Doesn't matter. Every time some maniac invents some, we all need to scramble to adopt it. This is what _progress_ is. Is there's a new technology, we don't think about the consequences. We all just adopt it and use it so thoroughly that we cannot imagine living without it.
Calm down, what actually happens is there is a reaction to new technology and then once its been used there is a counter reaction which takes into account what works and what dosent.
Is there a previous decade you'd prefer to return too for quality of life? Why?
I suppose cars will continue to get worse. I'd say "before they get better" but I'm not sure there's any light at the end of the tunnel here.
I don't want iPads in my dash, I don't want an LLM in my car, I don't want $1000 headlights, I don't want molded plastic that cannot be serviced, I don't want an infotainment system, I don't want it integrated with the CAN bus, I don't want huge aluminum rims, I don't want auto start/stop, I don't want GDI, I don't want turbos, I don't a mobile connection in my car, I don't want crazy-high belt lines, I don't want a $50k median new car price, I don't want a car that weighs 5,000 lbs, etc, etc, etc.
Wireless headphones were never a good idea. You need a buggy, annoying pairing protocol. You need a source of batteries. Lithium, in most cases, a deeply rare and valuable material is wasted so some idiots don't need to spend half a second managing a cable. Of course, the batteries wear out over time, and the tech eventually stops being supported. It's tons of waste just to make people slightly more comfortable.
I was gifted $250 pro airpods that stopped working after a few months, and then the replacements they gave me stopped working again after a few months. I went back to using the $10 wired earbuds that have always worked fine.
"All VPN providers, except ProtonVPN, appeared in court to argue a defense. They raised various arguments, with the “no-log” defense from Surfshark and NordVPN standing out."
Proton is relocating their servers out of Switzerland and into Germany over privacy concerns. They are now facing the possibility of the same privacy concerns in EU countries. Ironically, the safest place to host a private VPN service may actually be USA given the way privacy-related things in the EU are going.
The EU member states are still sovereign, though. This French court ruling doesn't really affect the prospects of certain kinds of privacy in Germany. I think the parent might have been referring to the fact they didn't raise a no-log argument, thus implying they do log. But I don't think that makes much sense either.
Heartbreaking but true. The most popular pickups today are not the most useful pickups. There are no more basic utilitarian pickups any longer, at least in the US.
Pickups are a little bit interesting in this regard. For any given model (eg: Tacoma, Frontier, etc.) the more premium the truck, the worse it is at being a truck. Each feature you add reduces its payload, and in the case of the Frontier, you could drop from a 6' bed with ~1,600 lbs of payload on the base model all the way down to a 5' bed with ~900 lbs of payload for the most premium offroad model.
I would be willing to say that a small Japanese kei truck is more than the average American would ever need for hauling furnishings, appliances and lumber. If you really need something bigger renting a trailer or truck is dirt cheap
>If you really need something bigger renting a trailer or truck is dirt cheap
It’s neither convenient nor cheap to rent a trailer in much of the US. Major cities have options, rural areas less so. Full disclosure I have a mid-sized pickup, but I recently looked into renting a trailer for a landscaping project that was above the weight limit for my truck. First issue I ran into was that there were not any trailers available for rent anywhere near my location. Second issue was that after factoring in driving distance + rental cost + dump fees, it was ~ the same price just to pay a junk company to haul the materials…and it was not cheap. Anecdotally, my pickup was cheaper than most other vehicle options at the time I bought it, my commute is short (so fuel economy is less an issue), and as a homeowner I use the bed to haul something at least once/month (Unfortunately kei trucks weren’t available at the time). So the cost/benefit/convenience factor of owning a truck over renting a trailer works for me. YMMV.
Yeah, I cannot speak for rural US as much, I live in a large metropolitan area, and I would estimate around 1/5th cars here are pickups. You can rent a truck from Home Depot for as low as $100 a day.
I found out a couple of years ago that you cannot rent a vehicle and use it to tow. This is a major barrier to the argument "when you need to tow <X> just rent a vehicle that can do that" (an argument I would like to support).
