Elon Musk: Officially a fraud and piece of shit. Official or unofficial war criminal?

[Genco 3040]

16 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

I saw a cybertruck drop off what looked like Torchy's Tacos at a neighbor's house the other day.  I was flabbergasted on multiple levels.

Could they fit the entire Torchy's order in the truck bed?

[Francisco 2.0 32389]

Man buys Cybertruck.  It has massive issues, so Tesla gives him replacement Cybertruck.   It has massive issues.   Rinse, repeat.

 

https://jalopnik.com/fan-boy-finally-criticizes-tesla-after-2-broken-tesla-c-1851573471

 

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Tesla Cybertruck owners are willing to put up with a lot in order to own one of these massive trucks. One true believer finally found fault in the truck’s design after the replacement for his first Cybertruck died. 

It’s safe to say if you own a Cybertruck, you’re likely at least sipping the Tesla Flavor-Aid, but X user @LamarMK is chugging it. He’s owned a Model Y for a while and he added a Cybertruck back in March. Two weeks after taking delivery, his Cybertruck failed on the side of the road, throwing all kinds of error messages, as he documents on his YouTube channel.

 

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He made it back home and Tesla service came to pick up the truck to see what was going on with it. There were other issues he wanted them to look at as well, like the windshield having what he described as a line or “wripple” in it, the driver seat being too close to the center console and the headliner trim sagging. “Stuff happens and we just have to work through it,” Lamar says in the video. Weird attitude to have about a six-figure electric pickup truck breaking after two weeks of ownership, but OK. 

 

 

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By April, the truck was still in a Tesla service facility. So, Lamar made another video with graphics that said “Help Me Elon!” Apparently Tesla service kept giving him dates as to when the truck would be done, then telling him they would need it a bit longer. He then created a video that included footage of the Cybertruck in the service center, saying that techs there “took it completely apart” to find out what was wrong with it. 

 

 

Spoiler

A couple weeks later he got the truck back after it had been“fixed.” Service told him the issue was a corroded ground wire for the AC resulting in a shutdown of the entire truck’s high voltage system. Another video shot the night Lamar got his truck back shows the creator and his Cybertruck happily reunited. Two minutes into that video, the truck began making a loud noise so Lamar looked at the service logs where he discovered an issue with the truck’s active shutters. Again, this is the same night he got it back from being in service for over a month. At this point he was done, saying “Hey, I love the company, I love the truck, it’s my dream truck. But just give me a new truck. Please.”

A few more breaks and service visits and online complaints later and Tesla heard his call. Tesla replaced his Cybertruck at the end of May. Things were going well and he seemed to be happy. Lamar even got this Cybertruck wrapped. Now, nearly two months into having this second Cybertruck, this one has failed. The video shared to X shows that the truck lost power and locked up while it was charging. It’s so dead he can’t even disengage the charging cablefrom it or get inside it. This happened four hours after he last drove it. He called Tesla service for help but they essentially told him that since it was nearly midnight, there was no one to come and help him. He’d have to wait until the morning to get the truck into service.

The next morning a tow truck showed up to haul away the dead truck. In a tweet showing the truck on the flatbed, he said it couldn’t even be jump started. Another tweet showed that once the truck got to the center, it was so dead that even the techs at the service center couldn’t access it; they had to use old school lock out tools to open the truck. 

Then, an update that has to be seen to be believed. In the tweet, Lamar said the techs had to drill into the frunk to get access to the manual release, which caused Lamar to finally pause and take a second look at the engineering of his truck.

This isn’t just bad engineering, it could be incredibly dangerous if say, a kid were to get stuck in the frunk and the Cybertruck lose power. He said service told him it was a problem with the 12-volt battery but since the truck is dead and locked up, they can’t access the 12-volt, which is in the frunk. None of this matters though because the Cybertruck doesn’t even have a 12-volt battery.

A short time later Musk responded to Lamar’s tweet, saying that the company will get his truck fixed. The mess that this guy went through with two basically brand new Cybertrucks is nuts. If this were any other car company, none of this would have been acceptable but somehow Tesla owners have convinced themselves that going through something like this is just a part of the ownership experience. If they have a problem, they can only hope they have the internet clout to get the attention of the CEO.

 

 

[Chopper 17230]

Elmo is a psycho.

https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-prioritizes-musk-vip-data-self-driving-2024-7

Tesla's self-driving cars seem like a marvel of machine learning.

But in reality, the company relies on a small army of human "data annotators" who continuously improve how the cars drive by reviewing camera footage from thousands of Tesla drivers and teaching the vehicle how to behave like a human driver, like deciding when it's appropriate to use a blinker or identifying a construction cone.

Business Insider has learned that those annotators focus their efforts on two high-profile categories of drivers: Tesla CEO Elon Musk and a select set of "VIP" drivers.

BI spoke with over a dozen current and former Tesla employees, all but one who spoke on condition of anonymity, who said images and video clips from Musk's Teslas received meticulous scrutiny, while data from high-profile drivers like YouTubers received "VIP" treatment in identifying and addressing issues with the Full Self-Driving software. The result is that Tesla's Autopilot and FSD software may better navigate routes taken by Musk and other high-profile drivers, making their rides smoother and more straightforward.

That means, experts say, Tesla's resources are being unevenly distributed and could serve as a distraction toward the company's larger mission of truly autonomous driving.

Each Tesla is equipped with nine cameras, and owners can opt to share video from those cameras to improve Tesla's systems.

