Youtube comments of Nicolae Crefelean (@kneekoo).
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Scrollbars are very useful. I get that people used to tiling window managers are fine with using the keyboard, but using the mouse to click the scrollbar to quickly navigate down, or dragging its handle to move faster up and down is very useful on large pages. It's way better than wasting time scrolling, because there are quite a few websites nowadays having a lot of content, and scrollbars mare a lot of sense there.
Besides, even back in the days of THICK scrollbars, you could argue that they waste space, but realistically if you blame a 20px wide for not having enough content at resolutions of 1024 or more pixels, then I wonder how can you miss the elephant in the room, and that's the design itself. Also, there's zoom for people who really need to cram more on a page. You don't really get a lot more if you don't have them.
Also, web designers who hide the scrollbars on pages with huge vertical content should be criminally prosecuted. :P Kidding, but that's a horrible experience when you have to rely on the mouse wheel to smoothly scroll through the content. It's quite rare when not having a scrollbar is a good idea. Most of the time it's an important feature. Even on a touch screen I prefer using it to scroll vertically faster, because when you have to swiped your screen 10+ times to reach the bottom for some footer info that you need quickly, it sucks.
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Very nice review, and quite fair, although subjective here and there - normal when it comes to personal preference.
What I care the most about a car are: safety, reliability, comfort, and for all of its systems to just work. And when it comes to EVs, clearly I don't want any headaches with charging. All of these things are great with Teslas. No amount of looks and interior fluff will convince me to make compromises in terms of safety, reliability and charging experience. The other brands really need to do a better job when it comes to charging, because are awful way too often.
About the aesthetic stuff, I fully agree that for the price they should do a better job. I don't know how many of them squeak and have misaligned panels and gaps, and I know not all come out with these problems, but these issues should be rather rare. Regarding the plastic and stitching, I'm split. I'm not sure if it's a good or a bad thing that I don't care too much. I want the car to not degrade, so they'd better have good stitches and well fit/glued plastics. But other than that, I want the car for its main functions that I think are important to everyone, and less for how I would compare it to other interiors.
About the exterior looks, which is of course subjective, I like their designs. Sure, some of it comes from whatever aerodynamics requirements they want so the car performs as they want, but it's a good idea to make them a bit different than others - everyone does it, for better or worse, when it comes to consumer choice.
About the door handles, it makes sense to me that they combined the button with a handle. If they only had a button, you'd need to grab the door from somewhere else to open it. I would definitely not like to grab the door from its side, where I could hurt my fingers if the door would close for any reason. The handles are useful where they are.
Thanks for the detailed explanation in the first part of the video! It complemented nicely the information we got from Sandy Munro's teardowns.
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That moment when people can't even ignore comments they're unwilling to read. Quite remarkable. 😆 Also telling others what to do, assuming nobody cares, when they obviously care enough to leave feedback. Oh, well...
@Letticia Morgan: The almost complete lack of punctuation makes is a bit more difficult to be sure exactly where the sentences end. So if there's a reasonable way for you to make the voice to text software transcribe your words in more sentences, that would help. Other than that, don't worry at all about the "too long; didn't read" crowd. With such a high amount of information and stuff literally abusing our attention, no wonder so many people won't go into details. That's why I think that as long as you're comfortable with what you share, it's fine. Just as they filter out long comments, other can filter out unconstructive feedback.
By the way, I read your comment in full, it was a bit hard to understand everything, but what I liked about it is that sense of having a conversation. It felt like your were there sharing your thoughts as in a face to face conversation, not an online comment. I like that because short comments on complex topics are obviously unsatisfactory when one feels like talking about it. And I liked the "at the moment" part, which leaves room for improvement. I hope you'll get as well as possible, as soon as possible. :) Cheers!
P.S. Separating paragraphs also makes reading more approachable, so it would be great for your software to have that feature.
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SpaceX is both fast and steady. :) And they've already sent people to space, while Blue Origin didn't even reach orbit. Slow and "ferociously" steady? Ok, but the thing is Blue Origin lags way behind, while even the slow and overbudgeted NASA is closer to set people in space. So Blue Origin is cool, if you put it in the context of the 70's. Other than that, they're insanely far from having orbiting colonies or settlements on any heavenly body. They really need to step up, or they will become irrelevant. The Chinese are reasonably close to rocket reusability, the Russians have also started working on reusable rockets, the ESA also works on reusability, and all of them have a long standing experience of going into space. I have no idea what to think about Blue Origin, other than... what exactly are they doing? Everyone moves faster than them, and they get results.
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19:04 "If you're using a distribution of Linux that is created from a company then, reality check, you have to expect things like this to happen. If you don't want a company to decide things for you, then don't use a distribution that's designed by a company." <- Reality check: software developers decide things for their users pretty much all the time, regardless of them being organized as a company or not. The outcome can be both good and bad, depending on who you ask. Debian + systemd gave birth to Devuan. Gnome 3 pushed at the wrong time (Gnome 2 abandoned and Gnome 3 being extremely buggy) gave birth to MATE and Cinnamon (initially MGSE). Also a reality check, Ubuntu is not just Ubuntu, but many distros building on top of it inherit the same issues or they have to work around them.
What matters for the users is rather what they want, need, hope, expect, and are willing to put up with. This complicates things because nothing fits everyone's use case. We could say that most people expect their software to have the needed features working in a stable and secure manner, so they can have a predictable working environment to get their stuff done without unexpected/negative events. And not many, but some of these users also care about system resources, so when a regular OS update installs a new service that requires RAM, CPU and storage space, that's obviously not great, especially when using a device with less capable hardware. The reality smacks you right in the face when kids can't go to their parents to ask for more RAM or bigger storage even when it's a cheap upgrade, because... real life issues, atechnical parents, etc. It's heartbreaking when you find out they can't spend $10-15 for 2/4GB RAM, a $25-30 SSD or up to $10 for an old dual core CPU that would turn their single core PC into a viable one. And yes, at least these kids have a computer, unlike others who have much less. It's heartbreaking nonetheless, and it's not just kids but also many adults who struggle staying afloat and have bigger priorities even for their last penny.
Universal Linux apps should be great, but they're not there yet. Solutions?
- make them capable of working with a "Universal Library Provider", so that you can only install all the required libraries once, instead of who knows how many times for a number of universal apps, because if this becomes the future, we'll see a crazy amount of duplication and more storage would be required as a result;
- if a Universal Linux app would fail to start, the "Universal Library Provider" UI could start and ask for the installation of the missing libraries;
- include a default theme for apps within the app package, but first plug into the theme provided by the system;
- for those who deliberately want the default look, WMs/DEs could offer a setting on a per-app basis (app id) to use either the app or OS-defined theme;
- provide integration mechanisms for software updaters, so that they can be updated seamlessly to the latest version;
- use said mechanism to allow software managers to easily uninstall Universal Linux apps;
- snap? allow for custom repositories (about Chromium: they created snap promising it won't replace APT, so they broke their promise when they stopped shipping it through APT)
- snap? fix the performance
Obviously there's still a lot to work until people can start using them as great additions to the distro's package management system. Having such apps is really important, but for now I disagree with your assessment that they're great. It has to become easier to use and manage them, and to eliminate some important issues that can be avoided.
Thanks for opening this discussion, though. I think it's important to talk about it objectively, pragmatically.
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When Zelenksy said he doesn't want a ceasefire, that's not all he said. He also mentioned security guarantees and multiple broken ceasefires. He's concerned with taking steps to ensure that a new attack would be much more difficult, not an actual guarantee that there won't be one.
Trump loudly repeated during his campaign "Peace through strength," and that might be possible if a new approach is attempted here. Right now, it's Ukraine having to become strong enough for Russia to think twice about more war. No one wants escalation, but it's also terrible to continue the politics of allowing the bigger powers to grab more of other countries' land. When exactly do we see ourselves a better world, where this kind of thing remains in the past? And how do we get there if we don't take steps in that direction? How is it that so many people fail to understand Ukraine's position?
Ukraine doesn't want the war, but it also doesn't want to be on the chopping block with large parts of it going to another country. So a ceasefire is an immediate important step, but with how many broken ceasefires have happened in recent years, it's obvious that more than a ceasefire is required here.
The occupied part of Ukraine during this war is about the size of Tennessee, or about half of Kansas or half of Utah. Imagine your family is there, while you're in another part of the US, and you have to make an international phone call to talk to them - on US land.
Also, the US is not strictly interested in just ending the war. Biden made a mistake giving out money to Ukraine, and Trump is trying to get something back for that. The US, on paper, doesn't have the right to change the terms for that money. So Zelensky is being judged harsh here for superficial reasons because it's easy for everyone else to not be in Ukraine's shoes. It's much easier not to know how the many broken ceasefires broke any kind of trust in a ceasefire alone being a good enough solution. The US, the EU, and Russia, are very interested in the Ukrainian rare earth minerals. Ukrains has large deposits of many rare minerals, and a big chunk of those are located in the occupied regions. It's pretty hard to believe that's a mere coincidence. Everyone wants those, which is likely why the war is not over yet. Trump wants the mineral deal because not only it gives the US something back after Biden's mistake, but it also helps with the fact that China is the biggest player in the refining of rare earth minerals and the US doesn't have that many on its own land. Those minerals are crucial to ensure technological progress, and the US is eager to get supplies from Ukraine.
This whole thing is a mess, and there is no easy way to deal with it. I just want the world to not default to the "classical" two options: (1) bigger war or (2) land concession. It's time the bigger powers are no longer allowed to occupy independent countries. We really need a third option, and that starts with understanding that Zelensky doesn't simply reject a ceasefire, or that he wants the war to go on. He wants it to stop, but he also wants the world to stay stronger on the side of the attacked country. The fact that this happened is proof that the big aggressors are still allowed to grab what they want. We have to change that, or this will happen again in the future, especially when less resources will be available. Everyone needs resources, but even Russia has done plenty of trading and could do that in the future. We have to look for peaceful trading, not violent land grabbing.
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Let's see what 360 TBW (TeraBytes Written) means in practice. Assuming 1TB of data being written every single day, the drive would lose its warranty in about 1 year. So this is clearly the wrong choice for people who do a lot of video editing or other storage intensive tasks on a daily basis.
But for the common user, who normally don't overpass 20GB of data written (on average), this translates into a lifespan of around 50 years, which is nuts. Even at 50GB written every single day, a QVO drive would last for around 20 years. And considering all the QVO drives (1/2/4TB) have a MTBF (mean time between failures) of 1.5 million hours (171 years), these drives are a great choice for a lot of users.
Now all we need is for them to become cheap enough for the everyday PC user, and the HDDs will no longer make sense for people who don't need massive amounts of storage capacity. And when this happens, the HDD prices will go up, because of the lower demand. In probably 2-3 years after their prices increase, while the SSD prices would be going down, the HDD/SSD price/capacity ratio will even out and it will make more sense to buy SSDs because of their higher speed. By that time, the SSD will have become what HDDs are today, and NVMe SSDs will be the go to choice for people requiring more performance at a reasonably more expensive price.
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The main point they're making, if genuine, is that they're incompetent. Not only they collect telemetry, but also become less relevant due to whatever decisions they make. But of course they're not genuine.
Make Software Great Again! (just a fun poke, don't fret :P)
The thing is, anyone who genuinely relies on telemetry to make "informed decisions" is actually saying that they don't really know what they're doing, that they don't actually have a solid plan to address certain needs and solve problems that exist in other software. That's quite telling, because normally you're supposed to drive the project forward based on known needs. Mozilla acts like they're user-driven while, actually, baking in feature that are not even user-requested. So yeah, they're full of it.
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8:17 An average of 1 MWh/month?! 😳 That's 5-6 times more than what I've been used to here in Europe, and I can easily think of stuff that I can unplug to lower the bill. Some households can go 8-10 lower than that, on average. And where I lived for a long time, we've had temperatures both higher and lower than the record highs and lows in Massachusetts. It really makes me wonder how many wrong decisions go into housing and power consumption in the US. Poor insulation is probably a big reason, then maybe choosing inefficient appliances. And of course there's the lifestyle, both that of the general population, as well as personal choice.
I'm sure I'm not part of the average, because I pay attention to everything I buy to make sure I get the best balance between features, power consumption and price, but still, it's a huge difference that's hard for me to explain. And I don't compromise on features and quality, but I go through the painstakingly long process of comparing long lists of specifications of many products. It can be annoying to be fair, but it pays off in a lot more than just power savings. I'm probably doing 2-3 times better than the average where I am, and I'm at about 8 times lower than Matt's average consumption. Clearly, I can't just buy the cheapest stuff, but not very expensive either. There are good options out there, from PCs to refrigerators, TVs and other stuff. The fact that one purchase takes me a few minutes or hours of research is almost irrelevant when I consider all the benefits I get after, for many years.
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@LinuxGalore The world works even with proprietary software. The legacy car makers have a long list of issues, their software being just one of many things requiring attention. Their whole business model is different compared to Tesla's, which is something that can't be fixed without a lot of pain, expenses and lost jobs. That's why they want to keep the status quo, because while they were happy to ignore Tesla knowing how easy it is to fail, now that Tesla not only didn't fail but succeeded big time, they are forced to catch up unreasonably fast. It took Tesla quite a few years of hardship to get here, and now everyone else has to jump over the bar Tesla raised.
It would be a blessing for them for software to be their biggest problem, but that's easier to address, if we ignore A.I. That hard part is surviving the implosion of the ICE vehicle sales while dealing with the legal affairs done with dealers and services, while trying throwing money at designing cars and new production lines, then bring them online with qualified staff, then go through validation and certifications. This is extremely hard even if all the software they need simply falls on their lap for free. No wonder Elon sounds like a broken record saying that "prototypes are easy, production is hard."
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@SuperNiceClown I can't idealize capitalism because it's already proven to be awful when taken to extreme. Nothing should be taken to extreme. However, I can barely cherry pick a few good things about the communist period of my country. And when put in balance with everything else, the good is about as powerful as a fart in the wind. By contrast, capitalism has more potential for good. But of course it's complicated, because politics always is.
We should be very pragmatic and acknowledge the problems created by the various kinds of politics. I don't see what kind of politics would satisfy everyone, or if such a thing could ever exist, but I think we should take a look at the whole picture - past, present and future. Most of us will probably agree that progress is a good thing. I think we can also agree that having more people trying to solve problems is also a good thing, because it increases the chances of having more problems solved.
If we zoom out to see the past and present, we can see how humankind evolved in many ways, although it was a bloody evolution, filled with all kinds of bad and evil. Now if we look towards the future, can we really call our lifetime evolution or stagnation if we repeat what we did so far? As long as we care enough about a future generation to look at our time and acknowledge progress, we're supposed to step up and do better than this. At some point in our evolution we have to reach the age of accountability. Not only should we admit our flaws and work to correct them as individuals, but the society as a whole needs to work on it just the same, and that includes the political system and countries.
Romania is one of the countries that suffered from Russian annexation and influence. You'd have a hard time finding enough Romanians to say positive things about the Russian leadership. We're obviously opposed to that kind of values and politics, and we've been a democracy for over 30 years now - although flawed in many ways. But how successful are we? The difference is huge when compared to Western and Central European countries like Germany, France, Spain, etc. Why? Because that's where our leaderships brought us.
To an extent, leaderships are a reflection of what people voted. It's safe to say that we must learn to not only vote better, but also be more attentive and/or involved with politics if we want to improve. It doesn't matter where you are on the map if you always expect others to fix something. We need more people to hold their votes accountable and do better next time. And apart from voting, we also need to improve our ways as individuals in a society. There's no progress otherwise, it doesn't just fall on our lap out of thin air. We need to cherry pick the good parts of existing politics and come up with something better. Otherwise we will keep arguing over and over, over repeated mistakes that we could've learned from.
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@WhittyPics Tesla makes profit from EVs, which is not a secret, considering their financial statements are public. Now in regards of battery cost, Tesla is also working on it, by reducing it with the new 4680 batteries. They aim for a 56% reduction in cost, but we'll see.
However, they're not the only ones working on innovation. And as with many technologies, the more research and development goes into it, the more streamlined those things become. Smartphones were expensive early on, and now you can get one, albeit mediocre, for under $100.
Battery cost has gone down in recent years and will keep going down for a while. And while I don't expect them to cost $2000 any time soon, it's hard to argue that a 10-15 year old ICE car doesn't require a lot of money for consumables, maintenance and service. There's always cost involved. This is simply about switching to technologies that are better for the environment. And hopefully it won't take too long before we find something even better, but hey... huge changes aren't easy.
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Cool, thanks! :) I recently had my TeamViewer account marked as "commercial user", telling me that my sessions would be cut after 5 minutes, but in reality they cut them at the 1 minute mark. And after a few days of beying annoyed, I tried to find them and found the page where you can request your "commercial user" account to be reviewed and reset to non-commercial after you give them out a lot of personal details and your handwritten signature.
I gave them no private info, and I drew up a nice middle finger as my signature, and explained the situation, requesting to fix the issue. Amazingly, although it took them a few weeks, just days ago they fixed my issue. Now I also have to check it, but I didn't before seeing this video. I hope RustDesk server works on a Raspberry Pi. :D That would be awesome!
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@logangraham2956 The kernel of an operating system is a mandatory *component*. But the kernel alone doesn't make for a full operating system. Put any kernel on a PC and see what you can accomplish with it - nothing. You first need a boot loader (like GNU GRUB), then you need other software along the kernel, so the hardware can be useful in any way at all.
Just because a number of operating systems don't use the GNU tools, along with the Linux kernel, it doesn't mean that you should use them as an example to talk about the whole family of GNU/Linux operating systems. And that's exactly where it makes sense to say "GNU/Linux" - when referring to the family. Other than that, it's pedantic non-sense. I use Linux Mint, which is just one of the hundreds of operating systems in the GNU/Linux family. I also use Ubuntu and Debian, so there you go - that's the OS.
We certainly can't call the Windows sysadmins idiots for not calling their OS "NT" just because that's what "operates the system". No matter how important, the kernel is still a component of the OS. You can't have one without it, but that doesn't make it the OS. And people should just use the OS name given by whoever made the OS, and stop discussing the kitchen sink already.
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@hectornecromancer5308 No, it's actually stupid to double down on ICE vehicles. The price of batteries has consistently gone down, and they are are most expensive thing in a car. With longer range for less money, and cheaper to recharge compared to refueling, plus lower TCO, one doesn't have to be a genius to know a BEV is better - even if they don't care about emissions.
And when the ICE car makers lose even more economy of scale (already an issue), their margins will become lower. If they sit and wait for longer, what kind of money will there be available to save them from going bankrupt? That's the problem - it's a matter of survival at this point. And the difference between ICE and BEV is big enough to not be easy to scale fast. It takes time, some mistakes in the process, and so on.
The ICE vehicle manufacturer should know better, and keep pushing harder to reach profitability with BEVs, because their ICE sales will implode in very few years from now. They only have time until Tesla and the Chinese manufacturers scale up to the point ICE sales will take a huge dent. Waiting to see is a recipe for bankruptcy.
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I've been choosing PC parts with power consumption in mind for over 20 years - always custom builds, so I can have maximum control. I have also learned to optimize my resource consumption by disabling unnecessary services and startup programs. There's also the choice of more efficient software that does the same job faster without burning a lot of CPU/GPU power, so it's a good habit to learn skills, not specific software, to be able to migrate to something more lean if opportunity shows up. And I learned to settle for less GPU power, having used iGPUs since they became reasonable enough for HQ multimedia and some gaming.
Many people don't seriously consider the fact that had all of these cool games come out, our lives would've gone just the same, we would've played what we had at hand. My happiness doesn't rely on a flood of newer and newer entertainment, but simply being able to be entertained. There are so many forms of entertainment, including less power hungry gaming, that we could game on for more time that we actually have - if gaming was really that big of a priority.
Of course, not everyone has the luxury of using iGPUs - some people need fast rendering for what they do, but most people don't do that. And many can adjust their habits, expectations, and knowledge, to be able to do a lot with less. And technology keeps improving. Both Intel and AMD now have quite decent iGPUs that can easily support streaming (to Twitch, YouTube, facebook, etc), some fairly decent gaming, rendering and other stuff. So it's always a good idea to check the latest options, to see if something significantly more power efficient can cover our needs. It's a scary thought for some, but then we should always keep in mind that adding a dedicated GPU to our PC is possible, provided it's a desktop PC, but it's also the case of some laptops. Just plan ahead a bit.
Apart from using less energy, some added benefits of using iGPUs is that the PC is quieter (less fan noise), and it generates less heat, which some people try to get rid of by using air conditioning (more power, more money, more noise).
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They're not going bankrupt. They still have a huge margin on their cars, compared to the rest of the auto industry, so while they will get less money when the ZEV credits go away, they're still be profitable. And the thing is whatever happens in California, there's 49 other states where if the competition doesn't come up with EVs and people want them, they legacy car makers will basically hand over market share to Tesla if they don't make enough EVs.
