How will the people who continuously rationalize cars justify that they are destroying a profession - horse carriage driver - that was fun and profitable ?
How will the people who continuously rationalize the Internet justify that they are destroying a profession - travel agents - that was fun and profitable?
If we blocked every possible innovation because it lowered the fun of something existing we'd never have progressed past the Stone Age.
Professionally driving a horse carriage wasn't fun. Noise, boredom, unloading things manually if it was a carriage for goods. It was probably a moderately horrible job.
Travel agents used to give better recommendations and even cheaper flights. There is little innovation in the ad laden travel sites that give bad deals. Case in point: Often if you call a hotel directly you get a better price than on the sites and they don't give you the room next to the elevator that appears to be reserved for people who order via the sites.
Real anti-stone-age innovation has mostly been in the physical world to free up time for thinking. That is what the rich people who cannot think for themselves now want to take away.
cars are not exactly a success story. Both of your examples (cars and internet) are things that had some great applications but also have been mis-used or over-used.
cars: people now live completely car-dependent lives and drive way too much. our infrastructure cannot handle people driving so much and it's extremely expensive and bad for our health and terrible for the environment
internet: well... obviously... social media and all the harms that come with that.
Even if you believe that humanity would have been better if a some global dictator could have stopped the Internet and the Internal combustion system, that's simply not how society works.
If you want another analogy, it's like Feudal Knights complaining about the introduction of the crossbow. Not only were their efforts doomed to fail even the question became irrelevant with the unstoppable march of technological innovation.
But I'm not arguing for stopping the internet or stopping cars from existing. I think both of those things have great applications that shouldn't be ignored.
All I'm saying is that many technologies are a double-edged sword. They can have wonderful uses that make life better, but they can also make life worse in some ways. The Internet and cars are two perfect examples of that. And by the time we realize the harms of these technologies, it's too late.
So perhaps the challenge with any technology is figuring out how to reap the benefits without letting things get out of hand.
I, and apparently a lot of other people on the Internet find the latest Tesla FSD update pretty incredible. There's a reason why Tesla gave it as a free trial to everyone. I drove it downtown and back without any interventions this weekend.
Is it 100% perfect? Of course not. But this article is the ultimate in low effort. A person who felt that the car might hit another one but probably not. Yes, real value there.
What’s low effort in sharing your personal experience? It’s very clearly written as an opinion.
Any reader would be reasonable to assume that there are other opinions out there, and that this opinion may be in the minority.
That said, I’m happy to see a dissenting opinion in the comments here! Would be curious to see others thoughts in the sudden appearance of a free trial.
The author went in with a negative attitude opening with hate for the CEO and then proceeded to diss the product based on how it "felt like it was about to" do something bad rather than what it actually did. It seems that the author has already decided that it was bad before trying it and then decided to confirm their bias based on vague feelings.
I find it extremely biased and lacking in substance.
I get it though... Elon does deserve a lot of hate so I guess the HN crowd is gleefully cheering out of schadenfreude whenever someone says something along the lines of "Tesla bad".
There are lots of cool things that probably shouldn't used by people operating heavy machinery. Phones for example.
From my experience working in this space though, judging quality is extremely difficult. For one thing, different people have different criteria. I've taken rides with other people where we all had different opinions on the quality of the ride at the end. These systems (FSD especially), can also be highly sensitive to specific details of the situation. Two drives in apparently similar conditions have meaningfully different behavior because the system understands them differently. It's very difficult to compare apples to apples outside statistics and simulation.
All this is to say: don't dismiss feelings or intuition about the danger. These are good caution signs and talking about them can help companies improve the product.
I think everyone using this product should be asking themselves why we don't have an objective measure for the quality (or lack thereof!) of the product.
With every new release of FSD, there are people quick to say it's a breakthrough, and amazing, while others lament it doesn't nearly do what it says on the lid.
Why are we putting safety critical systems we can’t adequately measure on our streets?! There are people who confidently state that Tesla's FSD is already better than humans.
Where's the data?! Why isn't it open? Why can't we build an objective measure for effectiveness and safety of each of these releases?
The data isn't open because it's not required to be. Every manufacturer is either making a good faith effort to collect that data (to their own standards) or they probably shouldn't be on the road. Regulators, NHTSA especially, don't have the expertise, time, or mandate to get it from them, analyze it, and make it available. That could (and should) change though.
