Chinese vehicles, both EV and ICE, are selling like crazy in every market where they can legally be sold. I've spent some time in Latin America recently and have ridden in several of the various models, and the reality is that they are all quite nice. The Uber drivers driving them invariably think that they got excellent value for their money.

In the United States we don't have access to these inexpensive brands. We can either buy expensive ICE vehicles, or even more expensive EVs where you pay a premium to not burn fossil fuels. In that situation it makes sense to want a vehicle that competes favorably with an ICE vehicle. After all, you can get a perfectly good ICE or hybrid vehicle for less than it would cost to buy a less capable EV.

The equation shifts dramatically when the Chinese vehicle you are looking at (whether it is ICE or EV) is 1/3 to 1/2 the price of a comparable vehicle. If I could get a Chinese EV for $13K I, personally, would be willing to put up with some of its shortcomings. As an example, I like the idea of the American made and designed Slate truck. However, it isn't available until next year at the earliest, and it is likely to cost $30K, very close to what a base model Ford Maverik, Nissan Frontera, or even a Toyota Tacoma currently cost. At that price it doesn't really make sense to purchase the far less capable electric vehicle.

However, if the Slate only cost $15K then it becomes far more interesting. That's the sort of price difference that Chinese brands are currently offering. I could learn to live with a range of 150 miles (that's supposedly the Slate's range, Chinese vehicles typically offer more than that), if it costs half as much as the competition. China is making vehicles that are more than competitive with what we currently have access to in the United States, and the prices are very low. The only thing keeping China from making huge inroads in the U.S. auto market is politics.

Sure there are some people that will never buy a Chinese vehicle, and there are other people that will never buy an EV. That's fine. I remember when the same arguments were made against Japanese (and later Korean) vehicles. If the politicians really thought that no one would be interested in these cars then they wouldn't need to protect us from them with tariffs.

The housing market is definitely another place where things have become ridiculously expensive. Fixing that issue is more difficult. Everyone is in favor of low cost housing, until they are building it in their neighborhood.

On the bright side, there is a ready source of inexpensive vehicles already for sale. The only problem is that, in the U.S. at least, our politicians won't let us buy them.

In the case of both cars and houses the solution is to remove existing barriers to supply. Right now it is impossible to build inexpensive housing in many parts of the country, and so we end up with expensive housing instead. It is likewise impossible to buy the inexpensive vehicles that I believe that consumers actually want.

My current daily driver is a 1996 Honda Civic (the base model with a 5 speed manual transmission, no AC, and manual windows). I say this to say that I really like the idea of the Slate. What I want is a basic electric vehicle without frills, and without extra technology that does nothing but break and drive up the price. The problem with the Slate is that it is not yet available, nor is it likely to be available in any numbers for a couple of years. What's more, there are already more capable Chinese vehicles selling in large quantities throughout the world that are available at a lower price. These vehicles come from companies that have already set up manufacturing and distribution channels, and they are selling vehicles in some of the most challenging markets in the world.

I've done a bit of traveling in Latin America in recent years and the reality is that there are several Chinese brands that are already powerhouses when it comes to actually selling, delivering, and maintaining vehicles. They make very competitive vehicles, and, at least in Latin America you can get these vehicles serviced and repaired ridiculously inexpensively. Uber drivers were quick to point out that their BYD (and other brand) Chinese vehicles weren't Toyotas, but they have invariably stressed that they would buy them again.

If it wasn't for the U.S. tariffs the Slate wouldn't even be a contender, and it isn't likely to be a contender when it is finally available. The only real advantage that it has is that it is comparatively affordable when compared to the other ridiculously overpriced EVs that you can currently purchase in the United States.

It is also worth noting that the projected base price of the Slate keeps going up. The first time I heard about it they were saying that it would cost around $12K with tax incentives. That would have put it under $20K without incentives. These days they say that it should cost less than $30K, but that puts it within spitting distance of the base model Ford Maverik, Nissan Frontier, or Toyota Tacoma, which, quite frankly, are far more capable vehicles, from companies with actual track records.

The reason that Chinese EVs are interesting is that they are essentially 1/3 to 1/2 the price of existing ICE truck models with compelling features and decent build quality. In the parts of the world where politics aren't getting in the way these Chinese vehicles are absolutely dominating. That's what I want.

I have spent some time recently in Latin America, including several countries where Chinese imports are absolutely dominating. The local Uber drivers like their Chinese vehicles. They are quick to point out that they don't measure up to Toyota, but that, for the money, they have been an excellent value. They invariably would buy the vehicle again. Every time I get into a Chinese vehicle I ask the driver what he thinks about it, and the results have been overwhelmingly positive.

I haven't driven any of these vehicles, but as a passenger the various Chinese vehicles look pretty well made. For the price I am definitely interested.

