It's more complicated than that. Inflation is a combination of supply and demand. Too few goods for an extended period of time? Inflation. Excess money allowing people to bid up for the goods they want? Inflation.
A sudden reduction of debt might contribute to people spending more for the same goods they already buy, or it might lead to more savings and investment as people are able to escape living paycheck to paycheck and start entering stock markets. It might mean they are able to buy goods and services they couldn't before, but those goods might have ample supply.
It's just not as simple as, X therefore inflation.
No, if the federal government "forgives" student debt, neither spending nor budget receipts will decrease to compensate.
If any other institution ventured to forgive such massive amounts owed, they would be forced to compensate with their budgets, but they don't have monopolies on violence.
> a random article on the BBC and Alex Jones saying the kids in Sandy Hook were crisis actors
A tiny fraction of people follow Alex Jones and the vast majority disagree (or have no idea who he is). I have yet to see someone who actually believes the kids in Sandy Hook were crisis actors.
The reality is that the US corporate media (literally billion dollar media companies like NY Times or WaPo) are angry about losing their monopoly on what the "truth" is.
Now, they have to compete with independent journalists publishing on Substack/YouTube (read how critical the NY Times is of Substack. It's absurd.). They're trying to get YouTube/Facebook/Twitter to censor anyone who's not "an expert", where they get to decide who counts as an expert.
So, the media is trying to push a narrative that Alex Jones is a bigger threat than he really is. They're also trying to paint all independent media as Alex Jones-type so they can maintain their monopoly on the truth.
Meanwhile, they continue to run million dollar marketing campaigns where they're trying convince everyone that they're the truth ("Democracy Dies in Darkness").
Frankly, the media did the exact same thing with Trump in 2016 (and continue to do so). Trump was a fringe character during the beginning of the RNC for the 2016 election and Jeb Bush was the frontrunner.
The media (left especially) proceeded to talk about Trump 24/7 and give him unlimited free air time (and they got a ratings bump in return). They took someone who was a fringe character and made him seem like the mainstream. The Streisand Effect kicked in and Trump immediately shot up in the polls.
Then, when Trump ended up winning, the media pretended they had 0 culpability and spun up a false narrative that the Russian interference gave Trump the victory (The Russians interfered, but their interference wasn't what swung the election, it was a laughable attempt if you read their strategies. The media talking about Trump 24/7 was what gave him the victory).
Ok? Again, this is an extremely fringe view. There are a couple thousand people who believe the sandy hook children were actors. The rest of the US thinks those people are abhorrent.
Censoring independent media and giving the US corporate press a monopoly on truth as a response to this incident (or other fringe incidents like this) would be a massive mistake.
I don’t think the prosecution of Alex Jones is an example of independent media being censored. He harmed some people with lies and is being held accountable.
Nobody here is suggesting US corporate press has a monopoly on truth.
Thank you for stating it so clearly. If the media was not building narratives and, in effect, household recognition of some profiles around none of this would be an issue. But we have narratives, because they do sell and old media has to compete with new entrants that are not as bogged down by quaint rules that governs old media ( and that includes stream of Alex Jones ).
I do not blame just the old media though. They just responded to the reality the best way they could. There is a reason most articles are now a litany of clickbaity titles. I blame us.
> The media (left especially) proceeded to talk about Trump 24/7 and give him unlimited free air time (and they got a ratings bump in return). They took someone who was a fringe character and made him seem like the mainstream. The Streisand Effect kicked in and Trump immediately shot up in the polls.
