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--- 2026lctgmeetingchats [2026.02.04 14:42] – created Steve Isenberg
+++ 2026lctgmeetingchats [2026.03.26 10:40] (current) – Steve Isenberg
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 	in this context, the routers are discovering the various networks and dynamically creating routes in the routing tables to determine optimal paths, redundancy, etc.
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+====20260325====
+===Self Driving Vehicles - Waymo, Tesla===
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+-03-25 10:06:29 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
+	A plus to using Waymo as a “taxi” is that you don’t have to tip the driver
+-03-25 10:10:02 From Seth to Everyone:
+	Funny story, presumably true.  I saw someone talk about going to a fully automated cafe, i.e. robots making and serving the coffee.  When they went to pay, they were presented with the tip screen on the payment kiosk :-)
+-03-25 10:15:05 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
+	Tipping the robots at the cafe is important as it helps them pay for daycare for their baby robots. :^)
+-03-25 10:16:59 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
+	Tesla does not use LiDAR.
+-03-25 10:17:22 From David Duff to Everyone:
+	they did.  they stopped.   i think as a cost-saving measure.
+-03-25 10:19:11 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
+	According to ChatGPT, Elon Musk said LiDAR was too expensive and heck, humans use vision to drive so cars should also.
+-03-25 10:19:12 From Seth to Everyone:
+	I thought Waymo is part of the Alphabet company, which I think is traded as GOOG
+-03-25 10:19:55 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
+	Mark Rober has a video testing different cars, shows that Tesla doesn’t do as well as cars using LiDAR.
+-03-25 10:20:54 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
+	Waymo is Google; Tesla is not part of Alphabet.
+-03-25 10:21:41 From John Rudy to Everyone:
+	from Gemini  ..  Waymo is a private company and not publicly traded on any stock exchange, meaning you cannot buy its stock through a traditional brokerage account. As a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. (Google's parent company), it operates independently and has raised funds from external investors, valuing it as a major private ”decacorn”.
+-03-25 10:22:04 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
+	Musk tries to make AI seem human. This is a fallacy. Just because people don't benefit from LIDAR does not mean machines can't benefit from LIDAR.
+-03-25 10:22:16 From Seth to Everyone:
+	Exactly!
+-03-25 10:23:03 From Steve Isenberg to Everyone:
+	We may have watched that video (by Mark Rober), Can you fool a self driving car.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6jbSWNCDAE
+-03-25 10:23:41 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
+	We have showed at least two, maybe four, such videos.
+-03-25 10:23:50 From Seth to Everyone:
+	Wasn’t that Mark Rober video about fooling a self-driving car with only video, i.e. Tesla, and how having Lidar prevented those catastrophic failures?
+-03-25 10:24:09 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
+	That's the gist, Seth.
+-03-25 10:24:36 From Seth to Everyone:
+	That video was the one where he used a Road Runner/Wile-E coyote fake brick wall and a dummy child in the road that popped up at the last minute IIRC.
+-03-25 10:24:51 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
+	Yes, that one.
+-03-25 10:28:08 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
+	Decacorn definition -- https://www.investopedia.com/what-is-decacorn-7500821#:~:text=A%20decacorn%20is%20a%20private,attracted%20significant%20venture%20capital%20investment.  Probably derived from ”unicorn” and amplified with the prefix ”deca-”.
+-03-25 10:28:35 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
+	”Deca” refers to valuation of over $10 million USD.
+-03-25 10:30:12 From Seth to Everyone:
+	I believe that even though Waymo is an independent private company, the performance of the non-Google Alphabet companies undoubtedly gets factored into the GOOG share price.  I used to work at EMC and they had what they called the “federation of companies” where EMC was the publicly traded stock, but the subsidiaries RSA and most notably VMware were private with EMC owning a controlling share of the companies, but greatly influenced the share price.
+-03-25 10:34:04 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
+	Waymo does not contribute directly to Google's valuation. But investors are increasingly accepting that Waymo's success feeds Google's success, and ultimately, the value of Alphabet. The Markets determine this relationship; it is not intrinsic.
+-03-25 10:42:53 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
+	Current Waymo vehicles do not automatically plug themselves into chargers. While they can autonomously drive to a charging depot when their battery is low, human employees at these, depots (also known as Waymo hubs) are responsible for manually plugging in the vehicles, performing inspections, and cleaning them.
+-03-25 10:43:05 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
+	So there's the job creation due to AI.
+-03-25 10:46:32 From Seth to Everyone:
+	Waymo does not contribute directly to Google's valuation. But investors are increasingly accepting that Waymo's success feeds Google's success, and ultimately, the value of Alphabet. The Markets determine this relationship; it is not intrinsic.
+	I believe in all cases, the markets determine the relationship between any company’s performance and stock price.  I was just saying that the markets factor in the performance of the non-Google Alphabet companies, whether it is because they are a financial drain on the mother ship because they are in early R&D or they are becoming profitable or expected to be highly profitable.
+-03-25 10:50:26 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
+	Yes, that's the gist of what I read in a quick GeminiAI query.
+-03-25 10:55:30 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
+	The truck did not turn from the wrong lane. Big trucks make wide turns, starting outside the lanes reserved for cars.
+-03-25 10:56:29 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
+	And I'll bet Tesla's system knows this, which this narrator does not know.
+-03-25 10:59:24 From Bob Primak to Everyone:
+	The original ChatGPT was released to the consumer market on November 30, 2022. 4 years, not just the past year or two.
+-03-25 11:03:34 From Seth to Everyone:
+	Keep in mind, this video is a year or so old.
+-03-25 11:10:50 From Carl Lazarus to Everyone:
+	I wonder how well it deals with passing stopped cars where the driver might open the door without looking.
+-03-25 11:12:44 From John Rudy to Everyone:
+	driving a bike, i had that happen 3 times
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