No US auto maker makes profit on EVs, other than Tesla, and out of the Chinese ones only BYD makes some profit, but with a smaller margin than Tesla. That's why unless something really terrible happens, they're going to keep doing business and even gain market share globally because ICE car sales keep going down and something has to replace them. By the end of the decade, we could see at least a legacy car maker going under, if not more. GM doesn't look great, and VW looks pretty shaky in its own country. Seeing them like this was unthinkable a decade ago.
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@VickieEvans-m8w Watch the whole recording. You'll see how JD made what I hope is just an honest mistake, telling Zelensky that he didn't even thank them. Earlier in the meeting there were 2 or 3 instances when Zelensky thanked for the help. JD looked pretty leveled in many interviews I've seen him in before the elections. That's why I gave him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't notice the thanks, likely because there was no point to focus on those specific words. But the fact remains that he scolded Zelensky for the wrong thing, and doubled down on it. If JD doesn't apologize on his own, hopefully the media will bring this up so he can comment on it and prove it was just an honest mistake.
However, when even Karoline plays the gratitude card, this all stinks like politics. Trump wants a quick ceasefire because then the US can get valuable rare minerals and he can also brag about stopping the war. But Zelensky is not wrong to distrust Putin, since he broke ceasefires before. This is a complicated mess, but the least the US can do is to stop lying about what's going on, and treat Ukraine with dignity. This is not about Zelensky, it's about a lot of people whose lives are messed up because of Russia's leadership. The right solution is peace, not yet another ceasefire that can be broken as before. Trump acted like a baby here - all he wanted was to be right, and JD played along, and now Karoline too.
People shouldn't support this kind of politics, or you'll get more of it. A lot of things are starting to look great in the US after Trump became president, and I'm sure more will be done. But not everything is nice and peachy, so be ready to call out the bad politics when you see it, so they can take note and correct course.
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@nmatheis We probably spend similar amounts of money on housing, but in Europe we pay more upfront. The difference is a huge quality of life from day one, and energy savings for cheaper living afterwards. This pays off especially when you go through rough patches in later years, because not having to heat or cool the house at all or rarely means a lot to the budget.
As an examples, in our home we only needed heating during 2-3 colder days in the last 4-5 years, when the outside temperature was between 0-20F. Inside we had around 70-75F when it was the coldest outside. Cooling, I guess some people would've wanted some, considering the inside temperatures got close to 85F frequently during the heat waves.
Cooler temperatures can be handled with proper clothing. The warmer/hotter ones, some people can handle, others might need a fan. But in general the power consumption is vastly lower with good insulation, so you can get away without solar panels (less cost) if the temperatures don't go wild. So insulation is an upfront long-term investment that makes living way cheaper and more comfortable for decades. That's why people do it here, because it's well worth it.
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- Intro
The fact that some scientists act like complete fools about this topic is pathetic. It doesn't matter what (if anything) motivates them, they're pathetic. They're not wrong to point out the challenges, but it's rather shocking to see how profoundly their lack of vision makes them think Musk's plan doesn't make sense. It's like they are incapable of understanding what that guy is doing, and what the consequences are - or at least a few obvious consequences. Do they even try to follow the plan and its evolution? Do they care to listen? Or do they think that browsing through a few articles and watching a few short videos is enough? Is that how they think random people can assess their scientific work? Obviously not, it takes some serious effort to actually get it, but they don't apply the same measure when judging this plan to colonize Mars.
"First, let's fix X, Y, Z" sounds just like they lack the ability to understand that billions of people can and, in fact, do billions of things at the same time. Before anything, going to Mars is not about avoiding to fix stuff back on Earth. It also doesn't prevent so many people from doing everything in their power to fix Earth. But to be fair, here we are, despite all the efforts ever made - so there's no good reason to say no. Going to space gave all of us quite a few technologies that we now carry in our pockets, like cameras and GPS. The scientists who seem to refuse to even try to put themselves into "visionary mode" don't see how learning to live on a frozen dust ball gives Earth a plethora of new technologies to make harsh places on Earth habitable and self-sustaining. Idiots. I know I'm harsh, but they should own their idiocy, then grow out of it. If they care so much about Earth, they should get to work, instead of putting out sterile papers every now and then. But no, they would rather tell Musk (indirectly) to fix Earth.
- Background Facts
Mars is a frozen rusty ball with an unbreathable thin atmosphere and a next to zero magnetic field. So what? What are we if we don't periodically push our boundaries? Humans have always wanted to accomplish great new things. And despite what Neil deGrasse Tyson says, over a century ago Ernest Shackleton led the Antarctic Expedition, mostly privately funded. It lasted for nearly 3 years, and while it failed its main objective to cross the Antarctic, it accomplished a lot and all its members returned home. Mars is exponentially harder, and a mission would take close to 3 years too - interesting coincidence. The difference is that it's technically possible to take this next step.
"It’d require moving and handling enormous amounts of materials, and is way beyond the economic capacity that humans currently have on Earth, let alone on another planet."
This statement proves ignorance on two accounts. First, it ignores the proven work of reducing the cost of space flight by orders of magnitude. NASA's document "The Recent Large Reduction in Space Launch Cost", on page 8, compared the cost per kg of cargo to LEO, adjusted for inflation:
- Space Shuttle: $61700
- Falcon 9: $2700
- Falcon Heavy: $1400
That's proof of a stubborn individual who pushed his company to reduce the cost by a factor of 44. The second thing that quote ignores is how Starship's engines have become more powerful, allowing for a new version of Starship that can put even more cargo into space. 100-150 tons per ship seems like the starting point, and we still don't know how far they can push that ship. The consequences of Starship development is a drastic reduction of cost that moves missions to Mars from prohibitive to doable. I don't understand how a scientist can't look past budgets and see that the damned equation of moving stuff to space includes the cost per weight. I wonder how many scientists paid enough attention to Musk saying that they want to achieve a $10-20 cost per kg with Starship. They probably don't believe it, just like most people didn't believe SpaceX could reuse their boosters. Their current record of booster uses is 24, and still no other company can do it. They have laded a building-sized booster on the launch tower in their next generation rocket, and yet people doubt SpaceX just because it's never been done. But it will be done just because a stubborn guy managed to find an amazing team of engineers who kept proving doubters wrong for many years now.
Leaving SpaceX aside, I wonder why Neil and others don't (seriously) talk about The Mars Society. They worked their assess off to prepare for any opportunity to go to Mars. Check out their MDRS, with over 270 crews trained and over 2730 analog Mars operational days clocked in. However, Neil started to sound lately like a bureaucrat apologist, claiming that only nations break space frontiers. I don't believe for a second that he's unaware of Robert Zubrin's effort to get a lot of people ready to go to Mars to live and do science there. The Mars Society looked into many challenges and worked to find solutions, but probably most scientists prefer to ignore all of that just to they don't sound idealistic or unrealistic. They would rather dismiss these hard to achieve plans and work, and claim that we should first fix Earth, then go back to publishing inconsequential papers. Hypocrites.
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This oversimplifies things. Both men and women can be single parents who are supposed to prioritize their kids - because that's what responsible parents do. Also, them being single can also be caused by their spouses dying - no one is coming back from that. So should we expect everyone to remain single parents, without exception? Use your brain when you date anyone, with or without kids, and don't turn yourself into a statistic. Even if the majority has it bad, that doesn't automatically mean that your future is predetermined by those statistics. The average exists because there's both worse and better. And if you can't understand how someone can love someone else's kids, just remember that adoption exists.
Dating with single parents is obviously way different. But if you marry that person, your spouse would still have to focus on the kids, as if you were in a "first marriage". So what changes, other than living under the same roof? Pay attention to both statistics and people, and treat neither as all figured out.
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I "fired" ASUS too earlier this year. Crap motherboard, disheartening and cheeky assistance, and literally zero support towards solving my issues. So I sent the motherboard back, got my money, got another brand. 3 months later, I have a functional PC - not with ASUS.
I have no clue what the hell happened to them these last few years, I've had crap support last year as well when I contacted them about a different product, but at least it wasn't mine and it wasn't brand new. This time it was the latest gen stuff, and not only false advertising (RAM compatibility marketed with some speeds that weren't even in their RAM QVL), but also multiple issues and zero support. They closed both my tickets, for false reasons ("garbled characters"), without helping at all. I hope they go bankrupt before they treat other customers like this. They don't deserve the money.
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Trump is disingenuous on this. Of course a ceasefire is nice to stop the loss of life for now, but Russia has broken ceasefires against Ukraine before, so you bet Zelensky isn't happy with (nor can trust) a ceasefire. The right solution is peace, and Trump just wants a quick agreement to get his part of the deal. Zelensky is likely worried that once the ceasefire would go in effect, the US will no longer care enough about peace negotiations.
Russia took a big chunk of Ukraine. If you're a US American, that's about the size of Tennessee, or half of Kansas. Imagine any country takes that much from you, the aggressor doesn't concede, and the world allows it to happen. The sane people don't want another world war, and the aggressor relies on that specific reason to keep the war going. To make it even more palpable, the regions Russia grabbed from Ukraine mostly have telephone numbers with a Russian prefix. Imagine making an international phone call to talk to your family in Tennessee or Kansas. That's how bad this is.
There is no easy solution just because everyone wants to avoid WW3. The result of that is a country being ripped apart, with no guarantees that Russia will stop. I understand that Trump wants to use smooth talk to carry out the ceasefire agreement, because diplomacy is about talking it out, but I don't like how dismissive and disrespectful he is to the leader of a country under attack. It makes no difference who the president is. Any president giving away territory looks terrible and gets to be judged by history for leaving people behind, along with territory. Optics aside, a lot of lives are affected when territory gets annexed by a different country, and that's the reality Ukraine experiences now, again.
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@stimpyfisk7258 The word "interesting" has been used for a long time both for stuff that is actually interesting, as well as stuff that you don't really want to share an opinion about.
And while Joe has heard a lot, and knows a lot, he's mainly a talk show host (does he still act?). So he obviously doesn't have the competence to set most people straight if they say stuff that goes over his head.
Fluently spewing gibberish is hard to counter in a live conversation, unless you have extensive competence on the topic the gibberish addresses. So I'm not surprised he didn't call those things crazy. Joe did mention, politely, that "I wish I could really, truly, understand exactly what you're saying.". :)) That was basically "Man, what you just said makes no sense to me." He also said he kind of gets it, but it felt like he was just coming his way a bit.
Getting your hands one someone like Terrance is not easy. The guy is somewhere out there. How many people do we see writing 4 pages about 1 * 1 = 2 and then goes on even deeper on stuff they're obviously not competent with? Joe milked this and if he gets another chance, he'll do it again.
I don't know why Dave thinks Joe should call out the bullshit Terrance said. I'm fine calling it bullshit even without proving why. But face to face with another person you have to be fairly prepared, or it won't go well. Sometimes it's best to give them rope.
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- Scientific Merit?
Yet another thing that a number of scientists would rather ignore is the fact that the people on Mars would be insanely more productive in their research compared to the robots we've sent so far. They're afraid about contamination but ignore the fact that we have safe methods to study ice core samples and other stuff right here on Earth. It should be obvious that things would speed up a lot with boots on Mars. I think it's fair to assume that those who would rather research Mars from Earth would feel displaced by those brave enough to go to Mars, so I expect plain old jealousy to play a role in the negative comments.
- Economic Benefits
Neil actually praised Elon until recent years, but he's become a sort of a hater presently - he's willing to ignore a lot of obvious positives while maintaining his broken point about the economics of Mars colonization. Elon doesn't care about ROI here because that's not his goal and he won't spend any effort to make a case for ROI. His outspoken goal is for humans to become a multiplanetary species. That said, there will be a ROI of sorts in the valuable research done there by people, among other things. Doing agriculture on Mars will also benefit Earth, by giving us blueprints to making pretty much any Earth landmass useful one way or another. And there will be many things that we can't even anticipate.
Elon doesn't need friends in the government. He just needs the government to stop acting like hater-activists by standing in the way of SpaceX's development. Look at the FAA how they blatantly lied about the reason they delayed Starship licenses, and how they fined SpaceX for bogus reasons, including using fresh/drinking water on the Starship launch pad. Look at the CCC (almost CCP) denying SpaceX the extension from 36 to 50 launches from the west coast of the US, just because they didn't like Elon's politics. So it's not friends that Elon needs, but rather public servants who do their jobs efficiently, without overreaching or standing in the way for personal political reasons - which should be illegal and punishable by law.
It's worth pointing out again that Neil and other scientists should keep in mind that the cost per kg is a huge driving factor in spaceflight. That's why Elon can and will send ships to Mars even without government money. The fact that NASA is also interested to go there, by virtue of having a good and cheap vehicle in Starship, makes no difference in how Elon's ambitious goal stands on its own feet even without "nations breaking space frontiers" - as Neil puts it. It's definitely not NASA who will send 1 million people to Mars. That will be done as a private endeavor, and all we have to do is wait and see.
- Future of Consciousness
"One might argue that planning the future of civilization for a million years seems rather ambitious seeing that most of us can’t even make a houseplant last through the winter, but maybe that’s what a trillion dollars do to your brain."
This is incredibly shortsighted, and borderline jealous - in line with those who don't like rich people just because they're rich and that somehow automatically makes them crazy or out of touch, therefore you couldn't possibly find reason in their goals. There are multiple books about this guy and his companies, and they capture his mindset well enough to understand that he was always different than most people. Your average kid doesn't just make something and sells it for $500. And your average businessman doesn't just work on two insanely hard companies (Tesla and SpaceX) and makes them very successful. And then there are Neuralink and xAI on their path to great success, and maybe in the not distant future, The Boring Company will also do some serious business - potentially drilling human habitats out in space when not making new transportation routes here on Earth.
It doesn't matter what the average people do when planning and executing. It doesn't even matter what other billionaires think about the future, because that's really all they do - just think and talk about it. This guy is actually working hard to put humanity on the path of a future that allows human consciousness to have a much better chance to not be wiped out by natural causes or petty politics. And just like the haters love to point out, Elon is not this or that, he hasn't done X, Y or Z, he's just whatever. Sure, and just like the hoards of brilliant engineers executing this guy's ambitious vision, the Mars colony will also be built and shaped by those who decide to be part of something historic and literally out of this world. It will all happen while various people here on Earth will still moan about "who needs that when we have so many problems here?!"
Seeing Mars colonized will give me great comfort in knowing that a new generation of scientists will push humanity forward. One that refused being complacent and nag doers about their goals. A generation who will generate new science and "make consciousness great again." (pun totally intended) Regular people can easily miss the many benefits of becoming a multiplanetary species. And some scientists and so-called pundits will rather look at the problems and become naysayers, complaining about the ROI and ignoring how a Mars colony can make money or resources by selling the technologies, knowledge, and patents they come up with while carving a life for themselves on Mars.
Sometimes even very smart people can be shortsighted or wrong. And it's quite ironic how they don't consider how this obviously smart and ambitious guy who is successful on a scale unseen before actually has a solid chance of making this a reality in many of our lifetimes.
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- Is it the right time?
This is peak ignorance on Sabine's part, and of all others who think about timing while not seeing the obvious. Elon Musk is alive now, and he's an extremely rare combo of people who not only can manufacture physical objects at lower and lower costs, but also wants to set humanity on the path of a distant future. It absolutely is the right time to do this while you have someone alive to do it thanks to all the billions and trillions he generates through his businesses. We can see how politics sucks and how it impacts our lives, and how uncertain things look. And while most of us are demoralized about all the crap on display, and not having much, if any, impact on what the world will look like, this guy works hard and fast to start a Mars colony while he's alive. Everyone else expects nations/governments to do something of this scale. But nations only to this kind of things extremely inefficiently and either motivated by impending threats, or by some adversary who wants to claim their technological leadership.
The time is now, and nations *can* participate, or they can stay petty and watch the private sector pulling the biggest humiliation on them in human history. And when he succeeds, Africa will pride itself with the South African born entrepreneur who made humans multiplanetary. And Canada will raise a statue, and the US will gloat in the face of the adversaries. Of course, all the scientists who acted like idiots will then grumble and shift their focus on the science they can do remotely - if they don't want to go there.
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Welcome back, both of you! :) And nice bow, Jixuan. My wife approved it too. 😄
10:12 The guy wears a duck mask and the lady next to him wears TWO masks (duck + a black one on top). 🤣🤣🤣
> Imaginary plan following:
Senator 1: - We're kind of screwed, SpaceX will beat everyone, what do we do?
Senator 2: - LOL, I know how to mess them up. 🙃 Let's only give NASA a smaller budget than SpaceX actually needs. SpaceX are so eager to prove themselves that they might just take it. Then the others file protests and we'll give NASA the rest of the money to fully fund "another" winner. 😉
Senators 3, 4, 5, 6...: - LMFAO! 🤣 Genius move, crappy budget approved. ✔️ In your face, SpaceX! 🥸
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Ok, what I don't understand is why Sandy reviewed an ICE vehicle. I remember him saying somewhat recently that he only looks at EVs now, and that the ICE age is dead. This looks like a funeral party.
With that out of the way:
1. Americans love big vehicles and they frequently say that in an accident you want to be in the bigger car. But you know what? There can always be a bigger car if people ask for bigger and bigger cars. What exactly does that lead to? Terrible inefficiency: gas guzzlers and in the future battery hogs. I wonder how much time the US market will need to figure out that smaller cars are a better idea. And by smaller I don't mean the Fiat 500 kind of small. I mean common sense small - enough to have plenty of room inside for you and your passengers, and to carry stuff around, but not a big and heavy monstrosity that can pass for a pimped-up tank on wheels.
2. 0:15 For an ICE vehicle to be developed for nearly 8 years and launched when EVs sales are ramping up exponentially... may their negative ROI be as small as they can hope for! It will be a loss.
3. 4:20 A gap presented as a feature and Sandy doesn't even flinch? What?! This is Sandy we're talking about - nagging about gaps before you even see the whole shape of the car. I felt like there was a punchline somewhere, but over 9 minutes in the video there was none.
4. 7:48 The cap over the battery would've been categorized as unnecessary on other vehicles, because most people don't even look, but here it was attention to detail because it's a luxury vehicle. Where exactly is the line between useless+cost and luxury?
5. I immediately liked the video because so far I liked everything I watched from Sandy, so just so I don't forget at the end, at some point I started clicking "Like" from the get go. But after 9:25 I removed the like and I was wondering if it's still worth watching the review of a glorified ICE vehicle. I decided to do so, just because Sandy is in the video and maybe there will be a conclusion that will be worth being there for. He did ask about an EV version of this vehicle in the first few minutes, so at least there's that. I'll see what comes next. But if Sandy weren't in this, I would've stopped watching and disliked the video. Just let the ICE vehicles die in peace. It's time.
6. 12:32 Sandy recommending an ICE vehicle. Ok, this happened. And sure, if his friends don't care about anything other than luxury tanks, it goes without saying that Tesla, VW and others are not there yet with their EVs, which means their only option is ICE. Still... whatever.
7. 14:50 Ok, they mentioned a weird thing about the "chrome" line not having the same finish.
8. 21:13 🤣🤣🤣 Two punchlines for the price of one timestamp! It stinks, but it wouldn't if it were an EV.
9. 22:12 About the 360-degree visibility: "This, at its time, and it probably still is within this segment class, leading." Giving him the benefit of the doubt, he probably wasn't up to date with that detail. But if that feature was benchmarked 8 years ago and no one checked in the meantime, it explains how some car manufacturers see themselves as leaders in this and that. You know, like GM are somehow the leaders in EVs. 🤣 So maybe it was a slip up, but it still looks bad.
10. 27:34 Very funny, but that's definitely not the only problem of this vehicle. A 6.4L engine is a seriously big problem. You pay taxes through your nose and your passenger's nose to be able to drive that. And then you need lots of oil and gas to move it around. And then there's everything else about ICE vehicles.
It was a strange video for this channel. At the end I didn't click "Dislike" but not "Like" either. The good part of reviews like this is that you get to see features that are classified as luxury, so you can appreciate them when you get them on vehicles that are half the price or cheaper. Other than that, seeing a huge gas guzzler reviewed when EVs are finally taking over, it feels completely wrong.
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Mispronouncing stuff is normal, as people don't have their tongues and mouths trained for all languages. What makes no sense, though, is intentionally mispronouncing words when the goal is not comedy or insult. The easiest way to get a proper feel of why intentionally mispronouncing words is not really a great idea is hearing others constantly mispronouncing your own name. Many people actually care.
But then it also makes sense to try to pronounce it as correct as possible because it's easier for people to understand it, instead of trying to figure out what that was, while losing track on the words following some mispronunciation, which leads to rewinding a bit, just so you catch the whole idea/sentence. This is why you can't do this with a live audience, because you will definitely lose a few on the way. So it's not about people giving anyone a hard time, but rather making sure you pass the message in a way that makes it easy for everyone to follow. And it's also hard work to make sure you pronounce everything correctly and clearly, so this shouldn't be taken lightly. But the effort is worth it and it pays in time.
