If only voters would get this worked up about corruption.

People are also ignoring the benefits. Data centers don't bring a lot of jobs after construction is complete, but they can generate a lot of tax revenues for counties and cities. Huge amounts of money that can be a real game-changer for the local budgets, and could be very beneficial for the locals. By itself that's not a reason to accept them, but it should be part of the overall calculation, and the net cost/benefit of the projects should be reasonably and fairly evaluated, and negotiated.

But this isn't what's happening.

The thumb wheels on the steering wheel do that. You do have to use the touch screen to put it in "mirror adjust" mode, but really that's something you only do once. Set up your driver profile, set your mirrors, then the car just always changes them to your settings.

I find the auto wiper works pretty well... it is important to keep the windshield fairly clean, but I like to do that anyway.

Yeah, the Model 3/Y handles are weird. The S/X handles are pretty nice. In theory the fact that they're motorized could make them a maintenance problem. In practice, little electric motors are extremely reliable. There was a problem with the wiring harness getting fatigued and breaking about 10 years ago, but that's been fixed.

Those are also on the thumb wheels on the steering wheel.

Before I came up with my current system I spent a lot of time looking into actuators for windows. They exist but they're expensive, often bulky and look like a lot of work to install and maintain. Then it occurred to me that I already have a whole-house fan (HVAC system)... if I could just get it to draw from outside rather than from the air returns. That part woks great and I think it does give me a pretty good single point of control. The only problem is that the house is pretty tight so I also needed a way to create some negative pressure, hence the laundry room to attic fan. I think that's still my airflow bottleneck.

As for whether I've crunched the numbers.... no, I haven't. And since I installed solar last year it maybe doesn't even matter any more? Throughout most of the summer I'm actually giving away nearly a MWh per month of electricity even after running house, A/C, car, steam shower, etc. So it's really more of a game to me than a serious attempt to save money. That said, I do watch my energy consumption closely (game, right?) and running the fans consumes maybe 400W. Overnight that's about 3.2 kWh. Meanwhile, my AC draws 4 kW, so if my AC kicks on for 45 minutes it consumes as much as the passive system does all night. And for that, the passive system cools the house by ~10F degrees while the AC will cool it by about 2F, which would indicate 5X efficiency improvement. But even that doesn't fully capture it, because the AC will cool the *air* by 2F while the passive system will cool the house and also much of the thermal mass, so it's actually moving quite a bit more heat out than the thermostat temperatures would indicate.

So, yeah, an order of magnitude more efficient seems about right. When outside air cools down at night!

I've also been thinking about building something for my shop. It's an uninsulated pole barn (30' wide x 40' long x 25' high) which gets quite hot in the summer and quite cold in the winter. I think some automated fans to exploit day/night temperature variations could probably move the average interior temperature several degrees closer to comfortable, year round. Even better if I insulate it.

I think that's fair, although it feels like the tone has gotten harsher.

Definitely. I'm actually already seeing a little of that in late August. Nights are getting down to ~62F, which is managing to cool the house to the high 60s. I'm wondering if I could get a higher-volume fan for the laundry room to increase the air flow... I'm sure that by the end of September we'll have nights in the 50s but days will still often reach the mid-80s. That's when another benefit of having it automated kicks in. If I were just opening a bunch of windows before going to bed, there would be a period of time when the house got too cold at night. With the automated system, when the house gets to 62F it turns the fans off.

Of course, as we get into winter, I pop the laundry room fan out and fill the gap with an insulated pillow of the type they sell for filling swamp cooler vents.

Speaking of swamp coolers... those have historically been fairly effective in Utah, thanks to the dry air. My first house had just a swamp cooler and it was honestly fine. I've actually thought that it might make sense to have all three: passive cooling, swamp cooler and central air. With a smart system deciding which to use when. You don't want to use the swamp cooler a lot on days when the A/C might need to run, because it raises interior humidity, which the A/C then spends a lot of effort extracting. Maybe... have to consider the cost of buying and installing the swamp cooler.

modern safety features and modern fuel economy.

OK that may mean a 2020s car with a 1970s user interface. Minus the 8-track, I don't need that.

Multiple places in the USA. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

Back in the early days of cable, I sometimes switched to dialup because of high packet loss on the cable connection. The dialup might have been slow but it was as solid as a rock.

A decade earlier I would sometimes throttle my modem to a slower speed for similar reasons.

... for slower technologies!

It's possible. My prediction is that they're not going to find any evidence of collusion, that all of the DRAM manufacturers simultaneously shifted production to AI chips in response to clear market demand, not because of any agreement.

Yes, there was collusive price fixing 25 years ago, but the companies got slapped pretty hard for it -- not just cash fines but prison sentences for executives. I think that prior experience makes it less likely that they're colluding now, not more likely. Once burned twice shy.

One correction: It didn't have anything to do with discovery. Discovery was complete when the judge put the trial on hold to allow the deal to close. What happened was that Musk realized that proceeding with the trial was dumb because he was going to lose and be forced to complete the transaction regardless, and possibly on worse terms than he could get by just doing it. Avoiding the public spectacle of the trial was also a consideration, I'm sure, but not discovery... 10 days before trial discovery is already done.

https://www.wired.com/story/fl... (may be paywalled by the time you read this).

One person's "OMGTHATSSOSTUPIDYOUAREANIDIOTIFYOUTHINKTHAT" is another person's "hmm, I haven't thought of things that way, tell me more about what you think so I can contemplate it."

We need more people in the second group.

That's too strong. Appeasement does work sometimes... when it works we usually call it "compromise" or something similar, though. There's a book "Appeasement in International Politics" that examines a large number of cases where it worked and where it didn't. The author lays out a number of criteria that influence whether it works.:

1. When the opponents aims are limited and grievance-based.
2. When the concession addresses the grievance
3. When the conceding party is strong, so the concession is a choice
4. When concessions are reciprocal and limited.

That said, Trump's aims are never limited. That has become clear. It wasn't necessarily obvious that was the case early on, though.

Maybe? There are some pretty good arguments that it did pan out in 1939. It didn't prevent the war, but it gave the British time to build out radar coverage and ramp up production of hurricanes and spitfires. Britain may actually have been better off going to war in 1940 than they would have in 1939, so appeasement may well have provided a useful delay.

I don't know how IPOs work in China but if this happened in the US, it would indicate the IPO price was set way too low.

The idea "IPO spike" is about 0 or maybe a little bit above 0.

If it drops on the first day that's obviously bad.

If it's goes up it means the company left money on the table. Sometimes its good to leave a little money on the table to give the IPO underwriters an others a reason to stay excited about your company.