I ran a server, paid for it, also banned for TOS. Senseless garbage.

I don't bother with romance novels (they're usually about abusers being rewarded for being abusers, and not really my cup of tea even when they aren't), but AI is not great at translation, is terrible at metaphor, and is horrific at writing.

If they're going to use AI for auto-translation, then I think the best thing they can do is pay for the first 30 sessions of therapy needed afterwards.

Over-reliance on an unreliable source is stupid.

Britain has plenty of brilliant minds and is more than capable of building services equal, or superior, to those in the US. It honestly isn't hard - I've worked in the US tech sector and their minds are nowhere near up to scratch. Those that are are overworked, underpaid, and essentially beholden to their employer because the US is a "good ol' boy's club" where executives abuse power and authority on a regular basis. This is not a good way to run a reliable, competent, business.

Hell, give me the seed money and I'll set up an damn cloud provider that can beat the carp out of those in the US. I've been in this business longer than most of the techies working on the US cloud infrastructure but I'm also not blinded by the naive assumptions and political intrigues that have defined the sector thus far.

Also, about two weeks after I first got my Model X, it sprang a coolant leak because somebody didn't fasten something together properly in the back end of the car.

So I wouldn't call it maintenance-free. It is complicated enough that things absolutely can go wrong. They even used to recommend a coolant flush after a year of ownership, though at some point, they stopped doing that.

Until it isn't. One part of that coolant system (some sort of crossover valve or similar) failed on my Model X and damaged the front motor just a couple of weeks before its drivetrain warranty expired (so I only paid for the valve).

No, they don't. They have massively less brake wear than a traditional ICE car. But that's also true of a plug-in hybrid.

You're right about the fuel filter. It doesn't get changed often, but it does get changed.

But EVs have a massively more complex cooling system than ICE cars, because they have to have coolant flowing through multiple motors on opposite ends of the car and through the battery in addition to the HVAC, and you have a heat pump instead of just a simple radiative heat exchanger. And most people do not ever replace the coolant in their ICE cars.

We passed Idiocracy some time back. We're now in a region where satirists and humourists are simply no longer able to function without sounding saner.

True, but to be fair, the scientists, engineers, and scholars are largely fleeing the country, the tech industry is in a massive slump (agriculture is the only sector growing jobs according to the last reliable official figures), and there's a political need to create the impression that the country isn't in a bad way.

I was watching a Twitch stream where Pokimane was addressing her recent visa renewal and some issues travelling back to the US, and she nailed it perfectly. The O1 visa is based upon how much money the US thinks you can make, and they can therefore tax. It's not about artistry or anything like that in the majority of cases, they just want to see you will make money they can collect taxes on. Like most things in the government (especially in this government) it has become entirely transactional.

EVs and hybrids shoudln't have significantly different brake wear. Factored in oil changes, which includes the oil filter. I've never needed to add any other fluids in any car I've owned other than wiper fluid, which an EV also requires. I guess I left out the air filter, but that's such a tiny maintenance cost compared with the other stuff that it almost isn't even worth mentioning.

Belts and transmission do wear out eventually, but that's not an issue unless your car is outside of its warranty period, and an out-of-warranty EV can also have things go wrong. The only straightforward comparison is between two in-warranty cars, because it's impossible to predict the costs for an older vehicle reliably. It might go 300k miles or it might blow a head gasket 10 miles out of warranty.

Jiffy Lube in the Bay Area. And while cars are under warranty, if you don't do an oil change at the recommended interval, it can negatively impact your ability to get engine problems covered under the warranty, so most people do so.