How many times did he shoot himself?

I mean there is a pattern to these things.
If Putin doesn’t like you, you shoot yourself and then jump out of a building.
If the Clintons don’t like you, you shoot yourself twice in the back of the head before driving your car off a cliff.
If you have dirt on powerful people, you hang yourself in prison.

That practice was halted and now the vehicle video is under MUCH stricter control with an option to not share any of it at all.
Given the choice, I’d rather have some Tesla employee joking about what I park next to than Tesla Inc selling my driving data to insurance companies like most other automakers do…

That was from years ago.

Tesla used to sell cars rated by pack capacity. For example the ‘P85D’ was the performance model, 85 kWh pack, dual motor.
There was also a 40 kWh (cheaper) and 60 kWh version.
After a while they stopped building 40 kWh packs and just software-locked the 60 kWh pack to only have 40 kWh of usable capacity. I think for a while they offered an upgrade where you could pay to unlock the extra capacity.

I don’t think they’ve done that in some time. I know when I bought my car (model y long range) they didn’t even advertise the pack capacity nor was any upgrade offered. The only paywall thing I’ve seen with Tesla is FSD and they’re pretty transparent about that. I don’t think they’re awful for paywalling it, because if they build the car without the FSD hardware it won’t have other safety systems like lane departure notification.

I’ve done it. I think it might have opened the charge port or something. What do you think happens?

Something to consider…

Elon may be going down a conservative rabbit hole these days, but this is the sort of thing Tesla would never ever ever do. And things like using the telematic system to sell your location and speed to insurance companies. Never happened on a Tesla. You may not like the guy, but the cars are fucking solid.

This, exactly this. The fact that they would even consider this rules them out for me forever.

Still care about MP3- it’s the bog standard, the thing EVERYthing supports. Like the shitty SBC codec on Bluetooth. I’ve still got tons of MP3s and they aren’t going away anytime soon.

Everything I get new though is high-res FLAC.

Then you are serving the needs of people like Trump, Murdoch, and other billionaires / CEOs / shareholders who’d rather have us fighting each other than working together to restore the American dream.

There are a lot of moneyed interests who want us all fighting each other. They want that so they can continue to extract the wealth of the nation for themselves. So while you explain why you’ve no need to listen to anybody, you are helping them.

Ever see a magic show? The magician sets up the trick and the cute bikini clad assistant jumps around and flashes her hands to capture your attention so you don’t notice the magician has just palmed your card instead of shuffling it. Elon is the assistant here. Everybody is focused on him and his stupid salute and all of the crazy things people like him say and do, and people are not focused on the real question of how to stop the fact that Americacs people are being bled dry.

I would encourage you to read the story of Daryl Davis, he is a black musician, most famous for becoming friends with a number of KKK members. Those people were used to being hated by black people and vice versa. All Daryl did was talk to them, listen to them, find elements of commonality. I think like 40 or 50 KKK members have left the organization because of him.

I realize the American educational system has gone downhill, but surely at some point somebody taught you the concept of nuance? That not everything is black or white, good or evil? That sometimes things are shades of gray? Sometimes good people do bad things, bad people do good things, etc? And that not everything is as it first appears at face value, you have to look deeper to understand?

I for one am very much a student of nuance.

I think we would both agree that of late, Elon has somewhat gone off the rails. But that doesn’t mean everything he has ever done or ever will do is automatically bad. I can dislike his current politics and the way he is approaching this efficiency project, without having to shit on everything he’s ever done.

Thus, I remain a fan of SpaceX and Tesla, for the simple reason that they both lead their respective fields technology-wise. As someone who has owned a Tesla for years (going back to the days when everybody loved Elon), I can confidently say from personal first-hand experience that it is a fantastic car. The fact that I now disagree with many of its founder’s politics doesn’t change the car in my driveway. It was a fantastic car when I bought it and it’s an even more fantastic car now as FSD gets further refined.

I ask, for the good of our nation, please avoid black and white thinking. A population unable to grasp nuance and uninterested in looking deeper for motivations and questions below the surface is easily manipulated with range bait news. Republicans have been doing this for decades. Democrats have just started in the last 4 or 5 years.

Tesla fan here, this is kind of accurate. I wouldn’t call it terrible, but the aluminum chassis means it has towing limitations, the small battery doesn’t have nearly as much range as most other Tesla’s and it gets worse if you’re towing, plus not everybody wants to drive the Halo truck. Double the range or cut the price by 30% and you have an interesting car, as it is now I look at it as a first generation attempt.

There’s value investing and there’s speculation. If Tesla can make a robot that can mop the floor, even this seemingly ridiculous valuation will look like a bargain. Have to remember, Tesla is not a car company. They are an AI and green tech company. Cars are just their largest activity to date.

I am concerned about Elon though. I think he’s a visionary, I think he’s valuable, but I also think he’s spread far too thin and he’s losing it as a result. Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, xAI, Neuralink, and his political efficiency project. All of these are full-time 100hr/week jobs. Even if you assume he literally never sees his gaggle of children, hell even if you assume he never sleeps, there’s literally not enough hours in the day. And I think he is thus blind to the fact that his antics are costing him support for the bigger mission.