As an unrelated aside, measuring safety performance is hard. Doing it accurately without putting vehicles on the street is probably impossible. Simulation is not a fully adequate replacement for road testing and many companies are already looking at cutting the latter because of the expense. It'd be nice for regulators to outline an acceptable road test framework that better balances the goal of public safety from unsafe vehicles against ensuring safety can be demonstrated in real world environments.
Of course Tesla is not participating - the real numbers would make them look disastrous.
Regarding objective measures for the quality - the famous standards for level 1-5 etc. Objectively speaking, Tesla's system is Level 2. There are other companies at level 3, and some others operating fully autonomous vehicles.
As to why Tesla chooses to base all their claims on purely subjective and highly cherry-picked numbers and videos ? We all know the answer to this question.
There are several reasons - for some it's about security, for other about truth.
I find it fascinating that a guy become the richest person in the world, by convincing 'investors' that a Level 2 system is 'almost ready' for a Robotaxi operation and will make them infinite money. To give him credit, he also did mention that Tesla is worthless if it doesn't solve FSD.
I'd love to see all cars (including Waymo) compete on a standard set of tests with clear gates as to what conditions they'd be allowed to go to Levels 3, 4 or 5.
> There are lots of cool things that probably shouldn't used by people operating heavy machinery. Phones for example.
I will tell you straight up that a Tesla model Y on FSD 12.3.3 is a safer vehicle operator than a human being using a phone. Period. No qualifications. Under all circumstances.
FWIW, I'm happy to see the "Yeah" there. But regarding the "and", it gets to the sincerity of the discussion. In a world where literally millions of people are texting from the drivers seat of a moving vehicle every day, freaking out on the internet about a handful of robots doing less dangerous stuff seems maybe a little performative.
I have a bit of professional interest here because building these kinds of systems safely is my job, whereas distracted driving isn't something I can meaningfully change as an individual. At the very least, I can explain to others what a safe development process looks like.
Considering you are putting your life, that of your family and everyone on the street around you in the hands of this software, I don't get the nonchalant "sure, it's not perfect" attitude like you were trying out the beta version of a new note taking app. It absolutely has to be 100% perfect before being allowed on the streets.
I use it daily and I would be the first person to agree that it isn't 100% perfect, but not in the way you are assuming. The flaws it has are that it errs on the side of being too cautious.
Being overly cautious on the road is as bad as being reckless. The frequent example about 4-way stops is a perfect one. If a car is behaving unpredictably and stopping when it's their turn to go then it is creating a dangerous situation for everyone at the intersection.
Of course, it's a spectrum. It's nowhere near dangerously over-cautious. I'd describe it as a very prudent new driver. It drives the way most people probably should, but that means there's a little hesitation in low-risk scenarios sometimes. All you need to do is tap the accelerator and it instantly gets the message. We're talking about something that's barely an inconvenience, but it isn't the "100% perfection" the people here seem to blindly demand.
My devil’s advocate response for that would be that Tesla as the first mover on the market gets to call their product whatever they want.
Is a “garbage disposal” a device that can dispose of all garbage in your sink? No, all it can handle is light food scraps. But the inventor named it a “garbage disposal” not a “light food waste processing device.”
To me it seems stupid that so much of the debate after all these years is about the name. I think we are beyond the point where the name matters.
They get to call it that when it can drive safely on snow covered roads. Before that happens, it's marketing hype that can't be relied on in all scenarios. When they transitioned to radar-only, they sold "FSD" that needed a whitelist to ignore the sensor input in problematic locations. What other half-baked hacks are in the current implementation?
And yet nobody cares that lottery products have names that imply winning, prizes, pots of gold, etc even though almost nobody wins statistically.
Again, I just think that marketing is marketing and everyone knows that. Everyone knows that a trash bag isn’t indestructible and that a paper towel can’t absorb a tsunami.
I’ve used FSD since the first invite beta and this version has been a step back for me. Multiple break checks on the freeway, incredibly bad path planning through intersections where it just switches lanes mid way through, random turn signals coming on for no reason, list can go on. It’s like they just tweaked some params to reduce the shakiness of the wheel but didn’t actually do much to improve confidence.
Elon is missing a huge opportunity by not hiring his flight attendants from this website. Wouldn't have to buy any horses and probably wouldn't even have to ask.
I don't think it's low effort at all. In fact, I totally see where the author is coming from despite loving FSD and using it often.
Driving is a very personal activity. There are nearly infinitely many variables driving every decision during every drive, and the default experience that people will want from something like this is "someone that mostly drives like me and never makes mistake because computers".