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Neil looks like a defender of bureaucracy. He pushes so hard on the idea that the great (and expensive) things are only done by nations and governments, that he can't see the irony and reality. Nations/governments are obviously going to do stuff expensively because they're inefficient people who do stuff with other people's money, and then they brag about their achievements. He claims that the private entities simply come and take those expensive projects and try to make a buck off of them, and doesn't go into the obvious details that you cannot copy/paste the highly expensive projects to make them commercially viable. By NASA's own study, Falcon Heavy costs over 40 times less in cost per kilogram to LEO. To Neil, that's just the private sector copying NASA for a buck.
Neil insists that no private company can push the space frontiers, and that SpaceX does what NASA has been doing for decades. He not only ignores the fact that Russia was the first to put a satellite and a man into orbit, or that they had the first space station, but also that SpaceX is the only entity to ever reuse rockets, and that Starship is getting close to being operational as a Mars vehicle despite the fact that NASA hasn't even drawn a contract to go there. He seems to believe that if SpaceX goes to Mars, it's going to be NASA's credit because the taxpayer money would pay the bill. He stubbornly ignores all of that, and seemingly doesn't care about how much innovation and even completely new ideas and technologies have to exist to make space exploration so much more affordable. He willfully ignores how all the work SpaceX does is allow people like him to break new frontiers simply because it enables a lot of research projects that would otherwise take centuries for NASA to accomplish, not because it lacks engineering talent, but because it's guided and funded by politicians.
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Historians are supposed to be experts about the past, not the future. I initially thought "NASA historian" was ironic and funny, but then the joke kept dragging to weird levels. 😂
No problem, though, it's ok when people have opinions and are willing to stand by them. It's just that not everyone can be right. And considering how much progress SpaceX has done with Starship, I expect it to see it tested in orbit and then around the Moon in 2022. A test mission to Mars will probably follow in late 2024.
No one else has anything better than Starship, even in its current form, so I don't see how any other rocket would reach Mars before SpaceX. Rocket engineering is not the kind of field that you can easily leapfrog development stages. It takes a lot of money, talent and time - all highly important.
And considering SpaceX will soon make a lot of money with Starlink, that will enable the acceleration of their development, because they have a silly amount of talent just waiting for bigger budgets to get results faster. More money will enable them to easily test more advanced materials and manufacturing techniques, which is something governments can't afford and something that other private companies don't do simply because they sit on their hands and wait for governmental contracts or they lack the vision/talent to execute.
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They only pre-built computers I bought were laptops and the Raspberry Pis. The exception was my first computer, a second-hand one, that I had to buy as such because I couldn't afford anything else. For over 25 years now, I've spent a lot of time deciding what parts to buy. Nowadays, that is what I consider when buying parts for a new PC:
1. The CPU has to have the performance I need at the lowest power consumption possible. This allows me to run the PC for long hours without overspending on electricity.
2. The motherboard must allow:
- CPU upgrades if I ever need more power;
- RAM upgrades if I ever need more (4 slots are best for cheaper upgrades);
- Enough storage device connections, which is important so I can add more storage when necessary;
- The addition of a modern GPU (on the latest or previous generation of PCI-E) if I believe I'll ever need more than integrated graphics.
3. The storage would have to be:
- The fastest (or close to it) and most reliable SSD (most write cycles) that I can buy, only "compromising" on capacity (great performance and durable);
- A large enough HDD for "big data".
Obviously, when it comes to specialized PCs, like a NAS, the priorities shift towards motherboards with more connections for storage devices and no special need for more than 2 slots of RAM, though if I can find a model with 4 slots at a very close price I choose that because it has better value if I ever want to sell it. I've never sold one, though. So as you would expect, I have a (not so) small museum. 😆
P.S. Great video, I loved it! 👍
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0:50 Supercharging is one out of multiple streams of revenue. And while profitable, it's small overall. Obviously supercharging is required, but everything else is required too. That said, if every single person in the supercharging department got fired, either we're missing something super important or it was simply (and I think most likely) a rash decision.
This is one of those things I can easily see Elon later claim that it was a mistake - and I can also picture a Nicholas Cage meme: "You don't say?!" His management style will almost certainly become the subject of many studies. It looks more and more like an experimental way of reinventing business at scale. And as many experiments, there are mistakes along the way - some big. I get that we need to rethink doing business. We've seen and can still see crap management everywhere - wrong people being promoted, wrong people doing very poorly or even detrimental stuff at work but still get to keep their jobs, we see gross and blatant inefficiency that is tolerated by management, and so on. The result is that there are plenty of businesses that could do a lot better but don't, and some barely survive, or die off, or sometimes they get governmental bailouts just because they're too big and shutting down would heavily disrupt the economy at a local and national level. We do need to fix the way we do business, but going to the other extreme where people are almost like chess board pieces doesn't look like a good approach either.
I'm bullish on Tesla because their track record is proof that despite many mistakes along the way, they corrected them, stayed the course and they keep pushing their mission forward, with good results. But I don't see what's defensible about firing a whole department. I don't know what they know, but it's an essential part of the business and this kind of action makes no sense.
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26:03 You renamed F-Droid, son. Many, many times.
About these 3 projects, they're incredibly helpful to a lot of people, and I like that they get funded by various governments because they're very important when you take all of that at face value. That said, if you get government funding, you should be open to audit and do things transparently, or you cannot qualify for that kind of money. No shady stuff, no hidden stuff, no extremely-delayed-reporting, none of that. Any government-funded organization should have open books and organizational reporting never older than 12 months.
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Dwarves could've played those roles and that awkward CGI would've never had to see the light of day. Who cares that Peter Dinklage feels weird about dwarves being in the live-action remake? He's a great actor, but he's as wrong as he can get on this. It's a story, all characters are fiction, just like Game of Thrones and most movies.
The fact that he doesn't allow himself to be seen as just some dude who can go a great job on camera, but fears that having real people in all roles would somehow hurt anyone, is nonsensical. The seven dwarves are even the good guys in this story, and people love them. More non-dwarves have played as people in caves, or underground, or as (horrible) bad guys, or whatever, and no one is confused about the fact that it's just a story with people playing parts. 😆
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So what was wrong with "Eskimo Nebula" and "Siamese Twins"? I looked into it.
Here's what NASA [1] says: «“Eskimo” is widely viewed as a colonial term with a racist history, imposed on the indigenous people of Arctic regions.»
Here's what Canada [2] says: «"Eskimo" is the term once given to Inuit by European explorers and is now rarely used in Canada. It is derived from an Algonquin term meaning "raw meat eaters," and many people find the term offensive.»
Ok, that makes sense. It's not a racist word, though. But being non-sense and tied to nasty wrongdoings, I see why they stopped using it.
As for the "Siamese Twins", NASA didn't say anything but Wikipedia [3] says this:
«Chang and Eng Bunker (1811–1874), Thai brothers born in Siam, now Thailand, traveled widely for many years and were labeled as The Siamese Twins. Chang and Eng were joined at the torso by a band of flesh, cartilage, and their fused livers. In modern times, they could have been easily separated. Due to the brothers' fame and the rarity of the condition, the term "Siamese twins" came to be used as a synonym for conjoined twins.»
There you go, I learned something new. I never knew where that word came from. Now I see why it makes no sense to use it for conjoined twins. But for a pair of galaxies, why not? That would be an honor for the actual Siamese twins. What am I missing?
[1] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-to-reexamine-nicknames-for-cosmic-objects
[2] http://www.publications.gc.ca/collections/Collection/R2-236-2002E.pdf
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjoined_twins
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I started watching the video and paused it to get some groceries. After the checkout I saw two laptops in a display: one for €199 and the other for €299. Since I'm a PC builder, I came back home disillusioned with the thought that we consider a $500 PC a "budget" (cheaper) one, when two full computers were right there for the price of one without peripherals. I thought that regardless of their specifications, you can actually start doing things with them - no assembly required, no need for a monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers, they just work as such. So I started wondering if building PCs is still worth it, and if a $500 budget can still be considered cheap.
But before I could answer that, I went online to check out the specifications of those laptops. Sad to say, those are e-waste under warranty. The €199 laptop has a weak and old Celeron CPU (N4120, launched in 2019), 4GB RAM and 128 GB flash memory on-board, very likely eMMC. Its only redeeming qualities are the extra M.2 2280 slot for a better storage device, although that's S-ATA, not NVMe, and it has a 14" Full HD display, which is reasonable. The one for €299 has a Celeron N4500 (launched in 2021), 8GB RAM and, thankfully, an NVMe SSD, though only 256 GB, with a 15.6" display.
As long as you know what you're doing, and what you get a PC for, there are for sure cheaper options than $500. However, that's pretty much the danger zone when you want the ability to upgrade in the future, let alone the fact that you'd have to be comfortable with reduced productivity until you spend more money. So when it comes to budget PCs, more often than not, you get what you pay for - unless you know someone who can give you good advice (for free 😆).
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They're not cowards at all. They had the courage to admit that they're anti Trump, and that the shooting was a bad thing. To people who haven't looked into the details, no wonder it looks staged. I initially saw the foto in a chat, without context. The famous Iwo Jima photo instantly came to mind, and in the context of the campaign, you'd think some Trump fan would photoshop that just for kicks. Then I went online and found out about the shooting.
Because it's a campaign and politicians attempt all kinds of stunts, I asked myself if this could be staged. But before finding out that a 20-year old was behind this, it was obvious that Trump being behind this was a huge stretch, next to impossible, considering how he talked as he usually does, and he constantly moved, which common sense should tell people that you don't do if you want the sniper to accurately to their job.
So again, if people didn't spend much time looking into details or thinking about it, no wonder it looks staged. That photo is fantastic. By the way, I don't like Trump either. And I dislike Biden even more, but shooting any of them is fundamentally wrong in a civilized society. And I think that even if the Democrats didn't plan this, they certainly allowed it. Because the level of incompetence required for this incident to happen is way too high. This was a lot more than just DEI.
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What the haaail? Do these two know next to nothing about NASA's Commercial Crew Program and the ISS? It's been over 4 years since the first two astronauts flew up with Dragon, and 8 other crews followed - 4 at a time (after Demo-2 with Bob & Doug) -, and they talk about square pegs in round holes?! 🤦♂ The SpaceX Dragon has even been on Netflix twice, in short series about the first commercial crewed flight (Demo-2), as well as Inspiration 4 (with 4 people).
Both Dragon and Starliner are designed to carry up to 7 astronauts, but they've been adjusted to crews of 4 because that's enough for the crew rotation on the ISS. That's why SpaceX can easily send up a capsule with 2 astronauts and take Suni and Butch on return as a 4-person crew - the standard flight configuration.
Anyway, the two astronauts are stuck when it comes to flying Starliner, but they're up there comfortably, doing work for NASA until their return. The ISS has plenty of supplies because it's NASA's protocol to always have a lot more, just in case the resupply missions can't reach the ISS on schedule. It's just Starliner that needs to be sorted out so they can send it back autonomously. Although Boeing pretends to be confident about it, their track record doesn't make NASA confident enough. But since the whole point of the Commerical Crew Program is redundancy, this makes it obvious why having alternatives to flying astronauts to and from the ISS is important.
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Here are 3 more easy reasons why Linux is better than Windows, to add up to 10:
- Secure software on old hardware: While there are hardware bugs making them vulnerable with any operating system, you can still use a 20 year old PC with an up-to-date Linux distro for a few specific use cases that don't expose you to risks, while also being capable of having a bit of fun with other up-to-date software that run just fine even with low resources.
- Easier software discoverability: For decades, most graphical user interfaces in Linux-based operating systems have grouped similar software in the menu categories. When you know you want to do some office-related work, you go to the "Office" menu for that program. The same with "Sound & Video", "Games", "Internet" and others. Windows makes you look through all available software, or try your luck by searching the menu and hope that you used the right keywords.
- Software choices are respected: Once you set your default browser, it stays that way. By contrast, Windows has changed that "by mistake" so many times, that it's ridiculous.
There are other reasons, too. Privacy is a huge one, although many people don't care enough. Familiarity is another big one, with a few choices of graphical user interfaces (like Cinnamon, Xfce, MATE, LXDE, etc) being developed in ways that allow users to see little change so their workflows/habits don't get disrupted with every new version. Updates are much friendlier than described in this video, not forcing you to reboot. With Windows, rebooting is almost guaranteed to be required - and you get nagged about it. Also, unlike Windows, there are no ads in a Linux-based operating system. It's rather insane that you get ads in a paid operating system.
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4:01 He said "I *think* we will be feature complete", and "I *would* say I am certain." Considering that wording, I never took those statements seriously - because words matter. Sure there's progress, cool, but I always look for the uncertainty in wording. And the thing is that even when people are certain about stuff, things can still happen that makes stuff come later (or never).
I don't care about the naming of FSD. It was always clear that it's a technology in the works, it warns about requiring constant human supervision, and that the driver is responsible. Whoever declines responsibility shouldn't use it. The same goes for autopilot. Planes have autopilot too, but it's not autonomous flying either. People must take these technologies for what they are, not for what they wish they were. People have to learn to be responsible and accountable for their own choices and misuse of technology - and this is true about many technologies, not just the ones discussed here.
15:15 About FSD safety, your data source is not properly curated. A number of cases are unrelated to assisted driving (Autopilot or FSD), and some of those accidents weren't caused by Teslas. Even worse, cases marked as "Autopilot claimed: 1" are mistakenly labeled as such, like case 349, where a Tesla crashed into the side of a tractor-trailer truck pulling out of a truck stop, and the truck driver was cited for reckless driving. With this many mistakes, I wonder how many cases are truly related to Tesla's software. And at 15:15 you attributed those deaths to FSD, which is not Autopilot. I expect there are likely accidents and deaths related to Tesla software, but when making a case against it, you should definitely have valid numbers. Fanboyism doesn't help, but FUD doesn't help either.
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I don't have either Mac OS or Windows because I don't care about them as long as I can do what I want with GNU/Linux on my PCs. That's not to say I didn't run into issues with GNU/Linux, but boy did I have plenty of those with Windows... ugh! I've lost much more time fixing or maintaining Windows than I've done with my GNU/Linux distros (I've used plenty, although I've settled for Mint).
As for Macs, they're not an option for me. Their inner and outer beauty are not enough to make me choose one. I build my own PCs and I buy laptops that are easily upgradeable because I want the luxury of doing a lot of things with that hardware, and Macs don't offer that kind of luxury. And that's ironic considering their price. Apple could make them easily upgradeable/customizable, especially for that much money, but obviously they don't want to. So I'll never buy a Mac - it's that easy.
I can understand why many people like Macs, though. As long as they have their needs covered, they feel pampered. That's nice, of course, but I've seen people making strange faces when I told them how much their needed upgrades cost, and how much the same thing costs for a non-Mac PC. Sure, there are also PCs deliberately made to be hard to upgrade. That's why the people who want a new computer should get informed with their options.
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@RenderingUser Computer literacy doesn't hinge on terminal use, so it shouldn't be showed in people's faces - because this usually gets the opposite reaction to that of raising interest. We should show how it helps, and how a few basic things can accomplish both fun and important stuff, so that at least a few people will naturally gravitate towards it.
One can understand that "the box" is where the computer parts are, and that roughly a handful of hardware components are what make up a functional PC, and that each part plays a specific role, etc, without knowing much, or anything, about the terminal.
The terminal is an optional tool, and it can be crazy powerful and more effective than a "clicky" tool, but just like physical/hardware tools do different things in the hands of craftsmen and laymen, so does the terminal. We should treat this the same - some people have an affinity towards more technical stuff, some don't. So I think that making a compelling case for the terminal is the best way to handle this, but people should never feel that the terminal is mandatory, but merely a hidden gem.
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I don't understand why some people come up with the argument that more advanced beings would find us too boring, therefore we haven't been visited. We study even the tiniest things in nature. Is it because we know we still don't know enough? So do those advanced beings know so much that they can't learn anything new? But then why do people watch sports? Where's the learning value in that? :P
Why do we watch comedies about ridiculous people in ridiculous situations? Why would some advanced beings watch some ridiculous people generating and worrying about ridiculous situations? Why do some people enjoy re-watching movies when they know them by heart? Why would some advanced beings keep coming to watch us? At best, we're not really too boring, and some aliens have visited us. At worst, we're their entertainment value. :P
I don't see a reason why an advanced civilization wouldn't watch us. And if they got this far, they're likely watching others. The universe is a generous Petri dish for those who found the way to cut through vast distances in short amounts of time. Although time might be just another axis in their representation of our dimension, and we can't even conceive how "they" would move around. It's like 2D stick figures would be unaware of how we folded the paper so it doesn't go across the whole room, having it comfortably on our desk, to watch.
We think we're smart for moving away from the geocentric model, and now we view the Universe by a new set of rules, although we know we're still missing some really important pieces of the puzzle, and even an unknown number of unknowns. But we're pretty convinced "they" find us too boring. :)) It's really odd how we boldly go all over the place in tiny steps, searching for new knowledge while being so hesitant to have a mind open enough to stop making silly statements about how boring we must be.
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Financially speaking, Tesla keep piling up cash while doing everything they do. Whatever the sentiment is, if the Cybertruck can be made and sold profitably, it's a commercial success, no matter how small. Plenty of products have no appeal to people, but they do have appeal to some. Companies run on money, not on how some people feel about some of their products, and Tesla is financially successful with their lineup. A product is not successful only if everyone likes it, but if it makes more money than it takes to sell it.
Additionally, in this year's S&P Global Mobility Automotive Loyalty Awards Tesla was recognized as a winner in 4 categories for the second year in a row. Tesla is not for everyone, just as Volkswagen is not for everyone, or Porsche, or Apple, or whatever brand. Companies can be very successful even when you have nothing to do with them.
And if you think yuppie (young urban professional) applies to Tesla, then google "Hedges Company Tesla owner demographics" and see how the median age of a new Tesla owner is 48. Clearly that will change after they reduce their cost to manufacture, which will allow them to lower the prices, but that's in the future.
17:34 They're not crazy because Tesla still wants the world to shift to sustainable energy. I think we agree that not everyone cares about saving the environment. Most people don't go out of their way to make environmental-friendly decisions only to pay a lot more for some product. You live in the US and you probably know that pickup trucks are very popular, and it's around 20% market share in the US.
Have you watched Tucker Carlson's "Ultimate Test" of Cybertruck? You'll see how easy it is for people to hate it, and how people change their minds once they put it to seriously hard work. Many people hate its looks, but they love what their trucks can do for them. Again, it's a sentiment issue that is easily challenged when people actually use them. Not everyone is run by sentiment, even if that's the first and easiest thing that comes to us. A lot of people care more about what their thing can do, than how it looks. Take a look at the fresh numbers published by Cox Automotive, noting how the US EV market share grew by 11% year over year in Q3 2024, and how Cybertruck is the third best sold EV in the US (Q3 2024), only overtaken by two other Tesla models (Y and 3).
That is definitely not how failure looks like - outselling other brands and models in a growing market share. Did any of us think this were even possible? Nope, for sure many of us said about the same thing in 2019 when they unveiled the Cybertruck: 😰 Is that the real thing, or is it a prank and the real truck will come out in a minute?!
The Cybertruck is more than what's on the surface. The fact that a production vehicle that is growing in number of sales is a great thing because the more parts are needed for 48V architectures, the easier it will be for suppliers to also care about making such parts. A lot of people don't consider the implications, but they definitely should. The 48V architecture will definitely be used in future Tesla vehicles, which will reduce the cost to manufacture even further. And making EVs cheaper is indeed the way to help transitioning to sustainable energy even when people don't care about it at all. But it's a process, not a flip of a switch, and some people are too stuck in the moment to zoom out and see the big picture.
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24:58 By the way, the 2.5% of people who decided to buy the truck is not surprising. Obviously a lot of people wanted the cheaper models, so they can't even take delivery of a model that's not even produced yet. That said, despite the obvious inflation that made everything more expensive, and the 2019 prices unrealistic, we have two key factors at play: the Cybertruck already achieved a positive gross margin, and the economy is slowly recovering. The future looks like profitable and cheaper Cybertrucks in a market that can afford to buy more than a year ago. The interest rates will also go down further and more people will afford to buy cars of all kinds, including Teslas, so that's another important thing that even some analysts seem to miss.
Quite a few people like being opinionated and get angry at stuff. Some of them are so adamant in their convictions that literally can't understand how something can be successful without their "approval", so they're in constant denial, despite all the data available to them, even when it comes from companies who don't cheer for Tesla or its leader.
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26:44 "FSD is never gonna be a thing" is wrong. Most of the people on Earth don't even have a driver's license but have to move around. Owning a car requires passing a test, and then you need money to buy the car, you need insurance, pay taxes, you need a parking spot (most don't have a house with a garage), there's recharging and maintenance, sometimes you find our car dented or worse in some public parking lot, then if you have to drive the car you also have to spend time looking for a parking spot wherever you go, and many cost money, etc.
