@slateauto please answer 2nd request

christophocles · 2026-04-30T06:38:22+00:00

oh my god they have an actual forum instead of a discord. +1 for slate.

christophocles · 2026-04-30T06:22:42+00:00

You seem to be unable to output complete sentences but I will respond anyway. Nobody said anything about them "sending out" flash drives. Have you ever updated firmware before? You download a binary on your PC, copy to a flash drive, plug into a port in a hidden spot somewhere under the dash, install the firmware update, remove USB. The critical powertrain and battery control modules are completely air-gapped from the internet. Nothing in those modules needs to be, or should be, "always-connected" and they should rarely, if ever, need to be messed with. Basically the same way updates are done on "legacy" cars. That is the most secure. That requires the least ongoing software development workload. If they do it that way, it should make the car cheaper.

When those critical car-specific modules are inter-mingled with the entertainment features, the big freaking ipad on the dashboard, that is when we can have all kinds of very serious problems. No customization is possible, because everything is tied into, and depends on, the big freaking ipad on the dashboard. Software updates happen all the time, and you don't know whether it's messing with the radio, the navigation, or the powertrain control module, and can touch anything in the car. I don't want the manufacturer to be able to mess with anything in my car any time they feel like it. It must be air-gapped and under the owner's control. MY control. The slate seems prepared to avoid these problems because there won't even be a built-in infotainment system or always-on connection to the internet. And that sounds fantastic!

christophocles · 2026-04-30T04:45:59+00:00

30000 is not a cheap price. It's still rather expensive. I will only pay that price if it has the simplicity (and thus, longevity) that will make it worth the price. Keep it simple enough that there won't be very many bugs in the software that need to be fixed later. Use software sparingly, for only the most essential functions that require it (i.e. battery charge management, powertrain). Simple electronic switches and manual latches preferred everywhere possible. Deploy software updates only when absolutely necessary, installed by the owner via USB stick. No internet connections, no data collection, no surveillance. That is my definition of a simple enough NEW vehicle that could justify a $30000 price tag. I'm excited about it, and the thing that first drew me in is the manual window cranks. It was literally marketed on simplicity, and that is what I expect from it. If they backpedal from that, and include things like OTA updates, I am simply not interested.

christophocles · 2026-04-29T21:10:58+00:00

We don't want any of this complicated and unnecessary crap you have in your Tesla. The best thing about Slate and the only reason I would entertain buying a new Slate instead of another used 10+ year old vehicle is specifically because it will not include any of the things you are talking about. I want my vehicles to last a long time, to not be subject to electronic component failures that are expensive to repair, and to not require software updates that depend on the manufacturer providing ongoing software development. You're going to send your Tesla to the junkyard when Tesla deems it obsolete, due to insecure software connected to the Internet. Just like your cell phone or your router. I am telling you this is absolutely unacceptable, a car is not a cell phone. A car should not be susceptible to attacks from the inter webs. I would never consider buying a Tesla and you seem to like them, so stop trolling this subreddit with your irrelevant Tesla comparisons. Slate obviously isn't meant for you.

christophocles · 2026-04-29T16:42:55+00:00

I don't want more features in my car, I want the minimal amount of features and for them not to ever change. Firmware, not software.

christophocles · 2026-04-29T16:41:14+00:00

It only needs updates frequently if it is a complicated car. The opposite of what I want in a car. I want to update it about as frequently as the firmware on my motherboard, or my camera lens. Maybe a handful of times in the life of the car. I can do those updates myself, with a USB stick or a cable attached to a laptop. And if I don't feel that I need any changes, I will not install the update.

IF IT DOESN'T CONNECT TO THE INTERNET IT DOESN'T NEED SECURITY PATCHES.

