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Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

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Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#431

Post by javierluraschi »

javierluraschi wrote: post #424
jacquesm wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's some pretty impressive goal post moving there. It doesn't matter whether it can't ever be ported back. It doesn't work today, and that's all there is to it. Musk lied. And it isn't the first time he does so either.

That's a bit harsh. Many technology products have delays, it sucks, makes customers unhappy, but is not uncommon and is not considered lying, not in my book at least. Windows Vista was delayed for many many years [1]. They actually promised a full database replacement to their file system that it never really shipped, etc. This is not to criticize them, but just to say that when ambitious goals are set, it's often th…

Although, most V1 software is released early, as an MVP (Most Viable Product), get a lot of feedback and iterate. So it's a very reasonable approach to release FSD incrementally and get early adoption and early feedback. Again, it's a pretty hard problem to solve; so even if they fail, lots of respect from me to their team for getting this far.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#432

Post by jacquesm »

javierluraschi wrote: post #431
javierluraschi wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit harsh. Many technology products have delays, it sucks, makes customers unhappy, but is not uncommon and is not considered lying, not in my book at least. Windows Vista was delayed for many many years [1]. They actually promised a full database replacement to their file system that it never really shipped, etc. This is not to criticize them, but just to say that when ambitious goals are set, it's often th…

Although, most V1 software is released early, as an MVP (Most Viable Product), get a lot of feedback and iterate. So it's a very reasonable approach to release FSD incrementally and get early adoption and early feedback. Again, it's a pretty hard problem to solve; so even if they fail, lots of respect from me to their team for getting this far.

What will it take for you to admit that it doesn't exist?

Just like you can't be a little bit pregnant you can't have a little bit of FSD. You either have it or you don't. It's a boolean, and it's embedded in that word 'full'.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#433

Post by simondotau »

dangrossman wrote: post #408
javierluraschi wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with the latest statement? Technically all cars have a proper GPU (Tesla's "GPU") and 360 cameras, the reliability is probably in the 90%-99% (which, yes, is pretty terrible to be considered fully autonomous, but impressive from a technical standpoint). Technically is correct to say that all they have to do is to "improve the software". That will be a lot of work, sweat and tears, but still correct.

Since the fall of 2016, Tesla's website has said: > "All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver." Yet the original "HW1" computer was replaced by "HW2", which was replaced by "FSD Computer 2.5", which was replaced by "FSD Computer 3". If you want to activate the Full Self-D…

Had the GP quoted Elon saying this in fall 2016 then you would have an entirely valid point. But the GP did not do this. The GP dated the quote as being made in 2020, when all new cars did in fact contain HW3.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#434

Post by tsimionescu »

javierluraschi wrote: post #424
jacquesm wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's some pretty impressive goal post moving there. It doesn't matter whether it can't ever be ported back. It doesn't work today, and that's all there is to it. Musk lied. And it isn't the first time he does so either.

That's a bit harsh. Many technology products have delays, it sucks, makes customers unhappy, but is not uncommon and is not considered lying, not in my book at least. Windows Vista was delayed for many many years [1]. They actually promised a full database replacement to their file system that it never really shipped, etc. This is not to criticize them, but just to say that when ambitious goals are set, it's often th…

It's not harsh. He sold cars claiming they can do FSD in the near future. He claimed he will have a million robotaxis in 2020. He claimed Teslas will pay for themselves in a year's time working as taxis for you (a bold faced lie even if FSD were here today).

Windows Vista and software in general are not even remotely comparable: they are not sold today with the promise of features tomorrow - they are generally sold when they're ready. Even pre-order games are usually refunded if they incur too huge delays or ship with significantly altered features (see Cyberpunk 2020).

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#435

Post by makeitdouble »

californical wrote: post #407
makeitdouble wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my point of view as a peasant without any shares anywhere, multibillion dollar vaporware companies have very little impact. We could argue this investment could have gone into better companies who could have made the world a better place, but it's purely hypothetical (the money could have gone to a worse company, or political lobbying as well...). Basically, from afar, it's a "rich people lost some money" drama.

That’s about as valid as saying “robbing someone’s house is legal as long as the victim has a high net worth, after all, they can afford it”. That’s not how laws and society work — theft is theft, no matter who the victim is.

The point was on "sins", so I didn't comment on the legal basis, but the moral one.

