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Sandman

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Posts posted by Sandman

  1. This is bullshit IMO:

    https://jalopnik.com/tesla-remotely-removes-autopilot-features-from-customer-1841472617

    Quote

    One of the less-considered side effects of car features moving from hardware to software is that important features and abilities of a car can now be removed without any actual contact with a given car. Where once de-contenting involved at least a screwdriver (or, if you were in a hurry, a hammer), now thousands of dollars of options can vanish with the click of a mouse somewhere. And that’s exactly what happened to one Tesla owner, and, it seems many others.

    Alec (I’ll withhold his last name for privacy reasons) bought a 2017 Tesla Model S on December 20 of last year, from a third-party dealer who bought the car directly from Tesla via auction on November 15, 2019. The car was sold at auction as a result of a California Lemon Law buyback, as the car suffered from a well-known issue where the center-stack screen developed a noticeable yellow border.

    When the dealer bought the car at auction from Tesla on November 15, it was optioned with both Enhanced Autopilot and Tesla’s confusingly-named Full Self Driving Capability; together, these options totaled $8,000. You can see them right on the Monroney sticker for the car:

    Tesla officially sold the car to the dealership on November 15, a date I’ve confirmed by seeing the car’s title. On November 18, Tesla seems to have conducted an “audit” of the car remotely. The result of that audit was that when the car’s software was updated to the latest version in December, the Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self Driving Capability (FSD) were removed from the car.

    Tesla confirmed the date of the audit—which flagged the features for removal—in an invoice:

    A disclosure statement from Tesla to the dealership at the time of the sale does not mention anything about Autopilot or FSD removal:

    It’s also worth noting that those repairs on the disclosure were not actually made, which is why Alec took his car to a service center in January.

    Let’s recap a little bit at this point: A Model S with Enhanced Autopilot (which includes the Summon feature) and FSD “capability” is sold at auction, a dealer buys it, after the sale to the dealer Tesla checks in on the car and decides that it shouldn’t have Autopilot or FSD “capability,” dealer sells car to customer based on the specifications they were aware the car had (and were shown on the window sticker, and confirmed via a screenshot from the car’s display showing the options), and later, when the customer upgrades the car’s software, Autopilot and FSD disappear.

    When Alec asked Tesla customer support about this, this was their response:

    Tesla has recent identified instances of customers being incorrectly configured for Autopilot versions that they did not pay for. Since, there was an audit done to correct these instances. Your vehicle is one of the vehicles that was incorrectly configured for Autopilot. We looked back at your purchase history and unfortunately Full-Self Driving was not a feature that you had paid for. We apologize for the confusion. If you are still interested in having those additional features we can begin the process to purchase the upgrade.

    This is all very puzzling. Alec bought the car from a dealer based on a set of features that the dealer understood the car to have when purchased at auction. If Alec saw that the car had Autopilot and FSD when he paid for it, how, exactly, did he not pay for those features?

    Those features together are worth $8,000, but as they were already on the car when he bought it, it’s hard to understand how he somehow didn’t pay for them?

    I realize that these are software features, but they act like any physical feature of a car. You don’t pay a subscription for FSD or Autopilot, you pay a one-time fee, just like you would for an electromechanical cruise control system on any other car.

    If you buy, say, a used Ford Ecosport (not my first choice, but you do you) that has lane keeping assist and active cruise control, and Ford somehow thinks you didn’t pay for those particular features and sends over a service tech to physically remove them from your car, I think we’d all consider that pretty wrong. We might even consider that theft. I’m not clear how what Tesla did here is any different.

    If Tesla had conducted their audit prior to the sale of the car, and made everyone in the loop aware that the car was being de-contented, then that would be one thing; still kind of shitty, but a bit more defensible.

    But this audit happened after the initial sale of the car. The car was no longer owned by Tesla at the time of the audit, and none of the parties involved were aware that features were being removed from the car.

    As an experiment, Alec reached out to a Tesla Used Vehicle Sales Advisor to try and see if he could ask for Autopilot and FSD to be removed from a used vehicle.

    Alec suggested he wanted a particular car, but wanted to save money by having FSD deleted. The Sales Advisor told him that

    “...if it’s added and it’s a used car they just simply will not remove it.”

    That goes directly against Alec’s experience, where Tesla did remove FSD from a used car.

    Alec isn’t alone in his experience; Tesla message boards have stories from other owners who have experienced similar incidents.

    All of what happened here goes completely counter to how we’ve understood the buying and selling of used cars since there were used cars to sell. Whatever equipment the car had on it at the time of sale was part of that sale, period.

    Subscription-based services like OnStar would be different, but that’s not what we’re dealing with here; this is an optional feature of the car paid for once, like cruise control or A/C or a radio. You can’t just yank it out after the car is sold with those features understood to be part of the car.

