Reminder that any car that has an always-on cellular internet connection that you aren't paying for has a connection that's being paid for by the manufacturer, and it must be worth it to them.

If you can, and can get at it, remember that a coax terminator in place of the 5G antenna connection is a pretty good guarantee against your privacy being violated and your possession being treated like it's the manufacturer's.

I mean, humans have a double standard for mistakes they make while they're in control, and mistakes someone else makes while in control of their lives. Which is pretty reasonable.

And we also have a double standard for mistakes that a human might make (which we might anticipate and be able to prepare ourselves for), versus mistakes a computer vision system might make (which are more likely to take us completely by surprise when they're in a category that a human would never make). Driving in an automated car is knowing more than ever that at any minute your car may kill you, and you have no power to stop it or even know when to be anxious. And that *is* a worse experience than being a passenger in a car with a human driver, and certainly worse than driving yourself.

And that's the thing --- if it's just augmenting a human driver, it means that now, instead of driving, you're supervising. And that's a much more difficult thing to devote continuous, full, unwavering attention to (still required) than it is to devote that attention to something you're actually doing yourself.

I have yet to feel safer in a car that argues with me than I do in a car that just lets me drive. And until it can take over *fully* from me (which it may never), I would rather it not express opinions at all.

Except, specifically and only, adaptive cruise control, which is strictly better than regular cruise control, and which still leaves me steering.

And that's got nothing to do with whether or not it's an EV. *All* modern cars are heading that way, very unfortunately. The drivetrain is irrelevant.

That's an absurd statement. If you live in an area where this does not happen, it doesn't make any sense to have your house set up as a refrigeration unit. This is hotter than it's ever been there; why would it be the norm in a place where this doesn't happen to built refrigeration into every dwelling?

Any gas station that *can* install fast chargers, though, may be doing quite well. Gas stations make most or all of their money on people who come into the store, and there's much more opportunity for that when people are sitting at the 'pump' for 20 minutes.

(Almost) everyone who's driving on the roads is paying for them, roughly in line with the damage they're doing (larger vehicles consume more gas, and the roads are maintained with gasoline taxes). A few rich assholes leaving the roads won't mean they aren't maintained.

He clearly either isn't interested in organically building popular support for his app, or fundamentally doesn't understand that that can be done. But my fear is that he finds a way to force the issue, by finding things Americans *need* to pay for and arranging with his billionaire cronies for X to be the only convenient way to make payments.

This would be an extreme example, but imagine if next year it was cheaper to pay your federal taxes through X, because Musk gave Trump a gold-plated Tesla limousine or something.

People who don't know how get people to like them sometimes resort to coercion, and that definitely feels like Elon's MO. He doesn't respect you, and he *does* feel entitled to your money and the knowledge of everything you do in your life.

If the value gained from the datacenters truly does dwarf the cost of all this ad-hoc power generation (INCLUDING externalities), then surely every single one of these operators can pay to fully remediate the damage and still have value left over. Right? Right?

How on earth does he think people will feel more connected to him, talking to a digital simulacrum? Fundamentally, how does someone who made himself a billionaire on the back of our social connections to each other not know what it is human beings want from connection?

And he stole the company from the nonprofit set up to keep tabs on its ethics. Perhaps one of the biggest thefts in history. I don't know why anyone trusts this guy.

Other responders have done a good job of responding to most of this, so I won't try, except to say that being a luddite isn't a bad thing. Go look up who the Luddites were. For all the shit we give them on this site, they weren't wrong.

They didn't say "expect it not to work", they said "expect it not to work for you". As in, it's working for the manufacturer/software owner, with their interests in mind first and foremost. And it is likely to eventually start doing things that make your life worse and their lives (and bottom line) better, because only they have control over it and why wouldn't they start to extract more value at your expense if they can?

Laptops still let you install what you want. Android tablets and phones (now with a bunch of ugly, concerning hoops) still let you install what you want. Hell, even Steam decks let you install what you want, up to the point of replacing the operating system! Lots of consumer electronics let you install what you want and therefore work for you. To claim otherwise is to be defeatist.

And further, plenty of things either don't have a screen (including refrigerators) or, in the case of TVs, can have their internet connections disabled and be connected to other devices which you do control. Don't give up and assume you have to cede the right to every surface in your home to companies trying to extract more value from your life!

It's not sensible to steal money that people have paid in with their taxes, and which the people's representatives have decided for a different project. It may be a shitty project, but the people all had at least an indirect say in it. Only a dictator takes the money and uses it how he pleases.

It's not bad to be a luddite. The original Luddites were correct in their belief that new machines were going to make their lives worse, and to *notice* that a new machine will make your life worse and refuse to use it and advocate against its use is an excellent thing to do.

New technologies can be wonderful. But if they are, it is not *because* they are new, but because they make our lives better than they were. Our cars knowing who we hooked up with last weekend is not that.