A YouTuber let the Cybertruck close on his finger to test the new sensor update. It didn't go well.

EdibleFriend@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 735 points –
A YouTuber let the Cybertruck close on his finger to test the new sensor update. It didn't go well.
businessinsider.com
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Judkins said that after the finger test, a lead cybertruck engineer at Tesla said he did the video wrong.

The engineer told him the frunk increases in pressure every single time it closes and detects resistance, Judkins said. It's going to assume you want to close the frunk and maybe something like a bag is getting in the way, which would make it close harder.

Are you kidding me? You did the test wrong on a safety critical feature? No you dumbass engineer, you designed it wrong. Why in the holy fuck would you make a safety critical algorithm keep applying more pressure on subsequent attempts??? That's literally the opposite of what you do for safety.

This is why, as a software developer, I'm against designing any system that assumes what the user wants and tries to do it for them automatically. On the occasions where the assumption is right, it's a mild convenience at best. When it's wrong, it is always infuriating if not dangerous.

Yeah, I'm an embedded software developer myself and yeah, when we architect our code we have safety critical sections identified with software safety reviews and we always go with the assumption that we're going to run into that one guy who's the living embodiment of Murphy's law and go from there with that design to minimize the potential for injury and death.

Can't imagine who the hell is in charge of the software safety reviews there that let that pass.

You think a company run by Elon has an extensive software safety review system?

They did, but Elon asked one of them for a latte and they brought him one with 2% instead of oatmilk so he gutted the whole department.

/s, because it might be to be specified.

Whose company that sends a poop emoji as a response when the PR department is emailed? Hmm, this us a tough question. . .

Same in the medical devices industry. We have whole teams of non-developers whose job is to find out when and why a surgeon can be a moron. The code is more difficult to write, but it's way better and more robust.

"Smart" may as well be synonymous with "unpredictable". I don't need my computer to be smart. I need it to be predictable, consistent, and undemanding.

"Oh my, the cake box/finger/dog was in the way, but thanks for automation, the door didn't close!"

And also every additional kind of complexity (which stacks BTW) makes you more dependent on the vendor (good for them, bad for you) and on doing things exactly as their imagined user (because it's disproportionately your problem as laws don't seem to work in making it theirs).

Distributism is actually a very good political ideology. Sad it's associated with Catholic religion, because it correctly generalized the principles making democracies and markets and cultures work.

The engineer told him the frunk increases in pressure every single time it closes and detects resistance, Judkins said. It’s going to assume you want to close the frunk and maybe something like a bag is getting in the way, which would make it close harder.

What the fuck kind of idiots are leading things over there? "Something's in the way. Better crush it!" What a bunch of morons putting everyone in danger.

"If it encounters resistance, the brushless motor increases in pressure until it closes fully." Guess the company:

  1. DeWalt
  2. Milwaukee
  3. Makita
  4. Tesla

Musk seems to be increasingly infecting the whole company with his idiocy.

The sane people were fired or left. I'm sure most of who's left are either stuck or like to lick elons taint.

Why the hell would it close harder if there is something in the way? That's not the correct behavior for a lid, that's the correct behavior for powered shears.

Tesla Cyber Truk* *includes free shears with every purchase

Maybe because they want the degradation of some mechanism to be less noticeable over time. And because they're dumb.

Never tried to force the closing of your trunk lid because there is a bag that is slightly over the limit and you need a little more pressure, even if the bag is a little pressed down ?

The assumption here is that if it is your finger which is in the way, you take it out the way and you are not that stupid to try to close it again if for some reason you are not able move it away, which to me seems to make a lot of sense.

We built it wrong as a joke

Cybertruck owners can have a finger guillotine. as a treat

Needs a lockout/tagout before putting your hands in the powered shears to get out your bags.

As if it wouldn't just close and break off the lockout anyway.

How many miles? Would you say, ten million?

My finger points.

  • Not that cybertruck owner

I wonder if the guy that designed autopilot had the same idea. "So when the car detects resistance up ahead in the form of a crowd or wall, it will accelerate to make sure it goes through!"

We deliberately made it fail critical. It's your fault for expecting fail safe!

I know I'm old school and all that, but why do people want to pay for automatically closing doors of any kind? Automatic opening of cargo spaces I get, if you have your bags full of hands or whatever, but once you put the stuff in there... Seem like such an incredibly unnecessary and costly feature, that also have a high chance of failing in the future. I don't get it.

Because taking stuff out is like putting stuff in, only in the reverse order.

Except when the stuff is in, you have free hands to close doors and hatches

I think we're on two different wavelengths.