Tesla's legion of data annotators review the clips shared with Tesla and use the images to train the system to execute a proper left turn or identify a stop sign (and stop at it). The workers also review situations where the system failed to respond properly and a driver had to take back control of the vehicle.

The annotators label videos where the system worked properly and instances when it malfunctioned. By ID'ing issues, the data-annotation team can update Tesla's global database with new information to clear up any confusion for other Teslas that encounter the same situations. Put simply, they teach Tesla's AI that the stop sign at First and Main is part of a four-way stop.

Analyzing data from Musk's vehicles has been a priority since the program's inception, multiple workers said.

Eight workers said they recalled labeling data that they believed was associated with the billionaire. Two workers said they labeled a route in 2021 that went in and out of the driveway of a mansion in Hillsborough, California, that they later discovered belonged to Musk. The Tesla CEO sold the house in November 2021 for $32 million.

Several workers said they spent a significant amount of time labeling routes in and out of Tesla's Austin and Fremont, California, factories, as well as the SpaceX office in Hawthorne, California.

While the annotators could have been viewing data from other Tesla employees or SpaceX workers who owned Teslas, they said the same focus was not given to other factory or office parking lots in California or elsewhere. In addition, one recalled labeling a series of clips from late 2022 and early 2023 that involved Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco. The worker said the team was told to focus on data from areas near Twitter headquarters during the same time period that Musk took control of the social-media company.

John Bernal, a former Autopilot analyst and test driver, and three other former workers told BI they were informed they were working on data from Musk's car and specifically told to treat the clips with care. While workers at the data-labeling plants are typically rated on how fast they can annotate the data, Bernal and two other workers said they were told to take more time with data from Musk's vehicles, adding that the clips would go through an extra round of quality assurance as well.

"It seems pretty clear that Elon's experience would be better than anyone else's," one former employee said. "He was seeing the software at its best."

Another worker said they had some misgivings about the initiative.

"It seemed like we were purposely making his car better to make Autopilot look different than it was," another former employee said. "It felt dishonest."

Four other workers said they believed they'd labeled routes associated with Musk but had not been expressly told by supervisors. When annotators view the data, they can see a timestamp from when the footage was taken and the geolocation, but they're unable to view anything that explicitly identifies the specific vehicle or driver. Instead, annotators said they could rely on context clues, particularly the routes and locations the vehicle visited.

Some workers said the cost of failing to label Musk's data correctly could be high. Two former workers recalled an incident where a data annotator was terminated shortly after labeling a clip they believed came from Musk's car. The worker was escorted out of Tesla's facility in Buffalo, New York, the workers said, after the data labeler failed to properly label a highway exit sign. One former worker said it was highly unusual for someone in data annotation to be fired without warning and that the employees were typically put on notice if they were not hitting their metrics.

One former worker told BI they recalled labeling a route in 2020 from a house in Los Angeles to SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, where the software struggled to identify the lines on the road toward an off-ramp. Tesla's Autopilot software has struggled to follow patchy lane markings in the past. In Walter Isaacson's biography on Musk, the author said that earlier on in the Autopilot program, Tesla persuaded a "Musk fan" at the California Department of Transportation to repaint the lines on Interstate 405 after Musk encountered issues with Autopilot as a result of the faded lane markings.

However, one former worker said there was no way for any of the labelers to know with certainty whether the clip belonged to any one driver, adding that anyone who thinks they know the owner of the car would be operating on "pure speculation."

Representatives for Tesla and Musk did not reply when reached for comment.
Tesla influencers also get extra attention

Musk isn't the only driver that gets special treatment.

Since FSD was released in 2020, Tesla fans and critics alike have taken to social media to share videos of the technology succeeding and failing, from clips of it navigating difficult routes without human intervention to buggy videos showing the car running over toddler-sized dummies or mistaking the moon for a stop light.

These videos do not go unnoticed by Tesla staff. In fact, the company created a system to prioritize data from drivers most likely to share their experience online, three current and former workers with direct knowledge of the issue told BI. These drivers are internally referred to as "VIP" users and their data is at times put in VIP queues, according to the workers.

Data collected from VIP users, including high-profile Tesla drivers who post on YouTube, is scrutinized more heavily and more likely to be labeled, three current and former workers said. They said they'd been specifically told by leads on their teams that they were working on "VIP data" and had received overtime pay to work on the data ahead of FSD updates.

"We would annotate every area that car regularly drove in," one former worker, who said they were told by their manager they were working on "Tesla influencer" data, added. "We'd home in on where they lived and label everything we could along that route."

Bernal said that Tesla sent multiple test drivers out to routes YouTubers had driven, including routes driven by Raj Balwani and Chuck Cook, two YouTubers who often review the software.

Bernal said he was one of eight or nine test drivers who went to Lombard Street to work on a solution, after Balwani, also known by his YouTube account Tesla Raj, posted a video of FSD repeatedly attempting to veer off the famously curvy road. The company eventually coded invisible barriers into the system to fix the issue specifically for Lombard Street, according to Bernal. (Bernal was terminated in 2022. He said it was the result of sharing a series of videos on his YouTube channel of his personal Tesla malfunctioning while using FSD.)

Balwani told BI he'd never been contacted by any Tesla employees regarding his videos but that he saw the company's focus on online feedback as a positive sign.

"I think this just means that their teams are monitoring and are engaged in the areas that they need to be," Balwani said

"For most of what I've recorded and done since I've had FSD, almost everything has been solved, which is pretty incredible," he added.

In 2022, Musk congratulated Cook on Twitter for giving Tesla a "tough case to solve" after the carmaker rolled out an update meant to address an issue with unprotected left turns that Cook had pointed out in his videos.

