I can forgive a lot of grandiosity as long as he keeps delivering more than his competitors.

Steve Jobs was also known for his “reality distortion field”, so maybe it comes with the territory.

That said, FSD progress seems asymptotic and the Optimus thing always seemed like bullshit.

Yes, but Steve Jobs delivered. He was rude and whatnot, but far from a fraud.

And Jobs' "reality distortion field" was primarily used to motivate / burn-out his team by demanding things that were technically very difficult but feasible (one of the original anecdotes was about reducing the boot-time for the original Macintosh), not something like solving AGI which FSD would ~apparently require.

I fully believe Elon and Jim Keller truly thought the deep learning HW delivered by Tesla was capable of self-driving in the early 201x time frame because, frankly, a lot of us did. More than likely, like the rest of us, they slowly came to see that the problem was much more difficult, and deep learning much less capable, than we had originally envisioned. Most of us didn't make a bunch of stupid promises to shareholders based on the original, incorrect assumptions though. Unlike Elon, we're able to admit we were wrong.

As someone who has worked for almost a decade with safety critical software, system design and functional safety analyses (both aerospace and automotive) etc. I don't think I ever met anyone who believed they would be anywhere near FSD/Level-5 what-have-you in the timeframe they presented.

The only ones I met who thought so was managers and software developers and ML-people, i.e. people who has never in their life seen the level of effort it actually takes to get something qualified for RTCA or other safety standards.

> As someone who has worked for almost a decade with safety critical software, system design and functional safety analyses

And you were right, but most people aren't like you, and people like you don't drive the discussion on what trends are coming. The world needs more folks with your background. Generally no one wants to listen to folks like you because you come off as a Debbie Downer despite being correct most of the time.

Hah, to be fair I am somewhat of a Negative Nancy from time to time ;)

I think Mercedes has a reasonably sensible game-plan as far as I know. They currently have Level-3 on some highways in Germany which is still freaking hard to achieve, but still a narrow enough scope that you might be able to pull it off.

Time will tell, my bet is its still 10+ years off.

ML approach for FSD was critized right from the start by mobileeye CEO who gave a very thorough talk on why that couldn't possibly work. I think the talk is still on youtube.

The guy was critized for being old school and not having adapted to the latest tech (including by elon musk when he dumped mobileeye), but in fact he was just plain right.

i think the tech community owes him an apology.

Until any FSD solution delivers, it's far too early to vindicate the mobileye CEO. As it stands, even with additional (expensive) sensors, it seems very likely that ML will be required regardless. Running purely off sensors is not going to be feasible when braking distances alone are greater than the sensors will be able to accurately measure.

He did give a second talk a few years later explaining how the purely cognitive aspect may be handled by ML, and the total system probably going to end up being a mix.

But his fundamental opposition to ML for things related to safety was, IMHO absolutely correct.

Betting on vision-only self-driving was still a very bad bet, not only in hindsight. The competition all added additional sensors.

You don’t think SpaceX and Tesla have delivered quite a lot? FSD is really the only big project I can think of this far behind, and maybe Cybertruck. I don’t think it’s fair to ignore all his other accomplishments.

Solar rooftops hasn't gone anywhere. Boring company and Hyperloop didn't go anywhere.

Let's face it Neuralink isn't going anywhere too.

Tesla wasn't started by Musk and relies heavily on Panasonic battery developments and SpaceX and Starlink is good old fashioned ex-NASA and MIT talent.

What does Musk actually do? Annoy the SEC, go on Joe Rogan to smoke weed and have more girlfriends per hour than Gengis Khan?

Ok troll.

If you had a point you wouldn't be so flippant.

I made my point. Pointing to additional examples of grandiosity (some might call ambition) doesn't invalidate it. Neither do attacks on his character or lame arguments like "Tesla wasn't started by Musk" ignoring that he grew the company from 4 people to 100,000 people. Or that somehow recruiting large amounts of NASA and MIT talent is a bad thing? That's good leadership.

Seriously? Either you're trolling or you have some irrational hatred of the guy.