I found this out recently as well, and it's really interesting since it must mean that a lot of these "just rent a truck when you need to tow" claims must have been unfounded.
I agree with you on the kei truck. They are pretty darn tough, and have so many uses.
However, they are TINY inside. If you are taller 6'1" and/or heavier than 200lbs, it is a tight squeeze, especially for anything longer than 30 minutes. The "average American" can't fit it a kei truck.
Also, the weird manliness of the average American man would make this truck unsuccessful, simply because it is too small. Which is hilarious, because some of the most resourceful, strongest, reliable and adventurous men I have met drive kei trucks.
I guess finally, the big highways with longhaul trucks and fast speeds are not so good in a k-truck.
Except most people also use trucks as daily driver vehicles. You can't exactly fit the wife and kids in a kei. Sure you could also own a car for that but now I need to own/store 2 vehicles instead of one.
Yeah let's not pretend every family with a truck only owns one vehicle. Most families already have a second car anyways. Especially people spending $60k+ on a truck.
That is my argument for EVs as well. One truck with an ICE for take the whole family on long trips, or towing. Then an EV for everyone else - whoever is making the long trip that day gets the truck.
Truck works well for those role because it can do so much. It isn't the best for most of those, but it can do them.
>Heartbreaking but true. The most popular pickups today are not the most useful pickups. There are no more basic utilitarian pickups any longer, at least in the US.
Any OEM will happily sell you a white vinyl floor half ton with your preferred cab/bed/engine/drivetrain configuration.
The GMC 4cyl 1500s were stupid cheap for awhile, because they shat out a bunch for CAFE and weren't selling so they were going for like 25-30k going into the new model year. I wanna say this was 2024 into 25, maybe 23 into 24, idk.
Ford Maverick seems to fit the bill for compact stuff though I suspect it may make the goalposts zip to "single cab option" and "body on frame"
I decide if you need to have a step on your bumper because the truck is too high to get anything in and out of it. Lowering my truck made it way easier to load and unload.
I used to fairly often carry 2x4x8 and 4x4x8 in a Toyota Matrix (Corolla wagon) with the hatch closed. Couldn't do a full-width sheet of plywood, though.
Yes, with room to spare. I assume the grandparent was referring to a stud, i.e. the nominal "2x4" that is 1.5x3.5inches in cross section and 8 feet long :-) Sadly I cannot fit 4x8 sheet goods though I haven't tried very hard. I can definitely fit them if I ask nicely for a lengthwise cut, so I end up with 2' wide 8' strips. Those I can fit and close the hatch.
Ford had a terrible but well packaging rear suspension design in those cars. It was designed to not have strut towers so he gets the full width which is probably around 4ft.
No way does the length check out though. I haul lumber in a similar size car and 8ft is basically trunk to dash so there's no way he's hauling an 8ft by 4ft sheet without it conflicting with the driver's seat if not torso.
Individual boards should fit in just about anything though.
> There are no more basic utilitarian pickups any longer, at least in the US.
What makes you say this? The F-150 series has a pretty serviceable option in their XL trim. 8ft bed, 4x4, "dumb" interior (maybe not, looking at their site looks like the most recent is iPad screen, sigh) - but what else would you look for to call it utilitarian?
You're right that each feature is further limiting, but I would argue premium and utilitarian are reaching for opposite goals.
A F-150 from the previous century is much utilitarian than today's F-150's. The bed height and rail height are much more reasonable heights -- you can reach into the bed from the side.
I would argue that the first couple of these could be considered "features." Not sure what you mean about the bench seat - the "regular cab" configuration is a 3 person bench.
Same. The Slate is so close to what I actually want out of an EV: basic, utilitarian, cheap, not made out of 5 iPads. It's not perfect, but neither is any of its competition.
It's important to note, that the law is not written such that it's only illegal to share classified information when you have a good president. I think a lot of us are very sympathetic when classified information is released to the public due to public interest, concern regarding government action, etc.
