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] 20 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (3 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.

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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] 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 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days 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 2 days ago

That's so wrong holy shit

[–] [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 2 days ago (7 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?

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[–] [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] 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.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago (4 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 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 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

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

Still, that video is good anti-musk press.

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

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

[–] [email protected] 156 points 2 days ago (59 children)

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

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

E. Lon Musk. Supah. Geenius.

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[–] Ulrich_the_Old 5 points 1 day ago

How are there still tesla fans?

[–] [email protected] 287 points 3 days ago (35 children)

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.

This has been known.

They do it so they can evade liability for the crash.

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[–] [email protected] 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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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago
[–] [email protected] 434 points 3 days ago (30 children)

Notice how they're mad at the video and not the car, manufacturer, or the CEO. It's a huge safety issue yet they'd rather defend a brand that obviously doesn't even care about their safety. Like, nobody is gonna give you a medal for being loyal to a brand.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 2 days ago (21 children)

And the president is driving one of these?

Maybe we should be purchasing lots of paint and cement blockades...

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