Rules are rules of course. But when the car was approved for sale, approved as being rule following, and then retroactively after the fact, after it’s been out for years with literally millions of units on the road, suddenly it’s no good…, that doesn’t seem like fair enforcement to me.

Frequent software updates are part of having a Tesla. If the vehicle is unable to do a software update, then it is broken and would require service regardless of the recall.

Which IMHO just shows that the recall in the first place was just NHTSA unnecessarily flexing on them

Sorry we don’t think like that anymore. Nuance and multiple truths are a waste of time. Elon supports a Republican that means he is bad and everything he does is bad and everything he has ever done is bad and he has no vision or leadership of his own he is just a rich asshole using Daddy’s money to buy cars and rockets and Twitter. Thus he is unworthy of praise for anything at all that he has done since he was born into a life of luxury and anything he touches is automatically shit worthy of being canceled or outlawed.

The warning icons were the exact same size as the car I had before that. No recall on that car, and if anything icons were even easier to see because the contrast was higher and they are closer to your face.

Yes absolutely. The term recall is supposed to be when they literally recall the cars, like bring them back in, in the same context as you recall your dog after he runs around the yard.
No cars are being brought back in. No dealers are involved here. It’s just a bug fix for the next software release.

I also don’t like how the ability to fix bugs is creating a huge number of ‘recalls’. For example, last year Tesla had a ‘recall’ because NHTSA decided the warning icons on the dashboard screen weren’t big enough. Like the icons for parking brake and seat belt. Which is frustrating because the car is operated for years with the original icons and nobody had a complaint.

But if this was an old style car, where those were individual LEDs silkscreened in an instrument cluster, that would never be a recall because it would cost millions to replace every single instrument cluster on every single car. But because it is remotely fixable, it becomes a recall.

This is a very good point. The other issue is security. The little mechanic shop that has no dynamic content, technically should be static pages, so when it’s left alone and not updated for 3 years it doesn’t get hacked by some WordPress vulnerability.

Absolutely. They were so arrogant they never thought it would happen to us. After all, we are in charge of our own networks so why would we expect the enemy to be at the gates? Let’s make those gates out of cardboard so it’s easier to spy on everyone.

Of course then you have things like CALEA mandating a back door, you have cheap telecom companies that will happily buy cheap lowest bidder Chinese hardware and install it "everywhere* without concern for security (after all, it’s not their data being stolen) and now the enemy isn’t just at the gates but inside the walls.

A decade ago, making sure the feds could read everyone’s mail was the national security priority. Suddenly when the Chinese can read everyone’s mail, good security is the national security priority.

It’s too bad there was no way to predict this in advance. Oh wait…

XKCD #538: Security

China’s too smart to ‘invade’ Taiwan. There will be no tanks and helicopters invading. China / CCP may be assholes but they are also fucking smart.

Look at Hong Kong. There were no tanks or helicopters. Just steadily increasing political control. More or less the entirety of HK protested for weeks/months. It did fuck all.

That will be what happens with Taiwan. It won’t be an invasion. It will be a gradual slide.

Right now, USA officially supports the ‘One China’ policy to appease China even though we want Taiwan to be independent. It’s let us keep huge trade with China (which the Chinese also want/need) while we depend (and NEED) Taiwan for a lot of tech manufacturing especially computer chips.

Thing is, China has no desire to be dependent on us. They want us dependent on them for manufacturing, but don’t want to need that business. That’s why China is doing aggressive R&D on pretty much every high tech area they depend on the West for, trying to ensure that everything China needs can be made in China from Chinese tech. To do that they need to be able to design and manufacture the latest computer chips, which they currently can’t. But they’re pouring billions into figuring it out.

If China takes over Taiwan, either openly or covertly, they get TSMC. And that gives them all the chipmaking tech they need.

Don’t expect tanks. Expect state sponsored industrial espionage at TSMC and their own suppliers. Then expect Chinese chipmakers to flood the market with top-line or near-top-line hardware at low prices, which US won’t embargo and thus we’ll get even more dependent on China.

He was handed a company in a horrible strategic place and he did the right things to fix it. Reinvest in process technology mainly. Those investments do not bear fruit overnight. They take years. Whoever replaces him could basically be a stuffed suit and will probably have some success if only from his investments starting to pay off. It’s too bad he didn’t get a few more quarters to see it happen.