But it's still illegal. I'm not making a moral claim here. Rather, people who release classified information without authorization are breaking the law. If I rob a bank to feed my family vs. robbing a bank because it's fun, it's still illegal. A jury might be more or less sympathetic to my cause, but I will still be arrested and charged if the police can manage it.
But also note the government is punishing people for legal acts as well. It’s perfectly legal to tell a soldier they do not have to obey unlawful orders, in fact in many cases it’s a requirement. But the us military started court martial proceedings against a sitting congressman person for doing it.
It’s frequently not illegal to talk to a reporter. Let’s not kid ourselves, this isn’t about classified material it’s about loyalty, so watch what happens to sources that didn’t do anything illegal.
This government brought sham charges against the Fed president, what are they going to do to a run of the mill federal employee?
> It’s frequently not illegal to talk to a reporter. Let’s not kid ourselves, this isn’t about classified material it’s about loyalty, so watch what happens to sources that didn’t do anything illegal.
It is not illegal to talk to a reporter, it is illegal to share classified intel with someone who doesn't have a clearance and a need-to-know.
Do I think they should have raided this persons house? Absolutely not. Is it illegal to share classified information, absolutely.
"For my friends everything, for everyone else, the law" or whatever the saying is, applies here. In this case, the reporter did nothing wrong, but the raid on the home of the reporter can be justified according to the law, so it isn't illegal. Should it be? Probably.
Legislation is good, rules are good, the classified rules seems to make sense if you subscribe to Hanlons Razor at the least. Sometimes though, laws just don't make sense and shouldn't be codified.
For example:
MCL 750.335 - "Any man or woman, not being married to each other, who lewdly and lasciviously associates and cohabits together, and any man or woman, married or unmarried, who is guilty of open and gross lewdness and lascivious behavior, is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment for not more than 1 year, or a fine of not more than $1,000.00."
You've misunderstood the parent. They're saying watch out what happens to anyone in the Journalist's book who did not share classified information.
You seriously think this administration is going to get a list of 1,200 government employees who are (legally) informing reporters of the goings-on and just... Let it go? Those people are about to get punished.
And since we're at the point of an unaccountable, unidentifiable Gestapo going door-to-door and arresting / murdering citizens openly in the streets...
You are responding to a thread with the exact quotes:
> But also note the government is punishing people for legal acts as well.
...
> so watch what happens to sources that didn’t do anything illegal.
So we, in this thread, are talking about what happens to the majority of her sources that are NOT sharing confidential information or committing any crime.
Aren't you arguing against a straw man here? It seems that you can't address the concerns of the comment and are instead saying obvious truths as if that is somehow counter to the person you replied to.
I didn't intend to. When he said "But also note the government is punishing people for legal acts as well." I read this as "the government is breaking the law"
I think instead what that poster meant is was "people who didn't share classified information will be targeted and prosecuted as well."
They can and do make whatever they want illegal, but you're correct not to make a moral claim about it. I'm not making a moral claim, either, but a pragmatic one.
At the same time, it's entirely legitimate to look at a set of laws and think "fuck that". Just because you're correct that bad things might happen to folks doesn't mean I have to be happy with it.
At the end of the day, having bad laws doesn't make the rest of us cower in fear.
Rather, those laws help us understand that the folks protected by those laws (and the systems that they are using to harm us) neither have our interests in mind nor have any legitimate claim to authority.
So while your "bad things will happen if I break the law" is maybe pragmatic, consider a similar pragmatic point:
"writing laws that folks feel justified in breaking might lead to shifts in how legitimate people see that government".
I understand what you're saying, but we as a society need to have some sort of baseline above the law and order view of the world. I know a lot of people are either too stupid or too tied up in the propaganda machine but we DEEPLY need to agree on some sort of universal ethical standards as a country or we will die.
We used to have at least vague concepts like that but the admin has eroded that in the pursuit of "anything goes" political maneuvering.
i keep tabs on posts roughly along the lines of "maybe we need guns after all."
imo they're usually too late, as guns without training and a group aren't very useful. but i can tell you the number has went up about 4x the baseline in the holiday season. and thats after its doubling after November's elections.
this country is a powderkeg and what's worse is i think these provocations are international. the admin seems to want to start a civil war.
