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> Everything sounds like it's just a bunch of hackers

It is! This is run by George Hotz, aka geohot, aka the kid who cracked the iPhone SIM lock at 17yo, released the 1-click jailbreak for iOS before he was 20, and then went ahead and cracked the PS3 shortly after and released Sony’s private key (used to sign all PS3 software) for all the world to see.

He’s a beast. Now he’s doing Tinygrad and Comma. You won’t be seeing Corpo-speak from this guy or his team lol.

Cool to see him doing well and doing it his own way.

Exactly! And I would expect hacker news of all places to understand that.

Didn't geohot leave Comma like ~2 years ago

He left Coma for tinycorp the same way Elon left SpaceX for Twitter.

Didn't Geohot also leave for twitter?

He was only at Twitter for a few weeks, maybe a few months before quitting because it turns out things are A Bit More Complicated Than That TM. This is one of the reasons why I would feel weird about entrusting my life to Comma.ai. I'm not that keen on Move Fast and Break Things when the things are my bones.

He famously criticised the engineers there, joined, delivered basically nothing and then left.

How many of those accomplishments were truly his, I wonder ? https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/109561314682149814

The only thing the link contains is a bunch of people claiming that his achievements were built on other people's.

Yet not even a single a achievement is mentioned by name, nor any specific detail is given.

It's evidence for nothing.

except marcan is https://archive.org/details/console-hacking-2010

not just 'a bunch of people'

marcan is at least 2 people

The next message in the thread gives specifics about the PS3 crack referenced in the parent:

> Disclaimer: I have personal experience with him when he took the PS3 ECDSA fail research I and the other fail0verflow folks presented at CCC, and a couple weeks later released the PS3 metldr keys obtained using our method, with zero credit or reference to us. Then Sony sued us all because they assumed we were working with him, even though we'd been careful not to actually release any crypto keys precisely to avoid giving the lawyers excuses to sue us.

> So yes, I was named as a defendant on a lawsuit with him, thanks to his antics. That wasn't a fun few months.

So, it sounds like the individual is complaining that he didn't mention them, but also complaining about Sony sueing them, and somehow manages to blame him for Sonys actions? Like Sony gave them credit they didn't want, but they want to complain about not getting the credit they didn't want?

It's as if you gave an academic lecture on a casino's vulnerability to being robbed, and then someone actually went and robbed the casino. You can be mad at the asshole who robbed the casino for two reasons; A: he's put you in hot water that you would have avoided without the robbery; B: he took credit for discovering the vulnerability (or at least didn't correct people who assumed he must be a real hotshot at casino security design)

Except that nobody robbed anyone.

The worst part of this critique is that it's not even true, and marcan knows better. He clearly dislikes me so much that he is willing to lie.

The symmetric half of the metldr key was obtained with a novel exploit I found. Then the asymmetric half was derived from that with the fail0verflow method.

But who really still cares about any of this, it was 13 years ago.

Weird, I could swear that I haven't seen that message.

Thanks for the correction.

A great thread to show how Mastodon is no better than Twitter. Really obnoxious and toxic and not something I want to be near.

That's not platform specific, it's the humans

You forgot to mention how he also single-handed solved search at Twitter /s

> Wouldn't partnering with car manufacturers be a great idea here? Isn't it weird to be so against that sort of partnership?

They aren't against this at all. They think their product isn't good enough for this and would prefer to go it their own way for now.

> Why would anyone without a GitHub account and a soldering iron in a drawer somewhere use this?

They largely wouldn't, yet. geohot et al are aware of that and don't care.

Not sure what the problem is. The product isn't good enough, they're working on it, they want open source + bounties to improve the product, and yet the product is profitable. It's early.

Furthermore, nothing is stopping anyone from developing a competitor and getting into the driverless / ADAS field themselves. But no one has. So I'll take the man in the arena over... well, nothing.

Charging $1000 to talk to their business development person does not suggest taking partnerships seriously to me.

I understand that the product might not be ready to go mainstream but that's not what the marketing says to me, in fact much of their marketing says they are better than the competition, and having followed the company for years they've been through cycles of saying it's amazing and saying it's not good enough.

Honestly I feel like the whole thing is just whatever geohot is feeling each day, but I don't know, I hope there's more strategy than that.

