The restrictions are a mix of reasonable nuisance management and paranoia about who is flying drones, what they can do, and chain of custody.

Beijing proper is a city with a population density of over 21,000 / km^2 -- so you can imagine the chaos if any tech enthusiast resident could fly a drone without a permit. Except for a couple of free zones in the outer boroughs, New York City restricts drone launcing and landings within the city to flights with a permit and flight plan, because otherwise the sky would be black with drones. Many cities -- both red and blue -- have zone restrictions for drone flights, and those currently hosting World Cup matches have tightened them for the duration of the tournament.

Loss leader is a strategy of using the power of capital to win market share. Instead of innovation, production, or hard work to produce a better product or better value for the consumer. Winning on your own merits hasn't been part of our economic system as far as I know. (while China claims to be communist, they readily participate in the same global market as everyone else)

Punished for not being fully on board with building killbots for the government. Hesitation is treason.

BTW, AI is a godsend for ALS patients. Even with an eye tracker, your writing throughput is low / tiring compared to typing, and of course you can't do anything that requires physical activity (painting, playing an instrument, speaking, etc). AI tools help fill the gaps.

Did *she* want to die? Did *she* want to be "released"?

Did she have an eye tracker, to allow her to communicate naturally?

Motor neurons dying != brain control of motor neurons dies.

Anyway, you don't need a brain-computer interface for an ALS patient to work. I have a friend in Finland with ALS who works as a consultant on safety for a nuclear reactor startup (he was a nuclear safety engineer before becoming paralyzed). All it takes is an eye tracker.

The biggest problem is the typically short and unpredictable lives of ALS patients. He has lived abnormally long (I think something like 13 years now), but a large part of that is due to him thinking like a nuclear safety engineer (backup on backup on backup, training his nurses to have zero tolerance for error, etc), and still has a close call like once per year or so, and I regularly worry when I don't see him online in a while that something happened that killed him. A tube comes off a life support system. A nurse forgetting to reconnect something. A mucus plug in his airways. Etc. ALS patients' lives are fragile. He does CAD design for parts on his computer (it's too hard to do it with the mouse using the eye tracker, so he designs the shapes programmatically) and orders them 3d printed to correct any deficiencies he finds in his support systems.

ALS patients also have to constantly fight the medical system. Even in a place like Finland that will actually do long-term care for ALS patients (which is very expensive), it shows that it would be much more convenient for them if those danged ALS patients would choose to die (and there's often pressure put on them to do so). One of my friend's goals is to outlive a doctor who told him he would only live a year or two put a lot of effort into getting him to choose death. It was a battle to get long-term ventilator care. It was an even bigger battle to get to use a cough machine and to be able to control the settings on it; without regular, meaningful cough support, your lungs fill with mucus, and you'll probably eventually die of a mucus plug, pneumonia, or whatnot.

By contrast, ALS patients today can actually live a decent life using eye trackers. It's not like before when you had to tediously spell out things one character at a time to a helper holding an E-tran frame. Given that 1 in 500 people will get ALS at some point in their life, we really should be allocating a lot more money toward researching cures, even if purely from a cost-saving perspective.

(One final note: if anyone here starts getting peripheral weakness and worries its ALS: your instinct will be to exercise more. Do just the opposite. If your peripheral neurons are dying, the last thing they need is more work. ALS overwhelmingly strikes active people - one researcher I was reading noted that in her entire career, she's never met a couch potato who got ALS. Take it easy, see a doctor immediately, and if it is ALS, start preparing early, but know that you do not have to be forced to choose to die, so long as you can get care. You can live a decent, productive life if you choose to).

Congressional Insider Trading, is now a fucking job perk. Instead of Common F. Sense realizing how horrifically harmful that can be to the key market in US Capitalism and condemning it immediately it was defended, and is now unofficially known as Pelosis Law.

Gambling, a known and recognized concept that can easily create horrific addiction, got re-branded into "speculative markets". Which grew into a massive industry now in business with professional sports. Instead of Common F. Sense remembering why bookies are still rotting away in Federal prisons, we'll end up trading Robux as a fucking fiat currency because GenBet suddenly needs a re-defined retirement plan.