Yes, this is my problem with references to the ammo box. That exact rhetoric has been with us for decades now, and has in fact helped to get us to the point we're at.
Sure, maybe some ICE home invaders will be shot in self-defense while committing their crimes, but we already know how that plays out legally and even in the court of public opinion sadly (Walker/Taylor). So instances of self-defense won't change the big picture, regardless of such self defense options perhaps being pragmatic for those who are likely to be attacked right now or in the near future.
So that brings us back to the question of the large scale situation, which IME rests entirely on there being so many people Hell-bent on using the ammo box to "save" the country with the net effect of trashing it. We've essentially got flash mobs of brownshirts, understandably frustrated at how they've been disenfranchised and their liberties taken away, but having their frustration channeled into being part of the problem. Which I'd say comes back to filter bubbles, social media, pervasive and personalized propaganda, etc.
Of course freeing people from those filter bubbles is much harder than if we had managed to avoid the corporate consumer surveillance industry from taking hold and strongly facilitating them in the first place.
I reject the current legitimacy of that law. After Donald Trump claimed personal immunity for classified document violations in his interregnum, any prosecutions his government launches based on it are presumptively invalid.
I certainly don't agree that quantity of firepower determines what laws do or don't stand. Ask the federal agents who tried, and failed, to convict a guy for throwing a sandwich at them (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/dc-sandw...).
> The American military couldn't handle rice farmers or goat herders…
The American military at the time cared - at least somewhat - about the international reputation of the United States. That may not always be a thing. It may not be a thing now.
The American military is designed to operate away from its shores. One hunting rifle round into the transformer outside of the bases and they're trucking in fuel for generators, a few rounds into the fuel trucks and they have no power. They would have to mobilize massive resources to secure Lockheed and Raytheon facilities from sabotage...
Keep thinking along these lines and you realize the situation for them is actually quite dire.
Yeah, but... the quoted phrase should not be taken literally as a statement about battlefield capability.
It was a political struggle for legitimacy, not just territory, and the enemy did not have to win any battles, just avoid losing until the political will collapsed.
The thing is, military power does not automatically translate to political success, and guerrilla fighters do not need to defeat tanks and jets, they just need to survive, persist, undermine legitimacy, and exhaust the opponent's political will.
So, in this sense, the US was not beaten by farmers, it was beaten by a strategy that made military superiority irrelevant.
Absolutely, and I think the domestic opposition strategy here makes military superiority irrelevant. The US government doesn't want to, and would collapse if they tried to, shoot everyone who says that Donald Trump is an illegitimate president and any prosecution he wants to succeed should fail.
>The American military couldn't handle rice farmers or goat herders
Eh, they killed them by the hundreds of thousands, and were not even trying to genocide them. If the current regime decided to actually just exterminate people our level of technology would make what the Nazis did look like babies playtime.
>The question is how many people will side with them vs reality
At least 40% of the population given what we've seen so far.
It's reductive, but not totally inaccurate. The Stoics hated the Epicureans, because the Epicureans preached withdrawal from politics and the quest for political (military) honors, whereas the Stoics made those one of the defining principles of the virtuous life. Stoicism was adapted to imperialism in a way Epicureanism was not. Same way Pauline/proto-orthodox Christianity won out over the diversity of early Christianity --- it was usable by the Roman Empire.
Maybe you should consider being more stoic about it.
Stoicism is a technology of control — inward control so the outward system can function.
It’s the same structure as algorithmic behavior modification, as corporate “resilience” doctrine, as military discipline, as American hustle culture.
Maybe see the cup for what the cup is, not what you wish it to be for yourself to cope with reality.
Furthermore it is not “rude” to criticize something. And Aurelius would certainly call you out on that with a laugh.
>Furthermore it is not “rude” to criticize something.
I think it's rude to criticize someone if the criticism is not made in good faith. The fact that Aurelius was part of the Roman Empire does not mean that he practiced stoicism explicitly so that he could justify military actions. It's reductive at the very least.
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