Category Archives: Security

Security

Tesla Recall Recalled: 2015-2020 Model S Hood May Pop at Speed and Blind Driver

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It’s a hood, so that’s what I’m calling it. Just like the Nazi Tatra T87.

Nazi high ranking officer prepares the "frunk" to commit suicide in his Tatra T87, an inspiration to Tesla management.
Nazi high ranking officer prepares the “frunk” to commit suicide in his Tatra T87, apparently an inspiration for Tesla management.

Musk says Tesla… Hitler said Tatra, where’s the difference in management, seriously?

China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) has allegedly announced reopening an earlier recall of Tesla Model S imported from California.

…expanded a late 2021 recall to cover more imported Model S electric vehicles due to the risk of their front trunks (frunks) opening unexpectedly while the vehicle is in motion. […] If the secondary latch is not locked when the primary latch is accidentally released, the frunk lid may suddenly open while the vehicle is in motion. If this happens, it will affect the driver’s view, increasing the risk of a crash…

It’s interesting because there has been ongoing global confusion about this safety issue; somehow a bunch of Model S sent to China were dropped out of the 500,000 cars recalled by Tesla in 2021 for the same issue.

According to documents submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), there are 475,318 vehicles subject to the recall… The Model S recall is particularly concerning because the issue affects the front trunk, which could obstruct the driver’s view of the road if it flies open while driving.

This comes not long after Tesla had to recall last December over 400,000 of its cars in China, which was right after their recall last November for another 80,000.

The numbers seem big because they are, in fact, rediculously high for a company that promised it would be better than all others. Tesla’s 20 recalls in 2022 affected 3,769,581 vehicles putting on par with buying a Kia, worse than a VW.

Worse than a VW.

Have I mentioned VW was basically a copy of the Nazi-killing unsafe Tatra?

Food for thought considering the Chinese-owned (Geely) Swedish Polestar has had just one single recall, affecting under 100 vehicles.

Sailing, Security

Blind Tesla on Freeway Crashes Into Boat Trailer

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It’s clear from this video that the Tesla doesn’t detect the boat at all, and doesn’t understand the turn signal.

It encroaches dangerously from far behind, a predictably dumb move as if asleep at the wheel.

Perhaps the most important detail here is the Tesla doesn’t hit the brakes until it crashes into a car clearly in front of it and then the boat.

Watching this video I hope very much that your own instinct to hit the brakes kicked in a long time before this Tesla’s brake lights turn on. The obvious failure to slow indicates to me yet another vehicular assault by the Tesla. Arrest the driver for driving under the influence.

Radar? What radar?

Tesla cut costs by downgrading to the least costly and least capable sensor technology, as demanded by the CEO over engineering safety objections.

Former Tesla employees say the decision to remove radar immediately caused problems. Complaints filed with regulators reveal that vehicles were allegedly “stopping for imaginary hazards, misinterpreting street signs, and failing to detect obstacles” including emergency vehicles.

Add boats to the list.

History, Security

What Could Be More Steampunk Than A Ukrainian Maxim Machine Gun Quad Shooting Down Iranian Drones?

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The Ukrainian and Russian approaches to war could not be more opposite.

Learning and innovating, creating and maintaining, Ukrainians are showing off four colonial-era Maxim machine guns (made famous in WWI) turned into a quad anti-drone machine. Ukrainians are thinking hard, and working hard in measurable ways. It has signs of long-view sustainable effeminacy.

Russia meanwhile is using its lazy oil money to buy automated throwaway machines operated by humans who have been told to never think. Toxic masculinity.

No wonder Russia has been failing nearly 100 times a day to attempt a basic assault, stalled and confused. You’d think, if you are allowed to think, that after 8 or 18 or 28 failures the Russians would change tactics, learn or adapt instead of suicide. Alas, pride and privilege blinds them into horrific levels of self-owns through basic short-sighted waste.