    It sets a bad precedent if carmakers are going to be able to de-content used cars after sale; technically, any feature that is available to be activated or deactivated in software could be vulnerable to something like this, and I can’t think of any context where remote removal after purchase is okay.

    In fact, it seems like a pretty shitty thing to do, a craven attempt to double-dip and get money for the same features every time the car is re-sold.

    I’ve reached out to Tesla for comment multiple times over the week and have gotten no response. I’ll update when, and if, I do.

    Updated: Friday, February 7, 2020, 1:27 p.m. ET:

    The dealership, United Traders, reached out to me to add some details and more information about the sale of the Tesla and what they knew of its features at the time of the sale:

    I saw the Tesla story blowing up on your website and a few others as well. We are the dealership (United Traders) that sold the Tesla to Alec B_____.

    I bought that vehicle personally, and used the full self drive on it multiple times. It was working fine. One day, a random message popped up saying your autopilot has been upgraded after a software update. Then it disappeared. I figured it was a glitch. I already had an agreement with Alec to purchase the vehicle.

    He did come and test drive it a few days later, and we both agreed it was a technical difficulty or bug that would be fixed by next software update. Since then Tesla has been of no assistance to him, and I have been doing my best to get him some help in this case.

    I sell dozens of Teslas a year, and sold my father in law a Model X P90D with ludicrous speed package. 60 days after the purchase of the car, Tesla removed his ludicrous speed package. Upon complaints to them they said he never paid for it. We have video evidence and multiple pictures of the vehicle with it. They even removed the line under the P90D. I am still shocked at these acts.

    What a screwjob. Tesla needs to fix this shit. 

  2. On 2/3/2020 at 5:03 PM, Scheiss Meister said:

    when I'm wearing sunglasses and engage someone in conversation, I remove my sunglasses out of respect.  So much of face to face communication is facial expression that I don't want sunglasses to get in the way. 

    How am I supposed to check out the tits on the chick I'm talking to if I take off my sunglasses?? You think I'm talking to her because I actually want to hear what she has to say?

    • Like 2
  3. 2 hours ago, Matuka said:

    Sorry for getting off topic, but csb…     Lived off campus in a co-ed dorm my freshman year.  Hometown bud lived in the same dorm.  Sometime in the middle of the Fall semester, his roommate announced that he was going to live with his frat buddy in the adjacent room, so my friend was going to likely to need a new roommate.  So I called him on his room phone, disguising my voice in a thick middle eastern accent.  I was laying down some ground rules like no alcohol in the room and that I smoked.   He was royally freaking out.  He immediately called the dorm mother, raising hell and of course she didn't know what was going on.

    As this was 1980, there were no cell phones or caller ID on the landlines.  It was the golden age of prank phone calls; it was my second favorite prank phone call ever. 

    Yeah, caller ID ruined our prank calling fun. Looking back on it now, we were such assholes. I'm glad the youth of today can't call me and tell me how much I suck. Too bad their parents call me about my credit card debt, car warranty and health insurance plan.

  4. On 2/1/2020 at 11:53 AM, Brew said:

    That is a fair assessment along with it being overrun by the olds, but I would say the City is built around a water based lifestyle. We shop, eat, etc in Ft Myers, but weekends and afternoons are spent on the water or at the beach or at one of the many nature preserves/trails. There is no historical component to the city, so you've got to be there for the water. Within 2-3 hours, we can be in Tampa, Orlando, Miami, the Keys, etc. if we want to go do something different on a given day. I'm also not sure I would classify Tampa or any of the other larger FL cities much differently. I've been to and through all of them and outside of Miami I'm not sure how different any are. Jax has been a complete shithole for a while, but even it has some positives.

    My preference would be several different locations from Tampa through Ft Myers. Ft Myers isn't a tourist trap like some of the others, but it gets really busy during snowbird season with people that have second homes. I also have a preference for the gulf side over the Atlantic side although I'm starting to get an itch to make a run to the Bahamas so that may change.

    I was in Ft. Myers for work  25 years ago. All of the young folks hated it ( I was young too but coming from OKC, I thought it was nice) because there was nothing to do. I guess they didn't have access to a boat or anything fun. 

  5. 49 minutes ago, Your Mom said:

    But at the same time, fuck any shitbag barista that thinks I have to meet their personally chosen level of behavior for the privilege of having them make my coffee.  As long as I'm not being verbally abusive, as long as I can hear you and answer your questions, and as long I'm not causing a scene in your coffee shop just do your fucking job.    

    I wonder if they'd refuse to serve a guy wearing sunglasses? Do you have to look them in the eye before they'll accept your order? 

    I only use headphones when I'm doing stuff around the house, I don't get the whole idea of having to have music playing at all times. My kids used to be that way but they seem to have grown out of it.

