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>slightest critical comment... fanatics... bizarre I don't know if it's intentional or not, but your comment reads as if you're very angry at Tesla yourself, w

by xoa 8y ago

>slightest critical comment... fanatics... bizarre I don't know if it's intentional or not, but your comment reads as if you're very angry at Tesla yourself, which makes it harder to take your comment at face value. FWIW, if you're just legitimately trying to make an argument on HN it can be worth trying to be judicious about throwing around terms like "zealot" or "fanatic" or significant hyperbole in general. Furthermore you've started with something more then dubious: >that Tesla would go through their trip logs Above link was the first time I'd seen that, looks like it's from 2013. But even just reading Tesla's response alone I noted they said "media drive", as in this wasn't the reporter buying his own car and then writing about it, but getting a temporary loaner from Tesla. It's completely normal and within the rights of a manufacturer offering a loan of something valuable for review purposes to keep logs or check it for reported problems on return, it's their property after all and if there were real flaws they'd want to be able to work on fixing them. After I read further comments made at the time it was stated that private owners logs are theirs in turn, no Tesla cannot go through their trip logs if they write whatever they want. But if you want to just try something out for free, well it's not yours. This would be the same as if you used a company car or system or equipment or whatever, the company may monitor that. And loaners aren't the only way for journalists to do reviews either, Consumer Reports for example famously buys things themselves (with confidential shoppers to boot) precisely to avoid bias or cherry picking or whatever from either side. Given the above, I have doubts about your assertion of "a lot of potential customers" too. If you have some newer information indicating that Tesla was lying about not logging data of private cars without consent (real consent, with a signature) maybe include that in your post?

