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Comment Putting numbers into perspective (Score 3, Interesting) 121

This is all to produce a peak of 240k EVs per year. Production "starts" in 2028. It takes years for a factory to hit full production. Let's be generous and say 2030.

Honda sold 1,3 million vehicles in the US alone last year - let alone all of North America, including both Canada and Mexico. If all those EVs were just for the US it'd be 18% of their sales, but for all of North America, significantly less.

In short, Honda thinks that in 2030 only maybe 1/7th to 1/8th of its North American sales will be EVs. This is a very pessimistic game plan.

Comment Re:Economic worship (Score 1) 247

Destroying middle class has predictable consequence of tanking birth rate. News at 11.

"We must have constant inflation or people might, you know, save!"

Inflation isn't a deterrent to savings, it just means you have to put your savings somewhere that it also does work, i.e. invested in something. Having a non-zero inflation rate encourages investment, which encourages economic growth. This is good. But it's not the main reason we need constant inflation.

The reason we need constant inflation is because deflation is extremely harmful; it causes debts to grow which can make people and businesses insolvent. The Fed has a 2% inflation target because low inflation rates are manageable and because 2% is high enough that a decrease still won't go negative.

Comment Re:Good. (Score 1) 53

Are Police reports used as evidence in criminal trials?

In general, documents are considered hearsay and are inadmissible. There are exceptions to the hearsay rule that allow them to be introduced, for example public records that are made in the normal course of business, but police reports are explicitly and specifically excluded from those exceptions. It might be possible to introduce a police report as evidence if the officer who wrote it is present to testify to its authenticity and accuracy, and to be cross-examined about its contents, but if the officer is there it's easier to avoid the hearsay question entirely by just having the officer testify.

Note that this applies not just to written police reports but also to bodycam footage. You still need someone to testify that the footage is authentic and accurate, and available to be cross-examined about it. With bodycam footage I suppose that could be either the officer or a technician responsible for collecting and archiving the footage.

In the case of an AI-generated summary of the footage, if the officer checked and edited the output I think it would be exactly the same as the officer's self-written report. If the officer didn't check and edit the output, then it would be a mechanical transformation of the bodycam footage and you'd need someone to testify to the accuracy of that transformation, as well as the authenticity of the footage. I don't think anyone could honestly testify that the transformation is guaranteed to be correct and accurate. In any case, though, the defense could always just review the footage to point out any inaccuracies in the summary. Most likely the summary would be ignored completely and the bodycam footage would be used directly, after appropriate testimony about its authenticity.

Comment Re:Anecdote (Score 2) 57

Just compare a Samsung S8 or S9 Ultra tablet to an iPad pro 10th gen and you will see what I am talking about.

I suspect it has far more to do with price than anything. iPhones are just too damned expensive, even on the low end. You can get a decently built, solidly performing Android phone for $200 or less. If you're not an iTunes user, or iMessage devotee, there just isn't any real reason to pick an Apple phone over an Android phone.

Comment Re:It wont survive a court challenge (Score 2) 89

The Supreme Court already ruled that they can't regulate carbon emissions like this.

They also ruled that student loan forgiveness was (mostly) unconstitutional as well, and yet the President does it anyway.

We are entering "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it" territory again.

Comment Re: This. (Score 1) 111

Given that most fast food stores are franchises, and that there's ~200k such stores in the USA, I would absolutely NOT put it past a fraction of them being asshole enough to attempt to do this, in order to keep their employees from quitting and seeking greener pastures elsewhere.

Somebody posted that Texas has "at will" employment, IE is "right to work", but that non-competes could be legal there. It read more like an opinion though.

https://www.texasnoncompetelaw...

"Supported by valid consideration (ie. something of value given to the employee)"

To me, that means something like, "they continue to pay you during the non-compete period."
There's also "need" - something like trade secrets. Which a fast food worker wouldn't have.

