Man, I hope the price increase doesn't kill the product's sales momentum!

>> So, why DO people buy Apple?
>> Apple goes to great efforts to protect user privacy.

This is why people buy Apple. They are badly mis-informed and repeat these same, tired arguments that have been shown over and over again to be wrong. Apple doesn't care about your privacy. In fact, they are some of the worst, and tends to make Google look like a saint for user privacy.

Apple tracks your surfing habits, purchases, location in real time, etc... just like Google. It's in Apple's privacy policies, all for ads, or as Apple likes to re-phrase as to 'offer you those personalized services'.

And when countries like China demanded that they need full access to online storage of every user whenever they wanted, Google deemed that their users privacy was not worth this so Android isn't available in China. Apple? They couldn't hand it over to China fast enough. https://support.apple.com/en-us/111754 Because screw customer privacy.

Then they decided that they will use AI to scan all your photo's on device to tattle to Apple if they feel it might be CSAM. They only backed down after the huge PR stink. Don't remember Microsoft or Google deciding to do this, since that would violate their users privacy of what they do on their devices.

Oh, and then there was the UK 'Online Safety Act' that requires you to upload and ID yourself to make sure you're an adult online. Google and Microsoft deemed to not run for this because, again, user privacy would be harmed by this and decided to wait to see if it would survive legal challanges. Apple? Again, who cares about user privacy, They already leaked that they were going full steam ahead for back in Feburary.

https://reclaimthenet.org/apple-ios-uk-age-verification-online-safety-act-screen

That is largely true.

But in the case of games, I'm not on your property. And we already discussed servers - I might not even be on your servers.

It might help to clearly separate these two cases: Pure online games with servers hosted exclusively by the game publisher, and the 90% of other games (single player or multiplayer with player-operated servers).

And there we have it, the usual ad hominem of people who have run out of actual arguments. Signaling the end of the discussion, because why the fuck should I bother talking to someone who says such shit?

Goodbye.

I asked Gemini to do the following:

"Get the number of F150s on the road. Estimate the change to drag coefficient a sloped hood would make -- Try one which is 6 inches shorter at the front than at the windshield, and estimate the savings of gas per mile that would cause. Multiply that out by the estimated number of trucks and estimated number of miles per year the trucks drive to get a gas savings for just F150s with the lower front on the hood."

According to its calculations, which it lays out in detail (doesn't make them RIGHT) the gas savings would be 306 MILLION gallons of gas a year.

Here's a more reasonable one, limiting ourselves to MODERN F150's:
"Get the number of model year 2024, 2025, and 2026 F150s sold in the US. Estimate the change to drag coefficient a sloped hood would make -- Try one which is 6 inches shorter at the front than at the windshield, and estimate the savings of gas per mile that would cause. Multiply that out by the estimated number of trucks and estimated number of miles per year the trucks drive to get a gas savings for just F150s with the lower front on the hood. "

Darn, changing this in 2024 would have only save 36 MILLION gallons of gas per year today.

If you generalize that across all pickup trucks sold in the past 3 years, we'd be saving (again, this is just Gemini, not real science) we'd be saving 216 million gallons a year.

If we included SUVs in that, the number would increase, but the pickup truck is (per vehicle) the better effect -- doing it for all SUVs (and there are a LOT more SUVs than pickup trucks) would only save a little more than doing the pickup trucks.

The US burns 136 billion gallons of gas a year, so it's a small percentage, but still a big number. Note that your truck would be able to go roughly 25 miles further on the highway with that 6 inch drop in front, with exactly the same gas tank size.

Just like every other CEO that thinks AI is a magic bullet.

YES!!!!!! OMG YES!

Thank you for that!

When you build a vehicle for a purpose, you build with intention and you design. When you build a wankmobile it's just a Homer.

It's really hard to find a modern "car" as you're describing now. Almost all EVs are "crossovers". The dang VW ID 4 has a huge hood. They have the ID 3 with a lot less hood, but decided not to sell it in the US. It takes real work to find something with a sensible hood position.

"I'd like a new rule. If you drive truck and the hood is taller than your shoulders you should require a CDL." -- I LOVE this. Absolutely LOVE IT. ...but would instead say if you drive anything with a hood which blocks more than 6 feet in front from vision, you need a CDL.

Dude, not that many years from now the touchscreens will be even bigger, and you'll rarely if ever touch the steering wheel.

Yes, the tech is taking longer than expected, but it's already much safer than humans (not based on the Tesla hype, but on a study in "Nature Communications") and will continue to improve. At SOME POINT (5 years? 10 years) when someone hits someone driving his/herself and is sued, the defendant will call it negligence, because he/she didn't use the autonomous driving. That will result in treble damages, and all suits after that will do the same thing. And overnight insurance will skyrocket on cars without it. Driving yourself will be over except for the rich, and that will end quickly too, when a few go to jail for negligent homicide for driving themselves.

I can see better backing out of a spot than driving out of it. The camera is RIGHT THE on the back, at the first inch of movement, but going forward, I need to push out several feet to get my eyes in the same position. If I can't see the toddler walking in front of the car below the hood line, that's one squished kid. If I were backing up, sensors and camera would prevent it.

What's true for 2005 trucks and cars is just no longer true -- we are better off backing out than driving out.

That's kinda stupid, and caused by unnecessarily long and high hoods.

It's irrelevant, if controlled for in the study. It's just the entrenched "I want my penis extension, dammit" folks throwing sand up.

It's worth studying of course, but it has no bearing on the clear need to legislate hood slope.

That's a reasonable take on it I suppose, until you factor in all the lobbying to keep congress from noticing that "work vehicles" were being advertised as family cars. The industry lobbyists represent the conspiracy in this case, and they were hired to do it, involving the companies in the conspiracy. So the Smidge204 is spot on with "conspired".

What alternative do you think these guys had? They've got bills to pay and families to feed, and all of these companies have been dumping skilled employees like crazy due to leadership's sophomoric belief that AI can do everything.

3. ICE are TWENTY TIMES (yes, really) more prone to burning than EVs are.

Every EV fire gets reported, whereas we think ICE fires are just normal and never report them, but if you count the fires and multiply out by car types on the road, EVs are massively less likely to burn. Add to that each model year, EVs get less likely to burn as battery design, manufacturing techniques, and chemistry improve.

Everything you're saying is true, but sloping hoods can be done in parallel, resulting in both less pedestrian deaths AND less pollution-related deaths, because sloped hoods increase gas mileage and thus reduce pollution.

With respect to the tall hoods, this is simply wrong. You don't need height, you need predictable bending, crumpling, and movement of force outward. We do that very nicely on cars with small length fronts, and cars with sloped hoods. The Tesla crash results are very good, and the hoods are not long or tall.