Apr 28, 2023Liked by Packy McCormick, Daniel McCormick
The brain imaging thing is awesome - make sure you don’t miss this potential breakthrough where they’re potentially delivering drugs to stop neurodegenerative diseases right past the brain-blood barrier. They’re using ultrasound pulses to do it and it looks promising so far!
Congratulations! We share a love of the Philadelphia Eagles (I live in South Philly), a last name (supposedly from County Mayo generations ago), and a sense of awe regarding the MRI progress.
That insane degree of resolution might reveal new clues to the structures of things like plaques and tangles in Alzheimer’s - but these degenerative diseases are so multifactorial that such heightened imaging sensitivity will likely not crack any codes by itself. Another piece of the puzzle, and like the Hubble and now JWST, simply observing the world at unfathomable resolutions often helps science find the unexpected, and provides a sense of awe and humility for those of us watching the show.
That Sprig integration has me intrigued. I wonder how long it will take Substack to start partnering with 3rd party apps for services like that. I'd love to see a loyalty incentives integration.
Yes, I just hijacked the thread, but I'm guessing some others feel the same. Thanks for the post, Packy.
There is a lot of talk about "reshoring" or at least partial reshoring. Even with automation, from what I have read, these facilities will cost more to operate. It is one reason I think that the goal of 2 percent annual inflation is not going to happen anytime soon, maybe 3 percent will be the new floor.
This is not a problem, of course, if we maintain employment and wage growth, but that remains to be seen.
I wonder what the safety record of Cruise taxis is compared to the average vehicle or regular taxi. Sure there are accidents and malfunctions, but the real question is do they cause more problems than other cars.
I would say that any comparisons at this point would be invalid.
Among the many problems with comparisons:
1) Scale. There are around 1400 taxicab medallions in SF meaning there are roughly 1400 taxis. How many Cruise vehicles are operating? I doubt it is more than say, 40. And while there are regulations covering the maintenance and age of taxis - I would bet large sums of money that the average age of a taxi in SF is higher than that of the Cruise vehicles. The number of Uber/Lyft vehicles operating in SF at any given time is certainly even higher than the taxis.
2) Service quality. I'll be the first to say that some taxi drivers (and Uber/Lyft drivers) are just not safe drivers. But then again, at least some people paying for these services want to get to their destinations ASAP. Are Cruise vehicles going to be more or less efficient than human drivers, particularly the experienced ones and/or the aggressive?
3) Entropy. Humans experience reduction in effectiveness as they get tired, but machinery experiences reduction in effectiveness through mechanical wear and tear. How well do the highly complex systems, plus heuristic algorithms, of these robo-drivers going to hold up over time? I actually would agree that humans are more prone to make dumb mistakes while driving due to distraction or being tired or whatnot, but I suspect the algo-driven methods are far more likely to make critical errors at the most unexpected time because they simply don't have the evolution-driven safeguards that actual intelligences have.
As for comparisons: there was a taxi collision with a Muni bus in 2012 - according to a structured Google search. So we have a span of at least 11 years x 1400 taxis operating almost constantly vs. Cruise fully autonomous 40? vehicles operating for 1 year (started last June). Sure, this is early days so again this isn't a fair comparison but it is data.
All I can say is: the original hype that started in 2009 was clearly BS.
The fully autonomous are still clearly not ready 14 years later.
The growth that Packy has done is incredible! Would love to replicate that, even though 200,000 words a week seems daunting...
P.s. please check out https://hiddenjapan.substack.com/
The brain imaging thing is awesome - make sure you don’t miss this potential breakthrough where they’re potentially delivering drugs to stop neurodegenerative diseases right past the brain-blood barrier. They’re using ultrasound pulses to do it and it looks promising so far!
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-04-blood-brain-barrier-usher-age-gene.html
200k is an impressive milestone! Way to go!
Also, keep going with the Weekly Dose of Optimism. I look forward to reading as much as your in-depth pieces.
Congratulations! We share a love of the Philadelphia Eagles (I live in South Philly), a last name (supposedly from County Mayo generations ago), and a sense of awe regarding the MRI progress.
That insane degree of resolution might reveal new clues to the structures of things like plaques and tangles in Alzheimer’s - but these degenerative diseases are so multifactorial that such heightened imaging sensitivity will likely not crack any codes by itself. Another piece of the puzzle, and like the Hubble and now JWST, simply observing the world at unfathomable resolutions often helps science find the unexpected, and provides a sense of awe and humility for those of us watching the show.
The data about the emotional load behind headlines is simply mind blowing!
How are you doing Packy? Just wanted to mentioned that I referenced this edition in my latest newsletter! https://thiagopatriota.substack.com/p/issue14-zephyr?sd=pf
Thank you for bringing this important data forward.
That Sprig integration has me intrigued. I wonder how long it will take Substack to start partnering with 3rd party apps for services like that. I'd love to see a loyalty incentives integration.
Yes, I just hijacked the thread, but I'm guessing some others feel the same. Thanks for the post, Packy.
There is a lot of talk about "reshoring" or at least partial reshoring. Even with automation, from what I have read, these facilities will cost more to operate. It is one reason I think that the goal of 2 percent annual inflation is not going to happen anytime soon, maybe 3 percent will be the new floor.
This is not a problem, of course, if we maintain employment and wage growth, but that remains to be seen.
Thanks, Packy, for all your tech updates!
Congrats on 200k! Thanks for surfacing the optimistic news of today in service of a brighter tomorrow.
re: Cruise
It isn't a random event why Cruise taxis are only available to non-Cruise users until after 10 pm.
Cruise vehicles have, just in the past 2 months:
1) Blocked a road
2) Hit a City of SF bus
Expanding into a year past - there were more blockages including due to a crashed server.
Given that traffic has returned to SF as evidenced by RSA - this grand release ought to be interesting.
I wonder what the safety record of Cruise taxis is compared to the average vehicle or regular taxi. Sure there are accidents and malfunctions, but the real question is do they cause more problems than other cars.
I would say that any comparisons at this point would be invalid.
Among the many problems with comparisons:
1) Scale. There are around 1400 taxicab medallions in SF meaning there are roughly 1400 taxis. How many Cruise vehicles are operating? I doubt it is more than say, 40. And while there are regulations covering the maintenance and age of taxis - I would bet large sums of money that the average age of a taxi in SF is higher than that of the Cruise vehicles. The number of Uber/Lyft vehicles operating in SF at any given time is certainly even higher than the taxis.
2) Service quality. I'll be the first to say that some taxi drivers (and Uber/Lyft drivers) are just not safe drivers. But then again, at least some people paying for these services want to get to their destinations ASAP. Are Cruise vehicles going to be more or less efficient than human drivers, particularly the experienced ones and/or the aggressive?
3) Entropy. Humans experience reduction in effectiveness as they get tired, but machinery experiences reduction in effectiveness through mechanical wear and tear. How well do the highly complex systems, plus heuristic algorithms, of these robo-drivers going to hold up over time? I actually would agree that humans are more prone to make dumb mistakes while driving due to distraction or being tired or whatnot, but I suspect the algo-driven methods are far more likely to make critical errors at the most unexpected time because they simply don't have the evolution-driven safeguards that actual intelligences have.
As for comparisons: there was a taxi collision with a Muni bus in 2012 - according to a structured Google search. So we have a span of at least 11 years x 1400 taxis operating almost constantly vs. Cruise fully autonomous 40? vehicles operating for 1 year (started last June). Sure, this is early days so again this isn't a fair comparison but it is data.
All I can say is: the original hype that started in 2009 was clearly BS.
The fully autonomous are still clearly not ready 14 years later.