your post is chock full of simply ridiculous claims and this one is the crowning piece. please supply *any* actual documentation for any of these made up ideas. Trump shot up in popularity because he ran in primaries, he had plenty of money to do so as well as a lot of backers (both domestic and foreign, we were to learn) all around the country and conservative voters liked his ideas (mostly the anti-immigrant rhetoric, which is the oldest song in the conservative catalog, as well as a deep well of hatred for HRC that had been developed by conservative interests for literally decades) the best, plain and simple. FOX news would have built him up ahead of time as they are a right wing propaganda outlet that most certainly did want to create a Trump candidacy, sure. however "Left wing media" or even "mainstream" media outside of FOX did not "pre-choose" Trump ahead of his popularity by any means. As he continued beating everyone in polling and later in actual primaries by crazy numbers, the (non-FOX) media appropriately noticed and reported on it, and he became the center of attention as is actually appropriate. There is absolutely nothing new about that in conservative politics (except for the novel opportunity to run against a female candidate who had been built up as a focal point of anger for 25 years).
The bigger problem with this notion that Trump was "fringe outside the mainstream" is this attempt to distance US conservatism from the deeply nativist, anti-immigrant stance of the Trump presidency. But that is exactly a core value of the conservative base, which I have personally observed for my whole life amongst the many conservatives in my large extended family as well as in the communities I live in. He is exactly what "regular" conservatives want. Trying to pin it on a "the media made us do it!" is a dangerous lie in that regard.
> your post is chock full of simply ridiculous claims
State exactly which claims are ridiculous and why they're ridiculous.
> please supply any actual documentation for any of these made up ideas
Here's a study by the Shorenstein Center on Media/Politics/Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.
"The report shows that during the year 2015, major news outlets covered Donald Trump in a way that was unusual given his low initial polling numbers—a high volume of media coverage preceded Trump’s rise in the polls."
"Neither of these indicators, however, explains Trump’s coverage. When his news coverage began to shoot up, he was not high in the trial-heat polls and had raised almost no money. Upon entering the race, he stood much taller in the news than he stood in the polls.[8] By the end of the invisible primary, he was high enough in the polls to get the coverage expected of a frontrunner. But he was lifted to that height by an unprecedented amount of free media."
"The Democratic race in 2015 received less than half the coverage of the Republican race. Bernie Sanders’ campaign was largely ignored in the early months but, as it began to get coverage, it was overwhelmingly positive in tone."
"The Shorenstein Center study is based on an analysis of thousands of news statements by CBS, Fox, the Los Angeles Times, NBC, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. The study’s data were provided by Media Tenor, a firm that specializes in the content analysis of news coverage."
Of course, you provide 0 "documentation" for any of your own claims and are just dismissing whatever I said as "made up".
> As he continued beating everyone by crazy numbers, the media appropriately noticed and reported on it, and he became the center of attention as is actually appropriate
Completely false. You provide 0 evidence whatsoever. I gave you a study conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School that shows the exact opposite.
The media gave Trump disproportionate airtime at the start of the primary when he was polling far behind other republican candidates.
> State exactly which claims are ridiculous and why they're ridiculous.
the media did not give Trump free air time as a nobody, fringe candidate. Especially left leaning media. Trump ran for president many times before and he was always treated as the joke he is. What changed in 2016 was he had HRC to run against as well as a potent backlash in conservative politics that was brewing after the Obama presidency.
> "The report shows that during the year 2015, major news outlets covered Donald Trump in a way that was unusual given his low initial polling numbers—a high volume of media coverage preceded Trump’s rise in the polls."
your statement is: "The media (left especially) proceeded to talk about Trump 24/7". The above report does not break down anything about "left leaning media" vs. centrist media vs. FOX news. I'm a consumer of left leaning media. In that world, Trump was a total nobody until he began winning.
> Of course, you provide 0 "documentation" for any of your own claims and are just dismissing whatever I said as "made up".
the burden of proof is on you to show "left leaning media" reporting on Trump "24/7" *before* his polling dominance and electoral wins occurred.
I'm not going to waste my time if you refuse the read the study.
> The above report does not break down anything about "left leaning media" vs. centrist media vs. FOX news
It literally does. Read the study...