  6. With the super bowl coming up, I thought there'd be some TV deals out there. I really want a TV that doesn't have issues with fast motion. I saw a 50" Samsung for $298 but I'm told they suck for watching football, which is the main reason I want a new one. Anyone got opinions on a 50-55" for around $500 or so? Most of the 240hz options are around 800 or so but I'd like to stay under that, if possible. I'm not against 120hz if it'll get the job done.

  7. 19 hours ago, BradInATX said:

    It's amazing that police brass always sees legalization as "OMG we're going to have to reduce our workforce" instead of "cool, now our officers can use all of that time to be proactive and in the community instead of wasting time and resources on victimless crimes"

    Dawg, they ain't here to serve and protect. They're here to tax and collect. 

    • Like 1
    • Haha 2
  8. Y'all might be fucked

    https://www.kxxv.com/news/local-news/brazos-county-investigating-suspected-case-of-novel-coronavirus

    BRAZOS COUNTY — Brazos County Health District is investigating a suspected case of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV). 
    The patient traveled from Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus originated. Health care providers were aware of public health guidance on novel coronavirus and quickly recognized that the patient met the criteria for coronavirus testing and is being kept isolated at home, while the precautionary testing is done. 
    If there is a confirmed case, we will promptly announce it.
    Those that have traveled to Wuhan, China and have flu like symptoms are encouraged to call the health district at 979-361-4440. Flu like symptoms include fever, cough, shortness of breath, and sore throat. If medical care is needed, please call your healthcare provider first before arriving.
    Nonessential travel to Wuhan, China should be avoided. 
    The general public is encouraged to practice general preventive actions:
    Everyone 6 months and older is encouraged to get a flu shot. 
    Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
    Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands.
    Avoid close contact with people who are sick.
    Stay home when you are sick.
    Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash.
    Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces.

     

  9. 13 hours ago, Bullneck said:

    I like how California doesn't give a shit about other states and how they bow to industry pressure groups.  You know how long it took to have labels on cigarettes stating the obvious?  Thanks Jesse Helms.

    I bought a pack of smokes when I was in Canada in the mid 90s. There wasn't a little warning label about "cigarettes could be hazardous", there was a huge label on the front "CIGARETTES WILL KILL YOUR UNBORN CHILD". Still have that empty pack somewhere.

  10. 3 minutes ago, Dr. Beeper said:

    So what can you and your kid say about her?

    I never spoke to her or saw her in person. My kid said she was really nice (obviously, wink wink) and a good teacher. The guy that replaced her was a mega douche and my kid's grade suffered because when asked for help, his answer was always "You should know this.". 

    What's really sad is that her husband was an assistant FB coach and I guess he'd had enough of kids snickering at him because he flew into a rage one day (or so I'm told) and told everyone to fuck off. He was fired after that. 

  11. 3 hours ago, 'stache said:

    Oklahoma has many longtime open KC fans. The state is fairly split between KC and Dallas, but Dallas still has more fans here. Third will always be whatever team the newest ou player is playing for, currently the browns, because they love them some douchebag.

    When Bradford got drafted, the local FOX station said they were making sure every fucking Rams game would be televised. I hated the Rams anyway, that just made it worse.

  12. My wife thinks she is the queen of dishwasher loading, so I have always left that duty to her to complete. But she thinks it is unfair to have to unload the clean dishes, as loading the dirty ones is such an arduous task, so she won't do anything unless the dishwasher is empty. I asked her once why I always have to unload the dryer myself to put in the wet laundry but tone.

    I had unloaded the dishwasher the other day, so it was empty but the sink was beyond full of dishes. I made an offhand comment but it was pretty much ignored. I got sick of looking at it last night, so I started to load up the dirty dishes (mostly plastic cups, nothing with caked on food). I get halfway done and she says "You're gonna make me feel bad about not doing that", to which I laughed and said "I'm not making you feel that way, you did it to yourself.". She then made a half-hearted attempt to help but I was already done.

    • Like 1
  13. 1 hour ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

    Almost all of the playoff games have been so shitty and one-sided so far, I'm just hoping for a competitive game. 

    I don't really get how in this day and age of airing it out football genius passing wizardry, that you can just run the ball almost exclusively and win. You have to figure that the Chiefs are going to try to make Garappolo beat them. I think that's pretty much the game -- if they can force the 49ers to throw the ball, it will come down to whether he turns the ball over. If he can make plays or if he's able to hand it off 50 times, I like the 49ers chances. As spectacular as Mahomes has been, I don't think they are going to just be able to outscore and boat race SF like they did to Houston and Tennessee. The SF defense and especially their pass rush is too good.

    I know the past has nothing to do with this current game, but I remember when my 49ers played Dan Marino in SB 19. His offense was fucking insane and he was supposed to be unstoppable. Then they played the game and it wasn't pretty. Eat shit, Dan Marino. 

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