simondotau

Correct, but then the credit for that capacity rightfully goes to the battery, not to solar panels for their ability to generate more than needed at other times.

You just said my Dad cannot fully self drive, but then proposed an "objective" definition which my Dad unquestionably satisfies.

Are you conceding that FSD is in fact correctly named in terms of its technical capabilities, and only falls short in terms of legal liability?

I should note that my Dad is a perfectly competent driver who has not been in any car accident in the last 30 years (at least, I'm not aware of any). But he drives in a way that makes me feel somewhat uncomfortable as a passenger. It's hard to explain.

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The end state of solar and wind will be a system that is overbuilt, potentially by a large factor. Overbuilding solar by 10x, for example, means that solar can still satisfy the grid when it’s thickly overcast.

A kWh isn’t a kWh if one is only available at certain times of day, under certain weather conditions.

A kWh isn’t a kWh if one contributes to grid stability and the other relies on it.

As far as Musk's opinions are concerned, I'm a fan of YouTube analyst William Spaniel's oft-repeated adage: "Don't listen to what leaders say, watch what they do."

Whatever it is Musk actually said to Trump (reporting of which we should take with a heaping grain of salt, since there are plenty of people with obvious motivations to lie and fabricate) we can see that the service SpaceX controls (Starlink) has remained unaffected, while the service the US military controls (Starshield) is what's in dispute.

Don't listen to what they say, watch what they do.

There are a lot of confused people reporting on this issue, leading to poor journalism. Starlink wasn't the service that got degraded; Starshield was. Starlink has never been allowed for offensive military use. Though Starshield shares some infrastructure with Starlink, the critical difference is that while Starlink is a commercial service, Starshield is owned and operated by the US military, not SpaceX.

Hence why Musk was supposedly "asking Trump".

Maybe that's true.

I'm reminded of the old adage: "If I told you to jump off a cliff..." Ultimately, Musk is a civilian - at most, he's a regular buffoon who should keep his nose out of such affairs. Whereas the very idea of a president taking military advice from the aforementioned buffoon isn't just further buffoonery, it's something far greater than that. It's probably not strictly treasonous, but it's got that kind of flavour.

Everything you said is highly plausible and potentially correct, but I think my previous post still applies. There's a lot of conjecture and motivated reasoning from all sides, enough that I'm doubtful that we can know what really happened.

Of course you're correct that Trump and Musk both hate Zelenskyy, and this established fact and not conjecture. Nonetheless it all still boils down to:

1. Musk has opinions

2. Trump has dangerously poor judgement

His reviews of many other smartphones are equally gushing, but ~nobody watches them because Apple gets clicks and Motorola doesn't.

In that context it would be obvious that "breaking the laws of computer science" is hyperbole for "breaking the established assumptions of computer science"

There's a lot of conjecture and motivated reasoning from all sides, enough that I'm doubtful that we can know what really happened. So park the actual facts for a moment. Let's just consider the situation in the abstract.

Musk is many things, but I've never heard anyone seriously claim him to have any particular aptitude or expertise around military strategy or conflict resolution. So if Trump is unilaterally executing on Musk's musings, we can derive two definite (and highly conservative) observations:

1. Musk has opinions

2. Trump has dangerously poor judgement

The Model 3 is very close to the same weight as a BMW 3-series. It's not substantially heavier.

Your confusion is understandable given your own (excruciatingly obvious) motives.

They never talked about battery swap again because DC fast charging got fast enough to eliminate that hassle.

Meanwhile Chinese EV maker Nio has built over three thousand battery swap stations. We can speculate all we want about Tesla's motives, endlessly entertaining as that is, but the fundamental idea was sound.

> I didn't downvote you

I know. Users can't downvote direct replies on HN.

Even if we accept the most favourable interpretations of the wacky conspiracies you've alleged, including the dodgy speculation in your linked articles, I would still argue that Musk's contribution to Ukraine's defence through Starlink vastly outweighs any actions that might have benefited Russia. In fact it's difficult to overstate how consequential Starlink has been to Ukraine's ability to defend itself. I think it's reasonable to hypothesise that Starlink is one (of many) but-for causes of Ukraine continuing to exist today.

