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Comment Re:The Age of Cheap Online Shopping is Ending???? (Score 3, Insightful) 258

Indeed. In fact it's about to get even better for the rest of the world. The production capacity in Asia isn't going away any time soon. Suppliers can try to slash their prices by a third to compensate for the tariffs going into the USA or they can cut them by 10%-15% and sell a load more to Europe, the Middle East and Australasia. The later outcome seems a lot more likely. Thanks!

Comment So, let me get this straight... (Score 3, Informative) 103

4chan is a US company that has been delivering services to people in the UK and getting revenue from that traffic. UK law says that if you deliver service in the UK and meet certain criteria then you need to verify the users' age. They didn't comply, and the UK said "If you continue to deliver services into the UK that don't comply with the law then we will sanction you with both fines and blocking your traffic." They said "Screw you" to the regulator. Now when Ofcom asks UK ISPs to block their traffic, Ofcom is an "industry-funded global censorship bureau" and "Ofcom's ambitions are to regulate Internet communications for the entire world, regardless of where these websites are based or whether they have any connection to the UK,"

They're having a laugh.

If they deliver service in the UK then the service delivered into UK needs to comply with UK law. It's pretty simple. It's not like there's no internet geolocation technology. Most of the other sites that are covered by this law have worked out how to deliver UK-specific age verification. It's not that hard.

Personally I think that the UK's new law is ridiculously misguided and broken, not to mention unlikely to achieve what it sets out to do, but telling a business that their service in the UK needs to be compliant with current UK law is not an attempt "to regulate Internet communications for the entire world". They are welcome to join all the other people who are lobbying for the law be repealed. In the meantime they need to comply or cease local service.

Comment The British are working on this too (Score 1) 20

Over in the UK apparently they are working on English Truly Open Neurals, known as ETON. Not only will these neural networks be exceptionally well educated but they will also have impeccable manners, although critics worry that they may occasionally be rather elitist and have a superiority complex. None the less, it is expected that more than a third of British Prime Ministers will use these models, despite protests from the Labour Party.

Comment Re:'murica proving to the rest of the world (Score 4, Insightful) 118

Indeed. Not only has Trump been playing chicken (and chickening out) on tariffs, but his reneging on the deal with he struck Canada and Mexico in his last term and his statements about not honouring the commitments America has to NATO have underscored the fact the any deal he is willing to strike is not worth the paper that its written on. American industry will suffer badly as a result. Why would you want to predicate any major, long term projects on a suppliers who might suddenly be involved in a trade war or change their alliances with your enemies? Trump said he wanted to reshape global trade, and he will. The problem for him (and the people of the US) is that America will loose out when everyone else is striking deals without them (and sticking to them).

Comment Baumol's Cost Disease (Score 1) 112

Aside from the regularly cited (and very real) bloat in administration in education, there's another important factor driving up education costs: productivity gains in areas like manufacturing and technology tend to drive up prices in services sectors like education and healthcare. When productivity rises in some parts of the economy wages ultimately end up rising across the board, but for sectors (particularly in services) where productivity can't rise as fast, those wage increases turn into real value price increases for those services. A hairdresser can't increase the rate of delivering hair cuts the same way that car makers or electronic gadget makers have increased their productivity, and the same goes for the productivity of teachers (or nurses, or firefighters). So even without the bureaucratic overload of extra administrators, the price of education would be rising compared to the price of "stuff".

One sliver of hope is that recent advances in AI might offer a way to increase productivity in education. If we can do that then's a chance to reverse some of these rises, especially if we can get rid of some of the administrators!

Comment Re:getting back? (Score 5, Informative) 201

And how many charging stops to drive it back the other way up the mountain?

One.

The dry weight of a Lucid Air Grand Touring is 2,360 kg. Add a couple of occupants at 80kg each then you're lifting 2,520kg up 1,300 meters. Gravitational potential energy e = ghm = 9.81 * 1300 * 2520 which comes out to just over 32.15 megajoules and very close to 9KWh. This is the baseline energy that is gained coming down hill and used going up hill. If we assume that the efficiency of the regeneration and the utilisation are about the same then you're going to gain less than this going down and use more than this going up, but the net difference is still going to be about 18KWh.

The nominal battery capacity of the Air Grand Touring is 112KWh, with the usable capacity probably several percent less, so you'll need about a 20% to 25% charge en route going back up the hill. Even if it's twice that, I don't think you're going to need to stop more than once.