Cook told BI he's very aware of Tesla's focus on his content — in fact, he said, he sees test drivers in his neighborhood on a weekly basis. The YouTuber said he'd attempted to reach out to Autopilot engineers over email and social media but that they never responded and the test drivers in his neighborhood had been very "tight-lipped" about their work.

Cook said he sent an email in 2020 to an account for FSD beta testers asking whether Tesla was really looking at his data.

"They sent a screenshot of what my camera was seeing in my car just 30 minutes prior," he said.

Cook feels Tesla is focused less on handpicking influencers and more on gathering the best data for training, he said.

"They know I'm not just blabbing and fanboying or overcriticizing," Cook said. "I'm fair."

One worker with knowledge of the issue said the VIP system wasn't designed to give preferential treatment but served as an additional method for Tesla to improve FSD for all drivers.

YouTubers are "going out and constantly trying to break the system," the worker said, adding: "They're identifying difficulties that could be translated to other routes and calling attention to them."

"In a way, they're a second tier of test drivers," they added.

But Tesla's focus on Musk and VIP users could be detrimental to the company's efforts to achieve truly autonomous driving, Missy Cummings, a former safety advisor for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said.

"It's going to be hard to make a self-driving car for the masses if it's only operating well around Elon's house," Cummings told BI.

The issue comes down to whether Tesla's focus on VIP users contributes to niche improvements like the fixes to Lombard Street or ones that will benefit the entire community, Philip Koopman, a computer-engineering expert out of Carnegie Mellon University, told BI.

"I expect there is marketing pressure to make the VIP drivers look good in their videos, and it's hard to know how much of that is theater and how much is reality without Tesla disclosing the amount of safety improvements provided by each change," Koopman said.
Tesla's self-driving in the regulatory spotlight

Tesla has come under increasing scrutiny from regulators over the self-driving software and the company's marketing of the service. In April, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's investigation into Tesla's Autopilot and Full Self-Driving linked it to hundreds of crashes and dozens of deaths, citing inadequate measures to ensure driver attention.

Additionally, the US Justice Department is investigating whether Tesla committed securities or wire fraud over claims that it misled investors and consumers about its electric vehicles' self-driving capabilities.

Meanwhile, Musk has repeatedly said Tesla is getting closer to its self-driving goal, including plans to unveil its Robotaxi service later this year.

Musk sees Autopilot and FSD as existentially important for Tesla. Self-driving, he said in a 2022 interview, is "really the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money or worth basically zero."

Do you work for Tesla or have a tip? Reach out to the reporter via a non-work email and device at gkay@businessinsider.com or 248-894-6012.

Edited July 9 by Chopper

[atomheartbevo 89630]

 

2 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

A couple weeks later he got the truck back after it had been“fixed.” Service told him the issue was a corroded ground wire for the AC resulting in a shutdown of the entire truck’s high voltage system.

[elfenix 34227]

16 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Earlier today, X suspended one of the two accounts for Popeye's for a terms of service violation.  What could a fast food chain possibly do to get suspended on Twitter?

Provide coupons for free food.  

 

https://www.mashed.com/1618111/popeyes-suspended-twitter-free-boneless-wings/?zsource=yahoo

 

Got a sandwich, large red beans, 6 ghost pepper wings, and a drink for $12. Enough for 2 meals. Will do that again if power ever comes back.

[atomheartbevo 89630]

19 hours ago, Chopper said:

There's been a couple articles recently about how Yac (remember her?) is getting a lot of pressure from Elmo to increase the number of large corporate ad buyers. This oughta help. /s

Is she even doing anything other than collecting a check?  There’s been tons of giveaways and promotions on Twitter for years.

[hayden_horn 11362]

12 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Is she even doing anything other than collecting a check?  There’s been tons of giveaways and promotions on Twitter for years.

she's probably watching herself age in years rather than weeks as her soul fully leaves her body

[Francisco 2.0 32389]

Drew Magary rented a cybertruck and drove it around San Francisco for a day.  If you are not familiar with Mr. Magary's work, it's a gift that keeps on giving.

 

https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/drew-magary-cybertruck-review-sf-19561381.php

 

 

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I got to drive a Tesla Cybertruck for a day this spring. You jealous? You should be, because Elon Musk’s Boy Scout project is the kind of virile, powerful spacetruck that should be owned and driven only by our largest, wealthiest, whitest men. The kind of men who use speakerphone on airplanes. The kind of men who talk big about colonizing Mars as if it’s a realistic scenario. The kind of men who are training artificial intelligence to not only take your job but also steal your wife. Real can-do American men.

 

 

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I am one such man. That’s why SFGATE asked me, someone who knows precious little about how cars actually work, to test-drive a Cybertruck. I fit the customer profile for one to a T. I am tall. I am white. I am loud. I don’t really have many friends where I live. Most important, I desperately want people to think I’m cool. You can see my thirst from the f—king moon, so why not drive an equally conspicuous truck? 

 

 

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So I opened up a Turo account (Turo is like Airbnb but for cars) and found a brand spanking new Cybertruck to rent for $500 a day, or roughly $850 once all taxes and fees had been included. While I was standing next to my rental Cybertruck, a woman on the street — a self-proclaimed medium named Free — walked up and started touching the car like it was a pregnant woman’s belly. Free cried out, “Goddamn! This s—t seems like plastic!” Whether the spirits told her this was unclear, but she was deeply unimpressed. 

