Educator suspended when she refused to show her Facebook page - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydot.com/news/teacher-aide-suspended-facebook-refused-access/ <comment><USER2> Whenever I see a story like this I always think of this XKCD strip: <http://xkcd.com/137/>

I don't aim to offend people with things I post online, but I don't expect to make everyone happy either. If a future employer might not hire me because I express myself publicly, chances are I don't want to work there anyways. However, I find it sad to see this kind of thing in education. I know too many great teachers in public schools that have decided to leave due to crap like this, and I can't help feeling that things only get worse in their absence.

(edited for grammar)

<comment><USER3> That's nice.

In the mean time, tomorrow is the 1st of the month, remember to pay rent, utility bills, and credit card bills.

The "someone who is a dick is probably not someone I'd want to work with anyways" thought is correct, but it is a thought that practically no one out there in the real world actually enjoys. One has to realize that the current state of the software industry _affords_ us the luxury of _choosing_ our jobs out of many opportunities, instead of simply taking whatever we can get. We are extraordinary outliers in this respect, and it remains to be seen how long we can make this last.

The majority of people in this country (and abroad!) do not have such luxuries - I'm all for regulation here, because it seems like this is not something that will regulate itself.

[edit] Side thought: what's wrong with people? You see something you don't like on Facebook, you _talk to that person like a reasonable human being_. This passive aggressiveness pisses me right the hell off. We've become a society of cowards and snitches, so afraid of confrontation that we will hide behind a 3rd party whenever _anything_ that displeases us happens.

<comment><USER4> I know many people who don't work in tech who also don't put up with this crap. It's not about whether you work in tech, it's about whether you work for yourself, or someone who isn't an asshole and more importantly whether you respect yourself. I know people who weld metal , cut trees, plant trees, landscape, etc, who would never put up with this kind of stuff.

Assuming the worst because she wouldn't give access is exactly the kind of reasoning that courts resolutely set their face against.

Necessity is the argument of tyrants and the creed of slaves. I for see this decision being overturned quite quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yeah, show your supervisor your Facebook. Bring in all your journals too. Maybe that incriminating picture that's in your drawer that your ex-lover took of you one night as well. Why not? What's the difference? Give them the key to your house so they can raid your bedroom just in case they need to look around. Ugh.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like an episode of House.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really hope she sues and we get a legal decision on this one way or another.

That said, it doesn't really matter to me.

1) I don't want to work anywhere that requires me to friend my boss or give up my password.

2) I don't want to work anywhere that doesn't like me for who I actually am, and I'm sure as shit not going to hide who I actually am so I can be a slave for someone.

<comment><USER8> I agree. And luckily, we have the luxury of setting requirements for our prospective employers.

Some people do not have this luxury. And that is why you should care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't say anything on facebook I wouldn't attach to my resume. Facebook will go into serious decline when the rest of the world figures out that it's not really that private. I really long for the days of private friends only mailing lists.

<comment><USER10> Except even they're not necessarily really private, as JWZ's story about Really Bad Attitude demonstrates: <http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/rbarip.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't get that whole Facebook thing, there is stuff that is work related and stuff that is not. Why is this even an issue? If they assume anything, they should let the police investigate it.

Why don't do they ask for the phone number from her ex-boyfriend or her Xbox live access? This is equally absurd, the employer has no right whatsoever to intrude the personal life of one of his employees.

</comment><comment><USER12> Isn't this exactly what Facebook said they would take legal action to prevent? Looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

</comment><comment><USER13> I am a high school teacher, and we have had to deal with cyber bullying on numerous occasions. It's not that difficult to deal with. If someone is bullied and wants something done, they can always show their page. This stuff can be addressed effectively without ever demanding anyone's password.

<comment><USER14> Ah, so all that was needed was for the school board to sit at the shoulder of the complaining parent, as the complaining parent voluntarily showed the school board the parent's Facebook, and the offending post that the parent saw via the parent's Facebook.

I don't believe the school board should have been involved in that either, but that would have been somewhat "better" than firing the teacher.

Better still, the school board should have said "It's Facebook, nothing to do with us."

<comment><USER13> Yes, sometimes we do need to address behavior from outside of school that bleeds over into school activities. For example, a few years ago students started fighting each other, filming the fights, and posting the videos to youtube. When it became something that unwilling students were being bullied into, and 50-100 students were leaving school to cheer on, the school appropriately got involved. "Off school grounds" does not always mean it's not school business.

I certainly don't mean that schools should look for stuff to investigate. I also don't see enough particulars from this article to make a clear judgement about this case. But when it is appropriate for the school to get involved, these situations can be handled without anyone handing over their password.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _Soon after, the district's Special Education Director wrote to Hester, saying "[I]n the absence of you voluntarily granting Lewis Cass ISD administration access to you[r] Facebook page, we will assume the worst and act accordingly."_

To be fair she did post something that would get her fired if posted in a truly public setting. If the parent of a student was able to see this picture then it's hard to consider her Facebook profile private. If they had a screen shot of this photo on Facebook I doubt they would require her password to suspend her.

That being said I still think it is horrid that anyone would even think of asking for a Facebook password, and the "guilty until proven innocent" thing doesn't fly with me.

<comment><USER16> _To be fair she did post something that would get her fired if posted in a truly public setting_

But it was _not_ a public setting, so how is that relevant?

<comment><USER15> Do you really consider Facebook a private setting?

<comment><USER16> For the purpose, yes. They did need her password, didn't they?

<comment><USER15> I'm assuming she just deleted the photo and they were fishing for some kind of proof.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _the district's Special Education Director wrote to Hester, saying "[I]n the > absence of you voluntarily granting Lewis Cass ISD administration access to > you[r] Facebook page, we will assume the worst and act accordingly."_

I guess this clown has never heard of innocent until proven guilty. Yes, yes, I realize this is not a court of law, but let's see how he feels about that when the ACLU hauls him into one.

</comment><comment><USER18> The attitude "never say anything you would not want tosee published" is wrong.

When you say something (online) you are publishing it

all those pub conversations, all those vitriolic diatribes against managers (whom we later bacame) are packed up and put into a book called read me later

we have all been writing appendicies to the Viz Swearosaurus

</comment><comment><USER19> When I read stories like this, I feel less like a contrarian Luddite on my refusal to Facebook. Sure, the school district is being shitty here, but if you don't post stuff on the Internet to begin with, this kind of thing is less apt to occur in the first place.

<comment><USER20> Self-censorship is fail. Being compelled to self-censor is double fail. Neither has a place in a free society.

<comment><USER21> Why is not using Facebook on grounds that it's effectively "public" considered self-censorship?

<comment><USER22> If it was "effectively public", there wouldn't be any issue with people being compelled to show their pages to their employers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Simple "solution" - delete her Facebook profile and tell them that's what she's done.

Surely there is a law that's already on the books that prevents coersion of person details? Under the U.S. Constitution, the government must get a search warrant. I don't see how this is any different - this is the government using coersion to gain access to your private life. I think that a good lawyer could take this to the Federal Court to challenge the constitutionality of the matter.

<comment><USER24> Good idea, destruction of evidence is surely the right answer here. Particularly when that evidence is recoverable.

<comment><USER23> Funny, I don't believe that she is being prosecuted of a crime. The ones asking her for the password is the _Education Board_ , who have no legal recourse but to demand the password.

If this was a prosecutor, they would file a subpoena to Facebook via the court system.</comment></comment></comment>


Run Your Startup Like a Cult - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/09/run-startup-like-cult-heres/ <comment><USER2> Articles like this make me believe that even if I managed to find my way into Silicon Valley I simply wouldn't fit in. My job is not my identity, I feel its healthy to generate a life outside your work that is entirely separate; heck I see it as a _necessity_ for longevity in life to have such segregation.