Not having to care about any of that is great for a huge amount of people. It's also cheaper, and if self-driving actually succeeds in the coming years, and we will have more and more autonomous vehicles moving people around, the roads will also become safer. I think FSD will happen, given the progress we've seen. When... no one knows. Even Tesla can't be 100% sure because no one has ever done self-driving at scale, let alone vision-only. But since people can drive just fine with vision-only, this complicated problem has a good chance to be solved.
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26:51 With YouTube, Spotify, iTunes and other services, how many people still own dedicated multimedia players? How many still own a dedicated camera to take photos with? A lot less, compared to 20 years ago. We moved to online services and devices with storage that can hold our media. Our smartphones are great to play music and take photos, and external storage has become cheap for those who want to store a lot more stuff. It doesn't look to me like Tesla will give up making their existing models any time soon, and their prices will keep going down as much as they can - they're going to reach the end of optimization at some point, though the cost of batteries would still influence the price by a few thousands of dollars.
People want quality, but look at the reviews for Chinese-made vehicles and you'll see plenty of issues - more than you get with a Tesla vehicle. They move fast, go cheap, but don't offer enough quality and you have to be able to compromise on it if you really want that cheap Chinese car. The worst part is that most of the EV makers are not even profitable, which is bad. There's only so much money that governments can afford to subsidize failing businesses. We can only rely on car makers who can survive on their own, unless we assume that the CCP has unlimited money for EVs. So far, only Tesla and BYD make profit off of their EVs, so it's quite rough. I hope Rivian will become profitable too - they make great trucks that serve an important niche in the US.
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Here's a hypothetical situation: The owners had a rough time there and got new jobs, and planned moving somewhere rather far away. The day of the move, the cat was out exploring, as they sometimes do when they're allowed to move freely, and the trucks arrived to pick up the last of the stuff that needed to be moved. The owners' jobs were stating the next day. Their kids were hysteric about not finding the cat. While leaving in a rush, because the trucks won't wait forever, they left a note on the mailbox/porch/whatever, for someone to call in case they find the cat. The cat got back, finding no one. The note was taken down by rain and wind.
All hypothetically, I have no idea what happened there. "Heartless" people obviously exist, but life is really weird. Bad things happen even when we don't want to, and fixes are not always possible.
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There's a lot to love about elementary OS, technically. You can see the sustained effort to make the user experience a lot more cohesive and pleasant, and I appreciate it when people go out of their way to not only deliver software that does stuff, but also has enough polish to feel like someone cares about it and its users. Even their AppCenter with the pay-what-you-want idea is great.
Now when I see words thrown around like "take that..." I just shake my head and shrug it off. It seems like a lot of people nowadays, regardless of political affiliation, if they have one, no longer care enough about the words they use. So if they want to insult and/or belittle someone/something, you'll see quite a few people utter some bad word, even if it doesn't apply at all.
I think it's a bad thing when people get used to uttering nonsense, just as it's bad when people get used to hearing others speaking nonsense and shrug it off, because all of that only leads to creating even more communication problems. But I don't know what we should do, other than understanding the problem and insisting on using the right words, so here's yet another shrug. 🤷♂
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Lots of men are not good enough to work really hard jobs. Physically disabled people clearly can't do physically demanding jobs. Should all of these also lose their voting rights? And some women work on oil rigs. Would they get to keep their right to vote? :P (rhetorical questions)
The right to vote should not be correlated to physically hard jobs. If we did, then people working in offices would also lose their right to vote, just because they "push paper" or "tap keyboards" - completely ignoring how those can easily be very important jobs, either done by men or women. The point of voting is for adults to have a say on who gets in positions that influence everyone's lives.
I totally get her annoyance with the "equality" that this new wave of feminism is pushing around. Men and women are simply different, in more ways than physically, and our choices reflect plenty of gaps - which include pay too. Bad people still exist, discrimination still exists, and will probably exist for as long as people exist. But there will always be gaps (a.k.a. differences) between us. It's the reality we live in. Pearl is totally right that if you want equal pay, go work the same shitty jobs for the same amount of time, and perform just as well, then ask for equal pay.
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Assuming that we can create an informational snapshot of a living organism, Kirk doesn't die but ends up in informational stasis. And yes, it's stasis when it's a snapshot. It wouldn't be stasis if it were a simulation where the living organism can resume doing stuff, like in the "Upload" TV series. Non-stasis would mean the organism is allowed to change some of its parameters, like shape, texture, knowledge and awareness, but other than that we would be ageless for as long as the simulation engine runs. A safety system could store snapshots at regular time intervals, on physical storage devices, so if a system failure occurs the living organism can be restored either as information or in the flesh by using an existing snapshot.
I couldn't even start guessing how much storage would be required to store a single snapshot of a person, let alone having multiple snapshots for a multi-pad transporter room. 😁
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My 2009 laptop currently runs Debian 12 with LXDE, in under 400 MB RAM. With the 4GB it has I can browse the web, watch FullHD movies, play games, etc. Even when it runs Linux Mint with Cinnamon, taking 1.5GB RAM, there's enough left for the same things. The laptop runs great with the SSD I put in, and I'm pretty sure it will be usable for a while longer. Of course it's no longer a daily driver, which is why I don't need it for everything, but it can do a lot anyway. On my main PC I already have 64GB RAM, so I can do a lot more.😆
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@salriz7385 Yeah, it sucks when the difference in price is that high. At least if the inflation wasn't a problem, the price would look a lot better now. But check if you qualify for the tax credit, because the numbers I put there didn't include whatever savings might exist. If you can get tax credits, this "tank" will likely save you more money down the road, compared to anything else. At least for people doing professional work with their trucks, not having to worry about dents, scratches, paint chips, or just metal sheet getting torn or punctured, that means a lot.
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@rogerphelps9939 A silly slip at the end makes a building collapse, or a food inedible, or a patient die of an overdose, etc. I am definitely on board with scoring some points for getting most of a question right, but definitely not close to the full mark. The point of education is to train people to do well, to the best of their abilities. Most people don't score the maximum points, and that's fine. But if you get almost full marks for the wrong answers, what's the incentive to do better?
In an ideal world, all students who got most of the questions right would get advice from their teachers, so that they can improve. But the reality is that when many students make mistakes, it gets increasingly harder to find time to help everyone individually. If the parents can't afford private tutoring, the least they can do is talk to other parents to let their kids get together to do study with those who know. I helped a few of my colleagues in elementary school, and it felt great to be that helpful to them. My colleagues did better, and their parents appreciated me. In high-school, I ended up getting private tutoring because I was hopelessly behind (losing focus sucks).
My point is that as long as we care about decent results, we can handle the stuff that seems too difficult. Students aren't required to excel, but to pass.
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@cengeb You're either misinformed or pretending. I worked for 2 car dealerships and I know about the logistics nightmare they went through to stock up parts for service. Frames and tires are one thing, the thousands of different parts are another. Currently, VW have at least 24 models for sale. Divide 10 million by 24 and you get 416666. How about economies of scale now, considering most of those are ICE vehicles that are much more complex than EVs? Even their ID.4 is way more complex than the Tesla Model Y, which is why they're more expensive to build, and take more time.
Herbert Diess (VW CEO) admitted it takes them more than 3 times as much time to make a car, compared to Tesla. The legacy car industry margins average below 5%. Tesla is way above that, and if you think vertical integration is the same for Tesla and VW/Toyota, you simply ignore how easier it is for Tesla with only 4 models. Have you watched the teardowns Munro did? Search for "Comparing Tesla, Ford, & VW's Electrical Architectures" and you'll notice how Tesla reduced complexity and cost. But that's not because they somehow cut corners.
When you think about vertical integration, you probably only consider the parts. It's more than that, because by having teams doing their own parts in house, they also work closely to optimize their design so their architecture works as efficiently as possible with the included parts. They remove what they can, by designing their components to still to the same job, most of the time even better than before. Their electrical system is very lean. Their cooling system went from a traditional one to one controlled by a super bottle, and then the octovalve. You just can't see that kind of optimizations when you order components build by various suppliers because they're not involved in the design of those cars.
Also, Tesla is set to deliver around 900k cars this year and two new factories are close to coming online, so next year we can expect over 1.3 million cars delivered. Their vertical integration and economies of scale will benefit them even more. Just watch more of Sandy's teardowns and comparisons and you'll understand the difference, and why Tesla's vertical integration is not your grandpa's vertical integration.
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John Brennan If you actually check J.D. Power (trust them or not), they have no expert reviews for Tesla and they only have consumer reviews for 2020. But if you take those into account, out of 221 reviews the lowest ones are two 4/5 ratings - the rest are 5/5 stars. As for Consumer Reports, they are known to publish crap like documenting how to "defeat" the Tesla Autopilot driver monitoring. Showing everyone how to be irresponsible and a hazard on the street is stupid beyond reason. That said, a month later Tesla already had camera monitoring for the driver to prevent idiots from being idiots, because that was what triggered their article in the first place, someone losing their lives for being irresponsible. And most cars have no driver monitoring at all.
About the control arm, for a non-safety related issue, it sucks but it's not a big deal and not more than other cars' problems that happen occasionally. Well, that if we don't consider exceptions like GM having to recall all Bolt EVs for battery fire issues after recommending their customers to park and charge them far from civilization, or Ford Mach-E's bricking problem on "over-the-air" updates that are not really over the air and can only be done in a dealership in the first place, if you want the promised feature of opening your car with your phone. But sure, complain about a few squeaking Teslas.
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Whatever you use, insulating your home will permanently make your heating and cooling bills cheaper. Not only that, when energy prices spike for whatever reason, like the recent geopolitical issues caused, you'll be less impacted. So insulating your home is a great idea no matter what system you prefer. It has an upfront cost, which sucks, but you get the benefit as soon as you have it done. The opposite is that your monthly bills for heating and cooling are more expensive, and you have less comfort, with the sole advantage that those monthly bills are much lower than insulating your home. But if you can afford it, it's worth it, even if it's strictly for your comfort. And if you have a home and significantly more efficient appliances, and you want a backup power system, it's going to be way cheaper when you need significantly less energy. Or it will cost you the same, but you'll last longer during an outage. All thanks to insulation.
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@Ryany2118 It can be done without antisocial people. :) Talking about myself, I do my day to day stuff in a space about as big as I suggested and I'm fine. I don't feel the need to go out, I don't care about being around others, my wife is all I need around. Sure, I also talk to my family every now and then. I'm OK in society, I've even done public speaking, so I'm not a caveman afraid of the world. I simply enjoy more doing my own things, working on stuff, learning, helping others online, etc. Literally all of that I could do in space, and I'm sure there are plenty others like me. Would I be fit for such a mission? I have no clue, I'd have to train and find out everything about it. I might fail on other criteria, but definitely not on personal space and social needs. 😄 You know, it would be a bit hard to watch all these videos, though. I gotta talk to Elon, to have Marslink fully functional by the time we get there. 🤣
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12:14 You call that "fine if you've got nothing to hide?" Please don't repeat that nonsense. It may not be obvious to everyone why it's in fact a problem, so here's why. Some agency/company collects a lot of data about you, including highly private data like identification, bank accounts, passwords, etc. Then some employee steals the data and sells it, and now you're at the mercy of whoever wants to periodically siphon a little bit of money from you, or to incriminate you of something, or even steal your identity for whatever purpose. With today's generative AI, having a lot of personal information and visual and audio samples from someone, a lot of nasty things can be achieved on your behalf.
Also, even when you don't have corrupt people inside the agency/company collecting this kind of data, they automatically become targets of hacking and the stolen data can be sold in the open. Even dumb thieves can do a lot of damage. Now imagine an intelligent thief knowing virtually everything about you.
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Years ago, when Blizzard asked me to give them my ID to recover my account (behind a lost authenticator), I refused to do so. All the large corporations have been hacked, so I didn't want to worry about how they would use/store my ID.
This issue, though, is not about parenting - as many people point out in the comments. Unless you're not good enough with technology, you know how even when you're an IT expert you still can't control where your kids access the internet on devices that are not under your management. So no amount of good parenting and technical skill will shield yours kids from adult stuff that is easily available online. That's why we need a way to not make it easy for kids to access this content, while also not making it a matter of privacy for adults.
There's no perfect solution here. But one that could work well would be anonymous internet adult cards that you can buy by showing your ID to the cashier. Just like in the case of buying alcohol, they look at it and sell you the stuff if you're of legal age, without storing your identity anywhere. These anonymous cards could be used in any place where proof of adulthood is required. You could get one for being over 18, and later one for being over 21. It's definitely better than giving out your ID to someone who you cannot trust to keep it safe.
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It's sad when there's cheating, and when there's enough distrust to consider doing a DNA test. However, look at it like this: a law making this mandatory will grant the government legal access to your DNA. Also remember the sentence: "Anything you say can and will be used against you."
Imagine a public place that becomes a crime scene and your DNA is there because you dropped a hair, booger or whatever, just hours prior to the crime. Imagine the officers *just doing their job*, searching for DNA matches and finding yours. Now imagine being interviewed for who knows how long, and how nasty that can be on you. That's just one big thing that should concern people. Many government agencies would love to get as much data, as intimate as possible, about everyone. They can use it for testing, research, investigations, profiling, etc. I think it's best for the paternity tests to be the exception, not the rule of law.
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Judging by what they showed us at 3:08, O'Neil cylinders don't make more sense than a colony on Mars. What kind of polluting industry is shown there? None. Claiming that he wants to move that into space sounds nice, but think about the industrial processes and the resources they require. In orbit, you have nothing but space. On a heavenly body you only take hardware, minimal life support, and make your own resources on-site. In orbit you take the hardware, the land, the water, the air, everything. There's also a limited amount of energy that can be generated there by solar means, so any industry up there would have to rely on nuclear power because that's the only way they can scale production. Then there's the constant risk of impact with all the garbage we put in orbit, as well as other objects flying through space. How do they quickly move a huge structure? And of course more and more astronomers will hate their jobs. So until they announce a solid plan with more than just nice ideas, I wouldn't say that Jeff's plan makes more sense. It's actually hard to prove that the polluting industries can be moved into orbit profitably.
Also, saying that Blue Origin is catching up is like saying that a toddler who almost started to walk is catching up to the marathon campion. The tragedy here is that Blue Origin took so much time to get New Glenn (close to being) operational, that by the time they start flying their own stuff it will be cheaper to just fly it with Starship. Even if Bezos stays committed to the idea of making O'Neil cylinders, he's going to need his own competitor to Starship because New Glenn will make no sense - too many flights to move the who structure, too many flights to fill it with stuff, too many flights to move a lot of people there, and then too many flights to fly raw materials and supplies to/from orbit and get products back to Earth.
By the way, Elon has "undersold" the economic viability of a Mars colony. My guess is he did that because he wants all the focus on the mission itself. He obviously has a few ideas about successful companies making profit, and he also knows a few people who would invest in businesses in space. A Mars colony with lots of scientists and engineers would inevitably come up with new technologies and solutions to live in harsh conditions simply because being there is the strongest motivator you can get to improve your odds to live, and life. Those technologies can be licensed here on Earth to cover some expenses for resupply missions. Also, since a lot of people would buy "Mars crap," even simple items manufactured on Mars could be sold here on Earth to those who own something literally out of this world. I'm sure there are plenty of ideas that can fund the colony until it becomes self-sufficient. Even making money from rights to do TV shows and documentaries will be a very lucrative source of income for the initial colony. Just wait and see.
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@FutureAzA If you lived in Europe, maybe you've been in parking lots next to hypermarkets like Kaufland, LIDL, etc. A Porsche Cayenne, for instance, is a bit oversized for such parking places. It fits, but if you want to get it out and it's between two other Cayennes, you're stuck. That's where the Tesla summon would be essential if you don't want to (or can't) enter your vehicle through your trunk - which would be ridiculous anyway. And many private garages are better suited for smaller vehicles. So if you want to park your Cayenne, everyone else but the driver have to climb out the vehicle before entering the garage, because there's not enough room to exit both sides without banging the doors on the garage walls.
It's pretty much the same across Europe - lots of countries and almost the same surface as the USA. Pretty much everything's tighter here as a result. And then there are cities and towns even tighter, that would make it physically impossible even for the 3% smaller Cybertruck to simply enter the street - Spain, Italy and France are good examples of that.
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0:00 I don't understand why some people cling to the apparent, instead of looking at the big picture. Being convinced that Elon went all in on Trump for less regulations and power is just being superficial. He got here, richest man ever, with highly successful companies, with FSD almost done, with Starship almost done, with millions of Starlink customers and already profitable, with a successful Neuralink human implant, and a strikingly strong xAI, despite 4 years with the current administration. People don't really get it unless they zoom all the way out.
While we joke about Elon being some alien who just wants to go back home (to Mars), he does share a few things with many of us. Facing a huge cross-point in the potential outcome of the presidential elections, people less invested in politics who saw a dangerous candidate tend to go vote for the other. Elon is the kind of person who sees in his mind the many ramifications of potential futures. A continuation of the current administration would've caused significantly more damage to the US and the world.
Elon didn't buy Twitter to unban a few people, but to actually give everyone a place where you don't get banned due to the moderation team disagreeing with your opinions, or reality itself. Going all in on Trump was just the big sequel of preventing the world from becoming a woke dystopia. He vowed to fight against it, and so he did. His involvement in DoGE has plenty of positive ramifications. He cares about what happens with the world, and he knows that a strong president needs a strong economy, so he chose to get involved to make it happen as soon as possible.
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@flash4s747 I lived most of my life without air conditioning, and I'm fine between 61-103 F (16-39 C) while doing desk work. Of course, at lower temperatures I move around every now and then, to get my blood running faster and heat up.
I don't know what people need to do to better adapt so they can be fine with lower and higher temperatures, but I think the body needs the "training" of being exposed to different temperatures, and learn to deal with them. Staying for a long time within a small range of temperatures makes us way more uncomfortable to changes.
It's not great for the body to experience sudden changes in temperature, because it affects blood circulation, which can cause headaches, and it also affects immunity. So when it's hot outside, we'd want the indoor air to be cooler, but not too cool if we also need to go out. "Training" the body not only helps our health, but also our budget. :)
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I was curious about that dossier, so I went to Ken Klippenstein's website. On his article about his X reinstatement, here's what he said: Yes, I know that it is general practice to delete “private” information from leaks and classified documents, but in this case, not only is Vance an elected official and Vice Presidential candidate, but the information is readily available for anyone to buy. [...] We should be honest about so-called private information contained in the dossier and "private" information in general. It is readily available to anyone who can buy it. [...] Did I make a mistake in not redacting the “private” information on J.D. Vance? If I wanted a Twitter account, apparently so. But on principle? I stand by it absolutely.
The document he published (indirectly, as a link on X) had indeed private information, and he obviously didn't have JD's permission. It makes no difference that some people who know where to get it from can pay for it. It's not the others who published private info. So whoever reported his X post wasn't wrong. It's one thing to say that someone has a certain laptop with certain stuff on it, and it's another to share private information. He made a bad call, and got suspended. That's the actual story.
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I think it's for time people to learn that despite plenty of politics and face saving gone into Boeing's Starliner, it's disrespectful to the astronauts to call them stranded. Not only they had the guts to fly in that thing, but they were also ready to deal with the unexpected - including a potentially longer stay on the ISS. Astronauts compete to fly to space, so despite the optics that were polluted by politics from both sides, yes, even from this side, they had no problem with the compromise of coming home later.
To actually be stranded, that would mean there's no means of transportation for them to return. And to mount a rescue mission to return them to Earth as soon as possible, that would've forced NASA (actually taxpayers) to pay a non-negligible amount of money for something that wasn't an emergency. The ISS had more people on board in the past, and they were fine. There's no shortage to good reasons to slam the previous government and everyone involved with Starliner, just show some respect to the people who took one for everyone else. Because that's what test pilots do, deal with the uncertain. If things were certain, there would be no need to do test flights.
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The big problem I have with compromise in face of an overwhelming force is that if we always agree to defaulting to give up territory, they will end up taking more and more. The bullies can only become more and more powerful, until there's no one left to even talk to them. That's why this war sucks beyond anything, because it's a huge waste of money from a lot of countries and, worse than anything, the target lost a lot of people and part of its territory is controlled by the attacker.
The U.S. doesn't understand why this sucks so badly because it never had to give up its homeland to a stronger opponent. In Europe, many countries have been ripped apart by various "bullies" for millennia. I wonder what it would take for Americans to understand how that's like. You're probably lucky that Biden (actually those behind him) didn't finish what he started with the open borders, or you would get a taste of some serious struggles. What you have right now is next to nothing, by comparison. So I really don't know what the solution is for this war. But ceding territory just makes me sick to the core, because that fucking thing has been going for far too long, and way too many lives have been lost to aggressors who always come back to take more.
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- Scientific Merit?
Yet another thing that a number of scientists would rather ignore is the fact that the people on Mars would be insanely more productive in their research compared to the robots we've sent so far. They're afraid about contamination but ignore the fact that we have safe methods to study ice core samples and other stuff right here on Earth. It should be obvious that things would speed up a lot with boots on Mars. I think it's fair to assume that those who would rather research Mars from Earth would feel displaced by those brave enough to go to Mars, so I expect plain old jealousy to play a role in the negative comments.
