Earlier this week, Mark Rober sparked off a giant online battle by testing autonomous driving tech. In a long video, titled Can You Fool A Self Driving Car?, he set lidar against optical systems like the ones Tesla uses. The result? Instant backlash, praise, confusion—basically, the whole internet lost its mind. Now, someone else has re-run the same test, and, unsurprisingly, the results are both familiar and a little bit different.

In short, lidar tends to see more clearly, and more accurately, in certain situations compared to optical systems. That shouldn’t be much of a surprise, as after all, it’s a high-definition radar system that can sense objects in complete darkness.

Nevertheless, when Rober’s video highlighted Tesla’s failure to detect a wall that looked like a real road, fans of the brand came out with their pitchforks, so to speak. To their credit, Rober’s test didn’t use Full Self-Driving (Supervised) but rather Autopilot.

More: Tesla Autopilot Smashes Through Fake Road Wall While LiDar Lexus Stops Like A Pro

That’s where Kyle Paul, a Tesla owner himself, comes into play. He decided to rerun the same test with the same general parameters, but this time using FSD rather than Autopilot. He printed out his own wall that looked just like the real road it sat on and drove his Model Y up to it multiple times.

In every test, the Tesla failed to see the wall until he was literally inches away from it. As Rober suggested in an interview, it’s plausible that the ultrasonic parking sensors noticed the wall rather than the autonomous driving tech.

That said, Paul then switched things up by bringing in a Cybertruck to run the same test. Interestingly, it passed the test with flying colors by stopping on its own every time it began to approach the wall. What’s the difference? Other than the obvious fact that FSD is more advanced than Autopilot, the Cybertruck was on Tesla’s latest FSD hardware called HW4. The Model Y, a 2022 year model edition, wasn’t as it was running HW3.

The Missing Pieces

Notably, some in the comment section pointed out the tests that Paul didn’t do. For instance, he didn’t test FSD with a mannequin or in the rain—two factors that could offer a more realistic sense of how the system performs in everyday conditions.

Nevertheless, this should at least help calm the noise around Rober’s video. There’s clearly some truth to the criticisms, and those who continue to challenge Tesla’s approach to autonomous driving aren’t entirely off the mark.

Sceenshot Kyle Paul

At a protest on Saturday at the Capitol in Madison, a man who asked to be identified only as Tony said he was worried about cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the withdrawal of U.S. support for Ukraine. | Photo by Ruth Conniff/Wisconsin Examiner

It was a blustery, grey Saturday afternoon on March 15 as about 40 people wearing togas, carrying signs and waving upside-down American flags gathered on the steps of the Capitol in Madison to protest Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the current administration’s assault on democracy. 

The Madison rally, part of a loosely organized nationwide effort launched by the 5051 Movement, was one in a series of 50 protests held in 50 states on a specific day. The theme on this day was the “Ides of March” — hence the togas and signs denouncing Trump and Musk as American Caesars.

“I am tired of bullies in our state and in our national government,” said a white-haired man who asked to be identified by only his first name, Tony. “I think they’ve lost the whole idea of what our government is all about.” Threatened cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the withdrawal of U.S. support for Ukraine’s effort to repel Russia’s invasion were among the issues that brought him to the protest.

“I’m old,” said Ann Kimber, 70, explaining why she showed up to the Capitol in her wheelchair. “I get Medicare. My daughter’s on Medicaid. And I know some people who need their VA benefits. I want people to know we’re concerned they might go away.”

Kimber organized a Facebook group of Fitchburg seniors, she said, because she felt there was nothing happening to resist the dangerous assault on the federal government by the Trump administration. She was optimistic that protests were having an effect, causing the administration to backtrack on some of its planned cuts. “I think each group that has some stake in the matter should be out there protesting all the time,” she said.

Kimber recalled the massive 2011 protests against former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, whose attack on public employee unions and drastic cuts to education propelled tens of thousands of Wisconsinites to mount historic rallies at the Capitol. She said she thought Trump and Musk, like Walker, would suffer an inevitable public backlash because of their arrogance, acting like kings. “If they would have been a little more subtle about it they would get farther,” she said. 

Madison, home to one of the top research institutions in the country, stands to lose $65 millions as Trump takes a meat cleaver to National Institutes of Health funding, with dire ripple effects for the state’s economy and for critical progress on everything from curing childhood cancer to dementia.

But unlike the 2011 Wisconsin uprising against Walker, the public response to the stunning aggression of Trump and Musk has been eerily quiet. Some of the Madison protesters said they thought too many people were intimidated about speaking out, especially after the high-profile arrest of Columbia University student and pro-Palestinian protest organizer Mahmoud Khalil, who was taken from his apartment in New York earlier this month and held under threat of deportation at a detention center in Louisiana.

“If they’re gonna start arresting people for the stuff they say … that’s fascism 101,” said Julie Mankowski, who helped organize the Madison event and showed up wearing a king-size bedsheet. “When the first person disappears, if there’s not enough outrage, it becomes no resistance at all, just fear,” she added.

