As I said, my car does but I very rarely use it. There's a short bit of the M74 where I could probably turn it on for half an hour. But, south of the border I've yet to find any section of motorway during the day that's quiet enough for it to be useful (I don't generally drive overnight unless I have no other choice - I'm generally far too tired to risk that, and stopping every second service station for another caffeine hit also makes cruise control largely redundant).
But that has nothing to do with Musk, unless someone's reported him claiming to have invented cruise control.
Most cars in the UK don’t even have cruise control. As mentioned you could use them on some motorways but really they are redundant here
I use mine virtually every time I go on a motorway, and even on some A roads. Even if I have to flick it off briefly while waiting for an opportunity to pull out and overtake a slower vehicle, it's far easier and more fuel efficient than trying to maintain a constant speed by myself.
As I said, my car does but I very rarely use it. There's a short bit of the M74 where I could probably turn it on for half an hour. But, south of the border I've yet to find any section of motorway during the day that's quiet enough for it to be useful (I don't generally drive overnight unless I have no other choice - I'm generally far too tired to risk that, and stopping every second service station for another caffeine hit also makes cruise control largely redundant).
But that has nothing to do with Musk, unless someone's reported him claiming to have invented cruise control.
He certainly didn't. I can remember being rather impressed at least 25 yeas ago by a mechanical version (i.e. not electronic) in a Landrover.
As I said, my car does but I very rarely use it. There's a short bit of the M74 where I could probably turn it on for half an hour. But, south of the border I've yet to find any section of motorway during the day that's quiet enough for it to be useful (I don't generally drive overnight unless I have no other choice - I'm generally far too tired to risk that, and stopping every second service station for another caffeine hit also makes cruise control largely redundant).
But that has nothing to do with Musk, unless someone's reported him claiming to have invented cruise control.
He certainly didn't. I can remember being rather impressed at least 25 yeas ago by a mechanical version (i.e. not electronic) in a Landrover.
In my mind's eye this consists of a series of bricks of different weights to be placed on the accelerator.
Most cars in the UK don’t even have cruise control. As mentioned you could use them on some motorways but really they are redundant here
I use mine virtually every time I go on a motorway, and even on some A roads. Even if I have to flick it off briefly while waiting for an opportunity to pull out and overtake a slower vehicle, it's far easier and more fuel efficient than trying to maintain a constant speed by myself.
I do too. Adaptive cruise control is great. Both feet can have a rest.
Back to Musk. I heard he trusts almost no-one. Shades of Howard Hughes?
ETA - I googled 'Elon Musk and Howard Hughes' and came up with this interesting article -
Most cars in the UK don’t even have cruise control. As mentioned you could use them on some motorways but really they are redundant here
I use mine virtually every time I go on a motorway, and even on some A roads. Even if I have to flick it off briefly while waiting for an opportunity to pull out and overtake a slower vehicle, it's far easier and more fuel efficient than trying to maintain a constant speed by myself.
I do too. Adaptive cruise control is great. Both feet can have a rest.
With Intelligent Speed Adaption being mandated across the EU, these types of systems are going to become more common in other markets too - especially the UK.
I've adaptive cruise - fed by the cars navigation system - in general it works reasonably well, but there are a few spots where the mapping is obviously less than perfect and it reverts back momentarily to the maximum speed limit for that type of road. Anticipatory adjustment tends to work better when slowing down than speeding up too - as it seems to target the location of sign as the point at which the new speed limit should be hit.
Back to Musk; the real issue for him right now is that he purchased Twitter with money borrowed in part against his Tesla shares, and it's rapidly reaching the point where he'll need to post additional collateral.
I've adaptive cruise - fed by the cars navigation system - in general it works reasonably well, but there are a few spots where the mapping is obviously less than perfect and it reverts back momentarily to the maximum speed limit for that type of road. Anticipatory adjustment tends to work better when slowing down than speeding up too - as it seems to target the location of sign as the point at which the new speed limit should be hit.
