
Comma.ai launches an $88 universal car interface called Panda - jonas21
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/07/comma-ai-launches-an-88-universal-car-interface-called-panda/?ncid=mobilenavtrend
======
josephpmay
Hotz is quoted as saying in the article, "there are only three real
competitors: Waymo, Tesla and us."

That's total bullshit. There are so many companies seriously working on
autonomous vehicles, such as GM Cruise, Auroa Innovation, Drive.ai, Zoox,
Nuro.ai, nuTonomy, Varden Labs, AImotive, Ford, and Nvidia

Edit, because George is on here: George, I want to like you, because I think
your tech is really good (the street image segmentation from RGB images is
seriously impressive-
[https://commacoloring.herokuapp.com/](https://commacoloring.herokuapp.com/))
and I think your business model of offering cheap devices and free services to
crowd-source data, along with the comma points to incentivize users could give
you a big competitive advantage. But the hyperbole makes it difficult to take
you seriously.

~~~
devy
I doubt Geohotz didn't do his homework before he made this conclusion. He went
to CMU, Google and Facebook and had worked with the smartest
professors/scientists/engineers in the field of AI before he founded Comma.ai.
He's pretty much single-handed built a level 3 drive assist prototype within a
year where other companies spent billions and many years R&D but not even came
close to what he was originally intended to release.[1]

So when George said, "there are only three real competitors: Waymo, Tesla and
us." What he really says is that Comma.ai's technology is on par with Waymo
and Tesla's. The rest of the companies are either subpar or have no existing
product to demo, likely both.

He also famously said "shippability" is the biggest differentiator between
Comma One and the rest but decided not to fight the uphill legal battle being
that he's taking the Android approach to grab the market share.

So, I kinda buy it.

[1]: [http://www.thedrive.com/tech/5772/the-cancelled-comma-one-
wo...](http://www.thedrive.com/tech/5772/the-cancelled-comma-one-would-have-
embarrassed-the-car-industry)

~~~
Oletros
I have a bridge to sell.

Looking at the github repository code, comma is a joke.

~~~
devy
> I have a bridge to sell.

Sorry what's a bridge? I don't get the reference.

~~~
brandoncordell
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Parker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Parker)

------
aresant
Why a dongle?

The chffr app (video / nav data) + panda dongle (sensor data) is a simple way
to let anybody participate in data collection, and for comma.ai to build
enterprise value by accruing and organizing a gigantic data set that's
critical to them or any third party executing the ML at core of self driving.

Now pair this with a tweet they posted in June:

"Just realized something. You are _really_ going to be happy you have comma
points. Get in early... [http://getchffr.com/](http://getchffr.com/) #ICO"(1)

I think that's an incredibly compelling / fascinating ACTUAL use case for an
ICO vs the current litany of pyramiding and outright scams we're seeing.

Take their chffr app + panda dongle and give people a financial INCENTIVE to
accrue "points" by running the two data harvesting mechanisms and suddenly I
am seeing comma's strategy in a new light.

(1)
[https://twitter.com/comma_ai/status/873014550164938752](https://twitter.com/comma_ai/status/873014550164938752)

~~~
roymurdock
The real winner in the race to mandate OBD-II monitoring is the auto insurance
industry.

Sure, you could install Hotz's dongle, give Hotz your data, earn "comma
points", feel like you are helping to train self driving cars, and trade these
comma points for - what exactly? a comma plushie? - while Hotz turns around
and sells your data to insurance companies.

Or you could get a free OBD dongle directly from your current insurance
company [1] and watch your rates go up/down depending on how safe of a driver
you are.

Ultimately, Comma.ai needs to find an automotive partner. It will be nearly
impossible for the company to beat Google, Uber, and (presumably) Apple, who
all have strong partnerships with auto OEMs, in quality or quantity of driving
data without direct integration and extensive testing on vehicles designed for
autonomous driving. Not to mention Tesla, which is an OEM itself, and can
design in data collection/processing for self driving vehicles from the ground
up.

[1] [https://jalopnik.com/progressive-insurances-driver-
tracking-...](https://jalopnik.com/progressive-insurances-driver-tracking-
tool-is-ridicul-1680720690)

~~~
ethanwillis
Not a comma plushie. He mentioned ICO, so cryptocurrency. Which with something
of value like this behind it the comma "points" (tokens?) could be worth quite
a lot if you're an early adopter.

~~~
aresant
EXACTLY. Sorry if I was unclear.

ICO as a way to convert "Internet Points" into something of material value and
reward users directly for contributions is incredibly fascinating to me.

