We Browse Alongside Bots in Online Shops
May 23, 2025
AI’s growing ability to mimic humans has brought us to an absurd milestone. TechRadar declares, “It’s Official—The Majority of Visitors to Online Shops and Retailers Are Now Bots, Not Humans.” A recent report from Radware examined retail site traffic during the 2024 holiday season and found automated programs made up 57%. The statistic includes tools from simple scripts to digital agents. The more evolved the bot, the harder it is to keep it out. Writer Efosa Udinmwen tells us:
“The report highlights the ongoing evolution of malicious bots, as nearly 60% now use behavioral strategies designed to evade detection, such as rotating IP addresses and identities, using CAPTCHA farms, and mimicking human browsing patterns, making them difficult to identify without advanced tools. … Mobile platforms have become a critical battleground, with a staggering 160% rise in mobile-targeted bot activity between the 2023 and 2024 holiday seasons. Attackers are deploying mobile emulators and headless browsers that imitate legitimate app behavior. The report also warns of bots blending into everyday internet traffic. A 32% increase in attack traffic from residential proxy networks is making it much harder for ecommerce sites to apply traditional rate-limiting or geo-fencing techniques. Perhaps the most alarming development is the rise of multi-vector campaigns combining bots with traditional exploits and API-targeted attacks. These campaigns go beyond scraping prices or testing stolen credentials – they aim to take sites offline entirely.”
Now why would they do that? To ransom retail sites during the height of holiday shopping, perhaps? Defending against these new attacks, Udinmwen warns, requires new approaches. The latest in DDoS protection, for example, and intelligent traffic monitoring. Yes, it takes AI to fight AI. Apparently.
Cynthia Murrell, May 23, 2025
Complexity: Good Enough Is Now the Best Some Can Do at Google-
May 15, 2025
![dino-orange_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_[1]_thumb_thumb](https://www.arnoldit.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/dino-orange_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_1_thumb_thumb-1.gif "dino-orange_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_[1]_thumb_thumb")
No AI, just the dinobaby expressing his opinions to Zillennials.
I read a post called “Working on Complex Systems: What I Learned Working at Google.” The write up is a thoughtful checklist of insights, lessons, and Gregorian engineering chants a “coder” learned in the online advertising company. I want to point out that I admire the amount of money and power the Google has amassed from its reinvention of the GoTo-Overture-Yahoo advertising approach.
A Silicon Valley executive looks at past due invoices. The government has ordered the company to be broken up and levied large fines for improper behavior in the marketplace. Thanks, ChatGPT. Definitely good enough.
The essay in The Coder Cafe presents an engineer’s learnings after Google began to develop products and services tangential to search hegemony, selling ads, and shaping information flows.
The approach is to differentiate complexity from complicated systems. What is interesting about the checklists is that one hearkens back to the way Google used to work in the Backrub and early pre-advertising days at Google. Let’s focus on complex because that illuminates where Google wants to direct its business, its professionals, its users, and the pesky thicket of regulators who bedevil the Google 24×7.
Here’s the list of characteristics of complex systems. Keep in mind that “systems” means software, programming, algorithms, and the gizmos required to make the non-fungible work, mostly.
- Emergent behavior
- Delayed consequences
- Optimization (local optimization versus global optimization)
- Hysteresis (I think this is cultural momentum or path dependent actions)
- Nonlinearity
Each of these is a study area for people at the Santa Fe Institute. I have on my desk a copy of The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution and the shorter Reinventing the Sacred, both by Stuart A. Kauffman. As a point of reference Origins is 700 pages and Reinventing about 300. Each of the cited articles five topics gets attention.
The context of emergent behavior in human- and probably some machine- created code is that it is capable of producing “complex systems.” Dr. Kauffman does a very good job of demonstrating how quite simple methods yield emergent behavior. Instead of a mess or a nice tidy solution, there is considerable activity at the boundaries of complexity and stability. Emergence seems to be associated with these boundary conditions: A little bit of chaos, a little bit of stability.
The other four items in the list are optimization. Dr. Kauffman points out is a consequence of the simple decisions which take place in the micro and macroscopic world. Non-linearity is a feature of emergent systems. The long-term consequences of certain emergent behavior can be difficult to predict. Finally, the notion of momentum keeps some actions or reactions in place through time units.
