George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’ • Hacker News Board

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#221

Post by Oletros » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 6:10 PM UTC

wyager wrote: post #188

smallnamespace wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The timeline is not unreasonable at all. They were planning to ship by the end of the year -- obviously the regulator should get involved before it's in the hands of users. I've seen requests from regulators before. If you don't have or can't produce exactly what they asked, you call them up and tell them some parts will take longer. The point is to have a dialogue; the threat of sanctions is just to make sure you wo…

Two weeks is not reasonable for the demands made in the letter. That, plus a $21,000/day penalty, is a clear "fuck you".

Two weeks are totally reasonable. If you intend to sell the thing in less than two months, that information should already be ready

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

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Post by mikeash » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 6:11 PM UTC

taco_emoji wrote: post #216

mikeash wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Is your family an acceptable casualty?" is a pointless question. It can be applied equally well to the opposite argument: what is the acceptable casualty rate for not advancing safety in this way? Is your family an acceptable casualty? Continuing on with the status quo is just as much of an action and a choice as pushing forward with automation. Both choices are going to get people killed. We can either evaluate the…

> Continuing on with the status quo is just as much of an action and a choice as pushing forward with automation Of course, but public perception is, you know... not largely logic-oriented. Whether or not you personally find @abduhl's argument convincing, there's still that emotional hurdle you'd have to clear to convince significant numbers of people to sign up.

Of course. But acknowledging and working with that illogical public understanding of things doesn't mean I can't argue against it when I encounter it online.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

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Post by phasmantistes » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 6:11 PM UTC

I love this paragraph of the Request:

> The singular includes the plural; the plural includes the singular. The masculine gender includes the feminine and neuter genders; and the neuter gender includes the masculine and feminine genders. "And" as well as "or" shall be construed either disjunctively or conjunctively, to bring within scope of this Special Order all responses that might otherwise be construed to be outside the scope. "Each" shall be construed to include "every", and "every" shall be construed to include "each". "Any" shall be construed to include "all", and "all" shall be construed to include "any". The use of a verb in any tense shall be construed as the use of the verb in a past or present tense, whenever necessary to bring within the scope of the document requests all responses which might otherwise be construed to be outside its scope.

I've seen similar paragraphs on other legal documents, but this is the most thorough I've seen. It's basically just a huge middle finger to all (any?) armchair lawyers who want to weasel out of the order.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

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Post by web007 » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 6:13 PM UTC

wyldfire wrote: post #13

Wow, sometimes I wish HN came with a "context, please" button. ;) It's a self driving car (or rather a prototype of an "autopilot" feature like Tesla's), AFAICT. From [1]: > After a couple miles, Hotz lets go of the wheel and pulls the trigger... Hotz shouts, “You got this, car! You got this!” > The car does, more or less, have it. ... Amazed, I ask Hotz what it felt like the first time he got the car to work. > “Dud…

And that last line is exactly why he got the letter from NHTSA.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

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Post by got2surf » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 6:14 PM UTC

defen wrote: post #113

6stringmerc wrote: post #98

Do I think Hotz has a viable product? Yes. (A comment over at Jalopnik linked to a Tweet where an actual human rider / journalist experienced the Hotz vehicle and was quite impressed) 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 confron…

> Do I think Hotz has a viable product? Yes. (A comment over at Jalopnik linked to a Tweet where an actual human rider / journalist experienced the Hotz vehicle and was quite impressed) Journalists being shown demos in controlled circumstances are a notoriously unreliable source of information about the viability of a product.

That's a fair point, and we shouldn't over-weight one journalist's experience.

However, I think that in this case, the author of the tweet has a lot of credibility (https://twitter.com/AlexRoy144/status/791996855114694657) as the holder of multiple performance driving records. You're right that it is only one anecdotal perspective, but it's kind of like a prominent Apple blogger tweeting that a new Microsoft product has phenomenal UI. It's just one perspective, but (to me) it's interesting enough to merit further consideration.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

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Post by ar15saveslives » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 6:14 PM UTC

6stringmerc wrote: post #98

Do I think Hotz has a viable product? Yes. (A comment over at Jalopnik linked to a Tweet where an actual human rider / journalist experienced the Hotz vehicle and was quite impressed) 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 confron…

Let us know when you think again.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

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Post by digler999 » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 6:16 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #59

Analemma_ wrote: post #16

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…

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.

I'm happy NHTSA is getting involved and regulating this, however the skeptic in me wonders if they're doing it for purely altruistic reasons or if the big software players in the industry are essentially lobbying for it to help them with the regulatory capture side. Apparently thats all the rage these days, position your business so as to make competition illegal or as financially cumbersome as you possibly can.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

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Post by robotresearcher » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 6:16 PM UTC

xiphias wrote: post #210

gavman wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "we want to shut you down" I meant the NHTSA isn't presenting him with so many regulations and requirements that meeting them is impossible, effectively ending the product. They are definitely using the fine to force him to comply with their request to meet the very minimum bar of answering their questions about his product. This, as mentioned, makes total sense to me in terms of what government should do to prote…

Actually even the $21k fine should be nothing if he got $3M in venture capital. What's questionable is whether somebody can build safely an almost-self-driving car without a good team and with many years of experience in the field.

$21K per day. Four months to consume $3M entirely.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

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Post by donpdonp » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 6:18 PM UTC

danaliv wrote: post #181

BurningFrog wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the letter, it's a lot more than "answering a few questions". He gets two weeks to provide an enormous amount of detailed information about the product, I assume under threat of legal consequences if any of it contains an error, interspersed with lots of reminders that they can and will close down his business if they feel like it.

If he doesn't already know the answers to these questions, he's got no business selling this product. Everything that they're asking for—essentially the owner's manual, product requirements, and test methodology—would be readily at hand for any serious operation. You can't just wire up an Arduino to the CAN bus of a 4,000-pound missile and sell it on the open market willy-nilly.

"You can't just wire up an Arduino to the CAN bus of a 4,000-pound missile and sell it on the open market"

best self-driving comment ever.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

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Post by tim333 » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 6:19 PM UTC

abduhl wrote: post #158

jtmarmon wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i understand where you're coming from, but there is a counter argument to what you're saying, which is that although there may be some dangers to things like the comma one and tesla autopilot, their release may save more lives than they edanger, having a net positive to humans. humans are pretty bad at driving

This is an ends justify the means argument. How many lives have been saved TO DATE with self driving cars? How many lives will be saved IN THE FUTURE with self driving cars? What is the acceptable casualty rate to get from where we are now to where you think we will be in the future. Is your family an acceptable casualty? If not, then why is mine?

To estimate your questions, probably no lives have been saved so far through self driving, possibly one extra guy killed in the Telsa crash which you could say was maybe half the systems fault and half the driver not following instructions.

In the future, 1.2m people die a year so say self driving reduces that to 0.2m/year, that's a million lives saved per year.

You family is thousands of times more likely to die in a conventional motor accident than due to a self driving vehicle. If unnecessary red tape slows things down and causes 100k extra deaths is that ok? Even if someone you know is amongst the 100k?

That said there's an argument system like Hotz's should be tested first. That's probably not going to slow things that much.