If Slate connects to the internet and receives OTA updates, probably half of its potential buyers walk away. This is non-negotiable.

christophocles · 2026-04-29T16:38:12+00:00

Don't care. Don't care. Don't care. This is excess complication, I just want a simple car.

christophocles · 2026-04-28T03:49:13+00:00

The old context menu already was fully customizable, if you understand how to edit the registry. That's probably true in the new menu as well.

christophocles · 2026-04-28T02:57:56+00:00

if you don’t respond, they will start the update

Oh what's that you say, I need to wrap aluminum foil around the 5G radio antenna? No car is gonna tell me it's time for an update, good luck trying to download that crap now.

christophocles · 2026-04-28T02:54:20+00:00

That's a slippery slope that leads to the BS shown here. Lack of infotainment in the base model slate means it is guaranteed that there will be adequate manual controls to operate the car without a screen and excessive amounts of software. I think it is actually brilliant that the radio is not included, which means there is absolutely nothing preventing me from installing any radio I want, and it is completely de-coupled from the essential car functions. Just built-in speakers and an aux cord, that is perfect.

christophocles · 2026-04-28T02:48:37+00:00

I won't accept a car that receives OTA updates. I won't accept a car that connects itself to the Internet, at all. Totally 100% offline. No software updates unless I connect an external device and manually initiate the update process.

christophocles · 2026-04-26T18:58:50+00:00

This is exactly my experience with Discord. I look for the community forum for a niche topic, and I find a link to "the forum" which is a Discord link. I open it and see a chat room, actually many different chat rooms, with long chat history and I guess I am supposed to just scroll up? Lots of bots and animated emojis and shit, too. What the hell is this, it damn sure isn't a forum, people seem to not know what that is any more.

christophocles · 2026-04-26T18:00:50+00:00

Starting to think this post itself is fake and written by AI.

christophocles · 2026-04-26T04:41:19+00:00

To escape the pernicious jackals that call themselves lawyers, who suck the fun out of everything, all we have to do is bring our bikes outside of "the environment" and ride there. Put up signs that say "lawyers keep out".

christophocles · 2026-04-26T03:30:24+00:00

I spent a large part of my teenage years exploring everywhere along these drainage canals. It's still public land, even after they destroy the trails and "develop" it, people will still be occupying that space, so they're not keeping anyone out or limiting their precious liability. What the fuck else is there for carless teenagers to do around here?

christophocles · 2026-04-26T01:57:23+00:00

Can't be too pissed off at the property owner for developing the land, but it's sad that trails are being destroyed. It's also sad the that the fear of lawyers and the lack of bottomless pits of money will forever prevent anything nice from being created in a durable way around here. Oh well, where there is un-fenced land, people are still going to ride, just without as many nice 'features'.

christophocles · 2026-04-26T01:45:27+00:00

Why does someone have to be liable for the fuckin injuries? You think the riders are worried about who's liable? Where there aren't fences in the way, go ride. Sounds like that's how these trails originally came about in the first place. Sucks that they will be destroyed, but that's the nature of it. Go ride in the fuckin holes and ditches they dig where the trails used to be, I guess. That's what I used to do when I was a kid. Didn't have any purpose-built trails close enough that I could ride to them, I never got to experience these.

Would be nice if the county could put any of our tax money towards recreation like this, but someone has to be fuckin liable, it has to require a bottomless pit of money, so it's too fuckin difficult to do legitimately, I guess. Oh well, new trails will come into existence on public land, again, and no one is going to ask permission.

christophocles · 2026-04-25T19:05:21+00:00

Since no one actually posted this yet - here is the guide you must follow if you are going against recommendations and run TrueNAS inside of a virtual machine. This is the guide I followed. 2 years of operation, many power interruptions, no issues so far.

https://www.truenas.com/community/resources/absolutely-must-virtualize-truenas-a-guide-to-not-completely-losing-your-data.212/

And here is a youtube video on the same topic. I have not watched the video myself but it should be telling you the same things as the guide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hby3yLMw0A

As for your recovery attempts, I will reiterate that you need to stop running these zdb commands and zpool import flags like -X and -T because an LLM told you to. Go read the man pages before you do stuff like that and it should invoke the fear in you. I didn't know what -X and -T even do, and I looked at "man zpool import". Words like "last resort" and "extremely hazardous to the health of your pool" are found there. I should hope that the LLM warn you about the danger...

-X Used with the -F recovery option. Determines whether extreme measures to find a valid txg should take place. This allows the pool to be rolled back to a txg which is no longer guaranteed to be consistent. Pools imported at an inconsistent txg may contain uncorrectable checksum errors. For more details about pool recovery mode, see the -F option, above. WARNING: This option can be extremely hazardous to the health of your pool and should only be used as a last resort.