That's not what I think of as adaptive cruise control. The thing I call adaptive cruise control maintains your speed at whatever setpoint you set, unless the car's sensors detect a vehicle in front of you, in which case it slows to match speed with traffic. It's almost entirely great, with occasional bouts of pathalogical behavior (you're driving at speed, come up behind another car and auto-slow, other car slows to 25 or 30 mph because you're driving though a small village and there's a posted speed limit, so you auto-slow as well. Then the other car turns off the road, and suddenly there's an empty road in front of you so your car accelerates back up to 60 mph or whatever.
ISA uses external inputs to either encourage or force your vehicle to conform to posted speed limits, and is I think the system you describe. I haven't driven a car equipped with that, although my GPS does a pretty good job of telling me what the local speed limit is, and whether I'm exceeding it. Given that typical behavior in these parts is to drive between 70 and 80 mph on a highway with a posted 60 mph limit, the introduction here of cars that enforced a speed limit on you would be "interesting".
I've adaptive cruise - fed by the cars navigation system - in general it works reasonably well, but there are a few spots where the mapping is obviously less than perfect and it reverts back momentarily to the maximum speed limit for that type of road. Anticipatory adjustment tends to work better when slowing down than speeding up too - as it seems to target the location of sign as the point at which the new speed limit should be hit.
That's not what I think of as adaptive cruise control. The thing I call adaptive cruise control maintains your speed at whatever setpoint you set, unless the car's sensors detect a vehicle in front of you, in which case it slows to match speed with traffic.
Yes, and that's exactly what I have, except the cruise control speed limit is also (optionally) altered by the navigation system.
ISA would generally also warn the driver in some way either visually/audibly or via some kind of haptic feedback (e.g altering accelerator pedal response), though a number of manufacturers are integrating it into their adaptive cruise (and other driver assistance systems).
Interesting Musk news out of Russia. First up, Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov claims that Elon Musk gave him a Cybertruck. Naturally the thing to do with such a gift is to mount a machine gun on it and say you're going to deploy it to Ukraine. This is somewhat problematic because Kadyrov has been under U.S. sanctions since 2017, with additional sanctions added on after Russia's 2022 re-invasion of Ukraine.
The second bit of sanctions-busting Mr. Musk may have been engaged in is this.
The war in the Black Sea has been shaped, maybe even defined, by maritime drones. So far it has been a Ukrainian dominated arena, with Russia lagging behind Ukraine in the adoption of uncrewed surface vessels (USVs). Now Russia appears to be slowly entering the game with increasingly credible designs.
The latest type, the Murena-300S appears generally comparable with Ukrainian types. And more significantly, it appears to have a Starlink antenna.
Of course it's possible that Kadyrov got a Cybertruck from a different source and is falsely claiming that it's a gift from Musk, just as it's possible that a Russian satellite antenna coincidentally has the exact same external configuration as a Starlink antenna, but in this case the simplest explanation is also fully consistent with everything we know about Elon Musk.
Of course Starlink hardware is hardly a state secret and sanctions against Russia aren't really a thing beyond the west. It's entirely possible Russia is getting Starlink hardware on the grey market or having duplicates manufactured in China while using their own satellites to provide coverage.
Of course Starlink hardware is hardly a state secret and sanctions against Russia aren't really a thing beyond the west. It's entirely possible Russia is getting Starlink hardware on the grey market or having duplicates manufactured in China while using their own satellites to provide coverage.
Yes, it could be a case of the unusually large market for luxury cars in Kazakhstan, but Starlink itself can be geographically/terminal restricted.
Probably didn't make the news beyond UK academic circles, but Jisc (provider of a lot of research and higher education infrastructure in the UK) has suspended all activity on X in response to (unspecified) "recent events that are incompatible with our values ". https://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/all/our-statement-on-leaving-x-twitter
I’m not expecting it, but I would love to see Elon Musk try to sue the World Bank. Oh my God that would be just delicious. I wish he would bite off more than he, even with his insane wealth, can chew.
I see that 'X/Twitter' has been banned in Brazil .... let's hope other countries follow suit .... except, I suspect, something equally bad or worse will rise from the ashes.
