Live data from Hacker News

I’m taking some time away from Comma

geohot.github.io

381–390 of 437 posts

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It exists now because you live in a place with good weather and regulators who are willing to put the live of other road users at risk for the sake of your toy.

> regulators who are willing to put the live of other road users at risk for the sake of your toy What about the regulators that allow drunk and distracted drivers everywhere

> What about the regulators that allow drunk and distracted drivers everywhere

In what places is drunk driving legal? The laws exist and are rigorously--if imperfectly--enforced everywhere I've ever lived.

Are folks building transportation businesses employing drunk drivers?

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#382
post #206

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.

Please read the details of Howard Hughes's test flights (also Winston Churchill) and realize that perhaps it's people like that who are required to make anything work. If planes were designed by safety committees we would have never figured out how to make them light enough to fly.

No one is saying people cannot experiment. We'd just not rather be the unsuspecting rats in Tesla's try-not-to-kill-too-many-pedestrians beta.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#383
post #303
post #27

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

he's a big yarvin (mencius moldbug) guy, he's read entries from the gray mirror (yarvin's substack) on stream. people who were into nrx (neo-reactionary) figures like yarvin and bronze age pervert (see: bronze age mindset quote in the op) pivoted to a religious slant, taking up catholicism or orthodox christianity in the last couple years for what seems to be aesthetic reasons and/or resentment of the general state o…

Disquieting to hear such a brilliant and promising young engineer is so taken with Yarvin's hokey crap.

Are there are other prominent young tech people who are openly into NRX? I hear about Yarvin and his Thiel funding spreading themselves around, but I haven't any idea if it's actually taking hold in tech circles.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#384
post #11

One of my favorite tech articles of all time involved this guy. He was showing off the self driving capabilities of his framework and took a reporter out on a drive. Everything went well and while they were wrapping up the interview the reporter said "Well I bet you're just driving around all the time hands free, it must be amazing" and Hotz says "Oh well I just got it working this morning". Classic. I love it. My ki…

It is funny to read top comment and then your comment. The thing you are admiring about him is the same thing top commentor is criticizing.

Comma was always riding the tailwinds of the underdog effect.

When Tesla ships an autopilot on mass market cars that fails in edge cases, commenters are up in arms that it wasn’t tested to perfection in every scenario. Big companies are punished if they don’t deliver perfection.

When an underdog company hacks together an autopilot proof of concept and takes a reporter for a ride with it, they’re heroes for pulling off a technical feat like that. Underdog stories will always draw applause.

The challenge with a company like Comma is that they can’t maintain underdog status forever. The product is very impressive in the context of an underdog hacker success story, but outside of a few early magazine shootout wins it just can’t hang with the efforts of the big companies throwing huge budgets at their own solutions. This puts them in a difficult spot because the underdog-hacker story can’t scale forever.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is funny to read top comment and then your comment. The thing you are admiring about him is the same thing top commentor is criticizing.

Comma was always riding the tailwinds of the underdog effect. When Tesla ships an autopilot on mass market cars that fails in edge cases, commenters are up in arms that it wasn’t tested to perfection in every scenario. Big companies are punished if they don’t deliver perfection. When an underdog company hacks together an autopilot proof of concept and takes a reporter for a ride with it, they’re heroes for pulling of…

Is this why Argo AI (legacy funded startup from the ranks of CMU, system set them up for success) just shut down their entire company and Comma is still selling devices? No? Ok.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Anyone can use 3d mapping and geofencing" - that shows you their limitations and also doesn't qualify for "completely autonomous" standard. - Completely means anytime (regarding weather conditions or time of the day), anywhere (no geofencing) and completely adaptive behavior to the permanently and randomly driving conditions humans deal with while driving. Pattern recognition software alone (A.I.) would never be abl…

> doesn't qualify for "completely autonomous" standard No, but it does qualify for "closer to reality today than they were 5 years ago" > Pattern recognition software alone (A.I.) would never be able to match human driving performances. That's okay. A trained human can do much better than necessary, and geofenced pattern recognition software doesn't have to be as good, especially because it should have better reactio…

"No, but it does qualify for" - please check the statement my comment was responding to. The "1 step forward, 3 steps back" way the automation sector does R&D is not moving towards reality, is moving towards confusing the public to justify their pitch to eventual investors. "That's okay." - Maybe for you, but not for investors and for the market. "Why?" - It's unsustainable, requiring resources (provided at this point by naïve investors) that commercialization can't provide. Just look at the over $100 billion wasted on this hallucination with zero actual returns. Investors expect palpable returns, not promises and delays.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think part of that (specifically Catholic) stems from the fact that it's one of the few religions that is compatible with a scientific understanding of the world, I went to Catholic school growing up, and I did not see anything in religion classes that involved updating models of the world that conflicted with data. In fact, it was the exact opposite.

What are some examples where the data is in conflict with modern Catholic teachings?

In my experience, "Data" is just a devout reverence for statistics. It claims to be a science but, like other modern belief systems strays into trying to be the "source of truth & the end of truth".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dataism

A weird pseudo-religion.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> regulators who are willing to put the live of other road users at risk for the sake of your toy What about the regulators that allow drunk and distracted drivers everywhere

> What about the regulators that allow drunk and distracted drivers everywhere In what places is drunk driving legal? The laws exist and are rigorously--if imperfectly--enforced everywhere I've ever lived. Are folks building transportation businesses employing drunk drivers?

People can drive under the influence, over the speed limit, distracted or with road rage

Vs autonomous driving where none of those impediments come into play

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#390
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Running in small areas shows that they can drive in small mapped out areas under specific conditions. That is fully autonomous driving. It's just classified as Level 4. Geofences and operating conditions can be extended to provide a real, useful taxi service to a lot of people.

Not really. Like Karpathy mentioned in the latest lex episode, keeping an updated exact map of any area isn’t a scalable way to achieve this (which is what these geofenced services do) and isn’t how humans are able to drive.

It’s perfectly scalable and it’s a solved problem. Maps aren’t the bottleneck in scaling. The cars don’t even require an always up-to-date map to work safely (but they are self mapping anyway). I’m not sure how long Karpathy will push this narrative because Tesla isn’t able to afford mapping like the others.

Tesla also uses maps, it’s just less detailed. If humans are able to drive without maps, why does Tesla require a map of lane geometry, stop signs and intersections?

Post reply on HN