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

Post by tim333 » Thu, Dec 17, 2015, 5:14 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #281

hellofunk wrote: post #261

I don't know what's going to happen with this project of his, but this certainly is an interesting article: >Sitting cross-legged on a dirty, formerly cream-colored couch in his garage, Hotz philosophizes about AI and the advancement of humanity. “Slavery did not end because everyone became moral,” he says. “The reason slavery ended is because we had an industrial revolution that made man’s muscles obsolete. For the…

Regarding slavery that's a fatalistic attitude that's not very good for the advancement of human societies. The other side of the coin of his "technology outgrew slavery, and thus we got rid of it", is that if tomorrow's technology demands some moral monstrosity, to "work better", we can't but bend over and accept it. Neither human struggles (from the civil war to MLK and Rosa Parks), nor desires and leadership come…

Post by frik » Thu, Dec 17, 2015, 5:49 AM UTC

sureshv wrote: post #241

frik wrote: post #135

He must have rich patents or a sponsor. The Lidar isn't cheap (50k).

$8k - http://velodynelidar.com/vlp-16.html

Post by Animats » Thu, Dec 17, 2015, 6:05 AM UTC

bcohn91 wrote: post #46

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…

Why is the first comment on HN minimizing this truly impressive project? Of course it's not perfect, he's ONE person.

Post by BHSPitMonkey » Thu, Dec 17, 2015, 6:23 AM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #414

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, he didn't actually build the car. He built a system that operates the existing car's steering and speed controls. And comparing the proper software solution to a CRUD app undermines the work that's been done by the big players in the space for the past several years.

Well yes, he only built the software that operates a car without a person driving it, connected it to a car, and did it all by himself . One person. My point was that what 99% of HackerNews does is likely nowhere near as interesting or as difficult, so when the top comments are all shitting on someone who did something that's actually pretty amazing, HackerNews can go to hell. I mean that from the bottom of my heart.…

Post by rmason » Thu, Dec 17, 2015, 6:29 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #424

rmason wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throughout history there are many cases of the lone tinkerer who achieves the breakthrough going up against much better funded adversaries. Take the case of the Wright Brothers who faced two well funded adversaries. Samuel Pierpont Langley had a chair at Harvard, worked at the Smithsonian and had among others funding him $50K from the US War Department. Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, was an avi…

Tracing the Wright's development process, it's the first example I know of of a directed research and development program. The Wrights formulated a clear goal, identified the problems needing solutions, developed a series of prototypes aimed at proving each solution, did laboratory experiments to resolve others, invented physical theories to resolve still more, carefully documented their progress, etc. I.e. they did…