 

Spoiler

That’s because the exterior of the Cybertruck is ugly. You might have deduced this merely from looking at pictures of Elon’s beloved car online, but I assure you that seeing the truck in person won’t change your mind. This car is all hard angles and even harder steel, with exterior panels that are often off in alignment. It’s a loud car, which is by design. Anyone who buys a Cybertruck, or any journalist who rents one as a stunt, is doing so for the attention. That included the gentleman who rented it to me, who once worked for Tesla and was surprised (and seemingly displeased) that the people taking his car out for a joyride worked for the press. He suspected we were going to say mean s—t about Elon, and he was right. Elon Musk is a penis.

But I do commend Musk for at least trying to make a car that stands out on the road when both safety regulations and manufacturing efficiency have conspired to make so many new cars look exactly the same. The Cybertruck doesn’t look like anything else out there, which is why your average new-money bro wants to plunk down $60,000 (at the minimum) for one. They’re paying to be noticed, and they don’t care what flavor of attention they might receive.

I got attention. So much attention — and in a wide variety of flavors! Children stopped and pointed. Strangers gave me the finger. Tourists at the Dana Bower Rest Area just across the Golden Gate Bridge swarmed the truck and asked to take pictures with it. Another motorist pulled up alongside me and said, “I just had to stop to laugh at you.” This car is a celebrity, which makes you a celebrity merely by driving it. That’s for better and for worse, with little in between the two poles.

The car also emitted a lot of weird noises: alarms going off for reasons I couldn’t discern.

As for the interior, the Cybertruck is as barren as most other Tesla interiors. I got a big-ass touchscreen, a fighter pilot steering wheel and little more. Tactile pleasures were nonexistent. No buttons. No switches. I felt like I was driving around in an unfurnished apartment. But the truck did have a pleasing strip of white leather trim bordering the interior, which gave me the impression that somewhere, deep inside Tesla headquarters, a person with legitimately good taste fought a battle and actually won it. Also, the gas and brake pedals had a brilliant chrome finish to them, and the seats were both roomy and comfortable, which is a big deal for large men such as myself. This was a far more attractive ride on the inside than out, which was good because I was afraid that the driver’s seat would be covered in iron spikes. It was not. It was a normal seat, and I felt at home sitting in it. 

Then I turned the truck on and was instantly escorted back to Elon’s technocarnival of suck. 

Almost every control on the Cybertruck is virtual, doors included. To unlock the truck, you have to either tap your key card (like the one you’d get for a hotel room) on a sensor next to the door or use the Tesla app. You can also use that app to control the height of the truck, but you cannot make the truck hop, which I found disappointing. Five bucks to the first dude who installs custom hydraulics on this bad boy.

Actually, you can use your phone to control a lot of things inside the Cybertruck, which is an obvious conflict of interest if you happen to be busy driving it. Your phone can operate the tailgate, along with the tonneau cover, a retractable roof that looks like a baggage claim conveyor belt and shields the flatbed from inclement weather. Making the tonneau go back and forth is super fun, unless you’re standing in the flatbed and accidentally push the button that closes it (guilty). The flatbed, while I was not hastily evacuating it, was perfectly spacious, should you require it for doing actual pickup stuff (you won’t). 

The catch is that the tonneau, when down, fully blocks the rearview mirror. I had to consult a rearview camera display that shows up on the touchscreen to see behind me. This is not intuitive.

Then again, little about the Cybertruck’s controls is intuitive. There is no physical gearshift. Instead, you swipe up or down on the touchscreen to shift into drive or reverse. There are no stalks protruding from the steering column to control the wipers or turn signals. Instead, you push a button to signal (this is standard in other Tesla models but took me some getting used to), and you consult the touchscreen to activate the wipers — or “wiper,” I should say, given that the windshield is cleared by one giant wiperinstead of two normal ones. Once I turned the giant wiper sword on, I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. Desperate for an answer, I had to pull over to the side of the road and ask the car’s voice control to stop it. The truck’s autopilot controls were disabled, likely because Tesla is having a few issues with that particular feature (people die while using it).

I also couldn’t figure out how to turn the car off. Turns out it does this of its own accord. You know how Apple will occasionally confuse the world by doing away with standard features like a headphone jack? OK, well imagine a car built entirely out of that kind of gimmick. You get a big truck, a big screen and not much else. Any problem you have with the truck’s controls is strictly because you’re a n00b. Only our shrewdest, most waterlogged minds can master such a visionary piece of machinery.
 
As for that screen, it’s an 18.5-inch monitor, with a matching 9-inch monitor in the back for passengers. A small game controller is tucked inside the console, but I didn’t learn how to use it. This is because I was busy learning how to do a bunch of other, more important s—t with the touchscreen first. Touchscreens are now standard in all new cars, and many of them are needlessly wonky, to the point of being hazardous. The Cybertruck is no different. It took me a solid 45 minutes to figure out how to turn on the air-conditioned seats. Once I did, though, I got a satisfyingly cool breeze right up my asscrack. The air conditioning in this car does not f—k around. Again, I find this important.

Also, you honk the horn by pushing it upward, which is stupid. But at least Elon didn’t attempt to reinvent the car horn sound by swapping in a Grimes sample for it. My expectations of this car going in were low, and it amazingly surpassed, like, four of them. Not bad!

Then I had to drive the stupid thing. Given how clumsy the Cybertruck looks on the outside, you’d figure that task would be a real bitch. This also proves to be untrue. It didn’t drive big. It handled like a standard car, if not better than most. The pickup when I hit the gas was, as promised, thrilling. While the accelerator was a bit overly sensitive, I was still able to maneuver the car with relative ease, through busy downtown traffic, across the Golden Gate Bridge and even inside a parking garage. I usually can’t navigate any parking garage in California without having a nervous breakdown, so imagine my surprise when the Cybertruck made that experience painless rather than even more harrowing. 

