I find myself going days between checking /. these days. This is absolutely why.

No more news for nerds, not even the pretense of editing. Just absolute garbage slapped into the feed, hoping for clicks.

Why?

Why would you want to pay more for the same TV?

Just get the smart TV and use it like a dumb screen. I've been doing that for a decade now. Works great! My TVs never are allowed to connect to the internet, all they ever see is an HDMI cable.

You get 2 major advantages in doing this: 1) You save $100. 2) You hurt the shitheads selling smart TVs because they sell them at cost and expect to make their money with their spyware.

Take your meds, my friend.

In the real world, no company is shipping a TV that hacks wifi networks.

We recently went out with a friend group, and one of them came in 25 minutes late. When they went to order, one of the things we had ordered was not on the menu.

Why? They ran out, and their system immediately pulled it from the online menu. We were all very confused at first, but checked with the waitress and she confirmed they were out of the special.

If more places can do this sort of tight integration, that's a net positive in my book. No more waiters having to apologize for them being out of something, no more chalkboard with the daily specials, with two crossed out, etc. There's a real use-case for being able to deliver to customers real-time information about your available products and services.

A few of our bars around here are tied into the Digital Pour app. That shows not only what's on tap, but a full description of the contents of the keg, ABV, IBU for beers. price, pour size and options, and the amount remaining in the keg. And they do beer, wine, ciders, premixed drinks, and NA offerings.That's just incredible to me. It's searchable. It's got a map. If you're looking for something specific, there's nothing like it to help you find your drink.

Now, there are a thousand ways to do QR code menus and apps wrong, as noted in this whole discussion. But there are some very cool things that can be done regarding pricing and availability that paper menus just can't do.

I didn't agree to any terms of service.

I don't have an account there. How could terms of service apply to something you freely expose to the web?

You don't get it both ways. Either it's behind a login and there are terms that users have to agree to to get an account, or you're making it freely available on the web. There isn't a middle ground.

A LITERAL pipe dream. A million miles of pipes dream.

To move to hydrogen, we have to replicate our ENTIRE gasoline production, transportation, and distribution network. Other than the ground that it all rests on, not a single part of the gasoline network can handle hydrogen as-is. Not the tanks, pipes, pumps, seals, gauges, engines, any of it!

When people propose hydrogen, I just don't understand what they're thinking. There is nowhere near enough financial incentive to replicate the entire fuel production and distribution system in the US or any other country.

The future is EV. You can get electricity just about anywhere. No trillion dollar investment needed.

The better idea is called an "electric vehicle". No pollution emitted as you drive it around, and electricity is available just about everywhere, unlike ammonia. In fact, electricity is even available off the grid!

Thank god you have that sig, or I would have thought you were a fucking idiot. Well played!

Best one I ever saw was the very bright kid who was the son of two lawyers. Half-way through sophomore year he goes from straight As to Cs. Parents lose their shit, want the teachers investigated, want the school to fix the problem, threaten administrators, etc. "What are you doing to our child!!!"

The band teacher opens his instrument locker and a bag of weed falls out. Mandatory 1 week suspension, drug counseling, and a possible expulsion for that. So his responsible parents threaten to sue the school out of existence, because they couldn't prove it was their kid's weed. Anyone could have put it in his locker! And their kid doesn't have a fuckton of disposable income and zero fear of consequences, so he can't be smoking weed!

Week after the school backs down from any sort of punishment they buy him a red convertible mustang for his 16th birthday.

And we wonder sometimes why there are absolutely raging assholes in the world with zero regard for anyone around them.

IDK, I can be convinced not to run for president for 0.1% of that much.

You talk about this as if it's going to be a gradual shift away from fossil fuels, but I don't think it's going to be, because we're dealing with corporations which are invested in making as much profit as possible. And they are giant conglomerates, with truly massive capital investments in places, all interconnected and dependent on consumer spending. Bankruptcies and mergers are going to drive a lot of chaos in the coming decades.

I've been saying for years now that I expect life to get rocky for ICE vehicle drivers once we see a sizable percent of EVs on the road.

Everyone has competing gas station chains in their area. As the percent of EVs goes up, one of those chains is going to tits-up and have to shut down. And it's not like their properties are going to be purchased by the other chains - they're all going to start feeling the squeeze of fewer customers coming in the door. Remember, gas stations make most of their profit from everything that's not gas!

So now one chain goes bankrupt, all of the ICE vehicles are going to be forced to go to the other stations. That's a solid temporary boost for them, but hopefully not too much, or they're suddenly going to have lines, and that's really not good for business. The temptation might be to snap up one of the defunct ones, but when you see years of declining sales, that's a short-term gamble. And taking on someone else's brownfields site is not something you choose to do lightly.

As more chains go out of business, the refineries they buy from are going to start to get squeezed. At some point one of them is also going to go bankrupt, and we'll see that same loss of product ripple through the industry, while the remaining customers flood some of the remaining refineries, giving them a short-term boost. But again there's the real question about what to do given years of declining sales. Try to buy the defunct one and squeeze a few more years out of it? Run at max capacity and leave some customers without any product?

I don't think it's going to be a smooth decline. I foresee a LOT of churn, bankruptcies and mergers, hugs swings in demand from particular companies as competitors go out of business and the remainder of their customers come flooding in. For customers, it will mean the convenient gas stations may cease to exist, driving them to go further to the remaining ones. And if there's too much demand or a product squeeze, that means lines for gas. And once you're driving 20 minutes out of your way for gas, and/or waiting in line, how much better does an EV start to look?

Tesla's semi just drove 1000 miles in one day.

Seems to me that the tech is now where they need it to be. Now it's just a matter of increasing the volume and making the build process more efficient to drive down the cost.

You won't be able to convince rsilvergun about anything relating to money - he's got a decade of history posting about his stupid financial decisions here. Apparently if he can't figure out how to handle money, nobody can.

Get a smarter grandma then.

Probably 85% of games work right out of the box on my linux laptop. Right click on it in steam > Properties > Compatibility > Check off 'Force Specific Compatibility..." and choose Proton Experimental. Proton is at the point of just being astoundingly good. If you ever fought with Wine, welcome to the future you couldn't even have dreamed of.

The biggest issues are the same ones that bother Windows gamers: Stupid developers who think you need an account on their website tied to their game in order to play it, stupid developers who want their own launcher app instead of just using steam, and stupid developers who want NSA level malware for DRM.