Summer Slum/Elon Musk needs his own thread because he's in every damn thing/positive Elon Musk

Given the level of truthiness these guys support, Elon Musk could very well be described as a rogue employee. And someone who takes a lot of ketamine could conceivably be up at 3:15 AM making bad decisions. But it probably wasn't him, because he can't code things himself.

 

The big news now is Musk saying he's stepping away from politics. But he was part of Trump's meeting with the South African President yesterday, and yesterday he was also on Capitol Hill to push the tax bill. That isn't someone stepping away from politics. That's someone who wants people to stop hating him and is saying things to try to make it happen.

 

What these people say about theirselves holds no predictive value over what they will do.

 

I think the administration has figured out that Musk is unpopular with the public. Trump's approval ratings have been going up since Elon got sidelined, or at least quieter about what DOGE was accomplishing. Trump fans have been claiming this is a big victory, but I think it's just because Elon has been quieter. Since they're all about the show, they'll keep doing what they have been doing, just more quietly, with Elon getting a lot less press, but he will still be moving fast and breaking stuff in the background.

 

If the administration has political strategists, this is what they would like to happen but this depends on Musk staying in the background and when has he ever done this for any length of time since becoming a public figure? He craves attention.

 

He may not donate money, but watch his companies (or some organization they donate to) donate to politics.

It's like saying CfA isn't a political organization. IIRC, they're not...it's that WinShape or whatever they donate to which is the issue.

 

So this bot brought up the topic of "white genocide" in a discussion about HBO's name change? What's wrong with that? Of course it makes sense.

Just the other day I went into a lengthy dissertation about Brazil's use of the 4-4-2 in the 1958 World Cup when trying to convince my wife I should go to Vegas for a bachelor party.

 

Using one of those babies to get to Vegas would be a hoot!

 

Other than to differentiate it from their linear service, I'm not sure why they don't call their streaming service HBO.

I believe most TV providers sell the service as "Max" and it just happens to come with whatever linear HBO or Cinemax channels the provider has. (I believe there's 14 linear HBO channels and a similar number of linear Cinemax channels, although not all providers carry all channels.)

I get Max complimentary with my internet subscription. As a result, I pay little attention to the modern differences between HBO and Cinemax other than the occasional free preview.

Oddly enough, the Max app includes a few linear HBO channels and a CNN channel inside the app, although I don't think it's the actual CNN, but a variation.

There was a time when a customer could get HBO or Cinemax without the other, but I believe those days are long over.

Huh?

 

Sarcasm detector broken? I hear Walmart is having a big Memorial Day sale

(The point was that the bot brought up white genocide, a totally unrelated topic, in a discussion about HBO Max)

 

How can someone intelligently debate whether you should go to Vegas for a bachelor party if they don't have a handle on how the 4-4-2 was deployed by Brazil during the 1958 World Cup?

 

Exactly... madness! Just faulty female logic I guess

 

Especially since they employed a 4-2-4 in '58!

Ps...Pele had a fairly decent tournament for a 17 yr old [or for anyone else].

 

At this point, I’m starting to think that this is the automotive equivalent of leopards eating faces.

. Tesla’s warranty strategy isn’t just aggressive—it’s algorithmic warfare against its own customers. A California class-action lawsuit alleges the company uses predictive software to inflate odometer readings by up to 117%, voiding warranties prematurely and forcing owners into $10,000 repair bills. And if the Courts find it to be systematic? Global? Based on the lawsuit data, the total estimated annual financial benefit to Tesla is about $3.99 billion.

Nyree Hinton’s 2020 Model Y odometer logged 72 miles/day despite a 20-mile commute, burning through his 50,000-mile warranty in 18 months. Tesla’s system calculates distance using energy consumption and driving patterns rather than physical rotation, a method patented in 2023. This is not random or a glitch but part of Tesla’s revenue model. Every 1,000 algorithmically generated “miles” saves Tesla $200 in warranty repairs per vehicle, while pushing owners into $3,500 extended coverage plans.​

​

 

Anything to own the libs!

