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Cake day: November 4th, 2023

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  • The stock is down because the Overton window has shifted. Two or three months ago, AI was the future and question that was lunacy. Now it is a mainstream point of discussion that AI is a giant bubble, that it is entirely likely to pop at some point, and that the efforts pushing it so hard are bordering on irrational given the actual capability of the product.

    If AI bubble pops, Nvidia loses. No more big tech companies with blank checks and open orders for AI chips that basically amount to ‘please send us as many AI chips as you can manufacture whatever it costs we will pay’.

    And, if anything there may be a surplus of AI chips and hardware in the market as companies that have built entire data centers for AI suddenly realize that paying millions for electricity so online idiots can generate videos of cats racing Roombas down F1 tracks is not a trillion-dollar business model.




  • Problem is that Samsung is like Apple- a shitton of people just blindly buy the latest Samsung whatever with zero research.
    So you have a bunch of other companies trying to stand out in one way or another- Motorola for example just released a phone that brings back the 3.5mm headphone jack. And you have a ton of cheap Chinese companies that may or may not offer any software support after purchase but have interesting form factors.

    That makes it hard for the little guys to get the kind of sales volume needed to justify the development and tooling for a really cool flagship phone.

    Personally while phones today are far more capable, I think phone designs peaked in the mid 2000s. Mainly because you had actual innovation in design– wildly different form factors. There were a few phones that flipped open like a laptop with a physical keyboard, a handful that slid open to reveal a blackberry-style keyboard, many had SDIO ports or other ability to clip on expansion modules, etc. Phones had fun features- there was one that could do an early ‘google pay’ type thing by pulsing a magnetic field to pretend to be a magnetic credit card stripe for a swipe reader. A lot of the early Samsung phones had IR blasters so you could turn TVs on and off. There were a couple designed for gaming that were laid out like a game pad. Manufacturers weren’t afraid to experiment and the result was some really cool stuff.

    Sadly that’s all gone today. HTC (which made many of those cool phones) was driven out of the market by Apple and Samsung, so now virtually all phones are identical flat bricks.
    I see a glimmer of hope with flip phones and foldables, but not much. They’re all just excuses to


  • FSD has routinely plowed into children, emergency vehicles etc.

    You are using this word ‘routinely’, but I do not think that it means what you think it means.

    Can you give me, say, 10 incidents of this? Of a Tesla confirmed to be on FSD driving full speed into a child, emergency vehicle, etc?

    FSD used to ‘routinely’ be overly cautious and slow down when not necessary, but I don’t think it’s driving into things.

    I’d also point out the driver remains responsible for the car and an eye movement camera prevents distracted driving, but I digress.

    Other companies have implemented these more limited systems (that often include better sensors such as lidar) not because they can’t do it but rather because they are more cautious about brazenly lying to people about the capabilities of their system.

    Other companies simply have less capable systems.
    If I go and buy a current product Tesla, I can have it drive me home and chances are I won’t have to touch any controls. In a few cases, new production Teslas literally deliver themselves to the new owner’s driveway. Can any other automaker say the same?



  • Significantly changed. Even in the last few months. I would encourage you to go do a test drive. Night and day from the type of experience you have.
    The driver monitoring now uses a camera. If you are looking at the road, it doesn’t ask you to jerk the wheel at all.
    Speed control is much more organic and considers turns, hills, etc. The machine vision on the cameras is different as well, it uses a processing technique called occupancy networks to produce 3D data out of the 2D camera images.

    The one concern is you list speed in km, the current full self-driving software is not available in all countries and may not be available in yours, which might mean if you do a test drive you are still on the same very basic system you had before.


  • The core issue, IMHO, is a mixture of lack of critical thinking and intellectual laziness, reinforced by algorithms and echo chambers. You see it in almost any contentious debate these days, including things like politics, but it’s pretty much everywhere.

    Whatever my opinion is, various algorithms will figure that out and feed me a solid stream of crap that agrees with me because that’s what I will click on and engage with. Every time I see an article that reinforces my opinion it gives me a little hit of dopamine that I am right and so I conclude that I am right and everybody smart agrees with me because my position is obviously the right one.
    Meanwhile the guy on the other side of the issue has the exact same experience and thus is convinced that he is right and everybody smart agrees with him.

    Combine this with an educational system that is teaching the test rather than teaching to think, and the very simple thought process of ‘what if I’m wrong? What if I don’t have all the details?’ simply doesn’t occur in an awful lot of people.

    Elon Musk is a perfect example. A few years ago, he was a genius eccentric billionaire working to make the planet a better place with green technology and electric cars. Then he joined up with Trump, and suddenly he is a fraudster using Daddy’s money to bully his way into companies and taking credit for their success. The rockets are bad, the cars are bad, the tunnels are bad, the brain chip is bad, and all these things always were bad from the beginning because it’s easier to retcon than to acknowledge your position changed because of politics.

    The fact is, in this age of information there is really no good excuse for ignorance. The information is always out there, if you put even a little effort into finding it. Yes it requires waiting through a lot of crap and slop, But it’s out there. And as you say you can just head down to your local dealer and ask for a test drive, and then you have real empirical data to base an argument on. Not that anyone would do that, because to them, their opinion is just as valid as my first hand experience.


  • Consider the difference between supervision and intervention.
    All production Teslas need human supervision, this is enforced with driver monitoring systems as a safety procedure. But the current versions of FSD, released in the last few months, can often navigate through most or all driving situations without human intervention. So the computer will make sure you are paying attention, but will in most cases execute the drive perfectly without making mistakes that require the human to take over.