"When critics have accused journalists of fueling the Trump bandwagon, members of the media have offered two denials. One is that they were in watchdog mode, that Trump’s coverage was largely negative, that the “bad news” outpaced the “good news.” The second rebuttal is that the media’s role in Trump’s ascent was the work of the cable networks—that cable was “all Trump, all the time” whereas the traditional press held back."
"Neither of these claims is supported by the evidence. Figure 2 shows the news balance in Trump’s coverage during the invisible primary. As can be seen, Trump’s coverage was favorable in all of the news outlets we studied. There were differences from one outlet to the next but the range was relatively small, from a low of 63 percent positive or neutral in The New York Times to a high of 74 percent positive or neutral in USA Today. Across all the outlets, Trump’s coverage was roughly two-to-one favorable."
"By our estimate, Trump’s coverage in the eight news outlets in our study was worth roughly $55 million. Trump reaped $16 million in ad-equivalent space in The New York Times alone, which was more than he spent on actual ad buys in all media during all of 2015. In our eight outlets, the ad-equivalent value of Trump’s coverage was more than one-and-a-half times the ad-equivalent value of Bush, Rubio, and Cruz’s coverage, more than twice that of Carson’s, and more than three times that of Kasich’s. Moreover, our analysis greatly underestimates the ad-equivalent value of Trump’s exposure in that it’s based on only eight media outlets, whereas the whole of the media world was highlighting his candidacy. Senator Cruz might well be correct in claiming that Trump’s media coverage was worth the equivalent of $2 billion in ad buys."
They only included positive/neutral coverage when analyzing ad-equivalent purchases.
I read the whole thing. "By our estimate". Where is the data? When did it happen and at what rates? What news sources are called "the left"? note that while I dont consider the New York Times to be very "left", that sentence is using the NYT as an example of how much advertising space costs, not that the NYT itself ran $16 million of coverage directly. Also, the images on this page don't seem to load (example https://shorensteincenter.orgwp-content/uploads/2016/06/figu... . host not resolvable here).
Trump ran for president many times before. Why didn't "the media" create his candidacy all those other times? It's because there were many factors working in favor for him this time, that both matched the message he was giving, as well as that he had himself honed his message with the help of foreign agents like Paul Manafort. Of course "the media" was essential to his win, as they would be to any candidate running at a national level, but they didn't just pick him out of thin air and decide to create a candidacy on a whim.
I don't have any data to have this up other than personal observation, but I would wager that CNN (for example) covered trump much more than other candidate simply because he was their best seller. They are a for-profit entertainment company after all.
I'm not necessarily saying that they set out to help him win, but they sure did help him win.
Personally, I'm not too keen on either of your takes. I do remember Trump getting an unusual amount of attention, but it was mainly because the media was mocking the idea of him running. Whether this had the Streisand effect I think is pretty irrelevant.
NYT is "left" as far as an every day citizen is concerned; how left the NYT is I think is a non-sequitur. There's a pattern on the left of unclaiming anything anyone raises about "the left" that's negative. You unclaimed the NYT but I've also heard this done rhetorically with Antifa. People will say they don't exist because there's no one leading it or that "they're not left" in a no-true-Scotsman fashion. I don't think these are helpful or truthful positions to hold.
There are pretty thoughtful takes on what motivated Trump supporters. I'll leave a few for both of you.
tldr: The areas Trump won in were rural areas, those were key to capturing the presidency in a tight race. I lived in one of these areas at the time; not a single Democrat showed up. There were no ads, there was nobody shaking hands, at that point I doubted people would even know what a Democrat or a left-leaning Libertarian were. QAnon and Neo-Nazis certainly did vote for him, but that doesn't make up the huge swing needed for him to win in a race as close as that one.
There's a rather easy fix for this: Send the fucking Democrats. Show up in the primaries in rural areas. Make policy and plans for improving rural areas. Speak directly to these people without telling them that you aim to take their jobs. Show them a trajectory to a better life and I'll bet they'll follow. People forget that many of these areas are historically Democrat or swing states.