~~~
roymurdock
It's not "internet points", it's simply a way to more easily measure how much
data you've contributed to comma's database. Fundamentally, that data is only
valuable to insurance companies, which are already willing to pay you ~$160
(in lower insurance rates) for a year's worth of driving data.

In theory Hotz could (and should) just pay you directly in $USD for your
driving data, arbitraging a bit off the top before selling it to insurance
companies.

But the genius of him "paying" you in cryptocurrency is that it will get you
to give it away for free "points"! And to pay him for the hardware to do so!
Because you think that a market might develop around these "points" where they
will get bought up by a bigger fool, pumping up their value way beyond their
fundamental value to the end consumers of this data - insurance companies.

These "points" have no other value or use, as they would not otherwise
function as currency (store of value, medium of exchange, unit of account)
unless Hotz decoupled point generation from car data generation and just
started minting an arbitrary virtual currency.

------
Animats
I saw a new player in self-driving yesterday - a blue Peterbilt truck equipped
with many cameras and some of the puck-sized Velodyne laser scanners. Nevada
license AU 0030. They were driving on US 101 southbound from Menlo Park to
Mountain View, where they exited the freeway and got back on, northbound. They
were bobtailing; no trailer.

In that location, I'd first though it was one of Google's vehicles But why the
Nevada plate? Turns out this is Embark.[1] They even show their AU 0030
license plate in the video.

Embark has been testing in Nevada, where the regulations are looser and
there's less traffic. Their demo video is on a a deserted, straight two-lane
road, closed for the occasion. Good place to debug.

Embark isn't on the list of CA DMV autonomous vehicle test companies. Also, CA
won't allow autonomous vehicle testing of vehicles over 10,000 pounds,
figuring that if something goes wrong, it's better to have car accidents than
heavy truck accidents.

When Otto did that "autonomous delivery" of Budweiser with a semi, their
vehicle was surrounded by chase cars. It was a much more controlled
environment than the video indicates. There's too much "fake it until you make
it" in this business. Waymo and Volvo are building systems that can handle
unexpected trouble. Some of the others, not so much.

[1] [http://embarktrucks.com/](http://embarktrucks.com/)

~~~
petra
>> Waymo and Volvo are building systems that can handle unexpected trouble.

How ? What's different in the tech they are building ?

~~~
Animats
Watch Chris Urmson's self-driving car talk at SXSW 2016.[1] Especially the
part where the Google car encounters someone in a powered wheelchair chasing a
duck with a broom. Google can handle that.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj-
rK8V-rik](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj-rK8V-rik)

~~~
unityByFreedom
You know you can link to a specific time in a YouTube video right? Pretty hard
to find that 20 second section in a 1 hour video ;-). It is a good drawand
worth watching that part first, in my opinion

------
simonsarris
2016: Comma.ai will compete with Tesla, Google, Mobileye[1]

2017: Comma.ai will compete with ScanGauge

hm.

([http://www.businessinsider.com/george-hotz-techcrunch-
disrup...](http://www.businessinsider.com/george-hotz-techcrunch-disrupt-
trashes-tesla-google-mobileye-zoox-2016-9))

~~~
agumonkey
he's answering in the comments, he says typical OBD interfaces are slow and
fragile, which I surely believe. Is it me or is his ego made of titanium ? the
reporter quotes "we're 3, waymo, tesla and us" .. yet he's building a cuter,
faster obdII bridge I don't get it.

~~~
commaai
Those are the three players with actual networks of deployed self driving cars
today. Granted, we are in third with 73 cars (and 1000's on chffr), but well
ahead of every other startup. Waymo has around 200, we expect to pass them by
the end of the year.

In addition to this interface, we also give away source code to a driving
agent:
[https://github.com/commaai/openpilot](https://github.com/commaai/openpilot)

Looks like this when running (video from a user):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VN1YcC83nA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VN1YcC83nA)

~~~
narak
What about GM/Cruise's existing fleet of 50 with an additional 100+ on the
way? [1] All equipped with LIDAR which to my knowledge you and Tesla don't
have, but will need for level 5. I know Uber ATG also has a sizable fleet as
well.

I have a lot of respect for your technical chops and the iPhone/PlayStation
hacking you did back in the day, but the lofty claims here are hard to back
up. At least Tesla has high margin electric car sales to keep them alive while
they catch up to their claims.

