Those first two, the "people" are largely the auto manufacturers.
Smaller and cheaper cars are SUPER popular in the rest of the world and are literally not available at all in the US. The auto mfgs will tell you it is because of US preference, but in a country of 330 million, there doesn't need to be that much demand compared to these vehicles popularity in, say, a cheese-loving nation of 65 million. Even if they are immensely less popular, there is still MORE than enough market for some of these ALREADY-BEING-PRODUCED vehicles.
But the US auto mfgs refuse. They go bigger and more expensive. The US consumer has no real choice.
For your fourth and fifth, the "people" are US civil/transportation engineers. They must be stopped. They are a scourge. There's no culture of safe road engineering in the US. AASHTO are an association of insane fuckwits.
I am incredibly skeptical that the behaviors of US drivers are significantly different than anywhere else in the world. I'm pretty skeptical of worries over inspections or licensing requirements and am CERTAIN that additional police enforcement will only cause more mayhem and death and not protect any life. I believe it's almost entirely a problem of road engineering, urban design, and vehicle design.
or anything a reasonable person would find lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value
But where can they even find a reasonable person in West Virginia? Sydnee McElroy is pretty busy with being a full-time doctor and science communicator. I'm not sure there are any others.
You're talking about a device which is a full-color high-definition surveillance camera that works at night and can be viewed from literally anywhere in the world and can be configured to send you alerts based on seeing people/animals/packages/whatever. That only costs them an inflation adjusted $13.
I don't really think the "they wouldn't believe this shit" argument really applies with how rapidly tech has changed.
If the data were properly encrypted and could only be decrypted by the client on their own device
Yeah, but part of Wyze's sales pitch is their AI image recognition features, and they'd lose all training data by doing that and would force it to be processed locally, both of which would be a dead end.
I realize these might not be features you want nor care about... but those are the features they want to offer.
A big part of that, in my opinion, is because they own the track and right-of-way. It creates a VERY robust natural monopoly in a field that is already predisposed to natural monopoly.
In other countries, even deregulated ones, the state still owns the track and right of way. It an operator isn't doing a job, a competing operator can be given a license or pay the fee and use the track and just blow them up. The state can be responsible for maintenance of the infrastructure and safety features either directly, through a PPP, or by requiring the work be done by the licensed operators as part of their fee structure. But with essentially private ROW and track, you lose almost all power.
Shout out to the fuckwits in Cincinnati selling off their incredibly valuable resource for pennies on the dollar.
I'm getting fooled by the word "port" here. I don't think I'd use the word port to describe a small barge hub like this.
I still very much doubt it will have a big impact on traffic. Not unless they can honestly be run faster and more efficiently than the old logistics hubs. Downs-Thomson still applies here. But if it's part of a comprehensive plan to getting more small delivery vehicles (e.g. eBikes) onto the roads and backed up with further congestion taxes and other regulations on the shippers, I could see it as a good way to by some time while working on more solutions.
Caused permanent economic fuckery people are still being victimized by today. Lied about every one of his campaign promises. Actively supported overseas terrorism. Hugely expanded the oil and gas industry at a time where it was still possible to control it and we already knew about how devastating climate change (then global warming) may end up being. Broke the back of organized labor in a way that it still hasn't and may never fully recover from. His views on civil rights were so regressive and heinous he actually had vetos overridden by congress on the subject -- he even wanted to continue supporting apartheid south africa. Double and tripled-down on the war on drugs and is probably more responsible for its expansion than any other president.
And I'm not even getting into his responses to GRIND/AIDS. Or the Iran/Contra affair.
Fuck I am so glad he's dead in the ground. Wish his assassination attempt hadn't been an attempt.
I am very skeptical of this plan, but if they're accounting for all the additional traffic major port expansion will inevitably induce and are setting up comprehensive logistics hubs (and who's paying for that, Amazon?) as part of the plan while actively banishing long-haul trucking from the scene, then I guess MAYBE it could work.
But damn, it sure sounds like a cobra tail bounty to me.
In Switzerland, you cannot build any kind of major logistics facility without rail access.
In the US, local rail connection isn't even CONSIDERED when specifying logistics facilities. Even when they are being SHOWERED with tax and infrastructure subsidies to build economically-destructive machines.
The only developed nation to have mostly privately-owned rail and right-of-way. It makes sense when you remember easily half of the country actively wants all cities to fail and collapse.
Also if the shareholders vote for policy X, the company cannot work against policy X or ignore policy X.
