Data wars YOU!

There are layers to the issue beyond just the purchase price. It is known that the Chinese government is subsidizing the manufacture of EVs to sell them at a price that others can't compete with. It's not fair competition in that regard if a country is fully subsidizing the manufacture of goods to flood foreign markets. It may be good for consumers, but from that perspective, tariffs DO make sense. Also, China has blocked imports of many goods just to protect their domestic companies, which also skews things. So, putting tariffs in place, and limiting imports of select items DOES make sense.

Free market being equal, then sure, tariffs aren't needed, but if the US government 15 years ago started flooding foreign markets with goods at below the cost to manufacture, then you would have seen other countries using tariffs and import limits as well.

The RAV4 hybrid is way more fuel efficient though, easily breaking even vs the non-hybrid engine and transmission. The hybrid is a way simpler transmission. Toyota has been doing this for decades and it works great and customers actually want it.

Or it just could be the price of fuel! From my own experience, currently a farm worker who commutes to work 30 miles every day spends at $700 CAD in gas (paid for by the farm of course), whereas the EV Lightning truck is probably $100 CAD in electricity per month while still doing daily farm work, sometimes requiring a charge on farm. The farm has a fast charger installed, along with solar so electricity is essentially free if charged on farm (most of the hired guys charge at home overnight, but it's still not more than gas).

Then you have the other side, those who live in areas with a very low population density are clueless about the needs of more densely populated areas, and then can't understand the need for things like homeless shelters, sewers, and trash pickup. When you don't understand that cities need services, many end up as these conservatives who don't even see a benefit to EVs.

I understand that's to be the premise of the next DC Universe reboot.

There are multiple layers of stupid here:

1) Connecting these devices to the open internet is stupid
2) They were connected to the open internet so that "maintenance companies" can remotely control them - but those companies weren't remotely keeping the firmware up to date?
3) Why is it even possible to set a refrigerator to 50C?

The party that controls all 3 branches of government could have a vote tomorrow and take those powers away. But they're all boot lickers and cult members without a spine.

You have more certainty about the future than I do. I *do* doubt that the full projected build-out will ever happen, and that will definitely hurt some overcommitted people. It *might* crash thoroughly, but I see no reason to put that at higher than a 10% chance. More likely a bunch of planned construction never gets ordered. And *when* does that happen? This year? Next April 15th?

Yeah, it will crash, just like the internet build-out crashed. Some folks will get hurt. But it won't return to what it used to be. AI will continue to be important...and become more important. (And there will be lots of mistakes made in using it.)

Whether AI will start setting it's own goals is less certain. If it does, it may be safer than if it doesn't. Things could get really wonky if a strong AI starts pursuing a stupid goal because it was told to do so.

1) Open task manager and see if any program is thrashing the drive
2) Run a SMART test to make sure its not silently failing
3) Don't listen to Copilot for hardware troubleshooting

Lift the tariffs you morons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Similar thing in Japan. The food isn't expensive either.

I wouldn't want them to be relying on AI to do reviews though. Maybe two AI, looking only for issues and reporting them back, like you can have AI look for security issues with computer code. And a proper review done by a human.

I have a feeling that if they did that, the AI would flag up loads of critical, may lead to meltdown issues that are uneconomical to fix and deemed to unlikely to be worth spending money on. Which incidentally lead to both Chernobyl and Fukushima being far, far worse than they might have been. Both cheaped out on the containment building. Fukushima's were inadequate, Chernobyl didn't even have any because the risk of an explosion was deemed so low.

Of course people should beware. Anyone who has a problem with Flock is surely aware that they are only a fraction of "the problem," though among the more visible.

I'm concerned that some Flock haters might take us down a slippery slope to where you can't have a camera in your house if it looks out onto the street, or that you shouldn't be allowed to record cops, or that I shouldn't be allowed to have a camera attachment on my Manhattan apartment balcony telescope that I normally just use to furiously goon to the good people of NYC who don't close their curtains. (Oops, forget that third example.)

I can't say I'm a fan of Flock but if their rights are infringed in a way that might possibly expand to everyone else, then they will need to be defended.

That said, I have a modest proposal for the law-enforcement-related problems of surveillance vendors. Require non-warrant sharing with LE to be unreliable. For every geo search, remove a random half of the applicable results and replace them with deliberate, randomized false positives, so that LE will know the data shouldn't be taken too seriously on its own. If cops act without confirmation while KNOWING it's _at least_ 50% likely to be wrong, that'll help with the civil suits for false arrests.