If $TSLA plummets a crazy amount the tables may turn
Interestingly, Juan Domingo Peron's version of that adage was "For our friends, everything. For our enemies, not even justice." I'm not sure which one is worse, but they are certainly both evocative.
> If $TSLA plummets a crazy amount the tables may turn
It depends. What happened here is that Holmes screwed over peers, and not just consumers. I don't think anything will happen to $TSLA's CEO unless except through malice aimed at his peers that affects their wealth.
when it comes to the patient health there was not this clear paper trail
I don't know where to start with this if you think that one, year-old video is somehow proof that Tesla FSD is ready for use--and, say, the recall earlier this year isn't indication that maybe it's not.
Ah, so the hundreds of thousands or millions who bought FSD years ago should be happy that a few thousand of you get to test out a system with your own lives. Great.
Edit: Don't bother responding if you're a Tesla or Elon fanboy/fangirl. I'm not interested in being insulted any longer by you folks.
It's "Full Self Driving" not "Full Self Driving without Accidents".
There’s a reason why we have specific false and deceptive advertising laws. Most of it doesn’t rise to the level of fraud. Fraud requires a lie and reasonable/justifiable detrimental reliance on that lie.
Capability, not feature. I know that isn’t how it’s marketed. But Elon isn’t claiming he has Level 5 right now. Most FSD buyers seem aware they’re paying into a research effort.
Fraud requires knowledge and intent. You’re making a good case for a class action lawsuit, i.e. civil action. Not for putting someone in jail.
Selling a "capability" that won't get delivered within the expected lifetime of the car is just marketing garbage.
It will require better processors, better cameras, LiDAR, more RAM, something.
Shades of Star Citizen right there.
I'm not saying you're wrong in the aggregate, but can't you make a better argument? How can noting two people who went to jail for one reason be "all the proof you need"?
But the only time one of their in-group is sent to prison is when it hurts other rich and powerful.
Minus all the other fraud convictions constantly being handed down in America, sure.
Having enough money to have the direct line to someone important in a political party is valuable. Enough prosecutors have a mind for future ambitions and understand that some battles just aren't worth fighting.
That doesn't make for straight up immunity, but it does change the calculus enough that so long as no one else really cares about your crime, they can let it slide or negotiate it down to something trivial.
The women's FCI in Dublin, California is an easy drive and they (presumably) have her level of security. If she wants to say F California (maybe she did in her PSR) then maybe Bryan TX is her destination. Could also be some random third facility. I don't think if a flight risk to Mexico is a concern that they'd be sending her so close to Mexico, but it may upgrade her security level enough that Dublin's off the table.
It's all time and it all sucks. Her kids will get to see her if their father wants them to, perhaps every weekend.
You can ask for citations, and I actually found one [1].
They prey on the desperate. They preyed on my family.
But if I ever had any question about Holmes, it was richly answered for me by her having not one but two children while under indictment for crimes that yielded an 11-year sentence. I cannot imagine the kind of person who has kids knowing there were good odds they'd have to abandon them for much of their childhood.
Also this rule only seems to apply to rich people. Poor people even in America go straight to prison.
She has been tried, convicted, and sentenced, and is trying to avoid prison during her appeal, so your question is irrelevant here.
The same people who blame the investors for being so "naive" to believe her BS.
EDIT: As comments point out, it is arguable that the crimes in question are violent because they directly jeopardized people's health.
These days I normally roll my eyes and stop reading when I encounter someone saying "the elites" but in this case it is 100% appropriate: she was a member of a wealthy elite, and both deliberately and casually used her connections from the get go.
"Specifically, the Three Strikes law made it possible for a repeat offender to receive a prison sentence of 25 years to life for a nonserious or nonviolent felony (for example, petty theft with a prior)"[1]
[0] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/cruel-an...
In fact, if an act is a crime in multiple states (which is possible), you can be charged and punished separately by each state as well as the federal government if it is also a federal crime. This rarely happens even where theoretically possible, but it can (its much more common for other jurisdictions to prosecute if you are acquitted in one but the act could be prosecuted in another as well.)
For the California three strikes law, am I correct in guessing all three strikes have to be in the state of California, or can 1-2 of the earlier strikes be in another state?
If the former is true, is the optimal choice after 2 strikes to leave California permanently (other than ceasing criminal activity of course)?
There is no such effect in the USA. Prisons are 100% not designed to rehabilitate anyone here.