There seems to be little chance, given Human Nature,' that Intetnet content will ever be, in toto, anything other than what it is.
While part of me has some amusement at Brazil upsetting Musk, I want Twitter to be fixed, not banned or destroyed. There are good people and things there that I am not seeing elsewhere at the moment. I was literally listening (and posting questions) to a live discussion of things on there today involving people who are definitely not on the Trump side of things. I don’t know how well that might have worked on, say, Facebook.
As well, if someone accesses the platform through some means, they’re fined nearly $9,000 per day. 😮 I want to see Musk deal with the consequences of his horribleness, not ordinary people.
I don't think it's necessarily a good thing to set this kind of precedent.
What should happen when an overseas company refuses to comply with local laws and court orders?
I agree. It is not always good but it is the law. If you choose to break it there are consequences.
China and its rules about passing on data to the government comes to mind as well.
The law is the law. The Brazilians can push for it to be changed, but good or bad it is what it is.
X, formerly Twitter, has been banned in Brazil after failing to meet a deadline set by a Supreme Court judge to name a new legal representative in the country.
Alexandre de Moraes ordered the "immediate and complete suspension" of the social media platform until it complies with all court orders and pays existing fines.
The row began in April, with the judge ordering the suspension of dozens of X accounts for allegedly spreading disinformation.
<snip>
It [ Xitter ] closed its office in Brazil earlier this month, saying its representative had been threatened with arrest if she did not comply with orders it described as "censorship" - as well as illegal under Brazilian law.
Essentially Xitter shut down their Brazilian offices so that there would be no local representative to implement court orders.
So which precedent should we be more worried about setting? That some forms of speech are false and harmful to a degree that it can be restricted by the state, or that a large corporation can evade the law by simply shutting down its local offices and operating "offshore"? For my money the more worrying precedent is saying that corporations are above the law.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/30/world/americas/brazil-elon-musk-x-blocked.html
(the original order also banned various VPNs and requested both Apple and Google to remove them from their app stores for Brazilian users on the basis that they could be used by users - not Twitter/X - to evade the ban - even the judge's allies gave him push back on this which is why it was reversed a few hours ago)
If you want a parallel example; I'm sure Bolsanaro would have been happy to use similar legislation to make his problems go away after his backers had found a judge willing to go after Lula.
It [ Xitter ] closed its office in Brazil earlier this month, saying its representative had been threatened with arrest if she did not comply with orders it described as "censorship" - as well as illegal under Brazilian law.
Essentially Xitter shut down their Brazilian offices so that there would be no local representative to implement court orders.
So which precedent should we be more worried about setting? That some forms of speech are false and harmful to a degree that it can be restricted by the state, or that a large corporation can evade the law by simply shutting down its local offices and operating "offshore"?
Both of them and not necessarily in the same way. In particular the latter issue is a complex one that needs unpicking.
First, it already happens, and is one way in which global firms (often American in origin) have pushed particular approaches to regulation around the planet.
Second, if you want to mandate that all companies should have offices in every jurisdiction in which they operate which are independently capable of pushing legal compliance (which in this case includes the technical ability to do so) I'm on board, as long as this is a standard generally adopted and not just focused on the one issue of permitted speech.
If you want to mandate that all local company employees are personally responsible for the behaviour of the parent company then I'm no longer on board, because in practice this results in CEOs fleeing arrest and lower level employees being prosecuted:
Musk gets away with saying whatever he wants because he can afford an army of lawyers to defend him. He called that caver who helped rescue the Thai boys a pedo and won the defamation case.
All the more reason to tax the super-rich out of existence. They can settle for being normal rich.
Mrs RR, an avid listener to BBC news and comment, tells me that Elon Musk on X has been urging folk to vote for Trump for, and I kid you not, 'the sake of democracy'. We need a strong leader, he opines.
I ask you ... can this be true?
You have to question the business acumen of a man who develops electric vehicles while allying himself with the population segment most likely to consider EVs to be part of a communist plot and alienating the people most likely to buy them.
