[0811] The Divine Comedy, Page 9
└ posted on Thursday, 11 August 2016, by Novil
- Larisa: Now what?
- The Devil: First, we have to find out what the angels have planned for Saturday.
- The Devil: They always prepare spectacular deaths for people on their personal hit list. That means we have to be on the lookout for any kind of sign.
- Billboard: Tech Expo – Saturday: 8 am – 8 pm – Big demo of TESLA’s new autonomous construction vehicles – Sunday: 8 am – 7 pm – Robot soccer – Fun & Games!
- Engineer: There’s no way the autopilot will be ready on Saturday, Mr. Musk.
- Elon Musk: The autopilot is ready when I say it is ready!!
- Engineer: Gulp
![[0811] The Divine Comedy, Page 9](/comics/2016-08-11-0811-the-divine-comedy-page-9.png "[0811] The Divine Comedy, Page 9")
Well one guy already died from Tesla autopilot beta…
“Quick, Larissa — you have to ‘fix’ the autopilot!”
@ Trimutius:
The stories I have heard so far was he was either texting/drunk/playing Pokémon Go. Sad no matter what, but this strip was probably done well before that accident happened.
Nice dartboard. 😉
Round and massive, slap bang in the middle of London. A huge circular metal structure like a dish, like a wheel. Radial. Close to where we’re standing. Must be completely invisible.
Last time I was this early, this kind of comment didn’t even exist yet~
Well anyway, I like how the info is just a literal sign put up right in front of their faces.
Also – I’m willing to bet it’s actually going to be the football event.
Elon Musk as The Hand of God is unbearably sad.
Hmmm- I really kinda like Elon Musk. This characterisation might work better for some crazy politician in the news, but fails badly here. Very badly.
“…Are you going to say it’s ready after Saturday, sir?”
@ HMRC4EVR:
He was watching Harry Potter movies. But Tesla autopilot isn’t fully autonomous.
Most likely the autopilot machine will have the same I.Q. as a bad AI gaming characters that kills you more times then hacking cheating gamers.
Sounds like a case of the Wrong Person being given a Death Note.
Daamn, Musk, what did the angels do to you man.
@ Birion:I see what you did there, an I approve!
Now if only the devil has some “Anti-plastic” that Larisa can force down Elon Musk’s throat all should be well. 😉
@ Crestlinger:
If you thwart a Death Note user’s elaborate death plan, the victim dies of a heart attack anyway, so that would defeat the purpose of this arc.
I like Elon Musk also, but this caricature is more true than the actual truth.
If he was not corrupt and half crazy, would not get half as much done.
Elon Musk has already killed one man by pushing artificial intelligence that just was not that intelligent, not ready for prime time, maybe will never be ready. Why not Sandra?
If this story line was written before that death, just shows how accurately the author perceives Elon Musk.
But hey, when Portugal sent a ship to travel circumnavigate the world, pretty much everyone on board died, and they murdered lots of people they met, but it was still a really great thing to do and well worth doing. If Elon Musk’s AI kills people, well, we will have learned a lot about AI.
Three cheers for Elon Musk. And if pushing technology before it is ready kills a few people, well, technology is worth it.
Autopiloted construction vehicles? Can anyone say “Devastator!”
I knew the angels would have her killed by an autonomous construction vehicle or perhaps kicked to death by robots as soon as I saw the sign.
How much you wanna bet it’s the robot soccer that’ll get her?
Do you want skynet? Because this is how you get skynet.
@ Freedomfiend:
Calm down, it’s a comic strip narrative, not necessarily an accurate depiction of the real world. No need for that level of anger and hate to this…
Prepare for extermination!!!!!!
….wrong Devastator?@ d.Artemis:
Elon Musk is arguably the most important man alive. He could very well be the savior of the entire human race. The current state of the world is not sustainable and he is trying to change that – both by reducing the stress on the environment and by implementing a species backup habitat on Mars.
Even if the unlikely happens and the politicians, corporations and populace become enlightened and push for a sustainable world, we still need to be a multi-planet species. While NASA plans on an exploratory manned mission to Mars in the 2030s, Elon is well on the way to a manned mission by 2025 and is planning on building a sustainable city there of a million people. This is Elon’s prime motivation and goal. While there is no lack of skeptics, remember ten years ago SpaceX did not even exist. In the ensuing ten years, he has almost singlehandedly transformed the space industry and turned it on its ear. What the next tens years holds should remove all doubt. He has no peer in innovation and big ideas. To say that he is a genius is like saying that the Pope is a catholic.
