The deal was killed in 2024, highly capable Chinese vacuum robots have been around for far longer than that.

The fact is that Roomba's tech was advanced when they first made it, but that was years ago. By now robot vacuums are generic, and there's a limit to how much of a premium you can demand when doing a generic product.

I think some of this is just businesses catching up.

Last month my hotel had chargers in their underground parking so I thought about topping up my PHEV, until I looked at the rates and realized it would cost far more than gas.

As expected, I didn't see the chargers in use a single time over my 3 day stay.

Imagine instead the chargers were free. The cost would be on par with the complimentary coffee pods and toiletries, and I would have come away with a very positive experience.

Installing paid chargers was a bad business decision by the hotel, I expect more public free charging in the future.

US auto manufacturer General Motors became infamous in the 1990s when it got out that their various divisions were mostly trying to outdo each other and viewed corporate siblings with more disdain than they did actual outside competitors like Ford, Toyota, etc. "Sux to be YOU, Samsung Electronics" can't be the correct reply here. Where is the CEO to step in and fix this?

The one conclusion we can draw from this is the folks drawing conclusions are exposing nothing but their own beliefs.

All we know is the dog was unleashed and the Waymo hit it.

We don't know if the dog shot out from under a parked car, so it was literally impossible to avoid. Or if it was sitting in the middle of the road and the Waymo ran straight over it.

All the folks trying to assign blame one way or another are doing so completely prematurely.

There's a narrative on the right that fascism was a left wing form of government.,

But the reality is that both fascism and communism were extreme right wing forms of government.

Fascism openly so, but also communism. Remember what fascism actually cares about, maintaining order, obedience to authority, sacrificing for the glory of the state.

Communism was supposed to be about equality and the people controlling everything in a bottom up manner. But the moment you implement it on a national scale you end up with a small inner circle, and they either go fascist like the USSR, or a technocratic dictatorship like China.

There's a reason that when the USSR fell the one narrative you heard was about how much the government lied (because they were far right masquerading as far left). And there's a reason why it was so easy for Russia to go far right under Putin, because they were under far right rule in the USSR.

So yeah, demanding public ownership is pretty on brand for fascists.

They've associated changes in the civilization with the changing climate conditions, it's likely not 100% certain, but it looks like a pretty likely cause.

That is a very weird take. The bits we modified are the best land, temperate zones, river banks, grasslands. You really want to move to some of that "untamed land" in the Sahara, Siberia, or Greenland?

And honestly, that map looks like a massive underestimate. I'm seeing big black regions in what I know to be largely unbroken crop land.

If you don't want Alberta to pump oil then don't buy oil.

But if you are going to pump oil then build a pipeline because shipping it by truck or rail is a horrible solution.

I want the oil industry to die because we're moving onto other energy sources, not because we're shutting down the Albertan oil industry so other producers like the US and the Middle East can make more money.

It's actually the exact opposite. Most of his voters voted for him specifically because they do not trust US institutions. Remember that Ronald Reagan guy? I voted for him. Mostly liked what he did. The stuff I didn't like, most of his supporters didn't care about. But the worst thing he ever did was give his infamous "Government is the problem" speech. So Orange Man was voted in by a lot of people who specifically wanted him to fire a bunch of government workers and make trust in US institutions at an all time low.

I guess the case went something like this:

Disney Lawyers: Our contract with Sling specifically says they have to have customers on monthly contracts. Slam dunk win for us, Judge!
Judge: Did you actually the contract you referred to?
DL: Uh, well, no, but somebody told me that is what it said.
J: Well I did actually read it as it's kind of important to this case and it says nothing of the sort in there.
DL: Um, still win for us, right?

This is so not true. China is anything but a reliable partner. In the latter part of the previous decade, the Chinese government cracked down on the rapidly rising Chinese FinTech industry because a small number of CEOs in the industry, including Jack Ma, said things they didn't like. You know how you basically don't hear anything from Jack Ma anymore and how he is retired from Alibaba? This is why. The government clapped down that industry hard. The companies involved have never really recovered from it, with their stock prices stagnating. It's because investors realized that at any time, the Chinese government can and will intervene in the stock market to make a point about how in charge they are. A few years ago the government had to say publicly that they are totally not going to interfere in businesses again, please come back noble investors. All I can say is a really smart man said last year that investing in communism is a bad idea.

I'm a big sci fi fan in general. I am much less critical of just about anything I watch than many/most people. Having said that, I watched all of Alien: Earth and I did not love it. Some of the actors were really good, but there were too many episodes and overall it just wasn't all that interesting to me. But I'm not surprised at all that Disney renewed it and threw money at the creator because they really don't know what they are doing in running that company any more. It is possible that for whatever reason it got a crap ton of views. And we've seen in the past that some Disney series get a crap ton of views even though nobody likes them. The Acolyte became their 2nd most watched series of 2024 once they canceled it and nobody liked that show. Percy Jackson and the Olympians gets a ton of views, but I honestly don't know anybody who watches that. Maybe it's aimed at tweens. Marvel keeps giving us shows nobody asked for with fringe comic book characters like Iron Heart and the upcoming Wonder Man. So it makes perfect sense that they would throw a ton of money at a streaming series that just wasn't all that good and bring it back for more of the same. I'm really not sure I'm going to come back for season 2. I'm starting to get really tired of feeling like I have to watch something that isn't actually very good just because it's in a genre I like.

So fake it until they give you a $1T pay package.

They did fake it. The "robot" was a guy in a robot suit, unfortunately, the guy in the robot suit got completely shitfaced.

US ciitizen here. That's important to what I have to say. While this all sounds great, you clearly don't know that many times the US government says they will accept something as proof of ID but in reality they won't accept it, even though their own website says they will. And there's nothing in what you quoted that guarantees that such alternate ID process can be done in time to actually make your flight.

About 20 years ago, I had to fill out a government form and I was required to show 2 proofs of who I was. Their own website said that they would accept a birth certificate as proof. I had it! Not only did I have a birth certificate, for another reason I had actually gotten it certified by my birth state and the US Secretary of State. You'd think having Colin Powell certify it would be good enough, right? Nope. They refused to accept it with no explanation. Talked to a friend who had done the same thing recently and he used copy of his passport as proof of ID, which they accepted. So I sent them a copy of my passport's main pages and I was good to go. So good luck with that whole thing of TSA having "other" ways to identify you.

Honestly the issue with the story is Ken Paxton, he literally has negative credibility. I know virtually nothing about Roblox or this case, but if Paxton is the first AG to pursue it my automatic assumption is he's prosecuting them because they either failed to give him a bribe or he thought they were helping Democrats register to vote or something.