> Charging $1000 to talk to their business development person does not suggest taking partnerships seriously to me.

A GM at Ford won't be paying this. That's for jabronis and randoms who want to pitch nonsense.

I think the price is fine. Mostly it's a form to say "I don't want to talk to you." He could just say that, but people would be mad as well. No reason to take phone calls from random "business development" people anyway as a startup.

> A GM at Ford won't be paying this. That's for jabronis and randoms who want to pitch nonsense.

I realise that's probably the intention, but that's not what it says. They could just as easily not say this, and it would be better. I suspect HSBC doesn't take random meetings with dudes with Bitcoin trading strategies, but they don't say that on their website, instead they have uninteresting stock photos and taglines that say "you can trust us with your money".

This is the root of the problem, the company markets and communicates in a way that says "we're a bunch of hackers that don't care what you think", and that's not appealing to most people.

A GM at Ford absolutely will be paying this if they want a phone call. Joining our Discord is free however.

I stand corrected. Still, I agree with your decision.

He talks about this in his webcasts, in the past he said he has wasted untold amount of time with executives and middle management at so many companies, who all promise the world but their only real power is to organise the next meeting.

He's an incredibly smart guy and has worked out the best way to partner with these slow moving cargo ships is to be so good that they can't ignore you. Their team is nimble so will eventually outmaneuver them and then the meetings will be on their terms, not time wasting.

When Consumer Reports tested a Comma 2 against ADAS from car manufacturers, it rated second best.

https://data.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/...

Thanks for sharing the document.

But I'm confused; while I've only skim-read, the 'overall ratings' on page 6 appear to show that Comma 2 rates as best, not second best?

You're right - I misremembered; I last actually read the report when it came out. I thought GM's Super Cruise came out on top, but it seems like Comma did!

They do care, on their Twitter they say they want to get it into Best Buy someday

> Everything sounds like it's just a bunch of hackers

Are you aware of what website you are commenting on?

A side-project for a very famous early-stage startup VC fund that offers advice, networking and mentorship so that hackers aren't just winging it?

You don’t need a github account or a soldering iron to use this.

I think they’re being a bit facetious, but the underlying point stands.

You need a DIY attitude. And not just a we renovated our bathroom DIY attitude you have to be really willing to dig into understand how and why this works and where it’s gonna not work correctly with your particular vehicle.

It’s already an expensive device that goes in an expensive vehicle driving on public roads where you can get cited tickets or possible liability if the thing really misbehaves and getting an accident with it.

I consider myself extremely DIY/hacker and this is one of the things that I’ve really struggled to get past the mental hurdles.

i took the leap and it's been more than I could have wished for. i don't have a ton of miles, maybe 10k miles but no issues. it's just level 2 driving which is better than anything OEMs offer.

how does it compare to Blue Cruise on Ford vehicles?

blue cruise isnt available on my full road trip route.

Same, I love mine, I really wanted what basic autopilot gives in a Tesla in my Highlander and it does that incredibly well.

I also really love mine. It has done what it has advertised extremely well, in my opinion. Makes driving chill. I have a '24 Ioniq with HDA2 and it's a night and day difference between Comma's implementation of HDA/LKAS and stock. If the stock version is like a 3/10, OpenPilot is like a 8 or 9/10. Stock HDA would just turn off randomly in the middle of turns. Its LKAS was very jerky which not only scares you, but scares other people on the road as well.

Thank you, I was being sarcastic, like the marketing material I highlighted in fact.

I don't think it's so much the DIY nature that bothers me, at least it's not the first issue I'm hitting, it's the unseriousness of it all. Maybe if this was being sold by a major car manufacturer in its current form, I might start to think about how DIY it feels, but I think that would be easier to get over because it's visible. As it is, it's the invisible aspects, like the software that's so critical to things like this, which bothers me coming from a company with this sort of attitude.

I will refer to this comment the next time anyone complains about enterprise speak in announcements.

Eh, no matter what you do, you can't please all people. Some people like the corporate speak, some hate it. I got the reverse a lot, where people recommended movies or shows as ABSOLUTELY THE BEST THING EVER, and I watched them and hated them.

That's when I realized that there will always be people that love or hate any given thing, and feedback should be considered in aggregate.

You don't need a soldering iron to install it, so your entire comment comes off as rude, dismissive and ignorant.