Charging the car, however, is another matter. Due to its massive curb weight (3.5 tons), refilling the Cybertruck’s battery took forever. When I had to charge an Audi e-tron a couple of years ago, the battery was back to 80% full in the time it took me to go to the bathroom and come back. A mere 10 minutes. With the Cybertruck, I could have taken a dozen pisses and still been waiting. 

Oh, and the gas pedal might stick and get you killed. You might have heard about that little design flaw as well, although I had no such issues on my test drive. Again, this is because I am a very smart, important and cool person. The Cybertruck works only for alphas, and that’s me all over. Once any alpha learns this car, they’ll feel at home within it. If you are not an alpha and the truck doesn’t sit well with your snowflakey constitution ... well, best of luck getting around Tesla’s no-resale policy. Perhaps you could rent it out on Turo to make back your down payment. Either way, you are not ready for the spotlight.

I had my fair share of “oh God, everyone is looking at me” moments with the Cybertruck. I was able to parallel park it quite easily, but I had to do it near a crowded intersection. When I blocked traffic to weasel my way into a spot along the street, every horn behind me immediately piped up in anger. Because who feels bad about being an asshole to a white guy in a Cybertruck? No one. Perhaps you’ll have a smooth ride in yours, but the road rage you’ll inspire in your fellow motorists will be swift and merciless. I drove by the Palace of Fine Arts multiple times for the sake of our photo team. By sheer coincidence, the landmark was being used right then for a film shoot. They halted that shoot after they saw me pass by over and over, because whoever was in charge of security thought I was a paparazzo stalking the set. I think I would’ve chosen a more discreet ride had that been the case. Regardless, driving a Cybertruck means accepting that people will assume things about you, most of them unkind.
 
But again, discretion isn’t this car’s job. This is a loud and lonely car for loud and lonely people. And while I enjoyed driving my Cybertruck, I hope I’m never loud and lonely enough to want to buy one.

 

[NoName 16351]

26 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Drew Magary rented a cybertruck and drove it around San Francisco for a day.  If you are not familiar with Mr. Magary's work, it's a gift that keeps on giving.

 

https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/drew-magary-cybertruck-review-sf-19561381.php

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

That’s because the exterior of the Cybertruck is ugly. You might have deduced this merely from looking at pictures of Elon’s beloved car online, but I assure you that seeing the truck in person won’t change your mind. This car is all hard angles and even harder steel, with exterior panels that are often off in alignment. It’s a loud car, which is by design. Anyone who buys a Cybertruck, or any journalist who rents one as a stunt, is doing so for the attention. That included the gentleman who rented it to me, who once worked for Tesla and was surprised (and seemingly displeased) that the people taking his car out for a joyride worked for the press. He suspected we were going to say mean s—t about Elon, and he was right. Elon Musk is a penis.

But I do commend Musk for at least trying to make a car that stands out on the road when both safety regulations and manufacturing efficiency have conspired to make so many new cars look exactly the same. The Cybertruck doesn’t look like anything else out there, which is why your average new-money bro wants to plunk down $60,000 (at the minimum) for one. They’re paying to be noticed, and they don’t care what flavor of attention they might receive.

I got attention. So much attention — and in a wide variety of flavors! Children stopped and pointed. Strangers gave me the finger. Tourists at the Dana Bower Rest Area just across the Golden Gate Bridge swarmed the truck and asked to take pictures with it. Another motorist pulled up alongside me and said, “I just had to stop to laugh at you.” This car is a celebrity, which makes you a celebrity merely by driving it. That’s for better and for worse, with little in between the two poles.

The car also emitted a lot of weird noises: alarms going off for reasons I couldn’t discern.

As for the interior, the Cybertruck is as barren as most other Tesla interiors. I got a big-ass touchscreen, a fighter pilot steering wheel and little more. Tactile pleasures were nonexistent. No buttons. No switches. I felt like I was driving around in an unfurnished apartment. But the truck did have a pleasing strip of white leather trim bordering the interior, which gave me the impression that somewhere, deep inside Tesla headquarters, a person with legitimately good taste fought a battle and actually won it. Also, the gas and brake pedals had a brilliant chrome finish to them, and the seats were both roomy and comfortable, which is a big deal for large men such as myself. This was a far more attractive ride on the inside than out, which was good because I was afraid that the driver’s seat would be covered in iron spikes. It was not. It was a normal seat, and I felt at home sitting in it. 

Then I turned the truck on and was instantly escorted back to Elon’s technocarnival of suck. 

Almost every control on the Cybertruck is virtual, doors included. To unlock the truck, you have to either tap your key card (like the one you’d get for a hotel room) on a sensor next to the door or use the Tesla app. You can also use that app to control the height of the truck, but you cannot make the truck hop, which I found disappointing. Five bucks to the first dude who installs custom hydraulics on this bad boy.

Actually, you can use your phone to control a lot of things inside the Cybertruck, which is an obvious conflict of interest if you happen to be busy driving it. Your phone can operate the tailgate, along with the tonneau cover, a retractable roof that looks like a baggage claim conveyor belt and shields the flatbed from inclement weather. Making the tonneau go back and forth is super fun, unless you’re standing in the flatbed and accidentally push the button that closes it (guilty). The flatbed, while I was not hastily evacuating it, was perfectly spacious, should you require it for doing actual pickup stuff (you won’t). 

