Originally published at: Steve "Woz" Wozniak is super pissed Tesla's FSD doesn't work | Boing Boing
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Caveat emptor!
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I have lots of respect for Woz. But it was abundantly clear in 2017 that Teslas were not going to be self-driving any time soon. It was an obvious fiction even before Musk exposed himself for who he is.
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All true. Though he could hire a fleet of drivers or a private jet to get him coast to coast anytime he wants to.
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But Woz says the car’s self-driving abilities are still far from what Musk promised. “It makes mistakes all the time,” he said. “It’s a horrible, frightening experience.”
And, yet, he continues to use the car?
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Clearly, you were not an Apple ][ user.
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You know, it still functions as a car if you don’t enable FSD.
I got a Tesla middle of last year. I like a lot of things about it. I have basic autopilot. I didn’t spring for FSD because I don’t expect to not be a danger to to myself and others allowing a car to drive itself on a busy surface street anytime soon. Autopilot is great on the freeway. You still have to pay attention, but it is really pleasant to not have to steer or use the pedals for miles on end. It is essentially a really good cruise control. I’m not claiming this is unique to Tesla, as my Sienna can do essentially the same thing, but it is more complicated to enable in the van.
Just a thought on what kind of self driving a Tesla (or many other modern cars) is good at.
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Yeah, if he’d just stuck to “the most advanced driver assist on the planet”, he wouldn’t have made such a damn mess of everything. But that seems to be his MO which his occasional successes have largely wallpapered over until now.
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I have wondered about this. The pedals I get, but what can you usefully do with your hands other than have them on the wheel? Is it so you can scratch both legs at the same time?
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Oh god, I just figured it out. Musk’s projects include:
Self driving cars
Brain-machine interfaces
Making employees disappear
…can somebody please check under the hood of their Tesla, to make sure it doesn’t have a brain-in-a-jar driving it?
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Very good question. What could you do with your hands that doesn’t involve taking your attention from the road. I don’t even think you could play rock-paper-scissors without taking your eyes off the highway. No writing, no touch-typing - unless you’re taking dictation, but you shouldn’t have your hands full with a device. Translate the radio into ASL for a deaf passenger, I guess, but you’d have to be really fluent and they’d have to read it from beside you, because you couldn’t turn to face them. Nothing that involves props, no reading, watching a movie or playing cards. To be honest, you really shouldn’t even be sightseeing.
I suppose you could point at things on the dashboard.
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I’d imagine that (ideally) it’s more that the mental load of applying the fine details of keeping the car smoothly in your lane. I don’t drive a lot, so I notice the fatigue from that on a several-hour drive. If I could offload that work to the car while focusing on the higher-level things like “what’s the traffic doing around me?”, I believe driving would be a lot easier.
Ideally.
In real life, a lot of people are going to look at their phones etc a lot more. I think that’s an example of “risk compensation”.
ETA: don’t look at your phone. FSD or not. Risk compensation isn’t a good thing.
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If he stuck to that, he wouldn’t have sold so many FSD upgrades and cars.
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Well most of the benefit of not steering is not having to make the constant micro-adjustments to the wheel needed to stay centered in the lane.
As for what I do with my hands, I typically rest left arm on the top of the door trim, right arm on the console. I do have to adjust the steering wheel every so often to verify to the car that I’m paying attention. I’m not trying to multi-task–that’d be weird and careless.
No scratching allowed in the whip, Bob.
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Just wanted to say thanks for this mention. It remains my favourite computer of all time, though I didn’t have one of the lovely Woz-signed ones.
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Woz is being a little disingenuous here, by claiming he lives his life in total honesty. I mean, it’s mostly true, but he also for years had as his ID a picture of himself with an eyepatch and a job title as “laser safety officer”.
Woz was a prankster, but otherwise, yeah. Actual engineers know how important it is to be honest, but sometime you just have to tro bait-fish for laughs.
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OMG this is now the moderate position 
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