You're not wrong, but I personally would like to see the job of being a reporter like public defendant, a lawyer, judge. Sure none of those are non biased either, but at least people try to hold on to that ideal.
This seems like a lazy defense of bad reporters who turned out to become propagandists instead.
> Government has no business censoring him or anyone from making spurious claims
The argument is if enough people suffer Sandy Hooks and get harassed by Alex Jones type sycophants, they lose trust in freedom of speech narrowly, democracy broadly, and become more inclined to support a change of pace.
We’re seeing rising support for authoritarianism in part because our system isn’t working for some people. I’m still unsure if the solution is less democracy (to temper swinging majoritarianism) or more, but that unsureness is sort of symptomatic of the argument around not being able to trust institutions. (There are also zero authoritarian regimes in history that tolerated broad freedom of speech.)
You could argue that we tend to move in cycles ( things are too loose, up the authority; things are too tight, loosen up ). I am personally horrified that US appears to be somewhat ok with gutting its freedom of speech as much as it can with support of some rather naive helpers, who think that power will not be used against them.
It's not about allowing or not. Anyone can say whatever they want. Then they get sued for fraud.
Free speech != allowing fraud in the legal system. (or any other consequence from speech).
So strictly speaking, yes, you are ALLOWED to say whatever you want, but be prepared for a lot of shit if you lie to people or are wrong. Or be prepared to go to jail if you incite violence or yell fire in a crowded space. (and btw, Alex Jones is bankrupt because of Sandy Hook, to the other posters above).
This free speech = speech without consequences is a silly lie invented by people who want to control speech.
A lot more would believe the BBC article. I don't believe that the BBC would do too many direct lies, but you can get very far by selective sourcing and we know the BBC is willing to go very far on issues of omission: they never mentioned Saville being a pedo rapist, fx, probably because it would look bad for them.
Well, that kind of comment adds nothing to the discussion. It's certainly not as an unpopular position among the "experts" as you probably think it is [1]:
> "For the Greeks, the concept did not meaningfully exist at all; the social identities we today understand in the West as a gay man or a bisexual woman, for example, simply weren’t something that people recognized."
I'm saying there are gay men in all countries, whether they are in the open or not. Their existence might be underground or behind closed doors, but they are there.
Singapore has benefits for married couples with the intention of boosting fertility rate, such as better access to HDB's. It's inappropriate to apply this to pairs of men.
Also, note that it has two kinds of marriages already, with different rules -- civil marriage, and Muslim marriage.
I have a tern, it's amazing. I can bike at 30mph, most of my errands within a ten mile trip are doable on bike. I do grocery shopping, cargo delivery, a bunch of stuff. It doesn't replace a car for all trips, but you'd be surprised how many trips it replaces.
It doesn't look like it works for any kind of cargo movement. It does not look like it can handle furniture, bags of groceries, or open boxes. A car does all those things.
I have panniers and a cargo rack on the front and back, I've carried six or seven bags of groceries without having to think hard. I've carried a car seat and two large plastic totes at the same time with a bit of Bungie cording.
Because as it gets better, it provides more value. In its completed form it basically replaces a driver. Calculate how much it would cost to have drivers capable of driving 20 hours/day (rest spent charging).
If they actually make it self-driving at a human level, it's value is clearly over $100K.
If they actually do something impossible, sure, it'll be worth some money. But even then, why would individuals ever be able to participate in that market?
If it's a sure thing, companies (including Tesla) will buy many cars and run the value as low as they can.
To some buyers anyway. It's not really clear that a higher price ends up being the revenue/income maximizing price (if the cost is minimal and many buyers value it much lower than the high price).
There are many people who have bought FSD from Tesla, and have had their car reach end of life without ever getting to enjoy FSD.
It's possible after being "less than a year away" for... a decade... that it may be less than a year away now. But it looks like a bit of skepticism has been earned.
