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Tesla Robotaxi Freaks Out and Drives into Oncoming Traffic on First Day

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  • Imagine you're the guy who invented SawStop, the table saw that can detect fingers touching the saw blade and immediately bury the blade in an aluminum block to avoid cutting off someone's finger. Your system took a lot of R&D, it's expensive, requires a custom table saw with specialized internal parts so it's much more expensive than a normal table saw, but it works, and it works well. You've now got it down that someone can go full-speed into the blade and most likely not even get the smallest cut. Every time the device activates, it's a finger saved. Yeah, it's a bit expensive to own. And, because of the safety mechanism, every time it activates you need to buy a few new parts which aren't cheap. But, an activation means you avoided having a finger cut off, so good deal! You start selling these devices and while it's not replacing every table saw sold, it's slowly being something that people consider when buying.

    Meanwhile, some dude out of Silicon Valley hears about this, and hacks up a system that just uses a $30 webcam, an AI model that detects fingers (trained exclusively on pudgy white fingers of Silicon Valley executives) and a pinball flipper attached to a rubber brake that slows the blade to a stop within a second when the AI model sees a finger in danger.

    This new device, the, "Finger Saver" doesn't work very well at all. In demos with a hotdog, sometimes the hotdog is sawed in half. Sometimes the saw blade goes flying out of the machine into the audience. After a while, the company has the demo down so that when they do it in extremely controlled conditions, it does stop the hotdog from being sawed in half, but it does take a good few chunks out of it before the blade fully stops. It doesn't work at all with black fingers, but the Finger Saver company will sell you some cream-coloured paint that you can paint your finger with before using it if your finger isn't the right shade.

    Now, imagine if the media just referred to these two devices interchangeably as "finger saving devices". Imagine if the Finger Saver company heavily promoted their things and got them installed in workshops in high schools, telling the shop teachers that students are now 100% safe from injuries while using the table saw, so they can just throw out all safety equipment. When, inevitably, someone gets a serious wound while using a "Finger Saver" the media goes on a rant about whether you can really trust "finger saving devices" at all.

    Anyhow, this is a rant about Waymo vs. Tesla.

    Excellent work

  • I know many people who believe that "right on red" means they have the right of way to make the turn and don't have to stop first or yield to traffic.

    I almost failed my first drivers test because I stopped at a stop sign instead of just yielding on a right turn. Still to this day it seems... wrong.

  • When the engine is off?

    Of course, how to tell this with an electric car?

    Yeah, tell that to police who bust people with DUIs when the engine is still off.

  • Imagine you're the guy who invented SawStop, the table saw that can detect fingers touching the saw blade and immediately bury the blade in an aluminum block to avoid cutting off someone's finger. Your system took a lot of R&D, it's expensive, requires a custom table saw with specialized internal parts so it's much more expensive than a normal table saw, but it works, and it works well. You've now got it down that someone can go full-speed into the blade and most likely not even get the smallest cut. Every time the device activates, it's a finger saved. Yeah, it's a bit expensive to own. And, because of the safety mechanism, every time it activates you need to buy a few new parts which aren't cheap. But, an activation means you avoided having a finger cut off, so good deal! You start selling these devices and while it's not replacing every table saw sold, it's slowly being something that people consider when buying.

    Meanwhile, some dude out of Silicon Valley hears about this, and hacks up a system that just uses a $30 webcam, an AI model that detects fingers (trained exclusively on pudgy white fingers of Silicon Valley executives) and a pinball flipper attached to a rubber brake that slows the blade to a stop within a second when the AI model sees a finger in danger.

    This new device, the, "Finger Saver" doesn't work very well at all. In demos with a hotdog, sometimes the hotdog is sawed in half. Sometimes the saw blade goes flying out of the machine into the audience. After a while, the company has the demo down so that when they do it in extremely controlled conditions, it does stop the hotdog from being sawed in half, but it does take a good few chunks out of it before the blade fully stops. It doesn't work at all with black fingers, but the Finger Saver company will sell you some cream-coloured paint that you can paint your finger with before using it if your finger isn't the right shade.