The catch is that the tonneau, when down, fully blocks the rearview mirror. I had to consult a rearview camera display that shows up on the touchscreen to see behind me. This is not intuitive.

Then again, little about the Cybertruck’s controls is intuitive. There is no physical gearshift. Instead, you swipe up or down on the touchscreen to shift into drive or reverse. There are no stalks protruding from the steering column to control the wipers or turn signals. Instead, you push a button to signal (this is standard in other Tesla models but took me some getting used to), and you consult the touchscreen to activate the wipers — or “wiper,” I should say, given that the windshield is cleared by one giant wiperinstead of two normal ones. Once I turned the giant wiper sword on, I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. Desperate for an answer, I had to pull over to the side of the road and ask the car’s voice control to stop it. The truck’s autopilot controls were disabled, likely because Tesla is having a few issues with that particular feature (people die while using it).

I also couldn’t figure out how to turn the car off. Turns out it does this of its own accord. You know how Apple will occasionally confuse the world by doing away with standard features like a headphone jack? OK, well imagine a car built entirely out of that kind of gimmick. You get a big truck, a big screen and not much else. Any problem you have with the truck’s controls is strictly because you’re a n00b. Only our shrewdest, most waterlogged minds can master such a visionary piece of machinery.
 
As for that screen, it’s an 18.5-inch monitor, with a matching 9-inch monitor in the back for passengers. A small game controller is tucked inside the console, but I didn’t learn how to use it. This is because I was busy learning how to do a bunch of other, more important s—t with the touchscreen first. Touchscreens are now standard in all new cars, and many of them are needlessly wonky, to the point of being hazardous. The Cybertruck is no different. It took me a solid 45 minutes to figure out how to turn on the air-conditioned seats. Once I did, though, I got a satisfyingly cool breeze right up my asscrack. The air conditioning in this car does not f—k around. Again, I find this important.

Also, you honk the horn by pushing it upward, which is stupid. But at least Elon didn’t attempt to reinvent the car horn sound by swapping in a Grimes sample for it. My expectations of this car going in were low, and it amazingly surpassed, like, four of them. Not bad!

Then I had to drive the stupid thing. Given how clumsy the Cybertruck looks on the outside, you’d figure that task would be a real bitch. This also proves to be untrue. It didn’t drive big. It handled like a standard car, if not better than most. The pickup when I hit the gas was, as promised, thrilling. While the accelerator was a bit overly sensitive, I was still able to maneuver the car with relative ease, through busy downtown traffic, across the Golden Gate Bridge and even inside a parking garage. I usually can’t navigate any parking garage in California without having a nervous breakdown, so imagine my surprise when the Cybertruck made that experience painless rather than even more harrowing. 

Charging the car, however, is another matter. Due to its massive curb weight (3.5 tons), refilling the Cybertruck’s battery took forever. When I had to charge an Audi e-tron a couple of years ago, the battery was back to 80% full in the time it took me to go to the bathroom and come back. A mere 10 minutes. With the Cybertruck, I could have taken a dozen pisses and still been waiting. 

Oh, and the gas pedal might stick and get you killed. You might have heard about that little design flaw as well, although I had no such issues on my test drive. Again, this is because I am a very smart, important and cool person. The Cybertruck works only for alphas, and that’s me all over. Once any alpha learns this car, they’ll feel at home within it. If you are not an alpha and the truck doesn’t sit well with your snowflakey constitution ... well, best of luck getting around Tesla’s no-resale policy. Perhaps you could rent it out on Turo to make back your down payment. Either way, you are not ready for the spotlight.

I had my fair share of “oh God, everyone is looking at me” moments with the Cybertruck. I was able to parallel park it quite easily, but I had to do it near a crowded intersection. When I blocked traffic to weasel my way into a spot along the street, every horn behind me immediately piped up in anger. Because who feels bad about being an asshole to a white guy in a Cybertruck? No one. Perhaps you’ll have a smooth ride in yours, but the road rage you’ll inspire in your fellow motorists will be swift and merciless. I drove by the Palace of Fine Arts multiple times for the sake of our photo team. By sheer coincidence, the landmark was being used right then for a film shoot. They halted that shoot after they saw me pass by over and over, because whoever was in charge of security thought I was a paparazzo stalking the set. I think I would’ve chosen a more discreet ride had that been the case. Regardless, driving a Cybertruck means accepting that people will assume things about you, most of them unkind.
 
But again, discretion isn’t this car’s job. This is a loud and lonely car for loud and lonely people. And while I enjoyed driving my Cybertruck, I hope I’m never loud and lonely enough to want to buy one.

 

The crossover I didn't know I needed.

Quote

I got to drive a Tesla Cybertruck for a day this spring. You jealous? You should be, because Elon Musk’s Boy Scout project is the kind of virile, powerful spacetruck that should be owned and driven only by our largest, wealthiest, whitest men. The kind of men who use speakerphone on airplanes. 

And

Quote

That’s because the exterior of the Cybertruck is ugly. You might have deduced this merely from looking at pictures of Elon’s beloved car online, but I assure you that seeing the truck in person won’t change your mind

And

Quote

I also couldn’t figure out how to turn the car off. Turns out it does this of its own accord. You know how Apple will occasionally confuse the world by doing away with standard features like a headphone jack? OK, well imagine a car built entirely out of that kind of gimmick. 

 

[956 Worldwide 34705]

Elon Musk doing so, so good at taking bots offline from X.

