I wonder if this is frontpage right now because of the other tiiny (the names are similar) video that went viral ... which turns out wasn't an actual product by the tinygrad linked in this post[1]
Someone on Austin's subreddit said the following and I think it's the correct take/lens:
> I might get downvoted for expressing my feelings but whatever. I hate seeing my coworkers being ridiculed for simply doing the right thing and moving on with their work. I’ve been abused and called an idiot on here for stating our reality. I’m a paramedic. We will NOT attempt to move or hit a vehicle, person, or object to go to a call or transport a patient. Especially if there’s an option for an alternate route. People cut us off, don’t move, flick us off, and generally don’t regard us even with our lights and sirens on. Is it frustrating? Absolutely. Do we like it? Hell no. But getting in trouble or under investigation for a collision or possibly causing unnecessary harm simply isn’t worth it. I know this was high profile, tragic, and absolutely dire. But you have to remember, we live this everyday and this is not the first time a vehicle, object, or person has gotten in this paramedic or EMTs way and it won’t be the last. Don’t even get me started on the amount of verbal abuse and assaults we deal with. This is a very hard job and we are under constant scrutiny but I promise you we try and do our very best every day. So please do us a favor next time you see us out on the streets and give us some grace.
He makes an excellent job describing all lots of systematic issues here
- a collision causes an investigation that is "not worth it"
- even in this case that was "high profile, tragic, and absolutely dire"
- vehicles, objects, or people get in paramedics' or EMTs' way on a daily basis, apparently without consequences
- EMTs are subject to high levels of verbal abuse and assaults, apparently without consequences
- yet they are the ones under constant scrutiny
Now don't get me wrong, I am not against oversight. But compare this with American cops, who seem authorized to do far more damage to vehicles and people for often far less immediate benefit, have much laxer oversight, and do not have to endure abuse without recourse (well, technically they do have to do that, but it's not advisable to test this)
Mostly agree, but choosing not to risk a new collision in order to maybe get there slightly faster (what if you damage the ambulance and are unable to continue?) to maybe help someone does seem like the right call
I think the most important problem here is that this is an ambulance not a monster truck. It never ceases to amaze me how people on this site will always insist that the onus should be on society to deal the fallout from silicon valley's poorly-tested and poorly-designed bullshit. In a truly just world we'd be able to charge Google's leadership as an accessory to homicide for this.
This is my town, wow - cant believe someone filmed this whole interaction while there was a shooting a couple of blocks from there...
If the ambulance was in a hurry they could have rammed the Waymo, I am sure Google wouldn't have sued for damages.
AFAIK when a Waymo detects emergency vehicle lights and sirens, it is designed to pull over and stop, unlock its doors, and roll down its windows.
Also: First responders can put the vehicle into a manual mode to move it if needed.
Not an expert but i think the goal is to get the ambulance and its occupants to a specific location and then make an egress to a nearby medical facility? Also I'm not confident ambulances are designed to execute the pit maneuver.
>I am sure Google wouldn't have sued for damages.
Oh well if that's the case i guess it's all alright.
>First responders can put the vehicle into a manual mode to move it if needed.
I really feel like you're missing the point of why you're supposed to pull over and yield right-of-way for emergency vehicles.
Interesting to see the cost curve drop ... this always changes the market.
I have been watching the sensor space for a while. Cheap LIDAR units could open up weird DIY uses and not just cars. ALSO regulatory and mapping integration will matter. I tried to work with public datasets and it's messy. The hardware is only one part! BUT it's exciting to see multiple vendors in the space. Competition might push vendors to refine the software stack as well as the hardware. HOWEVER I'm keeping an eye on how these systems handle edge cases in bad weather. I don't think we have seen enough data yet...
> Cheap LIDAR units could open up weird DIY uses and not just cars.
Interestingly, there are already some comparatively cheap LIDAR units on the market.
In the automotive market, ideally you need a 200m+ range (or whatever the stopping distance of your vehicle is) and you need to operate in bright direct sunlight (good luck making an eye-safe laser that doesn't get washed out by the sun) and you need more than one scanning plane (for when the car goes over bumps).
On the other hand, for indoor robotics where a 10m range is enough and there's much less direct sunlight? Your local robotics stockist probably already has something <$400
Neato from San Diego has developed a $30 (indoor, parallax based) LIDAR about 20 years ago, for their vacuum cleaners [1].
Later, improved units based on the same principle became ubiquitous in Chinese robot vacuums [2]. Such LIDARs, and similarly looking more conventional time-of-flight units are sold for anywhere between $20-$200, depending on the details of the design.
Sounds like the quality isn't all that great but LD06 sensors look like they're about $20 and someone who works on libraries about this suggested the STL27L which seems to be about $160 and here's an outdoor scan from it: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/pidar-scan-240901-0647-7997b...
Not sure if the ld06 is a scanner like this or if it's just a line (like you'd use for a cheaper robot vac).
Tune it out, come back in 6 months, the world is not going to end. In 6 months, you’re going to change your API endpoint and/or your subscription and then spend a day or two adjusting. Off to the races you go.
This is going to be a crazy month because the Chinese labs are all trying to get their releases out prior to their holidays (Lunar New Year / Spring Festival).
So we've seen a series of big ones already -- GLM 4.7 Flash, Kimi 2.5, StepFun 3.5, and now this. Still to come is likely a new DeepSeek model, which could be exciting.
And then I expect the Big3, OpenAI/Google/Anthropic will try to clog the airspace at the same time, to get in front of the potential competition.
one good thing vercel did, was indexing skills.md under a site skills.sh - and yes there are now 100s of these sites, but I like the speedy/lite approach from vercel's DX, despite me not liking vercel a whole lot
I don't like vercel design, its just huge list of abstract skill name and you have to click on every one to even have a clue what something does. Such a bad design IMHO.
Design of https://www.skillcreator.ai/explore for me it's more useful. At least I can search by category, framework, language and I also see much more information what some skill does at a glance. I don't know why vercel really wanted to do it completely black and white - colors used and done with a taste gives useful context and information.
I appreciate the mention of better browsable designs. I created Skly (https://skly.ai/browse) with a similar idea: categories, descriptions visible at a glance, and search. I would welcome any feedback on what could be improved.
Ok I will see myself out
(Yes I know it's actually from the Tolkien book)
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