I honestly wonder why America doesn't just agree that there's a succession line for the president and stop pretending that the world would collapse if he goes down.

Thank you, that was exactly the point I was trying to make. Yes, a Boeing 747-800 list price in its final year was about $420 million, meaning US taxpayers / Boeing are spending an additional $2 billion to specialize this plane to make it as secure and protective as possible. But do we really have to "Secure the president at all costs?" If so, where exactly do we draw the line, or is there no line?

As a taxpayer, I think there should be a line. Without one, today's modern military industrial complex will invent every specialized item imaginable and charge taxpayers dearly for it.

Why is anybody spending five billion dollars building these airplanes in the first place?

Every house has 240v, yes. But go ahead and daisy chain your outlet behind the stove to your car charger and lemme know how that goes for you, assuming you survive the house fire. (Yes, the box breaker will trip before that happens, but writing for dramatic effect is fun.)

Breaker panels have an amperage capacity you don't want to exceed for safety reasons, and the box breaker keeps you from exceeding that threshold. If you have a 100a box, and your house was wired for 100a of peak demand, then adding a 30a circuit to your box means your box will keep tripping every time you plug your car in. When I shopped for a house three years ago, many homes built before the 70s had a 100 Amp breaker box. That was enough for back then, but nobody back then could have had the foresight to throw a 200a panel into a house for 60 years into the future when ma and pa would need to add an extra 60a of juice to charge up their Buick to drive to church on Sunday.

To provide for proper electrical charging capacity, today's homes should have a 400a to allow for 200a in the home, plus two 50a plugs in the garage, plus room to spare 60 years in the future for when ma and pa need to install their new holodecks to experience church from home.

Possible? Yes.
Cheap? Well, as we say in the states, "your mileage may vary".

Home owners will need to hire an electrician to do the installation. Best-case-scenario, a 240v 30a plug will cost around $500 to install. Unfortunately, many homes don't have the breaker capacity to install one, especially older homes, so they'll have to shell out $2,000 or $3,000 to install a new breaker panel, plus the $500 to wire in the new outlet. Worst case scenario, someone down the road drive home two new F150 Lightnings, and the electrician gave him an estimate of $5K to install a new 400a breaker panel and a pair of NEMA 14-50's.

How much did LA spend on this AI program? Then, if they took that money and instead spent it on a rent-assistance program, how many fewer homeless people would there be?

Let's teach those Iranians how to make a Stuxnet that will destroy the American nuclear program!

You don't have to read the whole article to understand the problem, just this one paragraph:

A year later, Targos said she’s found it tough caring for three toddlers even with the help of her husband and a nanny, but she relishes that she’s always nearby when her babies need her. With President Biden calling for federal workers to return to offices this fall, she may soon have to brave a two-hour commute through Chicago rush hour and rework her child-care plan — or consider a more drastic change.

Today's American families want to have everything: a house in the suburbs, two cars in the garage, children, and well-paying jobs to afford it all. But today in 2023, it's practically impossible to have all of this. Suburban homes are too expensive. Cars are too expensive. Children are expensive. And jobs (that pay enough) are too far a drive away from suburbia. Typically, the only way to make this all work is with daycare. But daycare is expensive, and there's more demand than there is supply.

(Not to mention the fact that the economics of daycare are practically impossible in America. When I was a child, daycare was neighborhood mothers grouping together and organizing a schedule to watch each others kids. Today's daycare is an organized service that either has to be so expensive that it's unaffordable to middle-class America, or that the workers don't get paid enough money to also live middle class lifestyles. Not to mention that one mistake in handling how you care for a child can lead to the state shutting the whole place down.)

But if one can work from home, that lets you have your job and get paid for it too. And you can watch your kids. Which makes that $500,000 home in the suburbs just a little bit more affordable.

Honestly, I don't think we'd be having this conversation if homes and cars weren't so damn expensive.

Good one. Thanks for the laugh.

It's already been done.