To me robbing someone of 1% of their capital doesn't look worse than CEOs throwing around their social weight and followers against random people for fun.

The real world consequent of the latter might actually be worse, like whole life ruined levels of worse.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#436

Post by shoo »

busymom0 wrote: post #411
cybert00th wrote: post #130

Hindenburg Research was right then. https://hindenburgresearch.com/nikola/

The fact that the hedge fun researching this Hydrogen powered company is named "Hindenburg" is hilarious.

nikola's demonstration truck prototype was "powered" by gravitational potential energy, not by hydrogen.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#437

Post by simondotau »

belter wrote: post #308
_game_of_life wrote: post #48

This should not be surprising to anyone. Arstechnica has followed Nikola's terrible and obvious fraud(s) for years now: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/02/nikola-admits-to-making... https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/12/nikola-stock-craters-af... https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/09/nikola-patented-a-stole... And many more... The speculation around this stock has been insane for many years now: https://arstechnica.c…

At 5 min and 57 sec... https://youtu.be/AJUIaVuqpUs?t=357 Is this whole shebang very different from Tesla FSD claims?

Very different. Nikola showed a vehicle that absolutely could not do the incredibly basic thing it was shown doing.

Tesla has provided FSD beta access to two thousand real people who are showing the system's capability, warts and all, to anyone who cares to watch on YouTube or elsewhere.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#438

Post by simondotau »

fastball wrote: post #55
bornelsewhere wrote: post #52

Nikola is one of Crystal lang largest sponsors[0]. I wonder if this is going to have repercussions. It's no fault of the Crystal community but might cast a shadow nevertheless. [0] https://crystal-lang.org/sponsors/

Using fraud to support interesting open source work – I'm kinda conflicted.

So long as Crystal was never influenced by Nikola, I see no conflict from Crystal's perspective. Money is money. It's only tainted by the morality of its origins if you let it.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#439

Post by tsimionescu »

javierluraschi wrote: post #416
cat199 wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so, you're saying it doesn't work then?

Correct! I'm saying FSD only works on 90%-99% of cases, which is currently insufficient to be actually considered FSD. Keyword, currently. However, I'm NOT stating that this won't ever work. I do believe that FSD will work in the future. Are there risks? For sure. But I'm very optimistic. I'm trying to communicate that, even with current in-car hardware, this should be sufficient. Why? Cause driving the car with a ne…

The reasonable expectation is that cars will not be able to achieve actual self-driving without either AGI or more specialized hardware than a camera. AGI is almost certainly a 'next century' kind of technology. Adding sensors other than cameras (lidar, others) to a Tesla means that they don't have the hardware.

This claim is quite obviously true, because despite the claims of Tesla's people, we don't know of any vision system that works without relying on general intelligence. Human/animal vision in particular is only accurate because we inherently use our knowledge of the world and physical intuition to resolve ambiguity. Put a human (or other mammal or a bird) in a fully artifical environment, without recognizable objects and without shadows, and you'll see that they are about as bad at vision and navigation tasks as many current algorithms. The effect will be even worse if you recreate realistic objects but with unrealistic proportions and behaviors.

Since we can't hope that computers will gain animal level intelligence in understanding the world (no one is even really working on the necessary problems), the only path to self driving is through more advanced sensors, as everyone but Tesla has realized for a long time. This is why Waymo has self-driving cars on the road today (in perfect ideal conditions), and Teslas can sometimes barely navigate an empty intersection without a human driver intervening.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#440

Post by dangrossman »

simondotau wrote: post #433
dangrossman wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the fall of 2016, Tesla's website has said: > "All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver." Yet the original "HW1" computer was replaced by "HW2", which was replaced by "FSD Computer 2.5", which was replaced by "FSD Computer 3". If you want to activate the Full Self-D…

Had the GP quoted Elon saying this in fall 2016 then you would have an entirely valid point. But the GP did not do this. The GP dated the quote as being made in 2020, when all new cars did in fact contain HW3.

The quote is not "all Tesla cars have HW3", it's "all Tesla cars right now have everything necessary for self-driving". He said that same thing about HW2 and about HW2.5. There are no self-driving Tesla robotaxis running any computer version. It was as wrong to say it in 2020 as it was in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. Maybe at next month's "Tesla AI Day" (not to be confused with 2019's "Tesla Autonomy Day") he'll debut HW4 which will definitely be the one that turns your car into a robotaxi.
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