OnlyFans took prostituting oneself to the next level, normalizing amateur porn as some kind of logical career stepping stone for 17-year old social media hottie attention whores turning actual whores. Instead of Common F. Sense remembering the many reasons the worlds oldest profession never really went mainstream, 21st Century liberalism re-branded it into "modern" feminism which demanded All D. Accountability be sacrificed by a divorce court firing squad in the endless pursuit of Oprah-approved hypergamy happiness, making Fathers rare creatures. With disastrous results.

This might be how the world assumes it "works", but much like girl math it often doesn't add up. This is how stock market crashes happen. Again. This is how Recessions happen. Again.

After picking out the VIN # I want, I'll find my local group of stealership victims. I'll beat them up with a phone call saying "Me Want", and make them fight over the same car for a week or two. Once I've softened the price up a bit, I'll pick a victim and walk in at 9AM sharp with a popcorn machine under my arm, within 36 hours of their fiscal quarter end.

I don't get my ass or credit score out of bed for less than 12 hours of pre-approved stealership entertainment, at no less than 10% below MSRP. Sorry, but they're gonna learn one way or another that Fail, is never Too Big. If the status quo doesn't change, it's going to be blowout pricing when the inevitable liquidation happens. I've watched the same new car inventory rot on the same lot for over a year now. And it's everywhere you look. The main profit margin in a stealership is service. They now struggle to even keep mechanics employed in service bays due to flat-rate greed and too much warranty/recall work being underpaid.

Consumers should avoid at all costs being in a rush to buy a car. Even if you are, don't ever admit it. Ever. Emotions alone, will add 10% to the price. Desperation adds 20. Then depreciation takes off 30% within 6 months, reminding wallets of the actual value in reality. On top of what insurance will claim it's worth after a wreck. Until they drop new car prices more, we may be an era of Buy Used for a while. Few new car prices make sense at any level of reliability, which is also being enshittified rather quickly (The hell, Toyota. No shit we're looking at you.)

Did the UAW go a stitch too far when trying to negotiate the line workers minimum wage based on But-The-CEO-Makes-TOO-MUCH-MOAR-than-Me logic? Uhhh, guess we'll see once the manufacturing plants starts taking summer breaks like elementary kids do. Due to lack of demand for an overpriced re-negotiated $40K product made of plastic designed to now break before the 8-year car mortgage ends.

At some point a more sane century-old model of selling cars, might actually return. Along with what a car can be. KISS simple and functional.

Were the X-Wing and millennium falcon kits out by the late seventies? For some reason I thought we didn't get those until the 80s. Although I never really built kits until I got into gunpla. I guess I did do a few Macross kits back in the day. I seem to remember the Star wars kids being kind of pricey. At least initially

We lose money on every sale, but make up for it in volume.

Capitalism doesn't care where the money comes from, government or not

How much of anti-virus, was attacked with remotely controlled C&C features, 20+ years ago?

Perhaps unnecessary complexity, is the real infection here.

Democrats also managed to abuse many American airline companies to fly illegal immigrants around the country in the dead of night. With hardly a news story from the mainstream media about it.

Democrats also managed to put a man suffering from dementia in the White House. With an MSM in full denial. For years.

SHOCKING what leftist corruption can get away with when they have bought the mainstrearn media, now isn’t it? Makes the honest journalism challenge presented in Good Morning, Vietnam look fucking tame by comparison.

No shit Obama did literally more than Trump to fight against illegal immigration with little backlash. It’s easy with media in your back pocket. It’s also easy to see the childish hypocrisy.

I walk into a dealership with check in hand. Pre-approved by my own credit union. It’s the easiest way to avoid the finance department altogether. Makes it easy to know what you can afford too.

Last two cars I bought I got the test drives and research done early. Contacted five dealers in my local area, gave them the VIN # of the car I wanted and said , “Don’t call me until you have your best price.” When they did, I’d respond with ”Not bad. Now lower it $500 more, because your competitor just did.” and then immediately hang up. They work for me. I don’t work for them. After weeks of dealerships fighting over the same car sale, you at least have a reasonable idea of just how low a price can get. Learned long ago the key is to never be in a hurry to buy a car. Ever.

No-haggle dealership models have been around for decades. Never really got that popular for good reason. Far too much profit and competition not to negotiate.

Right now the problem isn’t sales tactics. It’s insane prices. Thankfully I don’t need a car, so I just troll my local dealership walking the lot prices every 6 months to get a good laugh. The bankruptcy sales, are gonna be wild.

The AI bubble, couldn’t be more fucking obvious when the RAM manufacturing barrier to entry is “we can’t risk it, because bubbles..”