What the essay reveals, in my opinion, that:
- Google’s work environment is positioned as a fundamental force. Dr. Kauffman and his colleagues at the Santa Fe Institute may find some similarities between the Google and the mathematical world at the research institute. Google wants to be the prime mover; the Santa Fe Institute wants to understand, explain, and make useful its work.
- The lingo of the cited essay suggests that Google is anchored in the boundary between chaos and order. Thus, Google’s activities are in effect trials and errors intended to allow Google to adapt and survive in its environment. In short, Google is a fundamental force.
- The “leadership” of Google does not lead; leadership is given over to the rules or laws of emergence as described by Dr. Kauffman and his colleagues at the Santa Fe Institute.
Net net: Google cannot produce good products. Google can try to emulate emergence, but it has to find a way to compress time to allow many more variants. Hopefully one of those variants with be good enough for the company to survive. Google understands the probability functions that drive emergence. After two decades of product launches and product failures, the company remains firmly anchored in two chunks of bedrock:
First, the company borrows or buys. Google does not innovate. Whether the CLEVER method, the billion dollar Yahoo inspiration for ads, or YouTube, Bell Labs and Thomas Edison are not part of the Google momentum. Advertising is.
Second, Google’s current management team is betting that emergence will work at Google. The question is, “Will it?”
I am not sure bright people like those who work at Google can identify the winners from an emergent approach and then create the environment for those winners to thrive, grow, and create more winners. Gluing cheese to pizza and ramping up marketing for Google’s leadership in fields ranging from quantum computing to smart software is now just good enough. One final question: “What happens if the advertising money pipeline gets cut off?”
Stephen E Arnold, May 15, 2025
LLM Trade Off Time: Let Us Haggle for Useful AI
May 15, 2025
No AI, just the dinobaby expressing his opinions to Zellenials.
What AI fixation is big tech hyping now? VentureBeat declares, “Bigger Isn’t Always Better: Examining the Business Case for Multi-Million Token LLMs.” The latest AI puffery involves large context models—LLMs that can process and remember more than a million tokens simultaneously. Gemini 1.5 Pro, for example can process 2 million tokens at once. This achievement is dwarfed by MiniMax-Text-01, which can handle 4 million. That sounds impressive, but what are such models good for? Writers Rahul Raja and Advitya Gemawat tell us these tools can enable:
Cross-document compliance checks: A single 256K-token prompt can analyze an entire policy manual against new legislation.
Customer support: Chatbots with longer memory deliver more context-aware interactions.
Financial research: Analysts can analyze full earnings reports and market data in one query.
Medical literature synthesis: Researchers use 128K+ token windows to compare drug trial results across decades of studies.
Software development: Debugging improves when AI can scan millions of lines of code without losing dependencies.
I theory, they may also improve accuracy and reduce hallucinations. We are all for that—if true. But research from early adopter JPMorgan Chase found disappointing results, particularly with complex financial tasks. Not ideal. Perhaps further studies will have better outcomes.
The question for companies is whether to ditch ponderous chunking and RAG systems for models that can seamlessly debug large codebases, analyze entire contracts, or summarize long reports without breaking context. Naturally, there are trade-offs. We learn:
While large context models offer impressive capabilities, there are limits to how much extra context is truly beneficial. As context windows expand, three key factors come into play:
- Latency: The more tokens a model processes, the slower the inference. Larger context windows can lead to significant delays, especially when real-time responses are needed.
- Costs: With every additional token processed, computational costs rise. Scaling up infrastructure to handle these larger models can become prohibitively expensive, especially for enterprises with high-volume workloads.
- Usability: As context grows, the model’s ability to effectively ‘focus’ on the most relevant information diminishes. This can lead to inefficient processing where less relevant data impacts the model’s performance, resulting in diminishing returns for both accuracy and efficiency.”
Is it worth those downsides for simpler workflows? It depends on whom one asks. Some large context models are like a 1958 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight: lots of useless chrome and lousy mileage.
Stephen E Arnold, May 15, 2025
The Future: Humans in Lawn Chairs. Robots Do the Sports Thing
May 8, 2025
Can a fast robot outrun a fast human? Not yet, apparently. MSN’s Interesting Engineering reports, “Humanoid ‘Tiangong Ultra’ Dons Winning Boot in World’s First Human Vs Robot Marathon.” In what appears to be the first event of its kind, a recent 13-mile marathon pitted robots and humans against each other in Beijing. Writer Christopher McFadden reports:
“Around 21 humanoid robots officially competed alongside human marathoners in a 13-mile (21 km) endurance race in Beijing on Saturday, April 19th. According to reports, this is the first time such an event has been held. Competitor robots varied in size, with some as short as 3 feet 9 inches (1.19 m) and others as tall as 5 feet 9 inches (1.8 m). Wheeled robots were officially banned from the race, necessitating that any entrants be able to walk or run similarly to humans.”