I've watched a lot of Munro (and even bought one of their retail reports for fun) and the thing that most bothered me that looked like tesla bias was when he was doing side-by-side stats comparisons of all of the mid-size crossovers like the id.4, mach-e, and tesla y. he kept on harping about the epa range in the comparison and never once mentioned the methodology of the epa estimate and the fact that manufacturers have a lot of leeway to conduct the test themselves - and either overreport or underreport the epa range. this was really glaring to me because tesla is known to stretch their range estimates (as do other manufacturers), but some manufacturers seem to deliberately underreport (mercedes, porsche, ford with some models of the mach-e for example). given that he's in the business of competitive analysis he HAS to know this, but he never said a word about it, which I think made tesla look a little better than it should have. it's one thing to just present the epa range and leave it at that, but he was using it as the basis for a ton of discussion and derived numbers and basically putting down the non-tesla cars... all without mentioning the limits of the number
see this for some real-world testing, there's lots like it and the results usually skew a certain way for each car. for example, there's about a 20% delta in epa vs. tested range for the tesla y LR and mach-e standard range in his chart. the tesla artificially looks 20% better! and this delta was well-known at the time of his video
https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/
to your question about conflicts of interest, owning a stock is a conflict of interest. nobody needs to show that something is happening inside his head, the circumstances exist and that's it. I think he's usually pretty good and I still watch the videos, and he trades on his reputation and I still regard him as a good source. but I'm still glad to learn that he's sold the stock
A conflict of interest accusation is pretty serious, and I think if all you had to go by is your skepticism, you probably shouldn't just make that claim as if it were a known fact: that's just very dishonest.
Sure, be skeptical, but then maybe say something like "I have no evidence for this, but I believe his manifest enthusiasm can only be explained by the fact that he's trying to manipulate the stock price to his own benefit."
Sure, it sounds less rhetorically convenient, but it's more honest.
It is my understanding that he had a substantial amount of shares up to 2021-07-29. After criticism about the conflict of interest he claims to have divested his shares.
It's shocking to me that people are willing to pay to be beta testers for Tesla's entirely-from-scratch manufacturing process and smartphone-with-wheels style of car experience but it doesn't matter what I think - that's the beauty of capitalism.
I have driven a friend's model 3 and while yes its nice, I feel like I would get more value for my buck with the driver assist in for example modern Toyotas.
But I'm also perfectly happy driving my decades old Honda so what do I know.
Based on the videos I've seen I'm not even sure I'd call their software beta. It looks like it's in early development, like where you'd be running it exclusively on closed tracks. Definitely nowhere near folks outside the company.
NFTs don’t have amazing unit economics with gross profit margins of 30% (or any unit economics at all), and incredible discounted cash flows (actually they don’t have any cash flows at all).
It’s like comparing the productivity of a med student on Adderall in a quiet library, and the productivity of a peeled russet potato sitting in the sun.
FWIW we have a 2018 Model 3 and a 2022 Model Y and both have had very minor or no manufacturer issues. Both have never needed anything other than minor, at home service from Tesla (mostly tire swaps).
A single example does not make for a general rule. Aside from the fact that thank fucking god a less than 1 year old car and a less than 4 year old car should not have some manufacturer issues, Tesla still has a dreadful 226PP100 (as in, each Tesla tested had on average 2.6 problems in a single year), even worse than the industry average (which includes some truly terrible constructors).
> since 2014, and nearly a decade later they aren't that much closer
That is just an absurd statement. AlexNet came out in 2012 and ResNet in 2015 but somehow Tesla had something "close" to the current FSD in 2014? They're heavily using Transformers now which came out in 2017. They have demonstrated leaps in performance since the first version of FSD Beta two years ago.
No it isn't. It is also not early days either and we have given FSD enough time to meet the claims of achieving Level 5 with those strong and 'confident' deadlines even set by Musk himself, which he knew he couldn't meet, but the gullible customers and fans rushed in and fell for it anyway.