    Now, imagine if the media just referred to these two devices interchangeably as "finger saving devices". Imagine if the Finger Saver company heavily promoted their things and got them installed in workshops in high schools, telling the shop teachers that students are now 100% safe from injuries while using the table saw, so they can just throw out all safety equipment. When, inevitably, someone gets a serious wound while using a "Finger Saver" the media goes on a rant about whether you can really trust "finger saving devices" at all.

    Anyhow, this is a rant about Waymo vs. Tesla.

    Really good analogy. loved this

  • I saw the Tesla Robotaxi:

    • Drive into oncoming traffic, getting honked at in the process.
    • Signal a turn and then go straight at a stop sign with turn signal on.
    • Park in a fire lane to drop off the passenger.

    And that was in a single 22 minute ride. Not great performance at all.

    Welcome to johnnycab

  • I almost failed my first drivers test because I stopped at a stop sign instead of just yielding on a right turn. Still to this day it seems... wrong.

    Why would you have failed? You are supposed to come to a complete stop at a stop sign.

  • Why would you have failed? You are supposed to come to a complete stop at a stop sign.

    No kidding, they fail you if you DON'T come to a complete stop.

  • I saw the Tesla Robotaxi:

    • Drive into oncoming traffic, getting honked at in the process.
    • Signal a turn and then go straight at a stop sign with turn signal on.
    • Park in a fire lane to drop off the passenger.

    And that was in a single 22 minute ride. Not great performance at all.

    Cruise cars were already doing this and performed far better. GM is fucking braindead and pulled the plug like usual though.

  • That's almost like a "three strikes" rule for drunk drivers.

    Oh man, that would be amazing. If after 3 strikes, all drunk driving could be eliminated... If only we could be so lucky.

    He's not talking about a per-vehicle points system, he's talking about a global points system for Tesla inc. If after a few incidents, essentially Tesla FSD had it's license revoked across the whole fleet, I mean, that's pretty strict accountability I'd say. That's definitely not handing out free passes, it's more like you get a few warnings and a chance to fix issues before the entire program is ended nation wide.

    I mean, if they weren't as buggy as they clearly already are, then sure... do a point system.

    But as they stand, they shouldn't be on the road.

  • I saw the Tesla Robotaxi:

    • Drive into oncoming traffic, getting honked at in the process.
    • Signal a turn and then go straight at a stop sign with turn signal on.
    • Park in a fire lane to drop off the passenger.

    And that was in a single 22 minute ride. Not great performance at all.

    Haaa, finally !! An AI taxi that behaves like a normal taxi driver. It must feel so refreshing.

  • Imagine you're the guy who invented SawStop, the table saw that can detect fingers touching the saw blade and immediately bury the blade in an aluminum block to avoid cutting off someone's finger. Your system took a lot of R&D, it's expensive, requires a custom table saw with specialized internal parts so it's much more expensive than a normal table saw, but it works, and it works well. You've now got it down that someone can go full-speed into the blade and most likely not even get the smallest cut. Every time the device activates, it's a finger saved. Yeah, it's a bit expensive to own. And, because of the safety mechanism, every time it activates you need to buy a few new parts which aren't cheap. But, an activation means you avoided having a finger cut off, so good deal! You start selling these devices and while it's not replacing every table saw sold, it's slowly being something that people consider when buying.

    Meanwhile, some dude out of Silicon Valley hears about this, and hacks up a system that just uses a $30 webcam, an AI model that detects fingers (trained exclusively on pudgy white fingers of Silicon Valley executives) and a pinball flipper attached to a rubber brake that slows the blade to a stop within a second when the AI model sees a finger in danger.

    This new device, the, "Finger Saver" doesn't work very well at all. In demos with a hotdog, sometimes the hotdog is sawed in half. Sometimes the saw blade goes flying out of the machine into the audience. After a while, the company has the demo down so that when they do it in extremely controlled conditions, it does stop the hotdog from being sawed in half, but it does take a good few chunks out of it before the blade fully stops. It doesn't work at all with black fingers, but the Finger Saver company will sell you some cream-coloured paint that you can paint your finger with before using it if your finger isn't the right shade.

