That's why it's a team sport. The mad genius doesn't need to have the social skills to sell the idea, build a team and run the company, he just needs to have enough to be able to work with people who can do all that for him. Besides money, helping to build that initial team is of the things where VCs can add tremendous value. The smart ones do that, instead of dismissing applicants for lack of social skills.

Lots of successful entrepreneurs dropped out of college to start their business, so clearly dropping out of college is a prerequisite for success.

It's a non-issue. Air pollution (pm2.5 particles) used to be way, way worse, but levels have been declining for over a century, and are still declining further. The maximum allowable concentrations have been steadily lowered as well, from 25ug/m3 nationally (NL), to 10ug/m3 as per EU directive, to the maximum advised by the WHO at 5ug/m3. At the current rate of reduction we'll be there within the decade.

Not just that. People generally want the interaction with their devices to be private. The people around them really want that interaction to be private. A few niche cases aside, voice control in public spaces isn't going to catch on.

"Most modern movies are of such mediocre quality and destined to be dumped on streaming platforms that there are few that justify being purchased, not in physical form nor digitally."
That is what that "woke idiot drivel" is about. Well, that and shit writing. Disney, who own pretty much every major franchise these days, freely admit that they insert politics into their movies, in a way that may upset "certain fans". The mistake they make is that those fans do not necessarily disagree with Disney's political leaning, they just don't want the quality of their entertainment taking a back seat to it.

I ripped my Bluray / DVD collection ages ago and built a library on local disc, along with some content from "other sources". Gets backed up every now & then, so it should be safe from disaster as well as from The Man.

Is that the case though? Here, the Hyundai Kona EV starts at €40k, the hybrid is €35k, IC version is €30k. Those are sticker prices including all incentives. Energy prices have gone up as well, I paid something like €0.19/kWh to charge at home, now it's €0.35, almost double. The economics for EVs make a lot less sense than they used to. Sales of new EVs have dropped, and there's loads of second hand EVs sitting unsold in lots.

The system makes a photo which can be reviewed by an officer (and by law can be requested by the person being fined).

I am glad they are deploying tech like this to stop rampant mobile phone use behind the wheel. And I am also ok with no human looking at it if the number of false positives is sufficiently small. We're not talking about felony charges here, and we don't even have a points system for driver's licenses. It's easy enough to contest these tickets, and when you do, a human will look at the picture and clear the fine.

I fully agree that for more serious charges, the kind that can be life altering by merely being leveled at you, a human should be in the loop before they are brought. But this is just a silly "AI bad" story without any real substance.

The government certainly has a right (even an obligation) to regulate content on the internet. What I take exception to is making hosts responsible for policing the content, and in some cases for the content itself, in order to impose censorship by proxy. They did the same with banks by the way, in the fight against the black market economy: make them responsible, threaten massive fines and impose them a few times, then sit back as the scared corporations go above and beyond to comply, and thus doing the government's dirty work.

Maybe the test flags people who are more likely to unionize?

They just started building, supposedly to be completed in 2025.

Shell is building a huge electrolysis plant in Rotterdam, to produce 60,000kg of hydrogen per day. Mostly for use at their refineries there, but they plan to eventually supply hydrogen for vehicles as well. The problem remains that hydrogen, even the cheap stuff produced with natural gas, is still significantly more expensive than gasoline, even here in the Netherlands where gas is around €2/l (€7,50/gallon)

Most new houses around here are already being built to similar specs. The problem is that retrofitting existing houses is a seriously expensive undertaking: you can't use air heating, and putting in underfloor heating and ventilation is a major PITA: count on ripping out all floors, opening up a couple of walls, then putting it all back the way it was. Optimistic estimates range from €35000 to €55000. In practice, €80000 is not uncommon. Many homeowners cannot afford that kind of expense.

And in winter at the higher latitudes, solar doesn't deliver all that much. Most houses here are heated by natural gas now; even when switching to water/air or water/water heat pumps, it is expected that power grid and generation will need to be increased by quite a bit.

That'll surely foster a lively public debate, what with cancel culture and all. Even in countries with a strong history of free speech, posting the wrong opinion can land you in a world of hurt. Not because that opinion is bad and you need to be answerable for it, but simply because there will always be people taking exception to whatever you wrote, and decide to take action with potentially far-reaching consequences.