There is a history of what we would now call industrial engineering and human factors going back at least as far as the first written records that shows that working more than a reasonable number of hours per week for any length of time leads to colossal decreases in productivity and quality, not to mention safety. If you have to work 18 hour days for two or even three weeks to get the crop in, yeah, that will work, but trying to keep human beings on this kind of schedule for very long leads to failure, burnout, and health problems up to and including death.

When I got my newest Thinkpad, I immediately took it apart and swapped out the 16GB RAM and 250GB drive it shipped with and replaced them with 96GB RAM and a pair of 4TB drives, which cost me a total of around $600 over the ~$1700 I spent on the laptop. Apple wants US$7200 to get a laptop with 128GB RAM and 8TB of internal storage.

I'll take Lenovo's construction, input devices and global support every day of the week over what Apple offers. I've certainly never had to argue with Lenovo over how I'd prefer to have my notebooks serviced, whereas Apple support seems to think that "Just bring it to the closest Apple Store for a six-hour repair window" is a great answer for everything.

It's not uncommon to find white-box motherboards with a PS/2 port. I've seem them on contemporary AM5 boards from Gigabyte, Asrock and Asus; the Northgate Omnikey I'm typing on is still plugged in to a PS/2 port.

Then you would be wrong. Probably best to recuse yourself from weighing in on this dicsussion.

I'm glad you looked up the real number as I usually see estimates of 65% of USians or something like that living in apartments (zero of which have chargers installed in the parking lot of course).

But what you are saying is that no progress can be made on the other 66% who can install a home charger until absolutely every possible case is covered, which is not out of touch but simply pro-Big Oil propaganda.

Here come the edge cases! Apartments! Towing a trailer from San Diego to Maine. Driving from Little Rock to Boise to return that tool you borrowed but being back in time for work at 0700. Nothing is decided until everything is decided.

Sure, whatever.

Auto industry analysts and enthusiasts alike have a hard time understanding how Stellantis is still in business, particularly now that they have screwed up the Jeep line in North America. I wouldn't take them as indicative of anything.

Beg to differ a bit: while GM made some missteps, particularly in handing the VOLTEC technology over to their PRC subsidiary and dropping it in North America, they took their time to develop a well-engineered and manufacturable EV platform for the next 10-15 years. The problem is their executive team is now living in fear of what a fascist regime could do to them if they don't toe the line and that has given the anti-progress faction at GM operations HQ the chance to counterattack and put anchors on EV marketing and sales. Really a shame and it will cost them dearly over the next 20 years [1].

[1] the anti-progress faction at GM will be well-retired to their backwoods Michigan cabins with their 2,847hp offroad pickup trucks by then

There's only one question in my mind: when the United States wakes up 10 years from now and realizes we have fallen 20 years behind in basic and applied science, EVs, public transportation, and re-creating our built environment to center humans instead of machines (ok, we're already 30 years behind on that last) WHO ARE WE GOING TO BLAME?!? SOMEONE DID THIS TO US - THEY MUST BE PUNISHED!!!

"Electric vehicles are one of those things that are a really good idea in theory but out in the real world they are just simply unworkable. "

EVs are like the apocryphal bumblebee: they don't work in theory, yet millions of people use them every day with no more serious inconvenience than ICE vehicles experience from time to time (e.g. the mythical 'range anxiety' = running out of gas on a back road).

I've had people give me long lectures about the un-usability of EVs while I have driven them across the city, errands, and back on purely electric power in my PHEV.

lol uh you think backup companies only have your data only in one place? This would be like you thinking your favorite pizza place doesn't know what a tomato is

Go learn about raid or something

That's not what's happening. That's never what happens. Any time someone uses an ai chat bot as part of their work, they immediately turn into drooling idiots.

Yeah, who needs a chatbot when you can make unqualified claims as statements of fact. You don't even need citations, such as the ones you're claiming (without citation) they make up. (Which just to be clear, they do, a certain amount, although a casual interpretation of your words suggests you're implying "always".)

Look, there are lots of problems with LLMs, but I find it amusing to watch people launch into "what I say is true, because I said it, and it sounds true to me" when talking about LLMs being sources of inaccurate information.

Do I think 20% of 7% of their trade surplus is a massive blow to their economy? No, I don't, because I can do basic math. The rest of your post is full of the same dumb shit you cusco of, although nobody can accuse you of not being a team player. Enjoy the ride, I guess.

"This is Chinese propaganda"

Do a quick self-learn. The amount of solar panels China was selling to the US before exports was only around 20% of their total solar module exports. Their total solar exports are only about 7% of their total intl trade surplus. They sell as much capacity to Europe in a year as the US has installed *total, nationally*.

I'm not arguing they don't care about loss of business to the US, obviously it impacts them.

But watching the US self-elect to fall farther behind, checking of boxes down a veritable "how to" list of losing US hegemony is far more valuable to them.

In that sense - maybe it is propaganda, but reverse psychology style, because you're doing the lord's work for them.