skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Is this the new motto for autonomous vehicles? Move fast and break bones?

With these minor bugs, Tesla seems to be doing a solid job of poisoning the well for self-driving cars. I'd like to see them explain how their competitors should not be tarred with the same brush, once the political backlash hits.

It doesn't matter how many disclaimers you give before you turn on autopilot - a driver who focused on driving the car (As opposed to letting autopilot cruise) would have probably noticed a tractor driving across the road on a bright, sunny day.

It's a dangerous system. Instead of arguing about the trolley problem, I'd first like to see a car be good at making decisions that save its passengers.
Was watching CNBC live, they devoted maybe 15-20 minutes to it.
Three reasons to rank life over art
You can use a radar, a laser, or even a regular camera (which is what Teslas have I believe).
Tesla's Autopilot uses a radar unit, a front-facing camera, and twelve ultrasonic sensors on the front and back bumper. The ultrasonic sensors are short range and are for detecting adjacent cars and obstacles while parking, the camera is used for detecting lanes, and the camera and radar work together to detect cars.

The radar is low to the ground and probably doesn't pick up a trailer that's high off the ground. The camera could, but not if contrast is too low. (And I'm not sure if the software is able to recognize the side of a trailer anyway.)
There was a videoreport on this startup last year by Tweakers.net: https://tweakers.net/video/10249/een-camera-die-geluid-visua...
(it's in Dutch)
Clint (or @dang if it's too late for Clint to edit the OP):

Can you please update the OP to include this:

http://GoFundMe.com/RayJennings

Put it on its own line like that, near the top.

You have many up-votes (probably thousands of readers), but only a few donations. This might be because the URL is easy to miss.

A lot of people skim large posts.
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Well more like Dreamweaver is so far behind that it's trying to at least catch up a little to stay in the rearview mirror. Developers with a any design background probably started with Frontpage, then Dreamweaver then maybe Coda, and if they code for a living they most likely went to TextMate, then went to Sublime and now everyone is moving to Atom. (of course devs who don't like Guis use VIM or other alternatives).

On paper, a lot of the features Dreamweaver is adding like css code peak is nice, but something that Atom and others can simply add as a plugin if users want it. Dreamweaver is bloatware and won't be gaining much of any modern Atom users, but rather a good solution for people who don't know how to code well but their job require them to interact with code so having a heavy GUI like DW can help them get by.

At least Adobe is trying!
http://tvgo.xfinity.com/live/network/cnbc
They could have titled it "Tesla Safety" -- which is what the article is about, and opened with an acknowledgement of the tragedy, instead of the tacky bait-and-switch headline.
I feel 'A Tragic Loss' sets the tone for the remaining highly technical overview, instead of the technical breakdown seeming tone-deaf, it added tone until getting to the concluding paragraph.

Unfortunately, fortunately, Tesla is having to educate people and being very clear to not allow room for panic and unwarranted fear mongering.

I would say it is as to the point as it can be, and that it is heartfelt.
> Anecdotally many academic cryptographers are female.

Really? I feel like the prominent papers I read are largely by men. I have no hard stats, just my impression.
Most of the problem is defining "where [the profits] are made".
How to Get Quality Developers to Work on Your Startup for Free
The thing about self driving cars is that every accident will have a wealth of information in regards to how it occurred and the decision making that went into it. Once we understand and correct the problem every subsequent car will be safer. This is not the case with humans whom regularly fail to learn from consequences to other humans.

Imagine if the first time someone fell asleep at the wheel and crashed, you could just tell everyone "hey don't fall asleep at the wheel". And it just never happened again.
TSA won't buy Analogic's Cobra CT scanner that could reduce wait times
This is a very weak response.
This release only happened because Tesla knew it would make headlines, and wanted to get out in front before a sensationalized story gets out first.

Other auto accidents are non-interesting to the public, but this one involved automated driving.
Human drivers do this kind of thing with great frequency. As long as the system is at least as good as a human driver at this stuff, I'm happy with it. Actually, scratch that: as long as the system combined with me is at least as good as a human driver, I'm happy with it.
Wow. I'm speechless.

I do hope they are able to learn more from this. This is just a bad coincidence of environment meets chance and someone died because of it.

I do think computer vision still has a but further to go. A white trailer and a white sky shouldn't be a problem. But everyday I'm impressed with how human sight can find and lock into the most obscure details. Like I've been sunblinded before and yet I knew something was in front of me because I noticed a grey shadow on grey asphalt and immediately hit the brakes.

We're almost there but not quite.
As long as emotions drive short term investors, which influences the stock price, which is extremely important for their success and expansion plans.

Already down $6/share in after hours trading.
> How long to they plan to keep doing this?

So long as every Tesla accident makes the homepage of CNBC, unlike the millions that occur in other makers' vehicles.

