I’m taking some time away from Comma • Hacker News Board

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#121

Post by thepasswordis » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 4:27 PM UTC

phphphphp wrote: post #116

thepasswordis wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>autonomous cars are no closer to reality today than they were 5 years ago Why do people keep printing things like this, which are objectively wrong? I have had a completely autonomous waymo come to my location, pick me up, and take me to another location. That didn't exist five years ago, it does exist now. How is this not "closer" than it was 5 years ago when it literally exists now, and didn't exist then?

The situation you're describing is no different to 5 years ago: autonomous vehicles exist but can only operate in a limited environment. That's where Waymo was 5 years ago, it was just an even more limited environment. Read the "Road Testing" section on Wikipedia, specifically, 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waymo

>it was just an even more limited environment

Huh, so are you saying maybe we're a little close to autonomous cars than we were 5 years ago?

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#122

Post by jstarfish » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 4:28 PM UTC

thepasswordis wrote: post #82

nynx wrote: post #27

It strikes me as surprising that George Hotz is religious. Very few people I’ve met with similar personalities are.

I've seen this change dramatically in the last few years. The people I knew 10 years ago who were the sortof frighteningly brilliant hackers have almost all become religious (mostly traditional Catholics). I'm not saying this is an objective truth, just that this has been my experience.

My pet theory is that people who exercise enough control over others/their environment get "bored" with it and want to feel like there's something out there bigger than themselves that they don't have dominion over.

Alternately, once you've had your fun with the more-complicated aspects of human technological advancement, you arrive at the gordian knot of religion-- the one construct nobody has managed to truly reverse-engineer. (I think this is what attracts the schizophrenics-- they believe they've succeeded where everyone else fails.)

To your point, Catholicism is very binary (pun intended) in terms of ideology. Little wonder it attracts the computer-minded.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#123

Post by andrewmcwatters » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 4:28 PM UTC

mwint wrote: post #112

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean you can say that all you want, but the proof of the self-driving pudding is in the driving, and SAE Level 2 is the most practical self-driving we are ever going to get. I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to refine that approach as much as openpilot did, and honestly if there was fruit in SAE Level 3 and above, I feel like we would have seen it by now, but we haven't. I have no idea what you mean…

> SAE Level 2 is the most practical self-driving we are ever going to get. So… how much would you bet on this?

$10,000 USD in 2022 dollars that SAE Level 4 is not available in standard economy cars in the next 10 years. My 2022 Corolla LE, a base model compact car, drives itself just fine (SAE Level 2) even on city streets. It would do it better with openpilot, though.

It makes Tesla Full Self Driving look like a joke, in my opinion.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#124

Post by ra7 » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 4:28 PM UTC

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #90

ra7 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His insights on self driving cars are total fluff once you realize he was only working on problems several orders of magnitude smaller in scope than the ones spending billions are attempting to solve. Autonomous driving is more than just making lane-keep on highways work with a camera mounted to the windshield and requires more than just "hacking". His insights do indicate one thing: that he doesn't understand the ri…

I mean you can say that all you want, but the proof of the self-driving pudding is in the driving, and SAE Level 2 is the most practical self-driving we are ever going to get. I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to refine that approach as much as openpilot did, and honestly if there was fruit in SAE Level 3 and above, I feel like we would have seen it by now, but we haven't. I have no idea what you mean…

SAE Level 4 driving is several orders of magnitude harder than SAE Level 2. You are either good enough to drive without requiring a driver or you are not. There is a reason developing L4 systems cost billions of dollars.

George Hotz thinks Comma does the job with only a fraction of the spending compared to the likes of Waymo, Cruise, Zoox, but fails to realize his product also does only a fraction of what the others are trying to do.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#125

Post by jocker12 » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 4:28 PM UTC

1980phipsi wrote: post #18

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That kind of attitude is great for editor or compiler or game development. It is absolutely the wrong attitude for self-driving cars or anything that is safety critical.

To be fair, he was recently in the news saying self-driving cars are a scam. https://cleantechnica.com/2022/10/09/george-hotz-autonomous-...

This is not news. He is saying that for at least two years now - https://reason.com/video/2020/02/24/george-hotz-fully-self-d...