I've turned down jobs that promote "monthly massages", "beer fridays", "gaming evenings", and other perks like the article mentions because when you step back and look at it they're trying to replace your life outside of work with excuses why you shouldn't leave work. Bind your job to your necessities and leaving becomes so much harder.

I own one T-shirt with my company logo (company uniform not counted) and I only have that because we got "sponsored" jerseys from the owner when we did a rec sport league. I don't wear it outside of the gym or doing laborious physical work, I feel a bit weird wearing it in public in a way; we are not a "brand", we do not need social marketing to be the multi-million dollar small business group that we are, hell the Joe standing behind me in the coffee lineup isn't interested in what we do anyway, he's not our market.

But it goes beyond that... Rule #3 raises alarm bells where having one person solely responsible for entire aspects of a business leaves you in a tight space should he hit the road, or fall ill. Heck even daily situations like ego or pride masking his greater vision can mean death for the company no? Even having a second individual sharing the load from those responsibilities allows for collaboration, brainstorming and are those not productive?

Perhaps I write a lot of these questions hypothetically. I'm not in the start- up biz, I don't really see an interest in it as you might be able to tell it clashes with my personality. Is life really seen as this dogmatic in the culture? I know its not universal but it certainly seems prevalent when I read the comments on HN and the like.

<comment><USER3> _I 've turned down jobs that promote "monthly massages", "beer fridays", "gaming evenings", and other perks like the article mentions because when you step back and look at it they're trying to replace your life outside of work with excuses why you shouldn't leave work. Bind your job to your necessities and leaving becomes so much harder._

This isn't always the case, especially in larger companies. Sometimes perks are just perks.

<comment><USER2> I shouldn't make it sound like I _dislike_ creative perks, but I definitely have a problem when the company tried using those as selling points in lieu of more traditional job perks that I was looking for. Perks that I like are spending accounts, flexible hours, pension, additional work holidays. The company I moved to after turning down those types had ones like: 1 paid day off per year to use volunteering; 0% interest loan on tech purchases (with certain stipulations), 1% yearly salary towards a spending account of my choice. 1 year into the company and I had 30 days of paid time off to use whenever I wanted (within reason... I couldn't go jet away mid launch for 5 weeks)

I'm just trying to say that the fact that they thought going against the grain and being creative in an attempt to match the stories you hear out of Google or the like rubbed me the wrong way.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with, then. The article specifically points out that playing the "perk war" is a bad idea, and people who are swayed by things like laundry service are likely not the people you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Hire Employees Who Are Excited to Wear Your Logo on Their Hoodies"

I was hoping this article wasn't as ridiculous as the headline, and some of the advice is good... but it's stuff like this, Silicon Valley.

Is it possible anymore to just want to work hard on an interesting problem, or do I really have to be a "fanatic" about it?

<comment><USER6> >"Hire Employees Who Are Excited to Wear Your Logo on Their Hoodies"

how about building a company that would make it employees excited to wear its logo on their hoodies. Compare for example wearing "Palantir" vs. "SpaceX" on your hoodie :)

<comment><USER7> I'm pretty sure employees at both Palantir and SpaceX wear company-branded clothes a lot. I know that's the case at Palantir for sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article is classic. The thing that strikes me most is the author's assertion that hiring should not be based on the classic indicators like talent and professionalism, but on some kind of subtle chemistry that a person either does or doesn't have as you perceive it. As he puts it, "Why work with a group of people who don't even like each other?"

Well, in the adult world, you hire mature, professional people who learn to work with each other and overcome their differences. It's fine if they aren't all buddies outside of work. In the startup "Real World" (a la MTV), you artificially craft a group of people who seem to "mesh" and then suffer the consequences later when the latent adolescent dynamics emerge.

I remember interviewing at a certain prominent software agency. I won't say who they are, but will only say that you've probably heard of them. Things went great, as far as I could see. I represented myself as someone who was technically competent and could get the job done. Great, right? They ended up passing and not taking me on. It took me a long time to extract the reasons why, but eventually they revealed that it was because of a perceived "culture issue."

Startup geeks don't seem to realize how frustrating an experience like this is. You go in, having done all your homework, having all the right experience, then you're turned down over something that you have absolutely no control. Something that is completely un-actionable and basically equates to saying "we just don't like you."

This cannot and should not be the way that people conduct business in the tech world.

<comment><USER9> _Well, in the adult world, you hire mature, professional people who learn to work with each other and overcome their differences._

You just described a specific personality trait - that of someone who can moderate their desires in order to get along with the broader group. This is exactly the same reasoning that people are looking for with "culture fit" \- they are looking for a very specific personality trait.

 _This cannot and should not be the way that people conduct business in the tech world._

Why? The tech world, like any other business place, is a mixture of people with different attitudes and personalities. If you clearly would have a personality clash with someone, why would it be worth hiring them?

<comment><USER10> > Why? The tech world, like any other business place, is a mixture of people > with different attitudes and personalities. If you clearly would have a > personality clash with someone, why would it be worth hiring them?

Easy, because they have the knowledge and experience you need for the job. If you're a professional you'll find a way to work with anyone. Yes, you'll have personality clashes from time to time but I have yet to work at a place where that didn't happen.

<comment><USER9> _Easy, because they have the knowledge and experience you need for the job._

Right but there are tons of people who have that - it's worth waiting for someone with both that and the cultural fit. As was mentioned in one of the lectures on "How to start a startup" Airbnb took 5 months to find their first hire for exactly this purpose.

<comment><USER11> There might be tons of people with knowledge and experience, but they're not in your typical applicant pool. They tend to already have jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Every headline in this article pissed me off.

Every paragraph in this article actually contained solid advice, even though I don't agree with all of it.

So I would like to add rule #5: Don't talk in ludicrous hyperbole. Smart people won't take you seriously, and you'll actually attract the kind of feeble minded people that would join a real cult.

<comment><USER8> Well put.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Please don't, I've worked at these kinds of companies. It's creepy as hell and will drive away good employees who just aren't willing to buy into the nonsense.

<comment><USER13> My first thought on reading the title was "so I should molest my employees' children while I appropriate their finances to offshore numbered bank accounts?"

A "cult" is not a good model for anything. Not only does it refer to a form of abusive relationship, but it also refers to a mindless follower dynamic. If I am founding a company to do innovative knowledge work, I _do not want_ mindless followers. I want employees who are smarter than me in various ways, especially in areas that are my weaknesses, and I want them to apply themselves fully which means I need to pay them well or cut them in on ownership. Sure, maybe I could get a "bargain" on labor by hoodwinking people with image, but people wise up fast and I will have high turnover.

It's good to have a sense of mission and purpose, but that doesn't make something a "cult." The article contains some solid advice if you ditch the hyperbole.

It's also okay to have a company that demands a lot from its employees as long as its up front about that. An example would be SpaceX: apparently they are tough as hell to get into and they tell you up front that basically you'll have no life, etc., but lots of people want to work there because they believe in the mission. If I were in a different life phase / circumstance, I would work there knowing going in that I'm sorta gonna be joining the army for a while. (I'd also do it for the resume and the experience.) But I don't consider that a cult either, since the mission is _real_. They're actually building real spaceships that fly and stuff. To me "cult" means the mission is bullshit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> While at least some of the advice is solid ("give each employee just one job" is really just a special case of "make it clear who is responsible for the outcome, not just the process"), Thiel is either making a truly trivial argument -- your employees should be more than mere clock-punchers -- or is recommending a dangerous path for most companies. In my experience -- and, like many in tech, I have more experience with this than I or portfolio care to remember -- highly-insular, self-regarding companies are _usually_ total failures, for the usual Kool-Aid-related reasons.

