In the U.S., we say suburban. But that has nothing to do with the numbers we were looking at, right? Sounds more like you're saying that the stats are hard for you to understand, not that they are inaccurate.

You might almost have a fair point there -- at least something to discuss-- if it wasn't a bullshit attempt to move the goalposts. Obviously, you know very well that what you said, and what I responded to, was:

And we've clearly put that bit to bed, haven't we?

However, I would very much like to see the new cars selling for $7,250-$9,250. That would be 1/4 of the $29-32K MSRP of the Leaf, Hyundai Ioniq, Kia Soul EV, eGolf, Fiat 500e, Focus Electric... maybe a couple others in that range, or on the slightly higher end, the Bolt's $37K. I don't know any cars that sell for those prices new in North America, but maybe I'm not looking hard enough? Also, we'll overlook the fact that I am rather generously using just price. Cost (in the U.S. specifically) can be around $10K lower depending on your state of residence due to tax incentives (up to $7500 federal, various state rebates and credits). And let's not even get started on operating costs. Gas is relatively expensive compared to electricity. But since we weren't even talking about cost to begin with and we've already dealt with your 4X cost claim just on price (unless you're ready to show me the new cars in the $8K range), running the numbers seems a bit much.

Unless you mean per week, you are way off. Average commute in the U.S. is about 27 minutes (one way). About 7.3% of U.S. workers commute an hour or more each way. For comparison, about 8.5% walk, bike or take public transit (and those groups are not mutually exclusive. About 23% of those with commutes more than an hour use public transportation).

So almost all commuters who drive themselves to work could simply charge at home if they drove an EV. Even current ones with the lowest range (about 58 miles for 2018 Smart Electric) could accommodate most (68%) of commutes, which are 15 miles or less each way according to the U.S Bureau of Transportation Statistics. And other low-ish range options (Fiat 500e @84 miles or Honda Clarity @89 miles) could handle up to about 89% of commutes (about 21% are 16-30 miles, along with the aforementioned 68% that are 15 or less). And there are several other current EV offerings (Leaf, e-Golf, Soul EV, Focus Electric, etc...) with ranges of 110-150 miles, and a few (Teslas and the Bolt) greater than 220 miles.

tl,dr: commuting distance is not a problem for current generation EVs for 90+% of U.S. commuters. (In Canadia, your mileage, or kilometerage, may vary -- and they're actually better according to the slightly dated stats here which says 89% of commutes are 24km or less)

Obviously, the ones who want to mimic the iphone design as much as possible probably should.

On the other hand, plenty of others already have good designs with "zero" or near-zero bezel, or with a wider bezel that accommodates a front-facing camera without making the screen area weird.

But somehow, half a million people not only signed up to get on the waiting list for a Model 3, but put down $1000 to do so (in a time when nearly half of Americans could not pay for an unexpected $400 expense), even knowing it would be more than a year and probably more than two before they'd get it. Nah, it's not lack of demand. If another automaker could produce an EV with a similar feature set and price point to the Model 3, they could probably sell them as fast as they could make them.

But maybe Tesla is a unique case, between having the best range by a significant margin (until the Bolt came along, nearly double anyone else), the supercharger network, plus an advanced driver assist (aka autopilot), maybe it is a mistake to think of it as just an EV.

Pure EV sales are continuing to increase across pretty much across the board. But the Bolt vs. Volt numbers make for an interesting comparison, since they come from the same automaker (so any differences wouldn't be affected by brand preference), are priced in the same range, and share many features. And right now, it looks like the pure-EV Bolt is killing the hybrid Volt in sales numbers (I'm looking at U.S. sales. It may be different where you are). So perhaps it is not so much that demand is not there for EVs done well, but more so that most EVs on the market are not done very well.

First of all, they're not getting into the car industry. They're trying to get into the self-driving systems industry, which is in large part a decision-making-systems industry.

Seems like there is a word for that..... competition? Sounds like that might be a good thing.

I was thinking the same thing. Commercial recreational hot air balloon rides can easily top 2000 feet, and a normal hot air balloon of that type is capable of exceeding 20K feet. He probably could have significantly exceeded his rocket altitude (not to mention time at that altitude) for a couple hundred bucks. But I guess he's trying to get his rocketry skills up to par since, per the article:

Of course, the smart thing would be to test the rocket thoroughly before getting into it. But I suppose a well-reasoned, scientific approach is not entirely consistent with being a flat-earther.

Sure, but the subreddit isn't the community that Reddit has to worry about. All of reddit is. And that community doesn't have a very good track record of across-the-board upstanding behavior.

Because the answer to the question: "Can [Reddit] trust all users to police themselves?" is a solid "no", it makes more sense to ban all transactions for goods that have virtually any restrictions on sale or transfer.

Have you been to reddit? There are large communities there that look quite favorably on drugs of many types. This is simple CYA. They are not a commerce site, so there really isn't much up side and there may be significant down side to allowing strictly regulated items to be exchanged or sold on the site.