Tesla puts out an immediate PR, and the breaking news that went up on all the financial sites included quotes from it nearly as fast.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/30/us-regulators-investigating-t...
This should literally always be the top comment until it's explained how to handle the tremendous cost.
Other premium automakers have automatic braking and pre-collision systems that take effect regardless of whether the (enhanced) cruise control is engaged.

We have seen from other incidents that Tesla's autobraking will not engage when autopilot is disabled (potentially by tapping the brakes), which is contrary to widespread user expectation -- disclaimers notwithstanding.

However, in this particular case, it was the obstruction detection that failed. Based on their blog post disclaimer, it appears to be a visual sensing system; eye-height radar-based system used by most other manufacturers would have correctly detected the obstruction.

Is there an industry standard (yet) for the efficacy and behavior that these systems must meet?
Yes this is in really poor taste. I'm sure it's very comforting to the deceased's family to know that safety features could have saved their life, had the angle of impact been different.
What if you get into a collision while you are reading all the text in that acknowledgement box?
Note that the way you expressed it, essentially the only way to contribute to society is by working a job.

Note the way I expressed it, the emphasis is on contributing. Your particular spin strikes me as an eagerness to oppose a particular POV, then you go on to project that POV onto me. I don't thrive as well when contributing as a volunteer, which I did when under employed, as when I have a full time job. Keep in mind the efficient market hypothesis. Most of the jobs constituting valuable contributions are going to be paid. There are going to be exceptions, of course, but not all of those roles are going to be suitable for everybody.
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It is because, if Tesla allows it to happen, the media will attack them incessantly over these things because they smell a story (and because a lot of vested interests are willing to pay for PR). If you don't defend yourself in that kind of situation, you die.
I'm personally very worried about the poisoning the well angle. Tesla is playing fast and loose with this compared to Google and the results could strangle the whole field.
I'd say most accidents are the result of the driver "not noticing", especially in the current majority of cars which lack autopilot, so even if this edge case exists in the future, having an autopilot is still an improvement.
No Regrexit: UK Increases in Popularity for American Travelers Following Brexit
"trying to go this route without asking him" - who said anything about not asking him? Seems pretty obvious that this would be the implied first step.
Those "frequent checks" are pretty rare. I've gone 15-20 minutes without seeing one. For a while it was every 3-5 minutes, but they've dialed it back up in newer software updates.
> Since this is apparently a self-selected sample of people interested in Rust, a 1/3 "No" report is a problem.

How do you know what usage level is a "problem" without any point of comparison?

I'm interested in JavaScript, for example, but I don't use it more often than a handful of times per year, if that. I wouldn't be surprised if a third of people answering a JS survey were in the same boat. And I'm not worried about the future of JS.

> If the survey was from a random sample of all programmers, the usage level would be much lower.

Is there any language which more than a small minority of all programmers in the world use?
How do tractor trailers drive perpendicular on a highway in a probable case?

Still, I agree it is strange that a white/glossy object cannot be detected with radar. Is it a stealth truck?
Where I live some highways have a sign that says:

> CAUTION: SOLAR GLARE IN THE A.M.

It's serious enough to warrant its own road sign, but its not as much of a realistic issue on a divided highway, so maybe this road didn't have such a sign.

This type of danger is probably what the article is describing.
Also on a different note, investing a little money/time on creating an emotional video and posting it on social networks might help on advertising the GoFundMe campaign thus generating more funds.
I don't think the setting can be changed unless the car is in Park.
> I do hope they are able to learn more from this. This is just a bad coincidence of environment meets chance and someone died because of it.

Nope, this is completely expected when unproven technology is packaged as a push-button feature and shipped on consumer technology. I don't work for Tesla, but I am a robotics engineer who has worked on exactly this technology, and I saw this coming from a mile away. Tesla should have as well.
"The i960 looks pretty interesting, but it appears that they aren't manufactured anymore. Is there something roughly equivalent out there?"

No. Closest thing in development with open code that I know about is Cambridge's CHERI processor that combines MIPS, capability-security, legacy compatibility, and FreeBSD. It's not exactly simple but it does some of things i960 intended.

https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/

"what is the state of the art in microprocessors for embedded systems and the like?"

I only know stuff in that space that crosses into my research into high reliability, security, or subversion-resistance. Studying more MCU's for last one given gotta use old nodes. Found a few interesting things, though.