The winner was one of the tallest at 5 feet 9 inches and weighed 114 pounds. It took Tiangong Ultra two hours and forty minutes to complete the course. Despite its impressive performance, it lagged considerably behind the first-place human who finished at one hour and two minutes. The robots’ lane of the course was designed to test the machines’ capabilities, mixing inclines and both left and right turns with flat stretches.
See the article for a short video of the race. Most of it features the winner, but there is a brief shot of one smaller, cuter robot. The article continues:
“According to the robot’s creator, Tang Jian, who is also the chief technology officer behind the Beijing Innovation Centre of Human Robotics, the robot’s long legs and onboard software both aided it in its impressive feat. … Jian added that the robot’s battery needed to be changed only three times during the race. As for other robot entrants, many didn’t perform as well. In particular, one robot fell at the starting line and lay on the ground for a few minutes before getting up and joining the race. Yet another crashed into a railing, causing its human operator to fall over.”
Oops. Sadly, those incidents do not appear in the video. The future is clear: Wizards will sit in lawn chairs and watch their robots play sports. I wonder if my robot will go to the gym and exercise for me?
Cynthia Murrell, May 8, 2025
Thorium News: Downplaying or Not Understanding a Key Fact
May 7, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby who gets revved up with buzzwords and baloney.
My first real job, which caused me to drop out of my PhD program at the University of Illinois, was with a nuclear consulting and services firm. The company was in the midst of becoming part of Halliburton. I figured a PhD in medieval literature might be less financially valuable to me than working in Washington, DC, for the nuke outfit. When I was introduced at a company meeting, my boss, James K. Rice explained that I was working on a PhD in poetry. Dr. James Terwilliger, a nuclear engineer shouted out, “I never read a poem.” Big laugh. Terwilliger and I became fast friends.
At that time in the early 1970s, there was one country that was the pointy end of the stick in things nuclear. That was the United States. Some at the company like Dominique Dorée would have argued that France was right next to the USA crowd, and she would have been mostly correct. Russia was a player. So was China. But the consensus view was that USA was number one. When I worked for a time for Congressman Craig Hosmer (R-Cal., USN admiral ret.), he made it quite clear that America’s nuclear industry was and would be on his watch the world leader in nuclear research, applications, and engineering.
I read an article in the prestigious online publication Popular Mechanics which appears to be trapped in that 1970s’ mind set. The publication’s write up “A Thorium Reactor in the Middle of the Desert Has Rewritten the Rules of Nuclear Power” does a good job of running through the details and benefits of a thorium-based nuclear reactor. Think molten salt instead the engineering problem child water to cool these systems.
But the key point in the write up was buried. I want to highlight what I think is the most important item in the article. Here it is:
Though China may currently be the world leader in molten salt reactors, the U.S. is catching up.
Several observations:
- Quite a change in the 60 plus years between Terwilliger’s comment about poetry and China’s leadership in thorium systems
- Admiral Craig Hosmer would not be happy were he still alive and playing a key role in supporting nuclear research and engineering as the head of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. (An unhappy Admiral is not a fun admiral I want to point out.)
- The statement about China’s lead in this technical space suggests that fast and decisive action is needed to train young, talented people with the engineering, mathematical, and other technical skills required to innovate in nuclear technology.
Popular Mechanics buried the real story, summarizing some features of thorium reactors. Was that from a sense of embarrassment or a failure to recognize what the real high impact part of the write up was?
Action is needed, not an inability to recognize a fact with high knowledge value. Less doom scrolling and more old fashioned learning. That reactor is not in a US desert; it is operating in a Chinese desert. That’s important in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, May 7, 2025
The 10X Engineer? More Trouble Than They Are Worth
April 25, 2025
Dinobaby, here. No smart software involved unlike some outfits. I did use Sam AI-Man’s art system to produce the illustration in the blog post.
