blisterpeanuts

It can wade through about 2.5 feet of water.

What's unreliable about the Model Y, other than some fit-and-finish issues? Does it have battery failures or mechanical/electronic problems?

Most MY and M3 owners I have talked to rave about their cars and have very high customer loyalty.

You speak for all Canadians? Because I know a lot of Canadians (and I'm from there, myself) who are quite disenchanted with the Liberal Party.

Pre-Trump, I had a paid online subscription to Guardian for a time, because it was so well written and informative.

After 2016, however, they seemed to adopt a firm anti-MAGA stance which I found to be biased and off-putting. Their highly critical stance against Israel after the Hamas attacks of October 2023 was the last straw.

Then, they withdrew from the X platform and now they might as well not exist, as far as I'm concerned. I think that was a mistake, given their significant following on X, but I guess they felt they don't need it.

Why not? What do you have against the 139,999 employees of Tesla who are not named Musk?

It’s nothing to do with my liking or disliking them. Maybe try formulating an argument that doesn’t have the word “you” in it.

And they have too much power, and sometimes abuse it.

Or do you imagine that these agencies are completely perfect and free of corruption?

Electric cars do have an effect on urban air pollution, though. Chinese cities have really cleaned up the air and become more breathable recently, for example. You used to have black soot coming out your nose; it was awful.

If such bizarre actions were to actually take place, Tesla’s brand will be the least of our problems.

It’s like saying that if Musk unleashes a billion Optimus robots to take control of the world, people will be mad and stop buying Teslas.

Like many unicorns. During the Dot Com era, when Oracle chief Larry Ellison was briefly thought to be lost at sea on his sailing yacht, Oracle’s stock tanked, then recovered after he was found safe.

Many such bureaus have been established over the years that have extralegal powers existing basically outside the Constitution. I’m thinking of the NLRB, CFPB, FBI, IRS, and several others.

We as a society have a consensus that we need such agencies to manage the hugely complex country that we have become, but that doesn’t necessarily mean these bureaucratic organizations are themselves properly managed.

Years ago, I read about a man who the IRS was trying to levy extensive fines on. After five years of court battles, he committed suicide.

Perhaps this was an extreme case, but there is nonetheless an important question that arises out of this tragedy: does the government exist to serve the people, or do the people exist to serve the government?

I believe our colonial era checks and balances no longer protect us from a bureaucracy that is automatically funded by the Treasury, that the President has limited control over, and that only an act of Congress can change.

In an era when no one political party has enough control to enact legislation (i.e. a filibuster proof majority), the bureaucracy is effectively out of control and the only real way it can be reformed is by uncovering waste and corruption.

The permanent bureaucracy exists outside of checks and balances.

Tesla is not just cars. Their large scale solar power storage business is growing, they manufacture batteries, they have the largest charging infrastructure for end users, massive super computing to crunch fsd data, a lithium refinery in Texas starting up this year, and their humanoid robotics division.

Perhaps their stock was overpriced, perhaps not. Long term, there’s tremendous upside and right now it’s arguably a buying opportunity. Musk’s involvement with DoGE will end in a matter of months or maybe a year, and the people keying cars and engaging in political theatrics outside Tesla dealerships will soon move on to the next cause.

Also, Elon != Tesla car owners.

I can find no evidence that Musk was involved in the Bud Light boycott. Do you have a link?

A smooth and picture perfect launch, docking, and return to Earth. Congratulations to SpaceX, NASA, the astronauts and all personnel involved.

I’m surprised there isn’t more interest in this topic. Is there another hn thread that is more active? I wonder if people have become jaded by the seemingly routine business of space travel. Yet, it remains a very difficult and dangerous endeavor.

The Chinese are ahead in the mass manufacturing and commoditization of electric vehicle batteries, but there are still some interesting innovations coming out of the U.S. and Europe, as well as Japan and South Korea.