Meanwhile, despite all this hypothetical love of Russia, Starlink (and Starshield) are still available to Ukraine and not Russia. As my favourite YouTube analyst William Spaniel is fond of saying: "Don't listen to what they say, watch what they do."

I explained that the exterior panels are structurally necessary and that the major ones are welded or bolted on. The response above somehow recasts that as me agreeing they're just plates glued on. That's not a serious attempt to engage with what I wrote. I think it's reasonable to assert an absence of good faith here.

It's not a defense. It's refining the criticism to be more believable, and therefore more likely to be believed. If anything, I'm helping your argument.

There's no formal definition for "full self driving". But perhaps we could tease out a definition we can both accept. Let me start. My elderly Dad is a legal licensed driver who drives every day. FSD drives much better than my Dad in every way you can possibly measure. Can my Dad fully self drive or not?

> SpaceX has committed said engineers to delivering unfeasable amounts of payload to LEO/ISS, etc. Think on the order of "One succesful launch, delivery, and re-entry/recovery per day". That is of course very very far away from reality

This is a mathematically silly assertion. Over the past decade, SpaceX has scaled their launch capacity from ~20 metric tons per year to ~2,300 metric tons per year. That's more than two orders of magnitude. It's not unreasonable to imagine that they could scale a further 0.3 orders of magnitude if there were customers willing to pay for this amount of lift.

Correction: A car company that has a long history of making both true and false claims.

Almost certainly true, but sometimes there are indirect benefits. Three I can think of are earned media, the knowledge gain from blue sky R&D, and key employee retention.

Tyres also throw stones and dirt at cars behind, sometimes with remarkable force. But you're right, road debris is a serious question here. I can only imagine that this is so obvious that it cannot have been overlooked.

Surely the intake will need to be minimally filtered, my guess is something similar to fly screen mesh (screen door material, for the yanks) or finer. Debris would then just fall to the ground when the fans aren’t running.

What you just relayed is another misleading claim purveyed by obsessives. Cybertruck is not a true exoskeleton design, but neither are the steel plates decorative. It is a hybrid -- the unibody shell carries some minimal structural load, but it's not sufficient on its own. The exterior skin is structurally necessary for torsional rigidity and contributes meaningfully to the overall chassis strength.

All major exterior panels are welded and/or bolted on. On the earliest revisions, the thin upper door trim strips were bonded using a bad structural adhesive which became brittle with temperature cycling. These were recalled and remedied with a different structural adhesive plus a welded stud. Such recalls are very common; the current generation Ford Explorer had multiple recalls for exterior panels falling off.

It's fun to see that one person decided to downvote me instead of replying with what should be the absolute easiest of challenges. I'll take that downvote as an explicit capitulation.

Remember, Musk would have been entirely within his right to explicitly refuse all military use of consumer Starlink. He didn't. No matter how much of a dick he is with his words, no matter how brain broken Twitter has made him, he cannot take away what he has done for Ukraine. By choosing to answer their call for help, he did more to save Ukraine than could ever be expected of any one person.

Just be aware you're moving from the territory of reasonable questions to moderately desperate conspiracy theory. Whatever it is we saw, it's clearly not lightweight. That much is obvious from the kinetics.

The people lapping it up aren't prospective customers, they're just people enjoying the spectacle.

Most supercars and hypercars make zero economic sense.

> I’m confused how this has (or will pass) regulatory approval for road use.

It won't.

And this is also true of being able to go over 90 MPH, despite many sports/premium cars touting an ability to reach a top speed above 150 MPH. Some cars come with "Donut" or drift modes. Donuts and drifting are definitely not road legal actions. These, and many other capabilities of sports cars, are obviously for track use only. These Roadster gimmicks are no different.

This Tesla event was apparently performed in front of a live audience. Yes I'm sure there's a hype strategy here but equating this with the Nikola scam is a stretch.

Also Tesla events rarely (if ever) get followed by a durable stock bump.

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Edit: Credible independent videos have been released on YouTube by reputable people. There's no doubt that the spectacle did happen as shown by Tesla. That's not to say it's anything more than a carefully staged spectacle, but claims that it's fake or AI or CGI are absolutely debunked.