this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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In the piece — titled "Can You Fool a Self Driving Car?" — Rober found that a Tesla car on Autopilot was fooled by a Wile E. Coyote-style wall painted to look like the road ahead of it, with the electric vehicle plowing right through it instead of stopping.

The footage was damning enough, with slow-motion clips showing the car not only crashing through the styrofoam wall but also a mannequin of a child. The Tesla was also fooled by simulated rain and fog.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I can’t wait for all this brand loyalty and fan people culture to end. Why is this even a thing? Like talking about box office results, companies financials and stocks…. If you’re not an investor of theirs, just stop. It sounds like you’re working for free for them.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

I think it comes from Depression era kids who found a brand that didn’t create cheap junk and so they spread the word. But of course, that has been co-opted by capitalist pirates who buy a brand famous for quality, gut expensive manufacturing with the cheap alternatives and then count on making a profit before word-of-mouth catches up to them.

Sears retailer. Gibson guitars. Off the top of my head. Thousands more examples over the years.

My guess as for why people do it today was because their grandparents or previous generations did that as a survival necessity but now we are seeing the behavior warped from its original purpose. Like opening and raising your right hand to show you had no weapon became a friendly wave hello nowadays. Maybe that’s not an analogous example but you should get the idea.

[–] ameancow 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I can’t wait for all this brand loyalty and fan people culture to end.

My blackest pill in my adult life was the realization that we've leveled off as a species. This is as good as it gets.

Our brains made monumental leaps in development over the last half-million years, with the strongest changes being made during the last ice-age, times when resources were scarce, and survival was extremely difficult and humanity was caught up in many wars and fights with other humans and animals and weather alike. Our brains were shaped to do a couple of things better than others: invent stories to explain feelings, and join communities. These adaptations worked amazingly, it allowed us to band together and pool resources, to defend each other and spot signs of danger. These adaptations allowed us to develop language and agriculture and formed our whole society, but lets not forget what they are at heart: brains invent stories to explain feelings, and we all want social identity and in-group. Deeply. This shit is hardwired into us.

Nearly every major societal problem we have today can be traced back to this response system from the average human brain to either invent a story to explain a discomfort, and those discomforts are often the simple desire to have a group identity.

Our world will get more complicated, but our brains aren't moving. We can only push brains so far. They're not designed to know how to form words and do calculus, we trained our brains to do those things, but our systems are far more complicated than language and calculus. Complex problems produce results like lack of necessities, which create negative feelings, which the brain invents stories to explain (or are provided stories by the ruling class.)

So this is it. Nobody is coming. Nothing is changing.

We MIGHT be able to rein in our worst responses over enough time, we MIGHT be able to form large enough groups with commonalities that we achieve tenuous peace. But we will never be a global species, we will never form a galactic empire, we will never rise above war and hate and starvation and greed. Not in our current forms at least. There's no magic combination of political strategies and social messages that will make everyone put down their clubs and knives.

This is it, a cursed, stupid primate on a fleck of dust spinning around a spark in a cloud of sparks, just looking at every problem like it's either a rival tribe or a sabertooth-cat hiding in the bushes. Maybe if we don't destroy ourselves someday our AI descendants will go out into the larger universe, but it certainly won't be us.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Well said. Thank you for sharing. This is a nice piece to help those to self reflect once in a well, it feels….. grounding. Curious what the positive sequel would be…

[–] ameancow 2 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Also, I realized recently that because all of our current stories, all of our current narratives of "forces of good versus evil" and all the political drama and inexplicable human decisions we see being made in the highest levels of power, are actually really dumb stories of people just saying shit and trying to be liked... this isn't even new, these people doing all this stupid, absurd bullshit are genetically identical to the creatures who ruled empires in the past, who led armies, who had songs written about them going down thousands of years... so that tells me that all our great epics are probably mostly bullshit, and the reality was a lot more stupid.

The idea that most of history was stupid people doing stupid things and then writing fancy stories about it later, that is also strangely reassuring. These are just people, just idiots like the rest of us. Everyone is just improvising as we go and trying to make the best of it.

[–] ameancow 2 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Curious what the positive sequel would be…

On good days, I remember that the sheer finality and certainty of the state of our world, our universe, the idea that we may not even have free-will at all and this is all just an inexplicable, passing moment of a universe becoming aware of itself, the grandure of it does more for me than any religious ideas or poems or songs or inspirational messages. It's wholly absurd and beautiful and we exist in the intersection of scales that are so immense they cannot be fathomed by our primitive minds... these ideas make all the struggles, pains and hardships I experience feel a lot less tangible.

I am aware that a lot of this sensation is simple disassociation from depression, but it's not necessarily a bad thing, disassociation is either a survival trick to keep us alive when our minds get the best of us, or it's a consequence of something actual and special inside us, a type of awareness that seems to reside just outside of the things we can quantify and explain, a sum greater than its parts. Disassociation is like standing just outside yourself watching the story unfold, and it used to terrify me, now I realize it can't be helped, we're all on tracks and it's just a ride. But if you look around, it can be a beautiful ride, even the shitty parts exist as a strange kind of reminder that the universe doesn't owe us anything, take it or leave it, it's all just experiences.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Of course it disengages self driving modes before an impact. Why would they want to be liable for absolutely anything?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It’s a farce that this protects them from any liability

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

It doesn't guarantee them protection from liability, but it makes it easier to muddy the waters.

