Karma on Slashdot has been rendered meaningless. Though I've probably done my bit to break the so-called karma system to the point I don't want to say how I deal with karma problems...

I still think the moderation approach is fundamentally borken [sic] in several ways, though the underlying philosophic idea was good. But it's the broken economic model that precludes fixing anything substantive here.

Trying to propagate the humor without the vacuous brain fart, but can't figure out how to work cabs or taxis or even robocars/robocabs into a more appropriate Subject...

However I actually had a more serious reaction to the joke because it wouldn't make much economic sense to only send your car out at night. Too much competition. Much more reasonable to adjust your own travel schedule to off-peak times and send your car out to make money because you don't need it at peak-demand times.

However the "stink" refers to my overall reaction to the story. All things Musk reek to my delicate nose. (There's a joke there if you've ever seen my iconic nose. I literally use it as my icon...) Just reading Regime Change by Haberman and Swan. Many points of sadness, though I also notice some mistakes. For example, they say Musk only "invested" $300 million in the YOB's campaign, but I think the Twitter cesspool should be included and that loss was more than $20 Billion with a Big B.

Ah, I finally figured out a joke. Musk picked Austin so he can blame the liberals if the immature technology fails. Or even worse, because he's sure the YOB's DoJ won't prosecute if some liberal gets killed? (The Texas DoJ is possibly even worse?)

Good Funny, but the story deserves more Funny. However I think SBF already tried 5 and it got attacked from some other zone. Not sure if it was an island, however. Been a while since I read Michael's entertaining book on the fiasco. And it may have been more of an EA zone than Tech Bro?

Quoted against the wanna-censor status, and even though the visibility is still high?

Anyway, the most answer to your question is Taiwan (per other replies), except I'm adding a proviso that I think the Chinese are too smart to start any warlike situation unless they are sure they have already won it. (There are some less obvious answers, but as far as I can imagine (right now and based on limited data) the risk-benefit ratios are too low for all of them.)

Having said that, I'm pretty sure the Chinese tactics would involve clouds of cheap drones and minimal actual attacks. I think it most likely that they would declare an embargo-not-embargo and merely require each ship going to or from Taiwan to visit China for complete inspection of the cargo. Certain things will get blocked or delayed, but they will do it in such a capricious way that it will be difficult to justify any interventions from outside, while the actual higher level strategy will basically be economic. After all they don't want to destroy the Taiwanese economy, but they will, if push comes to shove, seek to maximize interdependence-really-dependence with some kind of seasoning of threat control.

The Subject has become kind of confusing or even misleading, but still relevant, though I think for AI more than cars. I guess it depends on how much manufacturing goes to the robots?

But mod parent Funny anyway.

On one hand I want to say "Just so" but on the other hand I'm not sure if "designed" is too strong a term for a solution that can't seem to find its best problems... The third hand and higher hands are for the surprises that are coming?

One thing I've realized about that book is that his glasses are way rosy. But I've had to back burn it for Regime Change by Haberman and Swan. A light read about our current dark mess... (No extensions for books with active requests.)

Best joke of the day, but I was hoping for something about the misnomer. Floss refers to the stringy stuff and there's no string in this story?

But I might have asked my dentist about this if I'd seen the story before my last visit. Pert' shure I'll have forgotten all about it by the next time...

Very productive opening joke. Thanks.

Last paragraph.

We can only hope, but I predict it ain't gonna happen. Sadly.

Currently reading How AI Thinks by Nigel Toon. Some interesting bits and it's going quickly, but not seeing anything much to recommend in it. The intersection of "experts on AI" and "people who write well" remains small, though it may become more difficult to tell if they use AI to help write? I think it's only the deepest experts who can really explain things clearly, whereas AI is mostly focused on sounding deep with hallucinatory seasonings as convenient.

Among the many features that could improve Slashdot... You got me to try to figure out if it's a parody account or a sincere moron.

However with that many digits it must be a fresh identity. I think age should be one of the main features of that imaginary MEPR (Multidimensional Earned Public Reputation) system I used to daydream about. I still feel like there should be a measurable symmetry between reactions to comments and the reputation of the identity that wrote the comment, so that a history of reactions would clarify whether an identity is deliberately or accidentally being funny.

On the one hand I can't even figure out which dimensions of MEPR would assess "sanity", though it does seem clear to me that anyone who is still defending the YOB has at least one loose screw rattling around upstairs. Time to take a break from Claude games and see if any of the AIs know of a website with MEPR?

The angle I was looking for on this story was about the Chinese side, and yours was the "most significant" comment in that direction. (But the Chinese are not limited to batteries and electric cars for priority technologies...) Now about the funny side...

I'm expecting the #YOB to respond by signing a decree banning solar panels. Mostly because he hates California, but his official zero dark thirty excuse will be "Made in China". Or maybe a special economic emergency "justifying" a million percent tariff? (Xi will not be amused, which is likely to have repercussions in Iran and Taiwan, but who's looking forward these days?)

Joke of the week is still under development. Something in the chicken and egg genre. Did the sick YOB make America unwell? But how did the YOB ever become so YUGE, so Orange, and such a Buffoon? America's worst product and not suitable for export, even to such friendly places as Russia or North Korea or Epstein's island.

There must be some funny around here somewhere. I've already seen some worthy stuff, but...

Story needed more funny, but thank you for your humor.

I do think the story would be funnier with Tesla over BMW. Just saw another debranded Tesla. Apparently there is such a thing as shame? At least for some drivers...

Interesting FP branch but it doesn't seem to be going into my interests and it definitely hasn't (so far) seemed relevant to the focus of the actual story. But the story is actually related to a fresh axe I'm trying to whet. Some kind of joke about young people taking over and old people worth remembering?

So my premise is that the kids are going to be different from us. No surprise there, at least not if you've been paying attention. How long? Or I guess all of recorded history might be long enough. I do think we have created some mental crutches that are going to cripple a lot of kids, maybe most kids. Along that line you could argue that the cars are physical crutches that cripple walking skills, regardless of real buttons or none... And not just different, but okay (enough).

But the main point of being young is the flexibility to learn new things. Children are incredible learning machines. Just check the videos. Therefore my theory is that some children will learn extremely successful strategies and be able to use the new tools (both physical and mental) to do amazing things, maybe even solving some of the older problems faster than we can create new problems. (Other days I'm not so optimistic on that balance.) Will there be casualties? Losers at the game of life? Sure, same as there ever was.

However I do think there is a new problem with some of the new sociopaths. We have rich and powerful decision makers who just don't care. Even when they cause hundreds of thousands of people to die from disease or starvation, from ancient problems that we mostly know how to solve, they don't care, apologize, or even acknowledge that those dead people ever had a right to life.

Almost forgot the immortality angle. Best chance for any person over... What age? Let's say over 35 or 40, just for grins. Best chance for immortality in the sense of being "kept around" in GAIvatar form is if the youngsters are kind of idiotic. Maybe the mental crutches have reached the point where most of the kids will lack wisdom and "the system" (whatever that is) will need to keep a few old-timers around just to solve big problems out of the kiddies' scope. Me? I sure wouldn't want to get into a battle of wits or wisdom with Aristotle.

But if it's a blame game we want, then maybe we should look at the last two surviving editors? Some kind of joke about a 50% chance for any story submission now? For a while there I thought Slashdot was down to its last editor...