The first person to hack the iPhone is building a self-driving car • Hacker News Board

Re: The first person to hack the iPhone is building a self-driving car

#341

Post by betimsl » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 9:07 PM UTC

wdmeldon wrote: post #67

Aleman360 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this article reinforces our bizarre cultural notion that one person deserves all the credit for some innovation. Nevermind the ridiculous amount of engineering that was required to build all the tools he's using and the order of magnitude more engineering required to make this a safe, mass producible product. But nah, let's just praise the founder, allow him to get rich while we all do the dirty work.

This comment is depressingly cynical. This is probably the single best definition of "hacking", as the community often refers to it, that I've seen in a very long time. One guy starts working on something only the biggest companies in the world dare attempt, throws together a minimal prototype built on top of existing technology. Just look at the picture of it. Claims of commercial viability or beating Tesla are a bi…

You're just easily impressed, that's all :)

Re: The first person to hack the iPhone is building a self-driving car

#342

Post by michael_h » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 9:08 PM UTC

orky56 wrote: post #293

michael_h wrote: post #82

He thinks machines will take care of much of the work tied to producing food and other necessities. Humans will then be free to plug into their computers and get lost in virtual reality. Well, that's an astronomically depressing future.

The more technology can seamlessly take care of the foundation of humanity's needs, the better. Leisure is a very new concept and only came about when humans were able to destress from not having to worry about their next meal or getting attacked by predators. Despite all the progress, much of humanity still faces some basic problems due to inequality and access to resources. Technology combined with some other cultu…

Of course, but once our needs are seamlessly taken care of we're going to just "plug into our computers and get lost in virtual reality"? That is the depressing bit.

Re: The first person to hack the iPhone is building a self-driving car

#343

Post by kaizendc » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 9:20 PM UTC

ixtli wrote: post #247

It's somewhat frustrating that he continues to get the credit for "hacking the iphone" when he was neither the first nor the only person on the project. The "iPhone Dev Team" was a group of five to ten people who built tools to jailbreak the phone and unlock the radio. If anything, the first person was a guy called Nightwatch who was also associated with various .tif exploits to unlock the PSP. As near as I could tel…

Take some time to watch his YouTube video explaining the iPhone hack.

He starts the video by giving credit to other people involved in the project.

Re: The first person to hack the iPhone is building a self-driving car

#344

Post by MOil » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 9:22 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #338

samstave wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel as though there are improvements that can be done in the environment of driving; Have all stop lights have a beacon that will tell cars their state, "the light is green on north south, red on east west" Have exit signs have beacons as well.

Have you thought this out? What happens when someone hacks their own beacons for lulz? So then the beacons have to have public key cryptography. Now all of the firmware will need to be audited and kept updated. Will there be over the air updates? What if someone cracks or steals the key? It seems to me that a target as juicy as "getting control of the North American road network" would be worth a major national power…

What if someone would install their own traffic light right now?

Re: The first person to hack the iPhone is building a self-driving car

#345

Post by serge2k » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 9:24 PM UTC

thedz wrote: post #4

> “I understand the state-of-the-art papers,” he says. “The math is simple. For the first time in my life, I’m like, ‘I know everything there is to know.’ ” Yep, he's still in his twenties.

or just legitimately an expert on the field.

Re: The first person to hack the iPhone is building a self-driving car

#346

Post by yongjik » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 9:24 PM UTC

analyst74 wrote: post #282

nradov wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble with using neural nets for safety-critical real-time systems is that it's really hard to do the necessary level of validation. You can't accurately predict how the system might react in totally novel or unexpected situations. Which isn't to say that human drivers handle those situations well, but most of the time they don't do something totally bizarre or dangerous.

Humans totally do things that are bizarre or dangerous when in shock, but we've come to accept that as a personal responsibility and a price the society has to bear.

Because we can't re-engineer humans into rule-based automata. (And we probably shouldn't even if we could.)

Machines, on the other hand, are a different story.

Re: The first person to hack the iPhone is building a self-driving car

#347

Post by vkou » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 9:24 PM UTC

samstave wrote: post #308

jpfr wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy clearly is technically brilliant. But I was referring to the results. Not how the results were achieved. In the video, he claims to want to achieve level 3 driving. Let's see how he can do the following under non-perfect conditions: - switching lanes - stopping at lights - turning cornerns - turning left corners in traffic Then we can move on to the more difficult situations.

I feel as though there are improvements that can be done in the environment of driving; Have all stop lights have a beacon that will tell cars their state, "the light is green on north south, red on east west" Have exit signs have beacons as well.

So, 'simply' invest in billions of dollars of infrastructure improvements that will serve less then one percent of vehicles on the road?

Re: The first person to hack the iPhone is building a self-driving car

#348

Post by sirkneeland » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 9:26 PM UTC

YooLi wrote: post #83

mikeg8 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole: "Twenty year olds don't know shit but 30 year olds are so enlightened" sentiment needs to stop. I agree that many younger people think they understand more than they do but that's just part of growing up and we all go through it.

You are misunderstanding the sentiment. No one is saying 30 year olds know everything, they are saying 30 year olds _realize_ they don't know everything.

Or as Socrates put it, "the only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing"

(probably one of the more Buddhist-ish gems from Western philosophy)

Re: The first person to hack the iPhone is building a self-driving car

#349

Post by drumdance » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 9:26 PM UTC

SonicSoul wrote: post #268

drumdance wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a smaller scale, I remember one day realizing that I, a self-taught programmer, knew more than my boss. Within six months I left to start my own company.

How smart was your boss and how did it go with your company ?

The boss was pretty smart in the sense of knowing how to work with big corporations to build large decision support systems. But his technical knowledge was fairly shallow.

I sold my first company and the investors did very well, but I made tons of stupid mistakes in the process. Not least of which was holding on to dotcom stock that I thought would go to the moon but which mostly went down the drain.

Re: The first person to hack the iPhone is building a self-driving car

#350

Post by noetic_techy » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 9:29 PM UTC

jpfr wrote: post #37

Prototypical case of the 80/20 rule. He has implemented the happy case. But that system is nothing people realistically would want to drive their cars. What he did is impressive. But the results are not that outlandish for a talented person. 1) Hook up a computer to the CAN-Bus network of the car [1] and attach a bunch of sensor peripherals. 2) Drive around for some time and record everything to disk. 3) Implement so…

I agree this is 80/20 complete at the moment, but the gripes you have are not insurmountable if his model can truly learn with proper inputs.

What if you could simulate these conditions in a safe/controlled environment, and remove the driver from harm via remote control? Maybe build a virtual world that simulates the inputs as best as possible. That would be the cheap way, although you may lose fidelity.

If you had enough money you could build a simulated town/city, similar to a movie set, that throws all possible dangerous scenarios at you and operate the car remotely through these scenarios.