The actual reality.

The reason why their cars don't last is the reason why their sales are high. They're selling cheap cars that last less than a decade in normal use, and then they get to sell another new car.

Cheaper Chinese models intended for domestic market often don't even have galvanic rust protection. They become rust buckets in just a few years in wet regions. And almost all of PRC's rich areas are in fact wet.

But even for more expensive models, UV exposure makes plastic come apart after a few years, and breakages begin around the same time. You're supposed to buy a new one at this point. In PRC, there's a reason why there are new EVs and older ICE cars, but there are almost no old EVs other than Teslas. They don't last, because they're not supposed to last. They're supposed to break down and look like shit after a few years, so you get a new one.

I don't think you want to make any claims about UK trains being "proper".

At least not until you try them out.

This is on the level of saying that "US projects housing is really nice for aspiring 19 year old white college girls to live in". Don't say this nonsense until you see what you're talking about.

Why would a manufacturer's device need a trusted introducer to communicate with that same manufacturer? Vizio can be its own CA. There's no intermediary between themself and themself.

The irony is that this reveals you to be the "old internet user" who's used to "people on the internet" being different from "people I know in real life".

For younger internet users, there is little difference. Internet is where they interact with schoolmates, work colleagues, friends, teammates, etc. They see people like you and I as "these weird boomers who think internet isn't full of real people".

Meanwhile interest based groups are reasonably localized. I know something like 75-80% of people in most of those, and have met them face to face at least once. Same goes for those massive snapchat/whasapp/discord/etc groups. While some are international, for most of the young people these have in fact replaced bars, gentlemen's clubs, book reading circles, bowling alleys, etc social gatherings. They're the normal place where they socialize with friends and acquaintances now. And these old ones are slowly withering and dying as youngsters don't see a reason to go to a bar to meet up with friends any more.

What happened to "AI factories"?

Also, it would seem that they have overhired on PR people, if they're this desperate for something to do.

Small "we focus on interest X, we retain with comment sections and we monetize through ads" websites got killed a decade ago by facebook that centralized that model to their site. If you want to do basket weaving or local HEMA re-enactment group or anything in between in your area, your state, your nation, etc, there's a facebook group for that now. That is vastly superior in connecting people and generating good articles that aforementioned websites ever were, which is why facebook won.

Then reddit killed the actual forums in the exact same way. It's both better and more convenient to have a centralized depository for everything, with common interface and rule set from perspective of 95% of users (I pulled that number out of my ass, but you know exactly what I mean).

What's left is mostly various wikis, and similar "we provide information" websites. Those are getting hammered by AI being able to answer faster and better than having to go through a wiki for a few minutes for that specific interest you're looking for. This is notably why google is losing profitability. It's bread and butter was monetizing the search that found those sites, and then monetizing their ad stream through google ads that were common on such sites. Today, google's AI search is better at answering those questions (not to mention just asking questions of other popular models), but on top of that if your AI answer to the question being asked is on point and answers the question user is searching the answer for... you don't get to monetize it nearly as well.

But the hilarity is that internet is more alive than ever. It has more actual users than ever, as older generations who don't use it are dying out, while newer generations basically live their entire lives on the internet the way older ones couldn't even imagine. But with people being more and more able to specifically select for their more and more specialized and narrow interests, those of us used to much broader communities with broader interests are left with a feeling that everyone is gone.

Meanwhile every football guy and every party girl is in fifty snapchat/whatsapp/discord/etc groups that have to be muted because otherwise the phone wouldn't stop going off with notifications from other people in those groups talking.

From a 1960s comedy:

Interviewer: "Have you ever had any experience running a high-speed digital electronic computer?"

Virgil: "Yes, I have."

Interviewer: "Where?"

Virgil: "My aunt has one."

It was an absolutely absurd thing to say in 1967, but in 2026 the joke is about as dated as anything can be. I wonder if young people today even get it.

I don't know when you went larval, but your low uid suggests it was probably a very long time ago. I speculate that a few decades back, a type of tool once thought to be for business (which IBM had earlier predicted had a worldwide market size of about a half dozen) somehow fell into your hands, and you fell in love at a personal level. No? Did I guess right?

In a lot of industries, people learn about tech at work first, and then maybe adopt it personally. But with computers, at least for GenX-and-later, it mostly worked in the reverse: you get a personal computer and master it, and then when you're 18 you show up at a business totally loaded with years of experience and skills.

Why? Because unlike Bessemer converters or bucket wheel excavators or magnetic resonance imaging machines, computers are cheap. All the "capital" (if you can even honestly call it that) you need is just a few thousand dollars at most, maybe even just a few hundred.

The way things have worked in the last few decades (I'd think especially for old Slashdotters) is that the "professional" tool was already very familiar long before you got the job where you work with it. And anything involving cheap electronics is going to remain like that. Unless it's just totally illegal, there's no way millions of people aren't going to have it and use it personally.

Just ban them all in public, except perhaps for people with special needs (who could wear e.g. bright red ones with polkadots -- that nobody else wants to).

All the crap I wrote above was just to say: special needs is everybody. Don't hop in your time machine and tell 1979-me that I can't use a computer, or I'll become a very angry kid, and by 1984 I would consider it an inexcusable Act of War.

Now if you wanna mandate wearable displays be bright red with polka dots, you might get away with that. But don't be surprised if you end up changing fashion itself. Wearable displays don't really appeal to me yet (they haven't been commoditized where I can choose from many manufacturers, all of whose product can run the same defacto-standardized Free Software, just like how an x86 motherboard can) but maybe some day the market will produce a wearable display that I would be willing to use.

If it's bright red with polka dots, then I just might end up losing the black-band-shirt-and-jeans look, and start dressing like the love-spawn of Liberace and Quetzalcoatl, just so my glasses match the rest of me.

Google's fundamentals are web ads on its search.

AI search is more relevant and popular than ever, whereas web search results are less and less so. And AI search is proving to be less monetizable than web search.

Ergo, fundamentals have changed. More monetizable search is slowly getting deprecated, whereas less monetizable one is replacing it everywhere.

searches made through its AI Mode generate less revenue than traditional search

Have you thought about disabling AI Mode and returning customers to traditional search? It'll not only make you more money, but result in happier users too. Everyone-except-Nvidia wins.

This seems to be a part of the android's ios-ification.

Block installing unsigned APKs, and likely eventually all APKs by users entirely. Then when no one can install alternative app stores from APKs any more, and anti-monopoly people come knocking, have this "program" to show them.

Smart.

Remember when we were all techno-optimists who thought we would end up with 401Ms and even 401Gs? We're as dumb as the flying-car believers.

He was here to save our asses. We should have shown a little gratitude.

I love the idea of Facebook money being used to teach kids how to block advertisements. $25B should be enough to teach every single kid in New Mexico how to do it, going forward forever, as a permanent addition to public school curriculum.

I was going to suggest that maybe we could even use a tiny portion of the money to establish a state DNS server that blackholes the adservers the way pi-hole does. Then kids stuck running proprietary "apps," instead of accessing things through their Manifest-V2-compatible web browser, wouldn't have to install their own DNS server.

But then I realized the aforementioned ad-blocking curriculum ought to have resulted in every kid building their own pi-hole at school anyway, so a state pi-hole is unnecessary.

Only if you upgrade to goldtooth.

So every kid needs to have a brokerage account now?

No, each kid needs to get an X ("The Everything App") account.