gamblor956 8y ago
I'm not angry at Tesla, though I did cancel my preorder after their response to the NYT. I also had the opportunity to ride in one, and it was a depressingly sub-par quality car for the price. But in this case: at the time of the NYT article, Tesla's PR department was operating on hair-trigger reaction mode: even the slightest critical comment would send them into overdrive in response. They've since learned about the Streisand effect, and no longer respond to criticism in the way they did before. (This is likely because Musk no longer directly oversees the day-to-day of their marketing.) As for the trip logs: it's not just the NYT trip. It was every time there was an accident involving a Tesla. Or a negative review. Even Tesla's response to the Consumer Reports review included information from the CR vehicle's trip logs, even though CR acquired those vehicles from third parties. The problem isn't that Tesla is logging the cars (most new cars do), the problem is how Tesla is using that data in ways that violate cultural (and in the case of Europe, legal) norms regarding privacy. Finally, as to "a lot of potential customers," I count more than a few dozen in LA alone across a number of industries. Jaguar has seen the biggest windfall in terms of putative Tesla buyers switching to the iPace, followed by the BMW. A lot of the rest are simply waiting until the next generation of EVs and are sticking with their current luxury/mid-range vehicles. I am aware that on an absolute basis a few dozen customers isn't much, but it's a few dozen potential customers in the market segement most likely to buy and evangelize their cars.
- xoa 8y ago
  Hey, sorry but I posted a reply right as you were writing yours, I even refreshed before to make sure you hadn't replied yet but looks like we began at around the same time. I just want to say that it does look like there are real issues now, and I think you did your own valid concerns a disservice in the original post by not having some more details and keeping things more measured. Remember a lot of us don't follow any of this that closely, and after a long time on the net have developed an innate distrustful response (reasonable or not!) for any usage of things like calling fans "fanatics." Even in this post: >even the slightest critical comment But I mean, I wouldn't categorize something like that NYT piece as "the slightest critical comment" it was pretty brutal. Maybe correctly, but not nothing. Same with the Top Gear, though since that's more a comedy show it shouldn't be an expectation (but I think a lot of Americans at least don't know that). Unless you can really link to something showing say a bunch of random owners doing little blogs or tweets along the lines of "the color wasn't quite what I expected" or "range is overall fine but a few miles lower then was represented" resulted an "overdrive response" your argument would be stronger if you just stuck to a basic "negative reviews". And as far as the "a lot of potential customers" you must realize that we've all seen the anecdote/data thing a ton of times right and a few dozen out of hundreds of thousands of sales and an enormous backlog of demand kind of seems not very compelling either? Particularly given all the confounding factors of their genuine other fuckups? Anyway, that's all. I'm not saying you're wrong to be critical, but I don't think you did as good a job of it as you could have.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
  Interesting that this even needs to be said, about a CEO that would call someone a “pedo” without evidence. I totally support EV but Elon is his own worst enemy.
xoa 8y ago
>If you have some newer information indicating that Tesla was lying about not logging data of private cars without consent (real consent, with a signature) maybe include that in your post? So gamblor956 didn't reply (EDIT, did while I was writing this) but I was actually kind of curious about this (and I did bring up the question), so I took a stab at researching it a bit myself. Tesla has engaged in their own hyperbole after all, the cars do have online connections I think since there is some sort of remote maintenance that can be done, and they've talked about logs with autopilot before. And in fact it looks like (I am basing this purely on brief searching, I don't own one so corrections welcome) there is some real cause for concern though in a different way: sometime in the last 5 years it seems they've changed their privacy policy from opt-in to opt-out. It's still possible to uncheck general data sharing, but by default information is sent back to the mothership, and at least for trips with autopilot enabled it looks to be pretty damn granular (and AP apparently can't be opted out of now even?). A 2018 thread [1] I found in Tesla forums (which also links to some others) shows some pretty clear trip maps, and also claims the anonymization is pretty garbage (though with spatial information of that resolution I don't know if it's possibly anyway, it'd likely become instantly obvious where someone's house was and that's that): >"What other things I have noticed: the "anonymization" is actually pretty superficial. Every trip (from the moment autopilot started to the moment autopilot is powered off) is given a unique uuid, and every snapshot taken during that uses the same uuid, even if some internal fields are cleared for "anonymized" uploads, internally the trip id is still stored, combined with camera calibrations uploaded every other minute under the same trip id without any anonymization - connecting the dots back together is actually pretty simple. And of course looking at enough trips it's also pretty easy to see that "this must be home, now who lives there from our customer database"? Obviously timestamps are also all there." Finally Tesla is apparently not even at all transparent about sharing this with owners. So absolutely worthy of concern, and I wish all this had been in OP and they'd been more measured and precise because that 2013 post touches on none of that at all, nor naturally do comments from back then touch on anything that has changed sicne. Like at other companies, ML learning benefits from huge data intake and in turn is driving (harhar) a hunger for maximum data at maximum resolution. There is a real direct tension right now in a lot of areas of tech between that and privacy (witness Apple's issues trying to juggle that). A good step (if it hasn't happened already, seems like it must have but I can't find something on it) would be for an EU Tesla car owner to use the GDPR to force them to disclose everything they've got on them. ---- 1: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/data-sharing-and-privacy-whats-actually-collected.117294/ https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/data-sharing-and-pri...

by xoa 8y ago

gamblor956 8y ago

I'm not angry at Tesla, though I did cancel my preorder after their response to the NYT. I also had the opportunity to ride in one, and it was a depressingly sub-par quality car for the price. But in this case: at the time of the NYT article, Tesla's PR department was operating on hair-trigger reaction mode: even the slightest critical comment would send them into overdrive in response. They've since learned about the Streisand effect, and no longer respond to criticism in the way they did before. (This is likely because Musk no longer directly oversees the day-to-day of their marketing.) As for the trip logs: it's not just the NYT trip. It was every time there was an accident involving a Tesla. Or a negative review. Even Tesla's response to the Consumer Reports review included information from the CR vehicle's trip logs, even though CR acquired those vehicles from third parties. The problem isn't that Tesla is logging the cars (most new cars do), the problem is how Tesla is using that data in ways that violate cultural (and in the case of Europe, legal) norms regarding privacy. Finally, as to "a lot of potential customers," I count more than a few dozen in LA alone across a number of industries. Jaguar has seen the biggest windfall in terms of putative Tesla buyers switching to the iPace, followed by the BMW. A lot of the rest are simply waiting until the next generation of EVs and are sticking with their current luxury/mid-range vehicles. I am aware that on an absolute basis a few dozen customers isn't much, but it's a few dozen potential customers in the market segement most likely to buy and evangelize their cars.

