I guess I don’t think of the higher agencies as cops, even though they are. And those higher agencies (FBI, NSA, CIA, etc.) don’t strike me as the type of groups who want to keep the public informed—quite the contrary, actually. I would expect local cops to praise themselves if they got something right, sure.

Or they have stopped them, so we haven’t heard about it.

I’m not advocating giving up privacy but you don’t know for sure that these tactics don’t “work.”

I wasn’t actually so mad at first. They bought back our smaller cheaper car and we felt very compensated. But for the second car, which was much bigger and more expensive, they only offered a “fix” which they said wouldn’t affect performance (yeah right), and a small amount in restitution. It felt like a slap in the face. In hindsight I would have gone about things differently but let’s just say that I have little to no faith in the way our justice system works anymore due to how we decided to proceed after that, and we will never buy a car from VW ever again.

Meanwhile, we actually replaced those cars with Teslas. And now we feel like we’re kind of back in the same place, having given money to a company that is pretty shit. We try to vote with our wallets as much as possible but there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, after all. It’s just really depressing and disheartening and makes me not want to buy anything anymore.

I’m in the opposite camp. What are the reasons you don’t like Rivian? (I don’t like VW because we had not one, but two vehicles caught up in Dieselgate. They’re dead to me. Which is a shame because I really liked them.)

Upvote for Maintenance Phase, love that podcast.

I (maybe, kinda) miss what Facebook was like in, er, 2008-ish. But then again I was also 25 so maybe I just miss what life was like back then.

Yeah, as I age I definitely wonder what is going to be my “product of the times” prejudice. I try really hard not to be prejudiced but it can be hard. For instance, I really don’t understand poly relationships. But I’m also not going to yuck someone else’s yum, especially when it comes to the rights of someone to do what they want if it isn’t harming anyone else.

For the first two decades of the century, what it meant to be Texan—as explained by the state’s politicians—was largely wrapped up in a feeling of competition with California.

As a Californian, I can’t help but think of that Mad Men meme: “I don’t think about you at all” or some such. Do all Texans really think this way or does this author just have a huge California-shaped chip on his shoulder?

Musk thinks he already did that with the model 3, right? Billionaires have no concept of “affordable” after all.

Yes! This is my dad to a T. Meanwhile, my husband and I (oldish millennials) “cut the cord” fairly early on but more importantly, we actually have the TV off occasionally. That only happens in my parents’ house if my dad isn’t home. When I was a kid, he’d be working in the garage — where he had a TV — but we weren’t allowed to change the channel in the living room because he’d go back and forth and didn’t want to miss anything.

It’s a hard balance, being parents right now. I’m going to make an assumption and guess you mean you see them in public, yeah? The thing is (I say this as a parent of currently 9 and 7 year olds), our society — at least, my society in the US — still feels a bit like it expects children to be “seen and not heard” while in public. If even seen, to be honest. I don’t see it as much here on Lemmy but I saw anti-kid posts on Reddit all the time. I don’t mean childfree; I mean they constantly complained about other people’s kids. Yes, sometimes that can be due to a lack of structured parenting, but kids are also just little socially-inept, impulse-driven creatures who are still figuring the world out. The urge to hand them a magical little device that will occupy them and keep them “seen and not heard” while you are out somewhere is perilously strong.

All that being said: just last week I was sitting to the side at my son’s martial arts class, and next to me was a mom on her phone who had a young girl, maybe 3 or 4, next to her. The girl was squirmy but quiet. I could not help noticing that the mom barely looked up from her phone the whole time. I felt really bad for the girl.

I live in the Bay Area and I’ve seen a surprising number of them. But then again I think their R&D office is in a nearby city so maybe it’s just a bunch of employees driving them.

We weren’t watching it anyway and we can handle waiting a few days for shipping. We dropped it too.

/s not necessary. They’ve messed with numbers before and just got a slap on the wrist. Why wouldn’t they lie again?

As someone who uses it a lot: you don’t need it. But it is nice when you’re waiting for someone, which I do a lot of because sigh I’m basically a soccer mom now. (Kids don’t play soccer and I don’t drive a minivan but…yeah, the comparison is sadly apt.) These days, my kids use it more than I do, since a few times a week they are stuck with me waiting for the other sibling to get out of their activity. Can all this be solved by just handing them my phone instead? Sure.

As of yesterday, pretty sure my Disney+ app was still there, maybe because we’ve used it before, per the article. My daughter would be upset if it disappeared, but if it does I’ll just bring a iPad and hotspot it. Whatever. Maybe I should be more upset about this but I’m kind of resigned to Musk being an asshole man-child and honestly kind of depressed about being linked to him even if I’ve had the car for years and generally love it.

I live in a major metropolitan area, drive a model 3, and almost never use autopilot.

I am lucky enough to rarely be in stop-and-go traffic, but when I am, I don’t even use cruise control, because it’s too reactive to the car in front of me and subsequently too jerky for my preference.

As for autopilot, I was on a relatively unpopulated freeway in the second lane from the right, when a small truck came around a clover leaf to merge into the right lane next to me. My car flipped out and slammed on the breaks. The truck wasn’t even coming into my lane; he was just merging. Thankfully there was a large gap behind me, and I was also paying enough attention to immediately jam on the accelerator to counteract it, but it spooked me pretty badly. And this was on a road that it’s designed for.

Autopilot (much less FSD) can’t really think like our brains can. It can only “see” so far ahead and behind. It can’t look at another driver’s behavior and make assessments that they might be distracted or or drunk. We’re not there yet. We’re FAR from there.

I will say that where you live makes a huge difference for this. I’m in a major metro area and I’ve never had to take it to a service center; they always come to my house. Having pretty much always lived here, I can’t really speak for living more rurally or even small-town but I’d guess there are other concessions one would make living there (just as we make concessions with our traffic, COL and distance to open space). But in this case it definitely hurts adoption from those areas.

Apparently PG&E, a company with literal blood on its hands, has us and our lawmakers by the balls. Fuck them for San Bruno, for Paradise, and for my energy bill.

My EV is just over 5 years old and the battery is fine. I know it’s anecdotal but the batteries last longer than projected.