Elon Musk: Meep, meep
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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Very surprised Mark isn't... Super supportive of musk and Tesla.
He owns a Tesla and is rather wealthy at this point. Not to mention that he's Mormon. I'd expect him to be very conservative and all in on the grift.
Mark is a smart guy, I'm sure he walks great big circles around anything political, at least publicly.
His audience is everybody, aligning publicly with any kind of political flow is generally a bad idea if you want that to stay that way, because the only thing you'll likely achieve is shrinking your potential audience.
I would also be careful with the assumption that all conservatives agree with what's currently happening.
(Edit: Ope, I think I misunderstood you, my bad. Disregard my reply.)
What a world we're living in!
Observing a technical deficiency in a robotics platform requires political considerations. Even when a car drives into a fucking wall at 40MPH on camera, people are asking about the camera man's political party affiliation and not what's wrong with the car.
Wild!
out the camera man’s political party affiliation and not what’s wrong with the car.
We know what's wrong with the car. He was very clear about it. We mostly should have known it was coming.
I actually think the Tesla could be trained to stop for this, they certainly never trained it to detect this. As you get closer the perspective changes. it's slight, but probably fine for algo detection.
As far as political considerations, the REAL wild part is the actions of the current administration at less than 100 days in. It's difficult not to see things through the lense when the guy at the top is trying to dismantle the pardons of the previous president of people who weren't charged with crimes, while he pardoned the silk road guy.
Literally, every news-worthy action is peppered with politics now due to the incomprehensible actions at the top.
While Rober is officially non-committal to a political agenda:
He clearly and repeatedly supports education (this should not be a telling political statement)
He has created videos highlighting the importance of mental health and creativity, encouraging viewers to embrace their unique talents. (this should not be a telling political statement)
His projects often promote inclusivity and accessibility, making science and technology more approachable for diverse audiences. (this should not be a telling political statement)
NONE of these should be a telling political statement. Education should be paramount. Diversity should not be a political statement.
The current administration doing WHITE POWER SALUTES ON STAGE, shutting down education and REMOVING BLACK SERVICEMEN from the public internet are EXACTLY the kinds of things required to make all THIS a political statement.
Porque no los dos? I hate porch pirates and would love to sprinkle some in glitter. However, some porch pirates I'll assume are just poor kids. But I am intrigued by people wanting to go into a mortgage for a chance to end up pasted on a wall.
I would also be afraid of dying funny. You know what I mean? Like in old cars you would eat the steering wheel or get your guts removed by the center post of the steering wheel and right thru your spine. Not very funny. But on the Tesla steering wheel you could end up smashing your face right on the screen. Or if you're a woman, the implants could get sucked right into the two holes of the steering wheel. That would be awkward on a full body viewing.... Well it's a new bra style she was trying.... And then you get smacked in the face with a software glitch airbag. Wouldn't that be nice? Well at Least the steering wheel pit remover problem is solved. Give it a few hundred years and maybe someone will come up with an automated car that doesn't drive into walls.
Unfortunately when the vehicle in question is created by a company owned by a man operating a government agency, it's a valid question. He could have just never made the video, but making one that directly opposes the narrative of people you'd expect the "camera man's" political affiliation to be seems unusual.
Can't deny any of that.
Have I mentioned, I'm broadly surprised by how reasonable the conversations are here versus Reddit? Thanks for that, I think I misunderstood your initial comment
Rober is definitely a businessman out to make money and is very self-promoting and will accept just about anybody as a sponsor, but I can't think of anything he's done that's been out-and-out deceitful or political. And he really does have some engineering chops.
I think he's a good voice for this because he's been so intentionally apolotical, and even my right-wing family likes his stuff.
Though my YouTube crazy engineer of choice is Stuff Made Here. He spends months between videos, but the stuff he makes is awesome, and he shows off a lot more of the actual creative process. And his fabrication tool collection is insane for a home shop.
I’d expect him to be very conservative
We still don't know for sure. That video will likely become one of, if not his top-grossing videos. The topic and timeliness are absolute fire.
I give him some credit, though. It's a dicey time to throw Musk under the self-driving bus while showing that alternatives don't have the same problem.
They should just program it to drive through the painted tunnel but when another driver comes behind you they crash into it.
According to Ol' Elon the robo-taxi service has been a couple months away since 2017 or so. I can't imagine it's much closer now than then.
I think Rober just showed us why. Mowing down kids in weather is an unacceptable amount of risk.
Unacceptable risk to you. I’m guessing Elon is fully prepared to take the risk and minimise the consequences.
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It's right at the end of the tunnel they're diggin in CA
That's why they called it the "Coyote" dataset.
