Yup. Blocks ads on our iPhones, iPads, streaming services, etc. Between that & uBlock Origin on our laptop browsers we hardly ever see ads.

Not to mention that lots of malicious attacks occur late at night or on weekends in an attempt to delay getting noticed. My company has rotating on-call schedules for our security, devops, and even engineering teams. I’ve had to hop on late at night or on weekends to help mitigate attacks. Luckily my employer is really good about letting folks take a day or two off after such events.

Some of us drive 48-wheeled vehicles.

Ask Jeeves was a “question answering service” back then. They had a staff of human editors who curated answers to popular questions. Nothing they answered back then was done via search.

Source: I worked for a search engine startup in the 90’s that was acquired by Ask Jeeves when they realized they needed a true search technology since human editing wasn’t scalable.

Ask Jeeves was doing this before Google existed…

💩

I’m just curious, but what type of content would you be watching on YouTube?

I literally use it almost exclusively for how-to styles of videos. I had to replace the throttle cable on my riding lawnmower last year. I found an awesome step-by-step video. Stuff like that…

Just support contactless payments. Then people can just tap their phone, Apple Watch, credit card, etc.

This sounds to me like a solution looking for a problem…

That’s an optional software upgrade. It’ll cost you $12.95 a month.

Tesla has both a gigafactory and a Supercharger factory in mainland China. Any semi-competent CEO would recognize that publicly advocating for tariffs on China would have a good chance of backfiring. China could easily turn around and slap 100% tariffs on everything coming out of those two factories in retaliation.

Once the infrastructure (conduit, circuit breakers, cable, etc.) is in place then swapping out the charger at the end of it is pretty much trivial.

Yeah, but if they end up contagious before kicking it then we could end up in another pandemic…

Personally I’d call that a safety issue. A few years ago my wife and I were driving a rental car that was rear ended on the highway by a drunk driver. The impact caved in the left rear wheel and spun us 360 degrees across 3 lanes of the highway. Within a few seconds of coming to a stop an OnStar person was talking to us, asking if we were ok and confirming our location.

We had no clue ahead of time that the rental car had one of these services, but at that moment we were very happy it did. I honestly have no idea about the privacy ramifications, etc. but having been through that experience I’d think long and hard about disabling it outright. I do take my privacy seriously, but I’d have to weigh that against the safety of me & my family in that kind of situation and disable it only as an absolutely last resort… Just my own personal $0.02 on the matter.

• The AI will shut off before an impending accident just to transfer the blame onto the human.

I may be mistaken but I thought a law was passed (or maybe it was just a NHTSA regulation?) that stipulated any self driving system was at least partially to blame if it was in use within 30 seconds of an accident. I believe this was done after word got out that Tesla’s FSD was supposedly doing exactly this.

That truly depends on how secure Ecobee made it… I’ve seen some smart devices that use SSL (https) for all communication and do some sort of certificate authentication, making it virtually impossible to decrypt its communication protocol without a valid private key…

Having said that, it’d be nice if Ecobee took the initiative and opened up these older devices, if they could do so without comprising the security of all their others.

I own a Tesla and was offered 30 days of free full self driving. I refused to try it for a number of reasons.

• The routing in the navigation system has numerous issues like thinking it can’t turn left at intersections where you actually can. It results in less than optimal routes, and there’s no way to report those sorts of issues.
• FSD relies on the same camera system that Autopilot (traffic aware cruise control) uses. I’ve had Autopilot slam on the brakes for no obvious reason, swerve to avoid nothing, etc. If it has issues like that then chances are FSD will be just as bad.
• The cameras are also used to control the automatic windshield wipers, and they can turn on without warning in bright sun, etc.
• Same with the auto high beams, which are required by Autopilot & FSD. I refuse to use them because they can turn on & off a lot when there are cars approaching me.
• I regularly get alerts that cameras are obscured by bright sun, low sun in the sky, etc.