- Economic Benefits
Neil actually praised Elon until recent years, but he's become a sort of a hater presently - he's willing to ignore a lot of obvious positives while maintaining his broken point about the economics of Mars colonization. Elon doesn't care about ROI here because that's not his goal and he won't spend any effort to make a case for ROI. His outspoken goal is for humans to become a multiplanetary species. That said, there will be a ROI of sorts in the valuable research done there by people, among other things. Doing agriculture on Mars will also benefit Earth, by giving us blueprints to making pretty much any Earth landmass useful one way or another. And there will be many things that we can't even anticipate.
Elon doesn't need friends in the government. He just needs the government to stop acting like hater-activists by standing in the way of SpaceX's development. Look at the FAA how they blatantly lied about the reason they delayed Starship licenses, and how they fined SpaceX for bogus reasons, including using fresh/drinking water on the Starship launch pad. Look at the CCC (almost CCP) denying SpaceX the extension from 36 to 50 launches from the west coast of the US, just because they didn't like Elon's politics. So it's not friends that Elon needs, but rather public servants who do their jobs efficiently, without overreaching or standing in the way for personal political reasons - which should be illegal and punishable by law.
It's worth pointing out again that Neil and other scientists should keep in mind that the cost per kg is a huge driving factor in spaceflight. That's why Elon can and will send ships to Mars even without government money. The fact that NASA is also interested to go there, by virtue of having a good and cheap vehicle in Starship, makes no difference in how Elon's ambitious goal stands on its own feet even without "nations breaking space frontiers" - as Neil puts it. It's definitely not NASA who will send 1 million people to Mars. That will be done as a private endeavor, and all we have to do is wait and see.
- Future of Consciousness
"One might argue that planning the future of civilization for a million years seems rather ambitious seeing that most of us can’t even make a houseplant last through the winter, but maybe that’s what a trillion dollars do to your brain."
This is incredibly shortsighted, and borderline jealous - in line with those who don't like rich people just because they're rich and that somehow automatically makes them crazy or out of touch, therefore you couldn't possibly find reason in their goals. There are multiple books about this guy and his companies, and they capture his mindset well enough to understand that he was always different than most people. Your average kid doesn't just make something and sells it for $500. And your average businessman doesn't just work on two insanely hard companies (Tesla and SpaceX) and makes them very successful. And then there are Neuralink and xAI on their path to great success, and maybe in the not distant future, The Boring Company will also do some serious business - potentially drilling human habitats out in space when not making new transportation routes here on Earth.
It doesn't matter what the average people do when planning and executing. It doesn't even matter what other billionaires think about the future, because that's really all they do - just think and talk about it. This guy is actually working hard to put humanity on the path of a future that allows human consciousness to have a much better chance to not be wiped out by natural causes or petty politics. And just like the haters love to point out, Elon is not this or that, he hasn't done X, Y or Z, he's just whatever. Sure, and just like the hoards of brilliant engineers executing this guy's ambitious vision, the Mars colony will also be built and shaped by those who decide to be part of something historic and literally out of this world. It will all happen while various people here on Earth will still moan about "who needs that when we have so many problems here?!"
Seeing Mars colonized will give me great comfort in knowing that a new generation of scientists will push humanity forward. One that refused being complacent and nag doers about their goals. A generation who will generate new science and "make consciousness great again." (pun totally intended) Regular people can easily miss the many benefits of becoming a multiplanetary species. And some scientists and so-called pundits will rather look at the problems and become naysayers, complaining about the ROI and ignoring how a Mars colony can make money or resources by selling the technologies, knowledge, and patents they come up with while carving a life for themselves on Mars.
Sometimes even very smart people can be shortsighted or wrong. And it's quite ironic how they don't consider how this obviously smart and ambitious guy who is successful on a scale unseen before actually has a solid chance of making this a reality in many of our lifetimes.
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- Scientific Merit?
Yet another thing that a number of scientists would rather ignore is the fact that the people on Mars would be insanely more productive in their research compared to the robots we've sent so far. They're afraid about contamination but ignore the fact that we have safe methods to study ice core samples and other stuff right here on Earth. It should be obvious that things would speed up a lot with boots on Mars. I think it's fair to assume that those who would rather research Mars from Earth would feel displaced by those brave enough to go to Mars, so I expect plain old jealousy to play a role in the negative comments.
- Economic Benefits
Neil actually praised Elon until recent years, but he's become a sort of a hater presently - he's willing to ignore a lot of obvious positives while maintaining his broken point about the economics of Mars colonization. Elon doesn't care about ROI here because that's not his goal and he won't spend any effort to make a case for ROI. His outspoken goal is for humans to become a multiplanetary species. That said, there will be a ROI of sorts in the valuable research done there by people, among other things. Doing agriculture on Mars will also benefit Earth, by giving us blueprints to making pretty much any Earth landmass useful one way or another. And there will be many things that we can't even anticipate.
Elon doesn't need friends in the government. He just needs the government to stop acting like hater-activists by standing in the way of SpaceX's development. Look at the FAA how they blatantly lied about the reason they delayed Starship licenses, and how they fined SpaceX for bogus reasons, including using fresh/drinking water on the Starship launch pad. Look at the CCC (almost CCP) denying SpaceX the extension from 36 to 50 launches from the west coast of the US, just because they didn't like Elon's politics. So it's not friends that Elon needs, but rather public servants who do their jobs efficiently, without overreaching or standing in the way for personal political reasons - which should be illegal and punishable by law.
It's worth pointing out again that Neil and other scientists should keep in mind that the cost per kg is a huge driving factor in spaceflight. That's why Elon can and will send ships to Mars even without government money. The fact that NASA is also interested to go there, by virtue of having a good and cheap vehicle in Starship, makes no difference in how Elon's ambitious goal stands on its own feet even without "nations breaking space frontiers" - as Neil puts it. It's definitely not NASA who will send 1 million people to Mars. That will be done as a private endeavor, and all we have to do is wait and see.
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- Scientific Merit?
Yet another thing that a number of scientists would rather ignore is the fact that the people on Mars would be insanely more productive in their research compared to the robots we've sent so far. They're afraid about contamination but ignore the fact that we have safe methods to study ice core samples and other stuff right here on Earth. It should be obvious that things would speed up a lot with boots on Mars. I think it's fair to assume that those who would rather research Mars from Earth would feel displaced by those brave enough to go to Mars, so I expect plain old jealousy to play a role in the negative comments.
- Economic Benefits
Neil actually praised Elon until recent years, but he's become a sort of a hater presently - he's willing to ignore a lot of obvious positives while maintaining his broken point about the economics of Mars colonization. Elon doesn't care about ROI here because that's not his goal and he won't spend any effort to make a case for ROI. His outspoken goal is for humans to become a multiplanetary species. That said, there will be a ROI of sorts in the valuable research done there by people, among other things. Doing agriculture on Mars will also benefit Earth, by giving us blueprints to making pretty much any Earth landmass useful one way or another. And there will be many things that we can't even anticipate.
Elon doesn't need friends in the government. He just needs the government to stop acting like hater-activists by standing in the way of SpaceX's development. Look at the FAA how they blatantly lied about the reason they delayed Starship licenses, and how they fined SpaceX for bogus reasons, including using fresh/drinking water on the Starship launch pad. Look at the CCC denying SpaceX the extension from 36 to 50 launches from the west coast of the US, just because they didn't like Elon's politics. So it's not friends that Elon needs, but rather public servants who do their jobs efficiently, without overreaching or standing in the way for personal political reasons - which should be illegal and punishable by law.
It's worth pointing out again that Neil and other scientists should keep in mind that the cost per kg is a huge driving factor in spaceflight. That's why Elon can and will send ships to Mars even without government money. The fact that NASA is also interested to go there, by virtue of having a good and cheap vehicle in Starship, makes no difference in how Elon's ambitious goal stands on its own feet even without "nations breaking space frontiers" - as Neil puts it. It's definitely not NASA who will send 1 million people to Mars. That will be done as a private endeavor, and all we have to do is wait and see.
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- Economic Benefits
Neil actually praised Elon until recent years, but he's become a sort of a hater presently - he's willing to ignore a lot of obvious positives while maintaining his broken point about the economics of Mars colonization. Elon doesn't care about ROI here because that's not his goal and he won't spend any effort to make a case for ROI. His outspoken goal is for humans to become a multiplanetary species. That said, there will be a ROI of sorts in the valuable research done there by people, among other things. Doing agriculture on Mars will also benefit Earth, by giving us blueprints to making pretty much any Earth landmass useful one way or another. And there will be many things that we can't even anticipate.
Elon doesn't need friends in the government. He just needs the government to stop acting like hater-activists by standing in the way of SpaceX's development. Look at the FAA how they blatantly lied about the reason they delayed Starship licenses, and how they fined SpaceX for bogus reasons, including using fresh/drinking water on the Starship launch pad. Look at the CCC denying SpaceX the extension from 36 to 50 launches from the west coast of the US, just because they didn't like Elon's politics. So it's not friends that Elon needs, but rather public servants who do their jobs efficiently, without overreaching or standing in the way for personal political reasons - which should be illegal and punishable by law.
It's worth pointing out again that Neil and other scientists should keep in mind that the cost per kg is a huge driving factor in spaceflight. That's why Elon can and will send ships to Mars even without government money. The fact that NASA is also interested to go there, by virtue of having a good and cheap vehicle in Starship, makes no difference in how Elon's ambitious goal stands on its own feet even without "nations breaking space frontiers" - as Neil puts it. It's definitely not NASA who will send 1 million people to Mars. That will be done as a private endeavor, and all we have to do is wait and see.
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4:38 No research that EVs are more eco-friendly? Of course there is - you even mentioned one it in the "bombshell report on electric cars" months ago, EVs produce 24% less emissions even when their electricity comes from fossil fuels. The grid is expandable, and it will happen. To what extent, we'll see. But what no study/research properly covers is (to be fair they're not qualified to do so, and can't guess) how the technology will evolve. But what I can blame them for, is ignoring the variety of battery chemistry, and how we now have cobalt-free batteries, and how the energy density has been steadily increasing in time, and how the price kept going down and is still trending down. EVs are far from maturity, so there's still a lot that can be done to make them better. But even so, in their worst case scenario they're 24% better for our air quality. So why all this clown show against EVs? Blame the politicians all you like for being stupid or corrupt, for attempting to ban ICE vehicles. But don't conflate their actions with the new technology.
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Just because something is free and open source software doesn't mean taxpayer money should go there. Such projects may apply for funding, and the qualification criteria should not be as crazy as making it too much of a hassle to even try, but there must be some important conditions to apply for governmental funding.
1. Full (public) transparency on how the project is managed financially. This would not require disclosure of private funding, especially when donors expect anonymity, but the accounting documents should be up to date, not older than 12 months.
2. Only specific types on expenses can be covered by governmental funding: salaries and hosting. These two types of expenses cannot exceed a certain amount per person, in the case of salaries, and no more than a specific amount for hosting. Whenever these limits are too low, there can be public discussions about re-aligning them to the economy, but limits are very important because everything can be abused and common sense limits are necessary.
3. The project has to prove its utility to society. Games would almost always not qualify, but a browser, a FOSS app store and privacy-protecting technologies are very important. What else qualifies would have to become a public discussion.
4. Applicant projects would have to prove they used the money as intended, or the funding stops. This would be harder to properly measure, since you can release version x, y, z without lots of changes, while other projects have a slow release cadence but with huge changes. Not sure what the right balance would be, but this could also be open to public discussion - including the developers.
5. Applicant projects would be unable to take any political stance.
I didn't try to make a full list of things that are important, since I doubt going at great lengths in a YouTube comment helps advance anything, especially since Bryan doesn't even read them most of the time, but anyway... here's to hoping that the government understands that free and open source software is valuable, is worth investing in, and that the taxpayers realize how useful it is that some of their money supports actually useful software.
A huge argument against any kind of taxpayer funding for FOSS projects is the fact that not everyone would use that software. That's a fair point, especially when people can voluntary contribute to the projects they use/prefer, but (1) we're talking about very little money per taxpayer and (2) you may end up using that software in the future, when your favorite corporation decides to go evil on you. You don't just bring into existence new software when you need it, but it must exist and be reliable. So having alternatives is just like having emergency supplies. That's also why point 3 is important - being actually useful to society.
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Return it. Any kind of network connectivity required for any feature should be a huge NO. It doesn't matter if it's local, if you cannot use a number of features without a network connection, it's utterly bad, because there can be cases when you have no network connection - you move into a new house and there's almost nothing there but you have to wash dishes, or your network equipment breaks for whatever reason and it's the weekend and you can't just buy another one on the spot, but you still have to wash dishes. Just wait until the network breaks or has some hiccup and you have to develop the routine of resetting the connection as the first step to solving it.
This is, in fact, an evil design. For whatever reason, they decided to deny basic functionality in a number of cases when you cannot have the device connected. It's not stupid, it's evil. Return it, forget the time you spent on installing it, you will waste a lot more time in the future with its quirks, so get one that works without requiring a network connection. It only adds more work, and you'll be the only one capable to service it when some network issue occurs and the dishwasher can't perform, it's not worth it.
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9:10 As hard as I roll my eyes hearing her cringey speeches, I also find it weird to hear someone's expectation that the people who raise issues are also supposed to deliver solutions. If it's part of their abilities/skills, sure. But you don't have to know how to fix climate to be able to take notice it's disrupting our way of life, and that we're influencing it.
While so many people are busy nitpicking her "style" (instead of not giving 2 sh|ts), they also don't take the things she whines about more seriously. You can easily see people buying a new fridge, TV, or light bulbs, and not care about how much power they draw, even if one that does the same job for the same money is on the same shelf. The irony in that is people not realizing that it doesn't just require more power from the grid, but it also increases the cost of using that thing - they pay more for using it.
8 years ago I bought myself a monitor that required about 3 times less energy to do its job, good brand too. Did it cost 3 times more? No, it was almost as much as the "regular" ones. A lot of stuff being sold is less efficient because it uses older technologies and they want to sell their stock, so they give it at a smaller price. But you pay the difference many times over later. Obviously, this doesn't apply to everything. But more people have to understand that the purchase cost is not the only thing that matters. There's an operational cost too, which you want to be low because you probably have a lot of stuff that requires electricity. Imagine people halving their consumption. Not only we pay less, but less crap has to be burnt to make power. It does make a change. It's probably not enough, considering the industry and transportation are a huge contributors to pollution, but you can't even call it a sacrifice to do your part. It's just being smarter.
If you think about your own childhood, you'll probably remember saying something correct only for the grown ups to ignore it because you're just a kid. You were Greta, without social media, without any platform, without a pre-written speech - just a kid who got dismissed not on the validity of what you said, but because of your age. So mock Greta all you want, she's even an adult now, she can take it, but know that you can make a net positive change and keep your quality of life.
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0:30 I'm Romanian and I was concerned when I heard that the guy who came out of nowhere won the elections. And it wasn't because of the alleged connections to Russia but, before anything, because he's a complete and utter moron who is into pseudoscience, making wild claims as if he's convinced that nonsense is true. It was also because most people had no clue who he even was - he chose TikTok to talk about his candidacy and claimed that he spent zero on his campaign, which is a red flag on its own, but most people don't use TikTok and somehow he got the most votes - roughly 350k more votes than the second candidate, which is a lot.
Since there is indeed a non-trivial number of people using TikTok, though not a majority, I expect that some voted for the guy. But he got 2.12 million votes somehow. I don't know if it's possible for the ballots to be fudged, but it felt like that. He didn't even show up for the televised presidential debate before the elections, which is also not a good sign. Obviously I can't call fraud of any kind, since that would require hard evidence. The Romanian Constitutional Court released documents showing a really shady use of TikTok in promoting his videos, as well money actually spent on people choosing to promote him from their accounts. So many things were off, that I think it was a good thing that he didn't end up president. But even without any controversy, both him and his wife (also active on TikTok) are the kind of loonies you don't want to lead a country.
And do you know what's worse? All candidates this year suck. It's rather depressing to see the line up. It's going to be a vote for the one who's least terrible.
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Not talking about health doesn't mean he won't do anything about it. RFK's plan to reform the HHS can prove to be a great step forward in having a healthier population in the first place. And removing as many illegal immigrants as possible will also reduce the burden on housing that has been created in the last 4 years. The US has to become healthier before anything, you people have to admit that both the food industry and big pharma are happy to create food addictions and to treat them while becoming rich off of everyone. So fixing the underlying problem is something RFK manages to at least start doing in the US.
I'm not convinced that drilling is the right solution, I quite dislike that, but obviously energy prices are high and taking them down will have ripple effects in the economy, down to everyday people who have to afford buying a lot of things. Driving the prices down is beneficial. Hopefully the car industry will shift to making more EVs to reduce both pollution in traffic, as well as the need for fossil fuels. And hopefully more Americans realize that ICE cars are part of the problem.
Also, one way to address the "environmental justice" problem is to make manufacturers more responsible for their products. So far I haven't seen the US adopt proper consumer protection, at least comparable to that in Europe (not perfect but way better than in the US). By enforcing stricter rules on manufacturing and sales to protect the consumer, you get better quality products that last for longer, which significantly reduces the waste. I know Trump wants more manufacturing in the US, but I'm not sure if consumer protection is on his agenda. As a senator, maybe you can push this important thing forward.
Consumers should also be (better) educated on using less power hungry appliances and devices, since that in itself immediately lowers the cost to operate and energy demand. In many cases a small difference in price can lead to a lot of savings after purchase, which is something that people have to be conscious about - this is in our power to do, regardless of who's in charge.
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I watched quite a few of Brett's videos and when the change was presented the way it was, I wanted to unsubscribe and found out that I wasn't subscribed in the first place. Apparently I watched enough of her videos that YouTube kept recommending them to me. She had great content, a great presentation, she's very likable, so that's it. And then I found out that she has a channel, and I subscribed to that. From everyone at DailyWire, I watched Brett and Matt - both great. Even if Matt goes somewhere else, I'll keep watching him if he puts out the same kind of content. In both cases, I watched them for the person doing the news/comments/takes, so I watched them, not the DailyWire.
Whatever happened around Brett's departure, I hope she'll be happy, and hopefully she will start making videos on her own channel. If she decides to do something else, as long as she's happy, great. JP is right, people and companies part ways at some point. It's quite rare to witness the exceptions. I also agree that Reagan shouldn't have copied Brett. Obviously there are scripts that they both read, and the words may be the same, but that's the only thing that would make (some) sense to replicate. Everything else makes no sense. It's insulting to both Brett and Reagan to keep going like that. I don't care about anyone's age, you don't just copy/paste someone's personality and expect the fans to like it. When the lead singer of a band is replaced, the worst thing the new one can do is to emulate the previous one. Just be good and be your genuine self, and let people grow to like you as you are.
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Damn... the democrats had the nerve to call Trump a threat to democracy after they cheated their own candidates and voters 3 times in a row? 🤦♂ I'm no longer surprised there's so much political tension in the US. The media lies to their teeth, politics is really dirty, and getting younger and more promising candidates seems next to impossible. If Trump keeps his word to fix the economy, lower to cost of living, reduce crime and everything else he said, this mandate would be a sort of a rebirth of the US, or at least a break from its painful decline we've seen since Biden took office.
To be fair, the health crisis was tough everywhere in the world, so I'll ignore it. But the open border alone caused so many social, economic and political issues, that it's ridiculous. And then there were other problems that could've not existed in the first place, like DEI and stuff. People need less problems, not more.
Great documentary!
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🤣 Seeing so many issues here, it's hard to even suspect bias. It looks like gross incompetence. It's hard to believe that someone would intentionally want look this stupid.
From the get go, showing in 2025 a top 10 not only from 2023 (0:11), but also with Tesla Autopilot and FSD on the same spot is enough to know that whatever is presented here would have glaring errors. Also, ranking Tesla 8th is yet another disconnect from reality, but whatever. The difference between Autopilot and FSD is huge, so even when you only look at Tesla, you have to have near-zero brain activity to put Autopilot and FSD on the same place. The information in the video even mentioned (4:42) that FSD does more, so how did that ranking even survive in the final edit? My guess: gross incompetence.
By the way, since price was brought up (3:20), it would've been nice to point out that Autopilot is a standard (included) feature in Tesla, and that Model 3 is about half the price of the Mercedes tested here. 🤣 So the title of this video is nonsense.
Praising an ADAS system for allowing "collaboration" is not exactly smart. If the driver wants control, there's a reason and it makes sense not to mess with the driver's intentions. The car can't know why the driver intervened - it can be a pot hole or a lot more than that, so enabling and disabling ADAS should be deliberate. The driver should not have to know or guess how fast the car goes back to ADAS. If you intervene, it's best to put it back in ADAS mode only when you're done with manual control.
Finally, what exactly was the point of this video? Your ranking shows Ford on the first place but you ignore them to review #3 and #8? It's like this is a video sponsored by Mercedes, and in that case it's not gross incompetence, but straight up lies. I wonder how long it will take for the media to stop treating their audience like their IQ is below room temperature. And then you complain about being called "legacy media" and that people have become the new media. It's all your doing.
