I don't necessarily disagree with all of what you said. But that still doesn't rebuke that ending subsidies isn't "actively trying to kill EVs", which is an inaccurate, partisan trope. I believe the main thrust of the subsidies in the first place was to promote the technology to a point it could compete in the free market. Many (including myself) believe we are at that point.

What holds most buyers back now isn't some price subsidy (nor lack of different models, nor safety, nor lack of information/exposure), it is primarily the lack of being able to charge in a convenient/workable manner. A large part of the potential market is locked out because they are not as fortunate as some of us.... I charge in my own garage; not so easy for those in apartments and condos, or with only on-street parking.

>"since Trump and his puppet-masters are actively trying to kill EVs for some reason."

Ending subsidies is not "actively trying to kill EVs", it is simply removing PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT of EVs. If they slapped penalties on them, THAT would be trying to kill them. There is enough supply and demand they should be able to do fine on their own merits, like almost all other products.

LOTS of EV models lost their federal tax incentives based on sales, from 2022 and on, and others lost them due to manufacture location or battery sourcing. And there were income restrictions. But there was a leasing loophole for some models, which is why leasing them became really popular. It is all more complicated than people assert.

For the remaining models, there would, indeed, be an artificial "bubble" of sales leading up to the end of the artificial price reductions. And that will result in a slump of sales for a while after, and then prices will likely adjust back down and the sales will likely return to "normal" again.

Over exaggerate much? Installing solar panels to power individual homes doesn't even come close to the "most ambitious infrastructure project in human history". Maybe building a railroad across an entire continent, or building a massive roadway system with thousands of bridges that span mighty rivers and gorges. Perhaps digging canals to connect the planet's oceans, or building power plants and distribution systems to provide power to a billion people...

What is funding this is companies trying to buy carbon credits. I actually tried to read this article but it was so overhyped and the guy was so giddy to blow it out of proportion my eyes almost got stuck in a permanent eye-roll.

>"Next, we need a campaign to put all punctuation that is not part of a quote outside the quotes, even if it looks funny now."

OMG, I couldn't agree more.

>"what if your list is two elements?

Then it isn't needed.

>"you can pretend there isn't a conflict but there is one"

I would write that:

"You can pretend there isn't a conflict, but there is one."

Apparently I'm not human? I like hyphens, en dashes and em dashes. I understand what all of them mean and how to use them correctly, and I find it helpful when text that I'm reading uses the right one.

>"Seriously, make symbols for humans that are easy for humans to tell apart: lI|" :)
At least when I hand-write, I usually print (not cursive) yet I always use a cursive lowercase "L" when it is a code (like in a user ID or variable name). And capital "I"'s I always put top/bottom strokes. Pipes I write as two vertical hyphens (with a space in the middle). Oh, and slashes through zeros.

>"Now tell me your take on the Oxford comma"

I was taught in school (USA) that commas are important, lists should have commas, and there should be a comma for each element in the list (even before an "and"). I have written that way my whole life, I think it is clearer and more logical, and I am not going to stop doing it. :)

From the summary:

If the world's most valuable AI company has struggled with controlling something as simple as punctuation use after years of trying, perhaps what people call artificial general intelligence (AGI) is farther off than some in the industry claim.

That's not the right conclusion. It doesn't say much one way or the other about AGI. Plausibly, ChatGPT just likes correctly using em dashes — I certainly do — and chose to ignore the instruction. What this does demonstrate is what the X user wrote (also from the summary):

[this] says a lot about how little control you have over it, and your understanding of its inner workings

Many people are blithely confident that if we manage to create superintelligent AGI it'll be easy to make sure that it will do our bidding. Not true, not the way we're building it now anyway. Of course many other people blithely assume that we will never be able to create superintelligent AGI, or at least that we won't be able to do it in their lifetime. Those people are engaging in equally-foolish wishful thinking, just in a different direction.

The fact is that we have no idea how far we are from creating AGI, and won't until we either do it or construct a fully-developed theory of what exactly intelligence is and how it works. And the same lack of knowledge means that we will have no idea how to control AGI if we manage to create it. And if anyone feels like arguing that we'll never succeed at building AGI until we have the aforementioned fully-developed theory, please consider that random variation and selection managed to produce intelligence in nature, without any explanatory theory.

All very true, except you imply that this is a new situation in US politics. It's not. Until the 1883 Pendleton Act, political appointments were always brazenly partisan and there was no non-partisan civil service (except, maybe, the military). Firing appointees for petty vindictiveness was less common, but also happened. Trump isn't so much creating a new situation in American government as he is rolling the clock back 150 years, to a time when US politics was a lot meaner and more corrupt than what we've been accustomed to for most of the last 100 or so years.

Of course, the time when our Republic has had an apolitical civil service, strong norms around executive constraint and relatively low tolerance for corruption corresponds with the time when our nation has been vastly more successful, on every possible metric. That's not a coincidence.

Oh, I forgot to add: Stage 6 is the dumbest and most short-sighted one yet. It only works by ignoring the large regions of the world which will become unlivable, or nearly so, and the fact that those regions are home to billions of people. Those people won't just lay down and die, so the areas that are still livable -- and maybe even more comfortable! -- with warmer temperatures are going to have to deal with the resulting refugee flood, and the wars caused by this vast population upheaval and relocation.

But, yeah, if you ignore all the negative effects and focus only on the potentially good ones, you can convince yourself it'll be a good thing. SMDH.

I see from the comments that we've hit a new stage in climate change denialism.

Stage 1: Denial of warming: Denying that the climate is changing at all.
Stage 2: Denial of human influence: Admitting the climate is changing but denying that humans are causing it.
Stage 3: Denial of impact: Admitting human causation, but claiming the impact will be insignificant.
Stage 4: Denial of solutions: Admitting that it's real, we're causing it and that it will be significant, but denying that there is anything we can do about it.
Stage 5: Denial of timeliness: Admitting that we could have done something about it, but now it's too late.
And now, Stage 6: Denial of negative impacts: Admitting that it's real, and significant, and that maybe we could do something, but trying to spin it as beneficial.

What system component would enforce those restrictions? Unless Google modified Linux to add an entirely new access control scheme it wouldn't be the kernel, which would make the sandboxing much easier to break out of.

But that's not the biggest problem with your suggestion. The biggest problem is that users cannot be trusted to make complex security decisions, which your toggles definitely would be. That sounds condescending, I know, but it's backed up by a vast amount of experience and evidence. You have to keep in mind that approximately all of the three billion Android users know nothing about computing, nothing about security, and less than nothing about computer security.

Obviously. That's not the point I was addressing.

People have much higher expectations of mobile security. Also, most mobile phone users have never used any desktop/laptop, so they aren't even aware of the very low bar for security expectations set by desktop OSes.