Urgo

Their internal name was "GlobalCoin" but looks like it will be called "Libra". That said I like "FaceBuck" or "ZuckBuck" way better!

Worst UX ever. Even more annoying then slideshows. You click the link expecting to be able to read the story but instead you're forced to sit through the most annoying opening sequence ever. Pro tip: click over and over again and it finally does go away and you are allowed to scroll down, but be aware when scrolling down the story disappears into a full screen image with a single line of text several times. Is there another source for this?

Guessing its due to the features of the car being locked into some part of memory that can not be updated over the air and bringing it in will allow them to update it so future OTA updates will give the correct update.

Basically change the car's version from being a M3 SR to M3 SR+

Yes I am aware they are different cars but the upgrade process from my understanding is pretty much the same.

Also look at my UPDATE post. It looks like this is 100% consensual. As I expected the people who were effected by this knew when they accepted delivery of the car that these features were a sort of free trial. They could have declined the car and waited until the the features were locked out but they accepted it knowing they were a free trial.

Incorrect. I've had a Model S for almost 4 years now. In every case when an update comes out I have clicked "install now". If an update isn't desired you simply don't install it. The only thing I'll fault them on is the release notes aren't shown until after you install the update so its hard to know if you want it or not unless you look online. But in short, there IS a way to say no.

UPDATE:

Looking at the comment section on the Electrek [1] version of this story it looks like the people who will be effected by this WERE TOLD when they got the car that this would be happening. So they knew they were getting these features for free for now and it would be taken away unless they paid for them (a free trial). They could have refused the car right there and waited if they wanted to but preferred to get the car early and enjoyed their free trial. It seems the only people complaining about this are people who aren't effected by it.

"I have a M3 SR, This change is not unexpected and I knew what I was buying... having the additional features for a little while wasn't a problem. I'm glad that they started selling the SR earlier than waiting for the software to be ready." - FS21 [2]

[1] https://electrek.co/2019/06/07/tesla-downgrading-model-3-sta...

[2] https://electrek.co/2019/06/07/tesla-downgrading-model-3-sta...

All computer/phone operating system providers these days release updates to add/remove features as well. They don't own the hardware either.

Your loss. Have had a Model S for almost 4 years and it is absolutely amazing.

Also I probably should point out that when the updates come out it is still up to the user, at least to some extent on whether they want to upgrade or not. I think it turns into a snooze game though but I know there were people that held out for years on software updates because they liked the old UX better. So you don't HAVE to update, its just pretty much universally preferred to upgrade.

They're not actually limiting the software (except maybe the music I guess? but that's no different then just shutting off your siriusxm trial). They're just limiting the hardware that wasn't paid for via software.

As I mentioned in another comment I'd be surprised if Tesla didn't tell people when they were handed the keys that they were getting extras to "try out".

That said you do have a good point on their return policy.

Test drives are a different beast altogether though. At least when I got my Tesla 4 years ago it wasn't common to test drive the same exact configuration you were ordering anyway since everything is custom built.

I guess for both of these items if they were to come up I'd hope Tesla would be generous, but I still see nothing wrong with them removing features people didn't pay for.

They can also modify it to add features. I have a Model S I bought before auto pilot was released. I had prepaid for it though so when it was ready I got it. And over the years other features that weren't even announced I also got for free. It goes both ways. So is it troubling they can modify the car to add functionality?

I get it if they are modifying it to remove something you paid for, but that is NOT the case here.

I'm with you on that. Ideally it shouldn't have been given at all. I just don't see any issue with Tesla updating things to match what the customer paid for. And again, the Tesla website is super easy to use and they detail everything. You know EXACTLY what you are ordering when you order it. I may be bummed if I got some free extras if I was one of these customers but I'd be totally fine if the extras went away since I hadn't paid for them.

I'm wondering if when the customers were handed the keys though if Tesla let them know about this "free trial" of sorts.

It only feels bad because you (not saying you, but you know what I mean) thought you were getting away with getting something for free you didn't pay for and it's being taken back.

Really not sure why everyone is up in arms over this. The person buying the car knows exactly what they are buying when they order it. They just got some upgrades for free that they didn't pay for to try for a little bit. I think its great that Tesla includes them and is able to unlock them via software. The alternative is if you bought the low end car and later decided to upgrade you'd have to bring your car in, they'd have to tear apart seats/etc to upgrade the hardware, remove an old battery to put in a new one, etc. The system as it stands now may seem a little weird that you actually have hardware you didn't pay for but it's not unlike upgrading to get more features on some other service.

The fact of the matter again is the people who bought the cars after this update will get exactly what they paid for. If they want the upgraded version they could have either bought it from the start, or they can still upgrade.

Looks cool. If the app was on the play store I'd test it out, but looks like its not released. Below is the relevant quote from the story which links to their website which has no info.

"The researchers plan on commercializing this technology through a spinout company, Edus Health [1], and then making the app available to the public."

[1] http://edushealth.com/

Random thought after reading all the comments about abolishing all time zones and switching to UTC only. The biggest complaint people would have is they wouldn't know what time morning was for example. Morning would be 7am somewhere but 7pm somewhere else. But we already have the same type of situation with the seasons anyway. It's summer in the northern hemisphere while its winter in the southern. We should have month zones if we wanted to operate the same way.

So with that being said, I've always been a supporter of switching to DST only and this proposal actually does push my state that way, but I think I actually could support UTC only as well.

So.. google wave is back?

AMP: https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Dynamic-Ma...

Wave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBzuuWZPaXc&feature=youtu.be...

So let me get this..

Google allows 3rd parties to use their OS, allows 3rd party app stores, etc but gets a huge fine for bundling their own native app store.

