Let me correct that for you. There was no driver buckled in to the driver's seat when the fire department arrived. There are no witnesses and very little evidence that there was not a driver at the time of the crash. Damage to the steering wheel indicates there was a driver. The fact that the car was "driving" at the time of the crash is evidence that there was a driver. Is it possible to make any car accelerate without a driver? Yes. It is much harder in a Tesla because of the interlocks, but sure it could be done. But at this time, it is not known and is un fact unlikely that there was no driver.

There seems to be a constant retelling as fact an alternative history where Elon and by extension Tesla has "Promised" FSD by a certain date. Elon is constantly asked (yes for many years) when he thinks FSD will be done and full autonomy is reached. He gives his currently best guess on when certain features will be released. He also always goes on to explain (though it is often edited out) that when "the march of nines" reaches the point that FSD is so much better than human drivers that they will be allowed to flip the switch for level 4 or 5 autonomy - nobody knows. Meanwhile those of us who have experienced the limited feature set of FSD that has been released to the public are amazed at just how good it is.

No. As anyone who has ever tried the currently released limited edition FSD not to mention the excellent betas being tested and available for viewing on youtube, the car very much does the driving, and the "Driver" is more of a monitor just in case an edge condition occurs. In reality, the current FSD (not feature complete) is not a driver assistance feature (assist the human) so much as the human operator assists the virtual driver.

If you mean by yapping, he tweets about how good version 9 of FSD is your statement is partially true. But he and the rest of Tesla is very consistent in telling everyone in every communication that a driver is currently required to have his or her butt in the seat and paying attention.

60 sats/launch/$30M/launch = $500K per sat. Avg cost of arial fiber cable per mile = $25K. My rural county has thousands of miles of roads. 2K miles x $25K = $50M. One sat should be able to cover dozens if not hundreds of counties. https://www.ctcnet.us/CTCCosts...

For several years, every time I changed the password for a commercial ATT iPad cellular data account, they sent me an email with the new password in plain text to confirm the change I made. I spent several hours initially trying to talk to someone who cared or would understand why this was not a good idea. Every few months, I would try again, though putting in less effort. Typically just sending emails to some address that seemed set up to report problems. I assume this is one of the things they fixed when they put a layer of security on top of Yahoo Mail. I don't know because we eventually dropped cellular data for those iPads.

When DSL came to our town, our address showed up as not being eligible. Having worked for the phone company's engineering and outside plant construction departments during college I had a pretty good idea of my city's and neighborhood's infrastructure. I called ATT, kept telling whoever I talked to that there was a problem with their database and that there was no way my location could not support DSL. Eventually I got routed to a lady in the basement of South Central Bell in Birmingham AL who had a clue. She did a little digging, and discovered I was right. This was when ATT was a group of smaller companies and the employees would usually take the initiative to the right thing for their customers. She had me up and going in a few weeks even though I was a state away.

Fast forward a few months and my neighbor wants DSL and runs into the same problem. I tell him of my approach. Doesn't work for him. He goes several more months with dial up internet until his boss's boss (of a multi-million dollar company) meets a phone company vice-president. The vice president offers that if he ever has trouble dealing with his company contact the VP directly. The boss's boss says "Since you have offered, I have this employee who is having a problem getting DSL..." In a few days my neighbor had DSL and as far as I know no-one in our neighborhood had any problems getting service after that.

...former Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) said during Bridenstine's confirmation hearing in November 2017. "NASA needs a leader who will unite us, not divide us. Respectfully, Congressman Bridenstine, I don't think you're that leader."

In the beginning most of us space nerds suspected the Senator was right, but in the end, he was wrong. Bridenstine was a great leader who did unite those of interested in advancing space exploration and technology. Granted he was unable to undo much of the congressional pork barrel that is built into NASA's budget, but was more successful than many of his predecessors in working around some of the road blocks congress put in his way. His congressional experience may have in the end been more valuable than any scientific or engineering background. From his deputy down his team had plenty of STEM background.

As one of those space nerds, who also works in the industry, I wish I had mod points to mod you up, but thankfully someone with mod points took care of that.

Battery power has a number of dynamic properties going for it over conventional fuel.
      1. The energy density is increasing. (Carbon fuels are as good as they are going to get.)
      2. The expendable part (the electricity) is weightless. As technology improves you can cram more and more fuel on board with no payload penalty.
                There is never any need to take off with less than a full "tank", to be more efficient, or increase payload. This increases safety.
      3. Battery structure can actually add to the strength of an aircraft, potentially allowing for the reduction in other structure. Carbon fuel is dead weight structurally speaking.
      4. Maintenance is practically zero compared to compared to conventional aircraft engines and motors. Maintenance is a huge cost after fuel.
      5. Electricity is now cheaper and with renewables in trending even cheaper.
      6. Airports and other refueling spots for EAV's require much less infrastructure. If the spot has lights it has an electric fuel depot automatically.

Granted conventional fuels (for now) win for large aircraft. But electrically powered aircraft are chipping away and already dominate small drones and extreme long duration flights. In the end, cheaper and better wins. Electric power is already better and cheaper for short duration small capacity passenger flights. For the most part all trends are headed in the right direct for future electrical craft and in the wrong direction for the future of carbon fueled craft.

"...today's battery of choice is lithium ion. It reached maturity years ago, with each new incremental improvement smaller than the last."
I'd like to see the data that shows that.

"Three factors will determine whether lithium-sulfur batteries ultimately succeed or fail. First is the successful integration of the batteries into multiple aircraft types, to prove the principle. Second is the continued refinement of the cell chemistry. Third is the continued reduction in the unit cost."

Try reversing that order:
        First - reduction in cost. Make the battery attractive in many applications - especially EV's and Storage where demand is already scaled.
        Second - Refine the chemistry. You have customers now, try to keep them happy.
        Third - Successfully integrate the batteries into multiple aircraft types. You have scale now, in EV's and Storage and you are light enough for flight. This part is easy. Hundreds of companies will do this for you. They were just waiting on your battery.

It's that first one(in my suggested order), Cost, for nearly every use case, that has to be solved first before these new battery technologies will ever have a chance to scale. Meanwhile Li-on keeps getting cheaper and better.

Yes. About a third of my clients are mixed PC/Mac shops. It is my experience that more MacMini's are sold for use as headless servers than as desktops. There are these nice little 1U racks that hold two MacMini's.
One client's most powerful server is actually iMac Pro with pretty impressive specs mounted to the side of his network rack.
Zero cost server license, no premium charges for additional cores, no CAL's. What's not to like?

I'm trying to hold off until the Cybertruck arrives, to replace my truck, but thinking seriously about a model 3 or Y. But the ultimate console has 4 wheel drive, a stainless steel exoskeleton, dual motors and bullet proof glass. :)

It might be invisible to speed trap radar!

Take a moment and go to Youtube. Watch a few of the test ride videos. You see that many big tall men said there was plenty of room in the back seats for three of them. In fact one video I watched a guy said it was much roomier than his Tundra Supercab. I have a smaller Frontier Supercab. If it's big enough for him - it will be big enough for me.