It's easy to fool the lay public and tech journalists who don't have any
technical backgrounds, but there is a world of a difference between doing
fundamental AI research and development vs. patching together off the shelf
commodity hardware and wiring it all up with some python.

That said, I wish you all the luck, I think a16z is betting on an acquisition
like GM did with Cruise when they didn't really have anything that advanced
either.

[1] [https://electrek.co/2017/06/13/gm-self-driving-chevy-bolt-
ev...](https://electrek.co/2017/06/13/gm-self-driving-chevy-bolt-ev/)

------
brad0
TL;DR: it's a device that gathers metrics from the car sensors.

The product is aimed at hackers and car enthusiasts. You want to know your top
speed, 0 - 60 etc? This might be the device for you.

Afaik there's already products out there that do the same thing. This could be
at a lower price point though.

~~~
Meegul
You can find similar products that work over bluetooth for under $10 on
Amazon. I use an old smartphone on a mount to show all of the same information
using a third-party app - no need for an $88 proprietary dongle.

There doesn't seem to be anything new about this product other than marketing
and a high price tag. I'd love for that to not be the case, however. Maybe I'm
missing some features of it.

~~~
rjeli
From the README[0]:

It supports 3x CAN, 2x LIN, and 1x GMLAN. It also charges a phone. On the
computer side, it has both USB and Wi-Fi.

It uses an STM32F413 for low level stuff and an ESP8266 for Wi-Fi. They are
connected over high speed SPI, so the panda is actually capable of dumping the
full contents of the busses over Wi-Fi, unlike every other dongle on amazon.
ELM327 is weak, panda is strong.

[https://github.com/commaai/panda/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/commaai/panda/blob/master/README.md)

~~~
Meegul
Interesting. Seems to be more of an enthusiast data-focused product rather
than something aimed towards traditional car-folk then. Might be interesting
to play around with even if you don't want to contribute the data back to
comma.ai

------
kchhina
Excited about this. I've been looking for something like this for a while.
Tried a couple of different types of OBD-II adapters from Ebay, but trying to
get data from them over bluetooth or wifi was just a pain. Panda with a direct
interface to my laptop will enable me to get all the information I've been
trying to get from the OBD-II port of my car, specifically steering angles,
acceleration and braking. Using them together with feeds from a couple of
cameras, and some interesting applications can be hacked together.

~~~
ljf
Odd - I got the cheapest odb2 I could find on ebay and never had any issues
with it over Bluetooth using the Torque app for android.

~~~
kchhina
I was able to use the "apps" to get obd2 data's. What I wanted to do is get
acceleration, steering and breaking data and along with feeds from two cameras
try to train deep learning models. Getting that working over Bluetooth or wifi
was a pain due to poor documentation.

~~~
ljf
Cool - but since Torque can present that data for a whole range of ODB2
dongles, it must be achievable? Maybe reach out to those guys or reverse
engineer their app?

------
jonathankoren
So it's an ODB II dongle that made from what looks like parts from Sparkfun
and 3d printed case (Although, that's bit of wild speculation on my part),
sold at apparently 8x the price of competitors. Sure the ODB exports out some
common info, but isn't most of it encrypted and vendor specific? Also, calling
this and a camera "a self driving car kit" is an overstatement even for Silly-
Con Valley.

------
gehwartzen
As others have pointed out there are a TON of OBDII loggers on the market with
price points down to <$10. So maybe they make it slightly more universal by
interpreting more codes (?) but that seems to be mostly on the software side,
this is really still a device manufactured for probably $5.

It seems the real value for comma.ai is just collecting a huge amount of
driver data and then selling it to Autonomous car makers or generating
algorithms based or the data themselves. Either way, if that's the case why
sell it for $88??? sell it at cost ($5) or even give it away for free and just
quickly build a huge user base. Am I way off here?

~~~
roymurdock
As I understand it users don't necessarily opt in to contributing data to
comma's database. So there will be a large subset of hobbyists that just use
it to monitor their own driving data privately - these are the users that
comma needs to charge up front.

Plus, psychologically it feels like an investment with ROI in "comma points"
for those who do contribute their data, with some vague promise of a reward
later when someone (who?) decides to purchase comma points. So the upfront
cost is justified.

------
ramshanker
OK, so now there is a "fitbit for car". Yesterday it was "Uber for Garbage".

Service X (where X is an existing hit) for Area Y is getting popular.