Yeah but throw some batteries on that solar, which you really should do anyway, and you’re good to go. IMHO the batteries are what really makes self-sufficiency possible. With a good size solar array and a good size battery, you can be not only a net exporter but more or less an always exporter, rarely if ever taking power from the grid.

Run on sunshine during the day and stored sunshine at night. Unfortunately a lot of places it’s not legal to have a house with no grid connection, even if one isn’t necessary.

Absolutely 100% Right now having solar panels on your house is ‘branded’ as some sort of green save the planet thing.

Putting enough panels that your house can go totally off-grid with a little cutback and usage, that’s as independent as you get. Save money too.

create an out-group so they can control the in-group

That’s not just the media. It’s basically everyone in power. Media, politics, government, corporations… Everyone.

It applies to the Democrats too. Especially in the 2016 election, they managed to successfully make Republicans the out-group. But I believe that was hugely damaging to the country, it created a lot more division when what is really needed is unity to focus on the issues that most people can agree on.

Because here’s the cold truth- there is a body of policies that probably 80% of Americans would agree on. Things like efficient government, ending government corruption, reducing corporate control over government and elections, reducing income inequality, etc.
To quote Dylan Ratigan’s famous rant, the United States is being extracted. And I think most people would like to stop that extraction.
But no major candidate stands for that. Bernie did, but the DNC iced him out because their wealthy corporate donors didn’t want Bernie.

And that in my opinion is why Trump won. Harris certainly didn’t push any major message of radical reform, just a bunch of the usual ‘help the middle class’ talk. Trump may be terrifying, but he does push a message of radical reform and changing the system.
To write that off and say half the country is racist or misogynist is to avoid learning from this situation.

I think most commenters here are missing the point.

There is a more extreme reaction to transgender people as opposed to gay or lesbian people, because of issues like sports and bathrooms. And that hits at people’s sense of injustice. For example if you have a young daughter, a lot of people will hate the idea of a person with a penis going into the women’s room and being around their little girl. Or if that daughter grows up and joins a sports team, the idea of somebody who is hormonally male and thus naturally more muscular competing against your daughter is unpleasant.

Put differently, I think a lot of people we now classify as ‘transphobic’ don’t actually have much problem with trans people themselves. Rather, with how the efforts to ensure trans people receive the full treatment of their chosen gender can affect the rest of society.

For me personally, I don’t know what the answer is. I generally don’t care which bathroom you use as long as you wash your hands. I have no problem with anyone presenting themselves to the world as whatever they wish, if it makes you happier than by all means. At the same time though, I don’t think it’s transphobic to point out that somebody who is largely or entirely biologically male will have a natural competitive advantage in the field of sports.
So while I certainly don’t want to exclude anybody, I think there is at least a little justification for restricting some women’s sports to those who are genetically female.

Taiwan is one country I have absolutely no problem selling weapons to. They need as big a stick as they can get to maintain independence from China.

I. Do. Not. Care. About. The. Tech.

Exactly. The tech doesn’t matter. Tech only exists in service of the gameplay, and (introduced with HL1), the story (previous to HL1 the ‘story’ of most games was just a quick blurb on why there’s monsters and why you have to shoot them).

Gamers DGAF about new tech. Gamers wanted to be told a story. We LOVED the story.

Valve could’ve used the existing engine, built NOTHING AT ALL NEW, and just finished the story with existing assets and we’d all have been over the moon happy.

Once again, you’re looking at steak. Obviously sizzle doesn’t keep you alive. But someone desperate for meat is going to follow the smoke and fire and sizzle in the hope that there is steak at the bottom of it.

So far that solution seems to be to ignore it as a problem and continue the policies that created it. Dems are a little better on unions, but neither one is addressing the systemic problem.

Just like conservatism, the problem is what parts of it you push.

Focus on divisive issues like gun control, open immigration, and hyper inclusion of any possibly marginalized group and you push people away.

Avoid the wedge issues, and focus on things that will make everybody’s lives better, like honest government, social safety net, and good health care, and you bring everybody together.

If you look at the entire range of issues, including the ones politicians don’t often talk about, you might find that Americans generally agree on more than they disagree on. But rather than focusing on those shared agreements and trying to build a better country, both parties are focusing on wedge issues where there is strong disagreement.