He has reportedly that if the Democrats win, this will be the last election in US history. He appears to be living in an alternatve universe.
Musk’s reasoning is that he believes Democrats will grant citizenship to so many immigrants that it will dilute the votes of real Americans like him. Sounds like he’s nostalgic for the kind of political system he was born into.
Philadelphia’s district attorney asked a state judge on Monday to shut down tech billionaire Elon Musk’s controversial $1 million giveaway to registered voters, calling it an “illegal lottery scheme.”
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat, filed the civil lawsuit against Musk and his pro-Trump group, America PAC.
“America PAC and Musk are lulling Philadelphia citizens – and others in the Commonwealth (and other swing states in the upcoming election) – to give up their personal identifying information and make a political pledge in exchange for the chance to win $1 million,” the lawsuit alleges. “That is a lottery. And it is indisputably an unlawful lottery.”
Comments
But that has nothing to do with Musk, unless someone's reported him claiming to have invented cruise control.
I use mine virtually every time I go on a motorway, and even on some A roads. Even if I have to flick it off briefly while waiting for an opportunity to pull out and overtake a slower vehicle, it's far easier and more fuel efficient than trying to maintain a constant speed by myself.
In my mind's eye this consists of a series of bricks of different weights to be placed on the accelerator.
I do too. Adaptive cruise control is great. Both feet can have a rest.
Back to Musk. I heard he trusts almost no-one. Shades of Howard Hughes?
ETA - I googled 'Elon Musk and Howard Hughes' and came up with this interesting article -
https://tinyurl.com/423tzd4c
With Intelligent Speed Adaption being mandated across the EU, these types of systems are going to become more common in other markets too - especially the UK.
I've adaptive cruise - fed by the cars navigation system - in general it works reasonably well, but there are a few spots where the mapping is obviously less than perfect and it reverts back momentarily to the maximum speed limit for that type of road. Anticipatory adjustment tends to work better when slowing down than speeding up too - as it seems to target the location of sign as the point at which the new speed limit should be hit.
Back to Musk; the real issue for him right now is that he purchased Twitter with money borrowed in part against his Tesla shares, and it's rapidly reaching the point where he'll need to post additional collateral.
https://fortune.com/2024/08/15/elon-musk-tesla-stock-sale-twitter-x-advertiser-boycott-finances-bradford-ferguson/
That's not what I think of as adaptive cruise control. The thing I call adaptive cruise control maintains your speed at whatever setpoint you set, unless the car's sensors detect a vehicle in front of you, in which case it slows to match speed with traffic. It's almost entirely great, with occasional bouts of pathalogical behavior (you're driving at speed, come up behind another car and auto-slow, other car slows to 25 or 30 mph because you're driving though a small village and there's a posted speed limit, so you auto-slow as well. Then the other car turns off the road, and suddenly there's an empty road in front of you so your car accelerates back up to 60 mph or whatever.
ISA uses external inputs to either encourage or force your vehicle to conform to posted speed limits, and is I think the system you describe. I haven't driven a car equipped with that, although my GPS does a pretty good job of telling me what the local speed limit is, and whether I'm exceeding it. Given that typical behavior in these parts is to drive between 70 and 80 mph on a highway with a posted 60 mph limit, the introduction here of cars that enforced a speed limit on you would be "interesting".
Yes, and that's exactly what I have, except the cruise control speed limit is also (optionally) altered by the navigation system.
ISA would generally also warn the driver in some way either visually/audibly or via some kind of haptic feedback (e.g altering accelerator pedal response), though a number of manufacturers are integrating it into their adaptive cruise (and other driver assistance systems).
Maybe he's too busy with lawyers trying to work out how fucked he is by Khelif's cyber bullying complaint.
He did an interview with Trump in the past week and has been on various channels and podcasts decrying the 'woke mind virus'
What a happy coincidence of speelings...
The second bit of sanctions-busting Mr. Musk may have been engaged in is this.
Remember when Musk was supposedly appalled at the idea that Starlink would be used for warfare? I guess he was only appalled that it would have been used in warfare by Ukraine.
