What did I just (halfway) read? This person is incoherent and rambling, raptured with their own brilliance.
There may be solid points in there, I will never know. I automatically cannot take anyone as serious who writes this way. They do not want to be taken seriously. They want to be congratulated on their keen observations.
I do not disagree that I may lack sufficient background for this. It was clearly written for "those in the know," people who already share a common viewpoint and vocabulary, and only differ on minor nuance. A bit like getting a bunch of mechanics to argue about cars.
In this regard, the writing is definitely rambling and incoherent. It's one big mutual academic exercise (I am avoiding the use of a sexual term here).
Most articles written by experts are written for those "in the know." To extend your analogy, I'd much rather read a bunch of mechanics discussing the repairability of various cars than a bunch of lay people sharing anecdotal experiences. If I didn't understand the jargon and their concerns, I'd assume that they'd spent a lot more time thinking about these problems and possess insights that I don't have.
If I didn't have a software background, I'd likely find much of the more interesting articles here to be similarly dense and impenetrable, because expert discussion often assumes a certain level of expertise from the reader.
This is the same type of thinking that prevents most developers from working in safety-critical fields. The presence of a feature, or even its impressive capabilities, is/are not what constitutes "performance." It's also the same type of thinking that gets Tesla drivers decapitated or slammed into an abutment.
That would have an acceptable point to make if FSD was not capable of safely doing what all other ADAS systems can do, but it obviously can. It's just that Tesla has no interest in restricting its features and get L3 approval for such a small subset of driving.
If today you claim FSD V12 is "behind" the lane keeping assist of other manufacturers, that is just delusion, I don't know what to tell you.
I'm truthfully not understanding whether you've missed the point or if you're so interested in defending Tesla that you choose to look past it.
I'm not making a claim about relative feature capabilities (yes, having replied in this specific thread makes that confusing, but that's where your comment was). I'm making a claim that the vast majority of developers do not know how to judge a system's safety.
As an example of this from you, and for a more critical view of Tesla from me, I'll say that when I look at Tesla's capabilities, I could not make a claim that it does anything safely. Safety implies that the system knows its limits and refuses to operate outside of them. This is definitely not Tesla's way. Else it would be impossible, for example, to have sun blind spots make it not "see" a semi.
My point stands: just because Tesla chooses to make FSD an L2 system at the moment doesn't mean that it's unable to act safely in the same scenarios as for instance Mercedes L3. So concluding that FSD is behind Mercedes is delusional. If you actually look at evidence available, (the thousands of videos available for FSD, and the ... tens available for other brands), and still claim FSD is behind, that is delusional.
I'm defending Tesla because these comments are just insanity, and it points to an extreme anti-Tesla or Elon bias, which is very common these days. If you can't impartially evaluate a piece of technology that is clearly more advanced in every possible way, you really need to reflect.
I don't quite understand how anyone could actually compare systems from different vendors. The failure modes aren't something the vendors have been able to identify in advance of a cataclysmic event.
So I agree with your "delusional" statement, and also consider your remarks of the same caliber. You cannot determine a system's safety by watching videos.
Think how many videos there would be by now of the 737max taking off, flying, and landing if airplanes were as hip and new as robotic drivers.
While not really being one who cares personally about the example here, I would not give a tool a name that I full well know will offend the sensibilities of some who will use it. That would make me a jerk, no matter how funny or whimsical I may find it.
Even when poking fun at myself, I choose names of projects carefully. It's pretty easy to not be a jerk, at least in this way.
> I full well know will offend the sensibilities of some who will use it
How could you possibly know this, where do you draw the line?
For something people, "Hacker News" is surely offensive because "hacker" is generally thought of as a negative term (Yes, I know our meaning, others generally don't).
GitHub could also be offensive to some, "git" after all is as much of a swear-word as "fck".
An early-90s textbook I read about encryption said that some people were disgusted hearing the word 'decrypt' for the first time because a crypt is a place where dead bodies were stored. They suggested (to those offended) to use the word cipher instead ;)
Yeah, they mention the cost of technical debt, but they don't talk about the returns from the technical debt. How much value was created by going into technical debt? Unless we know that, we have no way of determining if it is a bad thing or not.
All my life, it has been common parlance among every person I have ever spoken with to refer to a depleted battery as a "dead" battery.
When someone announced that their cell battery is dead, I have never once in my life heard someone ask for clarification on whether the battery was incapable of charging or is simply depleted. I have also never once heard a correction of the person with the depleted battery when they announce that they have charged their phone.
I have also heard these same speech patterns pertaining to vehicles. It is odd to demand that a written work that is authored for popular consumption not to use the popular parlance.
Question, not argument: what is the definition of "super cold?" Asking because in my area, which is not an area associated with bitter cold, we have been in sub-20F temperatures for a week, and overnights are down to sub-10F. My PHEV has not done well in this.
This area sees these temperatures for a total of, I'd guess, 3 weeks (non-contiguous) annually. There's usually a couple days of around 0F each year (and if it goes lower than that, it sticks around for several days). Some years, we get 4-6 weeks of such cold. Basically everywhere from Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, and north of New York will see the same or worse.
Sorry for the long explanation. I want to calibrate on what "very cold" means to an EV.
The latest Tesla heat pumps can extract heat from the air to heat the battery and cabin down to -10C. Past that, they have to use resistive heating which is much less efficient. I would say that’s where the “cold” line begins, and of course the colder it is the more battery you have to waste. Last weekend I took a 3 hour round trip (starting with 90% charge) in -30C and had to charge only for 5 minutes to complete the trip.
Why not? Each project has a unique blend of acceptable risks and non-functional requirements. I promise you, you'd hate C++ if you had to write each project, safety critical or not, according to the least common denominator feature set for safety critical domains.
The only solution is to have a crystal ball.