Don't get me wrong. I support your right to get as outraged over this as you want. I just think you are mistaken in attributing malicious intent to this particular policy.

You may be thinking of rights guaranteed by the first amendment. Free speech is what (along with the other enumerated rights) is protected by the first amendment. The terms are often used interchangeably, but can certainly mean different things.

If by "it", you mean the 1st amendment, you are not quite correct. For a famous example, look up Larry Flynt. He has been the target of numerous legal actions attempting to limit his free speech/expression rights, most of which were not related to anti-government expressions but rather for "speech" that was offensive to some portion of the community. That kind of thing could be described as "against community standards" or "against the mores of the majority of the population", but not really against the government. The U.S. Constitution protects all speech (from being infringed upon by the government), regardless of the subject or intention (with limited exceptions).

My copy (of the U.S. Constitution -- if you mean some other constitution, you should specify which one) doesn't say "except for corporations" anywhere in it, nor does it say anything about "humans" or "people" with regard to free speech in the first amendment (it does regarding peaceable assembly and petition for redress of grievances, but those are distinct rights enumerated separately from free speech). Maybe you should check your copy? Compare it to an "official" copy from the Government Printing Office, or National Archives or somewhere?

Broadly speaking, that's true in the U.S. But of course, reddit is not a U.S.-only site. And certainly there are some guns that are illegal in the U.S. And of course, legal guns can be acquired or transferred illegally. And given the complexity of gun laws across various jurisdictions, validating the legality of sales or transfers could be rather cumbersome.

I don't know if that is true or not. And it seems doubtful that you can verify it with a high degree of certainty. But even if it is true that a small, well moderated area of reddit met that standard, does that mean that there have been (and will be) no questionable or illegal transfers on the entire site? Obviously, it is foolishness to try to make that claim. So, should reddit have one set of rules for some areas of the site, and different rules for other parts that may be less vetted and/or less self-regulated? And how often should the company that owns the site re-evaluate to make sure that the rules of a subreddit are adequate to ensure all appropriate laws are being followed across any and all jurisdictions, and that the users are following those rules, and that the moderators are enforcing them? Seems like a fairly excessive amount of work to ensure that commercial transactions (of which the site gets nothing at all -- no commissions or transaction fees or percentages of any type since they're not per se a commerce site) follow the law. Especially when you consider that such transactions might engender liability, or even just bad press, if a gun purchased there is used to harm someone.

Also note that guns are not singled out. Alcohol and tobacco are also legal for adults in most places, and transactions for those (and several other things that are more highly restricted or generally illegal) are also banned from the site. While content that is illegal has been officially banned by their policy (no doubt as long as they've had a policy), more clarity is probably long overdue regarding site activity that is potentially illegal or legally restricted/questionable, or facilitates related activity that of that type.

"Below market rates" for rent in that part of CA does not imply affordability to "low life tenets[sic]", or anyone in the bottom three quintiles of household income in the U.S.

I wouldn't say that. At least not in the near term. Currently, the programming or "AI" we are talking about can't distinguish between a living thing and an inanimate object. We've even seen cases where they have difficulty distinguishing between a large white object and empty space (or perhaps a close vs. distant object). If it sees something in its path, it will stop. If something enters its path in less than its current stopping distance, it should brake and attempt to steer away from the object if there is a clear path. If there is no clear path, it should just attempt to stop.

So, what about in the future when the machine is smart enough to distinguish between a person, a dog, a trash can, churches, lead, a duck, whatever? It might not be an issue at that point. With that much intelligence in the machine, it should have much better predictive ability and much greater ability to process larger amounts of incoming sensor data. Meaning it can have more and/or better sensors that can see farther outside the vehicle's path and process the data more accurately to estimate whether something outside its path is likely to move into the path, which could necessitate decreasing speed in case it has to stop, or changing lanes if it seems likely (perhaps even slightly) that a vehicle/pedestrian/whatever will move into the SDC's current lane.

So basically, wait until the horses are out, then start thinking about closing the barn door? Trying to play catch-up after things get bad doesn't seem smart.

U6 (which includes long-term unemployed, discouraged, workers who are part time solely for economic reasons, etc...) says otherwise. 8.2% of people can't find adequate, sustainable employment. That could obviously grow significantly if a few market segments engage widespread adoption of automation over the next several years. Waiting ten years to start thinking about dealing with those issues -- which we know are coming -- is just dumb. Thinking about it, planning, and evaluating, starting in the next few years so that we're positioned to start implementing it within a few years after that (if necessary) is the smart approach.

What's too soon? 3-5 years from now, when this guy would be able to start working on it? What will unemployment look like then? And how long would it take to implement something like UBI? Years, most likely, from when it gets introduced. Will 6-8 years from now still be too soon? That probably depends on how fast you believe automation and AI/machine learning/other job-impacting tech will advance. If it's quite slow, maybe that time frame is too quick. I guess we've got a couple of years to see what happens before anyone needs to think about voting for a UBI (presidential) platform.