Apple co-founder Wozniak ABOUT Tesla ‘They robbed my family of so much money’ | Hacker News Reader

Apple co-founder Wozniak ABOUT Tesla ‘They robbed my family of so much money’

fortune.com

68 pointssharemywin45 comments

He spoke at my conference on Tuesday in Tampa and said "Autopilot is the equivalent of a drunk driver." I've never been happier.

> They have robbed my family—myself and my wife—of so much money I couldn’t tell you

I would think the robbery would at least be capped at what he paid for the car, no? I guess "Woz is outraged he lost $15,000" has a different vibe to it.

I assumed he was deep into the stock because he believed the FSD hype. Woz never impressed me as a great business man. Brilliant just the same.

I think Woz got bamboozled because he wanted to believe. It's an easy trap to fall in - haven't we all gotten too emotionally involved in something at some point?

I want my LaserDisc money back

The difference is that LaserDisk worked as advertised.

Laserdisc was the bomb. And I miss mine.

Only after Pioneer purchased the IP from DiscoVision Associates (the joint MCA-IBM venture) did the system approximate what the average Joe consumer would consider "working". I'd say some time around the introduction of the CLD-900, so 1985 or thereabouts.

looks at all the crypto and then LLM hype

Nah.

He was part of the efforce /$WOZX coin, especially during launch

His whole thing is getting excited about technology, almost to a fault, without caring much about realism or financials. Combine that with brilliance and he is definitely a force for good in this world.

I thought he was implying he invested in Tesla itself?

Also, just because you have a huge bankroll doesn't make money worth less.

15k is 15k, regardless of how much you have in the bank.

It's valid either way to be angry about being mislead for a figure that would be a felony if merely yanked out of one's wallet.

> Also, just because you have a huge bankroll doesn't make money worth less.

Actually that's exactly what it means. Like pretty much everything else, money follows the law of diminishing marginal utility.

Anybody who invested in TSLA in 2016 doesn't have a whole lot to complain about, imo.

He's bought several Teslas according to news reports, so $15k/each in FSD could amount to ~$100k. His latest EV is a Lucid Air, sounds like he's done with Musk for a while.

He should be done with Musk forever.

This is the "full self driving beta" thing. I think Tesla is not handling it well for early customers.

People who bought in the early days should be allowed to transfer to their new vehicle. Reward early customers.

> Reward early customers.

Full self driving was promised and has not been delivered. At this point just refund their money.

Not sure why you need a whole article for what amounts to a product review from a disgruntled customer.

because the fame of the customer draws eyeballs and advertisers pay to have their graphics near the article, presumably.

Because woz is not just a disgruntled customer, he is an icon in the tech industry

I have the utmost respect for Woz, the ingenious Steve behind Apple, but it was clear from day one that FSD was plain impossible with todays technology: too many variables to take into account; by the moment one eliminates them and unifies road building to make them FSD proof, they're one step away from railways. Of everyone, he should have known how not to fall into someone's reality distortion field.

It's easy to say that it was clear in retrospect. 10 years ago I would have put ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, AlphaZero, and Boston Dynamics' dogbots in the same bin of 'plain impossible'. Now I am less sure of my predictions and thus not likely to say that some fantastical technology is plain impossible. I can see how the co-founder of Apple, a known optimist who might very reasonably have thought in 1980 that much of what we have today is 'plain impossible', and then saw it come to pass, might be willing to be optimistic about a tech CEO's claims.

It’s not just the technology, people have spun the narrative so now, even though human drivers cause thousands of accidents every day, a single accident by the self driving car is a disaster worthy of a media frenzy, endless litigation and political involvement.

I'm amazed Woz is complaining about being "robbed" and should have a better understanding of "beta", however, he gets one point absolutely right.

What I think nobody could have foreseen is how unnerving it feels to be in a self-driving car. I don't think this is the same as it not working. Even when it is working, you're still on edge.

We probably had this same feeling when cruise control was first invented, and then when it introduced the "distance follow" feature. Is it really going to slow down? Is it going to just follow the car ahead?

We're more comfortable today that those systems just work. And I don't know if they always worked flawlessly.

Tesla has done work in the UX to try to make people calmer by understanding what the car is doing, but it's clearly not working.

I had the experience of trying an (older version) of Tesla self drive before my first experience with distance follow. The self drive was a hell of a lot more unnerving.

I think the difference comes down to having lot more time to adjust the throttle or brake than you do the steering if the self driving feature misses a corner.

This is absolutely a fair argument with the current state of self-driving, however, if there were a better UX communicating what the car was doing, AND you were more used to it, AND it's 15 years down the road and self-driving is seen as more reliable, I wonder if you'd have the same feeling.

Let's check back in 15 years.

>What I think nobody could have foreseen is how unnerving it feels to be in a self-driving car.

What I think nobody could have foreseen is how unnerving it feels to be in Elon's experimental implementation of a self-driving car.

What I learned from this:

Musk is a good con artist and Woz is a good mark

It definitely makes mistakes, and is beta, but it's still the most advanced system to achieve scale. For most short trips and highway driving it works perfectly fine.

It a beta that doesn't work at all. Nor for short trips neither for highway. Take back seat and let it drive for any distance. It cannot even get you out of parking lot.

It also costs 15k. Insane Elon gets away it.

"Doesn't work at all" is definitely not true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nF0K2nJ7N8

On that video it clearly doesn't work at all. I don't see any second where Tesla is driving and there is nobody behind the wheel.

edited to add comment below

Here is an old video of beta self driving car https://youtu.be/__EoOvVkEMo?t=120

This is a bit sad that someone like woz who was at the heart of the computer revolution, on the engineering side, was unable to anticipate how self driving wasn’t anywhere near the corner at the musk sold it. It’s a bit scary as well for anybody working as an investor : if he wasn’t able to anticipate that kind of things, how am i going to ?

Charitably for woz: he has a strong commitment to quality, and seems offended that somebody would feel comfortable putting such a slapdash effort to market, even as a "beta." If he was the brains behind the effort, perhaps he'd have kept a lid on it until it lived up to the "full self driving" name.

What's shocking is Woz didn't fix it using a vintage Disk ][ floppy drive controller. I have only myself to blame for my unrealistic expectations

It is not like Woz got mugged in an alley by Elon - it was willing seller and buyer - not Elon's problem if he like so many others fell for BS and hype.

>not Elon's problem

"Truth in advertising" isnt just a suggestion.

Usually I would say "I told you so" about the Fools Self Driving (FSD) scam that Tesla is running, but in this case:

I really did try to warn you about the scam: [0] [1] [2]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32575938

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32558028

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28000436

Weird. I saw him live once at a conference where he praised being a shareholder and the disruptive tech. I guess a lot can change in a few years.

Highway robbery… am I rite?

Didn't Woz have a crypto coin? Is he so guiltless of robbery?

What about the efforce /$WOZX crypto he was/is part of? Especially during its launch/pre-launch (-95%)

Remember when his crypto was stolen, but he still supported it?

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/26/steve-wozniak-says-someone-s...

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