Plasma is a MIPS CPU & SOC in around 4,000 lines of HDL. Already has RTOS and stuff. PULPino is like a RISC-V version of Arduino with 32-bit core & lots of peripheral stuff. Some MCU's, no link on hand, are including I/O coprocessors that give some of benefits Channel I/O and server offloaders have. Another strategy is including HW accelerators for common, high-CPU (or I/O) functions. Outside C & serial, JOP is small, efficient CPU for Java code. Sandia's SSP is similar but highly-assured & rad-hard. AAMP7G is most reliable/secure in embedded with low-power, decent speed, triplicated circuits, mathematical verification, separation kernel, & easy ISA. I'm keeping an eye out for others that include things like DSP's or parallel architectures that aren't just toys. All I'm seeing so far that are being fabbed or used on FPGA's.

http://plasmacpu.no-ip.org:8080/cpu.htm

https://github.com/pulp-platform/pulpino

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_I/O

http://www.jopdesign.com/

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Victor_Winter/publicati...

http://www.rockwellcollins.com/~/media/Files/Unsecure/Produc...
If the driver didn't notice it either, why is it Autopilot's fault?
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IGDB.com (Internet Game Database) is nominated for best start up of sweden
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Press Releases like this are for investors and media outlets, not for general consumers. Of course they are going to focus on damage control, because if they didn't focus on the safety features of autopilot and the hands-on requirement some media outlet would contort the situation and say "What safety features does this car to prevent an accident like this in the future? Is this technology actually ready to be used on our roads?".

I think they did a fine job of handling this, and with the high visibility of this incident due to the use of autopilot they really had no other option.
This disclaimer also seems odd in the eventual case that an Autopilot accident involves someone in another vehicle being injured or killed. Although I implicitly agree to all sorts of risks when I drive on a public road, I'm still struggling with the idea that I'm agreeing to participate in a beta test for an automated driving system. Being a software engineer just makes the idea more terrifying!
And yet it really doesn't. Every so often it'll beep at you to make your presence known, but it can easily go many minutes with hands off the wheel and no checks.
As long as media continues to blame their new cars for clickbait articles and until they are treated the same as any other car manufacturer that's not blamed for every incident involving their vehicles.
In addition it had important information for how other Tesla drivers can use the auto-pilot feature more safely. The article combines condolences and helpful safety information to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. Also, you don't see GM making a blog post every time someone passes away in a car they make.
Yeah, the height seems to be the problem. There was a "similar" accident a few months ago where a Tesla was summoned out of the garage and it hit a trailer because it was to high for the radar to get it. http://s3.amazonaws.com/digitaltrends-uploads-prod/2016/05/T...
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Somehow this reminds me of Dr. Daystrom defending the M-5 computer, back in the original series.
> It is important to note that Autopilot is...still in a public beta phase...

No, it's not important to note that. You should not be able to hide behind the word "Beta" for systems that could kill people. Either you're willing to let people risk their lives on your software or you're not, and you were.
Would an infrared camera have picked up the trailer?
Tesla's Autopilot only changes lanes when commanded to by the driver. This is done by putting the turn signal on. If you put the turn signal on while next to a trailer that doesn't have stuff coming down near the ground, then yes, the car will likely change lanes right into it. But it's easy to avoid: just look before you signal.
> The high ride height of the trailer

Is non-standard ride-height a safety failure? Should trailers have crash panels to avoid drive-unders?
They did, which unfortunately means reduced performance for older (pre-Maxwell) NVIDIA cards.
I don't think it's nasty, I think it's realistic. I also think that it aligns with the research that shows humans take a significant amount of time to adjust to taking back over control from autopilot. This is one of the primary design considerations behind the Google self driving car having absolutely no steering wheel or brake. The illusion of humans being able to be the fallback when they're not physically capable of it is a dangerous situation.
>Tesla should not allow autopilots. They have nothing to gain by the negative publicity they will get from cases like these.

This is literally the only way to develop such systems. And regardless of incidents like this, these systems will be developed sometime in the fairly near future and whichever company is on the leading edge of them will command a massive new market that will probably start growing incredibly rapidly right after it takes off.
Yes, and since Tesla explicit ask driver to take over in dangerous situation, the number (fatality/miles) is certainly higher.
Still, impressive result by the autopilot.
I'm wondering, is there any advanced driving simulation? I'm guessing since they have now lots of data, they could simulate dangerous/extreme situation.
I miss the old yahoo in its heyday. I remember hearing their radio commercials .. yahoooo! Sounds like a great ride.
Very sad. I once designed a robot that used infra-red collision detection to avoid obstacles, my home built, and painted flat black, stereo cabinet registered as open space and the robot drove right into it at full speed. It was a quick lesson on sensor fallibility for me.

I've also observed human pilots on busy roads nearly colliding with obstacles when driving toward the setting sun, the visor pulled down and still trying to shade their eyes.

