V14.3.4 seems like it is taking longer to install than the last update.

Actually they’ve got 700 vehicles. 42 is the number that don’t have a safety monitor on board. One year after Waymo One launched, Waymo had ~300 vehicles in Phoenix. And only a few dozen were fully driverless. Nobody has ever deployed driverless Robotaxis faster than Tesla.

"Too cheap to meter" frightened most energy market competitors. They effectively worked to ensure it never happened. If nuclear energy had become "too cheap to meter" and we had completed the 1,000 reactors by 2000 that President Nixon's Project Independence envisioned, here are some consequences that might have happened – or not happened. 1. Coal would have become "too cheap to mine" and would have been pushed off of the US electricity grid. 2. Natural gas would have become "too cheap to drill." 3. George Mitchell would have never been motivated to develop the combination of directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing that enabled the shale revolution. 4. The LNG industry would have never been created. 5. It's unlikely that the wind and solar industries would have expanded beyond certain niche applications and geographies with superior resources. 6. Hydro would have continued producing from existing dams, but would have experienced limited growth. 7. Oil markets would have been more limited than they are today. The ~100 nuclear plants that did get completed have steadily produced about 1/5 of US electricity for several decades now. If we had successfully completed 1,000 nuclear plants, would we have just stopped building? Imagine what 10-20 times as many nuclear plants would be powering? Who might have worked hard to limit nuclear energy's market penetration? Why should their proxies get all of the credit just because they were openly carrying the signs and attending the rallies? BACKGROUND This post was inspired by a Wall St. Journal USA250 podcast installment titled "Nuclear Power's Reboot." The host of that podcast is Katherine Sullivan. Most of the show tells a conventional interpretation of nuclear energy's development history, starting with Truman's announcement about how Hiroshima's military capability had been destroyed by a single bomb, going through Strauss's statement about a future with nuclear providing energy that was "too cheap to meter" and ending with the 25 year hiatus in nuclear power plant construction. Victor Gilinsky, an NRC Commissioner during Three Mile Island, shares his certainty that serious accidents were bound to happen in the future. As history has shown, the low-consequence accident that took place on his watch is still the worst nuclear accident in US history. Sullivan played clips from Ralph Nader's antinuclear rallies and interviewed a woman who was a frighted young mother in Middletown, PA when the core at TMI unit 2 melted and caused a media/political/regulator stoked panic without harming anyone. When she returned from her governor-suggested evacuation to her undamaged home, she became an active member of the antinuclear movement. Finally, in the last few minutes of a 22 minute podcast, Ms. Sullivan attributed essentially all of the recent interest in nuclear energy to the growth of AI. That framing is not only wrong, it worries me. Nuclear energy is a clean, capable and potentially affordable replacement for much of the coal, gas and oil that we burn for electricity, industrial heat and ship propulsion. We need nuclear for far more than powering planned AI data centers. But energy system experts like Robert Bryce (@pwrhungry) have been warning that AI data centers are about as popular in rural America as hog farms. I worry about a near future when protests, finances and grid connection challenges slow AI data center expansion enough to cause the established antinuclear movement and its well-heeled, powerful, motivated friends to more loudly claim that less AI means we don't need new nuclear. The energy market consequences mentioned at the beginning of this post would be good for most of humanity. But those who are profiting by the enterprises that would lose in the competitive markets for energy fuels are guaranteed to do everything they can think of to ensure that they continue to survive and flourish. I suspect that many of those who would be negatively impacted by a thriving nuclear enterprise both read and advertise in the Wall St. Journal. @thecourier

I wish the towing capacity was the same, and that it had more range, but this is close to the model I wanted. If they could give me 11-14k towing capacity and 500 mile range for $70-80k that would be the truck I buy. It wouldn’t be a daily driver. It would be the battery bank for my rooftop solar most of the time.

This is the start of my last semester, so I will be going dark. May check in occasionally, but I need to focus. I will miss everyone. Stay safe!

I am excited to see if these new camera washers are retrofittable to existing vehicles. What about legacy Model Ys? Will all robotaxi vehicles need them?

The Tesla Cybercab was designed to be a driverless device. This is not secretly a manually driven Model 2. It’s designed from top to bottom to be autonomous. Whether early validation and crash units have a vestigial wheel, pedals, side mirror etc. kind of misses the point. It doesn’t have rear glass so you can see out the back. At all. It’s not designed to go faster than 85 - 90 mph, and has motors and suspension that are designed with those requirements in mind. The seats are positioned far back, in a suboptimal position for manual driving. The doors are designed for a vehicle that drops you off in front of your destination, not for one that you park yourself and need to squeeze out of in a tight parking garage space or on any busy city curb spot. It doesn’t have a charge port. I could go on. Clearly, this vehicle was not designed to be manually driven. It was designed to be driverless. Why is that so hard for people to grasp? Companies like Zoox already have vehicles with no steering wheel and pedals deployed on public roads. Today. Companies like Waymo are working to deploy them too. Why shouldn’t Tesla also do a vehicle without manual controls? Of course, they should be. Could Tesla do a manually driven vehicle on the Cybercab platform? Of course they could. But it would require so many changes that it would no longer be called the Cybercab. It would be called something else. But should Tesla do it? Overall, fans are too excited about the idea of a compact and not excited enough by the idea of a car without controls. They are looking backwards, and thinking about what they know. But the reality is nobody wants a tiny compact car, and a lot of people want a car that is designed from top to bottom for autonomy. Autonomy is a much bigger opportunity. So much bigger that a manually driven Tesla compact is a rounding error by comparison. Even if Tesla is required to put side mirrors etc on early production units, it doesn’t change the fact that the vehicle was designed from top to bottom to he autonomous to achieve the lowest cost per mile. Why is that so hard for people to wrap their head around?

