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ArjinFerman  Tinfoil Gigachad  2d ago (text post)   335 thread views

Tinker Tuesday for January 20, 2026

This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.

Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.

If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service

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I got a Comma autopilot for my car. AMA.

Well, is it any good? I recall seeing footage from a year or so back (an LTT video?), and thinking it seemed pretty solid. I'm curious if it's "Waymo-like" (you can pretty much stop paying attention and trust in the machine) or if the error rate is high enough that you're on edge throughout.

Well, is it any good?

I am impressed with it. A solid upgrade over my car's stock ADAS (2021 Toyota Prius).

I'm curious if it's "Waymo-like"

Very much no. The device only has forward-facing cameras, so it is not aware of your surroundings, so it would be impossible for it to autonomously do things like make turns that require checking for traffic, merge or change lanes on the freeway, etc.

The way to think of it is an upgraded ADAS, like the automatic lanekeeping and assisted cruise control that comes with the car, except significantly upgraded.

(you can pretty much stop paying attention and trust in the machine)

The Comma has a camera pointed at you that has its own machine vision algorithm checking to see if you are paying attention to the road, and if you're not, it complains at you and turns itself off. So no, you cannot stop paying attention.

On the flip side, it is very trustworthy.

It feels sort of like riding a horse. A horse knows how to follow a trail, you don't have to micromanage it, it just needs you to nudge it sometimes to indicate where you want it to go.

When I last looked at it, there was no navigation. They had disabled it as an experimental feature, because apparently it was really bad, and the rumor was that they were going to focus on other features with no estimate for when it might come back. So it's not a system where you can set, "I'd like to go to X," and then sit back and let it take you there.

Is this actually legal? I'd expect regulators be somewhat vary of some code off the internet controlling the steering on a car driving over a public road. But maybe not, no idea what's the regulations are in this area?

You, the driver, are 100% legally responsible for the trajectory of your vehicle. It's legally no different from the ADAS built into your car.

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