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#126

Post by jasfi » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 4:28 PM UTC

bsima wrote: post #73

monktastic1 wrote: post #12

Can't say I care much about what "George Hotz" is doing, but this line struck me as particularly silly: > And even if you are an atheist, you probably still accept the bible is the closest thing we have to a human origin story. I can't imagine why he believes so. Apart from the modern materialist origin story, what about all the mythical ones from other cultures? Of all of them, this is my favorite: https://www.youtu…

An origin story is a mythology, and all of those other cultural stories fit under a common schema, hence the reference to Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey”

An origin story is how we came to be where we are.

Atheists think along the lines of evolution / natural selection. Not mythology. Before that, tons to be read, all of it science based.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#127

Post by Kbelicius » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 4:29 PM UTC

thepasswordis wrote: post #102

Barrin92 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because that's like arguing that because you can now climb your way up a tree which you couldn't do five years ago you're closer to climbing to the moon. Self-driving is still incredibly limited and progress is often overstated because people make headway on some tiny issue. A thing I always liked for people who think progress is rapid, this is Germany in the 1980s where Ernst Dickmann had autonmous cars drive thousa…

What? No, it would be like if somebody said "some day we will travel to the moon", and then after the Apollo missions there were articles being published that said "we are no closer to traveling to the moon than we were 5 years ago". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHdKm0kW4l0 This is a video of a person riding in a fully self driving car.

That is not a fully self driving car in the sense of what people think when they say a fully self driving car or are you saying that I could order that car and it will drive me to New York under any conditions that a human would drive through?

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#128

Post by vippy » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 4:29 PM UTC

hatware wrote: post #41

prvit wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geohots actual track record isn’t that impressive though, he’s just one exploit dev with an OK portfolio. >edit: apparently this is a hot take to some, but no real substantive refuting of what's being said- only appeals to greater authority. "Well so and so was smarter" Do you happen to have substantive evidence to back up the original claim?

Getting a cease and desist from Sony for finding the master key is pretty impressive. Except he also jailbroke the first iPhone. Doing it twice is beyond impressive and proves he's the real deal.

He's a smart, talented guy, but it takes a very different set of skills to break other peoples' stuff than it does to create it in the first place. George never had much patience for the organization of people -- he's got something of a superiority complex, or at least he believes other people are almost always focused on the wrong things. This bias is true, to a degree, but it isn't perfectly true, and George was always destined to run with those who actually can and do give him a run for his money, and to run up against the limitations of his technical abilities.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#129

Post by mardifoufs » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 4:29 PM UTC

alrlroipsp wrote: post #104

Rezwoodly wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah. I've met more than a couple of engineers who spent their teens and twenties coding like that was the meaning to life, all suffer from deep regret, burnout, resentment, depression. They are better than average technically, but their social skills fail them. Which in a paid employment situation carries a lot of weight. I feel sorry for these guys

Quoted post unavailable.

Who is "we"? Unemployed code wizards?

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#130

Post by stale2002 » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 4:29 PM UTC

monktastic1 wrote: post #12

Can't say I care much about what "George Hotz" is doing, but this line struck me as particularly silly: > And even if you are an atheist, you probably still accept the bible is the closest thing we have to a human origin story. I can't imagine why he believes so. Apart from the modern materialist origin story, what about all the mythical ones from other cultures? Of all of them, this is my favorite: https://www.youtu…

So, people aren't really understanding the motivations that Geohotz has for looking into this stuff. He is being a bit cryptic about it.

Here is a basic summary though.

The atheist world, of no life after death, is scary. We have not invented immortality. And even if we do, well there is an even scarier thing called entropy, that will end the universe anyway. There is no escape from death, as far as we know, and this is a problem that faces every human being in the world.

Now what? What do we do now?

Do you just lay down and accept that? Do you just sit down and die when your time comes?

Or do you fight?

George seems to have chosen the fight route. And to do that, well, our options are pretty limited. It involves looking into things that likely are pretty fantastical.

Things like "are we living in a simulation, and is there a way to break out of the simulation, to a universe where entropy doesn't exist". Or, alternatively "does the bible talk about any magic, hidden portals".

And no, this doesn't involve just praying to a sky fairy, and hoping things work out in the end.

Yes, these solutions sound pretty fantastical. But what other options do we have? Because if the current atheist world is the real one, then we are doomed. We are in the death world. Game over. Thats it. The most important problem, ever, is unsolvable. And we are all going to die, and nothing other than this fact matters.