~~~
Skunkleton
I am starting the Herbalife for Groceries. Would you like to signup as an
independent distributor in my downline?

------
blt
Comma.ai's autonomous driving software implements the main control loop in
Python. It's full of memory allocations. The project is far from serious
engineering.

~~~
agumonkey
Sometimes naively I believe that with enough hardware capabilities, lazy
software can provide its function...

------
philippnagel
Related, is anyone aware of an affordable OBD hardware simulator?

The ones I found are either pretty expensive (e.g.
[https://freematics.com/pages/products/freematics-obd-
emulato...](https://freematics.com/pages/products/freematics-obd-emulator-
mk2/)) or seem sketchy (e.g. [https://de.aliexpress.com/item/OBD-simulator-
OBD-development...](https://de.aliexpress.com/item/OBD-simulator-OBD-
development-and-testing-tools-ECU-simulator-MINI-
version-301/32794172958.html)).

I am also aware of
[https://github.com/carloop/simulator](https://github.com/carloop/simulator).
However I would prefer a one piece solution. Any tips?

------
flyingcoder
I remember George Hotz stating in an interview a year ago that he was going to
be a billionaire by the end of 2016. He has quite the ego, there's tons of
OBD-II adapters that have been around for a while and many successful
Kickstarter campaigns launching better OBD-II adapters.

------
Animats
This looks like the dongle Automatic [1] sells. That's just a data logger; it
doesn't do anything except record.

[1] [https://www.automatic.com/](https://www.automatic.com/)

------
jaclaz
I am not much into this, but I believe that to be really useful the OBD-II
PIDs (generic):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OBD-II_PIDs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OBD-
II_PIDs)

should be integrated with the ones by the given manufacturer on the specific
model, and AFAIK all the money is in the software that can read those non-
standard PID's.

And this is border-line (or downright just over the border) with hacking
and/or reverse engineering the manufacturer's own software.

------
syntaxing
Slightly off topic, but can someone here explain what in OpenPilot that makes
it so technically superior? Or is the (partial?) open source part of it the
most seductive part?

I only quickly looked over the source code so I am not sure if I missed
something. But looking at the top level code, it seems like something anyone
can accomplish after taking the Udacity SDC class (minus the CAN interfacing,
but that shouldn't be all that hard?)?

~~~
elmar
you have a closed source, big binary that is the predictive model, it is the
result of crunching all the data they have.

------
zeep
Can't you see most of Panda's information with a $6 bluetooth OBDII adapter?
(something like [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Super-Mini-
OBD2-OBDII-V2-1-Android-B...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Super-Mini-
OBD2-OBDII-V2-1-Android-Bluetooth-Car-Scanner-Adapter-Torque-
US-/112159207901))

~~~
boardwaalk
I have one of those; as far as I could tell they're crappy non-compliant
Chinese knockoffs of real ELM327 chips. I wasn't able to get much of anything
good or interesting out of it and had to get a Beaglebone with CAN bus cape to
get any farther (other problems with that but that's separate).

Hotz confirms if you read the comments on the article.

~~~
zeep
I don't see any comments on the article... I even tried a plain browser
without addons.

------
babo
While this plugs into the OBD-II port but the main use is to dump the CAN bus.
Comparing it with OBD-II dongles where the functionality is restricted to the
OBD part is misleading. It's far from universal, as not all cars expose all
the CAN bus at the OBD-II socket, but a good start for sure. I ordered mine.

------
jawns
I experimented with OBD-II devices for a while, paired with a phone app like
Torque, and I found that the lower-level information (e.g. data about any
particular air sensor) just wasn't interesting or useful to me. And other
useful info (e.g. speed) I can get from my dash or other sources.

Where these devices come in _extremely_ handy, however, is by allowing you to
look up the opaque fault codes that your car's computer produces when
something goes wrong.

For $10-$20 off eBay or similar online stores, you can get a device that will
tell you, for instance, when you have a cylinder misfire without having to go
to a mechanic. (You may have to go to a mechanic to get it fixed, but at least
you'll have a rough idea what needs fixing.)

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Some mechanics charge you $120 literally just to plug in their OBD2 adapter
and read the code, so yeah, even if it saves you one diagnostic fee, it's a
bargain.

Note that Hotz is claiming his readers will do a lot more than the
conventional ones you've seen before. Whether or not that's true remains to be
seen.

~~~
blackguardx
Most auto parts stores will read the codes for you for free. Some will even
loan you tools to fix your car. They are in the business of selling parts and
are happy to sell you whatever part you need to fix the problem.