    There’s plenty of videos on YouTube check some of them out :)




  • There is a significant difference between lane control and FSD. Lane control just keeps you in the lane so you don’t have to actively steer. FSD actually drives the car, changes lanes, makes turns, stops for traffic lights and stop signs, navigates intersections, etc. With the current v14, you can get in your car, type in a destination, and then not steer or push the pedals at all and the car will take you to a parking space at your destination. Lane control does not do that. I’m not aware of any other company that does that.



  • For the average person to reassume the cognitive load of driving and awareness of what’s around then

    There’s the disconnect.

    You’re starting cold. Like, you just woke up from a nap, to find you’re on the highway and have to take over. Then maybe it takes 20-40 seconds.

    That’s not the case for a Tesla driver. The driver is required (and it’s enforced by attention monitoring) to stay situationally engaged.

    Serious question- have you ever actually USED FSD? In a five minute test drive, or ideally for a long car trip? I believe that you are speaking from a position of ignorance, IE you are speaking factually about something you aren’t familiar with the facts of.

    The VERY FIRST TIME I drove a Tesla, I turned Autopilot (that’s what there was back then) on and off several times in the space of a drive. There was no 40 second anything.


  • Funny, I don’t feel scammed.

    Drives better than any car I’ve owned previously. The ‘fuel’ cost is less than 1/2 of an equivalent gas car- and that’s if I’m using peak hour Superchargers. The maintenance is significantly less- no oil changes, timing belts, etc, just rotate tires and change cabin air filters. And the car drives itself when I want it to.

    So if by ‘getting scammed’ you mean ‘have a car that costs way less to operate, is far more reliable, has more safety features, has more functionality, has a gas pump in my garage, and I can preheat it in my garage without dying of CO poisoning’ then yeah absolutely I’ve gotten scammed and I’d love to be scammed like this more frequently :D



  • A fair position.

    In the current system, you are still responsible for the vehicle, including a responsibility to take over if/before it does something stupid.
    So if you frame it as ‘driving is my responsibility, and this is a tool that helps me meet that responsibility’ I think it’s a positive.

    A LOT of people will, and do, and have, looked at FSD (and its predecessor systems like Autopilot) as ‘I don’t want/need to drive, I’ll let the machine do it (even if the machine isn’t safe)’. These are the kind of people who hung weights on their steering wheel so the car thought they were paying attention while they dozed off (that’s why the cabin cameras became a thing).


  • As the parent commenter who actually drives the Tesla, this is absolute bullshit. It does not take me any 40 seconds to reestablish control. FSD is not push the button and take a nap. If it was, it might take me 40 seconds to wake up, take a sip of coffee, stretch and yawn, tilt my chair back up, and then look around the car. But that is not the case.

    FSD requires driver attention to the road. Even if the computer is driving, I am still paying attention to what is going on and if anything maintaining a higher level of situational awareness because I can spread my attention around the car without having to focus on staying in the lane. If I want to take over I literally just do it, apply any control input and I’m back in control. Turn the wheel, hit the gas, hit the brake, the car responds immediately.

    Driving on residential streets I will often go in and out of FSD frequently, the version I have is not as good with complex intersections and knowing when it is our turn for example. So I’ll let it drive along and stay in the lane, then when we get to the intersection I’ll take over, then when we get to the other side I’ll go back on FSD. There is no 40 second delay anywhere.

    I would strongly encourage you to go test drive the car. I’m not saying buy one, I’m saying just so that you can understand what exactly the system does and does not do. Don’t take that knowledge from what you read online, much of it written by people with an agenda either pro-Tesla or anti-Tesla. Go experience it for yourself and decide for yourself based on first hand knowledge If it’s a dangerous piece of shit or a useful tool.


  • Finally an actual intelligent question that isn’t just ‘fuck Tesla’.

    FSD has gotten very very good. On the highway, it is a better driver than I am. I have had my car for a few years, I have driven many hundreds of hours on FSD, and it has only really tried to do something stupid twice, both of them some time ago on much older software. I don’t even have the most recent software because my car is computer is generation 3, I’m running the last one that was available for HW3 (version 12) but I have a lot of time on it so I am quite familiar with what it can and cannot do.
    As such, I gain trust by experience, by watching it perform. So I know which situations I can trust it to do the right thing, and which situations I cannot.

    That means in one of the situations where I trust it, such as on the highway, I can turn it on and leave it the task of staying in lane and maintaining speed. I can focus my attention then on maintaining overall situational awareness of the world around the car. Even if I am doing something else like eating a sandwich, which would otherwise distract my attention and make me a less safe driver, I feel the result is overall more safe because the computer is watching 360° around the car and I am maintaining situational awareness of what I can see. I believe this creates the most safe situation.

    Using highway driving like that, there have been a couple situations where the car reacted to something that I hadn’t even seen yet and potentially avoided an accident. For example, there was one situation where a very reckless driver was coming up from behind in the right lane and merging into our lane. I didn’t see it because I was looking forward, Tesla did because the cameras are looking everywhere. Tesla’s reaction was to slow down and change lanes away from the guy, which was the correct response. The car started reacting before I was even aware of the threat, and because the car had already cleared the space it was changing lanes into, it was able to start that lane change faster than I could because I would have looked over the shoulder first…

    There have also been a few situations where I reacted to something the car was not reacting to yet and while it would not have resulted in an accident, it did increase safety by my intervention. Basic example is I am in the far right lane, there is an entry exit lane to the right which is ending and I know it is ending but the car doesn’t necessarily. I know the car slightly ahead and to the right of me is going to have to merge into my lane, so I manually slow down the car to give him a space to come in whereas Tesla would have just maintained speed and he would have had to slow down and go behind me.

    I would strongly encourage you to disregard a lot of The crap you read in the news and online, much of it written by people who intrinsically hate Elon and anything he has ever touched, and go test drive the car. I’m not saying go buy the car, I’m saying go have the experience of actually using FSD so you can see first hand exactly what it is like.