Just saying, in practice its clearly not about jailing menaces to society.
The bay area is famous for folks walking out stores with stolen goods:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/after-san-francisco-sho...
You can kill someone with a gun and spend just 7 years in prison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Kate_Steinle
Btw, I fully support Holmes getting punished but lets not misrepresent the ground reality.
IMO the reason it seems low is that people get such unreasonably long sentences for doing far less.
Possible typo, linked article lists $950.
Quote: "Grand Theft is punishable under California's “Three Strikes” system. (...) If you get three “strikes” on your record, you'll serve a minimum of twenty-five years in a state prison. (...) to be guilty of Grand Theft under CPC §§487(a)-(d), you must: Take property or services worth more than $950; or (...)".
Source is the same, i.e.: https://www.kannlawoffice.com/grand-theft.html
"Go big or go home" and no worries! Couple years in Federal summer camp and you go back to your cushy upper class lifestyle as a consultant or startup advisor, or "executive coaching" for other future/wannabe scammers
Devil's advocating myself: she could freeze eggs too, yes. Can't speculate on the pros and cons of different decisions.
She wanted investors' money, too. Having wants does not justify harm to others.
probably has the same mindset now regarding "having kids" or "family"
Actually, that is normal accepted business in many cases, and not illegal except in specific circumstances.
Classic example is commercial real estate bonds, where they roll over (the new bonds pay the old bond holders).
Or an IPO looks like a Ponzi, but usually isn't.
And bondholders understand up front that they are getting cash back on a particular date; that's the whole deal with a bond. Stockholders, though, expect profits to come from a functioning enterprise that generates value, not newer stockholders.
Skipping town on a sentence puts one in a rarified category where enforcement is now a federal problem, and the FBI has long memories, an international reach, and no statute of limitations on how long they can hunt a person who is sentenced. At which point, if they fall back under US custody, they get to start their sentence (as well as go on trial for the additional penalties associated with fleeing custody).
I'm aware of one case where for a suspect in a murder, the FBI put together a yacht party in a foreign country, got the target on the ship, sailed it out to international waters, and took them into custody at that point. I'm loathe to see what ends they'd go to to apprehend someone with a sentence hanging over them.
Enforcement of federal crimes like those Holmes was charged with is federal to start with. Skipping sentence makes it a US Marshals’ problem, though.
> I’m aware of one case where for a suspect in a murder, the FBI put together a yacht party in a foreign country, got the target on the ship, sailed it out to international waters, and took them into custody at that point.
Federal law enforcement has straight up hired people to kidnap a suspect from a country with which we have an extradition treaty; your example is hardly extreme. (And I’m talking about before the War on Terror.)
Though the best example of that is the DEA, not the FBI:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Alvarez-Macha...
And one she's certainly (allegedly?) entertained in the past ~year[0].
>As evidence of what they described as her “attempt to flee the country shortly after she was convicted,” prosecutors highlighted the plane ticket Holmes had booked for Jan. 26, 2022, without any scheduled return date.
>They complained to her defense team that she hadn’t notified them or the court about the trip, which violated her bail conditions...
[0]https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/elizabeth-hol...
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/20/tech/elizabeth-holmes-mexico/...
Life on the run is a Hollywood thing - the CIA isn't going to kick down her door and blackbag her back to the US. If she leaves the US, she is effectively gone unless she does something really stupid.
I’m in a similar boat. But corruption is uniquely caustic to a society. In its erosion of trust. And in its perpetrators’ unique ability to bounce back and cause trouble anew. Fraud at this scale, at Holmes’ level, is similar in those attributes.
> restrictions that limit their ability to do more damage
Under what penalty?
> free person with a job can pay back their debt to society
Construct a restriction on Holmes. I’ll propose a loophole. Then consider the cost of constantly litigating that with her.
For instance Bayer knowing that their products were contaminated with HIV still chose to sell them. Monsanto with well all their stuff. Corporate crime is really crazier in my opinions. It’s armies of lawyers and businesses men, engineers and stuff having no problem for harm. It’s just less direct than a punch on the face.
Disclaimer: violence is still bad to horrible nonetheless.
This merits the consideration of jail time. Nobody said automatic jail for all violence—the facts and circumstances may merit mandated therapy, for instance. But if someone refuses and keeps popping off punches, yes, the isolation prerogative of jail time takes hold.