FSD is not that. It will be a while before it is that. Until then, I can totally understand someone "never using this again" (for a while) over a few fumbles that FSD made that they would not have (in most cases).
Tesla has to know this because they also know that if even 10k Tesla buyers decide to subscribe to FSD, that's an extra $2M/month that can be (mostly) shoveled back into training infrastructure!
I drove my car downtown and back yesterday 100% perfectly. So while you're happy with not 100% perfect, what about other road users who have no say in whether you turn on your not 100% perfect death machine?
Don't know which utopia you live in, but are you really happy with the other drivers texting, sleepy, high or just completely incompetent at the wheel?
If anything, FSDs are over-cautious and slow down to well below speed limits if they can't make out conditions. So, yes I'd say other drivers shouldn't complain about a system that still requires a human to constantly pay attention and keep their hands on the wheel.
It makes driving a lot more relaxing in a way that you don't appreciate until you get used to it. My feet are off the pedals and can stretch, I don't have to steer so my attention is only partly on the road ( the interior camera monitors to see if you're looking ahead and not on your phone for example ) If I have to change the music I don't have to worry about the car in front of me suddenly braking etc.
I've been using FSD for years now at day and night and I think it's been ready for Level 3 going straight on Interstates/highways for a while now. The latest update significantly improves taking turns along a route.
I commented on this thread elsewhere that I wish there was a standard suite of requirements for all automakers to certify the self-driving levels on their cars. Otherwise, I feel too much of the discussion is being polluted by people who agree or disagree with Elons politics.
If paying full attention to driving is so tiresome to you please don't drive. My impression of this description is that FSD is getting good enough to lull drivers into not paying enough attention. There shouldn't be a product like that either Tesla takes responsibility like Waymo or makes a clearly L2 system that is good at limited things. Blurring the line like this is going to get even more dangerous as FSD gets better
And yet, I still get phantom braking daily with autopilot and auto wipers that don't actually seem to understand what rain is. Call me EXTREMELY skeptical that FSD is ever going to be viable when they can't even get basic blocking and tackling right that every other vendor has had solved for a decade.
^^it's horrible, I end up turning them off most of the time because I feel bad. The auto-dim when you're behind another car is about half the distance of every other car I've ever driven.
calling opinions "low effort" seems to suggest that everyone needs to be an expert in anything they talk about. I keep coming across this in technical circles and I find it discourages honest sharing and harms psychological safety
My least favorite part of the article was where the author complained about the “financial mistake” of the car, about how they were underwater on their car loan.
Depreciation is a normal and expected part of buying a car. If you are financing a car you should be prepared to keep it for a long period of time. While many automakers offer car loans of 5+ years, ideally you should only finance a car for 3 or 4 years and/or put more money down to ensure you are never underwater.
At no point did the author say that the car didn’t do its job as a reliable piece of transportation, but somehow it was a “financial mistake.”
The fact that cars depreciate and cost too much is a feature of all cars.
> Depreciation is a normal and expected part of buying a car
The problem is that Tesla owners are spoiled. I bought my Model Y just before the supply crunch in June of 2021, and within a year used models were selling for 20% more than I paid. They've since come down a ton as demand levelled off, but even now my car has depreciated only about 18% (including inflation!) from the cost of a brand new Y with the same configuration.
It's easy enough to imagine a young Tesla buyer over the last few years getting a very weird picture of the financials of owning a car.
Most car manufacturers take some efforts to try and ensure residuals stay reasonable, otherwise customers will be less keen to repeat buy for obvious reasons. Setting prices correctly at launch is key for this.
What Tesla did, which historically is not a "normal and expected part of buying a car", is repeatedly slash list pricing after launch, thus meaning the used market does not trust valuing them, as so many used car dealers got very badly burned on inventory they paid too high a price for when the new car prices came down, putting them all underwater.
These aren't small or predictable market moves either; they are random swings. The Model S and Model X have been reduced new by as much as 24% at times. This Simply Does Not Happen at most car companies, most of the time, and residuals are more stable as a result.
Imagine you had just taken stock of a used model S, valuing it based on purchase price "n", then tomorrow the manufacturer slashes the price of a new one by 24%. That's very, very hard not to end up underwater.
Similarly, for existing owners - that 24% cut has just shifted the depreciation curve massively, and not in your favor. Existing owners frankly have every right to be pissed.
