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Comment by tetrep | Hacker News Reader

a little more detail from techcrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/28/comma-ai-cancels-the-comma...

It seems that Hotz said, “dealing with regulators and lawyers… isn’t worth it.”

Which seems very unfortunate/shortsighted due to how useful this tech could be. Why not hire someone to deal with them for you?

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That may be just a fig-leaf to plaster over 'we couldn't do it'. It's one thing to release software, it's quite another thing to release this software and have it tested, audited and certified safe and that's definitely part of the process of delivering software that is critical to the well being of the users and the other people you're sharing the road with.

And that second part is part-and-parcel of wanting to operate in this space.

And he would have needed to have performed the development under an appropriately rigorous development process.

I agree. Prototypes are easy, production level products/systems are hard and take time and money. There is also another angle of just hoping to sell the prototype and "team" and let someone else do the hard work of making it real.

Exactly what I think -- here's the "deus ex machina" that he needed to wash his hands of the whole thing, after having talked himself into a corner where the only other way out was to deliver a real, working, product. The letter the government sent was simply asking for more information and a temporary pause in sales; not any permanent injunction at all. It reads like they know he's kind of a hothead but they're doing their best to convince him that this is in everyone's best interest.

An ex-colleague of mine used to say the difference between a software engineer and a real engineer is that the latter's signature is criminally binding.

We can refuse to be real engineers (it is a great responsibility), but then we should drop the title.

I'm 100% in agreement with that. Engineers carry responsibility for their work (and do so with pride).

We never had the PE title.

In any case, a software engineer still has legal liability. Maybe someone who works on mission-critical systems can comment more specifically here. Maybe it's contract based vs standardized.

I wouldnt doubt that regulators and lawyers may be the biggest hurdle in a project like that. But Im surprised that he did not have a team working on that for him. Elon Musk had to go thru that - and probably still is working thru a lot of that mess. Maybe it will inspire him to hack the system - and improve it.

> Why not hire someone to deal with them for you?

It's either taking a long time in order to be in compliance / certified or very costly or both.

Hotz mentioned a 2016 end of year shipping date, it's impossible to do that if they have to "dealing with regulators and lawyers".

Then it's impossible to do legally, and anyone who doesn't realize this isn't going to succeed in a highly regulated industry.

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