~~~
cr0sh
The nice thing about Torque and an OBD-II dongle is the fact that it can help
you diagnose those "random" issues that only happen occasionally.

You set up Torque into logging mode, clear your codes, turn on the GPS and
mapping, and drive away. When your car does "that thing" take a note of the
time, then when you get home, go back thru the logs around that time mark, and
take a look at all the sensor data, plus any thrown codes. If you know your
car, and understand what is going on, it can help you to narrow down the
diagnosis.

While a regular code reader (or getting the codes read) will help you by
giving you the codes, being able to get the codes, timestamped in a log along
with sensor data can go much farther in telling you where a particular problem
lies.

While there are other code readers out there that will do this logging and
tracking too, they typically cost hundreds or thousands of dollars - well out
of the price range of most home mechanics.

There are many other things that Torque can do or be used for (for instance,
virtual gauges are a nice feature - you can set up an Android tablet with a
cluster of them giving you much more feedback than you can get from your
regular dash instrument cluster, and it's cheaper and easier than setting up a
bunch of physical gauges on a stock vehicle).

------
anindha
Combining vehicle data with a phone's GPS could improve navigation accuracy in
urban canyons [1].

Back in 2007 we read CAN data from a Toyota RAV4 to get wheel encoder,
steering angle, acceleration, speed, and braking data [2].

I am surprised Uber/Lyft aren't using something like this. I often see the car
location jumping around in SF FiDi.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_canyon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_canyon)
[2]
[http://www.acfr.usyd.edu.au/research/projects/others/darpa.s...](http://www.acfr.usyd.edu.au/research/projects/others/darpa.shtml)

~~~
commaai
Improved localization / nav is one of the goals of chffr. Through panda, we
can use the car sensors for dead reckoning.

Combined with the phone camera, we can get and keep a really precise location
fix.

~~~
anindha
Have you thought about releasing this as its own product which I could use in
an existing navigation app?

~~~
commaai
We don't plan on writing a nav app, the plan is just to improve the location
fix at the system level and work with all nav apps.

------
ex3ndr
Isn't ODB-II just doesn't have anything useful for self-driving? What's is
"fragile" part of ODB-II? How does this yet another dongle solve "fragile"
part? Isn't it just arduino-like board and ODB-II shield?

~~~
fenwick67
OBD2 is the connector and the protocols used on that connector. The vehicle
CAN bus is on the OBD2 port, and the "K-line", which is diagnostic only, is
also there.

~~~
ex3ndr
Not the full CAN bus, only very small subset of it, isn't it?

~~~
fenwick67
The connector has at least 1 CAN bus on it, some pins are "manufacturer
discretion" meaning the manufacturer may put CAN or other signals on the
connector.

Nowadays most vehicles have several CAN and LIN buses and it's unlikely that
all traffic gets routed to the OBD2 connector, but some stuff is. Again, it
depends on the manufacturer.

There are lots of standardized signals defined that a OBD device can request:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OBD-II_PIDs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OBD-
II_PIDs)

------
amits1995
There's an israeli start-up doing much more with that car data. telling you
about problems and more. and it costs as much as 20-30$
[https://engieapp.com/](https://engieapp.com/)

------
brian-armstrong
So it turns out geohotz is great at breaking other peoples' stuff and finds
making products is harder. Who knew? Soon a 16-year-old will find a massive
security vuln in this ODB bridge and the cycle will be complete

------
thebiglebrewski
This....doesn't appear to be that useful?

~~~
agumonkey
Or even new. It's an OBDII bridge.. except maybe with a software mindset
instead of an automobile one, thus some wifi chip (looks like an ESP32 on the
picture) and a cute form factor. I ... don't get it.

I thought hotz finally found his spot and excepted some small nuc like board +
a set of cam and sensors ..

------
id_rsa
I've been following Comma.ai since I read the Bloomberg article about George
hacking a self-driving car in his garage. While I have read the criticism on
HN and think it is reasonable, I must admit I'm rooting for George and his
team. I'm happy to see they launched this product and are continuing to make
progress after the NHTSA incident. I'm looking forward to testing their tech
myself.

------
kevinhiggins
Looks like they're just trying to get additional sensor data to train their
neural nets (crowd source the data). I'm not sure if a single camera from a
dash mounted mobile device plus vehicle control data is enough for training a
neural net for fully autonomous driving, but it's certainly valuable for
driver assist features.

------
goeric
He also said he will "ship" his product and badmouthed his competitors for not
shipping. Then he cancelled his product after one cease and desist. George is
a brilliant mind, but I hope he figures out how to become a better
entrepreneur. He has so much potential.

------
zitterbewegung
If you want some of the features of the Panda interface (not the cloud
connected dashcam) it seems like Automatic [1] seems to do the job. Any happy
users of Automatic?

[1] [https://www.automatic.com](https://www.automatic.com)