Of course, it's legitimately hard for politicians to signal to voters that they take this stuff seriously without proposing longer and longer prison sentences for things that worry voters, which are usually crimes that "other people" do: high dollar white collar crime, drug dealing, etc.
Anyone who needs to trust their blood test results. If faking such results lands you in jail, that makes me trust the results and I can make medically relevant decisions based on them.
There's an argument that holmes would learn her lesson with a ~2yr sentence as opposed to an 11yr sentence. But I'm unconvinced that a 0yr sentence paid for by investor funds would prevent future crime.
It's like kids, they think you're joking about a penalty until you actual turn the car around once.
Government has a monopoly on violence. This is a founding theory of why we have states. Furthermore, violence causes damage money can’t fix. Most non-violent crimes’ damages can be dollarised within margin.
I'm sure that'll work great as a deterrent.
If the purpose is retribution or deterrence there are so many cheaper and less cruel ways to achieve those ends than taking decades of life and handing hundreds of thousands of dollars to prison industrial complex: caning, banishment, compulsory face tattoos of shame, whatever. The only reason we have prison sentences for crimes like this (along with most property and drug crimes) is so we can torture people without having to look at it directly. I wonder what society would be like if juries had to personally flog each person they sentence, or execute them at the date of (life_expectancy-sentence_years). The way we deal with crime in America today is sanitized barbarism, but if you peel back any layer of the justice system it's pretty easy to see it for what it is.
He needs to watch out for the Saudis, for sure.
https://www.sae.org/binaries/content/assets/cm/content/blog/...
Here are a handful from this year alone:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67034239/1/united-state...
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66964256/1/united-state...
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66760869/1/united-state...
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/65767429/17/united-stat...
This ignores the other side of the calculus: the political and career benefits of high-profile takedowns. I don't claim this balances across the power spectrum. But it's a far cry from the dystopia OP posits.
The prior strikes don't have to be in California or under California law, but if they are convictions from another jurisdiction, the conviction must include all the elements of a California offense which would be countable as a prior strike (one that is classified as a “serious or violent felony”.)
The final strike must be a conviction under California law.
> If the former is true, is the optimal choice after 2 strikes to leave California permanently
Well, I suppose, but note that sonething like 23 other states and the Federal government have three strikes laws, too, and many of them (including the federal one) consider prior strikes from other jurisdictions.
And habitual criminals aren’t often warmly welcomed by foreign immigration authorities.
Don't blame me. Make better wishes.
It ends up being a long chain of probabilities. Would the real test have shown a false negative? Would the treatment have definitely cured them (given that most treatments aren't 100% effective)? Would they have even sought treatment? Etc, etc.
It's kind of like how if a substance ends up causing cancer it's very hard to prove that an individual got cancer from that substance. You can see the effect in aggregate, but at an individual level it's very hard to prove they got it from this substance instead of pollution or smoking or eating too much meat or flying or whatever.
This is the same. You can say in aggregate that the patients would have lived longer with accurate tests, but it's hard to say what an individual outcome would have been.
House arrest won't be on the table either ("what good does that do?"). Being barred from starting a company? I can see people arguing against that ("but it'll allow her to pay back the money sooner") for the same reasons they're arguing against punishment.
And 11 federal years is a longer sentence than 11 years in most state systems, since there is much less opportunity to serve less than a full sentence in the federal system (short of executive pardon/commutation). There’s very limited good conduct time, but no systematic parole eligibility and early release.
Agreed. Of course she deserves more prison time for scamming the patients, but she wasn't convicted for that.
Also, it still doesn't seem to reference any deaths. There are no dead to be rehabilitated.
Her deliberate use was exploiting her very close childhood friendship with Tim Draper's kids to get Draper to fund her and use his network to find other investors and to get the message out. Another was her using her network to get a number of distracting and bizarre board members (ex generals and the like), especially when Vally VCs (other than Draper) refused to give the company the time of day.
The casual way I noticed was how she just slipped into a milieu of Ted talks, various "though leader" pieces, and circulated at Davos and wherever. No gawky fish-out-of-water period.
This is quite different from the typical nerd "has to get used to things" situation and gave her tremendous credibility with the rubes outside the valley.
I would drive or bike past their office on Page Mill and for a long time had no idea what they did, despite having been in the life sciences myself at the time. They were weirdly physically in Silicon Valley but simultaneously not part of it.
Seems to me to be a much stronger statement than “she used her connections and didn’t seem to care too much about doing so”.
