KayLeadfoot

joined 2 weeks ago
[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 9 points 7 hours ago

People who don't threaten physical violence often... you know, softies, the part-time tough guys... they don't anticipate how long-lasting the negative reaction from their victims will be.

The annexation talk, the 51st state talk, none of that stuff will be directly linked to whatever counterpunch Canada cooks up, but it'll be hardening the hearts of the Canadian voters to be in favor of ever-more-draconian countermeasures.

I hope those Twitter threats felt great to issue, because we'll all be paying for those for a good long while on every agricultural transaction (among others!) that we make with our closest ally in the coming decades.

[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 2 points 7 hours ago

Ope, shit, I jumped the gun. My bad!

[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 2 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

I'm just a journalist/comedian :) I got no dog in this fight, other than that the appearance of corruption in public programs is newsworthy.

If I'm ever unfairly positive about Tesla, do let me know. Most Tesla fans (and assorted grifters who grift in the same circles) say I'm actually the opposite, that I'm shield-biting Tesla hater, probably a paid Anti-Elon shill and maybe a $TSLA shortseller. They feel that way enough to send me threats from time to time. Neither take is true, but it's funny that I'm getting shot at by both sides.

If you find my stories interesting, you can do me a solid by sharing them on any subreddit or Fedia instance that you think would find them interesting. This publication is a couple weeks old, and that helps me get traction, it's wild that this story is only getting coverage by Canadian outlets.

[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 6 points 8 hours ago

Powerful Crassus energy to this one.

[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 11 points 1 day ago

So, the data has a "commercial" or "consumer" flag, Canada is apparently quite sensible and thought one step ahead of the shady things auto dealers might try - so we'd be able to see if it was a wholesale sort of deal, I think.

It wasn't, all the sales I saw were consumer flagged.

[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 31 points 1 day ago

Canadian government thought of that. The sales are marked as either personal or commercial in the database. All the sales I saw were personal.

 

Between January 10 and January 12, after being warned that an EV rebate program was running out of funds, Tesla dealerships in Canada managed to claim 8,669 individual iZEV EV rebates, or about $43 million CAD in incentives. That’s a staggering number of sales to log in a single weekend, about 1.5 sales per minute. Let's dig into the numbers.

[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 9 points 3 days ago

Right? I don't buy that explanation at all. I've had a bunch of cars with SXM, none of them had popup ads every time I came to a red light.

 

In covering car news, I will sometimes look at a new piece of technology and do a double take. “That can’t be real, it is simply too stupid for a room of automotive engineers to have signed off on it.” Often times, those pieces of tech are on Stellantis vehicles.

Here’s a winner that I had to confirm was real (spoilers, it is real). Popup ads in your car… for the Mopar extended warranty service.

Take a look, it’s the whole bleeping infotainment screen, every time you stop.

 

Tesla’s Cybertruck just made its grand debut at Mardi Gras 2025, and, well… it didn’t go great. Watch the Video: The Crowd Was Not Having It A group of Cybertrucks rolled through the Orpheus Parade, a generally tame, family-friendly event known for marching bands, fabulous floats, and an all-around good time. But when the small […]

[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 7 points 6 days ago

They were buttoned up tight as a tank, no throws whatsoever.

And I'm one of those frozen northlanders, too, I only been to the Big Easy once and even I know you bring the free goodies!!!

[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 6 points 6 days ago (2 children)

You need to log in to view Reddit videos? SHIT. I did not realize that.

Give me a minute, I'll swap that out, now I feel like a dick, I thought Reddit was just an easy way to host videos.

Arghhh, that actually really jams me up, I link a TON of Reddit videos in my articles, didn't think to check while not logged into Reddit. Welcome to the future, where every piece of technology fucking blows.

[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 7 points 6 days ago

Bahaha, they'll need a long disclaimer. YMMV sort of language. The orange Cybertruck, they were live-streaming from inside of it, I guess. Influencers were driving it. They showed off the damage in their video, looks like a cracked windshield and roof on their "bulletproof" truck.

[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 54 points 6 days ago (19 children)

There is a separate car and truck parade at NoLa's Carnival, where you roll up with whatever and parade in that. These folks... well, I'm not sure why they didn't just go to the truck parade.

Part of the anger in the crowd seems to be what you're rightly pointing out, the behavior doesn't make sense, other than as advertising. There's all these gorgeous floats, and then just 5 Pinewood-Derby-looking trucks absolutely decked out in American flags, it upset folks.

[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 24 points 6 days ago

Oh no, see the BlueSky link from Pelespirit below. Folks who were there commented, the booing was for the Cybertruck, folks went back to cheering for the other floats that bookended the Cybertruck XD

If you check out the NOLA.com broadcast, it was (as usual) a real positive crowd of revelers at Mardi Gras. I didn't hear any jeering, EXCEPT for the Cybertruck group.

 

We saw an interesting press release from the National Fire Protection Association, they released an EV firefighting video game for free with the help of a private developer and a Department of Energy grant. So far, more than a million firefighters have used the game to learn about fighting EV fires.

Well, that pitch was irresistible to us. We wanted to know more about how EVs work in emergencies, and we get to play video games to do it? Awesome, count me in, let the games begin. Here's how the game plays and what we learned from it.

 

We all know automakers want to keep tabs on their cars. Stolen vehicle tracking? Sure. Fleet management? Fine. Microphone eavesdropping to serve more ads? Hate it, but OK, that’s a thing. Hold onto your tin-foil hats: Ford just filed a patent for something that takes vehicle tracking into full-blown Twilight Zone territory. Always-On Tracking… In Your Car, or Somebody Else’s.

 

Update: We broke this news over the weekend from a lucky catch on Reddit, but the Washington Post and TechCrunch are expanding on it, citing anonymous sources. They report that 10% of the NHTSA employees have been cut, which would be about 80 staffers, with especially heavy cuts for the employees in the new office overseeing autonomous vehicle safety.

 

We now have a full year of data for the Cybertruck, and a strange preponderance of headlines about Cybertrucks exploding into flames, including several fatalities. That’s more than enough data to compare to the Ford Pinto, a car so notoriously combustible that it has become a watchword for corporate greed. Let’s start with the data...

 

Last week, Ars Technica broke the news that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) quietly took down their 2022 crash data, for the rumored purpose to scrub gender data from its Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). At the time, the records had simply vanished from the public database, leaving only speculation... now that the data has been reposted, we see that Ars Technica had it exactly right.

 

Here’s a story you all saw coming. If a new model pickup truck is on the road for any amount of time, somebody is going to ram a deer with it! What makes this collision unique is the pickup truck in question: a 2024 Tesla CyberTruck. The headline tells much of the […]

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