xoa 8y ago
Hey, sorry but I posted a reply right as you were writing yours, I even refreshed before to make sure you hadn't replied yet but looks like we began at around the same time. I just want to say that it does look like there are real issues now, and I think you did your own valid concerns a disservice in the original post by not having some more details and keeping things more measured. Remember a lot of us don't follow any of this that closely, and after a long time on the net have developed an innate distrustful response (reasonable or not!) for any usage of things like calling fans "fanatics." Even in this post: >even the slightest critical comment But I mean, I wouldn't categorize something like that NYT piece as "the slightest critical comment" it was pretty brutal. Maybe correctly, but not nothing. Same with the Top Gear, though since that's more a comedy show it shouldn't be an expectation (but I think a lot of Americans at least don't know that). Unless you can really link to something showing say a bunch of random owners doing little blogs or tweets along the lines of "the color wasn't quite what I expected" or "range is overall fine but a few miles lower then was represented" resulted an "overdrive response" your argument would be stronger if you just stuck to a basic "negative reviews". And as far as the "a lot of potential customers" you must realize that we've all seen the anecdote/data thing a ton of times right and a few dozen out of hundreds of thousands of sales and an enormous backlog of demand kind of seems not very compelling either? Particularly given all the confounding factors of their genuine other fuckups? Anyway, that's all. I'm not saying you're wrong to be critical, but I don't think you did as good a job of it as you could have.
eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
Interesting that this even needs to be said, about a CEO that would call someone a “pedo” without evidence. I totally support EV but Elon is his own worst enemy.

xoa 8y ago

>If you have some newer information indicating that Tesla was lying about not logging data of private cars without consent (real consent, with a signature) maybe include that in your post? So gamblor956 didn't reply (EDIT, did while I was writing this) but I was actually kind of curious about this (and I did bring up the question), so I took a stab at researching it a bit myself. Tesla has engaged in their own hyperbole after all, the cars do have online connections I think since there is some sort of remote maintenance that can be done, and they've talked about logs with autopilot before. And in fact it looks like (I am basing this purely on brief searching, I don't own one so corrections welcome) there is some real cause for concern though in a different way: sometime in the last 5 years it seems they've changed their privacy policy from opt-in to opt-out. It's still possible to uncheck general data sharing, but by default information is sent back to the mothership, and at least for trips with autopilot enabled it looks to be pretty damn granular (and AP apparently can't be opted out of now even?). A 2018 thread [1] I found in Tesla forums (which also links to some others) shows some pretty clear trip maps, and also claims the anonymization is pretty garbage (though with spatial information of that resolution I don't know if it's possibly anyway, it'd likely become instantly obvious where someone's house was and that's that): >"What other things I have noticed: the "anonymization" is actually pretty superficial. Every trip (from the moment autopilot started to the moment autopilot is powered off) is given a unique uuid, and every snapshot taken during that uses the same uuid, even if some internal fields are cleared for "anonymized" uploads, internally the trip id is still stored, combined with camera calibrations uploaded every other minute under the same trip id without any anonymization - connecting the dots back together is actually pretty simple. And of course looking at enough trips it's also pretty easy to see that "this must be home, now who lives there from our customer database"? Obviously timestamps are also all there." Finally Tesla is apparently not even at all transparent about sharing this with owners. So absolutely worthy of concern, and I wish all this had been in OP and they'd been more measured and precise because that 2013 post touches on none of that at all, nor naturally do comments from back then touch on anything that has changed sicne. Like at other companies, ML learning benefits from huge data intake and in turn is driving (harhar) a hunger for maximum data at maximum resolution. There is a real direct tension right now in a lot of areas of tech between that and privacy (witness Apple's issues trying to juggle that). A good step (if it hasn't happened already, seems like it must have but I can't find something on it) would be for an EU Tesla car owner to use the GDPR to force them to disclose everything they've got on them. ---- 1: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/data-sharing-and-privacy-whats-actually-collected.117294/ https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/data-sharing-and-pri...