Who then takes those billions, joins Marie Le Pen's National Rally to drive an ultra-nationalist, right wing French agenda.

Please, don't inflate her ego with this kind of nonsense. Last thing we need is to create the Elon Musk of Europe.

Don't worry, I'm sure they'll find some legitimate edge case of the FBI tracking a white supremacist's financial spending to prevent a terrorism act and say they're doing the same thing but against trans Mexican communist feminists who are out to destroy America.

So I'm torn on this. On one hand, I agree this is terrible from an ergonomics perspective. Speedometers should be right in front of the drivers. However, a significant cars do this, notably Tesla and the Mini-Cooper. So the precedence has been so long established that I don't know if anyone will step in.

Even then, I would think most businesses wouldn't leave something like that in an open cubby purely for economic espionage concerns.

The announcement itself is innocuous: Gemini Notebook is basically allowing its users to seamlessly load their already purchased books into their tool. If you haven't used it, Notebook let's you upload various materials into it for analysis, quick referencing, etc. This is just making it easier for those who bought books through Google Play. What I would be concerned however if this is a first step by Google to lock down Notebook. Will they later incorporate copyright protections so you can't just upload those PDF versions of your textbook or reference material into Notebook because it's licensing can't be confirmed? Could this be used to block out third party services who failed to pay Google... err... whose copyright can't be confirmed by Google, thus forcing you to use their play store or "approved" third parties?

Pilot programs are for normal companies. This is Silicon Valley. Move fast, break things, then have your minions arrange the flaming wreck into an sculpture that you can declare as a success to your venture capitalist overlords.

This is a neverending fight over money, and Walmart, and the retailer side in general, having lost the fight and throwing in the towel. Ever since contactless payments emerged, credit card companies, tech firms, banks, and retailers have been in a massive battle over the hundreds of billions in transaction fees charged each year. Retailers learned the hard way how credit card companies have forced their way in, essentially harvesting up to 1.5%-3.5% per transaction. When they saw tech firms like Apple and Google also working their way in, essentially adding another 1-2% into those transaction fees, they tried everything they could to push consumers in a different direction. Unfortunately, retailers just couldn't put together a decent alternative, and Walmart giving up on their sad app signals their surrender.

Yes, but the question is how it's being represented. Are they being provided with the well articulated viewpoint shared by the vast majority of the other side they disagree with? Or are they being shown the most extreme, inflammatory edge cases of the other side which are incorrectly being portrayed as mainstream? The former can encourage debate, but the latter is just fueling an attitude of "those people are crazy, there's no way I can co-exist with them."

Agreed, but I believe the entire "tech" industry is particularly notorious for this even by American capitalist standards. AI is emerging from a business culture that emphasizes "move fast and break things", launching half-completed, "minimally viable" products out quickly without real thought (or in the parlance of kids these days, "f--ks given") on security, privacy, or social impact. Society has figured this out, as we've seen the shift in perception of the tech industry from saviors to villains. So no one should be surprised when people have trust issues with AI firms that have emerged from that same ecosystem.

This is great for some of the small puddle jumper routes and a step forward in the electrification of commercial air travel, but we're talking about a range of 125 miles for the production aircraft in all electric, and a mere 500 miles for a hybrid flight, for 30 passengers. 125 miles won't even cover Honolulu to Hilo which is the first use case I could see. 500 miles is still well within high speed train and driving distances. The scaling up to big commercial aircraft, like an Embraer E2 series, let alone a Boeing or an Airbus single aisle aircraft, is out of range for all electric flight. You'd need to get range at least to 2,000 miles.

I mean, given that society's number one demand of the education system is to prepare students so they can find jobs, the school system is doing what's being asked of it.

Maybe that's more a condemnation of the American healthcare system overall. The VA may be better than private care, but perhaps there are so many complaints and horror stories about private care throughout society we've just tuned them out at this point.

The problem is that the Internet was inevitably going to (d)evolve this way no matter what the techno-utopians promised in the 1990s. The moment any communications medium shows the ability to convince / manipulate humans to do something, and especially convince humans to send money or allocate resources differently, interests from across the spectrum from state actors (for both legitimate and illegitimate) to criminal organizations were inevitably going to flood in. It is human nature.

I think it boils down to the classic dilemma: was it malice (intentionally ignoring a vessel in need) or incompetence (failing to properly monitor the emergency channels)? Both are equally bad looks. The former generates more negative publicity, the latter should be a firing event.