The infrastructure required to perpetually get decent to good quality petrol to where it's needed is insane. For electric you just need a battery, some solar cells and you're good to go. Petrol throughout south America is notoriously bad, often mixed with (bad) (m)ethanol and often a gable to fill in your tank. Its not uncommon for adventure bike riders to bring an extra spare piston and cylinder along in case you frag yours beyond repair and need to replace it somewhere in the ass-end of Patagonia.

That doorstep countries around the world are moving to solar and electric vehicles faster than developed countries makes perfect sense.

This is a detail many PC fanbois tend to overlook. And it's the reason consoles are so successful.

Point in case: I ditched hardcore PC gaming 25 years ago because it was becoming ridiculous with the constant hardware upgrades, fiddling with drivers and the mess that is M$ W1ndows. And I at one time had the most performant gaming PC available that costed roughly 5000$. I'm a computer expert but when even AMD went from one socket type to something like 5 different (Intel was already at roughly 10 different socket types back then) I got tired of keeping track, said f*ck it and left PC gaming alltogether. I just stopped the hardware upgrades, installed Linux for programming and the occasional Linux-native Unreal Tournament and Tribes 2 session and left it at that. This was in the late 90ies. I don't have the kind of space, time and attention anymore that PC gaming needs.

Roughly 15 years later I had some cash left and was curious about the new games such as the Deus Ex reboot and some discounted FarCry title and got an XBox 360, the last iteration just at the end of that generation that could run on a regular monitor without hassle. With all kinks fixed and a large cheap library of budget-priced games as GOTY premium editions and an affordable box that I knew would run those games with zero config fuss I was all set.

I've been with XBox ever since, always lagging 1-2 generations for price and stability reasons. I'm still using a Xbox One X as my main gaming rigg and it's totally fine. Yeah, I do miss mouse and keyboard occasionally, but I also enjoy being prolific with the controller by now and just leaning back on the sofa doing Open World Looter-Shooters, (A)RPGs or the occasional Spaceflight game. Every once in a while I ponder getting back into PC gaming but when I l then look at the prices, the science involded and remember the hassle of dealing with shitty operating systems, drivers, flaky software, etc. I quickly drop that notion again.

I might look into that new Steam Box thing, but I still have 82 games for XBox One alone, not counting my 360 titles. Most of these games I haven't played yet, so I'm not too much in a hurry. I also love the fact that the XBox is backwards compatible, which is a huge plus, Kudos to M$ for doing this. M$ W1ndows sucks, but with XBox they're still the global underdog and behave accordingly. And have me, a prime-time Linux user for 25+ years, as a paying customer, believe it or not.

People do stuff. WTF, are we supposed to have a world-wide committee meeting every time some hacker starts a random project?

Sam Altman can have his own "AI," with blackjack and hookers. If you don't want yours to have that, then write it differently. If his project is affecting yours, it's because he's on the sharp end, running into scaling issues and regulators first. Let him bear the brunt of that, so you don't have to.

The only thing that can really go wrong, is if he uses his financial influence to get a government-granted monopoly. (And you'll have my support in opposing that.) Until then, though, how much is he shaping things? You can do something other than what he is doing right now. He isn't in charge of your project, is he?

I think pupils should learn to hand-write. It's a useful skill to have. What I think should be done away with is torturing children with dictations and other non-sense that are basically speed-writing contests _without_ teaching them to type and giving them the option to chose typing over hand-writing.

Indeed, as long as a human bears the end responsibility there is no problem.

The Meta AI(s) that regular people will use are being thwarted by this dipshit. The next time you think you have something clever to say, just trust me, you don't.

He is clearly able to just block the queries. Intentionally making systems that humans who have no connection to Meta will use isn't pissing in Meta's cereal bowl ... which I am for 100%; it pisses in everyone's bowl.

I know you're trying to be sarcastic, but the truth is, we Europeans are only going to get through these times of de-globalization, demographic decline and power-shifts together. The UK would've been far better off throwing their weight behind EU issues that need solving rather than using the EU as a cheap scapegoat for the elites grabbing a paycheck and lining their pockets.

LOL ... When I read the "we have the technology" part of their post I immediately thought of the intro to "The Bionic Man" as well. For those who are constantly misusing the term meme: this phenomenon is the result of a real meme.

To complete your correct reasoning, bend cucumbers are also Class 2, the reason is you get less in a package thus transport would be more expensive (and less economic).

Well spoken!

[disclaimer: continental European here] ... but I think it's safe to say that even proud EU citizens are surprised at how the UK seems totally and irreversibly shafted at this point. No gloating here, it's really painful to watch.

Here's a perfect expert analysis of Brexit and it's outsomes in 90 seconds.

The cascading effects have already kicked in. Which means that the more "pessimistic" scientists were right. Or at least more right than others. Those target numbers always seemed a little lenient to me anyway.

So true. Sadly these days the market can stay irrational almost indefinitely. The factors that helped constrain this irrationality, like actual government oversight and discipline of equities and debt, willingness to let large corporations fail, and investor discipline in discerning real growth from financial games have all been eroded.

I have no idea when valuations will fall, and I wouldn't want to be better on a market that has no basis in fundamentals at all.

... ice land? Am I getting this right? 8-)