As for Tesla’s recent hiccup, they have a strong product portfolio and are likely to recover before long. It’s happened before.

I’m also a data point for excellent Toyota service from the dealership where we bought our Prius. From the concierge who holds your hand throughout the visit, to the free lunch voucher in their pleasant little cafeteria (sadly, closed after covid), to the couple of years of free oil changes, I actually looked forward to bringing the car in. And they cleaned it as well, a quick interior vacuum at least.

Standard supply side theory. Reduce tax overhead, reduce size of government, increase availability of capital for private investment, give people back the money to either spend, start businesses, or invest in markets. Money is more productive in private hands; government acts as a money sink that locks up wealth in unproductive cul-de-sacs. Government is inefficient; free markets are efficient.

Read Milton Friedman, not anti-Trump hit pieces that predict disaster.

Less than 1%. 45,000/400 = 0.89%. It was reported that they were not critical workers. Perhaps some will be rehired. A review of hiring procedures is underway.

It's recently been revealed that not only does the FAA require a "biography" of its ATC applicants, but have even been coaching black candidates how to use the keywords that will allow their applications to float to the top.

If the agency and the politicians overseeing it cared about safety, shouldn't they try to hire the best and the brightest, not the under-represented minorities that they have been struggling to hire in recent years? Meanwhile, White applicants who were fully qualified have been bypassed.

I personally don't care, and I suspect most thinking people don't care, what the ethnicity or gender are of the people in the towers. But we all care very deeply that they should be the very best of the best.

Lack of MagSafe is disappointing. How much would it have cost to include? It's an intriguing feature that distinguishes iPhones from Android competitors. I wonder if the intention was to avoid cannibalizing its more expensive siblings.

"Maybe those jobs were important."

It's been reported that 400 new hires on probationary status were let go. None of them were involved in safety related operations. The FAA has around 45,000 total employees, so it's a rather tiny percentage, in any case.

someone whose first foray into improving the FAA was to arbitrarily fire hundreds of FAA staff

400 non-ATC, non-safety related probationary new hires, out of 45,000.

Not to mention the national security advantage of being able to service the ISS and to launch humans into space without help from adversarial regimes.

Like how, for example? Serious question.

If SpaceX has the best, most economical, and safest route to space, why would Nasa and DoD not use them? Who else is there? Blue Origin's not there yet; others are in the works but not there yet. SpaceX is proven; it does a good job and has brought manned space flight back to the U.S. Has nothing to do with whether Musk & his team are close to Trump or not.

More to the point, the DoGE audits are projected to save the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars, which should significantly reduce the deficit which is currently projected at two trillion dollars.

Even if we assume the worst, most absurd and political stance that Musk is in it for the money and influence, saving $500 billion or more is still worth it. And, in reality, Musk's political activity is costing Tesla a lot of sales; Tesla's sales numbers are in decline, actually.

I've kept my Android phone on silent for years. I just don't like it beeping and interrupting all the time. I do miss a few phone calls but I figure, they'll leave a message if it's important.

Silent mode and face down really quiets down one's day and puts the phone back in its place as a tool you use only when you need it.

Nor on my S20 Ultra. Looks like an app is needed on non-Pixel phones these days (Play Store "flip to dnd").

I'm curious what's wrong with the self-driving, assuming you're referring to FSD and not Autopilot. Is there a different make of EV that has better self-driving capabilities? Genuinely would like to know.

In the China market, Tesla sold the most BEV's in 2024 (1.79 million units), versus BYD which sold 1.76 million units. It's possible, though, that BYD will dominate in 2025; we'll see. I'm not sure what "advanced" means in this context, but Tesla's manufacturing tech is among the most advanced, even if their vehicles are lacking in some features.

What about the (proposed) ending of the federal EV incentives?

Also, not to be nit picky, but how much rural broadband was actually implemented with the infrastructure funding during the Biden years? My understanding is, they didn't actually get much done.