Right, the economist refer to this as "externality". Fossil fuels aren't cheap, if you factor in the costs that people using them transfer to third parties. Theoretically, if the true cost of using fossil fuels were factored into every pound of coal or gallon of gasoline consumed, then we would use *exactly the right amount* of fossil fuels. Probably not zero, but not as much as we do when we pretend pollution isn't a cost.

Another issue is the lack of affordable public charging. Especially here in Europe with our sky high petrol excise, an EV might be a bit more expensive to purchase but a lot cheaper to run than an IC car. If you can charge at home, that is. Charging at a public charger can be twice as expensive, and if you're forced to use a fast charger it's even more. That changes the economics of EVs rather a lot.

I hope that doesn't mean the modern game system experience.
80s console: Turn on, 5 seconds later the game is ready to play.
Modern gaming conveniences: Turn on, wait 30 minutes for the console to patch, then another 30 while the game pulls in a 1 GB update.

The EIAJ standard barrel jacks (usually yellow tipped) are designed to fit only in the corresponding size socket and in none of the other sizes. Each size is for a specific voltage range, the different plugs are supposed to save you from accidentally over-volting your devices.

Reset copyright to 14 years, one time renewable for another 14 for a hefty fee, worth it for blockbusters and bestsellers, not for anything else. And no more "moral rights"; derivative works should always be allowed if they are not blatant copies. If some Star Wars or Harry Potter fanfic book or movie is shitty, then the market will take care of that. And if is not shitty but good, then the public will be well served with new content they will enjoy. That was the purpose of copyright, once. Let's make it so again.

While major media companies are wiping their arse with the social contract that is copyright, I do not feel one tiny bit of obligation to uphold my end of it, and I will turn to piracy when and where I can. Screw them.

That's what they've done. Or rather they've bought the politicians who create the regulatory frameworks. But if people woke up and realized they've been frog-boiled into giving away their privacy, then that would be prohibitively expensive.

I essentially made the argument that if we want capitalism to work the way we were taught in civics class it is supposed to, companies must be forced by regulation not to undermine the basic assumptions that lead to efficient operation of the free market.

I am neither here nor there on a basic income. I think it depends on circumstances, which of course are changing as more and more labor -- including routine mental labor -- is being automated. We are eventually headed to a world of unprecedented productive capacity and yet very little need for labor, but we aren't there yet.

The only thing that's getting pegged are the people who buy them. This incident, and the crash or loss-of-peg of other stablecoins (Luna, Terra, USDe, Tether, Titan) shows that these things are only weakly attached to the underlying currency they are supposed to be pegged to.

Though some central banks have plans to issue stablecoins of their own, which will probably be actually stable.

Anybody who is pushing AI services, particularly *free* AI services, is hoping to mine your data, use it to target you for marketing, and use the service to steer you towards opaque business relationships they will profit from and you will find it complicated and inconvenient to extricate yourself from.

The question is -- ideas that are bad for *who*? This may be a very bad idea for you and me, but it is a very good idea for Microsoft, especially as, like their online services, they will make money off of us and it will be very inconvenient for us to opt out.

In civics-lesson style capitalism, which I'm all in favor of, companies compete to provide things for us that we want and we, armed with information about their products, services and prices, either choose to give them our business or to give our business to a competitor.

Not to say that stuff doesn't *ever* happen, but it's really hard to make a buck as a business that way. So what sufficiently large or well-placed businesses do is earn money *other* ways, by entangling consumers in business relationships that are opaque and which they don't have control over, may not even be fully aware they're signing on to, and which are complicated and awkward to extricate themselves from. In other words a well placed company, like Microsoft or Google or Facebook, will constantly be looking at ways to make money outside the rigorous demands of free market economics.

AIs are getting a lot better. The current generation of "AI" support I get on the phone or an online chat can barely make sense of my question, usually responds with "can you word that in a different way to help me understand". I'm already happy if they understand the phrase "I would like to talk to a person" and put me through to one, and that's a pretty low bar. But the latest AI support systems that are beginning to be rolled out are surprisingly helpful.

The newer ones promise something new: they can act as 1st and 2nd line of support at the same time, solving more complex issues without having to kick it up the support chain. That's probably why SalesForce claim such a large reduction in ticket resolution time. And offering a similar service with human support staff would probably be way too expensive.

It wouldn't be cost-effective in China either were it not for state support.

There is no doubt that global free trade in commodities, in the absence of any government support, would be the most economically efficient thing to have. But China -- probably correctly -- identifies dependency on foreign supply chains for critical materials as a *security* issue. So they have indirect and direct subsidies, as well as state owned enterprises that operate on thin or even negative profit margins.

Since China does this kind of support on a scale nobody else does, China produces more rare earths than any other country, even though it is not particularly well endowed with deposits. This solves China's security problem with the reliability of the supply, but creates a security problem for other countries.

China thinks like Japan did before WW2, like empire building European countries did in the 1800s. Control over resources is a national security weapon, both for defense and offense.

The behavioral model you have isn't supported by data. When you raise the standard of living and food security of population, the fertility rate goes down. When you have nothing, children are economic assets whose labor can support the family. It's not a great option, but some people live in conditions where there are no good options.

I don't know what what means?

One example is AlphaFold an AI program which predicts folded protein structures "with near experimental accuracy" from amino acid base sequences. This ability is going to have a huge impact on many practical problems like pharmaceutical development, agricultural science, and engineering custom proteins. For example, since the human genome has been long since sequenced, the program means we now, with a fairly high degree of certainty, know what all the protein coding sequences make.

I'd say that's a pretty significant result.

If you work in technology long enough, you see this over and over. Every time something new comes along, it's actual usefulness gets buried in the breathless media response by a mountain of bullshit. But that doesn't mean the uses aren't real.