What a legend!
Nissan sued a computer repairman for $10,000,000 to take the Nissan․com domain.
His legal last name was Uzi Nissan.
He refused to fold, spent $3,000,000 fighting them in federal court for 8 years, and won.
This is the story of Uzi Nissan and why a $20B car giant still can't use Nissan․com.
1980-1994
- Uzi Nissan emigrates from Israel to Raleigh, North Carolina
- opens a small auto repair shop in 1980 using his family surname
- launches Nissan Computer Corporation on May 14, 1991 selling PCs and servers
- registers Nissan․com on June 4, 1994 for $70 while the automaker barely touches the web
December 10, 1999
- Nissan Motor Co. realizes a North Carolina PC shop owns their exact domain
- instead of paying his asking price, the automaker files a $10,000,000 federal lawsuit for cybersquatting
- Uzi refuses to back down and turns the homepage of Nissan․com into a public archive of their legal threats
1999-2007
- the court battle drags on for 8 years across district court, the Ninth Circuit, and a Supreme Court petition
- Uzi spends over $3,000,000 in legal fees and takes out two mortgages on his home
- federal judges rule a corporation can't strip a man of a domain built on his own birth name
July 2020 - Today
- Uzi Nissan passes away from COVID-19 in July 2020 at age 68
- when thieves hijack the domain after his death, a federal judge orders Nissan․com returned to his family estate in April 2024
To this day, Nissan Motors is forced to use NissanUSA․com.
If you type Nissan․com into your browser right now, you still don't get a car dealership.
You get a memorial to the computer repairman who beat a multinational giant over his own last name.
MK-1 can now store dated observations from selected images and compare them later. The tricky part, “I don’t see the key” doesn’t establish that someone moved it. Live camera integration is still ahead, but the memory groundwork is there.
WALL-E is partly to blame for this project. MK-1 now has a first pass at gradual personality changes. small, reversible shifts in conversational style based on repeated feedback. Whether that feels coherent over weeks/time is the next question. Will see.
Building MK-1’s memory made “forget that” surprisingly interesting. Deleting a memory also needs to remove the conclusions that depended on it. Everything stays local, and the memory store keeps selected summaries instead of entire recordings.
Robotic update: MK-1 now remembers selected experiences across conversations we have. what I tried, how it went, and what seemed to help. It can revisit unfinished topics and revise earlier conclusions. Small steps toward a robot with some continuity.
1/5 🧵
I just watched WALL·E, and one uncomfortable question stuck with me:
What if the real danger of AI isn't robots taking over, but humans slowly giving up control?
The movie came out almost 20 years ago. Somehow, it feels more relevant than ever.
4/5
The most brilliant irony in WALL·E?
A robot shows curiosity, affection, and a desire to explore, while humans live on autopilot.
Maybe the real danger isn't machines becoming more like humans.
It's humans becoming more like machines.
3/5
AI can already write for us, summarize things we never read, and recommend what decisions to make.
That can save us incredible amounts of time.
But if we stop questioning its answers, we risk losing something much more important: our own judgment.
2/5
In WALL·E, humans aren't terrified of machines. They're comfortable.
Screens tell them what to watch, what to consume, and where to go.
Control doesn't always arrive through force.
Sometimes, it arrives disguised as convenience.
This is one of the coolest things happening right now
Yep, that was my house. 72 hours of hackathon.
My house has never been this smart. Neither have I. 🧠
youtu.be/emi5O7LeiyU?si=fN6M…
MK-1 has been moving in simulation. The next step involves real encoders, wheel calibration, sensor placement and mapping my home. We have software to reuse, plus integration work ahead. I’m looking forward to debugging something with actual wheels.
Found a rover kit for $391. Then came the Raspberry Pi, LiDAR, batteries and mounting details. Robotics has a special talent for turning “that seems affordable” into a spreadsheet. Still planning the build; nothing ordered yet.
Tested a more natural local speech pipeline for MK-1. Sounded much better. Then memory pressure ended the conversation. Voice, transcription, the language model and navigation all share a hardware budget. That budget is now getting measured.
Gate 5 for MK-1: turning the simulation into a hardware plan. First target is a rover that moves between rooms, avoids obstacles and responds to voice commands. Starting indoors, with manual charging and later with its own dock maybe using april tag. The park adventures can wait.
I'm gonna blast this banger in the gym today for two straight hours!
At this moment in history, when France is at risk of disappearing, my friend @Erga3x and I decided to perform a 19th-century hymn to Saint Joan of Arc, who led French troops during the Hundred Years’ War and reclaimed the throne.⚜️
More than six centuries after her trafic death, Joan remains a symbol of courage and love for one’s country.
She reminds us that even when everything seems lost, a single person driven by faith and determination can awaken an entire nation.
(Find the link to our folk music channel in the description.)