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When it comes to deciding whether to upgrade or not, a few performance-related milestones are good to know:
- Multi-core CPUs are very important for modern operating systems, so having at least a Core 2 Duo CPU is important, even when using Linux
- Storage speed:
-- having at least SATA-II with an SSD means faster loading of operating systems and software, and small SSDs are cheap now
-- SATA-III (from Intel 2nd Gen up) doubles the speed of of SATA-II, and it enables full the speed of SATA-based SSDs because they're all SATA-III
-- NVMe (from Intel 6th Gen up) SSDs are over 5-10 times faster than the SATA ones, requiring and M.2 connector on PCI Express 3.0 or higher
As an example: my old laptop has a Core 2 Duo T9550 @2.66 GHz with an SSD on SATA-II and 4 GB RAM. It can handle the latest Linux Mint and is very responsive even when playing back 1080p videos in a browser, or local videos encoded with H.264 and H.265 - no frame drops, no fan going crazy. If I don't go overboard with a lot of tabs, browsing the internet is also pretty nice and smooth. On my PC with a Haswell-era CPU, i5-4690K @3.90 GHz, SSD on SATA-III and 16GB RAM, everything is even smoother. I can even get some decent gaming on its iGPU, but that's beside the point. These two are both capable of day to day tasks for most people, so for those who just want to make the most out of their hardware, going with a user friendly operating system like Linux Mint is great.
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When it comes to "first time", people tend to brag about it. But that's not a bad thing in itself. The really bad thing is to put people's lives in danger for stupid reasons. When Starliner attempted its first flight to the ISS, and was almost lost twice during that mission, NASA took a few months to go through Boeing's shit and gave them 80+ "recommendations" about what to do for their next attempt.
NASA's Commercial Crew Program is all about having at least two providers for space flights - redundancy. It makes sense they want both Boeing and SpaceX to succeed. It makes even more sense that they have a good relationship with Boeing, since they provided NASA with a lot of hardware and engineering for a very long time.
That said, NASA just proved that it is still capable of making the right decision to bring its astronauts with a proven vehicle, SpaceX Dragon, even if it hurts Boeing's ego. And as much as I dislike Boeing's recent past in both civil and space flight, I have to say that there would be no point to testing if you'd be sure your stuff just works 100%, and this was a test.
Something that happened for many years was NASA's cost-plus contracts where NASA (read: taxpayer-money) got milked by contractors who delayed stuff. This is what you shold've pointed out - how NASA's audit team determined that Boeing used unqualified workforce for the Space Launch System (the big orange rocket), and probably Starliner too. But the Commercial Crew Program is not cost-plus, so Boeing actually had to pay a lot for their own delays and failures with Starliner. And if they keep failing and/or delaying they might pull the plug themselves if the contract allows it, since they're so profit-oriented nowadays. Unless they make it about (actual) pride and fix their shit by using qualified people to do the work.
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If people blindly trust financial advice about something that doesn't have a solid track record, it's hard to argue that they shouldn't be responsible. This doesn't mean it's their full responsibility, but it's hard to put all responsibility on anyone recommending some crpyto or stock, especially when they're not professionals. Even Wall Street analysts have been wrong about many things, it makes no sense to blindly trust youtubers even when they're experienced.
When it's about your livelihood, or hard earned money, if you don't get a second opinion from someone you trust, or whom you can hold accountable, then you really are gambling and you can't just throw the whole blame on someone else. Bad personal decisions happen, scams also happen, but if you always blame someone else, you shouldn't manage money.
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I would argue that Windows is now trash. My old PCs are doing just great. 😆
For example, the latest Linux Mint runs great on my old 2009 laptop with a Core 2 Duo T9550 @2.66GHz, 4GB RAM and a Samsung 850 Pro SSD. It's snappy, silent, I can browse the web, even watch Full HD videos without dropped frames, I even virtualize on it sometimes when I want to test something out. It's a great PC for a lot of tasks. Sure, it can't hold a candle next to my Core i7-12700 with 64GB RAM and an NVMe SSD, but who cares if it can do so many tasks with up-to-date software without slowing down? And yes, I do maintain it properly, I clean all my PCs so they run smoothly, which is why they just keep working.
It's only my old Skylake CPU that had issues due to hardware bugs causing random freezes - though those happened in any operating system anyway. Even my old desktop PC with a 1st gen Core i5-650 and a SATA-3 adapter + SSD and 16GB RAM is smoother than I would've thought - I use that on vacation and it's great. SSDs and enough RAM have made old computers a lot more capable than originally envisioned, and with a Linux-based operating system you can have a (more than) decent PC even if it's 10 years old. My Core i5-4690K PC also runs like a champ.
The few advantages Windows offers are not important enough to me to deal with all the negatives - of which are many more. That's why I'm happier without it. The amount of maintenance and fiddling with many Windows versions since 3.x, as a sysadmin and hobbyist, is nuts compared to mostly applying updates in Linux Mint. I'm pretty much pampered compared to Windows, and I love the peace of mind and all that extra time I saved by not having to fight Windows and its blemishes.
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@zhaowei3025 Looking at a country or even a continent is not a good metric. However, Toyota had a record year in 2023 and so far their 2024 deliveries look pretty good for another record. From that perspective, it all looks great.
However, the world is becoming more interested in EVs and Toyota is years behind the leaders. Their forecast for fiscal year 2025 is 160K BEVs. That's roughly 12 times less than Tesla.
There's reasonably good news, though. As Akio Toyoda announced his departure in 2023, leaving room for a CEO with a real interest in making BEVs, one of their managers tore down a Tesla Model Y, called it a work of art, and then ramped up BEV production making 117K of them in fiscal year 2023.
So they went from 117K to a projected 160K in a year. Decent, but still very low. We'll see if they manage to ramp up fast enough, and make them worth buying, and make them profitable before ICE sales go under. If they pull it off, good for them. But so far only Tesla and BYD make profit off of BEVs, so we'll see. I for one hope they make it. It would be a pity not to.
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@kpcraftster6580 Oh, you're one of those people who parrots other people's comments and offer no substance to your claims. So what do you consider a miserable trainwreck, and why do you claim Linux is deliberately made worse. What is your experience?
To offer some substance of my own, I'm an IT professional and I started working with Linux-based operating systems 24 years ago. But as many others in my generation, I started out with MS-DOS and then Windows.
In my experience, all operating systems have serious shortcomings. For instance, Windows can't do, by design, important updates without requiring restarts. It also has a history of doing updates when it wants, and locking people out while applying them. It also has a history of deleting personal files, and invading the user's privacy. Its EULA also had a nasty paragraph that gave Microsoft the right to scan the user's computer for potentially pirated software and automatically report that to those in the right (themselves or their partners). NTFS is also an inferior file system when it comes to everyday use because it gets fragmented, something that barely happens on ext3 and ext4 - the filesystems used by most Linux distros. NTFS is bad for hard drives because fragmentation makes access to data even slower than the HDDs can perform in the first place, and it's also bad for SSDs because by not actively trying to store data in contiguous areas, NTFS requires periodical defragmentation.
When it comes to Linux Mint, which I've used as a daily driver for 15 years (previously in dual-boot with Windows), its shortcomings were mostly inherited from Ubuntu, back when Mint based itself off of every single release, even non-LTS. Once the Mint developers switched to the LTS base, it became easier for them to polish their OS. Presently, Linux Mint's Update Manager allows you to update all the programs, compared to Windows, which only cares about Windows+Office updates, and those from the Microsoft Store. Everything else, you have to update manually in Windows. In Linux distros you just use the update manager to update everything. And if you need the latest and greatest of some software, like LibreOffice, Inkscape, OBS, etc, you can use Software Sources to add the official software repositories to your system, so you can automatically get updates for those programs. For almost all updates, there's no need to restart. And in the rare cases when there's a kernel update, Update Manager will tell you do restart as soon as possible. But that's it, there are no constant nags. Linux Mint itself comes with commonly used software, so the average user can do a lot after they install it - which is a lot more than what you can do with Windows.
Clearly I left out a lot because this is the kind of conversation we'd rather have over a drink, not on YouTube. So I'm curious why you have such a negative view on this topic. What happened?
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@kpcraftster6580 What level of experience made you think that Linux is the miserable trainwreck deliberately made worse? I'm an IT professional with over 2 decades of experience with Linux, and I chose Linux Mint as my daily operating system since 2009. In many ways, it's better than Windows: its installation is faster, the pre-installed software covers common needs and you can start doing things with your PC right away, the Software Manager offers vastly more programs than the Windows Store, all the updates are done from a single program - the Update Manager -, you can add more software repositories to your system and the Update Manager will also take care of the updates from those (vs manual updates in Windows), data fragmentation on your storage devices is almost inexistent - thanks to a superior file system compared to NTFS -, printing and scanning has been made simple enough that you can find your devices auto-detected and functional, obviously there's no invasion of privacy like in Windows, etc.
So instead of parroting back my comment, share your experience.
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@kpcraftster6580 I'm an IT professional with over 2 decades of experience with Linux, and I chose Linux Mint as my daily operating system since 2009. In many ways, it's better than Windows: its installation is faster, the pre-installed software covers common needs and you can start doing things with your PC right away, the Software Manager offers vastly more programs than the Windows Store, all the updates are done from a single program - the Update Manager -, you can add more software repositories to your system and the Update Manager will also take care of the updates from those (vs manual updates in Windows), data fragmentation on your storage devices is almost inexistent - thanks to a superior file system compared to NTFS -, printing and scanning has been made simple enough that you can find your devices auto-detected and functional, obviously there's no invasion of privacy like in Windows, etc.
Share your experience.
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@martinrapavy9815 The problem is the Romanian Communist Party aggressively monitored and controlled everything related to information and people coming in/going out of our country.
There was no freedom to simply come in and out of the country, for scientists and engineers to go to symposiums, get and exchange knowledge, establish tight relationships with partners abroad, etc, without having the RCP breathing down people's necks over everything.
And in the case of people who did go out and return, their homes would be thoroughly inspected by the "Security" agency, and anything suspicious would be confiscated, and consequences would ensue.
Needless to say, population-wide paranoia was very common back in those days, when any "suspicious person" could have been and sometimes have been reported by their neighbors to "Security" agents for whatever crazy thing, even if they were seen carrying a bag with 10 bananas. Because getting any banana was hard in the first place, but 10 was a huge red flag (no pun intended).
There's an old Romanian company, called ICE Felix. They made some ZX Spectrum clones from 1985. After 1989 (fall of communism in Romania) they "magically" did some collaborations with IBM, Advantech, Sun, DEC, Logitech and Hewlett-Packard. Why suddenly all those big ones after communism? Not because communism stood in the way, right? They didn't get far, sadly, as many Romanian companies flopped during the country's transition to capitalism. But they were doing computers when only few countries did. Had they had complete freedom while they were very active, who knows where they would've been. World-class innovator? Maybe. Romania actually produced a huge amount of scientists and engineers. But as the communism remnants keep haunting our country to this day, many of them left the country. I'm an IT professional myself, I moved to Germany.
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@martinrapavy9815 I don't know what you're up to, but you keep going while not caring about the details I wrote. At no point did I imply that everything going wrong in Romania is because of communism. You can re-read if you want, I won't go through that again.
And because you seem convinced that you're right about stuff in Romania, although you are miserably wrong, just read about Ion Iliescu, ex president or Romania, who was in office for 13 years after Ceausescu. He was a hard-core communist and a founder of the FSN political party, which turned into the Social Democratic Party - riddled with other hard-core communists.
Another ex president with communist roots, although he vowed he only "used the Party as a slingshot" for his career, was Traian Basescu. He was in office for 10 years. That's already 23 years from just 2 presidents. While these two weren't presidents, the Social Democratic Party was the majority in the Parliament, doing a lot of damage.
The SDP still has a lot of power to this day, and it still has former communists. They still practice some of the communist crap that we knew back when Ceausescu still ruled. Although SDP changed its president in 2005, they kept Ion Iliescu as Honorary President until 2019!
So claim all you want that there's no plenty of communist influence still at play in Romania, but you're wrong.
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@AndRei-yc3ti The market came up with a lot of technologies, both in hardware and software. I wouldn't credit governments for the smartphone or the Raspberry Pi - to name two big things in two different countries. Regardless of the political system, what the government should do is to offer a healthy environment for business development.
I agree that a lot of potential was destroyed in the 90s, but especially in a country like Russia it would've been simpler for the government to step in and steer the economy and industry tighter to get back on track, even if lagging behind others.
Clearly one can't expect miracles, but it's only when a country sets its priorities straight and follows up on its strategies that it can start covering ground in the right direction. Capitalists, generally speaking, are indeed preoccupied with short term stuff, but there are some companies, big and small, that have visions and product roadmaps that go over a decade.
Now to be fair, it's human nature to be unable to see or plan a lot in the future. Wherever those managers are, under whatever political environment, they still need to be visionaries. This kind of people is not very common, unfortunately. That's why it's critical to keep those people in their countries and support their visions. But short-term views (+corruption) in both politics and business will get in the way quite often. That happened everywhere, Russia, USA, etc.
I think Russia still has plenty of potential, just bad priorities.
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This week in Chasing the Tail: Guy is set out to combat bad politics with a different kind of bad politics.
11:29 You tell any manager that 10% of their business goes away, potentially up to 20%, and see if they like it - existential or not. See what their investors think about a 10-20% decline in profit. See how ICE car manufacturers go bankrupt because they were too complacent or incompetent in making decent EVs for a good price. Millions of jobs lost to being too stubborn to put in an actually good effort.
ICE is a lost bet at this point, there's plenty of proof how EVs can be done cheaper and cheaper in time, thanks to battery price going lower and lower with better energy density, and thanks to many improvements in manufacturing and engineering - something that cannot be optimized much further in ICE cars.
Trump is right about the choice in buying cars - whatever you want to buy, the government shouldn't get in the way of car makers by banning the sales of ICE cars. The mandates were a temporary helping hand for the manufacturers to switch over to making EVs, but instead of making good use of that, they wasted it and aren't anywhere near to making profitable EVs without incentives. So the mandates are nothing but a failure of the car makers. The oil and gas industry has received plenty of subsidies for a long time and, for better or worse, they're still up and running. Meanwhile, ICE cars sales have kept going down for half a decade now, and the "big three" in the US are not doing great. Even the big three in Germany are also not doing great, and it's also their fault.
The climate science deals with both predictions and politics, which is why it's bound to get it wrong. Despite that, and leaving politics aside, I'm sure most people would like to breathe cleaner air, with less harmful particles. I'm sure most people would like to be able to charge/fill their cars at home, so they don't have to go anywhere for that. Surely most people understand how burning fuel causes pollution everywhere you go with your car, on top of the pollution it generates everywhere the raw materials come from.
Some people love to point out how EVs "pollute somewhere else", as if ICE cars only pollute where the driver is. The same people are also unaware of, or ignore, the studies showing that at the current level of technology EVs are already better than ICE cars in terms of pollution, after only 5 years. A lot of people aren't rich and they would like to use their cars for longer than that. And those studies will account for new data in the future, when the old EVs will become a source of raw materials for batteries, which means less mining. People like Mark P. Mills here don't like to point out the fact that even today we can recycle over 95% of a battery cell, which is a great source of resources that are already well refined. That makes the manufacturing of new battery cells cheaper than using mined materials. So in the future, we'll have to mine a lot less materials for batteries.
This guy claims that going to 50% EVs won't happen in the foreseeable future. China is already at 54% plugins for passenger cars. 31% of the new car sales are BEVs. China is the world's biggest car market and they keep growing their sales on other continents too. So Mark's claim will be turned upside down by the end of this decade. Even the US is close to 10% at this point in time, whereas 5 years ago it was below 2%, and below 5% in China. The two biggest BEV makers - Tesla and BYD -, have been profitable for years, and they keep growing their sales. Looking at the trends, with ICE shrinking and EV growing, we're actually witnessing the EV disruption of ICE, it's not a slow linear growth.
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@2023gainer Leading is great, but 72 is... hopefully enough to keep the lights on at Nikola. I hope they'll do fine and survive. But that's a far cry from calling them a savior. :)
As for Tesla, they're known to take it slow in the beginning of a new model because then they ramp up fast, so they want a product as refined as possible before they speed up production. And it's also a known fact that they prioritized the sales of their cars before anything else, including the Cybertruck, due to battery constraints.
Now they're doing pretty well with the batteries (over 100 million 4680 cells produced in-house), and the Tesla Semi also did great in testing, so they're probably close to the long awaited ramp up. I think the Tesla Semi will do great, but it still doesn't matter who leads, as long as we remove the stinkers off the road, and hopefully Nikola will stay in business and help in this transition.
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16:20 For some reason she didn't go further back in history, to the first world war, when women went to work in mass to support the troops and the economy, because someone had to fill in for the men who went to war (just like in WW2). And that was not an American thing - the same happened in Europe. And yes, the men who lived returned to work, and most women returned to keeping the house and the family - which was hard work back then, not like now, when we have dish washer machines, robo-vacuum cleaners, microwave ovens and air fryers, etc. Yes, everyone wanted women to resume the their work in and around the house after the war, because what else could you do? Someone had to raise the kids while men worked in factories. I don't know why some women these days think that it was easy for anyone back then. They only want men to pay, they complain if they're "broke", and then wonder why they're single if they dedicate their lives to becoming successful. I can't imagine how they'd complain if they were the bread winners and the men stayed at home to take care of the house and kids. Even more toxic, I guess.
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18:10 Back in 2021, Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess mentioned how he wanted to reduce the production time of their vehicles from 30 hours to 20 hours. He also compared their time to Tesla's 10 hours per vehicle. So there you have authoritative data from a CEO. Two years later, in 2023, Tesla announced during their Investor Day that they had developed a new "unboxed process" that makes manufacturing more efficient in both time and cost. The complexity of an EV not being the same as an ICE vehicle doesn't mean the manufacturing processes are similar enough.
There's a lot less manual labor involved in making a battery pack, compared to part assembly. Additionally, Tesla has removed a lot of parts by introducing front and back castings. Those also require a lot less time to manufacture, which includes manual labor, thanks to reduced complexity. You might forgive Mark P. Mills for not being specific to a single manufacturer, since not all BEVs are equal, but ignoring Tesla is akin to a certain president's EV Summit where he didn't invite the leading company that also happened to make the most American cars. So what we see here, too, is more politics at play.
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@billurban1581 My dreams? Nah... I don't care about cars at all - I never owned one and I will most likely never will. But I'm lucky that I live in Europe and we have great public transportation here. What I care about is cleaner air, because ICE cars both stink and the exhaust is nasty to breathe in.
The EV incentives were a lifeline for the ICE car makers, to help them make EVs profitably, but it turns out that they needed better management to make the most out of it. When the incentives go away, it's probably going to be only Tesla and BYD who will make profit from EVs for a while longer. By that time, who knows how many ICE car makers will still be around.
EVs have quite a few advantages, and they only get better because there's a lot of new technology that still allows for optimization. You can see Tesla pushing this industry forward with heat pumps, castings, better electrical architectures, and better production methods. The batteries themselves will have better energy density and charge faster, for a lower price, so the range anxiety will be a thing of the past quite soon.
All in all, this is great news for the average buyer who doesn't care about politics but rather a car that does its job and is cheaper to maintain.
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@billurban1581 The unpleasant reality is that hybrids only exist because they're easier to make with the existing ICE car factories. Basically the ICE car makers were lazy and took the easy way to "new energy vehicles." They would need some major changes to the production lines to make BEVs. (big expenses + new hires = headaches)
The main problem with hybrids is that they're more complex and more expensive to make than both ICE and BEV, because they obviously have both power trains. That's why I don't think hybrids have much of a future, because when BEVs will overtake them in manufacturing cost, those who don't care about the underlying technology will just look at the features and price, and get a BEV. The US is especially fit for charging at home, with so many suburbs, and that's a great selling point to many.
But just like there are gas stations everywhere, there will be EV chargers everywhere for those who can't charge at home. The energy companies will happily sell more power - it will be their turn to rack in profits after the oil industry will have taken some loss due to lower fuel sales. Just business, after all.
I think the ICE and BEV sales will cross and go in opposite directions before 2030. ICE sales have consistently gone down in the past 5-6 years in the US, meaning that there's a growing interest in a different technology. BEV sales are already close to 10% in the US, and 31% in China. Just 5 years ago, BEVs barely registered on the radar.
In 5 more years, more people will realize how nice it is to have cheaper maintenance, or to no longer have to care about oil changes, or how you can no longer put in the wrong fuel by mistake. It will happen organically, despite ads, incentives, etc. Even the suburbs will he happier when there will be less petrol heads revving their engines down the road. At least that's how I see the next 5 years.