Not only they have all been missed, this year, Tesla finally admitted that it was Level 2 and it still doesn't work in the most dangerous time to drive which is at night. FSD (Fools Self Driving) is no where near close in the nearly ten years it has existed.
This is an obvious over-promising of a broken product with the pied-piper selling it to their fans scam.
Everyone from the regulators to Musk himself have known that for years that it is more than just liability and none of the claims of achieving 'Level 5' FSD and the hype around the robotaxis have ever materialized with many customers falling for the scam lead by the pied piper (Musk) and once again increased prices on a broken product.
The driver has to be liable, until the L5 system has lower error-rate than a human. For regulatory and liability reasons, it should be registered as an L2 until it's perfect. No one has ever claimed that FSD is a finished product.
> The driver has to be liable, until the L5 system has lower error-rate than a human.
Which that was promised to be completed in 2020. Where are the Level 5 robotaxis that Elon was confident enough to release by that year?
> For regulatory and liability reasons, it should be registered as an L2 until it's perfect.
And FSD was advertised as Level 5 by Tesla and was due to be complete by 2020 deadline. Even before that, many customers fell for this and were promised that future updates would eventually make it Level 5.
See how the scam works? Not only it was meant to be 'Level 5' as advertised by 2020, Tesla knew that it won't get there all along and continued the deception as their fans bought into the false promise and customers realised that they are paying for a broken contraption that didn't function as advertised and will continue paying for it as the price keeps increasing.
> No one has ever claimed that FSD is a finished product.
Yes. Elon (and Tesla) were the only ones that claimed and promised that it will be finished with robo-taxis on the road, at Level 5 FSD by 2020. This is the pied-piper scam and they have sold a false promise to their loyal fanbase and they will pay for an unfinished product until its 'perfect Level 5 FSD'; whenever that is and will continue to raise prices.
I also don't think it is ok to use unfinished safety critical software on the roads and put many driver's on the roads lives at risk.
FSD is a level 5 system, but it just has too high error rate to give it full control. It's a beta software for a level 5 system.
Level 5 means that the system is designed for autonomous driving in every situation. It's not a metric whether the system actually works. There will be multiple level 5 systems on the road some day, and some of them will make mistakes more than others. Just like all technology and software, it's impossible to make these systems perfect.
Yes, Elon overpromised and they failed to deliver in time. This was compensated by cheaper prices, just like is usual in beta programs. Today, FSD is already insanely good and can drive 99% of time without human intervention.
It's still not good enough, and it's multiple years late from original forecasts. Still, I wouldn't call it a scam. It's a delayed project with a pre-order/beta program, but given it's huge complexity and importance, I'm willing to forgive them. When it's ready, no one cares that it was a few years late.
> FSD is a level 5 system, but it just has too high error rate to give it full control. It's a beta software for a level 5 system.
Level 5 defines that the system is so reliable that there is zero intervention of the driver and that there is no need for them to be fully attentive behind the wheel as defined by the SAE [0]; exactly the requirement of a robo-taxi. This was advertised by Tesla with claims of robo-taxis by 2020, with a fake taxi app for marketing the scam.
> Yes, Elon overpromised and they failed to deliver in time.
And yet he continues to play the pied piper with more false promises. Like these claims and promises:
"Tesla's Full Self-Driving tech will have Level 5 autonomy by the end of 2021" [0]
"FSD will be capable of driving the car anywhere under any conditions with no need for human interaction." [0]
So it is now 2022 and they finally admitted it is Level 2 and requires the full attention of the driver having their eyes on the road at all times. Another false promise.
> Today, FSD is already insanely good and can drive 99% of time without human intervention.
Even the Tesla fans and FSD beta testers dispute this vacuous claim and that figure is significantly lower, given that it completely doesn't work in the most dangerous time to drive which is at night and in other conditions as well. As long as it still requires the driver to be always attentive behind the wheel with FSD on, it is not "Level 5 Full Self Driving" which was advertised by Elon Musk and Tesla but it is absolutely Level 2.