Such companies, whether startups or established firms, inevitably end up focusing on aspects of their business (prestige, culture, a particular product mix, a particular technology or implementation, internal politics) that are irrelevant or actively-damaging to their profitability and external relations. In short, they end up believing their own press, and stop falsifying their assumptions. SWOT analyses become elaborate exercises in self-justification, failures to hit revenue or profit targets are handwaved away, and exogenous causes for short-term improvements are taken as proof that the company is run by brilliant minds who are no less than the _weltgeist_ on horseback.

I exaggerate, but only slightly. Survivorship bias is a powerful fallacy, and far more organizations starve from narcissistic self-regard than feast out on their good looks. Rather than cultic insularity, successful companies should constantly have their antennae out, alert for unexpected opportunities and dangers, _especially_ if they clash with the company's stated "culture" or mission. (This sounds trivial, but it's very difficult in practice -- CEOs tend to be very psychologically invested in their cultures; lower-level employees are frequently unwilling to bring concerns up the line; managers often have political incentives to hide, mitigate, or redirect bad news; and it can be hard to separate the usual employee grousing from objectively- genuine concerns.)

Cults that try to adapt reality to themselves are suicide pacts; cults that adapt themselves to reality become religions.

</comment><comment><USER15> From personal experience, the biggest downside to this advice is that it builds a culture of being in or out. You either tow the company line or you're not part of the team, it leaves little room for challenging the status quo when you see mistakes being made.

<comment><USER16> The idiom is "toe the line", to stand with ones toes exactly at the appointed spot.

I like the idea of towing the company line though, it takes on a nautical meaning.

<comment><USER17> "Toe the line" comes from the British house, where there were two lines drawn down the middle of the room. Each side was supposed to stay behind their line when debating, to avoid bloodshed, challenges to duel etc. The speaker would holler "Toe the line!" when anyone crossed over.

At least that's the legend I know.

<comment><USER18> The lines are still there today: [https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4070/4642915654_4fbb595e20_z.j...](https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4070/4642915654_4fbb595e20_z.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Translation: hire only people who are willing to eat your shit and take almost as much risk as you, but for pennies on the dollar because they believe so strongly in your "mission."

</comment><comment><USER20> I wanted the title to be a joke also.. Sad it's not. I just moved to SV and I feel like I get these types of pitches all the time. I would rather happily work on interesting stuff and go home to my personal life to unwind without having the pressure to stay at work for "pleasure". Maybe I just don't fit in with what the VCs pump out?

</comment><comment><USER21> Interesting article. The people who'd be convinced by it don't need it because they already follow it. The people who aren't are unlikely to be big participants in the startup world.

These HN comments seem to indicate that too. Lots of people talking like long term employees. Few actual startup participants.

</comment><comment><USER22> Poor article IMO. This is the kind of stuff that parody movies are made of.

This kind of attitude is what gives rise to mono cultural companies where everyone looks, thinks and acts the same. The cultures seem okay but they're brittle in that as soon as someone shows up who doesn't think exactly like everyone else, the whole thing falls apart or the additions are become "problems".

I've worked at a startup and I've resolved that if I do ever build a one, I want a company that is heavily resilient to diversity of thought and where everybody doesn't have to be best pals with everyone else because that is just fucking annoying after a while.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why not just adapt these 7 steps?

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-mason/start-your-own- cul...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-mason/start-your-own- cult_b_3999121.html)

I'll give it a shot:

How to make a Cult Startup in 7 Steps:

1) Begin with the Vision. It must be capitalized and either already be validated by pillars of an industry or actively opposed by them (because it's so disruptive).

2) Setup your inner management circle, make sure it includes big name advisors, partners that ensure immediate market penetration and investors that are always about to drop millions in the next round. It's not required that any employees ever see or speak to these people beyond a single meeting, which should also be a party to distract from any deep inquiry or feedback.

3) Make sure your employees are chasing a moving target and are under continually increasing external pressure. If they get close to a product, change the requirements... then say an important demo is only a week away to ensure they work day and night. Start small and soon your employees will be sleeping in the office and giving up holidays and weekends for your Vision.

4) Always have stories of the last meeting you or other members of the elite group attended. Make sure anecdotes are exciting and perfectly validate the Vision and it's end goals. Your employees are already familiar with stories of billion dollar buyouts and paradigm shifting applications.

5) Hire from the friends of your employees. This has the double advantage of rapidly growing your startup (from 4 to 16 employees in just 2 months!) while allowing you to mix your employees loyalties to each other with their loyalty to the Vision.

6) Keep everyone busy and excited. Always have an upcoming investor demo that is very important and leave no room for downtime which could be used to question product viability, technology decisions, or anything related to the Vision. Stock the fridge and cabinets with caffeine, junk food and alcohol to keep energy level high and overall cognition low.

7) Always talk about the Vision related to the eventual payoff. Changing an industry/the world for idealists or billion dollar buyouts for the more materially minded. It doesn't matter, you're doing what Google and Facebook and Uber and Amazon have done; and they should expect to enter the same paradise when their time comes.

That was fun, hooray satire! Enjoy the rest of your day everyone!

</comment><comment><USER13> This post from JWZ's awesomely hoary old web site is relevant: [http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to- se...](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell-a-con/)

</comment><comment><USER24> He fails to mention the fact that people who run cults are the ones who benefit the most. The startup I was with in Hayward got bought by Peoplesoft back in 2002, and so 90%+ of the employees transistioned over (the CEO spread some rumor about signing bonuses if people stayed on...)

The first day of orientation at Peoplesoft involved listening to a HR person constantly attach "People" as a suffix to key terms - i.e. PeoplePeople. It was brainwashing 101 and quite annoying if you were a hard-bittern veteran of the startup ecosystem. Capitalism is just as much a cult as religions are.

</comment><comment><USER25> _Here are some bad answers: "Your stock options will be worth more here than elsewhere." "You'll get to work with the smartest people in the world." "You can help solve the world's most challenging problems." Every company makes these same claims, so they won't help you stand out._

 _Just cover the basics and then promise what no others can: the opportunity to do irreplaceable work on a unique problem alongside great people._

Isn't that a contradiction?

</comment><comment><USER26> I would like to know more about WhatsApp culture. Small team, incredible talent, unbelievable outcome. Pretty sure even Peter Thiel would consider them to be among the "best startups". I think they give signs not to be this kind of cult, but they don't do lots of interviews, so it is hard to know.

Anyone have a more privileged view on this?

</comment><comment><USER27> it can be very dangerous to run your startup like a cult, most notably because you will be building an enormous, ever-increasing blind spot. people will try so hard to fit in that they will not want to speak against the group, a cult most would expect to be very harsh to opposing opinions.

</comment><comment><USER28> Rule 2: Giving People a Chance to "Change the World" Is a Lousy Way to Recruit Employees

Have to say that I roll my eyes every time I see an HN article titled "X is hiring: Help change the face of Y forever"

<comment><USER29> If you haven't already, watch Silicon Valley (the Mike Judge TV show). There's a whole episode where you see startups trotting out these "Changing the world through [buzzword buzzword buzzword]" mission statements. It's so accurate it's scarily funny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> "... promise what no others can: the opportunity to do irreplaceable work on a unique problem alongside great people."

So, step one- be a great person.

In the words of Maxwell Smart "missed it by that much"

</comment><comment><USER31> # 2 "Giving people a chance to Changing the world is a lousy way to recruit.

Totally agree! Ironic that "Changing the World" has become a meaningless phrase.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is the kind of advice you give to people you want to compete against.</comment>


Tesla's Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/teslas-push-to-build-a-self-driving-car-sparks-dissent-among-its-engineers-1503593742 <comment><USER2> The level-2 driving that Tesla is pushing seems like a worst case scenario to me. Requiring the driver to be awake and alert while not requiring them to actually _do_ anything for long stretches of time is a recipe for disaster.

