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Comment by naijaboiler | Hacker News Reader

You can say that about just every industry tech bros intrude on with hubris.

Well, the software startup mentality didn't succeed in revolutionizing any industry except for software.

And it is looking quite shortsighted and unsustainable for software too.

Yeah exactly, like the car industry. Christ, can you imagine if one of those cloud-cuckoolander morons decided they wanted to start a car company? You'd have kinda cool-looking cars that were surprisingly affordable but all the switches would be replaced by a big touchscreen that's too bright to look at when you're driving at night, and all the important safety systems would be written in node.js or some damn thing.

Do Teslas actually have important safety systems written in node.js?

Portions of the "Autopilot" and FSD systems are written in Node.

You reckon self-driving cars are going to be safer? I have a 1998 Range Rover that barely has *any* software on board, never mind things that will shit a brick because of the next Leftpad Incident.

There are plenty of 1998 vehicles with drivers ready to shit a brick at a moments notice though.

So, much the same as Tesla Autopilot, which is currently far less safe than driving manually?

Pretty much. Current Tesla seems to be nightmarish, but still within general range of some of the less good human drivers.

I'm still super excited about the tech, because I am very clumsy and have no business even trying to drive, and a car is one of the highest modern luxuries out there. Not that I expect to be able to afford it when it comes out....

The problem is that its safety is being compared to human drivers on every possible kind of road, when it only works on straight well-lit motorways with everyone travelling at the same speed in the same direction, which tends to be when human drivers don't have accidents at all and when Telsas make an absolute fucking beeline for emergency vehicles.

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