    Now, imagine if the media just referred to these two devices interchangeably as "finger saving devices". Imagine if the Finger Saver company heavily promoted their things and got them installed in workshops in high schools, telling the shop teachers that students are now 100% safe from injuries while using the table saw, so they can just throw out all safety equipment. When, inevitably, someone gets a serious wound while using a "Finger Saver" the media goes on a rant about whether you can really trust "finger saving devices" at all.

    Anyhow, this is a rant about Waymo vs. Tesla.

    That was great, the first comparison that came to mind after reading it was they are both a game of russian roulette...

    Waymo - you get one chamber loaded with a blank, might kill you if you get it.

    Tesla - you get one empty chamber... And the gun is loaded by your worst enemy

  • People are going to take a shit in them. And ride them around for fun

    People are going to take a shit in them.

    Sure, somebody will. But the system will take note of that person, and then they don't get to ride again. Or they have to pay a fine. Or whatever.

  • No kidding, they fail you if you DON'T come to a complete stop.

    Where I live, a few stop signs have a square white sign below them that says "EXCEPT FOR RIGHT TURN", i.e. you don't have to actually stop if you're turning right. It's incredibly fucked up - it works fine if you're a local and you're familiar with these signs, but people new to the area don't know anything about it and if they're on the crossroad they actually expect the other driver to stop since all they see is the backside of the octagon. It's pointless to have these signs anyway since people usually roll through stop signs as it is.

  • I mean, if they weren't as buggy as they clearly already are, then sure... do a point system.

    But as they stand, they shouldn't be on the road.

    I don't understand the complaint. I mean given their track record, with a system like this, they wouldn't be on the road.

    You know, unless it all worked.

  • Navigation issue / hesitation

    The video really understates the level of fuck up that the car did there...

    And the guy sitting there just casually being ok with the car ignoring the forced left going straight into oncoming lanes and flipping the steering wheel all over the place because it has no idea what the hell just happened... I would not be just chilling there..

    Of course, I wouldn't have gotten in this car in the first place, and I know they cherry picked some hard core Tesla fans to be allowed to ride at all...

    I've come to the realization, at least where I live, that a hell of a lot of accidents are prevented because of drivers who are actually aware and safe. This goes a bit beyond defensive driving IMO. I'm talking flat out accident avoidable. There is an entire class of drivers who are not even aware of the accidents they have almost caused because someone else managed to avoid their stupid driving.

    The majority of accidents that are likely to happen with these robocoffins will be single car or robocoffin meets robocoffin. The numbers on safety after a year will be acceptable because non accident causing error prone driving is not reported in any official capacity.

    I still maintain that the only safe way to have autonomous vehicles on the road is if they do not share the road with human drivers and have an open standard for communicating with other autonomous cars.

  • I don't understand the complaint. I mean given their track record, with a system like this, they wouldn't be on the road.

    You know, unless it all worked.

    I mean given their track record

    That's my point. Tesla (the company) has been notorious for pushing forward their deadly "self-driving" technology. It's one of the worst automated systems on the planet, with plenty of tests, reports, and real-world incidences to raise red flags all over the place.

    They SHOULD NOT be on the road, so are they only on the road because Musk was able to influence someone?

  • Yeah, it's a few years away from being ready. Plus the dumb shits need to backpedal on this "cameras for everything!" idiocy.

    I'm surprised the taxis aren't being driven remotely while Musk lies about their amazing AI or whatever.

    this “cameras for everything!” idiocy.

    That's why I'm so impressed with how well it's actually working. When they get off that really weird self-imposed restriction, it could be an interesting technology.

  • Imagine you're the guy who invented SawStop, the table saw that can detect fingers touching the saw blade and immediately bury the blade in an aluminum block to avoid cutting off someone's finger. Your system took a lot of R&D, it's expensive, requires a custom table saw with specialized internal parts so it's much more expensive than a normal table saw, but it works, and it works well. You've now got it down that someone can go full-speed into the blade and most likely not even get the smallest cut. Every time the device activates, it's a finger saved. Yeah, it's a bit expensive to own. And, because of the safety mechanism, every time it activates you need to buy a few new parts which aren't cheap. But, an activation means you avoided having a finger cut off, so good deal! You start selling these devices and while it's not replacing every table saw sold, it's slowly being something that people consider when buying.

