Who says you need Ford to do it? Aging Wheels tried a prototype of a small electric pickup a year ago from a team making one without the support of a huge car company. I have no dog in this fight, other than wanting more of transport to go electric but if Americans refuse to buy vans which probably make more sense for transporting goods this might be a good option.
You didn’t like the broader consensus views towards llm usage but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t ultimately a positive to their community that you left. It sounds as though there was a mismatch in what you and the broader group wanted so perhaps a non-confrontational split is the best that could be hoped for in this situation?
It is, on hacker news, easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism it seems.
This is echoing a term made by Varoufakis about an increasing amount of money being held by a smaller and smaller group, not a return to literal peasant existence. It’s not feudalism, it’s ‘neo-feudalism’.
The argument that labour can move is true, except where it can’t. Look at the entire towns of miners made irrelevant with no replacement to their jobs. Sure you might say they can move half way across the country to clean toilets but they have skills, a family and houses somewhere else.
Where the argument of a feudal analogy really rings true is the increasing attempt to do back to extraction of rent for everything. Subscriptions for everything, including homes are becoming more and more normal. Are we really okay with a world in this form?
Good for the time but dated. When your negative is the big it doesn’t matter as much but it’s absolutely not as sharp as more modern constructions.
It’s also arguably a step down to use his printed body versus the original Mamiya press in terms of functionality other than reduced weight. Still an impressive design though.
While the story is interesting one thing struck me about the writing. The author for some reason mentions the wording in some eBay auctions:
‘“This Redbox lot is a must-have addition to any movie collection,” one of the sellers wrote, while another promised, “From action-packed blockbusters to heartwarming family favorites, this collection has something for everyone.”’
As someone who has seen the use of eBay’s questionable ‘help’ tool, this is clearly the AI generated slop auto description. I find it interesting that someone writing an entire article has taken it as real sentiment and not just someone taking the easiest way to try and make some money on used dvds.
It’s a shorthand for news articles intended for laypeople but it gets the point across; no natural processes yet found break down these compounds and in small but measurable quantities they build up in our environment. It’s not practical to say, treat all sewage effluent or refuse going to recycling / landfill / incineration to break them down so they build up and we don’t really know what they will end up doing. So for most practical purposes, yes they’re not going anywhere.
Yeah but he didn’t write it so it doesn’t matter, that’s why he has half a dozen links to his own work in a short essay.
The man isn’t wrong but the relentless self promotion Doctorow does always comes over as mildly off putting.
Because they tell you before you get to the last station in the zone. You can get off, tap out & buy a ticket to wherever you’re going from that station.
I’ve been thinking about buying a copy of this but it seems like a pretty steep price to do in a whim. Is the third edition that much more necessary/ up-to-date than a good used copy of the second as a relative novice? Will I end up learning decades old things that are not relevant now?
I would counter that it won’t see adoption in cars but will in heavy machinery. It’s a much better proposition for hauling huge loads than tonnes of batteries are (assuming you can’t use a train in the first place) or for things like large excavators. It also removes some of the need for regular filling stations along roads etc. if you can centre the infrastructure around where fleets are based and return to for more cargo.
One could also use is rurally to heat greenhouses for crops that need warmer climates. Apparently there is one company using their data centre to heat (a?) swimming pool in the UK however!