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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 26th, 2023

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  • I posted this in the past and it continues to be true. Autopilot is getting worse overtime. Tesla is feeding autopilot driving data into its system to learn to drive better. The problem is, it’s learning its worst habits. Phantom braking, hesitation in turns, unable to keep a steady speed. Every update I try it and rarely last more than a couple miles. It’s not that I want to use it, I just want to see if it’s getting better or worse.

    The wild thing is, turning off autopilot and using lane keep and cruise is fine. They warn you that lane keep is old autopilot so it’s not as reliable, trying to urge you into using full autopilot so they can harvest more data. But that “old” autopilot was built before all the updates that made the full autopilot system unusable to me

    If you’re wondering, I’d like to not be driving a Tesla. But it’s paid off, worth basically nothing in resale, and I got it as a CPO with free charging and autopilot for life. It costs Tesla money to keep it.




  • I studied this a bit in my MS and the answer is… probably not. “The grid will collapse” has been an anti-technology or pro fossil fuel talking point for a very long time, whether* its arguing against renewables or against personal computers or against AC units. The most recent was solar. Grid operators were adamant that solar would crash the grid if it accounted for more than 10%, then 20%, then 30% and so on and it never happened. Now it’s onto EVs being the grid destroyer.

    The reality is that production and use is not all that hard to predict. Ultrafast charging will eat some power, but that isn’t going to be the norm for wide EV adoption. Public charging will cost more money and be less convenient than charging at home or work over a longer duration. Home chargers are capping around 30-35 amps, generally overnight when grid demand is low. Couple this with the combined low cost for residential solar to change at even lower rates depending on your state/nation’s hostility to solar.

    Now, if every car was replaced with an EV tomorrow, the grid would struggle. But that’s not going to happen. Adoption will be a long slow process and energy producers will increase output on pace as demand forecasts increase. A good parallel to this is Air Conditioning adoption. That’s another high demand appliance that went from rare to common. The grid has its challenges, but now the AC usage is forcastable and rarely challenges the grid.

    Is it a challenge, especially with higher renewable mixtures, yes. Can utilities fumble? Of course. Will it be a widespread brownout every day during commute hours? Not likely.


  • Trump restarted it last term too. They only managed to build 8 percent of it before Biden revoked the approval again. The company then abandoned the project officially. It’s just a political football at this point. Why bother putting money into something that will stall again in 2-4 years. That’s not even considering the 25% tariff on the oil it would carry, if it were ever finished.














  • You’re right, there are a lot of very liberal people in the ranks. There’s no disputing that. I’m just saying there are plenty of MAGAs around too, more than enough to cause havoc. And if shit starts going south, the GI bill nerds with degrees will head for the door because they have the qualifications to do so. They can stand up for the constitution because they will land on their feet after they get kicked out.

    Generalizing myself here, the more conservative a troop is, the more likely the military is all they know. The promise of being special and fighting for the America they believe Trump will give them is more than enough to push some of them over the edge.