Put stuff in: Stand next to closed car with no free hands, could use automatically opening doors.

Take stuff out: Open car. Pick up stuff out of the car. Stand next to open car with no free hands, could use automatically closing doors.

In the case where you took everything out though, there's no bags for it to get stuck on. There's no need for it to slam itself

Good question. My wife's RAV4 has a rear door that will only close if you press a button. You can't close it manually. Furthermore, it's on the door while it's open and my five foot tall wife can barely reach it. It's ridiculous.

Wouldn’t your wife have a hard time closing it manually too then?

You know, that's true and it didn't even occur to me. I guess she just wouldn't have bought it? (I would have been fine with that, I hate SUVs, even hybrids.)

We've got a 2019 Rav and I can't remember how, but you can adjust the height that the door opens to by some series of button pushes. We had to lower it so that it doesn't hit the frame of the garage door when opening it inside the garage. Maybe just adjust it so that it doesn't open all the way and it'll be easier for her to reach the button?

I'll let her know about that. Thanks.

I actually sell these. You can manually lower the door to the height that works comfortably, then hold the automatic door button down for about 3 seconds. That should program the door to a new maximum height.

How do I set the height on my vehicle's adjustable power liftgate?

When the liftgate reaches the desired height, push the rear liftgate close-button once (button is located on the doorjamb of the rear liftgate, and only accessible when the liftgate is open). Press and hold the button until it beeps 4 times. Click here to view a video.

😎

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

here

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

On older Toyotas the rear door has a strap inside that hangs down for people to grab onto and pull the door down to close.

My Subaru has a similar setup, and there’s a feature for changing the max height of the tailgate. You might wanna see if the same thing exists for you.

Because like you said, it's a nice to have feature. I like my wife's auto closing hatch for when I have a handful of boxes for that final grocery run and just walk away and it closes. It's literally just really nice convenience feature and if it fails, you go back to closing it manually.

I get it's nice to have, and if it somehow cost nothing I wouldn't mind having it in a car, if it's pretty much guaranteed that when it fails it doesn't prevent me from open/close manually. But I'd much rather not pay for neither the R&D, engineering, parts and manufacturing of it, only to end up with a more complex door mechanism that is more expensive to repair and more likely to break. When all it does is give me the slightest of conveniences. Best example of this is the motorized charging port lid on the Rivian. Like, whyyyy? Cheaper and longer lasting vehicles, please.

It strikes me as exactly the kind of engineering call that Elon has tended to make, time after time. With zero training in an area, he gets a solution in his head crufted up from some set of pre-existing notions or points of view and then pushes to have them implemented. He will also go on to fire anyone who disagrees with him. I spoke with an engineer who worked on the gull wing doors, which the team had objected to, and not only did he force them through, he burst in on one of the finalization meetings where they had finally reached a design consensus and insisted they change the hinge. Given similar reports on his behavior regarding other products (including especially twitter), I have no reason to disbelieve this person.

Must... break... finger... push mooooaaaa. ~Tesla

5 year old me after it bounces back from my finger I accidentally put there- agaaaain! agaaain!

And the stupidest of all car owners is not smarter than a 5y old kid.

Safety critical? I'd rather have a trunk I can get to close than one I can stick my finger into four times in a row without pinching it. What do you think happens when you slam down a normal trunk on someone's finger?

Hey, @Killing_Spark, found a member of the Tesla software safety team!

Lol. Nah, the trucks are super dumb. I just know I'd want a trunk that would be able to close more than an overly sensitive pressure detection permanently preventing it. For that matter, I think it's dumb to attach a motor to a trunk.

It's like you didn't read or did read and didn't actually comprehend what the article or linked video was actually taking about.

You sure would make a great fit at Tesla's engineering and safety team.

Friendly challenge: respond to that user again, in no more words than the first time, but address his question :)

No thank you. I refuse to engage with a person trying to straw man and change topics from a software safety argument to a personal preference that goes nowhere but you feel free to engage if you wish.

Maybe you didn't comprehend it? The close force attempt increases with each unsuccessful attempt at closing. That way seems better than it eventually not working at all a few years down the line as all the electronics get more jankety be cause something gets a bit bent or worn out and it always detects a small amount of resistance so it quits closing all together.

Nobody wants to discuss the logic involved with having to open the door and then close it again for it to attempt to close harder and why that isn't the dire safety hazard that people are trying to make it out to be. These people are the reason why we have to have "no smoking" signs at gas pumps because apparently they'd leave their hand in the door after attempting to close it 3 or 4 times.