Thanks for the attempt, but all I see are “the 17 sustainable development goals” where the Trump administration wants to take us backwards

Hopefully I’m just being us-centric and I understand our current issues may be partly obscured by long term trends and global statistics. However we also have an outsized effect on the world and those are some of the first places cut or corrupted, changed from achievements to points of instigation

Sometimes you can be a little self-centered. While climate change is overwhelming, a huge catastrophe for society and humanity’s future, how much will it directly affect you? Most of us will really only see more of the same: more severe and unstable weather, modified seasons, times where food and power are more expensive. You can handle that.

Sometimes it’s ok not to think too much about the statistics telling the bigger story or the news detailing the more extreme effects. As long as you know they exist

What can you do about the things that directly affect you? What can you do about the things in your control?

Right, and this is just one of those times where the scab was itchy so we scratched it off. We re-opened the gouge and are bleeding again. The question is whether the healing is still happening, with a little backtracking, or whether we’re exposing ourselves to gangrene

They’re starting with existing vehicles and safety drivers. I don’t believe the robotics are coming off the lines yet

At my local commuter rail station the entrance to the parking lot is immediately next to the track. It’s easily within margin of error for GPS and if you’re only focusing immediately in front of you the pavement at the entrance probably look similar.

There are plenty of cues so don’t rolled shouldn’t be fooled but perhaps FSD wouldn’t pay attention to them since it’s a bit of an outlier.

That being said, I almost got my Subaru stuck once because an ATV trail looked like the dirt road to a campsite from the GPS, and I missed any cues there may have been

They supposedly also have a threshold, like ten seconds - if FSD cuts out less than that threshold before the accident, it’s still FSD’s fault

They promote it in ways that people sometimes trust it too much …. But in particular when releasing telemetry I do t remember tha ever being an accusation

I mean …… Tesla self driving allegedly did this three times in three years but we don’t yet have public data to verify that’s what happened nor do we in any way compare it to what human drivers do.

Although one of the many ways I think I’m an above average driver (just like everyone else) is that people do a lot of stupid things at railroad crossings and I never would

At the same time, we allow bigger wood framed buildings than most places, so maybe there’s good reason.

—- anecdote time: a few years ago my town started allowing wood framed buildings up to 6 floors, from the previous 5. Sure enough, the first one burned down (it wasn’t finished so no one was yet living there to get hurt). Of course it was defended by people claiming technology fixes that - if the smoke alarms were installed, people would have had time to get out. We’re already making a huge concession in people’s lives so the builder can profit more, and now you also want to make it harder to escape?

I’ve read this claim before - the requirement for two ways out is building/Fire code.

The claim that it makes a huge difference in the number of apartments doesn’t seem credible, nor has any included sufficient evidence that only one way out is sufficient.

Usually one of the counter-arguments is building material. Maybe if you’re building with stone and concrete, that’s less flammable than wood. However even then every wall has paint and every room has furniture

Jokes on them: I watch videos on my tablet. There’s no way that’s spying on me, right? Right?

I believe paying taxes is a fair tradeoff for living in a society. My concerns are that those taxes be applied fairly, even if that impacts me, and that they be used to improve society for its people, even if it costs me more.

I know people who are elderly or have lower income, I have kids in college, I have been between jobs in parts of my career, I’ve had major medical emergencies in my family …. And I have the empathy to want no one to go through that without assistance. I know the only way for people to “pick themselves up by their bootstraps” (I know, I know), is that when they fall off the tightrope they are caught before hitting the ground. I know the only way to break the cycle of poverty and crime is for kids to start with the same opportunities as their peers. I know that technology and science can be directed and accelerated by targeted investments. And yes, even if it costs me more. My successes are a product of my society and it is fair for them to feed back into society

GPS is knowledge of the city. Most cities publish detailed street map data that is immediately imported into gps maps. The car relies on the gps not just for navigating, but even deciding things like what lane. And of course gps’s have much more complete traffic data than your human taxi driver ever did.

While I don’t want to fanboi too much …… as long as nobody is able to do self driving, any approach has potential. Teslas approach has the huge advantage of starting with millions of potential vehicles and they will soon be able to crank out a quarter million robotaxis every year, whereas Waymo is not ready to scale up. They’re going all in with a potential approach and if it succeeds are in position to disrupt the industry.

It might not succeed, but no other company has succeeded yet either. The difference is they went all in, and they were willing to try something different than Internet wisdom

(Actually, as a big fan of what Tesla used to represent, this worries me about their future: Cybertruck flopped, robotaxi may not succeed for years, semi is a very conservative market they may not be able to break into or will be slow take up , and Optimus doesn’t yet have a market. They’re making some extremely risky moves at the same time their profit margins are under a lot of pressure. )

This is not news. It was always the plan to start using model y’s with drivers. Consider the timing - they are supposed to start offering the services now or soon, but are not yet building robotaxi.

Even in more urban areas …. My ex asked for help getting internet service in her new condo, and I found out the entire town has fiber, except her condo development. They have an exclusive contract with ComCast and she can’t do anything about it

That article has a pretty extreme example: guy on 21 acres atop a steep ridge who doesn’t have phone service or running water or probably any infrastructure. There’s going to be people you can’t reach with fiber and this may be one of them. We can argue about that when the other 99% has fast internet service

All posturing and bullying aside ….

Building a nuclear weapon is “easy” and the knowledge is generally available. However enriching uranium is much tougher. For many decades the most effective way to limit nuclear weapon proliferation has been to restrict enrichment efforts.

I hope you’re not questioning why it’s a good idea to limit how many countries have nuclear weapons. Sure, the ones that have them are due for plenty of criticism but you can’t escape the math of more countries with nuclear weapons means more chances of someone using one.

As a citizen of the only country to use a nuke in anger …. I’m fine with everyone else calling that out assuming they’re serious about preventing it from ever happening again

As a European those power draws listed sound absolutely absurd to me

Let me clarify - those are standard sized circuits, not actual draw. However the service has to be sized to handle it, and over-provisioning to account for it.a customer might install a stove that draws the full load and might use all the burners at once, and you have to account for typical usage patterns.

For sure it’s a well earned stereotype that Americans use more electricity than many other places. We tend to have bigger houses, more and bigger appliances. We not only don’t have that base charge per size of service but too some extent are charged less to use more: essentially we subsidize people electric resistive heat, who can pay a lower usage rate. We also don’t usually have time of use metering, although some do: my rate is the same whether I charge my car at night or at peak time. And of course our current leadership is intent on rolling back the efficiency standards we have.

Taking your heat pump dryer example, those are finally available here but tend to cost a lot more than a traditional dryer: savings on efficiency will never make back the extra purchase cost More importantly they’ve only been available in small sizes, not typical for houses, especially with families

That may be the entire difference, we don’t have that base cost. Our monthly bill is mainly the actual useage, itemized into generating cost, transfer cost, fees and taxes. There is usually an administrative fee but that’s fixed cost.