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George Hotz against the institutions

return.life

71–80 of 174 posts

Re: George Hotz against the institutions

#71

I have an idea for a new religion. Imagine living your live and dying. Then realizing the world is a simulation (duh). The world is a training place for AIs. You exist to learn to think like a human. Now the time is come. You will get tested. Will you do the task? Will you do it well? No? Well then you get deleted/nirvana. But if you find satisfaction in the moment and in simple tasks, then you will get reborn .... a…

Sounds like the plot of the Pixar movie Soul. I'd rather just enjoy the movie. :)

Re: George Hotz against the institutions

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s interesting that you came away with the impression that Stallman is replaceable from my comment given my comment states in literal terms that Stallman crafted an idea that changed the world. What specific part of my comment gave you the impression that he’s replaceable?

This the most HN discussion I've ever seen on HN

I know, it's basically an argument about whether RMS is a god or merely a prophet.

Re: George Hotz against the institutions

#73
post #66

Can we please stop lionizing the "maverick genius." It should be clear to everyone at this point that the Nth brilliant asshole with an untamed superiority complex who hates institutions and fixates on sci-fi tail risks is not going to be making the world a better place. We are facing unprecedented global challenges this century that will benefit from humble and cooperative thinking at institutional scales. Not more…

Quoted post unavailable.

Critique isn't jealousy. Expect to grow out of that PoV in 5-10 years.

Re: George Hotz against the institutions

#74

Reminder that geohot wasn't the first person to jailbreak an iPhone; that's an oft repeated myth. He was the first person to publicly carrier unlock an iPhone, which he did using information and methods he mostly learned from others.

He's got a guru status from all the young apple owners and gamers now. Interesting crowd dynamics.

Same thing that happened to e.g. Shkreli, or RMS. Social media's demand for reality to play out like a crafted narrative with plot beats and protagonists/antagonists is distorting everything.

Re: George Hotz against the institutions

#75
post #66

Can we please stop lionizing the "maverick genius." It should be clear to everyone at this point that the Nth brilliant asshole with an untamed superiority complex who hates institutions and fixates on sci-fi tail risks is not going to be making the world a better place. We are facing unprecedented global challenges this century that will benefit from humble and cooperative thinking at institutional scales. Not more…

Quoted post unavailable.

"We have big problems and mediocre self-driving cars won't solve them" is insecurity now?

Re: George Hotz against the institutions

#76

One of the great promises in 2016 was that end to end machine learning would solve „self-driving“. It is pretty clear now that this approach failed and will not work for the foreseeable future. As smart as George Hotz may be, he did not deliver and probably never will.

Consumer Reports was quite complimentary of Comma2 in their review of ADAS systems: https://data.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/...

ADAS isn't self driving, and as you say it may never get there, but they did in fact deliver a working quality ADAS product.

After reading that review, I was somewhat tempted to retrofit one into my 2017 Chevy Bolt, but was dissuaded by the thought of changing the accelerator wiring.

Re: George Hotz against the institutions

#77
post #41

I generally like this dude and his antics…but becoming dependent on opiates as an “experiment” is the stupidest shit I’ve ever read. It sounds like he wanted some adversity to overcome and couldn’t find any so he manufactured his own. Hopefully George understands that premeditated physical opioid dependence is not the same kind of struggle which addicts face. The homeless dudes shooting smack under a bridge have terr…

Like most? all? of the names dropped in the article, he appears to be interminably up his own ass. Not sure why he was notable enough for a long form interview

No post body was provided.

Re: George Hotz against the institutions

#78
Hotz seems to be falling into the familiar pattern of those who gain fame at a younger age for doing something impressive to a wide audience - as they get ever older, they feel the need to recapture that feeling, and jump from trend to trend, trying to stay relevant.

He's clearly an intelligent man, but he should try to understand that he no longer needs to prove himself, or outdo his previous famous achievements. It will be a crack to the ego, but a healthy one, in the long run.

Re: George Hotz against the institutions

#79

Reminder that geohot wasn't the first person to jailbreak an iPhone; that's an oft repeated myth. He was the first person to publicly carrier unlock an iPhone, which he did using information and methods he mostly learned from others.

That may be true, but during the coding videos on YouTube he's extremely smart. My favorite saying of him is that they don't have a cone guy because a self driving system shouldn't contain the knowledge of a cone explicitly. Guess what happened in the last Tesla update: the car went into a cone because it wasn't the usual color.

Let's just say I've talked with people who have worked with him on comma.ai and... I heard his cars would be driving into everything if it were just his code running them without all the safety features the folks around him added.

geohot isn't dumb, but he's also extremely good at making himself look like a lone genius, all the while he heavily relies on those around him. This has been a pattern his entire career. He started out pretty clueless and relying on others; these days he's pretty good but still relies on others, and at no point did he learn to humble himself a bit and credit everyone else.

I personally experienced this when we gave a presentation on Sony's PS3 ECDSA screwup, and a week later he posted the root keys obtained using our method. I had to email him to ask him to give us credit since he literally just implemented what we described in our talk, and made no mention of it. Then Sony sued us all (my name was on the lawsuit next to his, even though I had nothing to do with his idea of posting the keys outright).

The reality is "lone geniuses" don't exist. I'm pretty good at what I do (and I also have 15-hour coding marathon live streams on YouTube, FWIW), but to accomplish something great you have to work with others, whether you give them credit or not. The major projects I've worked on aren't "my" projects (even those which I lead/led); they've all been a team effort.

Re: George Hotz against the institutions

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's got a guru status from all the young apple owners and gamers now. Interesting crowd dynamics.

Same thing that happened to e.g. Shkreli, or RMS. Social media's demand for reality to play out like a crafted narrative with plot beats and protagonists/antagonists is distorting everything.

rms ? did he lift things for gnu ?
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