I'm a long time GM buyer; I've only ever purchased their vehicles from Corvettes, to performance Cadillacs, to pick-up trucks. I currently have a '24 GMC 2500HD that I take off-roading, and a '24 Z06 that I'm selling to move to a new '26 CT5 Blackwing. Cut my arm and I bleed little blue GMs. But this move makes me seriously re-think that fanboi'ism.

The built-in Google system in the Corvette and pick-up is, how to put this nicely so I don't offend the Google fans...

Hot trash. Google Automotive sucks. Badly. Like, really, catastrophically badly. If you actually feel that it's a good system, you've used nothing but horrible systems in the past, for sure. It's super-trash.

It's awful. It's slow as all hell, applications crash constantly, and the nav system can take forrrrrever to find itself when the car is first turned on. And it requires OnStar to get constant updates, traffic, etc. You can attach the car to a Wifi setup or HotSpot to your phone and hope the offline maps can update that way, but it's sketchy as hell whether that works. No, GM wants you to pay nearly $600/year (per car!) to have your BUILT IN nav system work.

Remember when Nav systems had DVD updates, or even SD card updates because they stored everything locally in the car? Pepperidge Farm remembers. I actually prefer those days. But failing that, I'll take CarPlay over that Google crap any day of the week. The Apple stuff just works. All the time. Every time. Without waiting or any extra subscriptions other than my mobile bill. As someone else wrote here: I'm already paying for that for other things.

This is yet another silly decision that Ms Barra has made during her tenure, that her successor (who can't get here soon enough!) will have to unmake.

They've been working on this or something like that since I was a kid. For reference: I'm 52 now; 51 of those with T1D. The encapsulation idea isn't new at all, it's just not been scientifically feasible.

I kid you not, I'm writing this from 35000 on a United flight. We were all seated with bags stowed in the overheads, and the crew then told us get the eff off the plane. Apparently, some idiot lost his mobile phone on the plane during the previous flight, and it managed to fall between some of the plastic interior panels. We were all forced to leave the plane so they could tear the interior apart to get to the phone. They did finally find it, and we were allowed to get back in the plane and in the air almost two hours later.

I understand the concern with the lith ion battery being a threat to the plane. I just hope I somehow never meet the person responsible for this f__k up because I can't promise something bad won't happen to him. Several times.

Sure, assuming you have the extra PCI-E slot(s) to offer it, along with the lanes to drive it.

My quoting sucks. As does my spelling.

>It's worth noting that the PCI-SIG doesn't see PCI Express 7 living inside the PC market, at least not initially. Instead, PCIe 7 is expected to be targeted at cloud computing, 800-gigabit Ethernet and, of course, artificial intelligence.

PCI-E 6.0 will support 800GigE NICs because a 16-lane slot will handle 1Tbit/sec. These exist now; Nvidia's already launched the 800G CX8 NIC even though there's not yet a server motherboard to connect it to.

PCI-E 7.0 will support 1600GigE (yes, it's a thing) NICs because a 16-lane slow will handle 2Tbit/sec. It'll likely be eons before we see a motherboard that can do it.

This is an asinine statement, and you knew exactly what I meant when I said it wasn't their fault. The possessive pronoun, in this case, is referring to the baby that is born with the genetic mutation that causes the immune system to kill the betas. It's not that baby's fault.

The clue phone is ringing. It's for you.

I haven't had that misfortune, to be fair to myself. I was also trying to avoid Godwin, but it appears I've failed.

It doesn't matter whether they're "all the same" or not. As I said in a follow-up, it's trading the devil I know for one I don't. Just because the suppressant you're taking (for instance) isn't "bad" for you doesn't mean it wouldn't destroy someone else. Everyone's immune system is different.

The crux of T1D is that it's an immune system problem: the immune system, for some genetically fucked-up reason, sees the beta cells as intruders and destroys them. That problem doesn't go away once the beta cells are destroyed; new beta cells will be destroyed just as quickly (whether from your own stem cells or someone else's). Tamping down that immune response to retain those new beta cells will compromise the body in some form.

This can be interpreted very badly, so I'd back off on your rhetoric there. You do realize that without some "sort of medical intervention" you'd be dead by now? So would I and most of the rest of the race? Why is it that we've outlived our natural lifespan of about 35-40 years of age? Mother Nature certainly doesn't want us around for 80-100 years: she set the timer on us for 35 or so years. But we've temporarily beaten her with all "sorts of medical intervention" including antibiotics, pasteurization, etc.

Again, careful with the rhetoric. It has a "master race" feel to it, though I'm certain you didn't actually mean it that way.

We kinda agree here, but not 100%. The genetic mutation that causes the immune system response to the beta cells needs to be figured out and unfornicated. But as it turns out, that's REALLY fricken hard to do, elsewise it'd be done already. In the mean, the researchers are doing phenomenal work to try and improve T1D folks' lifestyles and lifespans; it's not their fault they ended up with this disease. Right?

