I want the car to be able to contact emergency services, but not to otherwise be able to use the cellular network. Is there a good way to sabotage the eSIM, without otherwise breaking the modem? (This would still allow the car to be tracked via IMEI, but I'm not too worried about that: anyone capable of that is also capable of tracking my actual phone, and anyone buying that data will already know what car I own.)
There's often been a few cases of "disappeared" people who went missing and it turns out they actually crashed off the road somewhere and weren't found for a week or two.
That's extreme of course but there are probably a lot of accidents that happen in low-density rural country areas or late at night when there aren't many people around. The automatic e-call from the car gives exact GPS coordinates and severity of the accident, even if you are unconscious or if your phone that was neatly in the cup holder before the crash was flung somewhere else (potentially even flew out of the car etc) and you're trying to find it while someone might be dying in the seat next to you etc.
People didn't survive before all this. It's a mandatory feature now because it's so effective at saving lives. 2 to 10% reduction in fatalities and serious injuries apparently. Would you also question why we have mandatory airbags and traction control?!
right, but airbags, seatbelts, etc. are not internet connected. That's the critical distinction. I do not want the risks that come with my car connecting to the internet.
A much more reasonable ask would be for your car's systems to use your phone to place a call to emergency services. I absolutely do not want yet another internet connected device in my life, especially one like a car, where examples exist of hackers being able to disable the electronics remotely.
Funnily enough, I mostly hear about it from hyper-individualistic types. It's probably a facet of some American conservative-traditionalist belief cluster invented in the last 40 years, but it's hard to say for sure, because the people who say this tend to be bad at introspection, so can't answer my questions about it (even when they're curiously cooperating with my investigation).
This is cool. My first into to a practical application of Linux in the early 2000s was using Damn Small Linux to recover files off of cooked Windows Machines. I looked up the project the other day while reminiscing and thought it would be interesting if someone took a real shot at reviving the spirit of the project.
I used to have a floppy and a mini-cd boot version of these. The mini-cd looks like a credit card and fit into a standard size cd drive. Reading the history of the project is a bit of a bummer, but still love the project ethos.
Damn Small Linux was the second Linux I tried (after the free CD promotion that Ubuntu did). I liked it and it was fun to play with, but I was such a newbie that I wasn't able to really use it for anything.
It's 20 years later and I've been running Linux for most of that time, so I probably would have even more fun revisiting DSL and Tiny Core Linux.
That's ok, you'll get the same treatment everyone else got before they started this trend. "Normies" with their lives on the standard socials will get extra attention or special treatment at no detriment to you.
I don't think that tracks. Not only do they have to incur the cost of getting the car cleaned, but while they're off getting it cleaned, they're also not accepting rides and taking in money. Not to mention it's just a huge hassle and waste of time.
I too have FSD 13 on my CT and use it for 99% of driving with no issues. I have done a number of long city to city drives (30-100+ miles) with zero interventions. The roads would be 10,000x safer if every car was using FSD, even in extreme edge cases like the original post.
It’s fantastic and Tesla service has been really good for the one issue I had over the last １２ months. My wife bought a Model Y in 2021 so it’s the second Tesla in the house.
I like that you've built a strawman for anyone who might disagree with you. "Oh there aren't any positive reviews they're just fanboys." You may as well write "Anyone who disagrees with me is wrong."
What is PG&Es generation cost vs administrative and legal overhead? The 11% margin isn't a good basis number. How is other states like Texas or Colorado are delivering at 10-12c/kwh ?
I do agree with your sentiment that city bureaucrats may be tempted to raid the energy business to pay for pet projects and other things. This can be protected against by segmenting the energy business into its own protected organization.
> What is PG&Es generation cost vs administrative and legal overhead? The 11% margin isn't a good basis number.
Administrative and legal costs don’t disappear when the city runs it, so why does it matter? When the city runs a utility, nearly all of the costs associated with running a utility still exist.
If your mental model of a city-owned utility is that they’re going to generate power and sell it at cost with no administrative overhead, you’re really just assuming that administrative overhead will be covered by taxpayers.
Electricity rates down, tax rates up.
> How is other states like Texas or Colorado are delivering at 10-12c/kwh ?
Texas produces the most crude oil, natural gas, and also wind generated electricity. A quarter of the entire country’s wind energy generation happens in Texas.
Comparing electricity prices across regions is meaningless. Everything is too different.
The basic argument on Texas seems to be: "Texas avoided 75% of the costs in California by doing everything differently. California can't learn anything from them because they do things differently". That seems like a weak argument. California would have to do things quite differently to get a 75% cost reduction.
It is stereotyping, but it sounds like the sort of state that has a strong regulatory regime that would be quite controlling about what people can actually do. I note the irony that when Texas had a power outage everyone wanted much more regulation to force changes to grid maintenance, but when California spends 4x as much and PG&E skips on grid maintenance everyone throws their hands up because they can't call for more regulation and are out of ideas. The regulation doesn't seem to have dodged the maintenance problems but I'd bet it drives the cost up.
Pressable includes support, global caching, and a bunch of other things you won't get on a $5/month VPS. Also not everyone wants to play system administrator 7 days a week to keep their server from getting hijacked or nuked.
So they throw Cloudflare in front of it and get defaced yearly. I've worked for companies (thankfully not in a position dealing with the website) that did just that. Somehow they're even still around a decade later. To be fair though that was actually Bluehost, not a VPS.
True, but shared hosting providers (like hostinger) offers basically the same, but for cheaper and no pricing per website, even on cheaper plans you can fit five or more sites in.
Of course, it doesn't matter in the end - as long as users have ability to choose a hosting there will be cheaper and "better" options. Shopyfing wordpress would be worse...
There’s value to users in using a service that’s the same as the software. Trust is worth it to consumers. It’s why many still prefer to take their cars to the dealer rather than an Indy shop
I've had 3 cars totaled by dealers and none totaled by indy shops. One was actually messed up by them beyond repair. One was messed up and they wanted more to fix it well beyond the replace cost. The final one just wanted well beyond the replace cost, and I got it fixed for much much less at an indy shop.
Just find a good indy shop. there's a great one 2 blocks from my house at a gas station. discusses all repairs with you, good on preventive maintenance, 1/4 the price of a dealer. Will tell you what repairs you actually need to do and what you don't. Also easier to schedule and pick up and drop off. I have to wait at the mega dealer near me like 15-30 minutes at drop off and pick up. At least the toyota one will let you defer your car wash instead of waiting for it longer. At the gas station I drop the car in the lot and drop the keys in a mailbox. For pickup I go in any day till 10 and pay like I'm buying an energy drink, grab the keys and walk out to the lot to grab it.
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