Regarding her seeming effortless transition into the public spotlight, I’d imagine it’s learned from a young age as an “elite”. Fun fact, her great* grandfather made the yeast company you probably use.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Trejo#Life_of_crime_and_...
It’s made clear that isn’t the definition of capability they’re using [1].
I am not a fan of the Autopilot branding. But I struggle to see how someone buys FSD capability, realises their mistake on delivery and is then unable to get restitution through either a return or a resale.
[1] "the facility or potential for an indicated use or deployment," emphasis on "potential" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capability
You may. Not everyone does. That doesn’t mean everyone capable of Olympic greatness achieves it.
Not only was the advice I received unhelpful, following it actually made my stay longer. My family would have been better off taking the substantial amount of money and setting it on fire.
I have a feeling she will not do as well inside as Martha Stewart did. Too much ego.
The FBI generally works through Interpol to bring back international fugitives (for example, Tamara Dadyan) but will also "blackbag" fugitives if necessary. It's just not necessary to do that very often.
There's also plenty of countries that would enjoy harboring a wanted US person.
Assuming bad faith by the manufacturer, how would you "dollarise" damage caused by incorrect sample analysis that caused the death of a patient ?
I don’t personally believe jail should be limited to violent acts for this reason. (My exceptions being corruption and fraud.)
People who do bad things often have complex motivations. That doesn't make what they did not bad. Whatever Holmes's internal state, she chose to have children that she knew she was very likely to have to abandon. I'm sure there are things in her character and history that might explain this, some more sympathetic than others. But are you claiming there's something that could justify that level of disregard for the wellbeing of children?
Because my original response that this conversation in a part of was to the comment:
> I cannot imagine the kind of person who has kids knowing there were good odds they'd have to abandon them for much of their childhood.
I think that's highly unimaginative and can reduces someone to caricature.
> But are you claiming there's something that could justify that level of disregard for the wellbeing of children?
First: Justify to whom? Who sets the criteria for what is a good enough justification? Your language on this rankles a bit. Especially because...
Second: Holmes children have a father of means, they have much higher odds of being well cared and achieving good life outcomes than most American children. And they'll have an opportunity for at least some relationship with their mother. You act like having a mother in jail is some sort of damnable curse that has been placed on this children.
… or did you just want to flog your hobbyhorse regardless of how poor the fit was?
Worse than being common, I heard US wage theft eclipses all other theft in the US combined.
No evidence these forecasts were made in bad faith. Delusion isn’t criminal. It’s mis-selling in the here and now, in absolute terms, in a way that causes damage, that is problematic.
Everyone who bought a Tesla with FSD since 2019 should sue Elon for lost revenues from failing to deliver robo taxi functionality over three years late (and counting!) than originally stated.
Sure. And if you sold the promise of future capability with no intent on delivering it, that's fraud. But if you try, it isn't. And if you fail, your customers should have a claim on you. But I don't think it should be a crime.
Neither do I. But that's a civil matter. Criminal conviction doesn't turn on the release of the benefit of doubt.
Me either! But that’s not fraud. It’s delusion. We don’t criminalise it because the difference between genius and crazy is often only apparent ex post facto.
Taken to the (more) absurd we wouldn’t have this issue if the claim was the cars could fly, be boats, or time travel. People wouldn’t buy the “capability” either.
This is a fascinating murky area and seems there’s no market solution beyond caveat emptor
I think so. It's interesting to discuss and think about, because the grey area is incredibly complex. (Not that we get too far into it on these kinds of forums.)
We don’t know this. That’s the point.
Don't they already have a new, more powerful HW design for 2023 that is incompatible with the fittings for the old one?
The harm is no greater than any other person that decides to have a child as a single parent.
The children will have a father, and a mother to visit until they are in their teens.
That is more family than a single woman who goes to the sperm bank to have children.
But having a parent in prison growing up? That's extremely hard on kids.
And more than that, part of having kids is an obligation to protect and care for them. An obligation she knew that there was good odds she would not be in a position to fulfill. That's horrific to me.
People usually don't make the argument that teen pregnancy harms the children of teen pregnancy because you're implicitly arguing that non-existence is preferable for the children.
Consider a "fake it till you make it" company that produces medical equipment. During the the "fake it" phase some people suffered life changing damage directly related to the company's equipment. The damaged is quantified and the company pays up without breaking a (financial) sweat.
You caught me; I was being hyperbolic for effect. Perhaps you've heard of it? Anyhow, I can imagine sociopaths.