~~~
palmerit
I used automatic for a while. It was pretty limited, and pricey. I've been
using a panda for several weeks now, and FAR more capable. It probably boils
down to: do you want a pretty UI dumbing the info down for you, or do you want
the raw data so you can do things with it?

------
ex3ndr
I got it actually, they reimplemented ODB-II in a more stable manner to
provide better stability and performance, ELM327 is the only player on the
field and provide less CAN busses (they are just not connected at all)

------
ma2rten
This article seemed really incoherent to me.

I didn't understand what comma is trying to do and how selling 1000 "FitBits
for your car" to "car enthusiasts and hackers" for $88 helps to compete with
Waymo.

------
petraeus
Does this kid want to be rich, famous or ubiquitous? Because he will never
achieve any of that without playing politics.

------
grandalf
This is very exciting. I've used an Automatic adapter after seeing the HN
discount and the data is very interesting.

------
ilurkedhere
OK so it's a $4 ESP8266 and maybe something else that plugs into the OBDII
port. Why do I need this?

------
dogecoinbase
Given the absurd insecurity of the OBD II CAN interface on all modern
vehicles, it seems insane to install anything there with a wireless interface
on it.

~~~
agumonkey
aren't they read only sensors anyway ? no outside agent can fiddle with your
car through OBD2 .. I hope so

~~~
babo
This device works on the CAN bus, where you can actually issue commands, not
just listen. So this is a bad idea in that sense.

~~~
agumonkey
I'd never have guess there were actual effecting commands.. hmm

------
morogop
That's nonsense. if his claims were true, he could've sold the lot for nine or
ten figures to somebody who was willing to deal with NHTSA.

It is exceedingly foolish to believe George Hotz's extremely obvious lies.
George Hotz is a smart guy who made some big mistakes, and isn't man enough to
admit that he was lying.

~~~
dang
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14720083](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14720083)
and marked it off-topic.

------
morogop
If you mean what you say: buy this thing, install it on your car, and use it
daily.

I dare you.

Oh right, you'd never do that, because some tiny part of you knows that George
Hotz was lying his ass off about his tech, and that you'd have to be a crazy
person to trust such a flagrant liar with your life.

~~~
tinco
Yeah you're right. I want to buy it though, and then wait a couple of months
before plugging it into my own car. I'm just saying you can't just dismiss the
guy's ability because he comes across arrogant. He's proven he's a hacker, and
now he's trying to prove he's a maker as well.

Maybe this Panda thing is engineered really well, and the money and reputation
will get him to a point where he can run a nice company. Maybe not and this
things get some people killed and he will be thrown in jail for building a
recklessly unsafe product, I don't know. I don't own a car right now so all I
can do is talk big.

~~~
morogop
His arrogance is orthogonal to the issue.

The issue is that he was obviously lying. He claimed he was weeks away from
autonomous cars. If this was true, he would've sold the tech for a staggering
pile of cash.

Instead, all the evidence looks like he thought he could solve the problem on
his own, in record time. Then he made a pretty basic POC (able to handle a
small number of very simple conditions). Then he realized he couldn't do it.
And so he pretended that he'd solved a problem nobody else had, but wasn't
going to share or sell the answer with anybody else because the government is
bad.

Unfortunately, some people hate the government enough that they want to
believe this. But it's a dumb story and an obvious lie. George Hotz does not
have autonomous driving technology. He never did, and he never fucking will.
He's a snake oil salesman.

~~~
commaai
Autonomous vehicle technology, and it's free -->
[https://github.com/commaai/openpilot](https://github.com/commaai/openpilot)

Working, video by a user -->
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VN1YcC83nA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VN1YcC83nA)

Where's the snake oil?

~~~
zaroth
Very nice, but video cuts right when it would have gotten interesting!

~~~
commaai
Follow us on twitter, we have multihour periscopes of driving.
[https://twitter.com/comma_ai](https://twitter.com/comma_ai)