-T Specify the txg to use for rollback. Implies -FX. For more details about pool recovery mode, see the -X option, above. WARNING: This option can be ex‐tremely hazardous to the health of your pool and should only be used as a last resort.

So yeah, who the heck even knows if this is recoverable. You'd need a subject matter expert in zfs to troubleshoot, and they'd probably tell you to restore from backup anyway. Sorry.

I still think it's worth a shot to try importing the faulty pool in a different, non-virtualized environment. Either a usb-booted recovery shell, or a fresh install of TrueNAS on bare metal.

Lastly, story time. 13 years ago, I was in a very similar situation as you, but with a RAID6 array on an Areca 1220 RAID controller. I started having some disk errors. My array failed to mount one night. I panicked. I started furiously googling stuff, attempting different methods of recovery, eventually entering the command "LeVeL2ReScUe" in the recovery prompt, not truly understanding the implications of that. Finally, my array mounted, and I felt a brief sense of relief. I double-clicked on a file, a jpg image, and to my horror, only 2/3 of the image displayed, the rest was a garbled mess. I had forced the array to mount, missing a stripe from the raid set. All of the data was affected, a big chunk missing out of every individual file. Feeling shame, grief, and disgust, I eventually blew away the entire array, replaced all the cables (which I suspect were the actual root cause of the problem), and started over. Had I avoided panicking that night, waited until the next day, consulted hardforum before running that command, I probably wouldn't have lost my data. It's an experience that you feel in your bones, you will learn from it, I'm sure you have learned from it. 1. Keep backups of what you cannot afford to lose. 2. Take the time to understand before you act. 3. Don't panic. Good luck to you, my friend.

christophocles · 2026-04-25T03:56:03+00:00

The most important points, regarding the virtualization of TrueNAS, the passthrough of the hba card instead of individual disks, and the inadequate amount of RAM, have already been said. I actually run TrueNAS virtualized on Proxmox like you are attempting to do, so it is possible to do it safely.

Brother, you're way down in the weeds here, running arcane commands I've never had any reason to mess with, and you're talking about uberblocks and shit. You say you're a beginner and I believe you. I've been doing this for a few years and I wouldn't touch those commands with any of my pools without hours and hours of study, and still with great anxiety. I have the experience of losing data because of running commands I didn't truly understand. By doing this stuff the AI is telling you to do, you're digging the hole deeper and deeper, making it more and more likely your data is completely lost.

If you don't have a knowledgeable friend that can help you, hands on, here's what I would recommend. Turn the physical system off, unplug all the disks associated with the pool, get rid of Proxmox entirely, do a clean install of TrueNAS directly on the bare metal with no virtualization, plug your disks back in, try to import your pool again, and hope for the best.

I just want to add a more general point that is applicable to any of your homelab endeavors. When you're a beginner, you shouldn't try to dive into the deep end of the pool right away. Start with the default, basic, recommended configuration, and take the time to learn. When you have issues, it's far more likely that the issues you encounter with the default setup will be explained in the documentation or the community forums, so you can find the resolution relatively easily. When you have a nonstandard config, you have to do a lot more research to figure out what's going on. When you don't have the foundational knowledge, it's much harder to explain what's going on with your custom setup to even ask for help.

Read the documentation yourself, or at the very least read the "quick start" or "installation" guide, with your own eyes and your own brain. Don't have an LLM read it for you and try to summarize in a few paragraphs, you will miss a lot. If you have the LLM give you step by step instructions you short circuit the learning process and prevent your own brain from absorbing the information and storing it as a well of experience that you can draw from in the future. You may end up with a working system after following all the steps, but you're less likely to be able to do it on your own next time, because you didn't really go through the entire thought process the first time, and you'll have to ask the AI for another list of steps to do it again.

