Your portals would have to be extremely precise, otherwise you’re free falling on the second run.

Now skydiving - hell yeah.

That’s right - I only rembered that they were “vegans” and couldn’t remember how.

I can’t remember specifics, but I feel like he was… And his “children” that look school age just go to school for a few years in each location they live so they can better blend in. Although honestly he may only have been a doctor so he could steal blood easily, now that I’m thinking about it. I read and watched them all in their heyday, didn’t leave much of a mark on me clearly.

Yeah, boo Larian, making games more fun and interesting. The fuck they thinking? /s

Oh well certainly it’s not universal. It would be pretty silly to paint 330M people with that wide of a brush. You can see why I wouldn’t have gotten that from your post. But OP mentioned Europe, with its tighter walkable cities, slower winding roads, particularly narrow roads, etc. where compact cars like these do VERY well historically. Just based on the historical sales numbers of comparable cars in the US, it’s still absolutely safe to say that it is unlikely to do well in the US. For instance, Hyundai isn’t shipping the 2026 IONIQ 6 in the US because sedans don’t do well in this market; they’re not shipping the new IONIQ 3 because compact SUVs/crossovers don’t do well in this market.

So to your point, at least a big part of the reason is definitely cultural. Cars are a status symbol in the US, which is ridiculous to me but here we are. But the other part is the wildly different geography and common travel distances between the two, which was definitely a contributing factor that created the divergent car culture in the US vs EU.

I was not suggesting someone go BUY a backup ICE car, but a family in the US often has more than one car and is unlikely to replace both/all simultaneously with EVs. The backup ICE car is something you already have, while using the EV as primary. You only buy your first car once, so I imagine MOST vehicles are sold to someone who previously owned one.

Oh I completely agree, I was simply answering your question. I’ve lived basically my whole life nowhere near a major metropolitan area, so I am all too familiar with a long commute from more rural areas, and about a quarter to half of the people I’ve worked with in my small city were in the same boat.

I wasn’t taking a stance - because I know that this car is exactly enough for PLENTY of people in the US. The Bolt EV, Bolt EUV, and the Leaf are decently comparable options in the US that have sold okay, but for the people that do buy them - they ADORE them and become fanatics. If you live and work in the city, have a short commute, and travel infrequently or have an ICE backup for road trips, low range but affordable EV’s can be a dream. If you live in the right place and have the right sort of lifestyle, cars like these give many of the EV benefits like MUCH cheaper energy from charging at home, no gas station stops ever, and silent operation, all at a way better price because you were simply shopping appropriately for your range needs.

Now, I’m not exactly sure what worst case scenario you’re talking about - you just buy the car that serves your needs. I was speaking of possible worst cases in hypothetical in my previous post, thinking about all the places I’ve been that were relevant to answering your question. Lived experience where I know I could not have made a car like this work to my benefit. If you’ve got a 120 mile round trip commute every day right now, you just might not want the car that has 140 miles of range in the summer and gets less than 100 miles in the New England winter. If you’re regularly driving out into the backcountry for weekend hikes, bikes, or skiing, you at least need to be able to get from the last public charger to your destination way up hill in the mountains. Public charging is a worse value vs gas (in most US states), so if you’re very rural and have to drive 50 miles to get to town for some errands and groceries, you’re only getting half the benefit of garage charging if you must charge in public on every trip out of the house. Situations like these might necessitate a high range EV, or just sticking to gas while adoption, infrastructure, and battery chemistries catch up in your area.

Oh definitely, Y2K babies got thrust into adulthood rapidly at 20 thanks to the pandemic but at least they made it through school without hiccups. Kids not much younger than them have had a rough go too.

I had a pretty rough 1 hour/60 mile (97 km) commute for two years, but most of my commutes before and since have been around about 30 min/25 miles (40 km). Plenty of people around me commute into the city, and that’s about a 50 mile (80 km) commute. With a range of 140 miles (225 km), it would really limit your ability to do much else on a work day, without a public charge anyways.

Just a few data points from one person… But the US is VERY car-brained, very big, and VERY spread out, so I believe this is pretty common. And while a lot of our land is inhospitable like Canada’s, it’s easier to deal with super hot than super cold so people are literally everywhere, while Canada’s population of course hugs a narrow strip of the southern border. We went to visit my family for Christmas, only 3 states away, but we drove 1200 miles (1930 km) to get there.

The other things to consider are the 19 second 0-60/0-100 speed, and the top speed of 78 mph/125 kph. A lot of our commuting is at high speed on freeways from suburbs to urbs. The slow acceleration could be a liability on super tight freeway ramps and just generally at high speeds in traffic. And it’s incapable of going the posted speed limit of 80-85 mph (129-137 kph) that we have in some jurisdictions. Freeways that fast are uncommon and most do top out at 65-75 mph (105-120 kph), but I have a feeling that needing to push the car to its absolute limits could be dangerous.

Yep - it’s a good thing they just IP block users in ID check states or this could have been REALLY bad.

I mean, the math isn’t hard here, given the obvious pandemic time marker: College aged. If you were born in 2000, you couldn’t, in the middle of a pandemic, go out to the bar with friends for a drink on your 21st birthday for instance. And just generally, people’s early 20s often slowly ramp up, a fun warm up to proper adulthood; a time where expenses are at the lowest they’ll be for the rest of your entire life and the world hasn’t beaten you down mercilessly yet; so yeah, I imagine some of that what OP meant.

There was also HBO Now and HBO Go, so there’s even more runway for Microsoft to spend years floundering on their naming before they catch up.

Just don’t get caught.

I like your take. An optimistic me would be fully onboard with it. But this isn’t a single change in a vacuum. I think the reason people aren hating is because they’re seeing it as yet another symptom of enshitification, and I don’t disagree.

There are rare examples of outstanding companies like Steam that talk the talk and walk the walk. But with Firefox, they’re headed the wrong direction. They cut 30% of their staff this time last year, cut their internet freedom advacacy group, and I think that was the point where they started a hard shift away from who they were. They’re harvesting and selling user data now (removed the old “Nope. Never have, never will” [sell user data] from their FAQ), they’ve got a CEO that’s taking an absolute fortune off the top of a struggling company, and they’re steadily removing long time features like pocket integration and compact mode.

The last straw will be if Google ever pulls their deal as Firefox’s default search engine… Mozilla will very likely pivot hard to nasty, modern money making practices to keep themselves alive if they lose 80% of their revenue all at once like that.

People WITH technical skills just wany a package that works. I don’t want to fix every single fucking piece of technology I own, constantly - even if I am capable.

Maybe it was my own misunderstanding.

Why have them?

If this doesn’t mean, “why should they even exist?” what was it that you meant here? Because that’s what you ask first, before you ask what they are.

They shouldn’t exist because you don’t know what they are?

When the robot uprising happens, using a soft a in clanka instead of a hard er on clanker isn’t going to save you. We’re all fucked.

This is a VERY interesting thought. I hadn’t considered all the data collection likely available to Google as a result of the casting protocol. This is definitely plausible.

IS IT extra code to maintain though? My understanding of casting is it effectively sends a URL to the receiving device. I would think there’s a negligible amount of development spent on maintaining it. And every media app under the sun supports it, now except for Netflix. 🤦

It’s a curious thought. Is there any strategic advantage for bot farms to flip sides? If it was in the operator’s best interest to push Trump narratives before, why flip now? I get the sense that the few speaking out against him are legitimate. Or maybe I just hope so.