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Comment by 6stringmerc | Hacker News Reader

Do I think Hotz has a viable product? Yes. (A comment over at Jalopnik linked to a Tweet where an actual human rider / journalist experienced the Hotz vehicle and was quite impressed)

Do I think there's significant political pressure to have his product, ahem, driven into the ground as to not be a viable competitor to larger firms? Yes.

Do I think it's a sign of immaturity to pack up your stuff and leave when confronted by a small challenge? Yes.

Do I think dealing with the NHTSA (and potential NTSB) is a small challenge? No.

Am I still a fan of George Hotz as both an inventor, innovator, and persona? Yeah, I can see where he's coming from.

Do I think it's hilarious that a vocal contingent here criticizes him for taking a "path of least resistance" (regulation) in his development and iteration process? Absolutely.

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Do I think there's significant political pressure to have his product, ahem, driven into the ground as to not be a viable competitor to larger firms?

I think it's likely that he's getting exactly the same treatment one of those "larger firms" would get if they did the same.

The difference between him and those "larger firms" is that the "larger firms" would've been planning for the regulatory checks from the start. They would never have been blindsided by a request for information because they'd have known this stuff is a legal requirement and would've been proactively having discussions with regulators, figuring out what they'd need to provide, etc.

And speaking from what I've seen working at a startup in a heavily-regulated industry: federal regulators aren't black-suited startup-killing robots. They don't seem to care much how new or "agile" or "lean" or "disruptive" a company is. They care that the things or people protected by the relevant regulations... are actually protected. Crazy idea, I know, but it certainly does appear to be the case most of the time (cue people lining up with anecdotes to angrily tell me I'm some kind of statist apologist whatever and shouldn't be listened to...).

> Do I think Hotz has a viable product? Yes. (A comment over at Jalopnik linked to a Tweet where an actual human rider / journalist experienced the Hotz vehicle and was quite impressed)

Journalists being shown demos in controlled circumstances are a notoriously unreliable source of information about the viability of a product.

Oh come on, do you understand the concept of journalism? It's a reporting profession. It's not goddamn PR.

I'm just saying that there are many cases where "a single instance of a journalist having a good experience with a revolutionary pre-release product" turned out to have been the company deliberately misleading the journalist. I'm not claiming that happened here, but I am claiming there is a non-negligible chance it happened.

Fair enough, I'm not trying to say the profession is 100% on the up and up and you're right, people can be manipulated. That doesn't mean it's reasonable to prima-face like you did and dismiss a journalist's impressions (being cited on an Auto enthusiast site mind you) as worthless. It just struck a nerve because I'm a pretty cynical person but do my best to weigh what I've seen / gathered, and while I do admit I think George is an interesting underdog type character and sympathetic in that regard (so to speak), I'm noticing a lot of open hostility toward the product being cloaked in dislike of the person.

I'd agree with this. The journalist in question (Alex Roy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Roy) is an auto enthusiast and race driver, and is well respected even in auto enthusiast circles, which are notoriously anti-self-driving-cars.

Journalists can be manipulated, but Alex Roy's tweet (https://twitter.com/AlexRoy144/status/791996855114694657) is more an endorsement by a car enthusiast with 30+ years of high performance driving experience than a journalist, IMO.

Thanks, I appreciate your context because I think such quality of sources matter. In this instance, I thought it was appropriate to include a 3rd party of sorts who really doesn't have skin in the game.

I'm legitimately not sure if this is sarcasm or not.

That's a fair point, and we shouldn't over-weight one journalist's experience.

However, I think that in this case, the author of the tweet has a lot of credibility (https://twitter.com/AlexRoy144/status/791996855114694657) as the holder of multiple performance driving records. You're right that it is only one anecdotal perspective, but it's kind of like a prominent Apple blogger tweeting that a new Microsoft product has phenomenal UI. It's just one perspective, but (to me) it's interesting enough to merit further consideration.

> You're right that it is only one anecdotal perspective, but it's kind of like a prominent Apple blogger tweeting that a new Microsoft product has phenomenal UI

To stretch your analogy: when the FCC sends Microsoft questions about the product's RF emissions, does the prominent blogger's endorsement really matter? Firstly, RF is out of the blogger's wheelhouse and secondly, hypothetical Microsoft ought to have planned for regulatory compliance from the beginning, or at least have the technical specs recorded somewhere.

I have an issue with Hotz, since failoverflow conf about them breaking the PS3 crypto, I think he oversell his ideas to the uneducated iphone crowd and medias. I understand his attitude in wishing to push things forward, his disdain about large corps, governments, but he fails to deliver calm and solid proofs; mostly diss.

Domains like medicine, roads,... life critical engineering makes me feel the hacker way, reckless plan (path of least resistance) is wrong.

Let us know when you think again.

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