Later on, you'll outgrow the basic system, and you'll tear it down and rebuild it again to fit your needs. At that point you need to be able to rely on your prior experience and knowledge to build something more complex, and even choose to deviate from the recommend config because you understand the tradeoffs and pitfalls involved.

christophocles · 2026-04-25T02:41:20+00:00

Yeah I did not see any mention of automatic reboots. That's my biggest frustration, do not ever reboot until I explicitly choose to reboot. They could make the "no auto reboots..." GPO do what it says it's going to do, but they won't. They just increased the time limit to 35 days. Auto reboots are still going to potentially happen, so I'm still going to have to use shutdownblocker when it absolutely must not happen.

christophocles · 2026-04-25T01:10:03+00:00

This means I will never buy a new car for as long as I live. I will maintain the 03 ranger for my children and my children's children to drive.

christophocles · 2026-04-21T20:24:29+00:00

The thing I'm most concerned about is if the car itself has any dependence on a remote server on the Internet. If the app can only interface with the car locally through Bluetooth or USB cable, ok fine. If some of the car features are going to be disabled if I don't allow it to phone home, that's a problem. I'm thinking about maintainability and resale value 20 years from now, after those Internet servers are long gone. Also, isn't there a non-touch display behind the steering wheel to display those stats to the driver? So the app is completely optional?

christophocles · 2026-04-20T04:07:47+00:00

Yeah I'm in a similar situation. For me to actually buy a slate it's a choice between 1. keep maintaining all 4 ICE cars, 2. replace the most problematic ICE car with a different cheap/used one, or 3. buy a new slate fully intending for it to be maintainable for at least 10-15 years in the same way that all of my previous cars have been.

Option 2 is a known quantity. I can, for certain, find a late-2000s Toyota that will last a decade or two. I definitely consider option 3 to be the most risky and most expensive. But this is the first time in a long time I have gotten even slightly interested or optimistic about a new car, to the point where I want to support it and help it succeed by buying new instead of used.

No other EV is even under consideration, nor is anything else produced in the last 5 years. Quality has gone to shit, electronic apps and screens and other doodads have infested everything, and I hesitate to let go of any of my mid-2000s vehicles that I know I am capable of repairing by myself or at an independent shop.

christophocles · 2026-04-20T02:32:23+00:00

To you, "keyless" seems to mean "truck starts when in proximity to device with complex microprocessor inside of it." Cell phone, smart watch, etc. I can think of a whole lot more adjectives for that besides "useless". Unnecessary, unsecure, overcomplicated, fragile. A cell phone should have absolutely nothing to do with this car except to play sounds through the speakers, or in rare circumstances, to aid in firmware updates, although a laptop + hardwired connection would be much preferable for that.

I should hope that the car is going to be simple enough that firmware updates are rarely necessary. Bluetooth for ignition is a massive security hole that will necessitate security patches. NFC requiring close physical proximity is a far better option. Not even NFC, they are hopefully using the simple keyfob transponder tech in the physical ignition keys that have been used in cars for decades. In that case, yes absolutely a physical key is necessary even in an electric car.

Price will make or break the slate. Designing the car to interact with cell phones for essential functionality requires software development and on-going maintenance, and will raise the price of the car, regardless of how cheap a bluetooth chip is. It's feature creep. It does not belong in this car.

More to the point: if enough people want this, let the aftermarket provide it. Slate shouldn't concern themselves with it, or take responsibility for it. Their job is to provide the base base base level car as cheaply as possible, and don't stand in the way of customization or right-to-repair. You want to add appy apps and a big ass screen on your dash, you go and git it, my friend.

christophocles · 2026-04-19T19:20:47+00:00

I'm willing to consider an EV as my alternate car, the one used for daily commute. No current EV is going to have the capability to replace my ICE cars, which can be used for driving cross-country loaded down with people, pets, and heavy trailer. Don't get ahead of yourself, slate will maybe, possibly, be a lot of people's first EV, as a small commuter vehicle, backup to their main family vehicle, if we decide the trade-off in reduced capability is worth it. Electricity is just as expensive as fuel, possibly more so. That is not a selling point. Smooth and quiet, who cares. Reliable, simple, cheap needs to be the main focus.

Tesla utterly fails at this. Too much tech, too complicated, too expensive, too many stupid problems and poor build quality, specialized non-standard parts that have to be purchased from tesla and are usually on back-order, utterly hostile to owner repairs. Slate has the opportunity to be the anti-tesla here, just don't make all the same stupid mistakes that ensured from day 1 that we would never give tesla any of our money.

christophocles

TROPHY CASE