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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • Tesla Model Y owner here (never again, either). I hate the touchscreen, and also hate the way they’ve shoehorned functionality into the button/scroller controls on the steering wheel to try to address complaints.

    When I first got the MY, the only way to control things like the wipers was through menus in the touchscreen. A software update introduced the ability to control them from the steering wheel controls, but even that “solution” sucks. You have to press & hold the control down while simultaneously scrolling it with your thumb. And most times you can’t scroll it from all the way off to all the way on in a single motion, so you press, scroll as much as you can, release & press again then scroll the rest of the way. A real PITA.



  • My wife & I just spent a week in London, where there are plenty of cars but very little off-street parking. We saw a significant number of EV’s ranging from Tesla’s & other cars, to taxis, double decker busses, and the occasional truck/lorry. We spotted one or two Tesla super charger stations as we made our way around the city, as well as a very small number of public parking spaces along roads that had either chargers or just outlets to plug chargers into.

    What little I saw certainly didn’t seem like a lot, but they clearly seem to have some sort of grasp on the situation given the number of EV’s we saw…







  • The problem is computer vision has a LONG way to go before it’s truly on par with human eyesight. Musk loves to crow how cameras are sufficient since we use our eyes to drive.

    The thing is, eyes have special neural circuits that detect motion. They essentially filter out unnecessary information and send just the motion details to the brain. This prevents the brain from being overloaded with every detail the eye constantly sees.

    And being overloaded with everything is exactly what computer vision currently does. It’s just a stream of images that the computer must analyze completely. So it’s working exactly opposite to how the eye & brain works.




  • Play paintball.

    I started playing back in the 80’s when I was in college and everybody used paint guns that could only hold about 15 rounds, and fired one at a time.

    I’m way too old to run around in the woods like I did 40 years ago, and the game has completely changed as well. People have guns that can hold hundreds of paintballs and shoot incredibly fast, so the whole strategy is unlike it was. I just don’t find modern paintball enjoyable at all.


  • I recall when I bought my first hybrid that the dealer said there were something like 15 different computers controlling things, from the ICE engine to the transmission to the charging of the battery, etc. They weren’t networked together.

    I also once ran afoul of a software bug in the ECU of a Honda CR/V. That’s the embedded system that manages the whole operation of the engine - from fuel injection to timing to emissions etc. As they progress through model years they use different ECUs that require different software. Even though I work in IT, I wouldn’t feel comfortable trying to update it myself, given the different models, firmware revisions, etc. I was more than happy to take that car to a dealer to have them confirm my car had buggy software and to upgrade it to the right new version.