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George Hotz against the institutions

return.life

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Re: George Hotz against the institutions

#131

Post by zozbot234 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #126
md2020 wrote: post #114

Has anyone in this thread who is commenting to hate on Hotz/Comma tried the product or even watched a video of it? I have their device in my car, and I love it. Lots of people in here saying this is doomed to fail and that e2e won’t work seem to not realize that Comma has pretty much already succeeded. Their e2e lateral policy is fantastic, and e2e longitudinal is shipping this year probably. They livestream demos on…

I’ve experienced it, although it was a while ago and only briefly in someone else’s car. It felt simultaneously very impressive for a grassroots effort, but it felt like the underdog status was doing all the heavy lifting in the owner’s perception of how great it was. When something like Tesla’s autopilot makes a mistake, everyone harshly criticizes them. When Comma makes a mistake, if feels like their fan base is qu…

Tesla gets criticized because they claim that their "AutoPilot" can someday be safer than a human driver. I don't think an open project would make such overblown claims so easily.

Re: George Hotz against the institutions

#132

Post by zozbot234 »

wffurr wrote: post #76
HellDunkel wrote: post #62

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 acceler…

> ADAS isn't self driving

Except that all current so-called "self-driving" systems are just glorified ADAS that are nowhere near the advanced SAE levels.

Re: George Hotz against the institutions

#133

Post by md2020 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #126
md2020 wrote: post #114

Has anyone in this thread who is commenting to hate on Hotz/Comma tried the product or even watched a video of it? I have their device in my car, and I love it. Lots of people in here saying this is doomed to fail and that e2e won’t work seem to not realize that Comma has pretty much already succeeded. Their e2e lateral policy is fantastic, and e2e longitudinal is shipping this year probably. They livestream demos on…

I’ve experienced it, although it was a while ago and only briefly in someone else’s car. It felt simultaneously very impressive for a grassroots effort, but it felt like the underdog status was doing all the heavy lifting in the owner’s perception of how great it was. When something like Tesla’s autopilot makes a mistake, everyone harshly criticizes them. When Comma makes a mistake, if feels like their fan base is qu…

Yeah, that’s fair, although FSD also goes for $12k right now and you can get the Comma 3 + required car harness for like $2400, so if it’s providing me at least 20% the value of FSD then I’m happy. I’d say it probably gives ~70% of the value of FSD, and without phantom braking. Not hating on the progress Tesla is making with FSD, but I think it is overpriced for now.

Also, openpilot has gotten much better over the past year, you might be surprised if you get the chance to try it again. They’re not even using the whole field of view of the new wide angle camera in the model currently, although it’s coming in openpilot 0.8.14. Their rate of improvement now that they’re developing for the Comma 3 is really impressive.

Re: George Hotz against the institutions

#134

Post by stavros »

elif wrote: post #98

The comma business model is built upon a car interface created by manufacturers for their own purposes. Those manufacturers are working on their own autonomous driving programs in various stages. None of those manufacturers want crash statistics for their vehicles being driven autonomously. Comma is clearly the unwanted guest in the room... the only positive outcome for them is acquihire when one of the manufacturers…

I feel simultaneously amused and dismayed at your "their business model is doomed" analysis that somehow fails to account for the business model of "sell people something they want at a profitable price".

I want to say "peak HN" but that would be doing the HN community a disservice, so I'll say "peak 'peak HN'" instead.

Re: George Hotz against the institutions

#136

Post by rank0 »

penjelly wrote: post #94
rank0 wrote: 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…

i think this is rationalization on his part, he probably got addicted for whatever reason, stress, anxiety, ability to work longer hours and not get bored (yes opiates can do this in low doses). you even see he pairs quitting opiates with accepting he doesn't need infinite income

Fair enough. That sounds like a much more reasonable explanation. If that’s really true, he should just summon the courage to be honest.

Re: George Hotz against the institutions

#137

Post by gitfan86 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #131
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve experienced it, although it was a while ago and only briefly in someone else’s car. It felt simultaneously very impressive for a grassroots effort, but it felt like the underdog status was doing all the heavy lifting in the owner’s perception of how great it was. When something like Tesla’s autopilot makes a mistake, everyone harshly criticizes them. When Comma makes a mistake, if feels like their fan base is qu…

Tesla gets criticized because they claim that their "AutoPilot" can someday be safer than a human driver. I don't think an open project would make such overblown claims so easily.

Comma specifically says that it is not L5 and will not be L5 anytime soon.

Re: George Hotz against the institutions

#138

Post by CamperBob2 »

jeffreygoesto wrote: post #57

He's a brilliant kid, but also boasting about things he has no clue about. We built 120db cameras into series production cars since 2005. Took one guy being brilliant in FPGAs and me implementing HDR tonemapping it down for processing on those small CPUs we had back then.

120 dB of dynamic range -- meaning one pixel is ~20 bits hotter than the one next to it -- sounds pretty amazing. I had no idea modern image sensors were capable of anything close to that. Is that the correct interpretation of "dynamic range" in this context, or is there a more specialized definition that leave some room for handwaving?

The last time I messed around with digitizing video, you got 8 bits of each R/G/B component and you were happy about it.

Re: George Hotz against the institutions

#139

Post by jokethrowaway »

Yo, my name is GeoHot and for those who don't know... I'm getting sued by God

Hotz is definitely iconic and I agree a lot with him. Talking about business: I think the fastest way to human level artificial intelligence is through biology. If we synthesised a human brain (or maybe just partially developed a human embryo, if we care more about science than a human life) and tried to connect it to digital signals maybe we could train it and eventually come up with automatic ways of doing so.

Re: George Hotz against the institutions

#140

Post by bko »

> Apart from a criminal streak, Hotz shares with Raskolnikov, Dostoyevsky’s antihero, a predilection for instrumental reason and an urge to test his own mettle, to know himself by knowing his limits. As a young adult Hotz allowed himself to become addicted to prescription opiates almost as an experience in self-mastery. “I did it, I was addicted, and I quit,” he told me. “I think I had to have that experience. I don’t think I ever could have been the type who never tried it. Because in some ways I feel that if I’m not strong enough to defeat that and overcome it…” He paused for several beats before assuring me he’d never want anyone to follow his example. “In order to quit,” he continued, “it required me to rethink what I wanted out of life. After that, one of the biggest things that changed is I stopped caring about money.”

This tells you the kind of personality Hotz is. I wouldn't want to compete against this guy. He might self-destruct, but there is something to say about his extreme personality that's beneficial to solving hard problems

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