> It's still not good enough, and it's multiple years late from original forecasts. Still, I wouldn't call it a scam.
You need to snap out of the pied piper's scam and realise that FSD is an on-going scam, compensating their false promises for more price increases and forever promises.
Progress this year has been pretty amazing. If they didn't progress or didn't try to make it work, then I'd call it a scam.
You're not reading that SAR chart right. If you look at the features and examples, FSD is level 5 in there. That's what the system is designed to do. It's not a lane assistant or a traffic jam chauffer. Again, it's level 2 only because it's beta and requires supervision, and the driver is liable for any mistakes.
> Progress this year has been pretty amazing. If they didn't progress or didn't try to make it work, then I'd call it a scam.
It should have been complete years ago in 2020, at Level 5 FSD; so what do you mean about 'progress'? After missing more deadlines and claims, the price of FSD increases again despite the multiple malfunctions from lots of testers.
One example of a devoted Tesla fan / investor (Whole Mars Catalog) doing controlled experiments and driving around the same San Francisco street(s) is hardly a generic case of the whole situation.
> You're not reading that SAR chart right
I have read it correctly and Tesla FSD is still not Level 5 as advertised and by definition of the SAE chart.
Even in the video the driver is still paying full attention and has to continuously intervene by touching and guiding the steering wheel. They still have their attention and their eyes on the road which is not required for a Level 5 robot-taxi FSD system supposedly due for 2020.
So Tesla knows they are selling a Level 2 system still requiring the full attention of the driver and still not even close to the Level 5 robo-taxi claims, but was marketed as Level 5 anyway to mislead their customers with the help of their loyal fans doing videos of controlled experiments to fool new customers into purchasing an unfinished product.
Given it frequently malfunctions, the generic excuse is: ‘With each update, it gets better’,‘There is potential, buy it now before the price increases again’ or ‘It will get better soon, its early days’.
It is clearly not early days and we have given it enough time to be Level 5 FSD and it still isn't close even if they were given up to this year to finish it. So it is definitely a piped piper scam selling false promises to their customers. If this was a different company, there would be class action lawsuits all over this.
These are improving at an astonishing rate, like a Web app rather than a car. Yes, this means the first ones were so bad they really shouldn’t have been shipped. But the newer models (of Y especially, X hasn’t been redesigned) are really a different world.
Hot tip, ship fast and break things doesn't work when you're talking about putting out a 2 ton, gigantic battery out in the world that is expected to last for over 20 years. This is a gigantic waste. Any other company would have been crucified for putting out such a shit car, and the only reason Tesla survived it is because they had funny meme man to do damage control.
What are you talking about? I watch FSD progress, and it's clearly getting closer to human level driving. Just go on YouTube and compare FSD from two years ago to the latest. It's night and day. Yes, it still makes mistakes. Humans make mistakes all the time while driving.
As for build quality, we haven't had any major problems with our Model 3. It's a great car.
Tesla has a media problem, where every little problem gets reported as if it's systemic and unfixable.
The suspension on the model 3 and Y is definitely not luxury. Nor is the interior build quality. I own a model Y and there’s plenty of creaks and noises in it that other car models don’t have. Also the highway FSD is still ridiculously bad with it’s phantom braking where at 70MPH your car will just slam on the brakes. And highway driving is the easy version that most other manufacturers have now too.
And now it looks like Cruise and Waymo have full self driving in San Francisco which looks amazing. There’s hour long videos of it navigating perfectly and smoothly in a jam packed city. Nothing like the Tesla videos which show it almost slamming into bikes/curbs or just freaking out and stopping in the middle of an intersection.
Has great acceleration though and charging at home is great or on the road with superchargers. But Teslas edge is not as wide anymore.
