• 2 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 8th, 2023

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  • This goes back to pre-Musk Tesla.

    Tesla started in July of 2003 and Musk showed up in February of 2004 with VC money, becoming employee number 4 IIRC. How many vehicles do you figure that Martin Eberhard, Marc Tarpenning, and Ian Write built in their garage before Elon showed up? Couple hundred maybe?

    Since Musk has been in…

    Musk has been involved since 9 months after Eberhard and Tarpenning started the company. He was involved with the design of the Roadster, which he and others won an award for in 2006. That was two years before he became the CEO.

    Elon is a disappointment and has truly become another billionaire douchebag jackass but that’s no reason to rewrite history. Practically speaking Elon has been involved with Tesla since the beginning.


  • We solved this problem more than 50 years ago with better Sterring rack.

    No, we did not. Every steering system that uses a mechanical column, like the Model 3, will eventually develop play. The bushings and u-joints are mechanical parts and wear over time. Even electric (drive by wire) steering can eventually develop play simply because the steering itself is mounted used a bearing or bushing assembly.

    Here’s an image of the steering assembly from an Opel Vectra.

    You see those things at the very ends? Those are tie rods and they wear out. You see those black booted things on each side of the steering gear? Those are u-joint and they wear out and get loose.

    There’s the actual column, the part that goes between the steering wheel and the steering assembly. As you can see in this image it too has wear points that will eventually cause looseness. Specifically there is a bushing at both the top and bottom where the steering shaft goes through the column. If you have tilt steering, that column does, there’s another wear point. If you have pull out / push in steering then there’s another one.

    MANY vehicles, including the Model 3, also have a u-joint in their column. You can see it in this image. That U-Joint is necessary because the location of the steering wheel often doesn’t align with the steering box on the assembly. Here’s an image of a column out of an Audi A6 and it has a u-joint on BOTH ends.

    I’m not arguing that Tesla’s are great, they definitely have QC problem, but the statement that this is a “solved problem” LET ALONE one that was solved in 1975 is absolutely untrue.




  • Everyone can live their lives without TikTok, YouTube…

    I was an adult before YT and I don’t want to go back to a time before it existed. It’s just too damn useful as a self education tool. Need to learn how to DIY a plumbing problem? Youtube. Need to learn how to subnet a network? Youtube. Interested in the History of Moldova? Youtube.

    I finished my basement by watching youtube videos and learning how to do everything from framing to electrical to drywall to finishing work. There isn’t anywhere else you can freely get the same breadth of knowledge on-demand.


  • Could be that they are taking a loss on the initial units in order to get going. Once the campaign backers are taken care the product is commercialized and then the price goes up. I’ve seen more than one Kickstart campaign used to launch a company in just this way. (Tempest PWS is another example).

    Anyway they aren’t vaporware. I backed the campaign and received my units today.




  • Maybe, maybe, maybe we’ll finally see another OS take a big bite out of the OS market.

    Which OS Market? The are several and the only one that Microsoft dominates is General Purpose PCs (Desktops & Laptops). Every other OS Market has a different major player. Nintendo owns handhelds with Valve as the secondary. Sony is on top in consoles with Microsoft as the secondary. Tablets are owned by Apple with Android as a strong secondary. Smartphones are the same as tablets.

    I could type several paragraphs about why MS is still relevant, although less so as time goes on, for GP Computer OS but instead I’ll point out that the reason so many games target Windows OS is simply because it gives access to the largest number of buyers.

    IMO opinion the decades of continually increasing DOS & Windows PC based ownership that got the gaming industry to this point is quickly running out. Personal computer ownership has been steadily declining for years as people increasingly use mobile platforms like Smartphones and Tablets. Assuming that trend continue then it won’t be long at all, maybe five years, before gaming companies find that Windows OS compatibility no longer provides a large enough target audience.

    When, if, that happens there will be a rapid sea change in the gaming industry. I strongly suspect that this is why MS have invested so much money into creating platforms for game streaming. It’s the only way they can stay in the game, lol, as personal computer ownership declines.