Norway has spent decades pulling in obscene amounts of tax revenue from various sources including citizenry and business, with the goal of building a massive rainy-day fund (per article below may be $1T or more by now). Losing $2.32B in revenue is a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of their economy, and even that is a drop in the bucket compared to how much money they have in the bank.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24049876

While there's no question that automakers are using chip-level tech that's a decade or more behind the current average (not even state-of-the-art), I think the more fundamental issue is that the rate at which the automakers are migrating to new processes is not accelerating at the same pace the rate of chipmaker's progress is, so they keep falling further and further behind. Chipmakers are on an exponential curve, while automakers seem to be stuck with linear advancements. 10 years' lag in 2020 is probably the equivalent of 15+ years' lag in 2000. Imagine if automakers had been using 1980's chips in 2000....?

It also has to do with the obscene amount of "process" that goes on behind the scenes. I catch little glimpses of it at work now and then, and if the efficiency of software development of their mobile apps is even remotely indicative of automaker's general pace of development, they're screwed. There's absolutely no way they can change fast enough to even *match* the pace of chip development, let alone catch up to where they need to be.

Tesla, maybe Rivian, and the newer companies are the only ones that have a chance, because they were built to keep up and even in some cases lead various technical advancements.

No, this is about an article written in *response* to the original article, or did you not actually read the post...?

You're equating statements that were made primarily by politicians with those made later by scientists with significant research, deliberation, and peer review. Sorry, the two are not the same, and nobody's ever claimed that YouTube would be removing false content because the *politicians* said so (though there's debate on that regarding other topics). YouTube is removing false content because decades of science (no, the COVID vaccines didn't just magically appear from nowhere in the last year, they built on literally multiple decades of research) have proven that the content is false, not because the government said so.

<quote>When the bullpucky from all this clears in 20 years. I bet no 40 to 60 year old(in 20 years) will admit they were ever on the wrong side.</quote>

Nope, because if they follow this approach to it's logical conclusion, between COVID and whatever else happens in the next 20yrs, they'll be mostly dead anyway and thus unable to admit they were wrong.

A key factor of the plan SpaceX plan that I think is probably the most underrated factor in all of these discussions is the fact that they're *not* going to be trying to man-rate the Starship for this contract. The plan is to send a Lunar Starship into orbit autonomously, and then fly the *existing* and *already flying* Crew Dragon up to meet it. Once they return from the moon, they transfer back into the Crew Dragon for landing, which again it has done several times before. The risks of landing/launching the Lunar Starship on the moon are dramatically less (~1/6th!...) than they are on Earth.

Based on the current Starship development rate, I bet you that if they shifted focus 100%, they could land a shell/unmanned Lunar Starship on the moon by the end of this year. That would sacrifice development on Starship terrestrial landing, but as per above, that's completely moot to the goal of getting people to the moon by 2024. Additional testing and landing of Starships on the moon (and leaving some there) could be used to send immense amounts of cargo there in advance of humans showing up. A couple years of development to complete a human-friendly design could see 100's of tons of stuff pre-positioned for the first humans back. It'd be like hiking to your distant camping spot to find that somebody had airlifted a cabin there already.

I don't think there are even 15 billion active vehicles, let alone 15b that can be tracked in any form. I'm pretty sure they're playing word games, and claiming each location at a point in time as a "vehicle location". If each vehicle reports its location every 60 seconds, that's only ~10.5M vehicles.

Look at the comments on the pcmag.com site. RMS is there in person demanding it be called "GNU plus Linux". By his logic we need to also make sure Qualcomm is listed, and Kilby (ICs), and Shockley (transistors), and who knows what else.

Nobody thought to set up an off-the-shelf <$100 trail cam??? How does the BLM function without a supply of those things in the first place?

No. 2.6M bar is 37,709,811 PSI.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised any more, but it's clear you have no concept of how pathogens work. It's *extremely* simple: the flu (in its various strains) has been circulating for millennia, and has an established "base" from which it re-infects the entire population each year. COVID-19 is *NEW* and has not established a foothold, therefore the vast majority of the population has yet to either be exposed to it or even have an opportunity to be exposed. Therefore, comparing cases and deaths between the two is completely irrelevant.

He doesn't need any help to do that.

<quote><p>That's a load of garbage. No really, if self check-out takes longer than your entire self checkout system is a load of garbage. In most sane places where implemented it is significantly faster than checkouts ever were.</p></quote>

Um, *that's* a load of garbage. Self-checkout has space for *one* basket of goods, and *one* bag of scanned items. Regular checkout lanes have belts where the customer can unload a nearly limitless number of items, and they're fed directly to the checker, who has a significant amount out outflow space for as many filled bags as necessary. In many stores these days they even have an extra employee responsible solely for final bagging, to speed up the process even more. Additionally, the checker's sole job is to scan items, which means that when something comes up that's unusual for *you*, the checker has probably dealt with it several times already just *that day*.

The only time self-checkout is faster is when either you have a limited number of items (max a couple dozen conventional items), or the regular checker lines are extremely long.

At our local store in Portland (Rose City Park neighborhood) they removed the self-checkout lanes, and got so much flak for it that they put them back...

Bridge-building projects don't need a manager with technical expertise, they can be managed by MBAs. And still be successful. Occasionally.