Neither the driver nor the car manufacturer will have clear responsibility when there is an accident. The driver will blame the system for failing and the manufacturer will blame the driver for not paying sufficient attention. It's lose-lose for everyone. The company, the drivers, the insurance companies, and other people on the road.

<comment><USER3> > _The level-2 driving that Tesla is pushing seems like a worst case scenario > to me_

What are you measuring? The current autopilot already appears to be materially safer, in certain circumstances, than human drivers [1]. It seems probable Level 2 systems will be better still.

A refrain I hear, and used to believe, is that machine accidents will cause public uproar in a way human-mediated accidents don't. Yet Tesla's autopilot accidents have produced no such reaction. Perhaps assumptions around public perceptions of technology need revisiting.

> _Neither the driver nor the car manufacturer will have clear responsibility > when there is an accident_

This is not how courts work. The specific circumstances will be considered. Given the novelty of the situation, courts and prosecutors will likely pay extra attention to every detail.

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-19/tesla- s-a...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-19/tesla-s-autopilot- vindicated-with-40-percent-drop-in-crashes)

<comment><USER4> That's not what the concern is based on. It's rooted in what we've learned about autopilot on planes and dead men's switches in trains. Systems that do stuff automatically most of the time and only require human input occasionally are riskier than systems that require continuous human attention, even if the automated portion is better on average than a human would be. There's a cost to regaining situational awareness when retaking control that must be borne exactly when it can't be afforded, in an emergency.

<comment><USER3> > _It 's rooted in what we've learned about autopilot on planes and dead men's > switches in trains_

Pilots and conductors are trained professionals. The bar is lower for the drunk-driving, Facebooking and texting masses.

> _Systems that do stuff automatically most of the time and only require human > input occasionally are riskier than systems that require continuous human > attention, even if the automated portion is better on average than a human > would be_

This does not appear to be bearing out in the data [1].

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-19/tesla- s-a...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-19/tesla-s-autopilot- vindicated-with-40-percent-drop-in-crashes)

<comment><USER5> You're misunderstanding the data and the concern. Currently, Tesla Autopilot frequently disengages as part of its expected operation, handing control back to the driver. Thus, the human driver remains an attentive and competent partner to the autopilot system. That data is based on today's effective partnership between human and computer.

The concern is that as level 2 autopilot gets better and disengagements go down, the human's attentiveness will degrade, making the remaining disengagement scenarios more dangerous.

<comment><USER3> > _The concern is that as level 2 autopilot gets better and disengagements go > down, the human 's attentiveness will degrade, making the remaining > disengagement scenarios more dangerous_

A Level 2 autopilot should be able to better predict when it will need human intervention. If the autopilot keeps itself in situations where it does better than humans most (not all) of the time, the system will outperform.

My view isn't one of technological optimism. Its derived from the low bar set by humans.

<comment><USER6> The problem is that in L2, the bar for the system as a whole is _set_ by the low bar for humans, specifically their reactions in an emergency. If the computer safely drives itself 99% of the time but in that 1% when the human needs to take control, the human fucks up, the occupants of the vehicle are still dead. And what people are saying here is that L2 automation increases the risk that the human will fuck up in that 1%, by decreasing their situational awareness in the remainder of time.

That's why Google concluded that L5 was the only way to go. You only get the benefit of computers being smarter than humans if the computer is in charge 100% of the time, which requires that its performance in the 1% of situations where there is an emergency must be better than the human's performance. _That_ is the low bar to meet, but you still have to meet it.

<comment><USER3> > _If the computer safely drives itself 99% of the time but in that 1% when > the human needs to take control, the human fucks up, the occupants of the > vehicle are still dead. And what people are saying here is that L2 > automation increases the risk that the human will fuck up in that 1%, by > decreasing their situational awareness in the remainder of time._

Humans regularly mess up in supposedly-safe scenarios. Consider a machine that kills everyone in those 1% edge cases (which are in reality less frequent than 1%) and drives perfectly 99% of the time. I hypothesise it would _still_ outperform humans.

Of course, you won't have 100% death in the edge cases. Either way, making the majority of travel safe in exchange for making edge cases more deadly to untrained drivers has a simple solution: a higher bar for licensing human drivers.

<comment><USER5> _> making the majority of travel safe in exchange for making edge cases more deadly to untrained drivers has a simple solution: a higher bar for licensing human drivers._

You are still misunderstanding the concern. The problem is not poorly trained drivers. The problem is that humans become less attentive after an extended period of problem-free automated operation.

I hear you trying to make a Trolley Problem argument, but that is not the issue here. L2 is dependent on humans serving as a reliable backup.

<comment><USER3> > _You are still misunderstanding the concern. The problem is not poorly > trained drivers. The problem is that humans become less attentive after an > extended period of problem-free automated operation._

I understand the concern. I am saying the problem of slow return from periods of extended inattention is not significant in comparison to general human ineptitude.

Level 2 systems may rely on "humans serving as a reliable backup," but they won't always need their humans at a moment's notice. Being able to predict failure modes and (a) give ample warning before handing over control, (b) take default action, _e.g._ pulling over, _and /or_ (c) refusing to drive when those conditions are likely all emerge as possible solutions.

In any case, I'm arguing that the predictable problem of inattention is outweighed by the stupid mistakes Level 2 autopilots will avoid 99% of the time. Yes, from time to time Level 2 autopilots will abruptly hand control over to an inattentive human who runs off a cliff. But that balances against all the accidents humans regularly get themselves into in situations a Level 2 system would handle with ease. It isn't a trolley problem, it's trading a big problem for a small one.

<comment><USER7> If you actually look at the SAE J3016_201609 standard, your goalpost-moving takes you beyond level 2. "Giving ample warning" puts you in level 3, whereas "pulling over as a default action" puts you in level 4.

The original point - that level 2 is a terrible development goal for the average human driver - still stands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tesla's system doesn't have enough sensors. Musk forced his engineers to try to do this almost entirely with vision processing, and that was a terrible decision. Vision processing isn't that good yet. Everybody else uses LIDAR.

I've been saying for years that the right approach was to take the technology from Advanced Scientific Concepts' flash LIDAR and get the cost down. I first saw that demonstrated in 2004 on an optical bench in Santa Monica. It became an expensive product, mostly sold to DoD. It's expensive because the units require exotic InGaAs custom silicon and aren't made in quantity. Space-X uses one of their LIDAR units to dock the Dragon spacecraft with the space station.

Last year, Continental, the big century-old German auto parts maker, bought the technology from Advanced Scientific Concepts and started getting the cost down.[1] Volume production in 2020. Interim LIDAR products are already shipping in volume. Continental is quietly making all the parts needed for self-driving. LIDAR. Radar. Computers. Actuators. Cameras. Software for sensor integration into an "environment model". They design and make all the parts needed, and provide some of the system integration.

Apple and Google were trying to avoid becoming mere low-margin Tier I auto parts suppliers. Continental, though, is quite successful as a Tier I auto parts supplier. Revenue of €40 billion in 2016. Earnings about €2.8 billion. Dividend of €850 million. They can make money on low-margin parts.

Continental may end up quietly ruling automatic driving.

[1] [https://www.continental-automotive.com/en-gl/Passenger- Cars/...](https://www.continental-automotive.com/en-gl/Passenger-Cars/Chassis- Safety/Advanced-Driver-Assistance-Systems/Lidars/High-Resolution-3D-Flash- Lidar)

<comment><USER9> It depends on what you're optimizing for. Others using LIDAR are optimizing for speed to market, while potentially sacrificing ability to solve the problem as fully. Musk's argument is that we know for certain that the entire road system can be navigated by visual cues, because that's how humans do it. We do not know for certain that this is possible with LIDAR.

