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Welcome Chris Lattner

tesla.com

201–210 of 291 posts

Re: Welcome Chris Lattner

#201
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It ultimately depends on how much of the car's action is driven by DNNs, a miss-classification in the CNN can easily lead to a car crashing on a highway and causing a pileup. DNNs are so complex, you can't really write unit tests like you typically do for deterministic code. That's why some of the big banks flat out refuse to implement any form of deep learning for risk analytics. They're much more reliant on simpler…

Yeah and it will happen. I am all for self-driving cars simply as they increase the life-quality for our civilization (more independency, cheaper ways of transportation, less fatalities), but there will be accidents and then you have to analyze them (which is good). In the end you want to know what did go wrong (the public will demand it and they are right) and it might be misclassification. But that is not enough. Y…

> However if you have a good (i.e. deterministic) stack you might be able to reproduce NNs bit-for-bit, which makes it simpler to answer the question "why did we misclassify".

It does make it simpler, but surely not usually simple enough to answer the question "why did we misclassify". It's like saying we will finally understand consciousness once we simulate the quantum mechanics of a certain cubic metre of space with perfect accuracy - which need not be true even if that cubic metre happens to contain a functioning brain.

Re: Welcome Chris Lattner

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Elon Musk is what Steve Jobs wanted to be. Steve Jobs thought he was changing the world with the iPhone, and while it was new it wasn't world changing. What Elon Musk does is world changing.

iPhone wasnt world changing? I mean sure, you could make the argument that if it wasnt Apple with the iPhone it would have been someone else, but it's undeniably daft to think that the iPhone didn't lead to a complete change in not only consumer electronics (mobile phones), but also so many services around it. It's well documented that Android was going to be Blackberry-ish, then they pivoted to be iPhone-ish after t…

The iPhone broke the carrier's backs. Before the iPhone the carrier was the customer, not you. They dictated features. They had final approval over the awful Java applets on phones. They also set the app prices and took a huge cut.

Very rarely is a new technology useful in abstract; the inventor of the steering wheel made a contribution but without the rest of the car it is meaningless.

Touch screens existed, sure. There were one or two largish screen phones, sure. Smartphones existed (all using keyboards and styluses). OS X and Safari existed. But no one had put it all together into a single device, nor had anyone created a sensible UI design language to take advantage of things like multitouch.

You're basically saying Dropbox is garbage because rsync/SMB/NFS/FTP existed. Or Uber/Lyft are garbage because Taxis existed. Yes there are some superficial similarities but it turns out the details make a massive world of difference and it is intellectually dishonest to be so dismissive.

Re: Welcome Chris Lattner

#203
Yesterday reading "Update on the Swift Project Lead" I was going to comment "He will go to Tesla".

Pure lucky, but my reasoning was that it is difficult for a compiler (etc) engineer like him to find a better job than the one he was doing at Apple: developers' tools, compiler infrastructure, a new programming language, Coding playground and so on.

Re: Welcome Chris Lattner

#204
post #94
post #70

What's really interesting about this is not just that Lattner is brilliant and liked, but that is highlights just how critical software correctness and reliability is to autonomous vehicles. Naively one might have expected some machine learning expert to take over the reins at Tesla. But fast-moving Silicon Valley needs a fundamental shift in quality standards when it comes to safety-critical software, and if you loo…

Well considering that most of the autopilot software is driven by black box deep neural networks, I don't think hiring someone with a strong coding background is going to make that much of a difference when it comes to safety.

So would you say that the reliability and correctness of the non-NN part of the system, and the code that implements the NN itself, is not worth bothering with because the system includes a black box NN in it's design? What a bizarre conclusion to draw!

Re: Welcome Chris Lattner

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confusing language development with autonomous vehicle development. Think of the long term goal. It's desirable to move fast and fix things with language development in the near term, to achieve a more perfect design and accelerate its maturation at the temporary cost of more volatility. After this process achieves a high level of maturity, said design principles may offer a safer, more reliable programming sy…

No I'm not confusing them. I'm responding directly to the comment that Chris lattner represents a more measured approach to software development than is tradition in the tech industry. I don't think Swift stands to gain wide spread traction outside of Apple orientated app development. Aside from a lack of stability, Apple is to well known for boxing its competitors out. I've used and loved their products my entire li…

>I don't think Swift stands to gain wide spread traction outside of Apple orientated app development.

It already is though, there are several Linux web frameworks etc. It's open source and community run so I'm not sure how they're planning to box out competitors from it.

Re: Welcome Chris Lattner

#206
post #66
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see Musk as more of a Bushnell/Woz hybrid. He knows his shit technically, which is why good people want to work with him. Jobs knew how to delegate knowing his technical shit to others though.

Steve Jobs' contributions came from from his leadership and marketing chops, but he also had pretty good technical knowledge for a CEO. I mean, he got his start designing circuit boards at Atari.

Jobs was a true polymath. He knew enough about hardware design, software engineering, typography, music, pretty much any relevant subject that he could work well with experts in those fields and synthesise their efforts together into whole products.

Re: Welcome Chris Lattner

#207

Apple has a car project. Autopilot must be one of its core features. But Apple would not create a VP-level position for Autopilot or any one feature for any of their products (even if they it called something else for secrecy/generalization reasons). This move increases his compensation and clout. Post-Tesla, he'll only have VP or founder titles elsewhere, never anything lower-level (unless he gets his old job back).…

> Working for someone with a vision other than "thin" must be a welcoming change. This is so spot on. I would kill for a thicker phone with a less vibrant display that would last 2x as long on a single charge. They're pushing stuff that the consumer doesn't want (thinner/less battery volume, no headphone jack) in order to make money. It reminds me a lot of the TV industry pushing 3D TV's. I don't know a single person…

>They're pushing stuff that the consumer doesn't want (thinner/less battery volume, no headphone jack) in order to make money.

But how do you know that people don't want this? All the people who told me they were switching to Android because of the headphone jack ended up with iPhone 7s anyways and love them. And now it seems that Samsung's next phone is going to ditch the jack too. Not to mention the numbers aren't really in favor of suggesting this change is hugely unpopular.

Re: Welcome Chris Lattner

#209
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has done more than okay since Tim Cook took over as CEO: https://qz.com/765360/the-first-five-years-of-tim-cooks-reig...

So did Microsoft when Ballmer took over from Gates. Until suddenly they didn't any more. https://steveblank.com/2016/10/24/why-tim-cook-is-steve-ball... > If you think the job of a CEO is to increase sales, then Ballmer did a spectacular job. He tripled Microsoft’s sales to $78 billion and profits more than doubled from $9 billion to $22 billion. The launch of the Xbox and Kinect, and the acquisitions of Skype and Ya…

Long term opportunities like Azure? Bear in mind 'Nadella' launches like Office for iOS came out so soon after he took over they must have started bell back into Ballmer's reign.

Yes, he blew it on Mobile and that's a huge deal. The hugest. He had his blind spots, but he was very far from incompetent.

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