This is the SV “fake it ‘till you make it” culture. Right now Tesla is delivering “full self driving” cars that require a human driver at all times. Experts have said that it’s not possible using cameras alone, without LiDAR.

Oversell and underdeliver. Fraud works great until it doesn’t.

I mean, we can go the other way by looking at SpaceX. I spent years reading detailed reports from experts that everything SpaceX was doing was impossible.

-A rocket made of steel

-Landing a rocket anywhere

-Landing a bigger rocket anywhere

-Landing a rocket on solid ground

-Landing a big rocket on the ground

and a lot of smaller things in between.

I read many plausible looking reports on the non-feasability of these things often came with the backing of professors at respected universities and they were all wrong.

Sometimes it goes the other way.

For the risk of being a broken record, nobody claimed that reusable rockets were technically impossible. The argument was that they were rather financially unfeasible due to a limited number of LEO launches, so nobody tried (I lost the ESA study on this from the early 2000s unfortunately...).

I'd really love that myth of SpaceX doing the impossible with landing rockets to die. Also because they don't have to, they were the first to do so. That alone is really impressive. Whether or not it is profitable is impossible to tell until SpaceX is publishing audited financials.

Also I have to point out that although SpaceX has very competitive prices for market contracts there seems to be a different services and pricing scheme for government contracts.

This is not unique in the industry to some extent but since SpaceX has no published audits competitors claim they overcharge the government.

It should be noted that the DC-X rocket also landed propulsively in the 90's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X

I don't disagree. It's a good thing that people are confident that they can achieve things that others deem impossible, especially experts. That's real progress. The part that starts to cross the line is when someone starts making legally significant promises ahead of schedule.

Tell stakeholders you're working on it. Tell them you're ahead of everyone else. Tell them that the experts are wrong. Tell them it's coming very soon. Update them on the details of your progress. Don't tell them it's done when it's not.

There were definitely no rocket experts claiming rockets can't be made out of steel. That's not a new thing.

I commented this in a different story, but I hate that the media (and now apparently HN) is conflating outright fraud with "fake it until you make it" culture. They are totally different, and the line between them is actually bright and clear, not some "gray, fuzzy" distinction some people propose.

That clear line is simply "are you telling a material lie about the present?" In Theranos' case, there were numerous instances when Holmes lied about the current capabilities of her company and its tech that she knew to be false. That is very different from making overly optimistic assessments about future capabilities.

Would love to hear any stories about a company that "faked it" when talking about their present day capabilities but we're able to "make it" before the fraud was discovered.

I agree that there is a difference. But, I do think that the line is not so clear in more than a few instances, and that the business culture in SV has normalized this.

The use of exaggeration, vague, misleading and/or conflicting statements, labels, or depictions can really blur that line.

Determining whether a statement is a lie is not always a straightforward and undisputed process.

Isn't the self-driving just a feature on top of the car? They're faking one feature that a customer might opt into -- and none that I know have.

Tesla has delivered a performant EV that is nice to drive in and is comparable to other luxury vehicles. It's not exactly faking for quite some time.

They're charging for "full self-driving" separately from the car, so I think it's fair to put it in the same bucket.

The fake it part is calling something full self driving when it does anything but that.

They stopped calling it fully self driving a little while ago in part due to a lot of pretty bad press and some good journalistic research.

> "Full Self-Driving Capability $10,000"

... is listed today as an option when configuring any vehicle on tesla.com

You're right. I think there's several regulators on it, but no one has forced them to rephrase the statement.

This is the sort of pseudo-tech BS that she fed everyone. She had Jobs envy and thought his approach would work everywhere.

All those examples (and all of yours) are from computers. Blood tests are different from computers. You cannot assume that, just because great things happened with computers, the same things can happen in all walks of life.

The Jobs presentation thing did work - much of the audience bought into it early on - combined with the hefty bonus points of her being a woman in Silicon Valley that the media was desperate to elevate as a path blazing icon (so desperate they entirely drank the kool-aid and acted as a valuable reinforcement pillar for the fraud, and largely failed to investigate if Theranos was legitimate).

Jobs had follow-through, he had real products that often lived up to his pitching. His salesmanship was merely half the equation. Holmes only had a poor clone of that salesmanship, with none of the product. Had Theranos had real products, the approach she used in trying to quasi copy the Jobs image/presentation, would have served the promotional purpose effectively, as the media loved it.

The voice pitch thing she was doing was a nice touch too.

They say she might testify in her own defense. Of course, the attorneys will always say that, to keep the prosecution guessing. "Hide the ball" is the term the lawyers use.

If she does, whether she'll use the deep voice is a big question.

Where can I put money that she will not use the deep voice. She doesn't testify it's a push.

These examples are all "impossible" due to regulatory or commercial constraints, rather than scientific - which is a category of obstacle somewhat more difficult to overcome.

Tesla anticipated this, though, such laws don't get passed fast.

