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Oh my, really? The Feds could just track you down and grab you. Why is this worse? I agree, in some fantasy dystopia this may seem scary but ... If this ever ha

Oh my, really? The Feds could just track you down and grab you. Why is this worse? I agree, in some fantasy dystopia this may seem scary but ... If this ever happened, I mean, we would have much bigger problems than the self-driving car.

krapp 13y ago
Call me crazy, but I consider a future of self-driving cars to be a fantasy dystopia in any case. I find it odd that people seem to be upset with governments intruding on their privacy in a purely abstract sense, but seem not to have issues with potentially giving up their physical autonomy completely to a system run by software (and potentially, by extension, a government.) Why be worried about the effect of a global internet surveillance apparatus but not be concerned about that being extended to the realm of vehicles, or the effect that that might have on personal freedom?
Apocryphon 13y ago
Come on- isn't the prospect of being in a personal transportation that could override your controls not scary at all? And remember, it isn't just potentially the government who might do this. What about hackers working on behalf of some malicious and sinister agency? What if instead of kidnapping you, they mess with the controls and cause you to drive into incoming traffic? Or worse, an entire highway's worth of cars in a terrorist attack? I'd be first in line to buy an autonomous automobile, but these are still real concerns. The more control you cede to programming, the more rigorous the code has to be.
- dinkumthinkum 13y ago
  :( this is a silly response. Who are these sinister organizations? Chaos? E.V.I.L.? Or the FSB or what? A terrorist attack? Wouldn't you be more worried people going crazy and driving down the wrong side of the highway? By your thinking maybe we shouldn't even have cities because they are dense target rich environments. Even under an attack by Loki or whatever sinister organization from a comic book, you're still talking about something far safer than what we have currently. I think it's hilarious that HN is the first place to see people saying the Boston Bombing was no big deal and more babies are killed each year by peanut buffer or something but yet here we have people more concerned about Magneto controlling cars and causing terrorist actions than reducing the very real 95% of traffic deaths. That's pretty hard to take seriously!
  - Apocryphon 13y ago
    I never said that we shouldn't have self-driving cars. I'm saying the code that govern these cars should be open-sourced. To prevent governments (or al-Qaeda or the mob or someone else with the resources to get hackers) from having an advantage in figuring out ways to abuse these systems. We already live in an age where pacemakers with wireless components can be hacked, and potentially kill the people who wear them.

krapp 13y ago

Call me crazy, but I consider a future of self-driving cars to be a fantasy dystopia in any case. I find it odd that people seem to be upset with governments intruding on their privacy in a purely abstract sense, but seem not to have issues with potentially giving up their physical autonomy completely to a system run by software (and potentially, by extension, a government.) Why be worried about the effect of a global internet surveillance apparatus but not be concerned about that being extended to the realm of vehicles, or the effect that that might have on personal freedom?

Apocryphon 13y ago

Come on- isn't the prospect of being in a personal transportation that could override your controls not scary at all? And remember, it isn't just potentially the government who might do this. What about hackers working on behalf of some malicious and sinister agency? What if instead of kidnapping you, they mess with the controls and cause you to drive into incoming traffic? Or worse, an entire highway's worth of cars in a terrorist attack? I'd be first in line to buy an autonomous automobile, but these are still real concerns. The more control you cede to programming, the more rigorous the code has to be.

dinkumthinkum 13y ago
:( this is a silly response. Who are these sinister organizations? Chaos? E.V.I.L.? Or the FSB or what? A terrorist attack? Wouldn't you be more worried people going crazy and driving down the wrong side of the highway? By your thinking maybe we shouldn't even have cities because they are dense target rich environments. Even under an attack by Loki or whatever sinister organization from a comic book, you're still talking about something far safer than what we have currently. I think it's hilarious that HN is the first place to see people saying the Boston Bombing was no big deal and more babies are killed each year by peanut buffer or something but yet here we have people more concerned about Magneto controlling cars and causing terrorist actions than reducing the very real 95% of traffic deaths. That's pretty hard to take seriously!
- Apocryphon 13y ago
  I never said that we shouldn't have self-driving cars. I'm saying the code that govern these cars should be open-sourced. To prevent governments (or al-Qaeda or the mob or someone else with the resources to get hackers) from having an advantage in figuring out ways to abuse these systems. We already live in an age where pacemakers with wireless components can be hacked, and potentially kill the people who wear them.