> Justify to whom?
To society, which has a duty of care toward all children? To her children once they are adults? And normally I'd say, "to herself", but see the previous bit about sociopaths.
> have much higher odds
Oh? You have statistics on this? Where a certain amount of money makes up for a parent in prison? A parent who was a notorious criminal who had the kids knowing she was likely to abandon them? I look forward to seeing that. There must have been some very detailed studies.
No, I actually believe that, because I have some morals and ethics around introducing dangerous and untested black-box AI into a several-ton machine with no physical consrtaints as to it's location (aka: a moving car), as in I wouldn't do it myself nor use a product like Tesla that was developed in such a shoddy manner.
It's pretty fucking rude to assume you know what's in my head, and I wish I could insult you as hard as you insulted me with that statement, but that would just be tit for tat and HN isn't about that kind of insulting remark.
You're testing it with the lives of others on the road or walking beside it too.
However, you make it sound like it's super difficult to disappear. It can be as simple as getting on a boat and sailing off into the night, or an airplane... no Hollywood plot necessary - no one would have any clue who was onboard, and depending on the destination, they may not care either.
Going on the lam for the rest of your life, with (or without?) your two young children, can't be a whole lot better than serving your white-collar time, can it? I mean, it's not like she's independently wealthy and can vanish to some tropical island.
Staying disappeared is much more difficult, particularly if you are interested in living even a moderately normal life.
> The typical argument against teen pregnancy is that it limits the life options for the mother, whereas you're arguing that the having these children represents harm towards the children.
I just googled "why is teen pregnancy bad" and every one of the relevant pages mentioned harms to children. And it seems pretty weird to me that you are so eager to sweep aside the harms to them. Those same teens could have children later and everybody would be better off.
> You're implicitly arguing that non-existence is preferable for the children.
I am not, and that is an absolutely wild think to take from it. It's akin to the kooky arguments of anti-contraception types and frustrated would-be grandparents that not having a child is basically equivalent to murder.
Why wouldn’t a buyer be justified in relying upon a sellers description of the goods for sale?
Campaign finance violations seem clear cut corruption. (Again, not mandatory jail sentencing. But jail is on the table.)
Perjury and contempt obviously need the capacity to put someone in jail. I resolve the moral discrepancy with their short durations. Theft is the elephant in the room for this framework, and I don't have a good answer for it.
Capability is defined as "the facility or potential for an indicated use or deployment" [1]. There are other definitions. But selling capability based on future potential is not fraudulent, unless you say the capability is present.
[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capability emphasis mine
I'm not going to engage with someone like you any longer, though, as you're being really fucking rude.
ABUSING YOUR FLAGGING PRIVS IS RUDE, DISHONEST AND SHAMEFUL. A PERSON AS OLD AS YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER
There are campaign finance violations that I would not consider corruption in the quid-pro-quo sense but are still illegal. I am sympathetic to your line of reasoning though I think the current sentencing guidelines are by and large fair. I would like to see less emphasis on "intended loss" and more rewards for making victims whole.
so self driving cars could only exist for a billionaires profit? how about for the countless lives that will be saved by this technology? tens of thousands of people die every year. cmon dude.
That limit is in place for student drivers to limit distractions; it's a specific mitigation to a problem specific to them. FSD needs its own.
> where is your proposal for compromise?
I'd like to see safety data reporting requirements that come from regulators, not Tesla, whose self-reported cherry-picked data points I find quite suspect. (Example of this issue: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-12-27/tesla-stop...)
I'd like to see safety-critical beta software in cars undergo independent audits prior to widespread release. (My dream would be for it to be open source, but that's probably unrealistic.)
I'd like to see formalized safety testing processes of such software at the regulatory level, similar to how crash testing is currently conducted.
I'm sure others have specific, useful suggestions.
> there are none because nobody who likes pouring cold water on tesla is coming from a place of intellectual honesty.
This, ironically, doesn't sound like it comes from a place of intellectual honesty.
> how about for the countless lives that will be saved by this technology?
I certainly hope that happens someday.
With that in mind it seems that you are not thinking about the Rst. 2d Torts 540 duty to investigate rule. I can be justified in relying on something (e.g., your intentionally misleading name for the feature) even if an investigation would have shown the misrepresentation was false. Instead of “totally fine and legal” I would say that this is “a fact-dependent situation.”