Underneath all this is the political analysis that Russia’s dictator became angry when Ukraine started talking about reducing foreign-run corruption. Was Ukraine corrupt? Yes, because Russia tried to make it so (like asking if Kenya was corrupted under British Colonialism).

Individuals given agency, working hard, in a domestic merit based system? That simple Ukrainian aspiration was such an affront to lazy oligarchs in Russia thirsty for endless exploitation… a war was started to erase Ukraine and block anti-corruption.

The invasion by Russia was expected by them to prove an infinite supply of thoughtless drones (human and machine) could sustain top-down corruption, in effect attempting to overwhelm then criminalize any independent and creative ideas of the Ukrainians.

We’re seeing clearly how the opposition plays out.

I’d also like to unwind how the old Maxim destruction automation script is getting flipped — it originally was unleashed by Britain to wipe out Africans who dared to assert independence from corrupt colonial oppression. Wave after wave of indigenous soldier charge was decimated by just a few occupying British holding down the trigger on a Maxim.

During the Matabele War of 1893-4, fifty British infantrymen with four Maxim guns held off 5,000 Matabele in a 90-minute engagement, killing 3,000 of their attackers… [In the] Battle of Omdurman on September 2, 1898. British forces faced a vastly larger force of Sudanese Mahdists, but the British had six Maxim guns. As the Mahdists jogged toward the British lines, the Maxim guns opened fire alongside the infantry. Hardly a single Mahdist got within a quarter of a mile of their enemies. 11,000 Sudanese died, almost all killed by the Maxim guns. The British and their Egyptian allies lost only 48 men. “It was not a battle,” one eye-witness wrote, “but an execution.”

Inverse to today’s news of Ukrainian volunteers stopping waves of invading Russians. But all those details will have to wait.

History. It’s fascinating, especially in terms of oppressors falling.

Old photos of the Soviet-era Maxim M1910, repurposed today by Ukraine:

Quad-Maxim M1910, Moscow, Russia, 21 Jun 1942.

Security

Pattern of Failure: Another Tesla Driver Arrested for Vehicular Assault

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A Subaru making a left turn at approximately 8am was hit at high speed by a Tesla that plowed straight into it. Police charged the Tesla with assault, arrested the driver.

The Subaru driver — a 31-year-old male — was extricated by Fire-Rescue personnel and transported to the hospital with significant injuries. The Tesla driver—a 50-year-old male—did not report any injuries at the scene. The drivers were the only occupants of both vehicles. The Tesla driver, Dion Jordan of Erie, was booked into the Boulder County jail this morning on a single felony charge of vehicular assault-reckless driving.

It fits a pattern I’ve discussed before here many times, where Tesla’s “free speed extemist” marketing and poor engineering quality results in a particularly dangerous rise in crashes, especially intersections.

Related: Homicide charge for a Tesla driving at high speed through an intersection. No other factors were cited, confusing the prosecutors who are used to investigating high risk influences such as drugs or alcohol. Did the accused have impaired judgment? Yes, he was in a Tesla.

This latest case documents again how and why police are reporting Tesla has become a threat to national security… as I quoted recently:

“This is our third catastrophic crash with Teslas in just the last couple weeks,” Martin County Sheriff William Snyder said Saturday. “We’re seeing an overall pattern here in Martin County of more aggressive driving, greater speeds and just a general cavalier sense towards their fellow motorists’ safety.”

A systemic problem from these catastrophic Tesla engineering failures needs a systemic solution. Perhaps all the Tesla crashing at high speed into police and fire vehicles like a Kamikaze was the thing that really made this point? Police seeing a Tesla should probably start treating it like impaired judgment, swinging around an explosive missile about to assault someone.

Unsafe for public roads, sorry. If the dangerously diseased Tesla isn’t properly quarantined, away from society, its owner should be arrested.

Tesla lawyers have tried to defend obvious design flaws by using basic science denialism, ignoring safety canon (slow is smooth… and safe).