The flip side of all this is a used Tesla can be a really great option right now for some folks - bulk of depreciation is over, maintenance/running costs are some of the lowest in the industry (ignoring EV insurance costs I guess, but thats another topic...). The traction battery/motors/drivetrains regularly get to 300k miles. I'd have no problem at all recommending a used 3/Y at the right price to someone if EV fits their lifestyle etc.
Probably why I used the word "most" here. Residuals matter, even to the manufacturer.
If residuals plummet too much, their lease accounting can go red too. Lease rates have to account for a future predicted value of the vehicle, and manufacturers strangely like making money on leases.
Also, the huge depreciation on a Maserati isn't a surprise, most of the time. A mass produced vehicle selling in the hundreds of thousands annually seeing double digit list price shifts at random did come as a surprise, and has put car dealers underwater on Tesla inventory before.
I'm an American who works quite a bit with companies in Germany.
The number of opportunities in tech and the speed with which new ones arise can't be compared.
Look at the latest trend - AI. Not only did the initial boost come from openAI (US) its adoption by the biggest tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple etc - all American and all investing Billions.
But that's not even the most 'special' aspect of the US ( I'm sure SAP will jump in big into AI ) It's the hundreds of startups that are either starting or pivoting into the trend.
Now, this doesn't mean that this latest iteration of AI will be world-changing, it could turn out to be a complete bust. But it's this constant churn, the striving to be on the cutting edge, the rise and fall of dreams that makes the US 'special'.
Thank you for your answer but none of these is very US. There are only a small parts of US which are deeply invested into AI, not all Americans striving for excellence and US is not excellent in all. Even your description I can argue also happening in China.
OK, we'll have to agree to disagree. The context here is Tech and why the US is 'special' for people who want to get ahead. You asked how it's different from Germany. My answer is that the US encourages creative destruction, and generates far more opportunities for trying new things.
I would never make the claim that the US is excellent in all. :)
Whether the same holds true for China is an interesting question. I've never worked with or visited China but I think there are differences. China certainly seems more 'innovative' when it comes to hardware, both physical infrastructure as well as manufacturing in general. Not so sure about software.
I don't think the context is tech, it was economical growth, but giving the all topic discussion, special has very broad meaning here and I like to know which one.
What you describe it is SV tech culture or start up culture in the US, which is focused on few spots. And not even all people there (e. g. Homeless people). This culture might be special but this isn't defitenly US because it is obviously not across this country.
Also I can tell you that in other countries and field of economics there is a certain sense of perfectionism or excellence e. G. In Germany or Japan or even Italy.
I guess why the Americans emphasise they are special because of economic growth is very clear: besides military there aren't many important areas where the US is good. This helps to feel "to be the best Country in the world", which is obviously wrong.
Don't forget entertainment, I always seem to hear mostly american songs being played in stores, or see American movies played in theaters when I travel to Europe.
Also food: While other countries can compete on one of their native cuisines or many a few more, the US is pumping out top tier chefs in multiple areas.
Also universities: The massive amount of investment and R&D that comes out of these schools allows them to remain top of the pack.
"t forget entertainment, I always seem to hear mostly american songs being played "
Nope. You don't get the reason why these songs are played. It's more jazz in a lift, not good music. Let me introduce into techno culture.
"Also food: While other countries can compete on one of their native cuisines or many a few more, the US is pumping out top tier chefs in multiple areas."
yThats sad about your lack of knowledge. May I introduce to this https://nerdyfoodies.com/countries-with-the-most-michelin-st...
Germany alone has more stars than the whole US
How is this any different from farm machinery 200 years ago or industrial automation 50 years ago? More production with far less people.
The same concerns that tithes would lead to massive unemployment. Instead, the economy and global living standards shot up and completely new fields opened up.
> How is this any different from farm machinery 200 years ago or industrial automation 50 years ago? More production with far less people.
The skill gap for in-demand labor was less back then. For instance, when farm machinery took off, unskilled farm labor could shift (at massive scale) into unskilled factory work.
You're not going to have a massive shift of low-end or midrange labor into high-end ML jobs. A lot (most?) people are just plain not capable of that. These technologies just kick a bunch of people down then pull of the ladder. Poverty, precarity, and inequality will increase. It'll be great for the ultra-wealthy, who will be able to keep more money (power) in their own pockets without sharing with the plebs.
But who knows, maybe that concentration of elite power will open up promising opportunities in the entertainment industry for the plebs to play squid games.
> You're not going to have a massive shift of low-end or midrange labor into high-end ML jobs. A lot (most?) people are just plain not capable of that.