Did you actually read the article? They are just re organising their teams and are actually recruiting 5 more people

No layoffs! You’re conditioned by mainstream tech euphemisms to think that from this post. geohot is straightforward type.

> We’re growing the team by ~5 people to help solve autonomy, improve the product, and scale up production. You’ll hear more about each team in the following posts from the head of each team.

> Check out our new leaderboard and jobs page. It’s got some fun programming challenges that also happen to be hiring challenges.

> You’re conditioned by mainstream tech euphemisms to think that from this post.

In other words, mainstream usage would suggest the interpretation that these are layoffs but comma.ai is either ignorant of this, doesn't care, or deliberately used the language as clickbait.

When it comes to language you don't get to blame "mainstream euphemisms" for your own failure to communicate—you work with the language that people actually speak or you risk miscommunication.

I completely agree. Communicating in this way is definitely not being "straightforward". It's either ignorant and tone deaf or just snarky.

OK, this thread has generally been shitting on comma, but this comment broke the camel's back for me. Is your line of reasoning seriously "other companies misuse words to cushion their shittiness" -> "Comma used the words as they are meant, and didn't have any shittiness to need to hide" -> "we're used to everyone misleading us with those words and Comma didn't" -> "Comma is misleading us by not misleading us"?

That's... an amazing syllogism.

I frankly don't care about Comma at all, I care about language. When most people reading a bit of writing interpret it one way, they're right and the author is wrong. That's all.

For you

most people = people in the corporate tech bubble

That’s the issue.

Yes, if most of the people who will be reading your press release will misinterpret it you have a problem. Audience matters, and if you dismiss your audience as a "bubble" you will fail to communicate with them.

Maybe consider the possibility it’s intentional. Basically by writing this way he got rid of all the annoying people! It’s a filter to only get the attention of beyond the surface thinkers.

The way I see it, "the language that people actually speak" didn't include refactoring as a euphemism for firing people; it's something corporations came up with. Now we have someone who tries to eschew this euphemism. I think it's a good thing. Using words in their plain meaning makes for a clear communication.

I’m not looking for a job, but out of curiosity, I looked at their jobs page and saw that one of their benefits was two meals a day. Umm—I’d prefer not to work somewhere where I was eating two meals a day at the office.

you couldn't see yourself eating breakfast at 8 or 9 and lunch at 12-1 every day? two meals is a perk at my job and it's great.

one of my friends at another job with same benefit doesn't have kids so he goes to work at 11 and eats lunch and then stays for dinner too.

I can't see trying to get to work without a breakfast first. But having two lunches isn't the worst idea.

What's the point you're trying to make here? That the role is bad because it implies needing to work from an office? Or that the daily hours are long enough to cross the boundaries of two meal times? Or you take offense to the idea that meals are eaten in the office, as opposed to somewhere else? I'm beyond confused.

I think the point is that the wording doesn't distinguish on the workplace, so it reads as the benefit being "you get to have 2 meals a day" in general life, which for most people having 3 meals a day would feel restrictive and overbearing that their employer would be dictating such details of their life.

I'm sure it was actually intended as "2 free meals at work", and while it may just be poor written communication, it could also speak to an assumption about how much work defines the lives of the employees.

He was talking about the long hours. Normal office hours do not span two meals.

> Normal office hours do not span two meals.

Arrive at 11am, lunch at 12, dinner at 5, that’s only 6 hours so far.

Is that really that long hours?

Most people have dinner at like 7pm. It does vary by country but I'm pretty sure that's what they do in the US. 5pm would be an extremely early dinner.

I'm not eating dinner at the office, unless I intend to stay a few more hours (which is only warranted by freak incidents).

I eat 3 meals a day at my 9-hour office and it's great

They don't? I'd love to get a free breakfast at like 9:15 and lunch at 1. That's not even remotely long hours. Others might work 10-7 and like having lunch and dinner. That's two sets of hours where 2 meals makes great sense. When I was single and living alone, I would have loved that benefit. The breakfast version, I would still do now, since I'm not really fully ready to eat until after 9.

The details are lunch and dinner. If I’m in the office at dinnertime, I’m there too late.

At one point I was eating three meals at ~8:30 hours at work. Breakfast just before 10am, lunch at 1-2pm, dinner after 6pm.

But what about second breakfast?