    Meanwhile, some dude out of Silicon Valley hears about this, and hacks up a system that just uses a $30 webcam, an AI model that detects fingers (trained exclusively on pudgy white fingers of Silicon Valley executives) and a pinball flipper attached to a rubber brake that slows the blade to a stop within a second when the AI model sees a finger in danger.

    This new device, the, "Finger Saver" doesn't work very well at all. In demos with a hotdog, sometimes the hotdog is sawed in half. Sometimes the saw blade goes flying out of the machine into the audience. After a while, the company has the demo down so that when they do it in extremely controlled conditions, it does stop the hotdog from being sawed in half, but it does take a good few chunks out of it before the blade fully stops. It doesn't work at all with black fingers, but the Finger Saver company will sell you some cream-coloured paint that you can paint your finger with before using it if your finger isn't the right shade.

    Now, imagine if the media just referred to these two devices interchangeably as "finger saving devices". Imagine if the Finger Saver company heavily promoted their things and got them installed in workshops in high schools, telling the shop teachers that students are now 100% safe from injuries while using the table saw, so they can just throw out all safety equipment. When, inevitably, someone gets a serious wound while using a "Finger Saver" the media goes on a rant about whether you can really trust "finger saving devices" at all.

    Anyhow, this is a rant about Waymo vs. Tesla.

    Awesome read, thanks!

  • How about you pay attention and PREVENT the autopilot from killing someone? Like it's your job to do?

    Expecting people to be able to behave like machines is generally the attitude that leads to crash investigations.

  • Imagine you're the guy who invented SawStop, the table saw that can detect fingers touching the saw blade and immediately bury the blade in an aluminum block to avoid cutting off someone's finger. Your system took a lot of R&D, it's expensive, requires a custom table saw with specialized internal parts so it's much more expensive than a normal table saw, but it works, and it works well. You've now got it down that someone can go full-speed into the blade and most likely not even get the smallest cut. Every time the device activates, it's a finger saved. Yeah, it's a bit expensive to own. And, because of the safety mechanism, every time it activates you need to buy a few new parts which aren't cheap. But, an activation means you avoided having a finger cut off, so good deal! You start selling these devices and while it's not replacing every table saw sold, it's slowly being something that people consider when buying.

    Meanwhile, some dude out of Silicon Valley hears about this, and hacks up a system that just uses a $30 webcam, an AI model that detects fingers (trained exclusively on pudgy white fingers of Silicon Valley executives) and a pinball flipper attached to a rubber brake that slows the blade to a stop within a second when the AI model sees a finger in danger.

    This new device, the, "Finger Saver" doesn't work very well at all. In demos with a hotdog, sometimes the hotdog is sawed in half. Sometimes the saw blade goes flying out of the machine into the audience. After a while, the company has the demo down so that when they do it in extremely controlled conditions, it does stop the hotdog from being sawed in half, but it does take a good few chunks out of it before the blade fully stops. It doesn't work at all with black fingers, but the Finger Saver company will sell you some cream-coloured paint that you can paint your finger with before using it if your finger isn't the right shade.

    Now, imagine if the media just referred to these two devices interchangeably as "finger saving devices". Imagine if the Finger Saver company heavily promoted their things and got them installed in workshops in high schools, telling the shop teachers that students are now 100% safe from injuries while using the table saw, so they can just throw out all safety equipment. When, inevitably, someone gets a serious wound while using a "Finger Saver" the media goes on a rant about whether you can really trust "finger saving devices" at all.

    Anyhow, this is a rant about Waymo vs. Tesla.

    Waymo is also a silicon valley AI project to put transit workers out of work. It's another project to get AI money and destroy labor rights.
    At least it kind of works isn't exactly helping my opinion of it. Transit is incredibly underfunded and misregulated in California/the USA and robotaxis are a criminal misinvestment in resources.