If phantom braking is reproducible, ie it happens at the same place and time(because sun angle) you should report it to Tesla. Or post a YouTube and link on Twitter. In 15k miles of mostly autopilot, I have had phantom brake happen once or twice. I’m in the Bay Area. It happened when it couldn’t tell wether the shadow of over cross bridge from a physical object. What is your experience?
>It happened when it couldn’t tell wether the shadow of over cross bridge from a physical object.
Who could have predicted that just relying just on cameras was not a good solution ? Definitely not the hundreds of researchers that told Musk that a LIDAR was necessary.
Idk why people preach this a gospel. There are billions of living things, some of which ( peregrine falcon, cheetah etc)do high way speeds and do fine relying on optics. The only animals that rely on sonar are those that live in the dark. There are insects with pea brains which rely on vision. I’m not saying it is proof that only vision works, but to argue against it requires more than platitudes.
They have two eyes close together that do tracking of depth. Plus they have ears and touch, multiple types of sensor synthesis that the Tesla doesn’t even come close to having with a plain old video camera.
Tesla does an extremely dumb and basic depth estimation from two cameras. It still lacks many senses that are critical to movement, and has software that about matches the abilities of a small bird
Does it work in rain, snow, and/or night? How about country roads and roads without clearly marked lanes or misleading lane lines?
It's like hiring a plumber who can only flush toilets, not install them. Self driving in pristine conditions is a party trick. Until it can do the hard part, it's nowhere near human-level.
At autonomy investor day they were saying better than a human in all human drivable conditions by 2020 for the robotaxi network they said they would launch then. They confirmed they meant level 5 autonomy in answer to a direct question.
They knew dojo wouldn't be online by then and they didn't even really train on video at that point, just trying to judge the scene image by image instead of taking into account prior frames (like knowing someone walked behind a bush 1p frames ago, so that sliver of emerging leg from behind a bush that might not be detectable confidently enough from a single image should be weighted higher).
FSD handles those situations well, compared to Waymo etc, because FSD doesn't depend on pre-mapping. Waymo depends on pre-generated 3D maps and it fails if there's a discrepancy. That's why Waymo works only on small areas and uses cherry-picked routes.
YouTube can't provide enough information to make a determination about the reliability of a safety critical system. The video that ends up posted could be the best result of multiple attempts and many of the "testers" use hints like pressing the gas pedal or hitting the turn stalk to give the system more confidence in maneuvers that it's otherwise having trouble with. Further, many users who post bad experiences get negative feedback from their audience and sometimes even delete the video and DMCA people who re-host it.
Beyond the problems with YouTube as evidence, its very clear that Tesla isn't operating a proper safety lifecycle as part of the beta and its not clear that their approach and their current hardware is even capable of solving the remaining problems with FSD. Having already sold the hardware as FSD capable, Tesla has created a problem where the hardware drives the validation process of the system, rather than validation process driving the hardware. This is a fundamentally unsafe approach to safety critical systems.
The "media problem" is completely earned by Tesla. You know how you avoid bad press? By consistently under-promising while over-delivering and bending over backwards to keep your customers loyal and happy even after they've handed over their money so that when they need a new car they return to you.
German automakers are a great example of this. Whether it's gas or electric they significantly understate the performance and efficiency of their cars while in the real world they always exceed what they've promised.
> Tesla has a media problem, where every little problem gets reported as if it's systemic and unfixable.
Similar to Apple, people expect more from them than anyone else. Minor issues on Apple products are always scandals. Remember Antennagate? People were sure that it would sink Apple, because "they don't know how to make antennas". People and media handle Tesla similarly, and minor issues are blown out of proportion.
It's the same issue. There is no double standard. Taking advance payment and being 5+ years late is something any company would get massive criticism from, if not sued.
A sudden reduction of debt might contribute to people spending more for the same goods they already buy, or it might lead to more savings and investment as people are able to escape living paycheck to paycheck and start entering stock markets. It might mean they are able to buy goods and services they couldn't before, but those goods might have ample supply.
It's just not as simple as, X therefore inflation.