The FBI and Canadian/Dutch intelligence services seized and dismantled an X bot network that RT was using for influence operations. Exploiting AI.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-leads-efforts-among-federal-international-and-private-sector-partners 

[Brisketexan 105083]

Elon Musk doing so, so good at taking bots offline from X.
The FBI and Canadian/Dutch intelligence services seized and dismantled an X bot network that RT was using for influence operations. Exploiting AI.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-leads-efforts-among-federal-international-and-private-sector-partners 

Elon is royally pissed because 1) his user count just went down, and 2) he agreed with everything those Russian bots posted. I guarantee it.

[atomheartbevo 89630]

11 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Elon is royally pissed because 1) his user count just went down, and 2) he agreed with everything those Russian bots posted. I guarantee it.

This is the article about the children’s hospital attack in question mentioned in the story below, it will make you rage. Musk being a protector of free speech..

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2024/07/09/russian-missile-identified-in-kyiv-childrens-hospital-attack/

Quote

On July 8, a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile hit a children’s hospital in Kyiv, killing at three least three kids and injuring 16 others. Anyone on X attempting to click a link that would take them to a comprehensive article detailing all the proof that Russia had, in fact, launched the child-killing cruise missile was met with a strange message.

“The link you are trying to access has been identified by X or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe, in accordance with X’s URL Policy,” the message said.

Quote

The story about the missile was written by Bellingcat, a site that publishes open-source investigations into war zones across the world. The decade-old site has built a reputation for being a reliable source of information about war, disinformation, and extremist movements across the planet. Its work has been cited in Human Rights Courts and has been instrumental in the prosecution of war crimes.

Quote

X owner Elon Musk has long believed that Bellingcat is a PsyOp and throttled the reach of the site on X after it reported about the Neo-Nazi associations of a mass shooter in 2023. “Didn’t the story come from Bellingcat, which literally specializes in psychological operations?” Musk said in a post on X at the time. “I don’t want to hurt their feelings, but this is either the weirdest story ever or a very bad psyop!” He repeated his assertion that Bellingcat was a PsyOp in an interview with CNBC.

After the Russian missile strike on the hospital, pro-Russian accounts flooded social media claiming that video evidence proved the missile was, in fact, American. It wasn’t. People took startlingly clear pictures of the missile moments before impact and experts quickly identified it as a Kh-101. Bellingcat sifted through the evidence and detailed much of it in its report.

Quote

Bellingcat has fought with Musk before, but this is the first time they’ve had access to something on their site actively restricted by X.

Quote

Maher pointed out that Bellingcat regularly posts links with information about other conflicts that aren’t flagged by X. “For example our recent coverage of Gaza received no such block,” she said. “Another example from our recent coverage of violence in Myanmar.”

“Busy now, please check back later,” an automated message from X said in response to an email Gizmodo sent for comment on the story.

When X was Twitter it was a place where open-source investigators mingled with policy makers and other government officials. It wasn’t perfect, but Maher said that it’s gotten worse since Musk took over.

After Gizmodo and others began pestering Twitter about this stuff, including bringing up free speech issues, they reversed course.

https://gizmodo.com/elon-musks-x-restricts-access-to-report-of-alleged-russian-war-crime-2000468908

[C-Man 27199]

Not just concerning but extremely concerning. Looks like that Elon meme needs updating.

[Blotto 23491]

Everybody sit down. I'll spoiler the update so nobody accidentally falls over in shock before sitting down...

Spoiler

Tesla (TSLA.O), is delaying the launch of robotaxi by about two months to October as the design team was told to rework some elements of the car, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the decision.

Shares of Tesla, which is betting on self-driving vehicles over less-expensive cars, fell nearly 8% following the news, ending 11 straight sessions of gains that had pushed the stock up 44%.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Musk had announced the Aug. 8 unveiling day of its robotaxi after Reuters reported on April 5 that Tesla had canceled its long-promised inexpensive car and would continue developing self-driving robotaxis on the same small-vehicle platform.

"Tesla has been playing this game for nearly a decade of promising 'next year, next year'. And I've seen no indication that Tesla ... is on track for a meaningful deployment of the kind of automated driving system that Tesla has consistently promised," said University of South Carolina law professor Bryant Walker Smith, with expertise in autonomous vehicle law.

Except for announcing an unveiling date, Musk has given minimal details about robotaxi so far. He has only said that some vehicles will be owned and operated by Tesla, while others will be owned by individuals but rented out on Tesla's network.

Extremely concerning. I thought that Aug 8 date was a sure thing. 

Edited July 11 by Blotto

[tbone_ 14113]

You fuckers just don’t understand how genius works.

[Chopper 17230]

Driving 85, lost steering and power in a new CT. Q U A L I T Y. https://www.reddit.com/r/CyberStuck/comments/1e10qqh/lost_main_steering_at_85mph_less_than_2000_miles/

 

[Deej 76756]

The comments:

"Steering voids the warranty."

 

Edited July 11 by Deej

[F250 28766]

I think it's time that the people rise up.

 

[Fudge Nuggets 19189]

3 hours ago, Blotto said:

Everybody sit down. I'll spoiler the update so nobody accidentally falls over in shock before sitting down...

  Hide contents

Tesla (TSLA.O), is delaying the launch of robotaxi by about two months to October as the design team was told to rework some elements of the car, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the decision.

Shares of Tesla, which is betting on self-driving vehicles over less-expensive cars, fell nearly 8% following the news, ending 11 straight sessions of gains that had pushed the stock up 44%.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Musk had announced the Aug. 8 unveiling day of its robotaxi after Reuters reported on April 5 that Tesla had canceled its long-promised inexpensive car and would continue developing self-driving robotaxis on the same small-vehicle platform.

