Who downvoted this? XD This brings me joy

It’s dirt cheap, too. If this was a cost-cutting measure, it was a thoroughly idiotic one. Which feels like the mark… of a certain someone I can think of

I did low-key get the squiggles before writing the article. I thought, from an ethical hacking disclosure-type perspective, that this info might cause folks to… well, ya know, paint tunnels on walls.

Then I looked, the cat was already out of the bag, the video had something like 5 million views on it in the 4 hours it took me to draft the article. So I shared it, but I definitely did have that thought cross my mind. I am also a little worried on that score.

So, your comment got me thinking… surely, in a big country like the US of A, this mural must actually exist already, right?

Of course it does. It is an art piece in Columbia, S.C: https://img.atlasobscura.com/90srIbBi-XX-H9u6i_RykKIinRXlpclCHtk-QPSHixk/rt:fit/w:1200/q:80/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL3BsYWNl/X2ltYWdlcy85ZTUw/M2ZkZDAxZjVhN2Rm/NmVfOTIyNjQ4NjQ0/OF80YWVhNzFkZjY0/X3ouanBn.webp

A full article about it: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/tunnelvision

How would Tesla FSD react to Tunnelvision, I wonder? How would Tesla FSD react to an overturned semi truck with a realistic depiction of a highway on it? JK, Tesla FSD crashes directly into overturned semis even without the image depiction issue.

I don’t think the test is misleading. It’s puffed up for entertainment purposes, but in being puffed up, it draws attention to an important drawback of optical-only self-driving cars, which is otherwise a difficult and arcane topic to draw everyday people’s attention to.

I am fairly dumb. Like, I am both dumb and I am fair-handed.

But, I am not pretentious!

So, let’s talk about your points and the title. You said I had fairly dumb pretenses, let’s talk through those.

1. The title of the article… there is no obvious reason to think that I think computers think like humans, certainly not from that headline. Why do you think that?
2. There are absolutely realistic situations exactly like this, not a pretense. Don’t think Loony Tunes. Think 18 wheeler with a realistic photo of a highway depicted on the side, or a billboard with the same. The academic article where 3 PhD holding engineering types discuss the issue at length, which is linked in my article. This is accepted by peer-reviewed science and has been for years.
3. Yes, I agree. That’s not a pretense, that’s just… a factually correct observation. You can’t train an AI to avoid optical illusions if its only sensor input is optical. That’s why the Tesla choice to skip LiDAR and remove radar is a terminal case of the stupids. They’ve invested in a dead-end sensor suite, as evidenced by their earning the title of Most Lethal Car Brand on the Road.

This does just impact Teslas, because they do not use LiDAR. To my knowledge, they are the only popular ADAS in the American market that would be fooled by a test like this.

Near as I can tell, you’re basically wrong point by point here.

The radar module on my truck costs $70.

The richest man on earth doesn’t think the lives of your vehicle’s passengers are worth $17.50 a pop.

And that’s to a knuckledragger like me, buying a single radar unit online. I’m sure the manufacturer gets insane quantity discounts.

That is an absolute no-brainer. Pay aside, take care of family.

That’s the whole purpose of the pay anyhow, money is just an odd totem that we allow to take care of our families.

Plus, you get to hang out with the little one for 3 months! Your wife loves you even better. It’s wins all the way down.

As a muscle car driver in the past, oddly, the sound is a big deal. The sound scratches some primal itch. A muscle car sounds like mechanical power. It’s hard to explain, it vibrates through the pedal, so I guess it’s sort of a human-machine interface feature. But also emotional. A lot going on there, I actually find that dimension of the design real interesting, most potential buyers hate what they attempted.

I can see how the corporate suits and engineers wouldn’t get it. But surely at least some of their engineers are gearheads? They tried to replicate it, and just widely missed the mark to most folks. It sounds really shitty in the videos I’ve seen.

You’re right, tho, the simple answer… it’s fake. It’s much more expensive than it used to be, and it’s clearly imitation. Nobody likes being a sucker, and a bad deal like that makes the buyer a sucker.

Greater than the sum of their parts, love it.

Whether it is a feature or a bug depends on how their sales numbers look for Q1 2025.

Call it Schroedinger’s bug.

The Muse’s cleavage knows what’s up.

Yeah, that’s how I read it :)

… Thanks for the downvote, boss XD

Have a great day.

This is the company that saw their North American sales dipping and responded, “let’s discontinue the Challenger and Charger, our 2 recognizable nameplates that give the rest of our lineup a halo effect with our largest buying segment, that’ll fix it!”

Then they brought back the Charger as an EV, which is exactly what that particular fanbase did not want to buy, at a starting price that’ll make your eyes water. Now they’ve announced that they’re doubling back and releasing a gasoline Charger, but by surprise and with no specs available in advance, as though they’re panic-releasing it. It’s a perfect shit show. Corporate idiocy on parade.

The folk with the random alphanumeric username, asking the real questions

Is your Challenger using the dealer installed SiriusXM? That would be for new and CPO vehicles. That seems to be what it is linked to.

Y’all are… surprisingly hard to persuade! I thought sharing a literal image of popup ads in the car would be the proof y’all needed to believe it was happening.

I mean, there are… more images of it happening…? Like, damn. Here’s an instance of it happening in a Challenger.

Reported by drivers as recently as Tuesday.

One of dozens of such reports, confirming make, model, and frequency of the ads (at every stop): https://www.reddit.com/r/Dodge/comments/1j838k8/why_tf_am_i_getting_ads_in_my_car/

I’m the world’s worst journalist, but I do try! When possible, I confirm facts with multiple sources. The “news” aspect here is that they were previously on a different Stellantis brand (Jeep), and now they have expanded to another Stellantis brand (Dodge).

If you have evidence that contradicts, feel free to share.

DON’T GIVE THEM IDEAS!

4 months is “almost” half a year, I guess.

Point of the post is that this popup ad thing has expanded from Jeep (small brand) into Dodge (large brand) from the parent company (Stellantis). What has happened in the meantime is that a bunch of other Dodge drivers has confirmed the issue is widespread and difficult to disable.

(Ope: I got fact-checked, turns out Jeep sells more vehicles per year than Dodge. I’m old, and apparently Dodge has lost a ton of market share since last I checked!

If y’all are concerned about recency, I updated the article to include more images of the popup ads, including one from as recently as 3 days ago.)