Of course it's possible that Kadyrov got a Cybertruck from a different source and is falsely claiming that it's a gift from Musk, just as it's possible that a Russian satellite antenna coincidentally has the exact same external configuration as a Starlink antenna, but in this case the simplest explanation is also fully consistent with everything we know about Elon Musk.
Yes, it could be a case of the unusually large market for luxury cars in Kazakhstan, but Starlink itself can be geographically/terminal restricted.
That well known left wing hotbed of wokery.
I think in Musk land World Bank = Globalist Bankers = Jews.
There seems to be little chance, given Human Nature,' that Intetnet content will ever be, in toto, anything other than what it is.
As well, if someone accesses the platform through some means, they’re fined nearly $9,000 per day. 😮 I want to see Musk deal with the consequences of his horribleness, not ordinary people.
I don't think it's necessarily a good thing to set this kind of precedent.
What should happen when an overseas company refuses to comply with local laws and court orders?
I agree. It is not always good but it is the law. If you choose to break it there are consequences.
China and its rules about passing on data to the government comes to mind as well.
The law is the law. The Brazilians can push for it to be changed, but good or bad it is what it is.
Well, let's look at what's going on here, shall we?
Essentially Xitter shut down their Brazilian offices so that there would be no local representative to implement court orders.
So which precedent should we be more worried about setting? That some forms of speech are false and harmful to a degree that it can be restricted by the state, or that a large corporation can evade the law by simply shutting down its local offices and operating "offshore"? For my money the more worrying precedent is saying that corporations are above the law.
I think in this particular case you proceed with a great deal of caution avoiding overreach, and acting in a manner which is precipitate:
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240829-brazil-judge-musk-standoff-intensifies-as-starlink-assets-frozen
Similarly from here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/30/world/americas/brazil-elon-musk-x-blocked.html
(the original order also banned various VPNs and requested both Apple and Google to remove them from their app stores for Brazilian users on the basis that they could be used by users - not Twitter/X - to evade the ban - even the judge's allies gave him push back on this which is why it was reversed a few hours ago)
If you want a parallel example; I'm sure Bolsanaro would have been happy to use similar legislation to make his problems go away after his backers had found a judge willing to go after Lula.
Both of them and not necessarily in the same way. In particular the latter issue is a complex one that needs unpicking.
First, it already happens, and is one way in which global firms (often American in origin) have pushed particular approaches to regulation around the planet.
Second, if you want to mandate that all companies should have offices in every jurisdiction in which they operate which are independently capable of pushing legal compliance (which in this case includes the technical ability to do so) I'm on board, as long as this is a standard generally adopted and not just focused on the one issue of permitted speech.
If you want to mandate that all local company employees are personally responsible for the behaviour of the parent company then I'm no longer on board, because in practice this results in CEOs fleeing arrest and lower level employees being prosecuted:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/india-farmer-protests-jail-twitter-b1797443.html
(Unless you want to remove the corporate veil altogether, in which case, welcome comrade).
Dictionary
Definitions from Oxford Languages
adjective informal•US
unpleasant, squalid, or distasteful.
But yes.
I'm reasonably convinced by the arguments that it amounts to a rape threat.
I would say that it does, but also, it was worded so that he would get away with it if challenged.
I suppose you *could* read it as an offer to hand over one of his many, many existing children he doesn't give a shit about.
Does Mr. Musk realize that Ms. Switft's current boyfriend is a rather large and athletic fellow?
All the more reason to tax the super-rich out of existence. They can settle for being normal rich.
I ask you ... can this be true?
It is despicable
And it's not an accident, it's been deliberate strategy since at least the administration of Bush the Less (per Karl Rove).
Musk’s reasoning is that he believes Democrats will grant citizenship to so many immigrants that it will dilute the votes of real Americans like him. Sounds like he’s nostalgic for the kind of political system he was born into.
He himself being an immigrant who only obtained US citizenship in 2002.
Yeah but he's white. [they're just about avoiding saying part out loud, but only just]
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/10/28/politics/elon-musk-philadelphia-lawsuit