If you're close sourced and expect to make back trillions of investment in AI infrastructure by charging people usage fees, they're going to use your competitor's free and unencumbered product instead.

Yeah, a fishing pole with a magnet would be a better option at that point. The LEOs can stand behind tall shields or around the corner.

This year is El Nino, which actually generates excessive rainfall in California. Global warming makes the planet wetter on average.

We'll be getting a preview of that with the Strait of Hormuz shut down. That's only a 20% reduction.

How does that help? They'll end up wetting or scratching your face instead.

There's plenty of work that should be done. For example, wild fires cause $400-900 billion in damages every year in the US, yet nobody wants to pay for prevention. Poor road conditions costs $167 billion to $169 billion annually. The lack of affordable child care costs the U.S. economy $172 billion annually.

What's missing is the recognition that unemployed people need to eat anyways, so it's a sunk cost. You can put those people into an after-school program, or send them to the forest and clean up debris, or any of the millions of other things that actually make money in the long term.

You don't need new laws. Machinery occasionally kill people when they malfunction, including construction equipment. A self-driving vehicle is just another machine. The maker could be considered negligent if they knew this could happen, or it already happened multiple times and no action was taken to improve the software.

My guess is that in however millions of miles that they've driven, they must've encountered road construction. They might even have a bug filed to address it. This will be revealed in a court case, showing they had knowledge of the problem, and make them liable for any resulting harm.

They use twice much as electricity, but have 4 times our population. Moreover, a higher portion of their energy mix is electricity, whereas we use more gasoline and natural gas. So they use even less energy than the electricity number might suggest.

We should be asking what the world will look like when they use as much electricity per capita as we do. Personally, I'm just glad it's not going to be all coal.

First of all, they did shoot down several aircraft. They also hit some that were stationed at airbases across the region.

We had air superiority in Afghanistan for 20 years. And Vietnam before that.

Being able to make the enemy's thing on the ground explode can help you win, that's true. But when they have millions of things on the ground, and you only have ten thousand explosions, the math doesn't work. Let's say you take out 10% of their capability, how do you deal with the other 90%?

Moreover, your explosions are not all powerful. Some things will be underground. Other things will be hidden or camouflaged. You're bombs (and the intel that guided them) are not perfect. Your actual kill rate could be only 10%. So taking that into account, if you destroyed 1% of their capabilities, which they will rebuild in 3 months, what did you actually accomplish?

The definition of winning is not landing some hits. It's to achieve your goals. Of course you can be obtuse and argue that exploding things is the goal, but let's be real, the goal should not be a participation trophy. It should be something that benefits your side.

We have not accomplished any of those in Vietnam or Afghanistan, and probably won't in Iran either.

For me it was when China locked down Wuhan, a city of 12 million people.

This level of lead is unavoidable. Crops are grown on the same lead-containing soil (all natural soil contains lead). If you eat plants at all, you'll eat lead. If you eat animals, it's even worse because they bioaccumulate it.

As long as you grow the trees, it's miles better than coal in just about every way. Trees are cheaper but less efficient solar panels. What they take out of the ground ends up mostly as ash, which is not that harmful. Coal ash on the other hand is highly toxic.

Let me guess, you bought a house 30 years ago and it has tripled in price since.

Notice how all of the luxuries have dramatically come down in price, while the cost of essentials like home ownership and healthcare, has become unreachable for many. Appendectomy for example, costed about $400 in the 1950's, which is about 30 days of income. Today it costs about $20,000, which is closer to 80 days of average income.

You're also not being completely honest with some of the characterizations. Lead paint was common, but not because they couldn't afford better or safer paint. They simply thought lead paint was better. We might find out that some of the things we use today, such as non-stick pans, are very harmful as well. It has nothing to do with affordability. A uncoated stainless steel pan is the same price.

What matters is not when we understood the problem scientifically, it's when the public understood the problem and viable solutions exist.

1988 was when most Americans learned about global warming, while solar electricity became consistently cheaper than natural gas and coal plants in most countries around 2020. Before 2020, we signed the Paris Climate Accords, we mandated gas mileage, and we got off coal. Things that were possible given to technology at the time. Then between 2020 and 2024 under Biden, we made huge investments into renewables. So it is 100% Trump's fault that since 2024, we canceled those investments and are moving back towards coal.

There's basic engineering concepts such as "separation of concerns" and "redundancy", which the average Slashdot reader should be aware of.