Maybe I can finally buy a house now. $300,000 for an 1100 sq ft 70 year old fixer upper on a postage stamp lot is too damn high.

Economic policies should be judged by their outcomes, not the "good intentions" of those crafting the policies. A lot of people are harmed every day by economic policies that are supposedly designed to help them.

How a freak accident in 2016 left me paralyzed. When I was 22, right after graduating from Texas A&M, I was working at a summer camp in the Pocono Mountains. On our first day off, a group of us went to a man-made lake in upstate New York. We all ran into the water. We weren’t drunk or doing anything stupid. I didn’t even dive headfirst. I just ran into the water and swam underwater for a few seconds. At some point, I got hit on the left side of my head. My C4 and C5 vertebrae popped out of place, and I woke up face-down in the water. I tried to move, but nothing happened. Immediately, I knew I was paralyzed. I held my breath, hoping someone would pull me out. No one did. After about 10–15 seconds, I couldn’t hold it anymore and thought, “Whatever happens, happens.” That’s when I took a big sip of water… Eventually, my friends noticed something was wrong and reached out to pull me out of the water. I was in and out of consciousness for about an hour — waking up on the beach, in an ambulance, in a helicopter, and finally in the hospital, just before learning I was about to go into emergency surgery. I even cracked jokes to calm the people around me. That’s just how I cope. The surgery went well, but the weeks — and years — that followed were brutal. I was in a lot of pain. Nerve pain, to be precise, and for those of you who’ve experienced that kind of pain, you know how unbearable it is. Not to mention the emotional pain that came with grieving the loss of my mobility and learning how to live life as a quadriplegic. Now, reading this might make you feel sad. But don’t. My accident was the best thing that ever happened to me. It saved me. I often joke (sort of) that the life path I was on would have either killed me or landed me in jail. I wasn’t being a good man or making smart life choices. Becoming paralyzed forced me to confront myself, my choices, and reflect on the kind of man I truly wanted to become. Even more importantly, my accident allowed me to deepen my relationship with God — and through that, He shaped me into the man I am today. For that, I am forever grateful. I truly love my life. I’m blessed with the most incredible family and friends, and now, thanks to Neuralink, I’ve found renewed hope and purpose in helping others discover this life-changing technology that has helped redefine my human potential.

We are going to build a Moon base

Archaeologists began cleaning the temple at Esna to reveal intricate scenes of Egyptian gods mingling with Roman emperors and hieroglyphic inscriptions never translated before. The temple’s stunning rebirth was our No. 5 most-read story of 2025! archaeology.org/issues/march…

The San Francisco Superior Court has just GRANTED my anti-SLAPP motion against my Cyberstalker Aaron Jacob Greenspan! Those following may remember that the Court previously granted Tesla’s anti-SLAPP motion, striking Greenspan’s claims and ordering him to pay Tesla’s legal fees and attorneys costs. Now they have granted my motion as well. This means that all but one count has been stricken from the lawsuit, and Greenspan will have to pay me back for my legal costs. Only part of one count remains where the court felt it wasn’t in a public forum. I think I could have moved under subsection (e) (4) to have that dismissed too, but as this is my first time acting as my own lawyer I didn’t think to do that or realize I had to raise on each subsection separately. Next I will find a demurrer to dismiss the remaining claim. Tesla did the same for the remaining claim after their anti-SLAPP and had the demurrer granted. Basically this means that the lawsuit is almost entirely gone, and Greenspan will have to pay both me and Tesla for all the wasted legal expenses from his frivolous SLAPP lawsuit. This is an emotional moment. For the past six years i’ve been going through this litigation, facing insane false allegations from Tesla short sellers. The court has now ruled that this entire lawsuit was an illegal attempt to stifle my free speech rights. Thank you so much to everyone who supported me over the years, emotionally and financially. Any money Greenspan pays me will be returned to donors. I’ve waited a long time for this day, and couldn’t have made it here without you guys. And what a coincidence that it happened the day Elon got his comp plan back. I love you all. Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all ❤️

Their approach makes some sense. If I understand their thinking, they will use cameras for all the decision making near the car, but will use radar when the cameras can’t see and will use lidar only at long distances. So, cameras still seem to be relied upon for almost all driving decisions. It doesn’t seem like they are going the Waymo route.

Still, no one cares about Myanmar. Where is the UN? It’s even more useless than the EU!

On Nov 13th, there was a solar particle event that resulted in beautiful blankets of aurora. You may have seen it. We had the most amazing view and our crew collectively took thousands of photos and dozens of time lapses. Here is one of those time lapses. Nov 13th. Nikon Z9 | 14mm.

There are about as many Millennials as there are Boomers, but Millennials own significantly fewer houses even though they are well into child-raising age. Millennials own about 28% of owner-occupied homes while Boomers owned about 42% of homes at the same age. Today, Boomers still own about 38% of total owner-occupied homes.

RT @Swingtrader: Brilliant article by @profplum99 - I don’t think this could have been articulated anyway possibly better. t.co/Up…

The state of Tennessee has accused WhistlinDiesel of tax evasion for not paying sales tax on a Ferreira. The car was purchased under his LLC in Montana therefore he wouldn’t owe TN sales tax. What is so chilling to me, the state never sent a letter or attempted to reach him at all. 1st contact was the sheriff arresting him. It’s going to be exciting watching Cody expose government corruption.