My mistake, appears to have dropped slightly to 3rd.

I had a friend visit the UK a week or so ago, from the US. He rented a BYD hybrid of some kind, and he was really impressed. That's not why I'm writing this post though - the thing that caught me was that he had never even heard of BYD, the world's largest car company.

Completely different universe.

This is years old. The third-party apps tracked people, so the consent pop-up appears. The first party apps do not track people, which is why they don't ask for permission to track. Because they don't.

Years and years of this nonsense.

You don't have to turn your head to see it. It's always in the field of view.

It's how all Teslas work, and honestly it's no hassle at all. The speed is still shown directly in the driver's view (top-right of the central display in the UK, I guess top-let in left-hand drive markets). It's also far from a new idea, my 1970s Mini 1000 had this design as well.

Personally I like it and find a lot of the "more physical controls!" crowd to be vastly overstating things. Tesla are always held up as the example, but they have physical controls on the steering wheel for most things you actually use. They did take a wrong turn with this ridiculous yoke and dropping one of the indicator stalks, but they've backed out of all of that and gone back to normal. The only truly daft omission for me is the lack of button on the glovebox - that one I'll give you is truly silly.

Am in the UK. Am being paid for exporting solar-generated electricity from my house.

We (the residents of California) believe you, but the politicians/lobbyists don't.

Witness the real time collapse of our film industry.

The continuing damage from AB 5.

(see:

Trucking and Shipping Latest Victims of Californiaâ(TM)s âoeCruelest Law,â AB 5

https://www.pacificresearch.or... )

The 3d printer regulation bill (although we're just the latest state proposing this)

And the billionaire tax proposition.

The irony is if/when California does truly start running into difficult problems (all it takes is another financial downturn and our tax receipts will fall short), those same politicians/lobbyists will probably desert like fleas and migrate to adjoining states.

Can we just vote the bastards out? Please? It would also help if we could permanently attach scarlet letters that would essentially make them un-electable in the future.

The Spanish call it "Canal de la Mancha" which is much closer to the French name, as do most other european countries.
In scandinavian countries it's called the english channel but in their respective languages, eg "Engelska kanalen" in Sweden.

He could have called it Lake Trump...

MacOS lets you run unsigned software too, you just need to remove the quarantine flag on anything you've downloaded if it's not been notarized.

For someone who is technically competent this is a very minor hurdle and only needs to be done when you initially download. Anyone who is not capable of doing this probably shouldn't be running random downloaded binaries as they're likely not capable of verifying that those binaries are not malicious.

This.
It doesn't need to be a special packet, it could be a specific pattern hiding inside any packet received by the host. You don't need the ability to send traffic directly to the target, just the ability to interact with a traffic flow in or out of the system.

I've also had audio blocked in browsers since it was implemented.
Nothing more irritating than opening a page and suddenly some loud obnoxious noise blares out.

For an SMS based backdoor, no. It seems these devices are designed to use cellular connections (which makes sense since traffic cameras will be installed in remote locations).

And then most firewalls focus on inbound connections, but often do nothing to prevent a compromised device from making outbound connections. SMS could easily be used to initiate an outbound connection.

Meanwhile I also own a Tesla, and am using a CarPlay adapter with it. Maps is better, particularly lane guidance and actually telling me which motorway junction number I'm coming off at. I can share an ETA with my contacts. I can listen to subscriber-only (paid) Podcasts. I can use WhatsApp (via voice of course), something sadly essential in the UK as the vast majority use that. I can listen to audiobooks from other than Audible. I can use the BBC Sounds app. I can...

You get the idea. I agree with you about integration - the time I will use the built-in map is if I'm on a longer journey that needs charging on the way, or if the journey is so short that none of the above really matters.

Personally I hope the rumours about CarPlay integration being worked on by Tesla are true, although I'd be surprised I must admit. But for me - works well.