If your shareholders all get together and vote for some policy or program that will DEFINITELY hurt the stock value... well, the company still has to do it because it obeys the shareholders. And it has to try and do it the best possible way -- malicious compliance/bad faith can also potentially get you in trouble.
But since the majority shareholders in, frankly, most meaningful public companies are the likes of hedge funds, then the majority of votes are always going to be to do the thing that boosts share value. This inhuman corporate concepts simply cannot care about anything other than more dollars. On the rare occasion where they may try, it gets labeled as ESG wokism and they get threatened legally by conservative governors (at least in the US).
The real problem with shareholder capitalism may be the terrible influence of hedge funds and professional investors rather than the fundamental principle of the investor-based system. But the hedge fund and professional investor is also a kind of natural consequence of these systems.
You can set up a justice system that is designed to reduce harm and to make the victims whole.
But doing so seems to be pretty incompatible with seeing up a penal system designed to harshly punish offenders. Because harsh punishments do not seem to be effective at preventing bad actions that create victims.
Especially in the US, we've made the choice to have a penal system instead of a justice system. And so our system does not exact justice, it just passes down punishments.
I'm for drug decriminalization and all the various kinds of harm mitigation strategies to make drugs safer to use. But I also will admit without hesitation that modern synthetic opioids and amphetamines are black holes that consume a person's entire being. If we want widespread drug decriminalization we need to do a lot of other side work to stop people from being spaghettified. We need housing and healthcare and an expectation of a baseline dignified life for everyone because if your life is going to be without dignity either way you may as well be injecting heroin while doing it.
Can't wait for the day a major court declares EULAs universally nonbinding outside of the most common-sense terms. Even though I doubt it will ever happen.
"We can store and display your content and use stuff you publicly post as examples in advertisements for our platform" is pretty common sense.
"We can use the things you post to do complex data analytics to package and sell your identity to advertisers" is fucking sus.
"We can use the things you post to train ANN generative systems to build next-generation technologies to impersonate you and your peers" is simply nuts.
The idea that displaying an EULA with an "agree" button is informed consent is just preposterous. Even lawyers don't read them.
There's just zero merit to these "people on the internet are saying X" stories.
Nothing of value to sourcing a few retweets, ticktock duets, instagram stories, or whatever the fuck TMTMTM version of it you get.
Actual street interviews with random schlubs are far, far more informative than this crap. The internet is huge and you can find literally any opinions on it. Sourcing these anecdotes is absolutely the trashiest tier of journalism and anyone writing one of these stories should think hard about an immediate career change.
Run a fucking poll if you want to write a story about public opinion.
The world will be a better place the day after every serious news media organization leaves twitter and tells all their journalists they cannot use it as anything other than an original source to what a specific public figure has to say.
Don't worry. It has no magnetosphere. Even in environmentally-enclosed shelters, you'd still see horrific rates of cancer and other such radiation-induced disease rapidly wiping out complex life like humans.
14 Romex on a 15A breaker is simply not going to get meaningfully hot, even under worst-case scenario loads and even fully insulated in something entirely flammable. If you're very nervous, size it up to #12 -- it will cost slightly more but be even more totally safe. Overbuilding is (should be) the DIYer's creed.
If they’re culturally or historically important, why are they in a private collection?
That's a really, really crap argument that is permissive of all kinds of cultural genocide. A LOT of artwork is in private collections that by no right should be. I make no claims about this guy's collection, but the mere fact that it is being bought and sold has no bearing. After all, I live in country that used to "legally" buy and sell people.
Those first two, the "people" are largely the auto manufacturers.
Smaller and cheaper cars are SUPER popular in the rest of the world and are literally not available at all in the US. The auto mfgs will tell you it is because of US preference, but in a country of 330 million, there doesn't need to be that much demand compared to these vehicles popularity in, say, a cheese-loving nation of 65 million. Even if they are immensely less popular, there is still MORE than enough market for some of these ALREADY-BEING-PRODUCED vehicles.
But the US auto mfgs refuse. They go bigger and more expensive. The US consumer has no real choice.
For your fourth and fifth, the "people" are US civil/transportation engineers. They must be stopped. They are a scourge. There's no culture of safe road engineering in the US. AASHTO are an association of insane fuckwits.
I am incredibly skeptical that the behaviors of US drivers are significantly different than anywhere else in the world. I'm pretty skeptical of worries over inspections or licensing requirements and am CERTAIN that additional police enforcement will only cause more mayhem and death and not protect any life. I believe it's almost entirely a problem of road engineering, urban design, and vehicle design.