Happy New Year to you, too! :)
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Over short distances, across a metropolis, air taxis are more inefficient than airplanes because they fly much lower, where both air drag and gravity are stronger than 12km up. We're still far from having working prototypes that tick all the important check-boxes when it comes to flying machines in low altitude. Gravity, air drag, bigger batteries to compensate, extra weight added by the batteries, redundant systems and even parachutes... so you bet it's hard. Basically, I expect air taxis to be the next step in the evolution of private airplanes, just electric and capable of taking off and landing vertically, but quite expensive due to their cost. We'll have to wait and "see" their noise levels when they become reality, not just computer animations. :P
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Natality going down is indeed a problem, especially when it comes to countries with a long history of innovation, development, etc. Even if we ignore countries and cultures disappearing or being replaced with others, we can only hope that the countries having lots of children also replace the innovators, inventors, leaders, etc. If that doesn't happen, the people of the future will have a lot more problems, also much tougher, and that will likely lead to more wars too. So the overall number of people is not enough to be optimistic about the future.
That said, in theory we can fix natality because we've been a lot less before and we got to a large number. So technically we're fine. But practically we also need a decent economy, because in many countries getting by is a lot harder than it was just a few decades ago. The problem is we see less and less competent leaders, and that doesn't bode well for the future, especially if education will decline further - because we won't be able to replace our crappy leaders with better ones. So we're pretty much in a downward spiral. It's absolutely justified to be concerned about babies in all countries, not just some.
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Repeat after me: It's stupid to truly believe that high speed rail is a mistake in America.
There's an unholy trinity of problems: cost, ownership and maintenance. The advantages are huge when you can see things in perspective. Leave the huge problems aside and compare flight to rail. All the security checks and boarding are a huge bottleneck, regardless of what powers the aircraft. A train can arrive at a station and leave only 1-2 minutes later. Compare cars to rail, and see how when you have a large enough distance it's impossible to drive the cars as fast as trains go, so having high speed rail enables long commutes. With a functional rail network, people will value it and use it. We already know that most people hate rush hour and they would love to reach their destinations faster and safer. Americans love cars because... what else is cheaper and convenient? Cars and plans can't scale like high speed trains can. The oil and gas industry lobbied their way to building the US on roads, but that grip will die once EVs take over.
Cost
Before anything, the US has to brave up, take a hard look at what makes HSR so expensive, and blast all the bureaucracy from orbit to make it cheaper from the get go. Deregulate the insanity and make a federal framework for land acquisition, with special rules for national interest - fair acquisitions but in a timely fashion. Prioritize segments by population density, to lessen the financial burden until completion. And be brave to take some financial loss (at least some subsidies), if necessary, by favoring the obvious huge advantages and long term impact on the economy and society.
Ownership
If it's not publicly owned, that is a huge mistake. A public infrastructure has a single owner, making it easier to handle legal and administrative problems. A bad government is still better than several bad companies.
Maintenance
Stop being complacent, drop the excuses, just do it. You just can't tell me you're proud to be American when a huge public infrastructure is left to rot. What the HSR unlocks for the US is drastically underestimated by many Americans.
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@MrDmadness You have the wrong mindset if you expect Elon to only be worth anything is he's top whatever.
The VW CEO told his managers that Tesla makes a car in 10 hours, while VW is over 3 times slower. That's great manufacturing from Tesla. Ford's CEO also acknowledged that Tesla is in the lead and that they have the best battery, the best entertainment, better customer experience, great engineering, simplified and cheaper production, etc. Are they fanboys too?
GM is praised by corrupt/UAW puppet Biden as having electrified the car industry, while Tesla have actually raised the bar so high with their vehicles that they created such a huge demand for EVs that their waiting line is months long while also having the biggest EV market share.
While Starship is in the works as a 100% reusable rocket, only Rocket Lab is actively working on recovering their first stages. A few Chinese companies are also trying to copy Falcon 9 and Starship but they haven't managed to come out with anything working yet. Everyone else either don't care or they're years behind Falcon 9, let alone Starship.
You're happy to call me a fanboy because you're probably unwilling to acknowledge the progress Tesla and SpaceX alone have done in their industries. Tesla have also entered the power industry in Texas and they will do the same in more states and countries in the future. Now they're also working their way in the insurance industry, not only with lower rates but also A.I.-based advice for drivers to improve their skills that not only improves them on the road but also make everyone else safer.
Elon is weird in his own way, but so far he's done more for a few industries that very few managers have managed to do in their lifetimes. Lowering the emissions is important - globally. Lowering the price to access space is also essential to do more research that we benefit from down here on Earth. Teslas are also rated as the safest vehicles by NHTSA, so that's also great when we take human lives into account.
Starlink has also brought cheaper and insanely better internet access to people who barely had intermittent and poor access through the other satellite internet providers. And with their growing constellation of satellites more people will have internet access for education, health and entertainment - people who never had internet before.
These are all facts you can check for yourself. But do you care?
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@MrDmadness Refitting costs less than making a new booster, which is why they do it. And today they landed a booster for the 89th time, which - in my opinion - proves that refitting does a good job.
And there you go again with "he's done nothing new" like his success strictly depends on conjuring something never before seen by anyone. Most of the time things simply evolve, improve, etc.
But he also did a few new things.
SpaceX is the first company to:
- launch their own spacecraft into orbit and recover it
- reliably reusable rocket boosters, and in the near future entire rockets (Starship)
- reliably take astronauts to and from the ISS (also currently alone, as the mighty Boeing just can't cut it)
Tesla is the first auto manufacturer to:
- make practical, compelling, profitable EVs
- own its own recharging/refueling infrastructure
- not waste resources with dealerships and ads
- offer insurance
The list is obviously longer. My point is some things might be "meh", but others are impressive. Just because you label Elon as a snake oil salesman it doesn't mean he's one. He wants to colonize Mars and he's working his ass off to make it happen, while others are busy nitpicking his goals or secretly hope he will fail for whatever reason. That's petty.
I'm not saying you wished him to fail. But you paint him the wrong way and you don't give him credit where it's due. That's simply denial. By they way, working his ass off to colonize Mars is also something new.
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@MrDmadness Not bad, you didn't call everything "first" as false. I'd say that's good progress.
About Tesla, as far as #1 goes, who was first to offer practical, compelling and profitable EVs if not Tesla? And to make it clear, by practical I mean exactly that - something that people can drive for hundreds of miles (200+) on a single charge, in various climates, giving the occupants both comfort and safety. I'm sure you know there's range anxiety with plenty of people. By compelling I mean something exactly what the definition says: giving people strong reasons to buy Teslas for what those cars have to offer compared to many others, and on top of that not stinking and polluting the air with CO2 and other nasty gases.
About #3, you probably know the dealership thing is a dumb US thing that Tesla would love to get rid of because they want direct sales. As for ads, they started doing some in China, but if you go back in time you'll see how they didn't pay media outlets to get eyes on their vehicles. And for good reason - they sold what they made and couldn't scale fast enough if ads worked in the favor. So if you're into nitpicking, you're right #3 is false. But being the first at something doesn't mean you'll always to the same thing forever. They still don't care about ads, other than China, even those being rare.
About SpaceX, they have 2 boosters that have successfully flown and landed 10 times, and 2 others have flown and landed 9 times. These four are almost 2 years worth of launches for SpaceX, which is significant. Other boosters have between 2-4 flights and landings, while another flew 6 times and failed to land a 6th time, this February.
About colonizing Mars, unless you're a Moon landing denier, you know that several crews of astronauts lived on the Moon inside the lander for a few days, with virtually zero atmosphere around their landers. I don't know what kind of pressure vessels you build, but clearly all that taxpayer money managed to pay for better pressure vessels. And the ISS has been continuously populated for over 20 years now - another pressure vessel. We nailed that down a long time ago.
The Mars soil is bad for us, but it's not as bad as people think. Chlorine is soluble, so the required soil for human settlements can be made safe for people. That's something that can be automated. And what's so hard about excavators? Starship is huge and can carry large equipment, including boring machines, which Elon has - uncoincidentally. This will be hard, but it's just a hard engineering problem that requires work. It can be done.
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"Now" also matters. The guy is talking about the top talent, and you don't get that on a conveyor belt. He's talking about motivated people and you just proved his point by saying that the US should educate people on this or that, because if not - they can't compete. If someone has to tell people what to study, it means they either can't or don't want to think for themselves - a.k.a. no motivation. That's a huge problem, and growing motivation in people is insanely hard in a society that only selectively accepts advice just because "my freedom/my choice".
It's complicated, and I'm glad that you acknowledge the need for people right now, and I agree that the education system has to be fixed, but the inescapable issue is that assuming all the fixing goes right, it will still take years to address the education problem, and it's uncertain how much of the motivation problem can be solved. If money is the only motivator, you get the wrong people on the job because they will also give no sh|ts about the mission if someone decides to "nudge" them with more money just to hurt the competition.
By the way, "my (great-)grandparents were here first" is not an excuse to dismiss immigrants. Today's US Americans are the result of mass immigration from all over the world. Filtering immigration down to exceptional people should not make you feel threatened at all. They can become the next Americans who will gladly dedicate their lives and intellect for the country welcoming them. Show motivation and participate in fixing the education problem, don't just expect the government or some rich people to tell you what to study. If you can't, others will.
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@wamnicho They're obviously not my EVs - not sure why you'd even say that. There is no over consumption when people switch from one car to another like they have done so far anyway. Currently the number of car sales is in decline due to a number of reasons, including people waiting for an EV instead of an ICE vehicle, so for now we're on the opposite direction of over consumption.
Now owning and using a car for 30 years means a lot of maintenance. As EVs require significantly less maintenance, this means that over a long time people would replace a lot more parts and consumables for their ICE vehicles. That means more money for the customer and more resources required to manufacture the parts and consumables. This alone is something people easily overlook.
What shouldn't be overlooked either is how a 30 year old car pollutes more than a 10 year old vehicle - both ICE. Se keeping an old car for too long saves some money but it's obviously not better for the environment. And EVs are way better for the environment compared even to the newest and greatest ICE vehicle, so you can see how it makes sense to switch to EVs if we care about the air we breathe and about the environment.
As for how long EVs can be used, that's actually a pretty long time in the case of vehicles with good batteries like Tesla's. The current Li-ion technology has degradation issues -losing about 10% capacity after 200 000 miles. But of course that's not a problem when the cars have a good range to start with, and the charging network keeps expanding anyway. Bonus: Tesla just opened some of it's charging network for all EVs. And newer Tesla batteries are also built to have close to or over a million mile usable lifetime, which is great for people who want to keep their cars for a long time.
If we learned anything from what Tesla has done throughout the years, it's that they're fast and steady at improving their technologies. They're so much better than the rest, that VW and even Ford CEOs admitted they have to catch up with Tesla if they want to stay competitive (VW is over 3 times slower than Tesla in producing a car). Those an insanely hard statements to make, so I'm sure whoever joins the EV trend seriously will also work on quality and decent batteries - not because they care about the environment but because they want to stay in business. And all of this is going on because some guy with a fixation on switching to renewable energy took things this far that the legacy car makers no longer have a choice but to do better than improving just because regulations require less polluting vehicles, although a few of them even cheated with their emissions.
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This looks like someone trying to speedrun to getting a job. If someone's livelihood depends on getting a job in the (very) short term, then programming is not the right path because it takes too long to sink enough information into your brain to be competitive enough. This is (not yet) the Matrix. To be fair, the "become a programmer" lie has been sold for decades now: "Learn this in 24 hours", "Learn that in 30 days" - quite ridiculous.
Programming should be, like other professions, vocational. That's how we get good products and services, when people who love their jobs actually do a good job because they're at a different level - not because they grind it (possible), but because their passion drives them forward and makes them better with time. Of course, this is hard to expect from people who have to be told constantly what to think, what to do, what to wear, how to fit in, just so they can be active participants in society. Make Parenting Great Again! :P Or schooling, whatever it is that broke so many young people to a degree where you barely see initiative and free thinking.
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9:33 I don't know how much has been spent on whatever they started working on, but that fat amount of money is allocated, not spent. Brendan Carr, FCC Commissioner, said earlier this year (on X): "Mostly, the $42.45B is just sitting there. Not even one shovel's worth of dirt has been turned." Their only (infuriatingly lame) excuse is that they're supposed to get everything done by 2030.
By the way, the FCC rejected SpaceX's bid for internet connectivity, claiming:
«“Starlink’s technology has real promise,” continued Chairwoman Rosenworcel. “But the question before us was whether to publicly subsidize its still developing technology for consumer broadband—which requires that users purchase a $600 dish—with nearly $900 million in universal service funds until 2032.”»
In reality, Starlink is capable to send dishes to people in just a few days, while offering very competitive internet speeds, and the government/FCC wants to wait until 2030 for something/anything to happen. By that time, Starlink will likely offer gigabit. Crazy.
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The F150 Lightning has a shorter cargo bed than Cybertruck, though. But the load capacity is not always the most important thing. And the towing capacity of the Cybertruck is close to the Ram 1500, and not far from the Silverado 1500. And just because it's not a heavy duty truck doesn't mean it isn't one, especially with most Americans driving trucks for non-professional use - which is weird, but it is what it is.
Yes, a truck is supposed to be synonymous with work. And in this regard, the Cybertruck can do a lot for its size. Obviously, some will need bigger trucks, but a lot of professionals can make good use of it. And when it comes to strength, that damn thing can withstand stuff that all other trucks cannot. I've seen ICE truck owners complaining about the metal sheets around the bed that got so thin in recent years that it can tear or puncture from stuff that it shouldn't. That's the opposite of what Cybertruck can withstand. It's ridiculously strong, which will make a lot of professionals happy - less dents, punctures and paint chips, so less headaches.
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If incompetence is the only issue here, with the Secret Service failing against a lone 20-year old individual, then the US has a shockingly huge security problem on its hands, which is just waiting to be exploited by whoever wants to do crap. However, it's impossible for me to believe that this was strictly incompetence. Everything that wasn't an act of incompetence was deliberate, whether opportunistic or planned, and that would be criminal and needs punishment.
Getting fired is not enough. With the public and its officials being exposed to such risk, despite billions of taxpayer dollars spent on this agency, the only fix is to clean up this organization top to bottom, and take harsh action against those responsible, by direct and indirect action, for this incident. If even this results in no accountability, then the US becomes a joke.
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The trap we risk falling into is dismissing everything just because it comes from the "politically correct culture". It makes sense to acknowledge inappropriate words and only dismiss the proposals who are indeed bad (and sometimes blatantly stupid, unfortunately). Otherwise it shows zero interest in improving ourselves as people.
Yes, it can be viewed as whitewashing. And it can also be viewed as simply growing up. Just imagine yourself being verbally abused, and then the mayor thinks one of those words are funny enough to name the new school being constructed.
People will still mess around with others, antagonize, insult, bully and even humiliate each other, but that should be kept on a personal level, not used as source for official names. Had that nebula gotten a normal name in the first place, there would be no reason to waste anyone's time with renaming it.
Why do people even need bad words? Because they're better than physical responses. But how would we avoid such verbal responses? By improving our behavior towards others - the root cause of all of these names. Can we improve? Are we willing to live in a nice society where people smile more, where we don't have to constantly keep our guard up and instantly react to bad behavior? It seems quite hard to achieve, but we can only hope we will get there, because the prospect of a nice and friendly society looks quite appealing. But we can't get there if we keep our ways. It's like promising to stop making a mess in our homes, but never cleaning up the mess we already had there. It takes effort to get there, and it's a pain, but it's worth the trouble. Just my opinion, of course.
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@michaeljacksonsghostheehee It doesn't look like you understood my earlier point - especially the part about people's lives on a countdown. If you want to nitpick, you can certainly look at the VP's phone call to the governor of Florida, and her pointless complaint to the media that he doesn't care enough, when she wasn't even part of that command chain. The president himself said that the governor was doing a good job and that they were in communication for assistance prior to Milton making landfall. But in contrast to the VPs fake outrage related to Milton, the former president and Elon actually helped with the restoration of communications during Helene, with over 10 thousand Starlink kits. And again, I assume that we can agree that politics should be left aside when people are in dire need for the basics.
FEMA did a poor job with Helene, and you can see various affected people complaining about it in videos on social media. It doesn't matter how exactly they budget if they do a good enough job post-disaster, but offering $750/home when some people no longer even have a home, and even rejecting valid claims (displaced people) for financial support, shows incredibly poor management. And because some people in the government understand the emergency, the FCC approved the Starlink Direct to Cell emergency service, so people can use their phones in the affected areas for text messages even without a Starlink dish.
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8:33 Dude, why would you even make that comparison? Alan had to stay in the capsule for nearly 3 hours after multiple holds. They wouldn't let him out because they would have to do a lot of work again - setting up the white room, de-bolting the door, etc -, so they ultimately gave him the go to... go. But if you brought that up, I wonder how this recent ride would've felt for the participants if they were to experience Alan's G forces. That's just one key difference between astronaut flights and hop-on hop-off space services.
As a side note, the people taking rides to space are obviously not astronauts, just like anyone riding with Waymo doesn't make them drivers. Actually, even drivers are not equal - there are race drivers, professional drivers, everyday drivers, and bad drivers. 😆
The huge difference between a ride to space and astronauts is the training, extensive knowledge about the spacecraft, and the ability to control certain parts of it - which would also require non-trivial knowledge of physics, and also actually having a mission to advance science. It's a job for most people who went to space. Others are just tourists or just people going on one of the coolest rides yet. It was pretty much the peak drop tower version. No control possible, no control expected either, just buckle up and enjoy the ride.
I see nothing controversial or offensive in not calling them astronauts, and calling that a ride. I flew in airplanes, but that doesn't make me a pilot. You learned a lot, trained a lot, and got a license, so you are one. What they did is cool nonetheless, and that's it. They're just not astronauts. :)
P.S. (7:53) Wikipedia documents Yuri's flight and it was a full orbit - there's even a plotted path on the map on the Vostok 1 wikipedia page. He spent over an hour in orbit, according to the timestamps listed there.
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Interesting, with nothing feasible from the outside you'd think nothing bad can happen to the US.
What could go wrong on the inside?
- weakening of military and administration by promoting less competent people in leadership positions
- destabilizing the country's economy by making it spend externally and getting huge debt
- destroying the education system to make people less educated and more reliant on incompetent leadership
- creating social tensions for any reason (race, gender, ethnicity, politics, sports/entertainment, etc)
- creating financial incentives for private businesses to promote divisive rhetoric (ESG)
- making it harder for people to own homes, so they can easily be displaced (a.k.a. less to defend)
- making sure there are less native citizens to being with (abortion + sterilization)
- making sure the population is psychologically unfit to handle harsh conditions (karenification, glorifying mental illness, "safe spaces", etc)
- importing millions of foreigners even when many of them are dangerous
- reducing the amount of well paid jobs by using less citizens, replacing them with low-paid foreigners (economic collapse, "unhoused" citizens, etc)
- and more
Good thing everything I mentioned here is purely hypothetical.
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How is it possible for everyone of all ages to stay outside in the sun, from kids, parents, and the former president, but the law enforcement went inside the building, instead of on its roof? And then they abandoned that building as well, to search for the guy. If this were a movie, people would endlessly complain about how stupid and unrealistic the writing was. A 20-year old guy who manages to fly a drone, make himself invisible to the law enforcement, and even fire 8 times - absurd, isn't it?
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It's both hilarious and worrying that you find the regular Fanta good or close to orange juice, because it's actually far from it. Many countries here in Europe have machines that split oranges in half, squeezing the halves to get the juice out. Some machines are operated by employees, some are accessible to the customers, who put the bottles in the right spot, then feed the machine with oranges. If the oranges are fully ripe, the juice is sweet, very tasty and refreshing. You don't even need it to be fizzy because the citric acid already makes it slightly tingy. It's obviously way better without so much added sugar and flavors, so it's healthier too.
The cool thing (for me) about Shokata is that it's a pun in Romanian (my native tongue), directly translated as "the shocked". That beverage is the industrialized version of a very popular home-made soft drink based on elderberry flowers - which we call "soc". The traditional recipe has these flowers, sugar, lemons and water (obviously), left in the sun in big (~1 gallon) colorless transparent glass jars to ferment over the course of 2-3 days (at least). Some people add yeast to make it ferment faster, but that's optional. Since the yeast adds an extra taste that I don't like, I prefer to just wait for an extra day for the flowers to ferment naturally. It's actually a colorless-cloudy beverage, even the one you have. Just pour it in a clear glass and you'll see. It only looks blue because the recipient is blue - cheap marketing trick. 😄
My rating for Fanta Shokata is 6.5 out of 10. The taste is reasonably close to the proper beverage, but it has concentrated juice, flavors and additives, and it's made with carbonated water, which is unnecessary in a home-made beverage because the fermentation makes it slightly fizzy anyway. In some countries it also has more sugar than it actually needs to be tasty and refreshing, which is why I prefer looking for elderberry bushes myself. If I find them in a clean area without pollution from cars or anything else concerning, those flowers are great to use. :)
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4:30 Are they actually failing on Artemis, or delaying for as long as possible because NASA keeps paying them anyway?
