The real sad case is that there's nothing in the vast collection of film and TV that suits your taste. There seems to be plenty for everyone else.

That's why it's a mutual fund investing in multiple ventures, not individual investors putting their money into individual start-ups.

Yes and no. It's true that "we" are burning all of the oil and gas, and are responsible for the demand. But oil companies themselves emit around 15% of all greenhouse gases in the process of producing, transporting and refining oil, before they sell it to us. That's not an insignificant amount, and perhaps there's a lot of room for further improvement. They already stopped practices like flaring off that pesky natural gas that is produced along with oil.

The same goes for the manufacturers of concrete: they emit a lot of CO2 in the process... but only do so to satisfy our need for the stuff.

I've dealt with call center agents from the USA, China, India, down to local ones. And all of the agents that take the call pretty much only run a script to cover the most common cases. But all of them can and will kick the call up to people who can actually help. The one thing I hate (and call centers from all parts of the world still do this) is when they make you walk through all the pointless troubleshooting steps in the script before they escalate your call.

Be careful what you wish for. This is something that Canada and the EU might want to return in kind, because the massive untaxed trade imbalance between us and the US regarding digital goods and services has been a thorn in our governments' side for a good while now.

Zoox doesn't have a steering wheel or pedals. You do not have control of it (except for the emergency red stop button).

Right now, Zoox can not even deviate from a hardcoded preprogrammed route, so it's a long ways to be true self-driving either.

Notice how the routes it does in San Francisco or in Vegas are always the same circuits.

Getting a DUI on it wouldn't make any sense.

This hasn't been tested yet legally.

However, if operator guidance is needed (autodrive levels 1, 2, and 3, driver must remain engaged), then you are operating the vehicle and can be charged.

For levels 4 and 5, if you're behind the wheel and could turn off the autodrive features, legal opinion is that you can still be charged (you're effectively in control).

If you're not in the driver's seat and the car is level 4 and 5 (and autodriving), then there's a strong legal argument that you're not operating the vehicle and can't be charged.

(And note that if you're autodriving, there should be no reason for the cop to pull you over in the first place.)

IANAL, this is just something I researched awhile ago.

They buy other companies, then jack up fees and mercilessly cut costs and corners, for a nice short term increase in profit. Then they sell it. If that fails, they strip it, load it with debt, and let it go bust.

They used to innovate. Not always being first with a particular feature, but being first to execute it well. And every year there'd be at least one enticing reason to upgrade, even if it was just a better screen or whatever. But lately, the incremental improvements are small, and mostly restricted to the processor (which was already plenty good) or the camera (which for many people does not have to be best in class). I'm still on an iPhone 12 and not planning on replacing it any time soon. Especially since they start at around €1000 now.

The one feature that would have me upgrade is Touch ID. Face ID eats in certain situations, and there were rumours that the iPhone 17 would have a fingerprint scanner in the power button but I guess they dropped that feature or were never planning to include it.

I always hopes that streaming would be perfect to serve the "long tail": content that is not much in demand but not expensive to serve either. Having a massive library of classics and hard-to-find lesser known works would make me reconsider re-subscribing. But I guess the demand simply isn't there.

the whole purpose of the Darwin Awards was to recognize people who, through their own stupidity, removed themselves from the gene pool.

No, that's most of the point, but definitely isn't the whole point.

Some of the point is to make fun of people for doing something stupid. They don't have to die or be prevented from reproducing, for their stupidity to provide smug entertainment.

This'll be a fun exercise, I suppose, and will generate some laughs.

Ah, you do get it.

Roomba and his friends won't make your bed, put the trash out, open the windows to air the place out, cook your steak, get the mail, put the groceries away, repaint your room, repair your deck, or load the dishwasher. But Rosie will. Eventually. I hope.

Yeah but if you only used $50 in electricity to power the LLM for writing the book to get infringed, that's still $2950 profit.

Let's do a thought problem.

For any issue where you're sure you're right, note the number of people who have a different opinion.

Suppose the number of people with a different opinion is excessively large, say more than 5% of the population. They have access to the same information that you do, but have come to a different position.

Given that situation, what does that say about your position, and whether debate itself is horrific?

A dumb question perhaps but... is the river temperature rising because of all the heat being dumped into it? This certainly is an issue around many of France's nuclear power plants, who rely on rivers for cooling, and adding significantly to the water temperature.