Electric cars and solar power are two of his projects that are meant to help the environment. Self-driving cars promise to save many lives. No one says they will be perfect and prevent ALL vehicular accidents but they will do much better than humans. Elon’s mistake was to name his current technology an autopilot instead of a driver assistant. Too many people accept the name but ignore its stated limitations – one fatally. That driver went brain dead watching a movie instead of watching the road and is now body dead as well. We have no way of knowing how many accidents and/or deaths have been prevented by Elon’s “autopilot” but I suspect there are more than a few. Even his detractors admit that his decisions are based on facts and evidence, not emotions. What a concept! Producing something less than perfect but will save a thousand lives while costing one hundred seems to me to be a good policy.
Unfortunately, what passes for “journalism” nowadays is not driven by facts or even truths but by sensationalism – the more the better. I would have thought that the S&W author was smart enough to see through that but instead he has swallowed the Koolaid and bought into the hype. To say that I am disappointed is putting it mildly.
d.Artemis wrote:
Soundwave: Superior. Constructicons: Inferior.
Well, Elon Musk is rather insane AND his business model relies entirely on taking money from people against their will.
@ redeneck:
Well no, Tesla (even personified as Musk) hasn’t killed anybody; there is a warning that those cars are not autonomous. The mainstream car industry has killed people in the past via defective brakes, catching fire, and a host of other design faults.
What has killed at least one person in a Tesla is, frankly, being too unintelligent to be allowed to drive.
…and let me be clear; I don’t think Tesla will succeed, because in reality it is far too underfunded compared to the mainstream industry. I’m not a fan of Musk. But he should not be accused of things he did not do.
Theskulker wrote:
And he could as easily not be any of it.
Virtually all the “new tech” for 5 years already keeps screeming for new advance in field of batteries – which did not happen.
the battery in your laptop does not have greater capacity then 10 years ago… just the new electronics by AMD and INTEL went from 130nm to 14nm… and that consumes far less power for more results.
nothing like that possible in mechanical engeniering… after all, electric engine is 150 years old, and it is at peak of thermodynamic efficiency possible.
Batteries – are not much better of – the very nature of concentrating energy in any confined volume of space goes against all natural tendencies of the universe.
I have heard a nice thing about new battery that can be quickly charged and has “standard capacity”… found it interesting utill I have found out you can only do it about 40 times and then you can throw it away.
(plus it was heavy as hell… the car actually would weight more than any effective load it could carry… and if you needed to relliably charge whenever needed – you would need coal or gas powerplant anyway… or well – nuclear.)
Current solar technology is also close to thermodynamical limits… (yes, in ideal world when you could sandwitch any amount of layers with optimal spectral absorbtion you could get 97 percent of ligt converted to electricity… now blink – such “ideal” material does not exist.
So – while I admire the material chemist in trial and error aproach with new compounds – there is no telling if they will develop something feasible tommorow, in 100 years, or ever. Such thing is unreliable.
(and for Mars solar power really is no option – it is barely viable here on Earth… with Mars almost twice the distance from Sol, the power of sunlight will be 1/4th of what we have here.) Want to go for Mars? Nuclear power is the only thing viable.
And well – good luck with ideas and innovation – 99,9 percent of people with ideas and innovation end up broke and forgotten. Because the ideas they come up with prove to be rubbish. and innovations not worth the effort for the result.
It’s the Robot Soccer, my guess is the Tesla event is a red herring.
Oh dear. Persona cult fight upcoming. Could be neat move of S&W, but a tad dangerous for the comment section if some pro- and anti-Musks clash.
Just leave it be. Musk is neither the “savior of the human race” nor just plain insane. He’s trying things that are possible but haven’t been properly implemented yet, and is in a position to do so.
That’s probably good, but it doesn’t imply infinitely scaling superpowers. Any change on a global scale will be hard without challenging mainstream education, which is largely outside private control. The problem isn’t dominated by a lack of ideas to improve, but by a lack of freedom to apply them on a level playing field.
Yes, Musk is attempting useful things. But he’s not the ultra genius to magically solve Earth’s problems by decree and build a Mars colony tomorrow. Can we just leave it at that?
BustyLaroo wrote:
Haha yep, the soccer (football, whatever…) ball is going to smack her upside the head.
Damn robots!
P.S. What is with all the Musk fanboys? Who cares, he’s just another eccentric rich guy who talks out of his ass. 😛
@ Cervisia:
Yup, a little “girl scout water” (kerosene) and a match should “fix” it properly.
@ Trimutius:
Trimutius wrote:
And one’s already been saved by it, driven to the hospital during a medical emergency.