And I actually used one once. I hated it. I can type a sustained 100+ wpm, but with this thing, I barely breached 20. Granted, it was buggy as hell, but even if it had worked flawlessly, I have no tactile feedback at my fingertips to confirm that I'm pressing on a key, which slowed me down. More importantly, there was absolutely no tactile reference point to anchor my fingers (unlike the raised dimples on the 'f' and 'j' keys), so my fingers would drift off the keys if I didn't keep a constant look at them, which also slowed me down terribly.

No way these guys were getting over 100 wpm.

Death to Meta. What a waste of money.

When I last shopped for a car 5 years ago, many didn't have a spare, just the fix-a-flat spray can. I suppose not having the 50-80 pounds saves a few gallons a year. But at the rate car prices keep climbing, I doubt cost has much to do with it.

Personally, I am more frustrated how electric cars are killing electric cars. The batteries are way too big and way too heavy (not to mention way too expensive) and are wasting too much energy moving itself around. I would like a small battery that has enough juice for commuting, and I wish Detroit would make a good quality, light weight and range commuter electric vehicle, not these monstrous monstrocities like the Ford f150 Lightning. Until then, I think I'll settle for a plug-in hybrid.

The requirement that ISPs list all their monthly fees "would add unnecessary complexity and burdens to the label for consumers and providers and could result in some providers having to create many labels for any given plan,"

As a consumer, paying monthly fees adds an unnecessary complexity and burden to the amount of labor I need to work to afford the fees. Let's lobby the FCC to let consumers stop paying the fees altogether.

Fuck Big Internet. They take our money from what we pay for service, they take more of our money from what we pay in fees, and then they take the rest of our money from the taxes we pay to Uncle Sam. In return, they give us the worst customer service that can barely qualifies to meet the definition of the words "customer service." Not a single executive from any of those companies earns less than a million dollars a year. To hell with all of them.

Please tell me it's not Android under the hood.

As it says in the article: "And they both have physical buttons, including a full 12-key number pad, plus navigational buttons to get around the operating system, called Series 30+ or S30+ ."

So, not Android.

That followed his saying earlier this month that he anticipates an electricity shortage in two years that could stunt the energy-hungry development of artificial intelligence.

Will AI improve the welfare of our planet and its inhabitants? No. Will electric vehicles? Maybe. But given the stakes, a maybe is worth pursuing.

Frankly, I haven't seen anything yet that AI has done that has truly been a benefit for human kind. I only see vain capitalistic pursuits.

You should be asking, "What could go right?" Because this country has had a long history of new industries getting so big and powerful that they choose profits over the health and welfare of the people, and the only thing that put a stop to it was the federal government.

Do you remember the days when it was common practice to shovel whatever scraps were found on the meat packing floor into the meat grinder, including dead rats, their droppings, and the occasional human finger? Do you remember the days where anyone could shove anything into a bottle, including mercury, lead, and heroin, call it "medicine", and sell it to the sick and poor? Do you remember the days when a family could order their seven year old son to go work in the coal mine, because daddy needed drinking money?

No? That's right, and neither do I, because all those atrocities were stopped long ago thanks to government regulation.

So today, do you like the fact that you and your children each have a data profile created by Big Data that can be sold in the digital marketplace without your consent? Do you like the fact that Big Data can hand over surveillance of you and your property to government authorities without your consent? Do you like the fact that that Big Data can create algorithms and neural networks that propagate lies that cause humans to kill one another, with you a potential victim, without being held responsibility for these atrocities? Do you like the fact that, once a Big Data company seizes control of the marketplace, they can reign as a monopoly without any government controls and actions that keep their power in check?

If not, then you should hope government regulation can put a stop to it.

More likely it is an effort to make it a public health issue that the government will then declare is an environmental disaster and make it an EPA superfund issue, allowing the telecos to get paid taxpayer money to upgrade those lines to fiber instead of having to pay for it themselves.

Here's what I'd like to see instead: Make it a requirement that any of the telcos that are responsible for these lead-lined cables be ineligible to receive the $40 billion in broadband funding until those cables are removed.