If I had a PHEV which could go, say, 50 miles on a charge, it would need considerably less battery than a full EV. I don't typically drive 50 miles in a week (my wife and I both WFH) so I wouldn't need to charge every night.

It also means the only time I'd need to buy fuel for it is when I do a significant road trip. Those happen a few times / year. I wouldn't need to worry about whether or not there's a charging station, is it functional, or is it full; I could pump a few gallons into the tank and get on down the road. That infrastructure is already built out. I'm just making considerably less use of it.

For 90+% of all my driving, I'd be doing it on electricity; I'd be within 50 miles, round trip, from my home and I can charge up at home. I care, considerably less at that point, about the public availability of chargers and charging networks.

When I lived in a rural area, a PHEV with 100 miles range would do 90+% of all annual driving on electricity.

We need to burn less gasoline; no argument. But there's a point of diminishing returns. If I can spend a little more money and eliminate 90+% of my gasoline usage (only needing gasoline for significant road trips), that's much more economically viable than shelling out 2 - 3x as much money for a vehicle which eliminates 100% of gasoline usage.

There need to be PHEVs with varying amounts of range, such as 50 miles, 75 miles and 100 miles range. Longer range = more $; that's understandable. So far, I'm having a hard time finding any with > 30 miles range. That would eliminate > 50% of my gasoline usage but I'd like to eliminate more.

In light of all that, he's not wrong. If we can make 6 PHEVs with 50 miles range, or a single EV with 300 miles range ... the former is going to make a bigger dent in gasoline consumption than the latter.

I drive a Camry Hybrid, which gets 40+ MPG in town. I'd love a way to upgrade that silly thing into a PHEV but that just ain't happenin'. I don't have enough $$$ burning a hole in my pocket to plunk for a Tesla.

As I understand it it, the screen is unrolling from one (maybe both?) sides of the frame as they stretch the frame.

So, the roll-up screens, as seen in "Red Planet," are finally becoming reality? I'd be ok with something like those. Retract it into a couple cylinders for storage / carry, unroll when needed. Bonus points if they can build in the tricorder functionality that can show you broken ribs, looking through a space suit and skin.

I am no conservative nor MAGA fan but I do believe Facebook etc acted as State actors during Covid and should be regulated as a State entity.

I have only registered and voted Democrat in my entire life and I am serious about putting some of these social network barons up in front of the Nuremberg courts version 2.

In "The Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer," the author talks about creating code by plugging numbers into boxes. You're plugging in numbers for lower- and upper-bounds of ranges, with various things happening based on whether metrics are in this range or that range. This worked well for creating a certain amount of automation, usually for unit testing.

Does this constitute programming? If so, it's definitely a low- / no-code environment.

Does creating a spreadsheet constitute programming?

A spreadsheet may be an interpreter, and it may be rather slow, but yes, this is programming. Especially when you have formulae which implement if / then / else logic; now you're getting into Turing-complete functionality. If you keep the spreadsheet from griping about circular references, you can implement all manner of programmer-adjacent functionality.

Do you need a degree in IT or Computer Science to do that? I know plenty of people who have no formal training in programming getting the hang of this and getting it working, able to implement some significant logic.

Back before I got my degree, I was doing temp work in various offices. I was using Lotus 1-2-3, which actually had a very easy-to-use macro recording function. I blew away a lot of people with how I could record a macro which did something, then record a second macro which used the first, then record a third macro which used the second. I would end up executing one macro and it would sit there and crunch numbers for multiple hours at a time (I had one macro which ran for over 3 hours; it was an older, very-slow machine; the company for which I was temp-ing was expecting someone was going to have to babysit the machine for a couple days and I did it all in one afternoon). I had some high-school training in programming (Applesoft BASIC, for the most part) so I had SOME programming training and experience, but nowhere near a degree.

Was that programming? Yes. Was I writing code? Not really; knowing how to tell the app to record a sequence of keystrokes ... that's easily a low- / no-code environment. Even if it's not the type of environment the article's author is thinking of.

It likely will not REPLACE traditional coding altogether but it will enable companies to implement more and more automation without needing so many traditional coders. If future apps make it easy for a "real developer" to develop to add-ons which end users can automate ... look out world. You won't need AI to do the coding stuff for you.

Artificial Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity. It's also no match for human intuition. Companies would be much better off trying to leverage the latter.

