
Darwin Award
After DOGE goes to work on the NHTSA, it would be ironic if one or more of the unresolved faults leads to Musk receiving a Darwin Award
The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has launched a probe into Tesla's software that allows cars to operate autonomously over short distances, after reports of the code crashing in a physical sense. The software under investigation is called “Smart Summon” and “Actually Smart Summon,” and is accessed …
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... and I mean that in the context that it is stupid...
Question is whether or not the person who chose "Actually Smart Summon" as the feature/product name could see the issue with the naming?
Or was it deliberate and indicative of Tesla's (aka Musk's) contempt for those who bought their cars?
/s
This sounds like an internal engineering joke. Not just for the obvious acronym, but for the acknowledgement that yes this time we'll "Actually" get it right.
I've worked on many engineering projects where the internal early models had funny acronyms, I once worked on a Space Greenhouse project, that we called GRASS. But it was always clear from the start that as soon as anything about the project was going to be communicated publicly that the acronym would have to change to something more politically correct/less funny.
How this clearly joking name got through to an actual product is well mindblowing... Especially since it clearly implies that the old system was not fit for purpose, and yet Tesla released it to the public. Which in the land of the lawyers (USA!!!) seems like opening themselves up to a raft of lawsuits... Truly Mindblowing...
I remember a major European aircraft program where the British contingent got everyone to use a Single Harmonised Integrated Test Environment for their software.
It survived unchanged throughout, along with some other much less subtle digs that got introduced along the way.
Paris had a new metro line that was meant to be called Metro Express Régional Défense Etoile...
Allegedly what we know know as the UK "Grampian" TV region had been planned as "Scottish Highlands & Islands Television" until the first ident slide was seen...
There's also GEC-Plessey Telecommunications, generally known as "GPT" which caused much amusement in a meeting in France where it sounds like "J'ai pété" ("I farted").
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Kinematically
Improved
Software
System
Mutating
Yearly
Actually
Smart
Summon
They'll update to the latest version - which will auto-mutate using AI to constantly improve itself and fix the problem. It'll be called KISSMYASS.
You know it makes sense...
"How fast do these things go in (Actually) Smart Summon mode?"
Not that fast, but if you aren't engaged with your hands on the wheel (as it spins around) and your feets on the pedals, you lengthen the time it will take to react when you finally see that the car isn't going to stop before doing $14k in damage by backing the rear corner of the car into a bright yellow bollard. (the repair cost does not include the cost to hire a car for 3 months while yours waits disassembled at the shop for parts.)
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"When using the Smart Summon, the user is not even in the car, so they don't have their feet on the pedal or steering wheel."
I got sidetracked by previous conversation. There's still an issue with not being able to stop the car fast enough and not being able to see all around the car as you would if you were sat in it. I see it as yet another party trick. The problem is it goes wrong could be very expensive. Does Tesla insurance cover beta software? I'll wager that independent insurers have clauses about that sort of thing not being covered so if you do $10k worth of damage to your Tesla (not that hard) and $15k worth of damage to another car, OR do somebody an injury, selling that massively depreciated car may not cover the money due. How much is your house worth or did you spend the money on the car?
When a Tesla using ASS hits another car, I assume that Tesla blames the human and takes no responsibility for damages. And has the logs to prove Tesla isn't at fault, which it won't share with a court or the user or the police, but trust them, it is never the car.
Do the courts agree with that? Has it been tested? Some might suggest that a self driving car should be responsible for its actions.
Or does your insurance cover such things when you buy a Tesla and that's already in the policy?
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"I don't think a pocket activation would be a defence, still their responsibility."
It could be argued that the app was so poorly designed that inadvertently activating the software with the phone in your pocket was inevitable when you didn't mean to.
I've had phones that did sketchy things while in my pocket. I finally notice when I feel the phone is rather warm. My latest phone had a feature that would dial emergency services if I pushed the power button 5x moderately quickly. Initially I thought it was a good feature. The phone can be slow so it turns out that getting it to blank the screen (and not turn back on) led to me hitting the button too many times and I didn't even realize I had done it until I got a VM. Now all of that is turned off. The local police use a blocked number for call out which I block on my phone so if they try to call me, they go straight to VM which I can't block from happening. Oddly, patrol officer's phones don't have blocked caller ID so they can get through to me.
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