<comment><USER10>
      Musk's argument is that we know for certain that the
      entire road system can be navigated by visual cues

We know for certain that human brains can be assembled out of regular atoms, but raising funds for a company that manufactures brains would be getting rather ahead of our current level of technology. The same might be true of computer vision and autonomous vehicles.

<comment><USER9> So you believe the technology gap for assembling a human brain out of regular atoms is similar to that for navigating a road using cameras?

<comment><USER11> JFC. I don't get why otherwise rational people become so stupidly aggressive when faced with analogies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The only industry to have produced truly driverless public transportation systems is the rail industry. Not aeronautics. Rail systems happens to be my business and what I read here makes me very worried.

I don't think the majority understands what safety means in mass transportation. It's not about running miles and miles without accidents and basically saying "see"? It's about demonstrating /by design/ that the /complete/ system over its /complete/ lifetime will not kill anyone. In terms of probability of failure it translates in demonstrated hazard rates of less than 1E-9 /including the control systems/. This take very special techniques and if that could've been done using only vehicle sensors, it would have been adopted by us long ago. I am also sorry to report that doubling cameras and sensor fusion will not get you an acceptable safety level. We've tried that too, rookies.

Is it "fair", to use Elon's argument? After all, isn't additional safety enough compared to existing situation. Ah but we have been there too! For driver assistance it is indeed better. Similar systems were deployed during the second half of 20th century (e.g. KVB, ASFA, etc). But the limit is clear. It only /improves/ driver's failure rate. It does not substitute for the driver. If you substitute, you have to do much much much better. Nobody will ride a driverless vehicle provided the explanation that it is, you know, "already an improvement when compared to a typical driver". Is it fair? Maybe not, but that's the whole point for entrusting lives to a machine.

<comment><USER13> This is a good summary of modern risk culture. It has good sides and bad sides. On the good side, you have things like commercial aircraft and trains that, despite them being inherently dangerous, manage to achieve extremely low fatality rates.

On the bad side, this risk culture destroys large scale innovation, and even safety in the long run. The problem is that we've adopted an attitude that safety is always first, meaning that it is immoral to do something in a less safe way, no matter what the other benefits might be. This means we get a regulatory, tort, and engineering culture that is willing to use existing systems, because they are grandfathered and therefore "reasonable", but will only adopt new systems if they can be shown to be perfectly safe.

This culture is fairly new. I date it to sometime in the seventies. Ralph Nader and the Pinto were both symptoms and causes. You can see the transition in, for example, how America responded to the Apollo 1 fire vs. the Challenger accident.

Since you're a a rail engineer, let's look at rail mass transit systems. The NYC subway has a limit of roughly 30 trains per hour, a two minute headways. All of the braking rates, margins of safety, and signaling systems do their job, and you never see two trains hitting each other. During rush hour though, trains are packed way over capacity, and this is mostly because of this headway limitation. If you were to imagine this on the freeway, you'd have to leave two miles between you and the next car. The cost for this level of safety is that about half a million people have to spend an hour every day in miserable conditions. Many of them choose to drive or take cabs instead, to avoid this.

When they make this decision, none of them even give the slightest thought that driving is maybe 10x more dangerous than taking the train. They understand that safety for both is plenty good, and the way that they spend two hours of their day, 13% of their waking hours, is a lot more important than some tiny difference in their risk of dying on the way to work.

Ultimately, while very well intentioned, this safety culture is inhuman. It's pessimistic. It says "nothing in your life could possibly be so important that it's worth any possibility of you being injured. "

So, this is what we face now, over and over. With self driving cars, it's, "sure, the chance of you getting killed is half as much as if you had driven, plus you get all of that time back to have a nice conversation, read a book, or idly stare out the window, but since it doesn't meet our aviation/rail transit level of safety, you can't have it." You even see it with kids -- your twelve year old kids can't be allowed out of the sight of an adult, or you're a dangerous, neglectful parent. It does not matter that childhood is the process of learning how to be an adult, and that becoming an adult is a process of progressively mastering greater and greater freedoms -- the most important thing is that we are never seen to expose children to even the most minute level of risk.

I really want us to have a real conversation about acceptable risk, informed consent, and human progress. We need it badly to regain our souls.

<comment><USER14> > On the bad side, this risk culture destroys large scale innovation, and even > safety in the long run.

So true. Its an issue in General Aviation where there has been huge progress in safety devices (electronic cockpit gauges, airbag seat belts, etc) but it has been illegal to install them in older aircraft because of the FAAs very slow, expensive certification process. Finally, in the last year or so, the FAA got serious about what's called "Part 23 reform" which will vastly streamline the process for safety upgrades in older aircraft.

Also, I don't want this comment to be interpreted as shitting on the FAA. I'm a libertarian leaning former liberal who generally has very low confidence in our government but I consider the FAA, with their insane safety record of which I'm a massive fanboy, to be a exception.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What befuddles me is that in all these discussions about self-driving cars seemingly no one refers to the massive body of knowledge in this area that comes from the aviation world.

I've posted variants of this same comment several times and I'm starting to feel like a broken record.

Look at studies of efforts to make planes safer by removing the human element. While efforts like autopilot have made things safer it reaches the point where more automation can reduce safety as pilots are no longer alert and/or don't trust the instruments and/or can't fully manually override the automation.

Call it the uncanny valley of automation safety.

Bridging that last few percent for true automation (ie where vehicles aren't designed to have drivers or pilots at all) is going to be _incredibly_ difficult, to the point where I'm not convinced it won't require something resembling a general AI.

All of this is why I think driverless cars are going to take much longer than many expect.

<comment><USER16> There's a big difference: commercial pilots are highly trained, even-tempered, and take their job seriously. Most drivers are lazy, distracted, and apt to do something stupid in an emergency. It's very hard to make something safer than a commercial pilot. It's much easier to make something safer than a typical driver.

<comment><USER17> > _Most drivers are lazy, distracted, and apt to do something stupid in an > emergency._

Er, citation needed. I think the vast majority of drivers are good drivers — otherwise, vehicular transport would be a disaster.

<comment><USER16> There are around 1.25M vehicle fatalities every year worldwide [0]. It is a disaster. Driving has killed more people than the world wars.

"Good drivers" \-- we have no benchmark to measure against. Maybe it's amazing that 10x more people aren't killed, or maybe it's dismal that anyone is killed at all. When we have autonomous vehicles, we'll have a reference to compare against. I predict that "bad" will be the only word to describe the current situation.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic- related_death_rate)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Biggest news buried at the end. It says that several engineers have quit since October 2016 (including the head of autopilot) when Tesla started selling "fully autonomous driving" hardware upgrade packages. Says the engineers don't agree the hardware is capable of supporting this and that it was ultimately a marketing decision.

<comment><USER19> If I were one of those engineers, and didn't believe in the claims being made, I'd personally be quite worried of being held personally liable if the company gets sued in the case of accidental death. Last thing I'd want is my bug being responsible for someone dying.

E.g. I would quit too.

<comment><USER20> Good thing it would be almost impossible to attach personal liability to an employee of a corporation unless they intentionally designed the system to be unsafe with malicious intent.

<comment> castle-bravo Frankly, I would be more worried about someone dying using a system that I had a hand in than whatever effect it might have on my career.

<comment><USER21> > Last thing I'd want is my bug being responsible for someone dying.

Is exactly what was written above.

<comment><USER22> In the context of a lawsuit. Which is different from not wanting it for its own sake.

But quitting doesn't retroactively remove your hand from the system if that's your main worry...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I just ordered a Model S with Autopilot, and as I've been reading the comments on the various Tesla forums, I'm not sure I'm ever going to use it. Some of the stories are honestly terrifying (sudden deceleration on the highway, swerving into other lanes, etc).

<comment><USER24> _Absolutely_ do not use it.

