ob disc: I used to work for nio usa.

batt swap is a great idea and its been done well. tesla tried it for a very short while and gave up. too bad.

one use case not always mentioned: you run out of juice and you are too far from a charging station or maybe you are in a hurry or just dont mind paying the convenience fee for a local drive-up swap. yes, they can do that. you can be on your way with a 'full tank' in very short order. no idea how common it is; usually you drive to one of the swap garages and it guides you in, you stay in your car the whole time, robots lower the old batt and raise up the new one.

the kinks are worked out.

dont bash on this cause its china. it IS and will continue to be a good idea.

china pulled it off since it was NOT adverse to ev's. in fact, they see ev's as their future, so the gov was eager to install all the infra they could.

during the very early T days, we still, as a country (usa) were going full speed ahead. car companies were doing well and we, the workers, did well.

then, the presidency changed and all went to hell after that. he picked his gas buddies over ev tech and the country is now suffering for it.

I'm 99% batt swap will never hit consumer cars in the US. monied interests dont want it. they know its their demise. their argument of '30 minute fillups' goes away with this. and you buy the car sans batt and so you always have a rental batt. you get used to it. upside: you never have a long-term battery that gets bad and bad. all swap batts are maintained so that no one gets a truly bad batt.

when you read the comments, you can see who has an open mind and who is a paid shill for a certain viewpoint.

It's the same for folks that whine about paying for those "extras" subscriptions for their fancy new cars. I would never agree to such a thing and won't buy a car I can't drive without paying an ongoing tithe to the manufacturer. I won't buy a car that I can only be maintained at a dealership either.

As for the printer example, I switched to a Brother printer years ago and have been able to purchase cheaper aftermarket toner without a hassle.

Best,

Well, in theory, your town/county/state/etc is providing services in exchange for those property taxes. If you feel like you're not getting value from paying those taxes, you always have the option to either: 1. vote for people who promise to lower/remove them or 2. move somewhere with lower taxes or 3. rent your dwelling and pay the taxes indirectly by passing the funds through a landlord.

Your data isn't really "safe" with any of the large cloud providers. If "the man" wants your data, they'll get it.

You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.

Better to sell the shovels than to try to pick the winners of the prospecting war.

Best,

I think a reason why AMPAS could do this is because in most of the developed world, over 100 megabits/second download speeds are now easily available over cable TV lines (DOCSIS 3.1 and later), fiber optic line to the home, and now Starlink satellites. As such, everyone can enjoy watching the Oscar ceremonies with at least 720p/1080i resolution with no stuttering nowadays.. Besides, YouTube is ubiquitous almost everywhere, and given Google's server resources, can easily handle all the traffic.

...doesn't mean they're not out to get you. :)

The broad spectrum of promises (appealing to a range of utopist to wannabe despots) for AI can't be emphasized enough to keep to money-train rolling.

I mean another possible technology, fusion, has the potential to be as transformative as AI. with far more tangible affects.

But since it can't shapeshift from savior to world-ending, it is relegated to "nice if it happens, but...".

The drama concerning AI (on all sides) would be mostly amusing except for the economy wrecking amounts being thrown at it, and brings to mind with sufficient wealth accumulation; how is this different than a command economy?

Most of those coal-fired power plants are so old that it's cheaper to dismantle them than upgrade them to meet current EPA emissions standards. The likely exception are power plants that use cleaner-burning Powder River Basin coal, and most of those are in central states in the country (Texas is a major consumer of this coal).

With modern fracking technology, most powerplants are now burning compressed natural gas instead of coal, natural gas from multiple sites all over the USA.

Nope. I didn't say that. Typical Chinese citizens understand how rampant corruption is and there is very little empathy for a potentially innocent person caught up the purge machine.

The problem is that due to the power needs and the need to cool all that computing equipment, there is actually not that many places where putting in a large AI datacenter is viable.

I can only think of two places: Iceland with its plentiful untapped geothermal power and Norway with its plentiful hydropower and water supply. Indeed, several companies have already started to build large data centers in these two countries.

Yep, corruption is so rampant with government workers (at all levels) in China that nobody has any trouble believing that story when someone who isn't corrupt is purged for any number of other reasons. One need only to see the number of children of relatively minor officials tooling around Europe in exotic sports cars and living VERY extravagantly. When the average family income in China is still only about US$6k per year, there is little sympathy for these people when they are rounded up (justly or unjustly).

No country can afford to take in unlimited refugees. At some point, the answer becomes another question. "How to we raise the standard of living for people in that country because we can not afford to take any more of them here?"

LK

Apparently Martians have an issue with Java.... :P