I like it when I spot a dinobaby fellow traveler. That happened this morning (March 28, 2025) when I saw the headline “In Praise of Normal Engineers: A Software Engineer Argues Against the Myth of the 10x Engineer.”
The IEEE Spectrum article states:
I don’t have a problem with the idea that there are engineers who are 10 times as productive as other engineers. The problems I do have are twofold.
Everyone is amazed that the 10X engineer does amazing things. Does the fellow become the model for other engineers in the office? Not for the other engineers. But the boss loves this super performer. Thanks, OpenAI, good enough.
The two “problems” — note the word “problems” are:
- “Measuring productivity.” That is an understatement, not a problem. With “engineers” working from home or in my case a far off foreign country, a hospital waiting room, or playing video games six fee from me productivity is a slippery business.
- “Teams own software.” Alas, that is indeed true. In 1962, I used IBM manuals to “create” a way to index. The professor who paid me $3 / hour was thrilled. I kept doing this indexing thing until the fellow died when I started graduate school. Since then, whipping up software confections required “teams.” Why? I figured out that my indexing trick was pure good fortune. After that, I made darned sure there were other eyes and minds chugging along by my side.
The write up says:
A truly great engineering organization is one where perfectly normal, workaday software engineers, with decent skills and an ordinary amount of expertise, can consistently move fast, ship code, respond to users, understand the systems they’ve built, and move the business forward a little bit more, day by day, week by week.
I like this statement. And here’s another from the article:
The best engineering orgs are not the ones with the smartest, most experienced people in the world. They’re the ones where normal software engineers can consistently make progress, deliver value to users, and move the business forward. Places where engineers can have a large impact are a magnet for top performers. Nothing makes engineers happier than building things, solving problems, and making progress.
Happy workers are magnets.
Now let’s come back to the 10X idea. I used to work at a company which provided nuclear engineering services to the US government and a handful of commercial firms engaged in the nuclear industry. We had a real live 10X type. He could crank out “stuff” with little effort. Among the 600 nuclear engineers employed at this organization, he was the 10X person. Everyone liked him, but he did not have much to say. In fact, his accent made what he said almost impenetrable. He just showed up every day in a plaid coat, doodled on a yellow pad, and handed dot points, a flow chart, or a calculation to another nuclear engineer and went back to doodling.
Absolutely no one at the nuclear engineering firm wanted to be a 10X engineer. From my years of working at this firm, he was a bit of a one-off. When suits visited, a small parade would troop up to his office on the second floor. He shared that with my close friend, Dr. James Terwilliger. Everyone would smile and look at the green board. Then they would troop out and off to lunch.
I think the presence of this 10X person was a plus for the company. The idea of trying to find another individual who could do the nuclear “stuff” like this fellow was laughable. For some reason, the 10X person liked me, and I got the informal job of accompanying to certain engagements. I left that outfit after several years to hook up with a blue chip consulting firm. I lost track of the 10X person, but I had the learnings necessary to recognize possible 10X types. That was a useful addition to my bag of survival tips as a minus 3 thinker.
Net net: The presence of a 10X is a plus. Ignoring the other 599 engineers is a grave mistake. The errors of this 10X approach are quite evident today: Unchecked privacy violations, monopolistic behaviors enabled by people who cannot set up a new mobile phone, and a distortion of what it means to be responsible, ethical, and moral.
The 10X concept is little more than a way to make the top one percent the reason for success. Their presence is a positive, but building to rely on 10X anything is one of the main contributing factors to the slow degradation of computer services, ease of use, and, in my opinion, social cohesion.
Engineers are important. The unicorn engineers are important. Balance is important. Without out balance “stuff” goes off the rails. And that’s where we are.
Stephen E Arnold, April xx, 2025
Management Challenges in Russian IT Outfits
April 23, 2025
Believe it or not, no smart software. Just a dumb and skeptical dinobaby.
Don’t ask me how, but I stumbled upon a Web site called PCNews.ru. I was curious, so fired up the ever-reliable Google Translate and checked out what “news” about “PCs” meant to the Web site creator. One article surprised me. If I reproduce the Russian title it will be garbled by the truly remarkable WordPress system I have been using since 2008. The title of this article in English courtesy of the outfit that makes services available for free is, “Systemic Absurdity: How Bureaucracy and Algorithms Replace Meaning.”
One thing surprised me. The author was definitely annoyed by bureaucracy. He offers some interesting examples. I can’t use these in my lectures, but I found sufficiently different to warrant my writing this blog post.