Apple doesn't allow 3rd parties to do anything and you need to use their app store but they're totally fine here.

Good job Europe.

"filed for bankruptcy ahead of a $134 million debt payment due Monday"

wow

"The company has roughly $5.6 billion in outstanding debt"

wow!

That got me to google. As it turns out, only 18 out of the 500 s&p 500 companies don't have ant dept. That is crazy to think about.

https://www.retirebeforedad.com/debt-free-sp-500-companies/

Before moving to GCP we actually did experiment with putting some of our services on a VPS at OVH as well as other providers to see how well they would handle our traffic. The issue we had with OVH specifically was that whenever traffic got high they thought there was an attack in place and automatic firewalls went up that took us down for hours at a time. Upon contacting support we were told "After looking into the matter, it would seem that our VPS do not have a profile that would accomodate your traffic spikes"

We've never had an issue like this after moving to GCP.

We have about 700k users who have opted in to our newsletter but we only send one a couple times a year. As a result mailchimp's costs are way too much so we've used Sendy the past couple years. Our emails are definitely not spam as they're announcing new products/features/company related/etc and again, only a couple of times a year... but over time more and more often the newsletters end up in peoples spam folders. We're sending through SES so this really shouldn't be an issue but it does. I'm not sure if Mailtrain will do something that sendy doesn't do to make mail deliver better but it really seems more like mailchimp gives some kickback or deal to gmail/etc or gmail just knows that people using mailchimp are paying a lot so that goes through...

Anyway long story short, Mailtrain sounds interesting if it can solve this issue... but it's really not just spam that gets blocked as spam these days, its a major pay to play game and its the email companies that are getting paid, not the people getting the emails.

First shameless self plug for whomever watches YouTube videos, Twitch streams, or consumes instagram via the web (twitter soon too) our Social Blade extension brings stats directly to the video/image page: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-blade/cfidk...

Beyond that here are a few others I like that I haven't seen mentioned:

hckr news: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hckr-news/mnlaodle... (marks what new comments are here)

Honey: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/honey/bmnlcjabgnpn... (shows price charts on amazon products plus finds a lower priced one if amazon shows a higher priced one first)

Momentum: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/momentum/laookkfkn... (inspiring images on new tab page)

Pushbullet: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pushbullet/chlffgp... (get my android notifications on my desktop/laptop)

Twitter Account Switcher: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/twitcher-twitter-a... (for changing between more then one twitter account)

Unix Timestamp Converter: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unix-timestamp-con...

Gestures for Google Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gestures-for-googl... (can close tabs, switch tabs, etc with right clicking and dragging mouse etc)

I second this. Currently using it (though not the borderless account, looks like that is new and need to check it out) to pay contractors in Canada and Australia.

The original lacks the actual video of the event though

Okay let me rephrase a little.. I've had a Tesla since day 1 of auto pilot (so the gen 1 hardware). Back when it first came out it was good but not great. They've made a ton of tweaks since then, almost two years ago now including the gen 2 hardware with a full suite of cameras which will eventually bypass my gen 1 system. Anyway when it first came out a lot of people were posting videos doing stupid things like riding in the back when the system wasn't mature enough yet to really support that.

So now, almost two years later, if you're on a highway with clear markings and good weather, though the car is programmed to nag you every ~5 minutes no matter what to basically just nudge the wheel, the car is better then a human at driving. Theoretically if Audi does get ready to release this they could simply remove the nags and have a much better system for the use case Audi is describing (Tesla supports up to 90mph). Again, for highway driving the nags are basically there for Tesla to cover their you know what. Off highway you can use it but it's more of a gimmick still as you have to very closely babysit it on most roads.

Hope that makes things more clear.

[Quick Edit: One other thing the nags are good for is just in case there is a scenario that they haven't accounted for they can say that they told the driver to put their hands on the wheel and they ignored the nag. Tesla has two years of an entire fleet of cars using and proving the system. Audi will be releasing it theoretically w/o this in place and telling drivers no hands needed right away.. I'd be skeptical on that vs what Tesla has already been proving]

In all seriousness, on the highway, most of the time the requirement is more of legal thing rather then actually needed. Yes, my Model S asks me to touch the wheel every ~5 minutes but it doesn't really need me too.. off highways different story, but highway autopilot on tesla, when markings are clear is pretty spot on these days.

“We like to bet with where we think the market is going as opposed to where the market was”

Translation

"Sprint was the only carrier that was in a place to take a bet on us and promote and pay us what we were asking for, or even allow us to put our phone in their stores and have access to the brick and mortar market"

Yes! My side project turned into my day job several years ago but to this day one of the largest source of income it brings in is from ads. I now use more of a niche ad network provider to serve our ads but at the beginning everything was google adsense. While its true that day 1 ads didn't generate enough to cover costs but since I self hosted and worked hard to optimize everything I didn't have huge AWS bills to pay and costs were really low anyway. It was only six month ago that we finally made the jump to the cloud.

Anyway the point is, at least if you're not targeting an user base that has ad block enabled, ads, and I'm not talking about annoying ads, still can work just fine. What we do is offer our users a fairly cheap subscription option to disable the ads too along with getting some extra features so a lot of people jumped on that too... but I love being able to offer most of our services to everyone without any cost so thank you advertisers!

Not thrilled with it but we use paypal for our reoccurring payments. Users trust it and don't have to fork over their credit cards, but I get scared every time someone lies and says they didn't authorize the charge and having to prove to paypal that they indeed did get what they ordered fearing they'll freeze our account or something. Also it does cause confusion where the subscription is managed at paypal instead of on our site. That said, it does work 99% of the time.

If only this were android I'd back it and even sign up for the beta package on kickstarter right away. Sadly ios with no mention of android :( Looks cool though, repost when there's android..