All these years, I always thought all self driving cars used LiDAR or something to see in 3D/through fog. How was this allowed on the roads for so long?
They originally the model S had front facing radar and ultrasonic sensors all round, the car combined the information to corroborate it's visual interpretation.
According to reports years ago the radar saved Tesla's from multiple pileups when it detected crashes multiple cars ahead (that the driver couldn't see).
Elmo in his infinite ego demanded both the radar and ultrasonics be removed, since he could drive with out that input so the car should be able to.. also it is cheaper.
Exactly, my previous car (BMW) once saved me in the fog by emergency braking for something I wasn't able to see yet. My current car (Tesla) shuts down almost all safety features when the camera's can't see anything, so I doubt it will help me in such situations. The only time my Tesla works well is in perfect conditions, but I don't live in California.
Exactly, my previous car (BMW) once saved me in the fog by emergency braking for something I wasn’t able to see yet.
If you were driving at a speed at which the low visibility would have gotten you into into an accident due to some obstable you weren't able to see yet, you were driving too fast. Simple, isn't it?
Is it that simple? Because in my situation it wasn't, I wasn't driving very fast and the situation changed quickly. I was just cruising and following the car in front of me that I could see, but as the fog quickly got thicker, the car in front of me had to emergency brake, and as did I. My car detected that quicker than I did, for which I'm grateful.
Yes it is that simple, however I will admit that sometimes we make mistakes, and in those scenarios, assistant systems are good to have. However, fog doesn't just "explode out of thin air", and if the car in front of you had to emergency brake and that meant you had to emergency brake as well, then it means you were not keeping a safe distance.
I used to drive a lot. I see how close people tailgate even when they are not trying to be aggressive - and I am not surprised that this leads to crashes. But almost all of them are ignoring basic safety rules they were taught - at least here in Germany. And since in some countries (like the fascist southern states of northern america, formerly USA) a driver's license basically involves no education at all in most places, more accidents happen. I have driven on the highways of the pre-fascist southern states of northern america, and the rate of dangerous driving combined with less control over the vehicle is much higher than in the average European country.
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I'd be very curious to know how much cheaper it is. Sure, there's R&D to integrate that with everything, but that cost is split across all units sold. It feels like the actual sensors, at this scale, can't add a significant amount to the final price.
I think it's all about the timeline. Tesla gambled on cameras before AI models became usable (the company most certainly committed itself to the camera sensors a few years before it became public). By the time automated driving models became usable, Tesla had tons of camera data to capitalize on, but presumably not the corresponding radar data (or not in a consistent manner), so rebuilding a multi-sensor dataset for AI training was probably not very appealing in terms of cost and time to market.
Back when Elon made avoiding LiDAR a core part of his professional personality, it was fairly expensive. But as any tech genius can tell ya, component prices drop rapidly for electronics.
Now, radar is dirty cheap. Everything has radar. Radar was removed from Teslas. A radar sensor for my truck is $75, probably much less at scale orders.
LiDAR sensors cost anywhere from $500-$1,500 for a vehicle of this type, near as I can tell (this type being Level 2 autonomy rather than something like a Waymo. A well-kitted out self-driving vehicle has 4 LiDAR sensors).
Here is the LiDAR module currently used on the Mercedes S-Class, it's $400 used: https://www.ebay.com/itm/285816360464
It's a hideously small cost-savings in 2025 for a luxury vehicle like a Tesla. Any rational company would've reversed course after the first stationary-object-strike fatality. Tesla is not a rational company.
I remember reading that tesla only uses cameras for it's self driving. My 2018 Honda uses radar for the adaptive cruise so the technology exists, musk is just an idiot.
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Honestly all the fails with the kid dummy were a way bigger deal than the wall test. The kid ones will happen a hundred times more than the wall scenario.
Some sort of radar or lidar should 100% be required on autonomous cars.
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Anyone with half a brain could tell you plain cameras is a non-starter. This is nearly a Juicero level blunder. Tesla is not a serious car company nor tech company. If markets were rational it would have been the end for Tesla.
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I love that one of the largest YouTubers is the one that did this. Surely, somebody near our federal government will throw a hissy fit if he hears about this but Mark’s audience is ginormous
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The rain test was far more concerning because it's much more realistic of a scenario. Both a normal person and the lidar would've seen the kid and stopped, but the cameras and image processing just isn't good enough to make out a person in the rain. That's bad. The test portrays it as a person in the middle of a straight road, but I don't see why the same thing wouldn't happen at a crosswalk or other place where pedestrians are often in the path of a vehicle. If an autonomous system cannot make out pedestrians in the rain reliably, that alone should be enough to prevent these vehicles from being legal.
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