"Tesla has been playing this game for nearly a decade of promising 'next year, next year'. And I've seen no indication that Tesla ... is on track for a meaningful deployment of the kind of automated driving system that Tesla has consistently promised," said University of South Carolina law professor Bryant Walker Smith, with expertise in autonomous vehicle law.

Except for announcing an unveiling date, Musk has given minimal details about robotaxi so far. He has only said that some vehicles will be owned and operated by Tesla, while others will be owned by individuals but rented out on Tesla's network.

Extremely concerning. I thought that Aug 8 date was a sure thing. 

I don’t get why the stock fell 8%. I figured everyone knew there was no fucking way they would pull it off. 

[Neonmoon 38129]

I love that Tesla is still trying to invent a product that Waymo already has on the market for a couple years. 

[NoName 16351]

4 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

I love that Tesla is still trying to invent a product that Waymo already has on the market for a couple years. 

It's so funny to me. Not sure any company since I became aware of any of this kind of stuff has ever blown so many deadlines. Big ones? Yes. Small ones? Yes. Internal ones? Yes. External ones? Yes. 

[Captainant 27641]

3 minutes ago, NoName said:

It's so funny to me. Not sure any company since I became aware of any of this kind of stuff has ever blown so many deadlines. Big ones? Yes. Small ones? Yes. Internal ones? Yes. External ones? Yes. 

And yet, their stock is still more valuable their their next several competitors COMBINED 

[956 Worldwide 34705]

Why do I have to comply with the regulations and laws of the countries where I am doing business!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

[royiv 9275]

2 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Why do I have to comply with the regulations and laws of the countries where I am doing business!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

Censor speech or not actively promote hate speech? 

[Chopper 17230]

27 minutes ago, royiv said:

Censor speech or not actively promote hate speech? 

Is criminally prosecuting advertisers who don't want to advertise on your social media platform free speech? It's all so confusing.

[Chopper 17230]

about that -

So yesterday Elon said he was going to sue Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and hoped states would criminally prosecute GARM. *Last week*, in an effort to woo advertisers, ExTwitter  announced it was "excited" to rejoin GARM. ‪  Mike Masnick‬ ‪@mmasnick.bsky.social
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/07/12/elon-says-extwitter-will-sue-the-group-extwitter-excitedly-joined-just-last-week/

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13578]

54 minutes ago, Chopper said:

Is criminally prosecuting advertisers who don't want to advertise on your social media platform free speech? It's all so confusing.

"Don't advertise."

"You don't want them to advertise?"

"No."

And "no in Elonspeak, means "yes".

 

[chainsaw 9861]

He needs to be involuntarily committed.

[Clintonaldo 2573]

lol his outfit in that speech still cracks me up. 

[flatdawgs 1277]

1 hour ago, chainsaw said:

He needs to be involuntarily committed.

He needs to be denaturalized and deported. Let Canada or South Africa commit him.

[ultimaton 2966]

40 minutes ago, Clintonaldo said:

lol his outfit in that speech still cracks me up. 

A dork's idea of what a tough guy looks like. Just missing the indoor aviator sunglasses.

[atomheartbevo 89630]

2 minutes ago, ultimaton said:

A dork's idea of what a tough guy looks like. Just missing the indoor aviator sunglasses.

In the 1980s.  When he came up with the idea for the Cybertruck 

Edited July 12 by atomheartbevo

[BrickHorn 18217]

 

[Deej 76756]

She should put her ass in the door.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13578]

1 hour ago, Deej said:

She should put her ass in the door.

[Deej 76756]

Thanks, Vic. 

[texasdago 7569]

Got back from an extended trip to Italy.  I drive s lot while there.  A LOT.  Maybe saw five Tesla's.  There's no love for them there.  I saw more Jeep Wrangler Unlimiteds that Teslas.

[Captainant 27641]

51 minutes ago, texasdago said:

Got back from an extended trip to Italy.  I drive s lot while there.  A LOT.  Maybe saw five Tesla's.  There's no love for them there.  I saw more Jeep Wrangler Unlimiteds that Teslas.

Jeep wranglers have a surprisingly strong presence abroad, I feel like 

[NoName 16351]

How does one fuck up this very very very basic concept this much. 

 

[Captain Ron 12872]

2 hours ago, NoName said:

How does one fuck up this very very very basic concept this much. 

 

 

 

They're parking in the wrong place!!

 

 

This is the Elon way - just do it so fast you cut corners that are missed and never corrected.

Edited July 13 by Captain Ron

[atomheartbevo 89630]

1 hour ago, Captain Ron said:

This is the Elon way - just do it so fast you cut corners that are missed and never corrected.

Or cut fingers as the case may be.

[Hank Kingsley 20908]

Elon: How can we cook the books even more on our engagement numbers? 

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13578]

4 hours ago, NoName said:

How does one fuck up this very very very basic concept this much. 

 

 

[hookemATL 11707]

Criminally underrated movie film. 

[Celery Man 20933]

1 hour ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Elon: How can we cook the books even more on our engagement numbers? 

 

Found that button over a year ago

 

[Celery Man 20933]

😶

[Ted Lange 16084]

Shocking 

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19100]

I saw my first cybertruck in the wild on 1st Ave yesterday.  Some jackass from NJ.  Goddamn, that thing is ugly.

Also, fuck Elon Musk.

[Captain Ron 12872]

1 hour ago, Neonmoon said:

I’m surprised a white supremacist endorsed Trump 

A man from South Africa? NEVER!

[C-Man 27199]