So safety regulations are why we don't have cheap EV's in the US? Not the decades long lack of investment and pushback from half the political class on the very idea? That has nothing to do with it? I mean Mitsubishi, a Japanese company was still able to offer a new $15k car in America up until a couple years ago. It wasn't very good but it existed.

I don't think the safety requirements are as onerous a cost as you think.

No wonder you are not putting your name down, that's pretty silly.

I've been thinking of the of crypto/AI/techbro behavior as a symptom and just the next generation of the shift in business culture that came about in the 1980's where we went into low tax, low regulation and cutting of services. Meanwhile the fast money culture turned the stock market from this somewhat mundane piece of the business world to a dramatic entity where you could turn thousands into millions with just a little gumption and smarts.

So while we expanded our economy exponentially we decided to not use that wealth to grow and maintain proper society. Oh you want a pension? That's stupid just put it in the stock market silly! Surely I the business owner am not saving gobs of money by this arrangement now!

Give that a few generations, sprinkle on the internet and here we are in a world where our business sector is obsessed with scams, bubbles and gambling because even the way they made money in the 80's isn't fast enough, Gordon Gecko was really pretty stodgy and I will put $40k on Polymarkt on that opinion.

Really? I've noticed a lot of other reasons not to buy one:

1. Import of Chinese electric vehicles, of which many are cheap and not that bad
2. Import of much cheaper second-hand Teslas, which eat the market for new cars of this model
3. Finally, a large expansion of EV models from European car makers, of which some are inexpensive and, unlike the musk abortions, some begin to look like real cars.

There is a bit of a badwill from his escapades, but I doubt it is noticeable as the hate musko got in the US.

To sum it up, musk was doing well when he could get away with heavily subsidized crap because there were few other options. This era is now over, and his crap will end up alongside the similar Chinese crap.

and neither are their power demands. AI exists to automated white collar jobs. The Demand for that is huge.

When the AI bubble bursts yes, you and I are going to bail out the banks that loaned doggy AI companies hundreds of billions (either that or they'll crash the global economy, remember, you're a hostage not a consumer)

But all that infrastructure you paid for with your tax dollars will just be bought up for cheap by whoever survives and you'll lose your jobs to it.

But hey, look over there! It's a DEI trans girl playing high school sports carrying a happy holidays sign!

You don't seem to be thinking very logically.

What is more likely to be hit by a piece of space junk or micro meteorite, a space station sitting there for years, or a transport vessel just making a quick run up or down ?!

You also seem not to realize the kinetic energy and destructive power of these impacts - some of the most powerful weapons on earth are rail-guns using nothing other than kinetic energy to punch though multiple layers of steel, maybe pass straight through a tank.

FWIW the windows on this Chinese craft are triple layer, and the impact only cracked the outer one, so it must have been an extremely small object which is why they wouldn't have picked it up on radar and maneuvered out of the way which is normal practice.

What a weird question !

Why would it be different to any other modern spacecraft, capable of both automatic and manual control ?!

The Chinese aren't exactly a newcomer to space - they have their own space station, are currently exploring Mars with their own rover, and look likely to beat the USA to building a moon station unless we get our act together.

You see to be imagining these "taikonauts" in some primitive Chop Suey powered craft built using 1950's technology.

We could also call it "apparent gravitational effects, which don't fit our models right now, but would fit perfectly well if we assume about five times more mass than we can actually account for."

No, it's Nibbler poop, as we all know.

It is marketing. So what? And there is reason to believe US (and European) car-makers stupidly left the market to China. And now China is ahead by a large margin. That is not how you win the future.

Yep. I do not think this has changed today. If you want to know, it matters little whether it is a trip to the library or to wikipedia.

I do not doubt that. We have some large-ego-small-insight "tech" people here, same as any tech forum. These then state total insightless nonsense with confidence. People like that are unable to tell when to fact-check, but have total confidence in their knowledge. And they are always around in some form.

Come to think of it, modern LLM communication is modelled on these idiots, because they can convince people. People like that also do well in sales, religion and politics.

Funny thing: I was asked about the same thing about 15-20 years back by a security consulting customer (very large bank). They wanted to store their Root CA secret keys by just putting them on bootable memory stick in a safe. My recommendation was to use industrial CF instead (which are essentially SLC FLASH with better properties that has 10 or 20 years data endurance and that endurance is in the data-sheet), but by any means to have several laser-printed copy on paper in addition. As CA secret keys are small, they went wit that. But they would have faced a real possibility of an expensive disaster otherwise.

Assuming equal regulatory burden, fission power is cheapest, not most expensive. For example, for an equivalent safety level, coal plants would need to capture every bit of reaction products (which currently are vented into the air), store them safely, and place somewhere where they'd no longer cause harm if released. Which for combustion products means forever. The plan itself would need decade-long studies wrt its localisation, many rounds of votes among the regional population -- etc. And throw in another 10x cost factor of bureaucratic costs.

The reason? Completely banning nuclear power was unfeasible politically, but adding layers after layers of "safety" was easy to be voted in.

Result? Hardly any new plants have been built. A good part of existing installed power dates back to the first generation -- which was indeed unsafe (as expected of any new technology). All three plants that failed have been built in the '60s.

Oh there will be plenty. You can imagine a one-hit-wonder type pop-star will jump on this to become the first 'AI artist' and then a bunch of tik-tok artists will jump on that bandwagon as well. Or a 90s pop star trying to get back into the limelight. I could easily see something like the estate of Michael Jackson, Dolores O'Riordan or Amy Winehouse jumping on the bandwagon if it brings in the $$$ - it just depends on who owns their rights in the end. Of course when it gets good enough, you bet that a record label will release a new Elvis single using it.

In the end this AI stuff is going to become the backing track at the supermarket, cafe and airport. Honestly, I'm not sure that's such a bad thing. There is only so much Robbie Williams and Spice Girls I can handle when I'm shopping. If they just have some generic bland backing music that removes the awkwardness of silence then so be it. Realistically, playing something like Animals as Leaders, or some free jazz in those settings would be entirely inappropriate anyway.

The UK has become so slow at developing infrastructure that it's now at the point where if you are in your late 30s you will NEVER benefit from anything they have not already put shovels in the ground for. They can literally talk about whatever they want - its takes so long you'll be on your way to the care home before it ever happens. I moved here 15 years ago when they were talking about 'making a decision on the third runway at Heathrow'. Today they announce that they are about to 'make a decision' on it again. There are things like the electrification of the Great Western line - which would benefit people for the next 100 years if they did it - and they still haven't done. The first electric trains on the underground happened nearly 130 years ago.

Sadly there's no reason to assume that it can exist.

Think of it this way; I learn a skill that enables me to produce a high value item. It earns me a lot of money. Then someone comes along and invents a way that allows the item to be produced at 1% of the previous cost. My hard earned skill is now worth vastly less. No 'new business plan' is going to maintain my income unless I move into a very different field, which I may not be equipped for (the 'teach the coal miners of West Virginia to code' joke).

The person who comes up with a plan that can indeed provide great jobs to theoe discarded victims of economic change deserves every possible praise. But sadly I don't think it is going to happen...