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Wish: Tesla "Learn to Drive" App

Mazie is taking drivers education and soon we are going to find a vacant parking lot and I’m going to have her get behind the wheel and drive. Contemplating this I decided we are going to use the Honda Pilot for this, and not the Tesla Model 3. Driving a Tesla is so different from a gas car that I worry it wouldn’t set her up well. I actually wish I had my Mini Cooper S with manual transmission for this exercise.

While the differences between electric and gas are so large, there are a lot of ways that the Model 3 could be a better platform for a learner.

This all made me think that it would be really neat if Tesla had a “Learn to Drive” app. What would it do?

  1. The app would allow you to put the car in learner mode. This would not only reduce the power output of the car, similar to valet mode, but also change the power curve to match that of a gas engine. Electric motors have so much low end torque, and I would worry about that amount of power with a brand new driver. I would think software could change that to emulate a gas engines curve, and simulate a gas experience.
  2. This app would allow the user to have controls for the car, most notably to safely stop the car. A big red “STOP” button on the screen would give the parent or teacher the ability to override.
  3. The car could be put in a defensive mode, where the radar system that detects nearby objects doesn’t just give you a warning but the car would actually stop to avoid any collision.
  4. The main display in the Model 3 could be swapped out with a learning display, taking realtime feeds from all the cameras and overlaying driving paths. Maybe even engage the autopilot system to not drive the car, but show on the screen where the car should be driven.

All of this highlights the power of a car being thought of as a software platform. The software can change the entire characteristic of the car could change for this special, and very important, exercise.

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Crypto Markets and Kids Soccer

On Wednesday May 12 at 5:06pm CT Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla would no longer accept Bitcoin to buy cars. The company also has $1.5B of Bitcoin on their balance sheet, reported $300M of which they’ve sold. Musks message is about the carbon footprint of Bitcoin. Odd since this isn’t new information.

Anyway, my commentary is not about Musk’s position but the market reaction. Immediately, as one would expect, Bitcoin dropped 10%.

BTC

Now lets talk about kids soccer. Any parent that has watched their kids play soccer knows what it looks like. There is a big group of kids chasing the ball around with no tactics or strategy. Ball is over there, run and get it.

The crypto market was all kids soccer with this. Filecoin, which has nothing in common with the Bitcoin news dropped nearly the same, with a slight time lag.

FIL

Then Cardano drops the same too. Cardano however is a massively more efficient blockchain. The fundamental argument doesn’t apply. They even told that story.

ADA

The point here is that these markets and investors are still treating all of these assets as a single thing. Only Ethereum in recent months has broken out and moves materially on its own. I put this in my approach, but I think it is really important. You need some mental model of the utility for each of these assets. That utility should drive how you value them, and how you differently value them.

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I love the #TeamSPS Cyberweek 2020 Shirt, and for the first time a paired challenge coin! 🪙 The challenge coin was also minted as an NFT. We also included the themed deck of playing cards. ♠️ Thank you to Kat Alberts for the great design.

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Sat down to figure out what was wrong with my 27-inch 2019 Retina 5K iMac. Beach balls. Terrible performance. Random crashes.

Turns out the Fusion Drive had “split” and the machine was completely confused about the disk system.

Complete rebuild and it is fast again!

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A very Happy Mother’s Day to my Mom!

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We just published the very first issue of Reading Things! 📚 If you enjoy books check it out! This is a new project from our whole family. 👋

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Ethereum is up 32% in the last week, over 11% in just the last 24 hours! Hard to say what is driving it up, but it has definitely diverged significantly from Bitcoin.

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We’ve had our pontoon for a few years and the hassle of taking the cover off and on each weekend was resulting in less trips on the water. This year we got a canopy! I’m so happy to put the boat cover away for the summer and we will definitely get more time on the water!

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Today is Boat Day 2021! I got the boat out of storage from LaCanne’s Marine and took it back up the Cannon River for the summer! This is such a fun tradition for me. The kids both made me cards to celebrate Boat Day!

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Tammy put together her 50 Puzzle today. It was so rewarding seeing the final puzzle at full size. The images came out great. The little details all hit the right spots. The kids and I are proud of this one! Create Jigsaw Puzzles.com did a great job with it.