Photo: @RealDanODowd via Twitter | Edited
Besides the football game organized to honor Rihanna’s halftime performance, Super Bowl LVII was also a commercial festival. One thing was different this year: Dawn Project’s ad aimed at discrediting Tesla’s FSD software. Not only had the claims in the video been debunked already, but Dan O’Dowd repeated the same recipe (and mistakes) from the times he engaged in a smear campaign against Linux.
The Super Bowl was one of the hottest moments for the advertising industry, with big companies pouring millions into commercials aired during the game. This year was different, though, as Dan O’Dowd’s Dawn Project seized the moment not to promote one of its products but to destroy the reputation of another company.
We’ve already seen the smear commercial against Tesla FSD, and we know O’Dowd’s past efforts to discredit and ban Tesla’s safety assist system. The video is not new, as it collages “best of” moments from Dawn Project’s previous videos. Most of them have been debunked already, and it is comical that O’Dowd’s Twitter post is now accompanied by community notes adding context to the claims.
The video has some strong statements, like “Tesla Full Self Driving will run down a child in a school crosswalk.” Dan O’Dowd is yet to provide evidence of any child run down by Tesla FSD other than the dummies used in his staged video. Moreover, the section showing the child dummy hit by the car is shot from outside, so there’s no way we know it was FSD driving the vehicle. The internet also pointed out that a blurred warning can be seen on the car’s screen in all the cabin images. People wonder why the video has such low quality in a world flooded by cheap 4K cameras.
It’s too early to know whether airing this commercial during the Super Bowl would meet O’Dowd’s goal of having Tesla FSD banned. Many people consider that bad advertising is still advertising, and the video does Tesla a service, letting more people know that the EV maker has automated driving features. People are not stupid. They know Dan O’Dowd owns a competing software company, Green Hills Software (GHS), trying to sell its own self-driving software. Among GHS’s customers is Intel’s Mobileye and, more downstream, Volvo, whose EX90 SUV features automated driving technology.
Sure, Tesla Full Self-Driving is on a collision course with the solution Dan O’Dowd’s company is trying to pitch. That’s why we’re fairly sure O’Dowd is already working on a video showing how much better the GHS’s competing solution is compared to Tesla’s. Just kidding, this would probably need to have some special effects involved. Tesla FSD is far from perfect, but it’s also far from being the apocalypse O’Dowd warns against.
In 2004, O’Dowd launched a similar smear campaign against Linux, claiming the open-source software was a national security threat. At the time, his company was selling Integrity OS, and Linux making strides in embedded systems was a big thorn in GHS’s back. O’Dowd’s anti-Linux campaign failed spectacularly, and he made a fool of himself by later announcing using Linux in his company's products. Based on this, we wouldn’t be surprised to see him become an FSD supporter in the future.
We’ve already seen the smear commercial against Tesla FSD, and we know O’Dowd’s past efforts to discredit and ban Tesla’s safety assist system. The video is not new, as it collages “best of” moments from Dawn Project’s previous videos. Most of them have been debunked already, and it is comical that O’Dowd’s Twitter post is now accompanied by community notes adding context to the claims.
The video has some strong statements, like “Tesla Full Self Driving will run down a child in a school crosswalk.” Dan O’Dowd is yet to provide evidence of any child run down by Tesla FSD other than the dummies used in his staged video. Moreover, the section showing the child dummy hit by the car is shot from outside, so there’s no way we know it was FSD driving the vehicle. The internet also pointed out that a blurred warning can be seen on the car’s screen in all the cabin images. People wonder why the video has such low quality in a world flooded by cheap 4K cameras.
It’s too early to know whether airing this commercial during the Super Bowl would meet O’Dowd’s goal of having Tesla FSD banned. Many people consider that bad advertising is still advertising, and the video does Tesla a service, letting more people know that the EV maker has automated driving features. People are not stupid. They know Dan O’Dowd owns a competing software company, Green Hills Software (GHS), trying to sell its own self-driving software. Among GHS’s customers is Intel’s Mobileye and, more downstream, Volvo, whose EX90 SUV features automated driving technology.
Sure, Tesla Full Self-Driving is on a collision course with the solution Dan O’Dowd’s company is trying to pitch. That’s why we’re fairly sure O’Dowd is already working on a video showing how much better the GHS’s competing solution is compared to Tesla’s. Just kidding, this would probably need to have some special effects involved. Tesla FSD is far from perfect, but it’s also far from being the apocalypse O’Dowd warns against.
In 2004, O’Dowd launched a similar smear campaign against Linux, claiming the open-source software was a national security threat. At the time, his company was selling Integrity OS, and Linux making strides in embedded systems was a big thorn in GHS’s back. O’Dowd’s anti-Linux campaign failed spectacularly, and he made a fool of himself by later announcing using Linux in his company's products. Based on this, we wouldn’t be surprised to see him become an FSD supporter in the future.
20 years ago, @RealDanODowd was running a different FUD campaign — against Linux
— Whole Mars Catalog (@WholeMarsBlog) February 13, 2023
The old fart claimed that Linux would kill us and was a national security threat… all because it competed with his crappy paid Integrity OS
When Dan lost that battle, Green Hills embraced Linux ???? pic.twitter.com/4tp3qRkdqs
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