People focus too much on job types. The reality it's actually worse. Even if eliminating one mid-range job[0] would create two more same-level jobs of different type - that is, the total number of jobs available would double - and even if the people automated away from the former were fully capable of retraining for the latter, they'll still be in a world of hurt, because this still means their entire career progression suddenly got reset.
In simple terms: your average Jane and Joe, 15-20 years in their mid-skill career accumulated some skills, experience and promotions, which allows them to get a mid-level salary. They built their life around it - bought a flat or a house sized right for their income, in the area sized right for their income. They started a family, and are caring and educating their kids in a way appropriate for their income. Suddenly, their entire occupation disappears, and they're forced to retrain. They manage to do that, and find new jobs in the new field. Guess what level those jobs are, and how much they pay? That's right, they're starting at junior level, with junior pay. Suddenly, their entire life is way too expensive for their income levels. The house, the area, the schools, the car - and by proxy, their social life, their kids' education - all of these need to be cut down. What didn't change, however, is their age and associated health problems.
As for the kids, they too are unlikely to benefit from the newly-opened fields, because they'll be too busy working their way out of poverty.
--
[0] - And note that unlike some earlier techology-induced job shifts, AI is threatening to displace the high-skill jobs first. Generative models won't displace your barber or the local handyman or the policemen on patrol. They are going to displace artists, clerks, possibly medical and legal techs, testers. They'll sooner displace programmers and lawyers and doctors before they'll be able to impact blue-collar jobs.
This is a nice story that omits one crucial detail of every such transition: the people who get automated away and the people who benefit from improved economy and standards of living are not the same people.
For the former, this is not a story of temporary hardships compensated in full by everything getting better few years down the line. For them, this is a story of life permanently derailed, their hopes and dreams destroyed, and the future of their kids taken away. They do not get to enjoy those promised benefits - they're too busy trying to salvage what little they can from their lives, after being suddenly dropped one or two levels down in socioeconomic class ladder.
The benefits? Sure, they come some years or decades later, and they're great for everyone else.
>How is this any different from farm machinery 200 years ago or industrial automation 50 years ago? More production with far less people.
The economy will for sure eventually get into some sort of equilibrium again. Things will become normal sort of like how the giant wealth inequality gap is super normal right now (likely caused by the same automation you're describing).
But there is so much different now then before. Additionally the velocity in which this replacement is occuring is much higher then industrial automation. Given the differences we cannot fully know the outcome.
It's easy and convenient to allude to examples in the past to predict the future, but that is not a data driven or logical conclusion. We don't know what will happen, and to ignore the possibility of a bad outcome is folly.
My wild guess is that there will be a temporary period of destabilization and this temporary period could last between one to two decades all the way to several generations. By then all the "problems" will be normalized; sort of like how the wealth inequality gap has been normalized and how it's basically become normal to see tons and tons of homeless people living in RVs in the bay area.
Global living standards have been rising sharply for the last 50 years, first in China, then South East Asia, recently India and there are signs it's going to start happening in Africa.
The idea that the newly middle-class in Asia ( including software developers working for international companies ) are increasing desperate and precarious is simply not true.
This statement really challenged me. I had to consider if I agree.
My first response was that the lefties (catchall phrase for purpose of this reply) I know fret over fairness. To even frame discussions in terms of power is seen as distasteful and largely avoided.
Then I was reminded that many lefties, especially younger cohorts, talk about privilege. In Ezra Klein's interview with Will Wilkinson, they discuss "white privilege" in terms of power. And power is a topic Ezra Klein is far more comfortable discussing (compared to me).
In conclusion, I mosdef agree that we lefties have a more systems-based view, where the relative power of the belligerents are considered. Further, the themes of privilege, equality, bias, opportunity, fairness (as used by misc lefties sub-cohorts) as rhetoric are really talking about relative power.
There are literally hundreds of developers in FAANG companies putting down payments a lot more than 200k in the Bay Area. The median compensation including RSUs is over 400k. If you're in a critical org your RSUs can be an order of magnitude more than that.
> For example, I would rather make $500k per year and have $10k net worth, than make $100k per year and have a $1 million net worth.
Why? Are you assuming that you'll quickly build up your wealth in the first scenario. Personally, I'd be way more comfortable with the second - no worries around how long your income stream will last.
How will the people who continuously rationalize the Internet justify that they are destroying a profession - travel agents - that was fun and profitable?
If we blocked every possible innovation because it lowered the fun of something existing we'd never have progressed past the Stone Age.