The problem is that it wasn't set up to actually solve the problem.

The fee should have been set high enough to contract with local Sherpas to go get the trash if the hiker didn't bring it back down, and it should have been spent that way. There should be enough extra in the fee to cover collecting additional trash left in the decades before it became such an embarrassment, with a goal of perhaps collecting it all within 20 years.

Perhaps the fee can be extended to cover a "Body Recovery Insurance" also. Recovering bodies can cost $100,000, and with a 1% death rate among climbers it might suggest that the government should charge $1000 non-refundable for recovery insurance. Some bodies still wouldn't be recoverable (buried in a deep crevasse, for example), but maybe all the visible ones could be.

The worst threat to the US automotive industry is the US automotive industry.

In 2016, over a quarter million people put down $1000 for a Tesla Model 3, with no firm date for delivery from a company which wasn't producing even 100,000 cars a year. That should have told the US automotive industry something. Today, it's sibling, the Model Y, was the fourth best selling car in the USA in 2024. The US automotive industry has been completely incapable of building a similarly attractive vehicle, although it has made a couple of really good ones that just haven't caught on. The most exciting competitors to Tesla have been Kia and Hyundai, both South Korean companies (which, coincidentally, is where GM's 2017 Bolt EV was designed).

Why haven't the Detroit guys been successful? Answer that question, and you'll know why they're their worst threat.

If there were anyone left in the FCC after getting DOGE'd, you might have a point. But I think that at this point, I could fire up a transmitter on LAX approach frequency and play "Baby Shark" on repeat, and be about 99% sure there'd be no enforcement.

Nice of them to look at Sept 10 as the starting point. The share price has dropped over $105 / share since then. You know how much Oracle has lost since Sept 9, one day previous? $20 a share.

So there was a big pop due to the announcement, and life has gone back to normal since then.

Is this what Slashdot has sunk to?

Well, see, that's part of the problem.

USB has chosen to include many, many different features and make them "optional". So a 65W USB PD power supply can be fully USB certified, and a Raspberry Pi 4 can be fully USB certified, and yet they won't work together. A device that uses USB PPS can be fully certified, and not work with that same 65W USB PD power supply.

And don't get me started on USB cables....

So instead of having a bunch of chargers with varying voltages, currents, and connectors, I'll have a bunch of USB C chargers with varying voltages, currents, and capabilities.
Tried using a mainline USB charger with a Raspberry Pi 4? (Nobody supports the 5V/4A that it needs)
Here's a charger that came with my phone, will it work for my laptop? (No)
How come this device won't work with that USB brick? (because it expects the brick to put out 5V without negotiation, and the brick refuses to do that).
This device needs a USB-PD PPS brick; does this brick support PPS? (No)

So have we really solved anything other than reducing the unemployment rate among EU regulation writers?

And by the way, good luck reading the capabilities printed on the USB brick - putting all of those along with all of the symbols from all of the national regulatory agencies on a 15mmx20mm label isn't conducive to reading.

Exactly in line with "No, you can't trust a Google result, but Google can still be valuable", or "No, you can't trust the Internet, but the Internet can still be valuable".
Whether the Luddites can understand this or not isn't particularly important.

Normally, I'm one to let businesses decide what's best for them. But it's obvious here that paying just reinforces that this is a great business model for the pirates. So I'm gonna step outside of my comfort zone.

Paying the pirates should be forbidden by law, simply as a national security interest in protecting all the other companies in the United States. You other countries can pass your own law. If a company is caught paying, the corporate veil should be pierced and the executive ordering the payment, as well as the one completing the payment, should do jail time.

It's almost like you missed the the other story on the front page today:
https://apple.slashdot.org/sto...

But being the smart, informed person you are, I must be mistaken.

Cute commercial.

The concept is good, the execution is bit too awkward in spots. I would bet that we see some 30 second commercials riffing on the same themes over the next couple of months.

I'm a fan of liability.

The media industry had a fine law passed (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/504 that set minimum statutory damages at $750 to $30,000 per copyright violation. It could, of course, be more.

I think that the same law should be written for personal information - statutory damages of $1000 to $10,000 per event, set by the type of personal information leaked. You leak my name and email address? You pay me $1000. You leak my name, credit card numbers and CVNs, you pay me $5000. You leak my name and medical and pharmacy records? You pay me $10000.

Once the prospect of a leak becomes an existential threat to a company, it'll get the attention that it deserves or the C-level execs will get ousted. Right now, they leak, they pay $0.10 per person to some credit monitoring agency that does nothing, and their name appears in the press for a couple of days. Why spend money architecting information systems around not leaking if it doesn't cost you anything when it does? Heaven forbid that they encrypt their databases, hold only personal information that they actually need, and stop copying their databases up to cloud-based instances so that off-site contractors can peruse them.

Interesting that they had great efficiencies with PVC wire - presumably, at this stage, just the PVC coating on wire.

One of the big hang-ups for recycling wires for the copper has been seperating the copper from the covering, often PVC. There are all kinds of processes for trying to do that economically, but it's still a challenge. Copper doesn't react with HCL, so if they could run this process on a pile of scrap wiring, they should end up with gasoline and copper; a valuable by-product of the recycling.

I noticed a lot of movement of the Ship flaps during the video, but then I saw this which captured the ship attitude angle-of-attack (attitude) during the flight. This is the kind of testing that they did, even on a flight where they desperately needed success:
https://twitter.com/mcrs987/status/1960724698825707659
No, that's not unintended tumbling - that's the flight profile that they intended to fly.

The fact that it survived that, with intentionally missing tiles and some flap damage, is a true testament to it's resilience....

I'm OK with the new path, as long as the FinTech companies are allowed the forward the data charges back to the consumer. It'd make a nice page on their website:
Access Charges by Bank
Bank of Assholes: 6.9%
Podunk FCU: 0.5%

There's nothing better than sunshine for reducing stink. I'd really love to see the same thing for Merchant fees for credit cards:
Credit Card Surcharge:
Visa: 4.3%
Mastercard: 4.1%
Discover: 6%
Amex: 10%
(Note that I've got no idea what the real percentages are)

>>> What do you mean by "investors"? VCs are the investors, or represent a private pool of investors.

By investors, I meant the "private pool of investors". Andreesen Horowitz claims $42 billion of "assets under management". How much of that is AH assets, and how much is "private pool of investors" assets?

>>> No. They are the investor buying shovels and pans up front for the miners for a percentage. They are not manufacturing shovels and pans, nor or they the merchant's selling shovels and pans.

For most VC firms, my belief is that they're selling shovels and pans TO THE INVESTORS, who are trying to get in on the gold rush. The startup companies are almost immaterial, other than they can be sold as a shovel or a pan. Most VC firms aren't paying their CEO from investment returns; they're paying their CEO (and the researchers, salesmen, and janitors) from Investor's money. Perhaps the economics changes after the VC firm has been around for 10 years and has successes under it's belt, but until then they're a middleman vulture, scraping money off the investor side and the investment side without necessarily having any of their own money invested.