Here are three examples:
- “Bureaucracy is the triumph of reason, where KPIs are becoming a new religion. According to Harvard Business Review (2021), 73% of employees do not see the connection between their actions and the company’s mission.”
- 41 percent of the time “military personnel in the EU is spent on complying with regulations”
- “In 45% of US hospitals, diagnoses are deliberately complicated (JAMA Internal Medicine, 2022)”
Sporty examples indeed.
The author seems conversant with American blue chip consultant outputs; for example, and I quote:
- 42% of employees who regularly help others face a negative performance evaluation due to "distraction from core tasks". Harvard Business Review (2022)
- 82% of managers believe cross-functional collaboration is risky (Deloitte, Global Human Capital Trends special report 2021).
- 61% of managers believe that cross-functional assistance “reduces personal productivity.” “The Collaboration Paradox” Deloitte (2021)
Where is the author going with his anti-bureaucracy approach? Here’s a clue:
I once completed training under the MS program and even thought about getting certified? Do they teach anything special there and do they give anything that is not in the documentation on the vendor’s website/books/Internet? No.
I think this means that training and acquiring certifications is another bureaucratic process disconnected from technical performance.
The author then brings up the issue of competence versus appearance. He writes or quotes (I can’t tell which):
"A study by Hamermesh and Park (2011) showed that attractive people earn on average 10-15% more than their less attractive colleagues. The work of Timasin et al. (2017) found that candidates with an attractive appearance are 30% more likely to receive job offers, all other things being equal. In a study by Harvard Business Review (2019), managers were more likely to recommend promotion to employees with a "successful appearance", associating them with leadership qualities"
The essay appears to be heading toward a conclusion about technical management, qualifications, and work. The author identifies “remedies” to these issues associated with technical work in an organization. The fixes include:
- Meta regulations; that is, rules for creating rules
- Qualitative, not just quantitative, assessments of an individual’s performance
- Turquoise Organizations
This phrase refers to an approach to management which emphasizes self management and an organic approach to changing an organization and its processes.
The write up is interesting because it suggests that the use of a rigid bureaucracy, smart software, and lots of people produces sub optimal performance. I would hazard a guess that the author feels as though his/her work has not been valued highly. My hunch is that the inclusion of the “be good looking to get promoted” suggests the author is unlikely to be retained to participate in Fashion Week in Paris.
An annoyed IT person, regardless of country and citizenship, can be a frisky critter if not managed effectively. I wonder if the redactions in the documents submitted by Meta were the work of a happy camper or an annoyed one? With Google layoffs, will some of these capable individuals harbor a grudge and take some unexpected decisions about their experiences.
Interesting write up. Amazing how much US management consulting jibber jab the author reads and recycles.
Stephen E Arnold, April 23, 2025
The UK, the Postal Operation, and Computers
April 11, 2025
According to the Post Office Scandal, there’s a new amendment in Parliament that questions how machines work: “Proposed Amendment To Legal Presumption About The Reliability Of Computers.”
Journalist Tom Webb specializes in data protection and he informed author Nick Wallis about an amendment to the Data (Use and Access) Bill that is running through the British Parliament. The amendment questions:
“It concerns the legal presumption that “mechanical instruments” (which seems to be taken to include computer networks) are working properly if they look to the user like they’re working properly.”
Wallis has chronicled the problems associated with machines appearing to work properly since barrister Stephen Mason reported the issue to him. Barrister Mason is fighting on behalf of the British Post Office Scandal (which is another story) about the this flawed thinking and its legal implication. Here’s more on what the problem is:
“Although the “mechanical instruments” presumption has never, to the best of my knowledge, been quoted in any civil or criminal proceedings involving a Subpostmaster, it has been said to effectively reverse the burden of proof on anyone who might be convicted using digital evidence. The logic being if the courts are going to assume a computer was working fine at the time an offence allegedly occurred because it looked like it was working fine, it is then down to the defendant to prove that it was not working fine. This can be extremely difficult to do (per the Seema Misra/Lee Castleton cases).”
The proposed amendment uses legal jargon to do the following:
“This amendment overturns the current legal assumption that evidence from computers is always reliable which has contributed to miscarriages of justice including the Horizon Scandal. It enables courts to ask questions of those submitting computer evidence about its reliability.”