Comment Re:Gotta start somewhere (Score 5, Informative) 146

Ford made the Ford Ranger EV 1998 to 2002, then the Ford Focus Electric from 2011 to 2018 before switching to the Mach-E. They are not "new at it". They're just bad at it.

To be fair, I have a lot more hope for Ford than GM, as Farley seems to actually understand the critical importance of turning things around and the limited timeframes to do so, unlike GM, which still seems to only care about press.

Comment Re: When no one is employed (Score 5, Interesting) 102

The lack of clear English isnâ(TM)t the frustrating thing with modern day customer "service". I have lived in non-English speaking locales and can roll with a language barrier. The problem is outsourced customer "service" ain't empowered to do a damn thing except read from a script and by the time I'm frustrated enough to make a call it's invariably for a problem too complicated to solve with a script. AI will not fix this problem. It will just leave you yelling at a disempowered computer rather than a disempowered human being. The solution to this problem would require the C-Suite thinking of customer service as SERVICE rather than a pointless expense to be minimized.

Comment Re:ISA (Score 1) 42

Yeah, I never had a problem with IRQ/DMA fuckery having a pretty loaded up (for the time) machine; Awe32 with Waveblaster daughterboard, ATI Rage 64 card, etc etc.

The main challenges back then were dealing with your low memory; figuring out the exact right order to load mscdex, memory manager, mouse driver and every thing else to squeeze out every bit of conventional memory, and using loadhigh to squeeze what you could into UMA, because that 1 kb difference could mean Wing Commander 2 didn't play the speech packs.

Comment Re:Economic harship (Score 4, Informative) 247

Destroying middle class has predictable consequence of tanking birth rate. News at 11.

"Economic Hardship" has jack-shit to do with most of the declining birthrate. Women have more money than ever. If being poor hurt the birthrate, the Third World would have ceased to exist centuries ago. Women choosing careers over marriage has far more to do with it. Those that are getting married are doing so much later in life, when their fertility is already declining, and having few children is a consequence of that. Why do you think IVF and egg-freezing are in such demand? Because women that waited until 30 to get married discover, often to their surprise, that their best chances of pregnancy are in the rear window.

Women were told that they could have it all, the best of both worlds: that they could live like men in their twenties, living the single sexual life and moving up their corporate ladder, and after they had their fun, then they could marry the man of their dreams and have their family. All in a neat package. Except nature doesn't work that way. The Biological Clock is a thing, women have a set number of eggs, and by thirty, they start heading downwards in terms of fertility. Late pregnancies have a greater chance of complications and birth defects. The peak year for fertility and healthy birth is, IIRC, age 24 on average for females.

Life is a series of choices. And choices have consequences. Declining birthrates are inescapable considering the choices made.

Comment Re:How much is really delayed maintenance? (Score 1) 116

Copper is not "the last mile". It's the last five meters. If that. When people talk about "the grid", they're not talking about the wiring in your walls. Which you don't have to redo anyway for adding an EV. Nobody has to touch, say, your kitchen wiring to add an EV charger.

"The grid" is the wiring leading up to your house. Those conductors are alumium, not copper. Occasionally the SER/SEU cable will occasionally be copper, but even that's generally alumium these days. And that's only to the service connection point (not even to the transformer - to the point of handoff between grid-owned and the homeowner-owned, generally right next to the house), e.g. after the service drop line with overhead service that descends down to the building. The "last mile" is absolutely not copper. Approximately zero percent of modern grid-owned wiring is copper, and even the short customer-owned connection from the drop line into the house is usually alumium.

Grids are not copper. Period. This isn't the year 1890 here.

And no, grid operators don't make money selling power. They make money providing the grid through which power is sold.

I have never seen a single utility that charges a flat grid access fee to residential consumers, anywhere on Earth.

Distinction can be hard to grasp for someone utterly ignorant on the subject

Says a guy who thinks that there's a mile of copper leading up to your house.

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