I am one of the biggest Tesla fans out there. I fucking love the company. But Autopilot in its current form is nothing short of dangerous.

I took a test drive in a Model S a couple months ago and enabled Autopilot at the Tesla rep's encouragement while on a straight stretch of route 90 near Boston. We were going 70mph, a safe speed.

The car came to a point where the highway curved, and a slight deceleration is required to navigate the curve correctly.

Little did I know, Autopilot stays at the speed you set and does not alter it as the environment requires, short of not hitting the car in front of you. So of course it tried to take the curve at 70mph and swung out of the lane almost instantly, prompting immediate corrective action from me to avoid a serious accident.

I couldn't believe the Tesla rep hadn't made this clear. I was required to have my hands on the wheel, but the position of my hands doesn't ensure that I'm mentally ready for egregious errors on the car's part and prepared to correct them at a split second's notice at all times.

Operational question mark aside, as an investor I was also astonished that the software was still in such a rudimentary state that it didn't know to slow down on curves. I found this troubling. It was scarcely more advanced than cruise control, to be honest.

It's the one place where I think Elon is really gambling with people's lives as well as his company's credibility, the former being an infinitely worse transgression than the latter.

<comment><USER25> It gets worse, if your Tesla is following a car in front of you, and they switch lanes, but you can't switch lanes because another car is coming from behind in that lane, the Autopilot will switch nonetheless.

This almost killed a tester from the German federal motor vehicle approval agency. Their overall report is devastating, and shows the Tesla autopilot is little more than a glorified cruise control, marketed in a very deceptive way.

<comment><USER26> I'm not sure what to say when the code I recently turned in (and passed) for the path planning project of term 3 in Udacity's Self-Driving Car Engineer works better at changing lanes than Tesla's system:

[https://github.com/andrew-ayers/udacity- sdc/blob/master/Term...](https://github.com/andrew-ayers/udacity- sdc/blob/master/Term%203/06%20-%20Project%20-%20Path%20Planning/CarND-Path- Planning-Project-Writeup.md)

Then again, it does have a failure mode where occasionally, for some reason, it will direct the car to change lanes into the path of a much faster moving vehicle in the lane being changed to. Most of this is because it only runs the behavior planner every second or so in the simulation, and probably does get everything perfectly correct in the prediction part (I honestly am not sure where the problem lies, though).

<comment><USER25> The problem Tesla has is that their system only has ~ 40 meters visibility to back or front.

That means if you're on the Autobahn, at say 130km/h in the right lane, and a Porsche is coming from behind at 300km/h, the Tesla will not be able to see it, and consider the lane free.

<comment><USER27> Remind me never to drive on a German Autobahn.

<comment><USER25> It's quite interesting, because obviously an entirely different class of issues becomes apparent when the speed between two lanes on a highway can differ by a factor of 4.

This is what you get when the speed limit actually is "unlimited".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _> In May 2015, Eric Meadows, then a Tesla engineer, engaged Autopilot on a drive in a Model S from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Cruising along Highway 1, the car jerked left toward oncoming traffic. He yelped and steered back on course, according to his account and a video of the incident._

Is this video online?

<comment><USER28> This isn't exactly an isolated incident, YouTube has lots of videos of autopilot steering wildly off course. The biggest problem is that Tesla allows turning on autopilot on roads that are not a highway and feature significant turns and hills obscuring "perfect lane vision", and the system is not prepared to handle that at all:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBaolsFyD9I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBaolsFyD9I)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOnuKrzCLYc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOnuKrzCLYc)

<comment><USER29> I'd like to point out that the first video you linked is nearly 2 years old.

<comment><USER30> What's your point? The second video is only a month old and in that video the car still drives in the way only a total jackass would drive, in the most favorable possible conditions for a self-driving car: clear and sunny with little traffic, clear road markings, and no pedestrians or bicycles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> A reference to Chris Lattner:

"In recent months, the team has lost at least 10 engineers and four top managers—including Mr. Anderson's successor, who lasted less than six months before leaving in June."

</comment><comment><USER32> Since we're finally getting some refutations to Self-Driving Hype, let me drop some quotes here:

 _"I tell adult audiences not to expect it in their lifetimes. And I say the same thing to students"

"Merely dealing with lighting conditions, weather conditions, and traffic conditions is immensely complicated. The software requirements are extremely daunting. Nobody even has the ability to verify and validate the software. I estimate that the challenge of fully automated cars is 10 orders of magnitude more complicated than [fully automated] commercial aviation."_

\- Steve Shladover, transportation researcher at the University of California, Berkeley

[http://www.automobilemag.com/news/the-hurdles-facing- autonom...](http://www.automobilemag.com/news/the-hurdles-facing-autonomous- vehicles/)

 _" With autonomous cars, you see these videos from Google and Uber showing a car driving around, but people have not taken it past 80 percent. It's one of those problems where it's easy to get to the first 80 percent, but it's incredibly difficult to solve the last 20 percent. If you have a good GPS, nicely marked roads like in California, and nice weather without snow or rain, it's actually not that hard. But guess what? To solve the real problem, for you or me to buy a car that can drive autonomously from point A to point B—it's not even close. There are fundamental problems that need to be solved."_

\- Herman Herman, director of the Carnegie-Mellon University Robotics Institute

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d7y49y/robotics-l...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d7y49y/robotics- lab-uber-gutted-says-driving-cars-are-not-even-close-carnegie-mellon-nrec)

 _" While I enthusiastically support the research, development, and testing of self-driving cars, as human limitations and the propensity for distraction are real threats on the road, I am decidedly less optimistic about what I perceive to be a rush to field systems that are absolutely not ready for widespread deployment, and certainly not ready for humans to be completely taken out of the driver's seat."_

\- Mary Cummings, director of the Humans and Autonomy Laboratory at Duke

[https://www.commerce.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/c85cb4ef...](https://www.commerce.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/c85cb4ef-8d7f-40fb-968c-c476c5220a3c/8BC0CC7E137483CEFD0C928ECB14E74E.cummings- senate-testimony-2016.pdf) [pdf]

All quotes pulled from this article (which is really quite good and you should read it in full):

[https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/10/self-driving-cars- ho...](https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/10/self-driving-cars-how-badly-is- the-technology-hyped.html)

<comment><USER33> The easy part is relatively easy, but it's hard to conceive how the hard part will be solved.

Just driving around New York City for a while makes me think that generalized autonomous driving, as a problem, is essentially "solving" strong AI. Consider the case of approaching a complex intersection during rush hour. There's a traffic cop in the intersection waving his hands around. You reach the intersection, the light is green, you want to proceed straight, but cars are blocking the way because they're backed up into the intersection on the cross street. The cop points directly at you, making eye contact, blows a whistle, and shouts at you, pointing and yelling "right right right". You're uncertain whether he means you should try to weave around the blocking cars, but he blows the whistle again and it becomes clear he is telling you you cannot go straight, and you must divert and make a right turn right at the intersection. He gestures again, indicating that he wants you to turn into the nearest lane on the cross street, then points to the car behind you and indicates that it should also turn, but into the center lane. You nod, and he looks away to another car.

This happened. So a self-driving car would presumably have to understand and interpret shouted commands, realize that they are the one being shouted at by someone with the right authority, recognize gestures, somehow be able to engage in the equivalent of recognized eye contact, be able to make an OK gesture, and have some sort of theory-of-mind about the traffic cop as well as the drivers of other cars.

Not easy.

<comment><USER17> Even worse: I've been on several mountain roads with stretches of one-way traffic, where either an officer has to signal a switch in lane direction every few minutes (which might not be clear otherwise, especially around a bend), or _cars have to occasionally reverse to let opposing traffic through_. Don't think I'll ever be letting an AI do _that!_

<comment><USER34> I think you can argue that at least those are outlier very rural sorts of places. It's harder to write off major US cities. (To be clear, interstates are still compelling uses but they're not universal self-driving.)