This explanation means that just because the little light is blinking and the machine is doing something, those lights do not mean the computer is working correctly. Remarkable.
Whitney Grace, April 11, 2025
Keeping an Eye on AI? Here Are Fifteen People of Interest for Some
March 13, 2025
Underneath the hype, there are some things AI is actually good at. But besides the players who constantly make the news, who is really shaping the AI landscape? A piece at Silicon Republic introduces us to "15 Influential Players Driving the AI Revolution." Writer Jenny Darmody observes:
"As AI continues to dominate the headlines, we’re taking a closer look at some of the brightest minds and key influencers within the industry. Throughout the month of February, SiliconRepublic.com has been putting AI under the microscope for more of a deep dive, looking beyond the regular news to really explore what this technology could mean. From the challenges around social media advertising in the new AI world to the concerns around its effect on the creative industries, there were plenty of worrying trends to focus on. However, there were also positive sides to the technology, such as its ability to preserve minority languages like Irish and its potential to reduce burnout in cybersecurity. While exploring these topics, the AI news just kept rolling: Deepseek continued to ruffle industry feathers, Thomson Reuters won a partial victory in its AI copyright case and the Paris AI Summit brought further investments and debates around regulation. With so much going on in the industry, we thought it was important to draw your attention to some key influencers you should know within the AI space."
Ugh, another roster of tech bros? Not so fast. On this list, the women actually outnumber the men, eight to seven. In fact, the first entry is Ireland’s first AI Ambassador Patricia Scanlon, who has hopes for truly unbiassed AI. Then there is the EU’s Lucilla Sioli, head of the European Commission’s AI Office. She is tasked with both coordinating Europe’s AI strategy and implementing the AI Act. We also happily note the inclusion of New York University’s Juliette Powell, who advises clients from gaming companies to banks in the responsible use of AI. See the write-up for the rest of the women and men who made the list.
Cynthia Murrell, March 13, 2025
Automobile Trivia: The Tesla Cybertruck and the Ford Pinto
March 11, 2025
Another post from the dinobaby. Alas, no smart software used for this essay.
I don’t cover the auto industry. However, this article caught my eye: “Cybertruck Goes to Mardi Gras Parade, Gets Bombarded by Trash and Flees in Shame: That’s Gotta Hurt.”
The write up reports:
With a whopping seven recalls in just over a year — and a fire fatality rate exceeding the infamous Ford Pinto— it’s never been a particularly great time to be a Cybertruck owner. But now, thanks to the political meddling of billionaire Tesla owner Elon Musk, it might be worse than ever. That’s what some Cybertruck drivers discovered firsthand at a Lundi Gras parade on Monday — the “Fat Monday” preamble to the famed Mardi Gras — when their hulking electric tanks were endlessly mocked and pelted with trash by revelers.
I did not know that the Tesla vehicle engaged in fire events at a rate greater than the famous Ford Pinto. I know the Pinto well. I bought one for a very low price. I drove it for about a year and sold it for a little more than I paid for it. I think I spent more time looking in my rear view mirrors than looking down the road. The Pinto, if struck from behind, would burn. I think the gas tank was made of some flimsy material. A bump in the back would cause the tank to leak and sometimes the vehicle would burst into flame. A couple of unlucky Pinto drivers suffered burns and some went to the big Ford dealership in the great beyond. I am not sure if the warranty was upheld.
I think this is interesting automotive trivia; for example, “What vehicle has a fire fatality rate exceeding the Ford Pinto?” The answer as I now know is the lovely and graceful Tesla Cybertruck.
The write up (which may be from The Byte or from Futurism) says:
According to a post on X-formerly-Twitter, at least one Cybertruck had its “bulletproof window” shattered by plastic beads before tucking tail and fleeing the parade under police protection. At least three Cybertrucks were reportedly there as part of a coordinated effort by an out-of-state Cybertruck Club to ferry parade marshals down the route. One marshal posted about their experience riding in the EV on Reddit, saying it was “boos and attacks from start to evacuation.”
I got a kick (not a recall or a fire) out of the write up and the plastic bead reference. Not as slick as “bouffon sous kétamine,” but darned good. And, no, I am not going to buy a Cybertruck. One year in Pinto fear was quite enough.
Now a test question: Which is more likely to explode? [a] a Space X rocket, [b] a Pinto, or [c] a Cybertruck?
Stephen E Arnold, March 11, 2025
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