Oh you don't get what I mean. Yeah those things are good and I'm grateful for the progress SpaceX is making. What I want to know is how much is really attributable to Musk and what his Ego is really worth at the end of the day.

Lets remember the only reason he's around today is because some very rich people and NASA bailed him out. SpaceX left to just Musk's ability, ego and resources died in 2008.

He relies so much on mysticism for parting people from their money, eventually some people get fed up with the 'mysterious future and repeated failure' business model.

Expectations around his personal abilities should be lowered. His track record is not that great and it's a fact people call trolling. Sorry, not sorry.

The abilities that made spacex and tesla were hundreds of highly skilled engineers. Elon just raised money and is the face brand for japanese battery tech.

He's not worth worshipping and his incompetence is covered by idolatry.

I would care more about NASA “bailing him out” if there were even a single other reusable orbital class rocket.

“Just raised money” is patently false. He’s known for being extremely hands on with both Tesla and SpaceX.

I maintain you’re either trolling or ignorant.

HN safely ignores anything positive about Elon because they prefer to think the richest man on the planet is both an idiot and also a failure in everything he does

he's been doing it on starlink too, but he gets a pass on HN for that one.

Isn't starlink pretty good though? I'm in a city, but I know people in rural areas that rave about it.

starlink is great for some. my comments aren't necessarily about whether it's overall good or not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32095920

Do elaborate please. I always get that feeling but I'm not able to put it in words.

I've elaborated and gotten shouted down enough on the old threads that it's not worth repeating the whole thing. tldr:

1) the beams are not full, so many users are getting unrealistic service since they're not doing traffic shaping in those areas yet.

2) the areas that are full are seeing significantly worse speeds and latencies. see Reddit.

3) Elon said <20 ms pings will be normal. they're averaging 30-40ms in full areas.

4) it's not financially viable without many more users, higher costs, and cheaper launches.

I don't recall Tesla ever saying they were producing Optimus as a product any time soon. He's said prototype demo later this year. A prototype is very far from a finished product. As a product businesses/consumers can buy, at least 5+ years from now.

Production ready by 2023: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/08/elon-musk-says-tesla-is-aimi...

Elon in 2024: “by 2026 we’ll have actual, real teleportation”

Elon in 2026: “by 2028 we’ll have FTL drives”

Elon in 2028: “time machine!”

> Elon in 2028: “time machine!”

Well, to be fair, he only has to hit _that_ goal - at which point he can go back in time at his leisure and fix all the others. And he could hit even the time machine goal as late as he wants, and it won't matter.

This sounds like solid evidence for the fact that he won't ever get his hands on a time machine.

Or it'll be like the time machine in Primer, where you can't go back before the time machine was turned on.

That kinda only works if we’re the only civilization in the universe, right? What if some other civilization discovered it a long time ago?

Something something 'light cone.' If the machine was turned on a million years ago in another star system and then brought to Earth, the Primer model would put you in the other star system when you climb out of the machine. And then you'd need to make your way back to Earth. (It's unclear to me whether you would continue aging while sitting in the box and waiting for a million years to go by in reverse... But I assume you would.)

So I think the 'other civilization' thing only works if they're already approximately here with a running machine.

Then they might have been using it this whole time. If they kept to themselves we would have no idea.

I think we can tell for certain that time travel will never be invented because if it were to happen, then logically we’d already be experiencing people visiting us from the future.

Hello! It’s me, your visitor from 22 minutes into the future!

Hi! In a few other threads today people claimed that they / one can time the stock market.

Wanna start a trading venture with me? :-)

Since this is HN and we're playing the tbf game...

To be fair he'd only have to hit the FTL goal and then FTL can be used as a time machine.

Oh, good point!

> Elon in 2028: “time machine!”

We might well have one - back to the stone age based on the potential to escalate ongoing conflicts...

Elon said they might have a prototype in 2022. He didn’t give any other timelines.

He said production ready by 2023. Read my other reply to a sibling post which already made the same claim you did.