They don't have the software, the core of the product.

And the fsd beta testers had to sign NDAs.

Not scientific, physical.

This illuminates the problem: thinking that the startup model can be applied to everything. This leads to people either naively tackling problems (you listed successes, but for every success there's many, many, failures). At worst, you find have someone who can use the startup model to hide fraud and grifting.

> Uber was impossible, because it was illegal.

Radio/Computer dispatch predates Uber. Where Uber got innovative, legally speaking, was making a Black Car service (can't be hailed from the street) just work with scheduling in minutes instead of calling ahead a few hours beforehand.

> Amazon was impossible, as you couldn't pack and ship stuff that cheaply.

Sears did it a hundred year prior here in America.

I think there's a substantial difference between impossible and illegal. Uber was mostly possible (don't want to minimize their efforts in operation optimization) but also illegal/unregulated. Same for AirBnB.

Personal Computers on the other hand... that's almost all innovation with a dash of unregulated (garage companies, surreptitious deals, etc).

AFAIK, the most likely projection at this point is that Uber will not have made a single dollar from the day it was created until the day it shuts down, and might well face similar scrutiny as Theranos someday (although, not being health related, consequences might not be as severe).

Who is claiming its impossible is what matters as well as when. If somebody has given something serious thought then their claim could be valid but unless they're providing any evidence it's probably a worthless claim. The evidence is also time constrained as the US going to the moon right now is pretty ludicrous but in a few years maybe somebody will have made a new lander.

Also I don't think you picked good examples.

Uber wasn't the first taxi app so it was definitely possible (IIRC both mapquest & google maps had a taxi tie-in at one point). Amazon used to charge for shipping so the cost of pack & ship is irrelevant (they weren't doing the current VC model of giving out dollars for 50 cents). See https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-det... .

Personal computers were ludicrous at a time when a computer took up more than a whole room. Just like flying cars are ludicrous but technology changes and thats why due diligence matters, is this company developing any technology or are they lieing.

Uber was not generally illegal [0]. So called “Black car” (or private car for hire) services (so called because these cars used to be limousine like vehicles but now can be anything, e.g. UberX) where a driver arranges pickup with a passenger in advance — which is how Uber started - is not regulated in most cities at all, or is regulated very differently than taxis.

What legally distinguishes taxis and requires medallions in many cities is the ability for passengers to “hail” an unknown taxi from the sidewalk and get a ride. (Uber didn’t start out offering taxis, but now some of the vehicles that they make available are also taxis.)

You cannot “hail” an Uber on the street and get a ride in it (unless that Uber, now, happens to also be a taxi). You had to book trips in advance. The trips might have been booked only a few minutes in advance, but that was the legal distinction between these two classes of transportation.

I am not aware of there being any regulation involved if you wanted to arrange a ride from the Seattle airport to the Space Needle with me as your driver on a certain date for a certain price, for example. Or 10 minutes from now. (Actually that’s a bad example. I believe there are certain areas of the city where drivers have to offer city-regulated fixed price fares either to the airport or from the airport or both, to certain sections of downtown. It’s a relatively small area though; I don’t know if it includes the Space Needle or not.)

In fact, Uber was able to grow so quickly because so many of these “private car for hire” services already existed in major cities. The cars were often owner-operated small businesses, with one car or a small fleet of vehicles and employees (with the owner typically being one of the drivers). They were able to tap into this excess supply and put it to use. At least that was the case in Seattle where I spoke to many Uber drivers during its early years, all of whom had existing businesses and wanted to give me their business card to cut out the middleman (Uber). They used Uber to gain additional business during downtime from their other clients, and often offered their business cards to riders before Uber started cracking down on that [1].

Originally if you had a relationship with a private car service and you were planning trips days ahead, then you could typically get a better price than Uber would offer for market rate pricing (once its low promotional discount pricing eased up) with no advanced planning. (However Uber now appears to offer the ability to schedule rides up to 30 days in advance; I don’t know if this change is the fare or not). Since Uber takes a cut of the transaction you can probably still get better pricing from individual private services. The value that Uber offers for most passengers in the ability to get reliable high quality transportation on demand. (High quality in the sense that poor quality drivers are removed from the platform)

Uber provided legitimate value by connecting the supply of private-cars-for-hire with the passengers who wanted to hire them, creating a sort of marketplace. (Not a true marketplace because Ubers set the price of fares; but I’m marketplace in the sense that drivers and passengers can choose to use the platform to connect and conduct a transaction of driving for hire.) Uber won by providing a superior experience for both parties having a reputation system for both sides with a 5-star score.

How many people reading this have had the experience of ordering a taxi and having it arrive late or not at all? Or have simply been frustrated by the lack of visibility into when it will arrive, or whether it’s even coming, when you need to get to the airport? Or when you get to your destination you learn that “the credit card reader is not working”? (which is illegal in many/most cities). I’ve certainly had all of these experiences in many cities with taxis.

