@sn4cktimes My guess is that buying the set for $7000 would come out of one budget and having you try to make things comes out of another budget. It may be shifting the accounting work based on what can be spent. Sure, it costs more in the long run, but internal rules can often lead to wasteful spending.
@davesaddiction It's designed to look good while you lie back with your Tesla on autopilot heading into the side of a truck.
Let's go with the Toyota 3.5 Liter 2GR engine.
Lotus Evora 400 (2GR-FE)
Toyota Tacoma (2GR-FKS)
@highlander At least it's easy to see on your dog. If you get the low-profile version with almost no sidewall and you can barely tell when they go flat.
@mastermario John Deere really made that thing. There are plenty of them available used. The 600 is the single-seater version and the 622 is the two-seater.
I don't even trust jack stands. I only fee safe working under my truck if I'm holding it up with a Ferrari.
There is some more information on potential Tesla touchscreen failures in the news this morning. Autoblog has information on what the failure is and the Seattle Times has some additional information.
https://www.autoblog.com/2021/01/14/tesla-nhtsa-recall-touchscreen-failure/
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/tesla-balks-at-touch-screen-recall-us-agency-takes-action/
My day job is as a product safety engineer, and I work closely with my company's safety attorneys. My thoughts are based on my experience only and I do not have specific information on discussions within Tesla.
The basic concern of the NHTSA is that the defroster can only be accessed through the touch screen, and the touch screen uses a memory type that will reach its maximum number of read/write cycles in 5 - 6 years. This could disable the defroster which is considered a critical safety feature.
Tesla has 159,000 cars to fix. At best, it will cost them $1,000 to fix each car based on a rough estimate on the cost of parts, labor, logistics and the overhead of managing a recall. It could cost them as much as $2,000. That means that running a recall would cost $160M - $320M. This would wipe out profits for quite a few consecutive quarters and would have a dramatic effect on the stock price.
However, there is a risk if they don't run a formal recall. If a single Tesla owner gets in an accident because the defroster failed due to the touch screen failure, they will sue Tesla. The plaintiff's attorneys will argue that Tesla was aware of a defect and they ignored it. They will argue that offering a software update for a fee is not an acceptable remedy for a known defect, especially if the software update only delays the issue and doesn't fix it. Tesla's attorneys will have to argue that the defroster is not a safety system, or they will need some other argument to indicate that the driver was at fault for not manually clearing their windshield when the defroster failed.
The risk is that this could become a class action suit. The plaintiff's attorneys may argue that the basic remedy would be to refund owners the cost of their vehicle, raising the potential cost to Tesla by a factor of 50. This doesn't even include possible punitive damages.
This is all supposition. I don't know any internal discussions within Tesla. I can't even state if the NHTSA position is correct. I can only estimate what the potential risks to Tesla are.
One thing to remember is that the plaintiff's attorneys will sway the jury based on emotion and the Tesla attorneys will try to use logic. History shows that emotion is often more of an influence on juries.
GM faced significant financial impacts from their ignition switch problem and only survived through bankruptcy and the creation of the new GM that didn't have to cover all of the financial obligations of the old GM. A jury may see Tesla as worse for knowing about the problem for a long time and charging customers to fix it, especially if that remedy only delays the issue.
This is high stakes poker. The financial risks to Tesla could be significant.
@ttyymmnn Fold the border back and forth a lot. Metal fatigue will break the stake at the root level pretty quickly.
@ttyymmnn The X-Wing looks good, but there's something wrong with the Astromech droid.
@mm54 I said I miss having a car with the sweep dash, but I didn't actually claim to want to drive one. The last car I had with that dash had the handling characteristics of an oil tanker. Come to think of it, the car consumed gas at such a rate that you needed an oil tanker to keep it fueled.
I'm 35 years older now, and I have to learn to leave nostalgia in the past.
@mm54 For some strange reason, I now miss having a car with a dash-spanning spedometer.
@hammerheadfistpunch said in Hindenburg, revisited:
World record for the worlds largest manmade capacitor?
It may be a record for length, but not for capacity. The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has a huge capacitor bank used to fire off the lasers.
https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/how-nif-works/power-conditioning
@ttyymmnn I remember an old sketch from "In Living Color". It was a spoof of the Arsenio Hall show with guest Marion Barry.
Arsenio Hall: "I hear you have a new book coming out."
Marion Barry: "No, I've been booked."
@darkbrador I see a lot of cuts in the video, so I'm assuming that there were hours of footage with only the most successful parts spliced into the final cut. I'm guessing that there were some unsuccessful attempts at these stunts.
@just-jeepin I would want to know the condition of the Jeepster before the modifications.
If the body was good, but the engine and driveline were gone, I have no objections. The modifications are extensive enough that it's almost like taking the Jeepster body and putting it on a more modern chassis.
If the Jeepster was in reasonable shape, I have some objection. At that point, I would prefer to see a reproduction body on a new chassis, sort of a "tribute" vehicle.
@highlander Even without the matching numbers, it's probably still a good deal.
Hagerty thinks a matching numbers version would be around $55K.
@bicyclebuck said in My neighbor ate my trash. What should I do?:
Seriously, don't feed the invasive species.
@MUSASHI66 There is a solution.
https://www.browardpalmbeach.com/restaurants/six-ways-to-cook-iguana-6392248
@krustywantout Large cargo ships require a significant amount of maintenance. Much of this work goes on while the ship is in transit with cargo. Much of the crew is involved in keeping the ship in working order, not getting it to its destination. In theory, maintenance could be done between trips, but every day a ship isn't carrying cargo it is losing money.
Part of the reason crews get stuck on abandoned ships or impounded ships is that they need to keep the ship from rotting away. They aren't needed to guide the ship, just to maintain it.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/abandoned-ships/
@fintail Biden will face pressure from the left wing of his party over the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Biden needs something from Israel to be able to push back. Netanyahu can't afford to lose any U.S. support right now and he can expect far more questioning from Biden than he got from Trump.
The AP and Al Jazeera likely need Hamas approval to operate in the Gaza Strip. I wouldn't be surprised if the AP didn't bother doing any significant investigation on who else was in the building where they had offices. It was a 16 story building and the AP only had a tiny portion. It isn't likely they knew every tenant. Hamas could have been using the building either without the AP's knowledge or as a condition of letting the AP operate in the territory.
Right now, I don't put much faith in any news that comes out of the area. I still believe that Netanyahu needs this conflict to remain in power, and he wants that more than anything in the world. I don't think he cares if civilians die on either side.
The length of this conflict will partly depend on how long Netanyahu's political struggle goes on and how much Iran wants to use Hamas in their proxy war. In other words, this could go on a long time.