People of various ages and backgrounds joined the march, including “a lot of faces I haven’t seen,” said Mankowski, “a lot of people with diverse concerns, but the real theme seems to be this is not what our country is about.”

After chanting on the State Street corner of the Capitol for a while, the group made a lap of the Capitol square, flags flying, led by a cheerful young man with a megaphone who chanted, “Fascists out of the White House!”

A couple of self-appointed marshals stopped at each intersection, facing traffic as the group crossed the street. One young man had a handgun in a holster on his hip and a “defend equality” patch on his shoulder with the image of a military-style assault rifle against an LGBTQ pride flag. The jarring suggestion of violence was muted by the jolly mood of the gathering. Cars honked and passers-by accepted handbills promoting free speech.

The Ides of March theme had shifted to free speech, explained Carrie McClung, another toga-clad protest organizer, after Khalil’s arrest.  “I hope more people start coming out,” McClung added. “I know people are frustrated. I know people are angry. And I hope it encourages people — this is our right to be out here.” 

The first popular test of the Trump/Musk regime will take place in Wisconsin on April 1, in a state Supreme Court race Musk has spent millions to try to buy. Some protesters carried signs supporting Judge Susan Crawford in that race and opposing Musk-backed candidate Brad Schimel. The race has garnered national attention since,  as The Wall Street Journal reports, it will show whether Musk could be a political liability for Republicans.

Buoyed by all the honks of encouragement and  thumbs-up from passing pedestrians, the Madison protesters wound up back on the corner of State Street where they bopped to tunes on a boom box.

While Democrats and much of the public have been too shocked and disoriented by the scale of Trump’s assault on democracy to react, the ragtag group stood out in the wind, trying to spark a movement. 

In fact, this spring, signs of a bigger backlash have begun to appear, including a 3,500-person rally with Bernie Sanders at UW-Parkside in Kenosha earlier this month, where an additional 500 people were reportedly turned away from a packed arena. Videos of Sanders’ Fighting Oligarchy tour have gone viral. The same weekend as the small Ides of March Madison protest,  I heard a gravelly Brooklyn accent coming through my teenager’s bedroom door.

“From the bottom of my heart, I am convinced that they can be beaten,” Sanders said of the billionaires taking a chainsaw to the social safety net and Hoovering up the wealth of our nation. “Despair is not an option.”

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Protestors March near Washington Ave in Downtown Green Bay, on Feb 8, 2025. (Photo by Jason Kerzinski/Wisconsin Examiner)

Early Saturday afternoon, a crowd of demonstrators marched through the streets of downtown Green Bay, holding signs and chanting to protest U.S. President Donald Trump and federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“If being an American is defined as hard-working, pro-family values, and being a good neighbor, then we are Americans,” protest organizer Verenice Lopez told the crowd before the march. 

Trump took action on immigration with a flurry of executive orders, including pausing the resettlement of tens of thousands of refugees who had been approved for relocation into the U.S. Reports of deportation raids around the country have caused panic, even after The Guardian reported that ICE press releases had been doctored so they appeared on Google searches to make it seem as though years-old raids had happened recently.  

Trump’s promised mass deportation of immigrants throughout the U.S. has not happened yet, Politico reported last week. The president is reportedly angry that deportation numbers are not higher. 

Trump’s threats have caused fear among immigrant communities in Wisconsin. Lopez addressed Trump directly in her speech. 

“Mr. President,” Lopez said. “My name is Verenice Lopez, and I am a Dreamer. I have chosen to use my voice today for everyone here and for others across this nation that seek a path to citizenship and the American Dream. My story is like so many others. I was brought to this country by my family when I was 2 years old. I have lived, worked and been educated in America my entire life.”

As demonstrators gathered near a promenade that runs alongside the Fox River, Winter Storm Brenda was hitting northeast Wisconsin, dumping up to 10 inches of snow across the region Saturday. Passing cars honked at the marchers. 

Lopez said that “in a moment of, I guess, fear and anxiety,” she “just had a calling to do something about it.” She used Facebook and reached out to organizations she hoped would support the protest. 

Two organizations joined the effort, though neither group specifically works on immigration issues. The Green Bay Anti-war Committee is “dedicated to fighting against U.S. wars” and has opposed the war in Gaza. Hate Free Outagamie’s aims include improving inclusivity for LGBTQ+ people. 

“Whenever you’re trying to create or do anything big, getting momentum going is always the biggest issue, or the hardest part,” said Daniel Castillo, co-chair for Green Bay Anti-war Committee. “…Something that people can go to and realize that they’re the only ones that can really fight for their own rights, is something that we would like to get started.”  

Lopez said she felt the turnout — estimates varied from 50 to 100 or more people — was good. 

She said that “we do plan on creating more [protests or marches] within the next few weeks or month.”

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