Do you believe that selling something called Full Self Driving that actually could not drive itself fully is within the duty of good faith and fair dealing? This sidesteps the issue of the tort of fraudulent misrepresentation and goes right to the heart of the customer confusion a product like a Tesla sows.
If you want to sit here and tell me that the contract actually says the car can't drive itself, that's fine but my hypothetical had nothing to do with a caveat in fine print. I suggest before you make a personal attack, you do your best to read the regular-sized print that I delivered to you. The website which you are using this twenty-hour old account to troll has some rules, too, and you would do better to study those rather than to try to contradict me.
Seller Assumes Liability for Injury†
†Seller Assumes No Liability for Injury
No, because there is no reasonable potential for it to generate enough thrust to be a lifting body. We understand aerodynamics enough to say that. We don’t understand self-driving cars enough to rule out the sensors on today’s Teslas being adequate, given the right software.
Saying someone is capable of climbing a mountain, conditioned on training, isn’t a lie. The caveat is important. I think Tesla has played fast and loose with its caveats in a way that produces civil liability. But it doesn’t appear to be wilfully defrauding its customers, who are more or less happy with their cars.
A Tesla today has no self-driving capability without software that doesn't exist. That means it doesn't have self-driving capability. It doesn't mean that someone "played fast and loose with caveats."
>The conduct of delivering something that is not what you advertised fulfills the elements.
The issue is what was promised. The promise is not just the title of the feature, but all of the information presented to you when you buy a Tesla.
And I’ll contradict you all day if I want because you’re not just wrong, but clearly suffering from Elon Derangement Syndrome.
You’re clearly not a lawyer even if you role play one online.
Your negative one karma over the last 24 hours tells us everything we need to know about you, leaving my licensure status aside.
if the federal government had been tasked with overseeing the early versions of fsd, it would have been swiftly shut down because of the nature of the federal government, not to mention the politics. but thanks to the private sector we now have modern fsd which is bar none the most advanced and capable self-driving solution in the world. now that self driving has gotten this far, its probably much less likely to be aborted if subjected to government intervention and oversight. in light of the huge benefits that self-driving cars stand to create, measured in human lives, compromise is the only rational proposal. shutting down fsd like mouth-breathing internet commenters talk about would be objectively wrong given the state of its competitors and the nature of the problem.
edit: your bio says 'fuck elon musk.' making a two dimensional character out of elon musk isnt a good way to understand him or his projects. when the time comes and elon musk uses his influence and money to do something really bad, it might be boy crys wolf thanks to your camp.
My Twitter bio does. Added shortly after he banned links to Mastodon, broke Tweetbot (and lied about them breaking the rules), and announced breaking changes to the Twitter APIs I use extensively at work with a few days warning.
But I'd like to point out that the link you included is out-of-date. Tesla has continued to publish their autopilot safety numbers in their quarterly slide decks. Here is Q3 2022 for example, see page 10: https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/SVCPTV_2022_Q4_Quarterly_...
Miles between accidents on Autopilot Q4 2021: 4.3 million miles Q1 2022: 6.5 million miles Q2 2022: 5.1 million miles Q4 2022: 6.2 million miles
Autopilot can only be used in safer conditions, and if the car goes “whoops I’m out, take over” shortly before an accident that doesn’t count in that stat either.
But you’re right that comparing largely highway miles vs all miles isn’t completely fair. FSD on the other hand can be activated and used in most scenarios and has 3.2 million miles between accidents vs the US average of 500,000 miles. So still quite a bit safer but less so than autopilot.
As for autopilot deactivating right before an accident, if autopilot was active within 5 seconds of the accident it is still attributed to autopilot, not the human driver.
They then announced the free API would go away entirely with a week's notice and pricing details "next week". (https://twitter.com/TwitterDev/status/1621026986784337922) That change got delayed several times.
Absolute clown show. If they'd said "in 90 days we're shutting down third-party clients and implementing a paid tier", people would've grumbled but seen it as fairly reasonable. Kneecapping devs who've been building Twitter apps and integrations for a decade was cruel and unnecessary.
"Old number" here means "the same old stat they trot out every time". The value gets updated; the concerns over its being a cherry-picked apples-to-oranges comparison remain.
FSD still nopes out in the most challenging circumstances, which are the circumstances where accidents are far more likely to happen. It's like a surgeon bragging about their low complication rate; if they run out of the OR screaming when something unexpected happens and their colleague has to take over, it's not a super useful stat.