Really though, what did people think would happen when they just freely uploaded their photos to the internet? We're not living in a post-scarcity society - it costs money to run data centers. There's that adage that if you're not paying for a product, then you are the product. It's like people just didn't think this through beyond "neat, free hosting for my shit" and are only now surprised that the business giving away "free" photo hosting actually has the same goals as any other for-profit business - to earn more money.

I'd mentioned awhile back that the Target near me used to have free public EV charging. One day, without any advance notice, the chargers were just gone. That happens when you're relying on the generosity of businesses - sometimes the freebie goes away, and sometimes they use your likeness to train AI models. The solution in both cases is the same - don't rely on the generosity of businesses.

The two extremes are the result of of politicians attempting to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Making the herd bigger doesn't change the herd mentality.

Compulsory voting doesn't bring us any closer to having that.

Did you even read TFS? It's a backup of the device settings and a list of installed Microsoft Store apps (which all competing app stores do anyway, otherwise they'd have no way of letting you restore previous purchases). Maybe this data has some marketing value, but they're not using it to train AI models.

Making it opt-in by default is shady, but IIRC, Apple has iOS's iCloud backup on by default (and quickly runs out of space and then nags you to subscribe to a paid tier). So, it's not exactly an unprecedented consumer-hostile behavior.

I'd assume most of the country just has their ISP bill on autopay and doesn't give it much thought. This really isn't a dinner table issue like housing/healthcare/grocery/gas costs.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending this, but it's just small potatoes over political issues to rage about.

You don't fix the issue of uninformed voters by adding more of them. That'd be like thinking you can solve traffic jams by adding more cars. If someone doesn't care enough about politics to even bother to go vote, it's probably for the best that they don't.

Seems like he might've been socializing with the dogs, rather than the people.

None of your examples involved age checking adults to make sure they're not kids. That's precisely the problem.

Actually, EV sales in the US are still down. You'd assume with the high gas prices that EVs would be flying off the lots, but buyers have pivoted to hybrids instead (warning: paywalled article).

Last time I looked at it, the time-of-use rate plan offered by my utility worked out to where the savings would just about pay for the cost of a battery installation right around the time the batteries are pretty much shot. You're also gambling that there isn't going to be any out-of-warranty failures with the inverter/charging equipment before you've achieved ROI, too. Plus if you have to add financing into the mix to pull it off, forget it - then the only entity actually making any money from this scheme is the damn bank.

Obviously, if you got a subsidy or use an insane amount of power so the savings adds up more quickly, batteries might end up being worth it. Here in Florida though, batteries aren't likely to save you any money, but solar might (again though, you're kind of gambling that a hurricane isn't going to trash your panels).

I'd say we passed that bar at Dr. Sbaitso.

It's obviously protectionism, because we're fine with inexpensive Chinese EVs so long as they happen to look like this.

Anecdotally, I've actually noticed an uptick in people riding e-scooters. I guess that's what you get when the least expensive new car in the US starts at over $20k.

Looking at Polestar's sales numbers, I don't think Tesla really had anything to worry about. It's mostly BYD (who has been eating Tesla's lunch in the rest of the world) that Tesla fears, and Polestar likely just became a casualty of the protectionism designed to keep BYD out.

Except that they're positioned as luxury vehicles and those kind of features are expected at those price points. The Polestar 3's MSRP is $68,900 and the Polestar 4 is $57,800. This isn't a BYD Seagull.

Except for those pesky times when motorists become distracted or impatient and ignore the traffic signals, but we know that never happens.

Many homes have 30A 240v clothes dryer circuits that can be repurposed for EV charging with a smart splitter or by upgrading to a heat pump clothes dryer that plugs into a standard 120v outlet. That'd provide enough capacity to recharge the Slate from completely flat (which you really shouldn't be doing regularly in an EV anyway) in about 12 hours.