I'm never sick. Well, almost never. I actually appreciate my immune system even if it's the cause of my T1D. Personally I'd rather not trade the devil I know for one I don't. The researchers are still hard at work trying to figure out ways to implant beta cells that can't or won't trigger the auto-immune system. I'd consider that the cure, and the only cure worthwhile. Until then: insulin pump, finger pricking, eating well, etc.

As a T1D patient of over 50 years, I'm happy to see these various attempts at cures. But until they can do it without the need for immuno-suppressants, count me out. As much as I hate this disease, I've managed it incredibly well with my pump, exercise, and eating well. I really don't look forward to a day when my diabetes are gone, but it's replaced by the fear that I could die from a silly infection that I'd otherwise fight off.

I'll pass.

Mine's a dual Xeon server that I also happen to use as a NAS. It's a SuperMicro dual-Xeon server board sitting in a SuperMicro 2RU chassis that has hot-swap SATA slots. It's running FreeBSD with ZFS, and I have 8x4TB SATA drives in it, in ZFS' version of RAID 10. It's packed full of dual-port 10G NICs as well and runs a pile of FreeBSD jails (DNS server, sendmail server, web server, DB server, etc, etc) along with serving storage. Works wonderfully for my use cases.

Sure, I'll do that. No problem. Honest I will.

It's OK if you want to surrender more and more of your agency to the government over-stepping their bounds, all in the name of "safety", but I'm not keen on it. If I can react in time while driving at over 150MPH on the race track, I can react in time at highway speeds. Perhaps you can't, but then you wouldn't know because you haven't actually tried. However I know what I'm capable of in a vehicle.

Of course. And it won't be overly intrusive either, will it?

Or, at least, I hope manufacturers just have to include it to meet the regs, and then are free to have on/off switches if they choose. I know the kids here are going to jump down my throat for saying that, but sit tight for a moment and let me explain my concerns: I like to have fun in my vehicles, and it requires that I have as much control over them as I can.

I off-road with my pickup trucks; fortunately the speeds are low enough such that I don't think this system would come into play (8MPH at most). I simply can't have a system slam on the brakes if it panics because I'm approaching a very large rock that I fully intend to climb with the truck. I need throttle there, not brakes. But controlled throttle.

I also drive my car on the race track at hysterically high rates of speed. And I'm on track with other cars, too, and we're often quite close to one another. I'd get thrown off the track without question if my car suddenly decided I was approaching someone too fast and it started applying the brakes without my input. That's unbelievably unsafe in those situation.

I do these things with factory new cars, not old beaters. I upgrade my truck on a 10 year basis, and my car whenever I can afford to and there's a new something I really want. None of my existing vehicles have auto braking, though my pickup's cruise has a following distance setting that is obnoxious when it cuts in. I keep that disabled because I actually focus 110% when I'm driving ON the task at hand: driving. I don't play with my cell phone, I don't monkey around with the infotainment system, I just focus on the road and the vehicles around me. You learn to do that incredibly well when you spend nearly 30 years(!) driving on the track with other cars around you.

Unsurprisingly: there will be folks that'll throw the stats at me, and I will reply back with Mark Twain's, "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics." I do know what the stats say, but I also know what I'm capable of in a vehicle. Taking that agency away from me is not such a good thing. Just make sure it can be turned on/off, even if it has to default to on.

And he knocks clear out of the park and into the next county, folks! Those of us who prefer the manuals like them for various reasons. But FUN is one of the primary ones. Most folks look at driving as a chore to get from point A to B. It's those folks that'll revel in self-driving cars. But fans of manuals will continue to enjoy the drive, even if it's commuting back and forth to work, or just running down the road to grab some groceries.

Yes, kids, there are folks that enjoy driving.

Back to the topic:

The "death of the manual transmission" isn't going to happen because of EVs. It's happening because of laziness and market pressures. It's expensive as fuck for an auto manufacturer to get various transmissions certified for FE and emissions with each successive generation. We as a community of auto buyers have told the auto manufacturers that, for the most part, we don't care about manual transmission in favor of automatics or DCTs. If you look at just about any car that's available in both, the auto/DCT will vastly outsell the manual version.

It's a shame, but the manufacturers are doing what makes the most sense (and cents) - listening to what the majority of their buyers want, and giving it to them without wasting money on testing/certifying a transmission choice that relatively few will select. This started long before the EV stupidity swept the auto market.

I bought a '23 Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing last year after ordering it, specifically with the 6-speed manual. I can't possibly imagine this car with an automatic, but those autos outsell the manuals by a significant percentage. From a monetary perspective, GM is crazy to offer that car as a manual, but the base car's sales more than make up for the costs involve in certifying a one-off. Look to the Corvette, no longer available with a manual at all. DCT only, to the chagrin of a few of us (including the Chief Engineer himself!) Why? Costs. Again, it's hellaciously expensive to get those cars certified, and doing two for each version of the Corvette (base car, Z06, E-Ray, the coming ZR1, etc) would be cost GM a pretty penny. Instead they focused on the DCT because the majority of Corvette buyers in previous generations preferred the automatic. Bleah!