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Comment Re:Idiocracy feels more like the current society (Score 1) 98

The problem is that as soon as you prevent some groups from voting, that possibility will get abused some time later and hence that makes things worse.

A successful democracy requires an educated, tuned in populace that can be bothered to learn the issues and vote accordingly.

Sure. But nobody knows how to create that. And those on power often have motivation to work in the opposite direction. I think the first rule would need to be that anybody that wants power is to be regarded as unfit and needs to be prevented from ever getting power. But how would that work in practice?

Comment Re:lmao (Score 1) 70

Even as someone who votes left more than any other way, I'd be entirely okay with killing the AMT. It is a huge pain to deal with.

The real problem, IMO, is that Congress needs to get off its a** and pass laws requiring brokerages and retirement plans to provide all of the tax data in a fully computed form so that you can fill in the boxes on your tax worksheet and be done, rather than having to look through every single line and figure out which ones were short-term, which were long-term, which had foreign tax, etc. Even with TurboTax, even with basically everything coming from Edward Jones, it *still* takes me two or three hours every year to fill in the information correctly for my taxes. I can't imagine trying to do that by hand on paper.

Comment Re:An opinion - not terrible (Score 2) 34

I love to hate on macs but this isn't terrible at all. The old and new icons are both quite clear and their purpose is most always understandable 'except for the two window icons replaced by an right-pointing arrow, I have no clear idea what either that could be doing), supported by shape and colours (though a more intense contrast could be desirable). These are icons I would enjoy using instead of the current "flat design" trend that exists elsewhere, for example the Breeze style in KDE which is what I would call terrible.

The real problem with requiring icons to be a specific shape is that it makes apps harder to recognize. Just look at how much confusion Google's icon rebranding has been, with every icon looking a lot like a multicolored square, and you'll understand what I mean. Now imagine every app icon on an entire operating system being a rounded square.

Comment Re:EV sales in *USA* plummet (Score 1) 297

most cars are more efficient at 55 to 60 MPH than at 40 MPH

I think the studies show 50 mph is the sweet spot for the same distance on highways. But you are right it varies by both vehicle and driving style. But the difference between 50 and the current 70-80 mph people drive on freeways is substantial for any vehicle.

Certainly true for highways, yes. There's also next to no good alternative to individual cars for highway driving, though. Amtrak is very, very limited, Greyhound is slow *and* very limited, airplanes are grossly fuel inefficient and are generally limited to relatively long distances, and that's about it.

The other part of the equation is how many miles someone drives. Lower speeds mean people drive fewer miles because the real cost of a trip is the time it takes. If you drive 8 hours at average 50 mph you only go 400 miles. You drive at average 60 miles per hour you go 480. If you use 5 gallons to go 100 miles then you use an extra gallon of gas.

Not sure why you think people would drive fewer miles. Most people in cars are trying to get to a specific place, not driving just to drive. Would people plan shorter trips? Maybe for some small percentage of leisure driving, but leisure driving is already a small percentage of driving, so that's a small reduction in fuel use for a small percentage of a small percentage of trips. That's hardly worth the negative impact on everything else.

Comment Re:Musk gets 50 billion dollars (Score 1) 155

It is basically impossible for Tesla to ever be a profitable company now. It is madness to be investing in it. But so many people have put so much money in it and they are so afraid of losing out that we all just have to pretend.

That's not how stock grants work. That trillion dollars doesn't come from Tesla. It comes from the stock market through share dilution. The company can absolutely still be profitable no matter how much equity it chooses to give out.

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