The Ford Pinto engineering design flaws are infamous, thus it has been the car most associated with preventable fire risks until… TESLA (updated July 2nd):

The driver, identified as an “executive entrepreneur”, was initially not able to get out of the car because its electronic door system failed, prompting the driver to “use force to push it open,” Mark Geragos, of Geragos & Geragos, said on Friday. The car continued to move for about 35 feet to 40 feet (11 to 12 meters) before turning into a “fireball” in a residential area near the owner’s Pennsylvania home. “It was a harrowing and horrifying experience,” Geragos said. “This is a brand new model… We are doing an investigation. We are calling for the S Plaid to be grounded, not to be on the road until we get to the bottom of this,” he said.

Hot off the desk of the un-professional PR department at Tesla is the related important story that their cars have a serious acceleration bug forcing a massive recall:

The remote online software ‘recall’ — a first for Tesla cars built in China — covers 249,855 China-made Model 3 and Model Y cars, and 35,665 imported Model 3 sedans.

The 300,000 cars being flagged for a critical safety failure are at risk of sudden acceleration due to problems with Tesla’s self-proclaimed “autopilot” software.

Yes, you read that right, the safety recall is because the very product feature that was supposed to make these cars safer is actually making them more dangerous.

An even deeper read to this story is that Tesla is pushing software updates to cars using an allegedly insecure supply chain. Given that the bug appeared in the first place, what is to prevent an even worse bug from being deployed to cars on the road at any time and in any place?

While some obviously want to celebrate the ability to remotely deploy update code, it may be wishful thinking to believe the update will not make things worse (Tesla’s 2.0 “autopilot” was infamously worse at safety than its 1.0 release).

Indeed, the “Plaid” model in flames above is using a “new version” of the battery for the S/X, which obviously is unsafe.

Tesla seems to regularly exhibit deploying bad code (the official insurance rating now has a “P” for poor safety in Tesla engineering) and pushing the cost of its own failure onto others.

Also worth mentioning is that Tesla’s PR system has been promoting acceleration as its top feature at the very same time that acceleration issues (coupled with handling and braking issues) are being cited in recent deaths of its customers.

This reads to me like Ford promoting the heating capabilities of its Pinto while its customers are dying in gasoline fires from preventable design defects.

• Killed in a Ford Pinto: 23 (estimated to be much higher)
• Killed in a Tesla: 86 so far…

Dmitri Alperovitch tweeted an oft-given and somewhat misleading statement that was picked up in a new article:

It’s unconstitutional to extradite Russians.

While technically (Article 61) might say it’s unconstitutional, it nonetheless has been done successfully multiple times:

• 2014 Seleznev extradited from Maldives
• 2017 Levashov extradited from Spain
• 2018 Nikulin extradited from Czechia
• 2019 Burkov extradited from Israel

There’s another wrinkle to the concept of constitutionality. When a Russian is nabbed in transit (via Red Notice, which currently publicly lists 2,979 Russians — nearly 60,000 notices are secret) …Russia rushes to file charges in order to “extradite” its own citizens.

A “pre-emptive” extradition request by Russia is intended prevent those charged elsewhere with crimes from being extradited for foreign prosecution, but it still proves the point that extradition happens.

Israel denied Russia’s extradition request for Burkov, for example, which is a single case that shows both Russia and the US recognized extradition as a viable negotiation platform.

A similar case was in 2005 when Yevgeny Adamov faced requests for extradition out of Switzerland by both Russia and the US. Unlike Burkov he was extradited by Russia, then tried and sentenced to five-and-a-half years in jail… released after two months with a suspended sentence.

Yes, you read that right. Russians extradite their own citizens into Russia for criminal prosecution, thus proving claims of “unconstitutional” misleading at best.

Perhaps “The Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press” reported it best way back in 2007 (page 4):

Mr. Miliband does not consider valid the Russian argument that the extradition of Russian citizens is prohibited by Russia’s Constitution. “That is true, but there have been numerous instances in which, in similar situations, countries have amended their constitutions to allow the extradition of criminals to the countries where their crimes were committed,” he said.

Alperovitch thus seems to have tweeted out a shallow talking point, and a reporter ran it without question or thinking about the context for the source.

I’ve pointed out a problem with such unqualified hot-takes before. Here is one of the more cringe-worthy and untrue statements that Alperovitch pushed into the press:

North Korea is one of the few countries that doesn’t have a real animal as a national animal…Which, I think, tells you a lot about the country itself.

That’s just obviously false. Many countries have a fake national animal, including Russia. Everyone surely knows Wales has its red dragon, Scotland a unicorn, England another dragon and Russia flies a double-headed eagle crest pretty much everywhere… the list goes on and on.

It’s always been a puzzle to me why Alperovitch comes across sounding so confident on these cultural and political issues that obviously he has not thoroughly researched.

Perhaps I can say it is like when he announced his new company named after a famous gay strip bar in Portland: Silverado.

Not what I was expecting.