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

electrek.co

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

#341

Post by mikeash »

lutorm wrote: post #320
mikeash wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fine is only if they fail to provide the requested information by the deadline given. The information requested is not that great and the deadline is entirely reasonable, so the fine is very much not "we want to shut you down," just "we want you to provide this information."

Well, the information requested, if you read the actual definitions, uses a lot of "any" and "all", so if you take that literally it's not exactly an elevator pitch style description they are asking for. "Describe in detail the features of the comma one" and "Provide a detailed description of the conditions under which you believe a vehicle equipped with comma one may operate safely ... [and] a detailed description o…

How much is "a lot"? This seems like a couple of engineer-days if it gets down into the dirty details, which isn't huge.

Ironically, if he hasn't done any such testing, the answers would be much easier to generate. "We haven't done any." Not that the NHTSA would take it well....

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

#342

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

lutorm wrote: post #320
mikeash wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fine is only if they fail to provide the requested information by the deadline given. The information requested is not that great and the deadline is entirely reasonable, so the fine is very much not "we want to shut you down," just "we want you to provide this information."

Well, the information requested, if you read the actual definitions, uses a lot of "any" and "all", so if you take that literally it's not exactly an elevator pitch style description they are asking for. "Describe in detail the features of the comma one" and "Provide a detailed description of the conditions under which you believe a vehicle equipped with comma one may operate safely ... [and] a detailed description o…

I would have assumed that anyone serious about releasing this type of product would have made contact with the relevant government departments and worked with them along the way to ensure they meet the requirements.

Also, the documentation being asked for is something the company should be able to put together fairly easily because they ought to have asked and answered these questions along the way to building the product.

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

#343

Post by stale2002 »

x0x0 wrote: post #200
idlewords wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just outsiders who take this view.

And we've now, at the behest of these companies, redefined statists down to: - thinks it's OK for neighbors and local government to have a say in whether people run a hotel next door, possibly sharing a roof or even a wall - thinks it's OK to require pretty reasonable background checks ala Austin for taxi drivers - thinks it's OK to have some safety regulations around self driving cars sharing our roads beyond hey, i…

Congratulations, by waiting a year to implement self driving cars, through overly burdening government regulations, you just killed ten thousand people.

What about those people? The people who WILL die in car accidents next year unless we do something about it. Screw them, right?

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

#344

Post by agumonkey »

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…

I have an issue with Hotz, since failoverflow conf about them breaking the PS3 crypto, I think he oversell his ideas to the uneducated iphone crowd and medias. I understand his attitude in wishing to push things forward, his disdain about large corps, governments, but he fails to deliver calm and solid proofs; mostly diss.

Domains like medicine, roads,... life critical engineering makes me feel the hacker way, reckless plan (path of least resistance) is wrong.

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

#345

Post by tedmiston »

snotrockets wrote: post #292
jacquesm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be just a fig-leaf to plaster over 'we couldn't do it'. It's one thing to release software, it's quite another thing to release this software and have it tested, audited and certified safe and that's definitely part of the process of delivering software that is critical to the well being of the users and the other people you're sharing the road with. And that second part is part-and-parcel of wanting to oper…

An ex-colleague of mine used to say the difference between a software engineer and a real engineer is that the latter's signature is criminally binding. We can refuse to be real engineers (it is a great responsibility), but then we should drop the title.

We never had the PE title.

In any case, a software engineer still has legal liability. Maybe someone who works on mission-critical systems can comment more specifically here. Maybe it's contract based vs standardized.

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

#346

Post by saosebastiao »

stale2002 wrote: post #329
saosebastiao wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you measure the safety of autonomous cars by counting the miles they travel, and not counting the miles that they intentionally avoid or defer to a human, you have succeeded in creating a metric that looks like it's useful for comparison, but is actually completely meaningless. It's like measuring typing speed while ignoring typos. Until autonomous vehicles are subject to the full spectrum of conditions that hum…

Not true. Lots of accidents happen in "good" conditions because humans suck at driving. The way you compare, is you give a self driving car to a person, and compare actually usage for that person, and see if owning a self driving car increases or reduces accidents for that person. Being perfect only half the time is still revolutionary.

I have a 100% perfect safety record over probably hundreds of thousands of miles of driving a class B truck with my knees instead of my hands, using cruise control, on straight empty highways in Nevada, Idaho, and Utah, with perfect weather and good road conditions. There's nothing revolutionary about my ability to perfectly drive with my knees...I just very carefully selected the conditions where I was willing to do it.

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

#347

Post by d0vs »

phasmantistes wrote: post #223

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 outs…

Need me one of those for internet comments.

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

#348

Post by sharpercoder »

idsout wrote: post #206
brianbreslin wrote: post #22

Something seems fishy to me. Cruise which GM bought for $1B a few months back was working on similar tech. Having only raised $3M he could have EASILY sold his tech/team to Chrysler or Ford or Hyundai, or any other car company for $100M and made his investors super happy and himself very rich. So why "quit" when the feds ask you to deal with regulations that involve passenger safety. Its not like he had to spend $20M…

He posted the answer to this on Twitter: "Would much rather spend my life building amazing tech than dealing with regulators and lawyers. It isn't worth it." Money isn't everything to some people. He has the true hacker ethos.

For me, hacking is about understanding systems and altering them in a way they behave favourably to you. The right thing to do when a regulator fires letters to you is to build a firewall of managers and/or lawayers to ensure they don't penetrate the hacking activity.

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

#349

Post by lutorm »

mikeash wrote: post #341
lutorm wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the information requested, if you read the actual definitions, uses a lot of "any" and "all", so if you take that literally it's not exactly an elevator pitch style description they are asking for. "Describe in detail the features of the comma one" and "Provide a detailed description of the conditions under which you believe a vehicle equipped with comma one may operate safely ... [and] a detailed description o…

How much is "a lot"? This seems like a couple of engineer-days if it gets down into the dirty details, which isn't huge. Ironically, if he hasn't done any such testing, the answers would be much easier to generate. "We haven't done any." Not that the NHTSA would take it well....

I could imagine taking a week to do it, and he has 11 days.

I've been involved in writing similar descriptions to provide to NASA, and when you get down to exactly how each module works and need to enumerate every branch, it ends up being a lot of work.

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

#350

Post by sangnoir »

stale2002 wrote: post #325
throwaway729 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge proportion of commercial self-driving car projects have senior technical staff who were involved in the DARPA challenges and the surrounding research projects. It's hard to over-state the role of federal R&D funding in the development of self-driving tech.

Right now, as of this moment, self driving cars are much safer than human drivers. Every accident that happens and person who dies is a death that could have been easily prevented if companies had been allowed to go to market last year.

> Right now, as of this moment, self driving cars are much safer than human drivers

Maybe if you limit the scope to the sunny streets of California. Maybe. Yours is a ridiculous statement that is not backed by any facts. Humans are adept at driving in conditions that self driving cars are incapable of handleing. How many self-driven miles have been logged in torrential downpours and on snowed-over roads?

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