By the way, faking incompetence is easy, especially when you get paid despite it. And it's very convenient that the congressman said that it's either aliens or (retrofitting stuff made by) aliens (1:25) in the context of the new president's inauguration, who just told some that if he doesn't get his way, all hell will break loose, and we know he also wants to end another war by negotiating hard once he gets back in the White House.
The US basically showed the world something "unidentified" and implied it's alien technology just when negotiations are about to take place. It doesn't mean much to the average Joe, but it's a clear signal for the others who will sit at the negotiation table.
5:44 Why use retrofitted tech if they have jets that are still superior and that allows them to keep their secrets for longer? Remember, the US is reactive in the sense that once they feel their supremacy is threatened, they step up and show they can do that, and more. The first satellite launch, putting animals in orbit, then people, the US simply reacted, and ended up going to the Moon to stomp their foot hard, and then Russia gave up. Now (some in) the US want to put out multiple fires globally, and all of a sudden they make vague statements about alien technology. It looks like their Trump card again.
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The reason for NASA's inability to move fast and efficient is clearly politics, as stated in the video. They depend on governmental funds and they're given funds if the contracts involve the "good old" favorite corporations that have been working for NASA for a decades. If it weren't for SpaceX, we wouldn't even return to the Moon. Even with their poor attempts of trying to make SLS, it's still unsustainable and would likely fail in the long run even without commercial competition, because that high price tag is not justifiable when there are way bigger immediate problems here on Earth.
Now if it can be done cheaper, things already look different, so let's say $100M/launch with Starship, not Elon's crazy targat of $2M, would make everything sustainable. But unlike almost everyone else in the space industry, SpaceX doesn't sit on their hands and "milk" their rockets for decades, but work hard to bring the costs down. So it's reasonable to assume they will get close to that "crazy" price target per launch. Like that, clearly we can explore space and do a lot of things. Everyone else will have to either keep up or die.
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Man, I'm all for crapping on bad marketing, hype, and misplaced optimism. But words matter, and it doesn't help putting words in his mouth. He's very optimistic and all that, but so far I haven't seen him promising a specific date for level 5 FSD - and I watch critic reviews and interviews because I'm interested in how this effort goes. Planning/targeting something doesn't guarantee success or making it in time. It can easily mean that despite all effort, the plan fails. Tesla managed to come up with some stuff on time from their master plans, and other stuff was either delayed or *very* delayed. FSD is the latter case. To be fair, no one has it, so you can't really estimate based on anyone else's timeline of solving it. That's why despite me rolling my eyes every time I hear them saying they're getting closer, I keep reminding myself that if this were easy enough, others would've done it already.
Now clearly they're both far ahead on their FSD work, and far from level 5 autonomy. FSD still feels to me like something likely in medium term, at best, because there's just so much that can go wrong. And that's why I don't like that anyone can get the FSD beta now. Even before they opened it, as shown, some people are plain irresponsible. I'm not sure what to make of this public road testing. If we look at the numbers, considering Tesla cars have less crashes per million miles, compared to the national US average (according to NHTSA), we can easily argue that shit happens for everyone, including (but less) with Tesla cars.
This is why I don't know what to make of this - the numbers are in their favor, even with this kind of crap. And it feels like people expect Tesla to either be perfect or stop testing FSD publicly. Sandbox FSD can't become real-world FSD faster, because there are plenty of edge cases that you might never learn in a simulated environment. So you pretty much have to make public tests. But I would definitely keep it a closed beta. And frankly, I find it mind-boggling that you have to pay 15k to be a beta tester. But I guess you can't tell people what to do with their money, so there's that.
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@Uncivilize "Colored" means something having color, and white would be without color. The words themselves don't imply anything other than their definition. Now when it comes to people I would rather call "black" and "white" as stupid names because most people are neither actually white or actually black. These are vague terms that I think are pointless in a country with most people having mixed ancestry nowadays. Even Europeans have incredibly mixed ancestry. In fact, if we go by definition, I think it would be impossible to find someone who is literally white like a blank canvas.
So talking about color regarding people looks more like yet another thing for people to argue about, just like some debate the colors pink, rose, taffy, etc. We are, in fact, all colored - just in different colors and tones.
Fun fact, I used a color picker to get a pixel off of Matt's forehead. Here's what I got: #c5907d color description: Slightly desaturated orange. 🤣 So frankly, when I hear "black", "white", "colored", I don't care because it's so far from reality that I can only hope we will someday have enough common sense to stop categorizing people by color. It's certainly not disgusting, just plain stupid - because it looks like we refuse to take a moment and think about how these terms make no real sense.
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@originzz What you remember is exactly the problem the project inflicted on itself for using "Minetest" both for the engine and part of the game's title for well over a decade.
The engine has been separated from the game since 2012, when the Lua API has been introduced in version 0.4, which allowed for various games to be built on top of the engine. Minetest Game got delivered in the same package just for the players' convenience, which made perfect sense initially.
The very same year, in 2012, there was effort to make an external website serving content for Minetest - initially called extensions, then mods. There's an article about this, you can google "Developing ContentDB rubenwardy" - it even gets technical.
The "out of nowhere" thing you mentioned is the removal of "Minetest Game" from the default installation of Minetest, which happened very late, with 5.8.0 late last year. They should've done it years ago but, to be fair, they also needed an updated UI for a decent interaction with their ContentDB, so people can install stuff easily.
It makes a lot of sense for developers to focus on and be experienced with development, instead of branding matters. And now they have finally jumped over the final hurdle, which was getting rid of the bad name. :)
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13:18 So after all the evidence of social networks (including Twitter) colluding with the US government to censor truth Jessica believes that X is worse? Community notes on X allows people to fact check anyone - influential people, politicians, and even Elon himself. Misinformation has always existed on Twitter and other social platforms. Just because it's been quietly swept under a rug doesn't mean it was never there. The difference is that on X it's now exposed and corrected in many cases.
Also, the people of the EU are not fans of censorship either, and didn't vote their freedom of speech away. What's going on is politicians trying to do everyone dirty, just so they can get away with more. You know, like in the US. Don't confuse the EU leadership with the EU voters. Surely you can understand that just as you haven't voted for certain bad things in the US but still got them, no one can blame you for what happened, other than saying "but you voted for those politicians!"
The voters are betrayed by politicians almost every time - it's just a matter of how much. Take Biden's $8 billions spent on EV chargers with only 7-8 actually built so far, out of 500,000. Meanwhile, people want more, and reliable, EV chargers, but they have to rely on Tesla to build them on their own money, while the government does next to nothing. Then take Biden's initiative for rural internet access, with over $42 billion on the line and a cost of $5125 per location, according to the FCC. And while making it so expensive, the Biden-Harris administration rejected SpaceX's bid to offer internet access under this program, despite Starlink being many times cheaper. Even in the "land of the free", the voters get cheated and betrayed. So don't blame them. I believe most of the democrat voters prefer those initiatives to actually happen.
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@kjaxky I was not talking about stock, but what the media and the car makers themselves have reported. No US auto maker other than Tesla makes a profit from EVs. On gross margin, GM has 13.12%, Ford has 13.54%, Stellantis 17.88%, and Tesla has 19.8%. When you see these numbers, and consider the impact of what Trump wants to do with the EV incentives, you can see how those who already lose money on EVs will have an even harder time, the lower their margin is. And this is happening while ICE car sales are in decline, and EV sales are going up, as reported by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Meanwhile, in Europe, VW (16.64% gross margin) struggles hard and wants to shut down 3 factories and lay off roughly 300k people in Germany. And given how those factories also affect thew supply chain, the actual impact is obviously a lot higher on the German economy. Also look at the debt of the car makers: Toyota: $255.71 B, Volkswagen: $219.94 B, Ford: $159.02 B, GM: $127.85 B, Stellantis: $32.57 B, Tesla: $12.78 B. Then, according to Cox Automotive, EV sales YTD look like this: Tesla 49.8%, Ford 7.2%, Rivian 4.5%, GMC 1.0%.
BYD is currently at a gross margin of 21.9%, finally above Tesla. But their line up is not as amazing as people make it. Look at the reviews and see how the software and infotainment system are lacking a lot, charging is slower, and they have other issues here and there. But despite not having the polish of Tesla, whose cars aren't perfect either, BYD is still doing better than the legacy auto makers. That's why the legacy manufacturers are in trouble. The market is pretty huge and no single auto maker can serve it any time soon, even if that's their crazy goal. But when some (Tesla, BYD) make profit while also growing their sales, and the "old guard" keep doing worse in both ICE adn EV sales, you can see how they're heading for trouble, whatever that looks like.
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Man, this is really stretching it. You can argue that seeing a manager bragging about not having contributed is exceptionally weird, but you can't say you don't see the point of claiming that certain people feel very welcome. He didn't say "more welcome", just very welcome, about some people who have been traditionally less involved, sometimes due to discrimination.
He also didn't say that 30-ish white men are less welcome. You can argue that it sounds really weird to say _"non-white, non-male, non-30ish"_, but since white men have done a lot of work left and right in many projects (regardless of the reasons), isn't it easier to say that weird thing instead of starting a long chain of attributes of people who now enjoy being part of that community? That is... if saying it was worth it at all.
Just look at it without a political lens and it no longer looks too weird. He could've easily left out that specific sentence and the message would've gotten across just the same because the message ended with "it's not important where you're from, your color, your belief, etc, [...] you're welcome." And that's really what matters the most, because ideally managers put the project first, as "the mission", then the community second - the people who make it happen.
It's a weirdly stated message, but so is your take.
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While casting a black actor as Heimdall was wrong, I think Idris Elba did a great job. But I agree, when it comes to folklore and history it makes perfect sense to respect it and cast the right people for the roles. Even with comics, just stick with the source material if you pretend to care about it. Can you imagine Leonardo DiCaprio as Blade? 🤣 He can surely deliver the lines and act amazingly, but... it would make no sense.
My main issue with all these remakes is that it looks like someone doesn't care at all about creativity, and they simply use something at hand to push some agenda. And they probably also want to piss people off. Are we really stuck in a loop, having to rehash the same old stories on and on and on?! Seriously, I get the appeal of some new movie about an old princess story, but how about new stories, new heroes, new stuff? What will the movie makers 100 years from now make movies about? Cinderella, played by a Martian? Where are the cool heroes and stories that will be worth shown and retold a century from now? Sure, we have some (though I have a hard time thinking about any), but we're still flooded with the same old stuff done differently. And unfortunately, worse, with political garbage inserted in it.
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2:54 A carpenter's daughter can become even more than a professor. Obviously there are no guarantees, because the carpenter's daughter might not be smart enough for some "superior" job, or she is but she would rather do carpentry with her father because she loves the craft and has lots of ideas to improve on what she learned.
Those graphs are the epitome of lying with statistics because they only gloss over numbers and don't answer a lot of "why?" questions about those represented in the numbers. To summarize a quote from George Carlin, there are a lot of stupid people. It goes without saying that when you look at the percentages on that graph of who succeeds, a lot of people are actually incapable of ever succeeding. So they're balast and they destroy the graph alone. Then you have the people who don't care about being rich, all they want is a decent and quiet life. Others actually try to do better, but fail and never get back up to try again.
Obviously there's competition. You can easily assume a utopia with a company trying to find a new engineer. 5 people come for the interview, all great people. Inevitably, 4 people will be rejected, despite all of them being amazing. So make sure you don't mistake meritocracy for "I deserve this!" Even when the system is not biased or rigged, you will still fail many times. Get used to it. Get back up and keep trying, keep growing, don't insta-whine.
There's absolutely a lot of unfair competition and a lot of rigged stuff. You only need one job to do what you love, and if it's not at a certain company, it's somewhere else. And if you're not good enough, become better. And if you can't become better, admit that's how far you can actually go and plan your future accordingly. Not everyone can be a rocket scientist or brain surgeon. That's why "you can become anything you want" is the worst lie a child can be told. However, if you're smart enough to understand how far you can realistically go, you can absolutely go there if you work hard enough. Just don't lie to yourself like your parents did, so your outcome can match your real abilities.
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@brendanr1525 If the grid collapses because of too much consumption, of course the problem is on the consumer side. The general attitude of unwillingness to switch to efficient appliances is part of the problem. Even when it comes to ICE cars, too many people in the US have been (and still are) fine with gas guzzlers. This was instilled into Americans over the decades to such a degree that you people think you're depriving yourselves when someone like us Europeans recommend you more efficient stuff. You're pretty much holding yourselves hostage in a system who wants to milk as much money from you as possible, just because someone convinced you that you're free to use whatever you want because no one tells Americans what to do.
I don't know how well the EnergyGuide Label works across the US, but it seems to be reasonable enough to help consumers pick appliances that do the same job for less energy. And when people also do a bit of research, they can find decently priced appliances that are way more efficient than what they have. For sure, buying appliances should happen when the old ones are no longer worth using. But in some cases, when the prices aren't big and the difference in efficiency is big, some appliances are worth replacing and you basically get those money back in a few years, while paying less on your bills, while having a more stable grid, or making it much easier for yourself to rely on a backup generator/batteries.
It simply looks like the US government has a hard on for making their citizens' lives more difficult, in many different ways. Too bad so many people play their game to their own detriment.
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The sad thing is that many Americans are too brainwashed to realize that, despite what Vivek really is like, he's not wrong about the US culture of mediocrity. Many of you are so used to being way too soft to kids, to throw participation trophies at everyone, to accept huge promises from politicians and settle for very little, to tolerate lack of accountability, etc, that it's damn near impossible to realize how bad things actually got.
Education has gone downhill for a long time, to the extent that Americans gained a reputation for being stupid and/or uneducated. There are obviously plenty of hard workers, awesome people, but I'm talking about those who don't challenge themselves, those who don't challenge the system, those who needed the catastrophe of the Biden-Harris administration to finally say "wait a minute... we can't keep this up, or we're toast," and then vote for Trump. Despite the recent wake up call, nearly half of the voters wanted Kamala in the White House. You can't tell me that says good things about so many Americans, because that's a significant number. And mediocrity is not limited to democrat voters. The US forgot how to be great, and that's exactly why MAGA worked so well for Trump, because more and more people realize that the country did much better in the past and it's high time to actually be great again.
H1B has been abused to death, of course, and it has to be fixed as fast as humanly possible. But Americans have to get used to the idea that they've been "educated" into this culture of mediocrity, and then you just have to get out of that hole. You can't get out if you insist you're not in that pit of mediocrity, as a nation. Looking at exceptions to deny the overall mediocrity doesn't help. Just zoom out and be brave to admit there's a lot of work ahead. It's been bad for at least 2 decades and DEI only made things (a lot) worse. Stop being too busy to be proud to be American, and admit to the problem you're having, so you can start fixing it.
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If we adopt this mentality of ditching products solely because of what the developers do unrelated to the projects, instead of the quality of the products themselves, we leave ourselves to be hijacked out of anything. All you have to do is inject bad people to "taint" a project. All you have to do is be a "bad actor" adopting a phrase, word, idea, or symbol, and people would automatically "have to" reject that, and remove it from current use. This is a guaranteed recipe for destruction of everything that is good. Once the big tech infests all projects with someone bad, what options will you have left?
Be careful, stay vigilant, but don't dismiss stuff out of principle, or you're exposing yourself to being hijacked very easily.
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The older a social media becomes, the more noise it gets, the more bots, the more user fatigue. The only things the platforms can do is (1) fight to keep things under control, and (2) add useful new features, so the fatigue doesn't become insurmountable.
I'm still on X, and I don't want to join another social network, despite not being particularly happy with X. In fact, I wasn't happy even years ago, when "Who to follow" kept showing me Trump and I was annoyed that I had no control over that panel - I wanted it completely gone. Regardless of that, and leaving the aging issue and bot situation, I find X way more balanced now than in the past. It didn't surprise me when I saw CNN showing figures about political leaning in the past and in the present - with an almost equal representation nowadays, and a significant left majority years ago.
Bluesky is young, and it will go through similar pains with user fatigue, bots, etc. Regardless of politics, where there are people, there will be bots to spam them.
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1:39 For perspective, if Toyota earned more than double than Tesla last year, while selling over 6 times more vehicles, their margins are not great.
8:38 Hybrids are worse than both ICE and EVs because they cost more and they have more parts that break down in time. The growth in hybrid sales happened because of two main reasons. First, it's because the big car makers slowed down their EV production and focused more on making and selling hybrids because it's much easier (and profitable) for them to build them compared to EVs. The second reason is that until all EVs can charge at Tesla superchargers, people will have to deal with the non-Tesla charging infrastructure that not only doesn't work properly but the charging experience seems to be designed by people who hate customers, or EVs, or both. No wonder there's range anxiety with those chargers.
9:35 It's going to be tough for other EV makers than Tesla because they're not profitable, but scaling production can lead them to profitability if they grow enough. The irony is that the traditional car makers are actually giving them a break by not competing so much, so Lucid (currently doing the worst) might still be able to survive. Tesla is only going to win with the others slowing down. Not only they've been profitable for years now, but the economy of scale works great for them, and they work on lowering the production costs further, which means cheaper cars with very healthy margins - a solid business.
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This video was a bit short. It could've also covered the natives who benefit from SpaceX being there, and how the local businesses get a lot more customers. The focus here was on the problems, which are undeniable, likely for the most part. I can understand that not everyone gets excited about rockets, and not everyone likes their desks to shake every now and then, or that not everyone can just start their own business to make a living from tourism. So I can see how SpaceX being there is a problem for some people. I would really like to see the other side of the coin, if MPU has any interest in covering that, because you can paint almost any place in a bad light if you only look at the problems.
What would be interesting to see there, given how the city has ~200k people, is a local organization focused on strengthening the local economy by offering advice to locals. Simply complaining doesn't fix problems that existed even before SpaceX arrived there, like poverty. But now that SpaceX is there, there's a demand for housing, food, services. Local cooperatives could handle this. Help people team up if making individual businesses is too hard. It's an opportunity that most other places in the US don't have.
Life sucks when it's hard, but SpaceX would probably be happy to financially support this local organization focused on economic growth. Someone should start one and make good use of the money, so that it really helps people. But whoever makes this happen should know what they're doing. You can even directly ask SpaceX if they would like the community to engage in specific commercial activities that would support SpaceX staff and visitors. A partnership may emerge and benefit everyone. The opportunity is right there, and it takes work for sure, but many honest working people would benefit from such a collaboration.
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2:19 WinMe was unstable as heck, unfortunately. On the surface, both Me and XP looked like "bridge" versions of Windows. Me was a bridge between 2000 and 98, but on the 9x architecture, while XP was a bridge between the two, but on NT architecture. We know which won, of course, but I really wish Me wasn't that unstable because there were things that I really liked about 9x, and Me looked really good - peak 9x experience. But it was also peak 9x instability, so other than enjoying its startup sound, I wanted nothing of it.
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Mayo Clinic: "Genetics play a role in determining your weight. But that’s not the whole story. Environment, lifestyle and healthy choices still contribute a great deal to how much you weigh. And your genes also make a difference in the type of weight-loss strategies that may work best for you. When deciding how to move forward with achieving weight loss, all of these factors must be considered."
So there is a genetic aspect to weight, but pretending it's only that is not the best idea. And sure, staying motivated to maintain a (reasonably) healthy lifestyle takes discipline and effort. It comes easy to some, but it can be hard for others. I for one am not concerned with how I look, but with how I feel, and how I will be 30-40 years later. With age, metabolism slows down. My main concern is to keep my weight in check, so I don't keep gaining more. Even with my (few) extra pounds/kilograms, as long as I don't get more, that's pretty good. But while trying to keep a balance, I also manage to train myself to be more careful and disciplined. It really pays off, with way less effort than it would take if I were to go to gym, run, etc. A six pack is not required to be in decent shape from a health standpoint.
And weight is only one of the problems we can have. But it's one of the easiest to take care of, because personal choice is usually enough. Reducing the chances for complications due to excess weight is a good idea.
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Sketchy: the guys around the tent, the white-shirted guy seemingly on the lookout. Weird: the "parked" totaled car. Despite all of these, nothing actually bad was captured in this video. So why is it that Americans think it's weird to see people chilling after dark? It's obviously cooler outside after dark in a summer day. Was it a weekend? That would make it even easier to see people outside. Of course some of those people are likely unemployed. That's a thing all over the world, in all communities. Don't be too quick to judge who's employed and who isn't, because a lot of people don't work from 9 to 5.
Maybe that's actually a bad neighborhood, but most of the stuff in this video looked pretty normal. Loud and cussing people? That's young people in many countries, I've seen that myself in Italy, Spain, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Romania. It's annoying if there's noise near homes with people trying to rest, and it's fine otherwise. But in a small to medium community, having a night life is not weird at all. That happens even in towns and cities if there are open stores and clubs. Being loud, while not disturbing the peace of others, is not a problem. And having a potty mouth should not be illegal either, especially in a country with an amendment protecting speech.
I get that you'd like to see cleaner streets, and more people looking nice and being polite. But we're far from that utopia - if we'll ever get there.
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