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Comment Re:No subsidy. (Score 1) 141

I'm curious, but suspicious. Tesla Y is the top selling car model by a large margin inside China, and UK reviews I've read of Chinese EV imports has made them sound underwhelming. UK reviews make them sound nowhere near as good as a Tesla, although decently priced.

But if you could post what model you're talking about, and what the cost of that car is vs. a Model Y in your home market, that might be interesting!

Comment Re:No subsidy. (Score 3, Informative) 141

Ultimately the Tesla 3 or Y cost less than median value new car, Nissan Leafs are cheaper than that, and compliance cars like the eGolf or the eFiat 500 were (once you consider the lower maintenance/fueling) the cheapest new cars you could buy.

Electric cars are the future, whether that happens in 5 years or 20. I think the subsidy helped get the industry started and smoothed the 1st stage of adoption, which was always going to be rocky. Despite my issues with Elon Musk, ultimately I think it's a good thing that the world's #1 largest car company by capitalization and world's top selling car (along with Rav4 and Corolla) is from an American company, and the subsides made it possible. But of course they were temporary, and while personally I think they should have been phased out, they were always going to be a temporary measure.

Comment No subsidy. (Score 4, Interesting) 141

Before September 2025, the government was throwing in $7,500, and maybe your state government was kicking in a few thousand extra, and then the local utility maybe was subsidizing your charger. So your $45k Tesla was effectively selling for $35k. Of course nobody is going to buy a used Tesla for $33k when a new one is selling for $35k, but the depreciation was still being taken as if a $45k vehicle was selling for cheap. What we're seeing isn't as much a change in demand for EVs, as much as seeing that removing government subsidies has normalized the used car market.

I remember buying an egolf back in 2015, I paid like $21k after subsidies. This was a good price, but that basic value held true for a number of years. Used price was great, for many years I could have sold it for $15k+, and it even went over $21k during 2022 due to supply side issues. But articles talking about used value mentioned that the egolf used value had tanked, going for $37k to $18k. But really that was a 10% drop, because if it went down a normal 30% or whatever you'd literally be buying a used car for more than you would spend on a new one!

The numbers are often taken from sticker price (the article itself doesn't discuss how it got its numbers). But of course many cars sell for under sticker price...or in 2022, during supply chain shortages, were actually selling for $5,000 above sticker price. Now that we're mostly over the supply chain issues, these cars are going to see an additional $5,000 drop in used value. But it seems statistically unuseful to account for a one-time extraordinary industry issue.

Comment Re:Did they have 2 complete crews? (Score 2) 70

They already have a planned rotation. There will be two crews, rotating every four hours. This isn't unlike existing long-haul flights, except that instead of the crews rotating at the same time, they will be on two-hour offsets. One pilot will stay for the first four hours, the other for the first two hours. A replacement will swap in at two hours and stay through the sixth hour, and then the other will swap at four hours and stay through the eighth hour, and so on. Qantas said that this will apply to all flights of 20 hours or more.

Comment Re:This is the most obvious use for thes glasses (Score 1) 31

PIckup artists are the most obvious use case?

I would think it's people recording themselves doing activities who don't have a hand free to take out their phone. Maybe athletics and athletes: bikers, climbers, skiers, or really anything.

Or people taking lazy travel videos: just walking through an interesting area.

Comment some fun quotes (Score 5, Funny) 62

The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a “mouse.” There is no evidence that people want to use these things. — John C. Dvorak, 1984

  Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it’s smart it will call the iPhone a ‘reference design’ and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else’s marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures Otherwise I’d advise people to cover their eyes. You are not going to like what you’ll see. — John C. Dvorak, 2007

  iPhone which doesn’t look, I mean to me, I’m looking at this thing and I think it’s kind of trending against, you know, what’s really going, what people are really liking on, in these phones nowadays, which are those little keypads. I mean, the Blackjack from Samsung, the Blackberry, obviously, you know kind of pushes this thing, the Palm, all these And I guess some of these stocks went down on the Apple announcement, thinking that Apple could do no wrong, but I think Apple can do wrong and I think this is it. — John C. Dvorak, 2007

  The Apple iPad is not going to be the company’s next runaway best seller. — John C. Dvorak, 2010

  Within the decade, Microsoft should have a minimum of 300 stores. They should do as well as the Apple Stores. — John C. Dvorak, 2012

Comment Re:Satan and the Stock Market. (Score 1) 108

Potentially, but not necessarily more than they're going to spend on the work.

Maybe Apple sees it as just the right thing to do. Apple has access to enormous volumes of data that they could monetize if they wanted, but they don't. They jumped through a bunch of hoops to make Lockdown Mode that, if the user screws it up, means that everything is lost. They are unlikely to be making money on that, especially since it limits some app installations and functionality, and they're not going to get fined by anyone for not having it. There is, in fact, a real risk that someone is going to fine them for being unable to recover the data.

Comment Re:Satan and the Stock Market. (Score 3, Insightful) 108

It holds a legal and fiduciary duty to make more money. By every fuck-you-and-me means necessary.

It holds a legal and fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of its shareholders. Tim Cook rather famously told off an Apple shareholder who asked him to commit to pursuing only programs that would be profitable, saying, "When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don't consider the bloody ROI."

That's just one small example by a powerful CEO after a shareholder initiative was shot down 98-2, but most companies spend money on things that reduce profits or are not profitable. Look at the sprawling HQs with fancy buildings that are set up by so many companies when they could have gone with simple brutalist architecture. There are companies that pay well because it promotes long-term stability even at the expense of short-term profits.

I get that these big companies don't deserve blind trust, but understanding what their obligations are is much more helpful than oversimplifications.

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