Comment Re:Sad (Score 1) 28

In rural Virginia where my parents live, their only non-wireless internet service is from Brightspeed. It's 1.2Mbps/256Kbps DSL that is offline more than it is online. And they have to pay $90/month for it...

While I am no fan of the largest shareholder, if they are in a rural area and already paying $90/month for terrible internet, Starlink would be worth a look, especially if they are on a large plot with unobstructed views of the sky. If 'Residential Lite' is available in their area it would actually be lass than what they are paying now and still delivers 50MBs most of the time.

Comment Re:America's Innovation Goes from Boom to Bust (Score 1) 238

China has vast industries to apply research which simply can not be applied in the US any more ... what's the point in researching stuff to be applied in China?

America has vast industries that can apply research too, and they're very good at it. The idea that US manufacturing production is in decline is a total myth. US manufacturing output has been trending consistently upwards (with the exception of 2020) for decades. It has declined as a fraction of GDP, but it has still grown in real terms. The reason that so many people think that it has declined (aside from propaganda from populist politicians telling them so) is that manufacturing productivity has been growing even faster, so US manufacturers are building more high value products with fewer people.

Now, if you want to stop the US from continuing to increase the value of the products it produces then a good way to do that would be to stop investing in long term primary research. Less new technology in your products will mean that they won't offer new value propositions. Is that really what you want?

Comment America's Innovation Goes from Boom to Bust (Score 2, Insightful) 238

Scientific innovation in the USA since 1950 has been primarily driven by the long term investments made by successive governments (on both sides of the aisle) in primary research. The short term investment strategies that drive Wall Street don't allow for companies to make long term plays that will benefit the whole of America, rather than this quarter's investors. As such it seems highly unlikely that "the market" is going to take up the slack in primary research investment. American innovation is going to suffer, and America will suffer in the long run. Meanwhile China is investing in primary research like America did in the 1960s. What a way to Make America Irrelevant Again.

Comment Re:Oh good (Score 3, Insightful) 105

By 2080 we can have banana farms in Seatle and vineyards in British Columbia.

There are lots of vineyards in British Columbia, especially in the Okanagan Valley, and some of them are really quite good. The difference will be that by then they will be growing cabernet, zinfandel and tempranillo instead of pinot noir and riesling.

Comment How do they compare to ride-share drivers? (Score 2) 112

While I don't dispute the numbers, it would be interesting to see the comparison not to all drivers but to a cohort of humans that drive the same sort of routes with the same sort of regularity, which would be drivers for Uber, Lyft and other ride-share services. I don't know if those drivers have higher rates of pedestrian and cyclists collisions (because they spend their lives driving urban streets) or lower rates (because they know the streets and intersections better). Either way a more focused comparison would be informative.

Comment Re:So what! (Score 1) 273

While I agree with the principle of this, the rate is clearly excessive. The current Federal gas tax is 18.4 cents per gallon, so the rate that they are proposing is the equivalent of 1,087 gallons per year. The average new cars efficiency in the USA is about 28.5 mpg, so this is a flat tax that taxes people as if they drive nearly 29,000 miles per year. In fact the average American driver goes just short of 13,500 miles per year. Furthermore EVs generally are driven fewer miles per year (since many families with two cars will use their ICE car for longer trips due to range anxiety), and internet numbers (your milage may vary) suggest that EVs average around 11,000 miles per year. So this is a flat tax, without regard for individual road usage (and resulting wear), that hits EVs users at more than 2.5 times the rate that the Federal gas tax hits the average gasoline car user.

Notwithstanding the contrary evidence from the tariffs, I believe that some people in the current administration are capable of doing math. As a result I think that it's fair to conclude that this is not just an attempt to make EV owners pay their share but is in fact a punitive attack on cleaner vehicles that don't buy their energy from Trumps donors.

Comment Re:I am shocked! (Score 3, Insightful) 290

because the bbc is a gear source of facts.

I appreciate that disparaging news sources that don't align with the MAGA narrative is part of the MAGA playbook, but has it ever occurred to you to look into articles that go against what you expect, rather than just writing them off? Irrespective of if you disagree with their editorial leaning, the BBC is generally an excellent source of facts because they name their sources. With only 60 seconds and a search engine you can track down the US DHS web page that is shown and do a reverse search of the image to see that it was indeed originally posted by the account of a Nottingham, UK, based tattoo artist. Maybe that's all too much work for you, and just slagging off news sources that don't repeat that sounds of your echo chamber is much easier, but if you try it you might learn something in the process.

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