<comment><USER35> That kind of thing happens occasionally around Boston when snow piles turn two lane streets into one lane, and it's common anywhere where construction or an accident partly blocks a road.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Level 2 still does not drive smoothly as many have confirmed on their forums. They do require you to jiggle the wheel every few mins to ensure you're alert. There's also [https://www.hbsslaw.com/cases/tesla- autopilot-2-ap2-defect](https://www.hbsslaw.com/cases/tesla- autopilot-2-ap2-defect)

<comment><USER37> It's amazing to me that Tesla is able to sell a car in its price range that lacks basic features that come standard on a $17k Corolla like adaptive cruise or automatic emergency breaking, especially since they effectively reduced the capabilities of their cars by rolling out AP2. If any other company tried to pull that, they'd be laughed out of the room, but somehow, Tesla is cheered.

<comment><USER38> You've clearly never driven a telsa if you think a $17k Corolla has more advanced adaptive cruise control. I've driven my model S over 15,000 miles, with probably over 50% of that on autopilot (mainly interstates), and NEVER had an issue with the adaptive cruise control. Its absolutely flawless. (autopilot has its quirks, although its still an extremely useful feature, and the primary reason I bought a tesla)

<comment><USER39> Do you have the Mobileye hardware?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Paywall bypass: [http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/tes...](http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/teslas- push-to-build-a-self-driving-car-sparks-dissent-among-its- engineers-1503593742)

<comment><USER41> how'd you do that?

<comment><USER40> Add [http://facebook.com/l.php?u=](http://facebook.com/l.php?u=) to the front of the URL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Honestly, I don't understand why the automobile industry doesn't learn from the airline industry. Airplanes have worked out how to balance autopilot capabilities with the need for pilots to remain engaged and attentive for years. Simply implement a Drive-By-Wire, similar to Airbus' Fly-By-Wire systems. A driver's inputs to the controls would still be required, but the autonomous systems could prevent or limit certain actions (such as accelerating into a stopped vehicle or swerving off the road).

<comment><USER43> There's a norm of competence in airline pilots. We can't say the same for automobile drivers.

<comment><USER44> Can't we? (about the vast majority of automobile drivers)

<comment><USER43> Depending on where you set your standards, sure. But we have an expectation in the United States safety technology has to accommodate darn near everyone.

We have a law that airbags have to accommodate unbelted passengers: [http://www.iihs.org/iihs/sr/statusreport/article/35/6/1](http://www.iihs.org/iihs/sr/statusreport/article/35/6/1)

Now sure, a passenger can be different than the driver but it's the same philosophy.

The amount of illegal maneuvers I see every day on my commute is astonishing - not using blinkers, intruding on cross walks, not moving over for emergency vehicles, following too closely, etc. It doesn't help that the only traffic law enforcement is really around speeding / running red lights / DUIs.

The problem with autonomous cars isn't the autonomous cars - it's accommodating non-autonomous actors. It only takes one google car hitting an old lady who's chasing a duck on the street to become CNN breaking news for the next 3 months a la that airliner that disappeared.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Good for the engineers having more ethics than VW, and resigning when they are asked to go farther than the technology allows.

<comment><USER46> VW engineers broke laws to do what they were asked to do. Tesla engineers are just doing the best that they can and taking longer than marketing would like. If that's a moral equivalence, then I guess we're all VW engineers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> FYI I've found a way around the WSJ paywall - copy and paste the title into Facebook and click on that link.

</comment><comment><USER18> [http://www.cetusnews.com/tech/Tesla%E2%80%99s-Push-to- Build-...](http://www.cetusnews.com/tech/Tesla%E2%80%99s-Push-to-Build-a-Self- Driving-Car-Sparks-Dissent-Among-its-Engineers.B15UfxtwY3O-.html)

around paywall

</comment><comment><USER48> Non-paywalled version:

[https://twitter.com/newsycombinator/status/90078007990679142...](https://twitter.com/newsycombinator/status/900780079906791424)

</comment><comment><USER49> Please no paywall articles. Please.

</comment><comment><USER50> Typical wsj paywall. Web link no longer seems to get around it, either, unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER51> Please stop posting paywalled articles. Especially WSJ. This community represents the future of the internet. I don't know what the answer is for making sure content providers get paid, but the WSJ model isn't it. So let's vote with our attention (or lack there of) and kill this annoying practice before it makes the internet an even more walled and unpleasant place.

<comment><USER52> Your post lacks information on the part of why the WSJ model isn't acceptable. Paying money for a newspaper isn't exactly unprecedented, and there are plenty of people who are fine with that model.

<comment><USER53> They want us to commit to a subscription, using a credit card, in US currency. That is significantly different from the newspaper model, because it requires some trust on my part, and it is quite awkward; my CC sits in a firesafe when I am not traveling. Subscriptions also encourage FOMO behavior, something I am currently having a bit of trouble with, personally.

I too would prefer that we do not allow subscription content here. If the story is significant, then it will be covered elsewhere.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple Watch is encoding each frame as PNG - <AUTHOR> http://lionet.livejournal.com/137350.html <comment><USER2> I never understand how someone can write an article about their very first foray into something and then, at the end, assert that they know more than the experts already.

> In the end of the day, the watch battery is there just to shuffle these > .PNGs around. When Apple realizes how to avoid that, the watch will last for > a week instead of hours.

Drawing every frame using CoreGraphics is a terrible idea, on any iOS device. Just like any platform, you have to understand at least the basics of the underlying architecture if you want to write efficient code.

I happened to make the built-in Stopwatch app on the watch, which displays an animated graph very similar to his. Suffice it to say, I did not use a CADisplayLink and CoreGraphics at 60fps. Especially considering my graph is horizontally scrollable by the user.

Even if WatchKit still doesn't provide a more efficient way to do this (I don't know; I've never used WatchKit), rest assured that Apple's apps certainly don't use this method, so the week-long battery life claim is just a dream, unfortunately.

<comment><USER3> Hi, 3rd party watch dev here!

WatchKit is really limited. It would be impossible, I believe, to make an app anywhere near as good as the native Stopwatch using WatchKit.

So this comment is pretty frustrating, actually: "you have to understand at least the basics of the underlying architecture if you want to write efficient code". What basic architecture? WatchKit is all we've got as a 3rd party devs! And it sucks.

It seems insane and very ill-advised to me that Apple isn't using the same SDKs for their own apps as what's available to 3rd parties.

<comment><USER2> Your point is actually orthogonal to the OP's.

The OP was claiming that Apple's architecture is flawed and that once they realize the error of their ways, battery life will improve dramatically. That's just not true.

Your point is that the public SDK limits 3rd party developers from doing some stuff that Apple can do with the private SDK. That is, of course, absolutely true.

Letting the public SDK (or at least parts of it) lag behind the private SDK, while certainly frustrating to 3rd party developers, is the right thing to do. The situation is exactly the same on the iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV. Apple has employed that strategy from the beginning with iOS, and they believe it to be the correct strategy, so they will almost certainly stick with it.

I don't work at Apple any more (pushing toward launch on a startup!), but based on over 8 years of iOS history, I think it's safe to say that the public watch SDK will get more powerful over time, as private-only features are deemed ready to release to 3rd parties.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, OP's claims about battery life are manifestly silly. The HN headline makes it sound like the article is making claims about the Watch in general, but it isn't, just that one dev's app.

I understand and take your point about public APIs lagging behind private ones, but in this case it's not that the public SDK is lagging, it's a _totally different beast_.

The fundamental execution model is the same as watchos 1 -- you don't get to write code that runs in the app process, you write code that runs in a separate extension process and get to twiddle ui elements in the main process using a very limited API.