  • Google Keeps Making Smartphones Worse

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    I really want to try a pinephone or something with Ubuntu touch. It’s likely not daily driver ready but I’m still curious at how far along it is.
  • We're Not Innovating, We’re Just Forgetting Slower

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    P
    Gotcha, thank you for the extra context so I understand your point. I'll respond to your original statement now that I understand it better: I ALSO think the author would prefer more broad technical literacy, but his core arguement seemed to be that those making things dont understand the tech they’re built upon and that unintended consequences can occur when that happens. I think the author's argument on that is also not a great one. Lets take your web app example. As you said, you can make the app, but you don't understand the memory allocation, and why? Because the high level language or framework you wrote it in does memory management and garbage collection. However, there are many, many, MANY, more layers of abstraction beside just your code and the interpreter. Do you know the webserver front to back? Do you know which ring your app or the web server is operating in inside the OS (ring 3 BTW)? Do you know how the IP stack works in the server? Do you know how the networking works that resolves names to IP addresses or routes the traffic appropriately? Do you know how the firewalls work that the traffic is going over when it leaves the server? Back on the server, do you know how the operating system makes calls to the hardware via device drivers (ring 1) or how those calls are handled by the OS kernel (ring 0)? Do you know how the system bus works on the motherboard or how the L1, L2, and L3 cache affect the operation and performance of the server overall? How about that assembly language isn't even the bottom of abstraction? Below that all of this data is merely an abstraction of binary, which is really just the presence or absence of voltage on a pit or in a bit register in ICs scattered across the system? I'll say probably not. And thats just fine! Why? Because unless your web app is going to be loaded onto a spacecraft with a 20 to 40 year life span and you'll never be able to touch it again, then having all of that extra knowledge and understanding only have slight impacts on the web app for its entire life. Once you get one or maybe two levels of abstraction down, the knowledge is a novelty not a requirement. There's also exceptions to this if you're writing software for embedded systems where you have limited system resources, but again, this is an edge case that very very few people will ever need to worry about. The people in those generally professions do have the deep understanding of those platforms they're responsible for. Focus on your web app. Make sure its solving the problem that it was written to solve. Yes, you might need to dive a bit deeper to eek out some performance, but that comes with time and experience anyway. The author talks like even the most novice people need the ultimately deep understanding through all layers of abstraction. I think that is too much of a burden, especially when it acts as a barrier to people being able to jump in and use the technology to solve problems. Perhaps the best example of the world that I think the author wants would be the 1960s Apollo program. This was a time where the pinnacle of technology was being deployed in real-time to solve world moving problems. Human kind was trying to land on the moon! The most heroic optimization of machines and procedures had to be accomplished for even a chance for this to go right. The best of the best had to know every. little. thing. about. everything. People's lives were at stake! National pride was at stake! Failure was NOT an option! All of that speaks to more of what the author wants for everyone today. However, that's trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist today. Compute power today is CHEAP!!! High level program languages and frameworks are so easy to understand that programming it is accessible to everyone with a device and a desire to use it. We're not going to the moon with this. Its the kid down the block that figured out how to use If This Then That to make a light bulb turn on when he farts into a microphone. The beauty is the accessibility. The democratization of compute. We don't need gatekeepers demanding the deepest commitment to understanding before the primitive humans are allowed to use fire. Are there going to be problems or things that don't work? Yes. Will the net benefit of cheap and readily available compute in the hands of everyone be greater than the detriments, I believe yes. It appears the author disagrees with me. /sorry for the wall of text
  • Say Hello to the World's Largest Hard Drive, a Massive 36TB Seagate

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    Thank you for all this information. One day when my ADHD forces me into a making myself a home server I'll remember this and keep it in mind. I've always wanted to store movies but these days just family pictures and stuff. Definitely don't have terabytes but I'm getting up 100s of gb.
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    my question was not directed at you Sorry for that, but you could say "it's NoneOfUrBusiness" (their username)
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    Oh, well that answered that question. Get your shit together tech bros
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    Watch the videos, believe your own eyes instead of billionaire propaganda.
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    So they tried to hide it from them by explicitly logging when it switched on and off in the data that they report to them? Huh?
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    In this case, it's for the benefit of fossil fuel related Robber Barons. plus just ending the subsidies in general, no doubt to float more tax reductions next year.