A brain enema would be preferred.

It's certainly possible that some people do, sincerely, 'fear' that the onrushing machine god will speak chinese and that it would be just the worst if all humans were rendered obsolete by the wrong side's robot when that's supposed to be our job; but, especially with how tepid the results are for the money poured in, it seems much more the case that we are seeing a lot of nakedly cynical playing of the 'give us what we want, lest the chinese win' by people who are otherwise on deeply shaky ground in terms of things like massive copyright infringement, voracious data mining, and an endless hunger for capital without any signs of returns.

It's like a vastly hypertrophied case of the 'race to 5G' stuff; where, if we didn't give Verizon whatever they asked for, China would have a faster rollout of 5G and we would lose the 4th industrial revolution or something? It was never entirely clearly what losing the race was going to involve.

The existential tone of the claims seem especially curious given how meagre the leads people are pouring billions into seem to be; and how readily 'AI' models can be poked at via distillation attacks or good, old-fashioned, electronic intrusion. If The Singularity kicks off that presumably changes everything beyond the powers of meaningful prediction(though that holds for whoever develops it as well as everyone else; given the odds that it will slip the leash); but as long as you are in the realm of incrementally more or less flakey chatbots it seems a bit weird to even talk like there is some sort of victory condition that will trigger and cause one side to lose.

Who?

If by next year EV sales in the US haven't tanked, I'll be somewhat surprised - since Trump and his puppet-masters are actively trying to kill EVs for some reason.

Regardless, as I've mentioned before - my next car will be an EV, likely a Hyundai Ioniq 5 or 6. It's just a question of when I make the purchase. It's possible I'll change my mind on the make, although I can say for sure it will not be a Tesla.

Yeah, it's not like adoption exists.

THANKS. Now I can't un-see that image...

Of course, whether they made 80,000 of them - or just 8 - is not something they're gonna tell us.

Oh, see, there's your problem right there - you appear to live in a country with a sane government.

Did you test drive the car before the purchase? If so, did they let you drive it off the lot without recording enough personal info to be able to identify and find you, if you decided not to return their vehicle?

I don't think most people think things through enough to even consider the privacy implications of having a camera on their television.

This just seemed like an obvious swing-and-miss on the part of the manufacturers. TVs are passive consumption devices, and that's exactly what people want them to be.

It's nonsense to call this is "a 50 cent item".

A skein of a good quality yarn is gonna set you back several bucks.

I remember, back in the day, buying (or being gifted) some iPod Socks. At $30 for a set of six, they seemed a bit overpriced... but they were occasionally handy to have.

I can't imagine why anyone would spend 6-8 times as much for a single sock - even one with a strap.

OH! FINALLY!

Sheesh, it's taken me two freakin' days (and a dupe) to get your joke!

THIS will end well...

Well, see, in Russia they always end Rocky IV right after Ivan Drago kills Apollo Creed.