Which is why if you're trying to do anything dynamic, you have to resort to generating and beaming over images.

Besides this fundamental limitation, the management of app process vs extension process vs network daemons is still buggy (contributed to, probably, by the fact that apple isn't dogfooding), which means it's hard to impossible to make your app stable. I think this has been a huge contributor the general perception that 3rd party Watch apps are slow and buggy.

Obviously, I can only speculate about Apple's motives for going with WatchKit vs exposing native development, as on the iPhone.

My guess is they were very worried about an initial public perception of the watch being "battery life sucks," so they didn't want to open up 3rd party code to run on the Watch. Hence WatchKit and OS1.

 _Then_ there was a huge public negative perception about not having native apps, so they rushed out OS2, which has 'native' apps, but still following the (now nonsensical) 2-process model of WatchKit.

I do hope Apple opens up true native dev on the watch at some point.

It won't be "the public SDK getting more powerful over time," though, it will be making a qualitative change to the SDK itself.

P.S. If you haven't and are curious, I encourage you to take a look at WatchKit. I think you will be surprised at how limited it is.

P.P.S. I think Apple may have been better served by doing something akin to the original iPhone model -- just saying, "no 3rd party apps yet, but it's coming," rather than having a half-assed SDK on day 1.

<comment><USER3> Actually, thinking about it, they are doing something akin to the iPhone model -- initially iPhone development was supposed to be done as html+js web apps, and devs revolted, and then we got a real SDK.

WatchKit is the html+js of WatchOS development. OK, not that bad, but the situation is analogous.

<comment><USER2> I was going to reply to you and say the same thing: it's extremely similar to the initial iPhone 3rd party developer story, and for the same reasons. Apple is pretty predictable, really.

I know how WatchKit works, I was in on some of those meetings... Trust me, everyone at Apple had the same concerns you expressed and they still do. It will get better over time.

Also note that some built-in Apple apps _do_ use WatchKit.

And I would still argue that allowing 3rd party code to run on the watch instead of in an extension on the phone would be just another example of an internal-only feature being opened up to the public. It's the same pattern. I realize that's a significant "feature", but so was the switch from html+js to native apps on the phone. And those significant advances go through the same decision process as smaller ones: do we feel comfortable opening up this feature to 3rd parties? what are the risks? have we used it enough internally to feel confident? has it iterated enough internally that we consider it stable enough to release (because it's hard to change after release)? etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Constants are defined via let, and variable are allowed to vary through a > var. Though constants are lame, as only the binding itself is constant and > you can change everything inside them as usual.

That is at best misleading, as it is not true for collections. From the Swift docs:

> If you create an array, a set, or a dictionary, and assign it to a > _variable_ , the collection that is created will be mutable. This means that > you can change (or mutate) the collection after it is created by adding, > removing, or changing items in the collection. If you assign an array, a > set, or a dictionary to a _constant_ , that collection is immutable, and its > size and contents cannot be changed.

Swift is the only language that I've seen that actually does make a distinction depending on the keyword used.

<comment><USER5> It also is one of the only languages where collections are value types.

And it has to, to make 'let' create truly immutable objects. Without them, this:

      var a = [1,2,3]
      let b = a
      a += [4,5,6]

would change b.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > When Apple realizes how to avoid that, the watch will last for a week > instead of hours.

In order for this statement to be true, the CPU would have to be using 85% of the entire watch's power consumption just to shuffle PNGs. I bet the entire CPU doesn't use nearly that much power, once you include the display.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is for 3rd party apps -- despite the "native" 2.0 SDK, where all your code runs on the watch, it's still split clumsily into app (which you can only control by providing interface templates) and extension, which is where your code runs. The extension can control the app only through a very limited SDK that has to do IPC to effect changes in the main app.

Apple's own apps don't have this restriction, and I can't see a good one for 3rd party apps to have it, either -- hopefully they'll open up a full API in the future.

</comment><comment><USER7> Would you rather they use uncompressed bitmaps instead?

I remember the little MP3/MP4 players which were very popular around a decade ago([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S1_MP3_player](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S1_MP3_player) ) used a similar strategy of making all the UIs bitmaps. The LCD had the windowing functionality built into its controller so it was easy to define a rectangular window and then just stream the appropriate pixels into it. They only had a 24MHz Z80 and 384KB of RAM, but hundreds of MB or more of secondary storage, so it made sense to tradeoff size for speed that way.

You can see an example of that here:

[http://www.mympxplayer.org/pafiledb/images/screenshots/12088...](http://www.mympxplayer.org/pafiledb/images/screenshots/1208854267s1res.png)

</comment><comment><USER8> PNG is not cheap on the compression side, due to the lossless coder. It's a little better to decompress:

Some benchmarks on iPhone 6 are here: [https://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/4423501](https://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/4423501)

e.g., JPEG is 15x faster to compress and 2.5x faster to decompress.

<comment><USER6> You can always adjust the compression settings on a PNG to make compression faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think I'm more impressed that LiveJournal is still around 10 years after it first came out.

<comment><USER10> LiveJournal is older than that; it was launched in 1999.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The big take-away:

      In the end of the day, the watch battery is
      there just to shuffle these .PNGs around. When
      Apple realizes how to avoid that, the watch
      will last for a week instead of hours.

<comment><USER12> Except Android Wear watches are built essentially identically, and only get about a days worth of life, and don't do any of this crazy shit.

<comment><USER13> Yeah. Pebble does get a week of battery life, however. The distinction between them and AppleWatch/AndroidWear is that the Pebble uses an E-ink screen that consumes no power when it doesn't change. That makes me think that the display is the biggest power drain on a smartwatch.

<comment><USER14> It's not E-ink, it's a transflextive LCD</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google play services: Granular dependency - <AUTHOR> http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2014/11/google-play-services-65.html

<comment><USER2> Important announcement for one reason alone, they are finally breaking Google Play Services into multiple dependencies. This will help the average developer avoid the 65k method dex limit.</comment>


Paper 1.2 available now  - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/paper/blog/1461672400743836/paper-1.2/

<comment><USER2> Why is this still not available outside of the US?

<comment><USER3> Who cares about this, even inside the US?</comment></comment>


Been stuck for 3months.. what would you do? - <AUTHOR>

http://filmbet.com/
FilmBet.com, my "first" idea that I wanted to go somewhere. I checked around eLance and spoke to developers to develop the project for me. I heard figures from $500 - $1000 ( which I didnt quite have). So I decided to try and do everything myself. Things started well, I handle most of the important things.. but I couldnt quite get IT done. It has been on the backburner for over 3months.
I want to hear from the HN community; what would you guys do? ( I have considered ditching the project, for some reason I keep coming back..) maybe a change in concept is needed
Currently.. its vote on the weekend box office results.. <comment><USER2> If you keep coming back to the project, it means that you want to do it and that's the most important thing.

Write down what's left to do as manageable tasks and try to address them when you can or ask for help on the ones you can't.(paid or free) That way, at least, you'd know you're making progress and have a clear idea where you're heading.

P.S. layout is broken on FF3.6. also, you have a few typos.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you have a plan about where you want to take the site, but aren't sure how to do it, you may want to break up the project into smaller chunks and perhaps hire out one of those small pieces and get it done. After you see that feature up and running, you may feel more motivation to get more done. You can work on bring in some revenue and using that revenue to pay for additional work to be done.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you're not passionate about it you're not going to get anything done so you need to "man up" one way or the other (ditch or push). Really think about what you want, if you want this project to get done go at it full spin otherwise leave it and take on an easier or more passionate undertaking.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hi! We had similar idea (i think?) with <http://movieorwhat.com> \- contact me - maybe we can help each other? ...

<comment><AUTHOR> sounds good. whats your email? redrory (AT) gmail (dot) com</comment></comment>