I am not paying for your garbage newspaper even if you paid Slashdot to post it.

It's a leftist garbage gossip magazine, and why do nerds still give them any support?

How is this different than what would come from interviewing a witness about her having been raped, who - in the course of talking about THAT case - says, "Yeah, I know her. I met her when she robbed that store liquor store down on Main Street." Why wouldn't the police follow such a lead?

There's more to it than that. Engineers can romp around in the production system - generally without leaving a trail that could get them in trouble - while doing a LOT more than just looking at web server log files. For example, he pointed out that half the company (some 4000 people) could send tweets from user accounts AS that user, and leave no trail. Multiply egregious stuff like that times dozens of other examples (like .. high level system engineers allowed to work remotely, directly in the production systems, without having to use devices/computers that are patched and up to date, security-wise).

There was a book with that title.

An excellent book, I should add. At least one of the chapters, talking about how large telegraph offices were setup, sounds an awful lot like the architecture of a modern router.

The reality is that a variety of communications techs came about in conjunction with the telegraph. Pneumatic tubes were originally developed because getting data a short distance from the one location to another was too slow via Morse Code (or any of its predecessors). Paris had a system where you could put messages in boxes on trams and have them delivered elsewhere in the city within a matter of hours. It was possible to get messages back-and-forth across Paris, using this tram-based system, doing two round-trips in a single day (not impressive by electronic standards but EXTREMELY impressive when you compare to modern postal systems).

Just as the Internet unified a variety of different technologies, telegraph offices of a prior century tended to be hubs unifying a variety of different comms techs.

...but the stupid "blue light" sucks. Why can't they put an amber light in there?

I had Covid twice and had no idea until forced tests.

Unvaccinated here.

Nobody I know is vaccinated. Everyone had Covid at least once. Nobody went to the hospital.

To one of your points: the workers find they don't add enough value.

That's the crux of the whole argument, yes? If a union adds value (gets you better conditions, more money, etc.) workers will want it. If it doesn't (caving to the employers' demands, taking too much in union dues) they won't.

This is an opportunity for unions to make a comeback. Too many people have been screwed over by employers for too long. But unions need to actually provide some value. Too many of them quickly became mini-corporations in their own right, enriching their own C-suite at everyone's expense. They will need to do better than that, if they are to actually make progress.

Whew! What a relief that SpaceX is privately owned, then, and NOT publicly traded, right?

I tried to do it, actually.

1. I have no need for extra money.

2. I drive an oddball 2 door electric so Uber and Lyft said no.

3. I would love to help someone get to a destination cheap or even free if I'm heading that way.

I scheduled rides (even to the store, etc) way in advance and never had a single bite -- even though I live in a very busy area and drive to very busy areas.

I would LOVE for Google to connect me to riders, even if it was free, just so I could help folks out.

I have zero fear of someone kidnapping me. I'm armed anyway.

I have a smartphone (recently upgraded from a Pixel to a Pixel 4a). And I have a tablet (currently an Asus Zenpad Z8).

For calling, texting and navigation, the phone gets used. It's narrow enough I can hold it and operate it one-handed.

For reading / composing long emails, reading longer articles and planning trips, the tablet gets used. For messing with docs and spreadsheet on Google Drive, the tablet, MOST DEFINITELY, gets used. I can use a smartphone to look at an existing spreadsheet but composing one with a smartphone is just painful.

These are different tools which are better suited for different jobs. A lot of younger folks don't have tablets (using the smartphone for everything) but older folks, who can't read 4 point type anymore or who actually need to do something other than watch video clips on TikTok or "like" stuff on FeceBook, need more screen real estate.

Samsung, and other fold-able manufacturers, are trying to create one device which will do both jobs. It's compact, so you can put it in your pocket and text with one hand. It also has a larger screen, so you can see and compose more text. One device, multiple tasks. And the competition in the traditional smartphone space is pretty cutthroat, so they're looking for SOME way to create a differentiated product, for which they can get a higher profit margin.

That's what they're TRYING to do.

They are failing at this. They end up with a jack-of-all-trades and master of none, and it's more expensive and fragile to boot. I will need to replace my tablet, at some point in the future, but it won't be with a fold-able device. There's a better than 50:50 chance the replacement will have an e-ink display; some of the newer color e-ink displays are quite good, even if they're not suitable for watching YouTube or playing fast-paced games (I do little of either with my tablet).