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Comment Re:according to google.... (Score 1) 117

Road maintenance isn't the only cost. Automobiles have a lot of externalized costs that are bared by the government besides just building roads. You need to constantly be building out new cities with new infrastructure in order to make room for cars and a car centric society.

You could tax the car companies themselves to pay for it but good luck with that. Realistically if you have the political power to do something like that you probably wouldn't have a car centric society that shifts billions of dollars of cost on to consumers.

Comment Re:People don't get the UK or the UK Labour Party (Score 1) 117

You're ascribing an awful lot of thought and direction to a party which has shown very few signs of either of those.

Seriously your claiming Starmer believes all that shit? Prove it for the love of god please because no one else had figured out what that guy actually believes in.

Submission + - Australia spent $62 million to update their weather web site and made it worse (bbc.com)

quonset writes: Australia last updated their weather site a decade ago. In October, during one of the hottest days of the year, the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) revealed its new web site and was immediately castigated for doing so. Complaints ranged from a confusing layout to not being able to find information. Farmers were particularly incensed when they found out they could no longer input GPS coordinates to find forecasts for a specific location. When it was revealed the cost of this update was A$96.5 million ($62.3 million), 20 times the original cost estimate, the temperature got even hotter.

With more than 2.6 billion views a year, Bom tried to explain that the site's refresh — prompted by a major cybersecurity breach in 2015 — was aimed at improving stability, security and accessibility. It did little to satisfy the public.

Some frustrated users turned to humour: "As much as I love a good game of hide and seek, can you tell us where you're hiding synoptic charts or drop some clues?"

Malcolm Taylor, an agronomist in Victoria, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that the redesign was a complete disaster.

"I'm the person who needs it and it's not giving me the information I need," the plant and soil scientist said.

As psychologist and neuroscientist Joel Pearson put it, "First you violate expectations by making something worse, then you compound the injury by revealing the violation was both expensive and avoidable. It's the government IT project equivalent of ordering a renovation, discovering the contractor has made your house less functional, and then learning they charged you for a mansion."

Comment Re:Annoying but actually reasonable (Score 1) 117

I would hope most every folk understand why such a tax is necessary and good but I guess I've never seen the logistical and privacy costs of tracking the miles driven worth the benefits over just flat rating the EV at registration, or making it based on vehicle weight or some other fact of the vehicle and driver. The best taxes tend to be the ones that are the simplest to comply with.

Comment Re:2 out of 10 - Could do better. (Score 1) 117

Don't know where you are from but here in America(TM) we let the states decide how and whether at all vehicles get inspected, despite the fact there are zero restrictions for driving between state borders.

I live in a no inspection state and while when I did it was annoying to have to take it in every year or two the number of tires in the parking lot I see with the belt wires poking out tells me they're probably a good thing.

Comment Re:All this happens openly on THEIR servers (Score 1) 99

If Walmart sells a gun to a five year old, they cannot say, "Well, the five year old broke the law. Not our fault."

If the 5 year old poses as an adult online with all the lack of age verification possibilities that come with it, it really wouldn't be their fault. Your analogy falls flat because OpenAI hasn't actually done anything illegal (unlike say selling guns to a minor).

Comment Re: Make EV owners buy fire insurance also (Score 1) 117

The fires can be worse but gas cars catch on fire like 2-20x as often.

This is also a problem that is only going to get better over time, most companies are moving away from lithium-ion and they are making more and more stable. In 20 years all the batteries will be solid state and those vehicles will effectively be inert, the only flammable device will be the airbags.

This was more interesting counterpoint back in the 2010's where every Tesla that caught fire made the national news but the stats just don't back it up.

Comment Re:Blaming the victim (Score 3, Informative) 99

You really live in a post truth world don't you. Literally everything you claim to know about this case and every assumption you made while formulating the words on your post is incorrect.

In fact if you actually read the link rather than throw-up ignorance you would have realised everything is wrong. But hey, what's facts when you have opinions right?

Comment Re: Not really new information... (Score 1) 78

I have never once come across a drive HDD or SSD that doesn't correctly respond to "smartctl -t long". Some drives may not respond with diagnostic data as expected because this is a vendor specific dataset without a standard implementation, but all drives ship with some mechanism for quick and extended tests, and they all respond to the same SMART command.

That being said, your past experience may not be relevant here. Unlike HDDs, SSD controllers are actually governed by a standard of what SMART metrics to respond with so they are consistent between all tools and manufacturers. Technically only SSD controllers on NVMe drives, but the controller manufacturers seemingly to not differentiate on a SATA connected SSD. Not sure if the NVMe standard also mandates a drive respond to short/long tests, but I've never seen a HDD or SSD not do so.

Comment Re:No One Mentions (Score 1) 108

NCAP is an independent rating system. But the EU has safety standards that are performance based and many cases more stringent than in the USA. The USA has some more stringent than the EU. The reality is these cars meet them.

But yeah sure, discount everything I said on a technicality of how NCAP tests. Disregard that regardless of how you think the test works, that the BYD I linked to outperforms many European and American cars subjected to an identical test. Just because you have a better testing system in the USA doesn't change how good or bad a product is.

So really, what point were you trying to make? Clearly not one related to the quality of a Chinese car. Maybe try and stay on topic?

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