But robots aren't humans, and they don't have to rely only on vision, there are so many ways to "look" it seems like we should have several different ways of identifying obstacles. Different spectra at least.
Apache Tomcat 8.5.3 available
Doesn't a 360 degree camera require it to be placed on top of the car?
Haha this is amazing! We were already considering moving into a cheaper part of Europe when we got focused on coding rather than BD, this just makes our decision a bit easier
Yeah no kidding, thousands of people die every year in Fords and no one gives a shit, 1 guy dies in a Tesla and "these cars are unsafe, run for your lives, hide yo kids and yo wife, sell your stock, return your car!". I fucking hate modern media.
Ah, gotcha. When you stated that the app is "broken" I assumed you meant buggy, not "broken" as in a bad core product.
I guess the question is, was the driver able to see it? I can see how maybe the contrast was so low that maybe it was impossible to see anything except for the wheels which you might not notice. And if the part of the tractor trailer in the path is elevated... sensors sweeping forward see just road.

I guess I'd like to see an NHTSB simulation of the situation in manual driving to see how humans do unassisted.
Black box? But logs must be useful for the insurance claim (by either the manufacturer or the driver).
Tesla driver killed in crash with Autopilot active, NHTSA investigating
How long are people like you going to keep speaking dissonance for others every time a Black Swan happens?
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This is why driving AI is 'all or nothing' for me.

Assisted systems will lead to drivers paying less attention as the systems get better.

The figures quoted by Tesla seem impressive but you have to assume the majority of the drivers is still paying attention all the time. As auto-pilots get better you'll see them paying attention less and then the accident rate will go up, not down for a while at least until the bugs are ironed out.

Note that this could have happened to a non-electric car just as easily, it's a human-computer hybrid issue related to having to pay attention to some instrument for a long time without anything interesting happening. The longer the interval that you don't need to act the bigger the chance that when you do need to act you will not be in time.
Judging from the description the accident would've happened either ways.
Did they really have to paint us a picture of what happened? They could have left out some details and still made their point.

Edit: Given the down votes, I guess people really want the mental picture. Sad.
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Also, the US fatal accident rate is one death per 108 million miles, which includes motorcycles and teens and drunk people.

Not only that, you'd expect drivers in the higher-income demographic of US auto customers to have less fatal accidents.

The real comparison should between a model S and cars like the Mercedes S-Class, since this is all about car marketing anyways.
"This guy died in a Tesla - you won't believe what happens next!"
Humans fail for even more stupid reasons.
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> the Supreme Court's word is final and absolute.

In Dred Scott v. Sandford the court ruled that the bill of rights does not apply to African Americans. Are you a supporter of that decision or did you mistype? Where does it say that the court gets to supersede the constitution? I think you will find that it does not.
> That doesn't sound like what happened.

Everything is speculation at this point so I am not sure how you can assume that's not what happened.

> "The driver didn't notice" well, that's why they're using autopilot.

If Tesla builds and designs a system to be used as an assistant, explicitly tells and warns the user of it's use case and potential danger of using it as anything other than an assistant, then the excuse that "it's human nature" is null, I don't think it's human nature to leave your safety and well being at the hands of something designed to be nothing more than an assistant.

Perhaps the name autopilot exerts to much confidence in its capabilities.
That's just crazy talk, there are PLENTY of companies to work for. If you're talking about big tech companies sure, but for every big tech company, there are zillions of other companies that require big tech people. I work for a company that is complete unrelated to my field. I get paid well, I travel the world to their ninety offices, and my house is only a five minute commute.
Condolences to the family. Since he was "a friend to Tesla" there might not be a lawsuit. If every Tesla owner is considered a friend, there might never be a lawsuit. These things are bound to occur. Remember Morrison and "Keep your eyes on the road...and your hands upon the wheel!"
I'm guessing that there is not a traditional steering shaft connected to the steering wheel. Instead, opting for a drive by wire system. There's a sensor in the steering wheel that detects user input and then sends a signal to another motor connected to the steering rack which actually turns the wheels. The steering wheel also has a small motor to that accepts input from the steering rack to give feedback to the driver, think "Force Feedback" systems in video game racing wheels. So, Tesla can send steering signals to the steering rack independent of what the driver is doing with the wheel. This system is becoming more common in all vehicles, not just Tesla's cars.
If any of these are true, her's wasn't the rational decision, it was the most convenient, least risky decision.

It shouldn't take far-seeing, risk taking, and great inconvenience to get out of poverty. If our society wants to bring people out of poverty, it should make the choices leading to that obvious, low risk, and convenient.

If the context was game development, this wouldn't even be an issue. People do what they're incentivized to do.
Bottom line: Lots of work to do if the car can't see a semi-trailer in front of it. I would be willing to say that it's much more likely that the driver would have noticed in time if Autopilot wasn't on. It's likely that most average drivers will think so too, which pushes the acceptance of this technology somewhere further in the future.

And Tesla's statement does nothing to alleviate these reasonable doubts about putting your life and the lives of your family and friends in the hands of automotive software engineers.