They never have to claim that autopilot or self driving was on during a crash in any comment to the press, or the courts. They never have to admit that it was directly the result of the crash, only that it "could have" led to the crash.

It just makes PR easier, and allows them to delay the resolution of court cases.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I saw the video and I have two points:

  1. Yes it plays like an infomercial for lidar. So take that portion with some skepticism. I can think of some issues exclusive to lidar like 2+ lidar cars blinding each other which needs to be solved, e.g. some kind of light pattern encoding to mask out unwanted signals.
  2. It absolutely 100% demonstrates the issue with camera-only technology in Tesla vehicles.

Teslas used to have cameras + radar but they cheaped out and removed the radar. I think it would have passed all the tests if they still had the front facing radar but they don't. The problem with cameras alone is obvious - they can't see what they can't see and probably don't have an innate sense to slow down if there is rain, fog, ice or whatever else that might cause a human to.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Are there no standards for minimum required sensors on a car to get a "self-driving" badge?

Every other field, especially in the automotive industry, has such strict standards.. Radar should be a minimum

[–] [email protected] 141 points 2 days ago (6 children)

I hope some of you actually skimmed the article and got to the "disengaging" part.

As Electrek points out, Autopilot has a well-documented tendency to disengage right before a crash. Regulators have previously found that the advanced driver assistance software shuts off a fraction of a second before making impact.

It's a highly questionable approach that has raised concerns over Tesla trying to evade guilt by automatically turning off any possibly incriminating driver assistance features before a crash.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It’s a highly questionable approach that has raised concerns over Tesla trying to evade guilt by automatically turning off any possibly incriminating driver assistance features before a crash.

That is like writing musk made an awkward, confused gesture during a time a few people might call questionable timing and place.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 day ago

That's so wrong holy shit

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Yeah but that's milliseconds. Ergo, the crash was already going to happen.

In any case, the problem with Tesla autopilot is that it doesn't have radar. It can't see objects and there have been many instances where a Tesla crashed into a large visible object.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 days ago (7 children)

Don't get me wrong, autopilot turning itself off right before a crash is sus and I wouldn't put it past Tesla to do something like that (I mean come on, why don't they use lidar) but maybe it's so the car doesn't try to power the wheels or something after impact which could potentially worsen the event.

On the other hand, they're POS cars and the autopilot probably just shuts off cause of poor assembly, standards, and design resulting from cutting corners.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 day ago (5 children)

if it can actually sense a crash is imminent, why wouldn't it be programmed to slam the brakes instead of just turning off?

Do they have a problem with false positives?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

if it was european made, it would slam the brakes or swerve in order to at least try and save lives since governments attempt to regulate companies to not do evil shit. Since it american made it is designed to maximise profit for shareholders.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I don't believe automatic swerving is a good idea, depending on what's off to the side it has the potential to make a bad situation much worse.

I'm thinking like, kid runs into the street, car swerves and mows down a crowd on the sidewalk

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Does anyone else get the heebies with Mark Rober? There's something a little off about his smile and overall presence.

[–] JokklMaster 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I believe he's one of the very many YouTubers who's a Mormon.

Edit: https://youtu.be/3Bcn0TFAi6E

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Yeah, he's over-positive, it's unnerving.

Still, that video is good anti-musk press.

[–] Soleos 10 points 1 day ago

The hyper-positivity and enthusiasm is because his content is aimed at kids as much as it is adults. A lot of kid-oriented science content I remember, from tv shows/documentaries to guest speakers, to science-centre guides had that affect.

[–] boaratio 15 points 1 day ago

Did you know he used to work at NASA? He very rarely mentions it. /s

[–] zzx 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] Death_Equity 4 points 1 day ago

Him being a Mormon makes him make a lot more sense. He very much has a classic Mormon vibe.

[–] madcaesar 156 points 2 days ago (58 children)

My 500$ robot vacuum has LiDAR, meanwhile these 50k pieces of shit don't 😂

[–] rbm4444 32 points 2 days ago

Holy shit, I knew I'd heard this word before. My Chinese robot vacuum cleaner has more technology than a tesla hahahahaha

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

How are there still tesla fans?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 days ago (4 children)

E. Lon Musk. Supah. Geenius.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Man these cars don`t have a Radar ? Only eyes like most of the animals? Not even as a backup ? Not talking about Lasers, but Radar? Truck drivers, better not paint a scenery on the back of your truck.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Allegedly they used to, but Musk felt that vision should be enough because humans don't have radar either and they're just fine.

https://www.drive.com.au/news/elon-musk-overruled-tesla-engineers-radars-cameras/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Tesla use to have radar I believe, musk over ruled teslas using Lidar and insisted on vision only. Lidar powered autonomous vehicles like Waymo are already cruising the streets unsupervised beating tesla.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

LIDAR generally works better at relatively short distances (like less than a km). Several other car companies are going with LIDAR and do alright. Musk thinks cameras with image recognition would be sufficient without anything else. It goes without saying that Musk is very wrong.

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[–] buddascrayon 46 points 2 days ago (5 children)

It's a highly questionable approach that has raised concerns over Tesla trying to evade guilt by automatically turning off any possibly incriminating driver assistance features before a crash.

So, who's the YouTuber that's gonna test this out? Since Elmo has pushed his way into the government in order to quash any investigation into it.

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