In other words, the systems that FSD rely on are clearly still buggy. So I refuse to use FSD until it’s clearly demonstrated the bugs in those systems are fixed.

I thought Congress reacted to this by passing a law that states a self-driving system is at least partially responsible if it was in use up to something like 30 seconds before a crash…

But they are NOT different things. In every one of these examples:

1. A safety issue is identified
2. NHTSA opens an investigation
3. The cause of the issue is identified by the manufacturer and reported back to NHTSA
4. NHSTA approves the proposed remedy
5. The manufacturer sends the recall notice along with instructions on the remedy to all known vehicle owners, as required by NHTSA

The only thing that is different in this entire process is how the remedy is applied. Every single step other than that is identical.

By your logic, the software bug in my Honda’s ECU would be called a recall because it required me going to a dealership and having them perform the software update. An owner can’t simply download and install ECU updates themselves in the vast majority of cases.

But then by your same logic the software update that Toyota mailed to me on a USB stick for my Prius shouldn’t be called a recall because I was able to plug the USB stick into the car myself. The only reason Toyota mailed that USB stick to me and thousands of other Prius owners is because they were legally required to fix a software bug identified by NHTSA in a recall notice. Toyota decided the USB approach was better than having all of us drive to dealers to have them apply it.

And the various over-the-air software updates that Tesla, Rivian, and others shouldn’t be called recalls either by your same logic.

Why cause confusion over calling software updates different things based solely on who installs it and/or how it’s installed? In all these cases NHTSA received reports about a safety issue, opened a formal investigation, and ultimately issued a legally binding directive to the manufacturer that required them, by law, to address it. That legally binding directive is a recall notice, and it can apply to software that you have to visit a dealer to install, or to software the owner can install, or to software the manufacturer can install automatically.

That entire process is what makes something a recall. Not how it’s addressed in the end.

What’s confusing about it? A recall in the automotive world has a very specific definition, and it covers not only software related issues but hardware related ones as well.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is a part of the US Department of Transportation, and they publish a 20 page pamphlet that describes what a recall is. Here are the relevant parts from that brochure:

The United States Code for Motor Vehicle Safety (Title 49, Chapter 301) defines motor vehicle safety as “the performance of a motor vehicle or motor vehicle equipment in a way that protects the public against unreasonable risk of accidents occurring because of the design, construction, or performance of a motor vehicle, and against unreasonable risk of death or injury in an accident, and includes nonoperational safety of a motor vehicle.” A defect includes “any defect in performance, construction, a component, or material of a motor vehicle or motor vehicle equipment.” Generally, a safety defect is defined as a problem that exists in a motor vehicle or item of motor vehicle equipment that:

• poses a risk to motor vehicle safety, and

• may exist in a group of vehicles of the same design or manufacture, or items of equipment of the same type and manufacture.

Furthermore:

The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act gives NHTSA the authority to issue vehicle safety standards and to require manufacturers to recall vehicles that have safety-related defects or do not meet Federal safety standards.

In other words, federal law gives NHTSA the authority to issue recalls for any defect that is considered a safety defect. There is no qualifier for it having to be mechanical in nature.

I’ve had software-related recalls issued for both a Toyota and a Honda that I used to own. The Toyota one resulted in them sending me a USB stick in the mail and telling me how to install it in the car (basically plug it into the entertainment system and wait). The Honda one required a trip to a dealer to update the software in the ECU to prevent the cars battery from dying due to the alternator being disabled improperly. Just because these were software related in no way means they weren’t recalls. They were both mandated by NHSTA, both resulted in official recall notices, etc.

Edit: Just for fun you might want to go to https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls and do a search there. If you enter “Tesla” in the field for “VIN or Year Make Model” you can browse all their recalls. The very first one on this page is titled “Incorrect Font Size on Warning Lights”. That’s most definitely a software recall. It’s assigned NHSTA recall #24V051000, and they list the affected components as “ELECTRICAL SYSTEM”. If you read further it also shows the remedy was an over-the-air software update.