Car autopilots don’t need to be perfect, they just need to be better than the human who’d otherwise be driving. They may have already reached that point.
Anyway, if you’re going to portray Musk as evil, at least have him natty dressed and debonair; He’s a Bond villain, blast it, not some thug off the street!
TvTropesgotmehooked wrote:
And builds better rockets than NASA, that land on a pillar of flame, “As God and Robert Heinlein intended.” That’s the important thing he’s doing. Building fancy cars is just a way of financing it.
@ Brett Bellmore:
Well, you have an excellent point there.
I’ll be quiet about him now, they are definitely advancing in that department! 🙂
@ Trimutius:
No, he died for being stupid. The “autopilot” does not enable you not to pay attention. It specifically says to keep your hands on the wheel and be ready to intervene when it’s activated.
The only thing to blame Tesla for is for calling it “Autopilot”. Because it isn’t one (in the sense people understand it).
All “autopilot” crashes are caused by either dumb people, or people trying to extort money from Tesla.
@ Brett Bellmore:
The reference is to Howard Hughes as in the tags, not just some thug off the street. They’ve even got the jars of urine in the office. A once great man spiraling into the disaster of madness and OCD.
BustyLaroo wrote:
Only if the angels got Thomas J. God to sign off on a new plan, or if the robots have a public practice game on Saturday.
@ Birion:
Y’all keep watching that right hand with the sparkles and whiz-bangs. I’ll just be doing sinister things with this left one.
Brett Bellmore wrote:
No it hasn’t, it brought him to the next high way exit and he drove the rest of the way himself. (And of course he was fit enough to tell it to do that.) It was still useful but saving him is overstating it.
But anyway at the moment Teslas death per driven km rate isn’t worse than the one for human drivers.
@ Paeris Kiran:
wrote: “…Current solar technology is also close to thermodynamical limits… (yes, in ideal world when you could sandwitch any amount of layers with optimal spectral absorbtion you could get 97 percent of ligt converted to electricity… now blink – such “ideal” material does not exist. ”
You’re not wrong about battery technology lagging far behind the rest of the tech industry, or how unlikely it would be for someone to discover a remarkable improvement in storage capacity. However, you sound far too pessimistic about the future of solar energy. Granted, reaching 97% or anything near that is a pipe dream. But solar tech as been making good progress. Just search for “Recycling old batteries into solar cells.” Also, search for perovskite: “A Material that Could Make Solar Power ‘Dirt Cheap'”. Heck, 50% solar efficiency for a reasonable price would be far better than 97% efficiency at an outrageous price, anyway.
TvTropesgotmehooked wrote:
Musk is one of the few “rich guys” that actually do something with their money aside from hoarding it and heap up even more money…
But hey, I must be a “fanboy” so my argument automatically disqualifies.
xpacetrue wrote:
In lab you likely get 37 percent by using the best combination of known materials… they currently try to REPLACE them. (just an example – to keep perfect absorbtion of green but pass red through to a layer suited to absorbing red effectively)
however – this process is in essence equivalent to Alchemy. It can yield results tommorow, or it can yield results in 10 years… or in 100 years.
noone with a tiniest bit of pragamatic sense would ever put any bet on such future… a risky gambler. I do not say the advance is necessarily impossible, I am saying it CAN NOT BE RELLIED UPON.
As with the batteries – this universe has physical laws and rules. They in the end define what is the achievable limit.
For example during my electrodynamics exam I had to calculate how much energy it would cost to bring in extra electron to a charged body.
and then create a recursive formula of how the forces between the charged carriers will increase.
Very close to current capacity of batteries… The forces were reaching treshold of the material cohesion.
the batteries are not really lagging. They are close to their thermodynamical limits with all known materials. (a nanotech is somewhat extending the stuff by cleverly arranging the charge carriers, but for example a nanotech super-capacity battery can not go to car… just vibrations from movement would discharge it immediately)
I’m probably way off base here, but here we go.
Sandra saves her dad by taking a bullet meant for him, but survives due to Larissa selling her soul, which is a completely selfless act, and thus liable to null and void said contract.
Robot soccer?
At least it isn’t robot hokkie
I’m calling red herring on the literal sign there.
@ rick:
Except Hughes was never all that great. Most of his pet projects were somewhere between disappointing and disastrous. Hughes Aircraft was successful, but only after Hughes himself lost interest and moved on to new projects, leaving the professionals to run the company.
@ Anon:
I agree. There will be lots of mechanized mayhem, but the actual threat will come from elsewhere. Larissa will thwart it without Satan’s help, and the contract will be null and void.