensreich 10 hours ago

13 replies

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I don't live in Berlin, but even if: have you ever taken public transport in less mainstream lines? Apart from nothing working and connections taking forever and operations stopping at night, horrible signage that lets you stress even more, you sit next to human excrements, hooligans coming from football games, nazis wanting to beat you up, stink, rude music and beggers. I sometimes miss it for sentimental value, but compared to a world of robots driving us with relaxing music in a clean and safe space i know what future I want.

dmoy 10 hours ago

Is there really that much poop on Berlin public transit?

Seattle has some of the highest per capital homeless in the US, and a dearth of public toilets, and yet there's not that much poop on our public transit.

I am also skeptical that y'all's violent crime rate is higher than ours.

Granted I haven't taken Berlin public transit in 20 yrs, so I don't know.

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  • dmoy 10 hours ago

    > I am also skeptical that y'all's violent crime rate is higher than ours.

    Ok well I am wrong. Berlin's violent crime rate is 2-4x higher than Seattle? Huh. The homicide rate is within touching distance.

    That was not what I expected, ok.

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    • mikestew 8 hours ago

      It wouldn't take much to have more violent crime in Seattle, according to my gut (yeah, I know, "show me the numbers"). Granted, it's probably gotten worse since we moved here 25 some years ago, but coming from places like my old hometown of Indianapolis, Seattle didn't have any place I wouldn't feel comfortable walking at night. Again, it's changed a lot since (there are some areas I would avoid at 2 a. m. now), but I still feel much safer in Seattle than other large cities.

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  • Hikikomori 6 hours ago

    Didn't see any poop in berlin, but did see it in Shibuya station, spread out by hundreds of people.

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askl 10 hours ago

> have you ever taken public transport in less mainstream lines?

Yes, I have. I never drove a car myself and maybe used a taxi 10 times in the last 30 years.

Will waymo even be available in less mainstream areas? It seems more reasonable for them to go for dense places instead and leave the unprofitable regions for someone else.

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  • tialaramex 9 hours ago

    > Will waymo even be available in less mainstream areas?

    Ever is a long time. It's not reasonable to predict beyond a decade or so. It's easily possible that this becomes huge and in the 2040s people are astonished that "driving yourself" was a thing, the same way it's hard to comprehend now that most people weren't literate. Not "Couldn't write an essay / read a newspaper" but "Couldn't sign their name / read a postal address"

    But it's also possible that this goes nowhere, and outside of a few large cities there is never a robot taxi market, it just doesn't exist. Waymo is, among other things, a bet that there is a large market.

    Dense places are where it starts, but that was also true for the telephone. Bell didn't provide service to tiny rural settlements, they wired places like Boston and New York, AIUI the general service provision was a government initiative even in the US, it was never strictly profitable enough for huge corporations to spend their own money making it universal.

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    • askl 9 hours ago

      I mean, I can understand wanting to start in dense places. But those are also the places where public transit is a viable existing solution.

      Personal transit just looks incredible inefficient and unscalable if everyone would use it. I could totally see it as a last resort solution for situations where nothing else is available, but that's an unattractive market that isn't going to make anyone rich.

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      • tialaramex 4 hours ago

        In an urban area the "last resort" cases add up. The last time I was in a taxi it was the middle of the night, and I'd just smashed my head open, so I had concluded that I must not trust my own judgement and should seek immediate medical attention, buses don't run in the middle of the night (on that route)

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