 

I don't always want to be the Tesla defender here, but there's a lot of "if true" in that lawsuit. If it's true that Tesla is messing with odometer readings, that would be terrible. But there's some clickbait in the article - the headline "Tesla's Odometer Lawsuit Could Be EV Industry's Dieselgate Moment" - (a) Dieselgate only affected VW; (b) I think it's highly unlikely that any other EV maker would be messing with odometers the way Tesla is alleged to have done in this lawsuit. Any EV from an established carmaker should have odometers as trustworthy as their other cars, and any EV only manufacturers (Rivian, Lucid, ...) probably wouldn't have inherited Tesla's disdain for rules and laws - I think? It's a pretty strong accusation but there's no indication that any manufacturer other than Tesla is involved in wrongdoing.

For the lawsuit itself - there's not a lot of details - the driver thinks he was only driving 20 miles per day but claims the odometer was going up by 70 miles per day at that time. Tesla probably has details on where the car went - they gather all kinds of data, which the owner agrees to when they buy the car - and can probably retrace that car's movement and show how many miles the car traveled. With that data, they should be able to shoot this guy's claims down. If they're not willing to show this as part of the lawsuit, that could be evidence that something is being hidden.

For the class action part - we have a 2022 Model Y and we have no indication that the odometer is acting differently than we expect. It's been my wife's main commute car and our main weekend car for over three years, and it has in the neighborhood of 36K miles (just looked it up on the app, since the car is in California and we're in Reno right now), which is what we would expect. If this is happening widely with Teslas, there should be a bunch of people coming forward to confirm this, but the lawsuit (so far) is just one guy who alleges that his lemon (he bought it used and it had ongoing suspension problems, which sucks, and is not inconsistent with Tesla's build quality) has unexplained odometer issues.

So, as a Tesla owner, a lot of this doesn't ring true. It sounds like a guy got a lemon and is pissed off about it - with good reason - but this class action lawsuit has a lot of extreme claims. If true, it's really bad, but is it true?

 

This reminds me of the scene in "Diner" where Steve Guttenberg's character is giving his fiance a test on the Colts

 

You seem to be saying “if the central allegation in the plaintiff’s lawsuit isn’t true they don’t have much of a lawsuit”. Which is kinda obvious, no? And if Tesla actually had the means to prove that allegation isn’t true….one would imagine they would have already provided that evidence in a motion to dismiss.

 

I guess my issue is that extraordinary claims (Tesla is systematically manipulating odometer readings in order to save money on warranty repairs) require extraordinary evidence. The statement of facts in the lawsuit - the list of things the guy is claiming happened - don't lead inexorably to the conclusion that the only way this could have happened is that Tesla is systematically manipulating odometer readings. The statement of facts reads like a reddit thread about bad customer service, and the far more likely explanation for those facts is that Tesla does, in fact, provide bad customer service.

As a member of the class in this lawsuit, my experiences with my Tesla's odometer do not match up with what is described in the lawsuit. The bad customer service, however, I can attest to. If we can file a class action lawsuit for bad customer service, I'm on board, but the odometer thing seems like a stretch.

And it seems like this lawsuit is still in the very early stages. It looks like it was filed in February 2025. I'm not an expert on class action lawsuits, but it seems like there's a lot of work to be done before they get to the point of sending out notifications to the affected class members to say "here's a class action lawsuit which affects you", which is usually the point at which I become aware of class action lawsuits that affect me. I don't think this one will reach that point, based on the statement of facts in the lawsuit.

 

Just off the top of my head, isn't this sort of thing quite easy to check anyway?

When I use my cheapo android phone for journey planning and recording it tells me how far I've driven and it's pretty damn accurate because it uses GPS data. So isn't it possible to drive somewhere and then check out how far you've driven according to google maps as measured by the phone and compare it to the car's odometer?