91–100 of 498 posts
He's currently throwing a temper tantrum on Twitter, and all because the NHTSA wanted to ask him a few questions about the product (you can see it here: https://www.scribd.com/document/329218929/2016-10-27-Special... ). Like, how dare the government try to have basic standards for multi-ton hunks of metal hurtling down the highway without human input. I've been trying to convince people lately that Silicon Valley isn…
Wow. If he really moves his project to China to take advantage of a lax regulatory environment even though he couldn't pass the scrutiny in the US, he's being very immoral and cavalier about people's lives in China. I don't understand how a startup like Cruise can get past this regulatory hurlde in the US but Hotz can't.
Programming a neural network to learn to drive is fun; dealing with lawyers is not. I don't think it is a matter of passing the regulatory hurdle; it's a matter of not wanting to deal with it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At a guess the list of questions showed Hotz just how far away he really was from having a shippable product and since the 'fun' bit was over it caused him to throw in the towel. Prototyping stuff and proof of concepts are fun, productizing much less so. Moving to China will not really change that.
And, the list of requests in the special order are not ridiculous at all. They are a bunch of basic questions that I would hope someone making driver-assist hardware would be able to answer.
[1] At least not as a direct cause/effect relationship.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At a guess the list of questions showed Hotz just how far away he really was from having a shippable product and since the 'fun' bit was over it caused him to throw in the towel. Prototyping stuff and proof of concepts are fun, productizing much less so. Moving to China will not really change that.
And, the list of requests in the special order are not ridiculous at all. They are a bunch of basic questions that I would hope someone making driver-assist hardware would be able to answer.
nuclear energy, supersonic planes, etc. - applying the "disruption" and "agile" method does not work everywhere, to put it mildly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Programming a neural network to learn to drive is fun; dealing with lawyers is not. I don't think it is a matter of passing the regulatory hurdle; it's a matter of not wanting to deal with it.
So did he naively expect that he would not have to deal with the legal issues?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I tweeted a joke yesterday that the Engineering Society had changed it's slogan to 'Move fast and kill people', I'm pretty happy that NHTSA has its feet solidly planted on terra firma and requires a bit of process around releasing something as important as self driving vehicles. The more software becomes mission critical the more we will need level headedness and quality rather than tantrums.
Not mission critical, rather life critical. I've worked on several life critical systems as a security researcher, helping to develop controls in tightly controlled environments to keep people safe. Work on software controlled switches in industrial machines mostly. As I've followed these developments and those of Google and Tesla I've been wondering at times if I live in some alternate universe. The level of diligen…
Do I think there's significant political pressure to have his product, ahem, driven into the ground as to not be a viable competitor to larger firms? Yes.
Do I think it's a sign of immaturity to pack up your stuff and leave when confronted by a small challenge? Yes.
Do I think dealing with the NHTSA (and potential NTSB) is a small challenge? No.
Am I still a fan of George Hotz as both an inventor, innovator, and persona? Yeah, I can see where he's coming from.
Do I think it's hilarious that a vocal contingent here criticizes him for taking a "path of least resistance" (regulation) in his development and iteration process? Absolutely.
Technically it sounds more like he is pivoting to other markets and tweaking the product. I don't think he is giving the 3 million back to Andreessen.
Besides, if Hotz can get his car to navigate China before Musk can get his product to not drive in the wrong lane in a fucking parking lot, then we've got game on.
I find it interesting that he was on This Week in Startups only a few weeks ago calling every company he found unconvincing "losers" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zy_07g2IrM Maybe they're all losers and you're a winner, but perhaps being an elite hax0r isn't all that's needed to go to market... If you can't reply to a regulator letter, how are you going to deal with supply chain or cash flow issues? Bad reviews in…
On the other hand, I am really concerned that he and his team didn't appear to think about working with the government agencies beforehand to sort out any regulatory requirements in order to prevent this kind of situation. Shocked!