Taxi drivers experienced no real penalties for misbehavior like falsely claiming their credit card reader is not working, or for not maintaining it in working order, or for taking tourists on a “scenic route“ to their destination” (unless a passenger called the taxi company and report them - and who would bother? Plus I don’t necessarily know the local law in the area, like whether the taxi is required to have a working credit card reader; and in the days when Uber was building traction, I might not have had mapping software on my phone so as to know whether the taxi was taking me on an unnecessarily long route.)

Uber provided a legitimately better product experience by solving these problems. You could see your vehicle as it traveled to you, eliminating the uncertainty around whether transportation was coming and an ETA for its arrival. You could enter your destination and Uber would provide turn by turn driving instructions that the driver was expected to follow to get to the destination following a close-to-optimal path. If the transportation provider was rude or provided poor service, then you could give them a bad rating, and poor service providers were be removed from the platform. Similarly bad customers that were drunk and misbehaved and did things like throw up in the vehicle would also receive a poor rating and might find themselves kicked off the platform after repeating that type of behavior.

This reputation system was completely missing from taxis and is one of the reasons why they were so dysfunctional in my opinion.

The vast majority of Uber’s growth and expansion was in the unregulated or lightly regulated area of arranging transportation ahead of time between passenger and driver. So long as the driver has a regular driver license in most cities, rides-for-hire that are arranged in advance not regulated, or are minimally regulated (though Uber/Lyft-targeted regulation have appeared in response to their presence).

[0] Various cities subsequently banned it or limited it after the fact, partially in response to political pressure from things like taxi unions, or other reasons; but the core business model was not originally illegal in typical cities.

[1] IMO, I don’t think it’s necessary for Uber to prevent high-end drivers from offering their professional business card when the trip is complete if they do so in a professional way. What Uber offers is the ability to get a ride at any place at any time; I don’t want to have a stack of business cards from private car services in my wallet that I dial one after the other to see if they are free to pick me up — with the same lack of visibility and accountability that taxis used to have.

Of course, in addition to being more convenient in some circumstances, Uber just offered rides below cost much of the time. For scheduled rides to the airport, many people don’t use Uber over a private car because it’s better but because it can be significantly cheaper.

In some places, Uber is just a front-end for a bunch of taxi companies to let you hail them. I remember doing this in Athens, the app just calls a taxi for you. Although I don't remember if I paid through the app or paid the driver directly.

P.S. In my state in the US, and I believe this is true for most of the country, “commercial drivers licenses“ are required for driving very large and heavy vehicles over a certain weight; they are not required for driving paying passengers in a regular sized vehicle - in case anyone is wondering. You don’t need a special license to transport passengers for hire in typical sized cars, because the expectation is that you already know how to drive those vehicles safely.

A catastrophic vehicle failure at highway speeds could cause death but these kinds of failures are not especially likely, and drivers are expected to be able to reasonably handle circumstances they may encounter. The most dangerous circumstance I can think of off the top of my head that is not whether related would be the explosive decompression of a tire at highway speed, leading to loss of control of the vehicle. While the car might begin to swerve, a driver should react to this and keep the vehicle under control while they navigate to the shoulder. Catastrophic failure of brakes isn’t a common occurrence, and brakes begin to squeak when they are wearing down; the entire brake system would have to fail.

Interestingly, the FAA does make this distinction for pilots licenses: if you are going to fly someone in an aircraft for hire, then a private pilots license (PPL) is not sufficient, and you need a commercial license - even if you’re operating the same aircraft. You can split the costs of travel with someone if you’re both flying to the same destination, but you cannot fly someone else for hire and charge them for everything (in other words, operate a small airline or a charter service).

I can think of a number of good reasons for this: among other things, most adults with driver licenses quickly develop hundreds or thousands of hours behind the wheel of a car, and if the car malfunctions you can simply stop (most of the time — driving in extreme weather conditions being an exception to this). Private pilots engaged in general aviation may take years to reach 1000 hours flying an aircraft, whereas a professional pilot probably flies 1000 hours each year; and has a rigorously routine re-training and certification schedule (from what I understand) because an aircraft malfunction in the air is a very serious situation. Plus the amount of information that pilots need to know in order to fly safely is substantially greater than what drivers need to know; the maneuvers that pilots need to execute are much more cognitively and mechanically intensive, and the concurrent task workload is much higher.

A private pilot engaged in general aviation is the one taking on the risk of an accident, along with anyone they bring along (e.g. friends/family). When a (non-pilot) passenger pays someone else to fly them, they have little understanding of the risks involved in the activity - whereas most adults know how to drive or could easily get a license; and even if they don’t, they understand the risks of road travel - whereas non-pilots have few understanding of the risks of air travel.

It's not really impossible if you operate on first principle.

Now, it might be harder to distinguish someone who can do it well and who'll do it poorly, but that's another issue.