The reality is that the entire U.S. auto industry has been chasing the luxury, and large vehicle segment of the market, and I am not interested in those types of vehicles. I want a vehicle that replaces my current daily driver, a 1996 Honda Civic. I don't want someone else's clapped out SUV. I want an inexpensive basic small electric vehicle. The Nissan Leaf is closest to what I am looking for, but in countries where Chinese imports are allowed to flourish the Leaf isn't even a contender. It is simply outclassed by the Chinese offerings.

That isn't even remotely true, at least not in any recent era. The way that bookmakers have made odds for hundreds of years has been to set the odds so that roughly the same amount of bets came in on both sides. The house makes their money from a fee that they take for setting up the bet. This is colloquially know as "vigorish, vig, or the juice."

Read the article linked, it covers how this works mathematically.

It might look like you are betting against the bookie, but the reality is that the bookie doesn't take the bet unless he has someone that is willing to take the other side of the bet, and the odds are set up so that whoever wins the money that they win is balanced by another group that lost that same amount plus a little more. That's why odds for future events would often change over time. if the bookmaker got too much interest on one side of the wager the odds would change to entice people to bet the other way. The vig guarantees that either way the house wins. That's literally what "bookmaking" means.

In other words, historically bookmaking worked exactly like prediction markets, and it has worked this way forever. The difference is that in most of the world it generally has been illegal, because gambling is addictive and destructive. There's a reason that this sort of thing was basically universally illegal, and the reason is that societies that didn't put up these guardrails invariably failed.

Why is the goal to create superhuman intelligence? Do we need something smarter than us? Are you trying to get us all killed??

The ICCU failure rate was too much for me, so I avoided all of the eGMP vehicles.

There's no catch. This is just Google trying to spike Apple's wheels. Play Store revenue is a much smaller piece of Google's overall revenue than Apple's App Store is of its overall revenue. Google can afford to be generous on that front, with the idea that both regulators and developers will love the change. Apple can't play that game without significantly lowering its total revenue.

Of course, consumers will pay for less expensive phone apps with increased surveillance, but, let's be honest, Apple and Google are both going to increase surveillance either way.

DEFENSE Secretary. There has been no official name change from the Department of Defense to the Department of War. That requires an act of Congress, not some nebulous "executive order".

Even with decades of education, most of us are incapable of moving past dualistic, oppositional thinking that is bogged down in emotionally based value judgements. Cooked vs. raw, Natural vs. artificial, clean vs. dirty, pure vs. corrupted, brave vs. cowardly -- and on and on. That's all this is. We will not adapt to our own technological and reproductive success because we lack the emotional flexibility to do so. As a result, we are turning the world outside of the most elite enclaves into a trash-filled, overheated global slum. I wish I could say we were doomed as a species, but I think that would be optimistic.

Wow! That superbowl add really paid off! https://slashdot.org/index2.pl...

The point of this article is that, even on full sized televisions, YouTube is kicking Hollywood's collective ass. When they look at hours of programming watched on full sized televisions YouTube is clearly on top, followed by Netflix, with everyone else quite a ways behind. That's not counting computer or smaller screens where YouTube is completely dominant. Movies are making less money these days because far less people are spending money on movies. Interestingly enough one of the few bright spots for movies are smaller studios making limited availability movies. These movies have much lower budgets, and basically non-existent marketing, but the empty seats in the movie theaters means that there are screens available at a price where they can make a tidy profit. Traditional television is getting absolutely wrecked. The only part of television that people are willing to pay money for is sports broadcasting. No one has a cable or satellite subscription unless they are a rabid sports fan. The shows that everyone is talking about are as likely to come from Korea or Australia as they are from Hollywood. For years people assumed that Hollywood drove the value of cable television, and now that people have choice it turns out that the valuable part of television is the sports (and to a less extent the news). ESPN costs more than Netflix, Paramount and Apple TV combined, and Disney forces you to purchase to purchase a whole pile of their regular programming to get it. Disney is currently suing SlingTV because SlingTV is selling day and weekend passes so that you can just purchase the games you want to see without all of the rest of the slop that you don't. On top of that Hollywood is seeing increased competition from the entire rest of the world. The hit television show that everyone is talking about is almost as likely to come out of Korea as it is from U.S.

Hollywood is definitely contracting, but it is mostly because making scripted content, whether it is for television or movies, is becoming far less lucrative than it has been in the past. People are watching less scripted content, and when they do watch something it is likely that what they are watching is not from Hollywood.

As you have mentioned Prime Time TV has devolved into cop shows, but it's actually worse than that. The few hits that Hollywood have had over the last few years have invariably been live competitions and other reality TV shows.

The problem isn't talent, it's that american big tech firms have been paying really well and are grabbing the top talent from across the world by paying top dollar.

Though that may change this year.

Here we are, filling out the flesh on the dystopian skeleton set up by the conservative progenitors of the âoeownership societyâ (as in âoethey own the society â" and youâ). If you are looking for me, Iâ(TM)ll be off in the ruins, scrounging chips to put together any Linux boxes I can manage to salvage.

back in my day it was Natalie Portman, naked and petrified, covered in hot grits.

It was a simpler time.