The whole premise of this article is troubling. I don’t want there to be a single standard for vertically-integrated EV design.
I want BYD to compete with Tesla, each having distinct stacks. I want Ford to differ from GM.
The pace of EV innovation since the 2010s came from companies like Tesla breaking the mold and doing things differently from legacy auto, sometimes with stubbornness and audacity that caused the media to shame them, and claim they’d be bankrupt within weeks.
IMO we need that sense of urgency and existentialism injected back into the industry. We need EVs to be exciting if people are to be inspired to make the switch. With one or two exceptions (eg charging standards), the last thing we need is the imposition of supranational standards, regulations and homogenisation that brings innovation to a grinding halt and leaves all carmakers with a lowest-common-denominator generic solution
As soon as data starts being exfiltrated to Google (or any Big Tech firm), be sure that governments will demand their copy of the stream too.
The non-disclosure clauses in mass surveillance legislation will ensure the process is opaque to users.
You’ll only find out about it when your door is smashed down and all your devices are seized, because Chrome’s crappy 4GB AI model misinterpreted an innocent photo of your kid in a paddling pool.
I think Hollywood has been churning out derivative content for a while, and catering for "modern audiences" (as opposed to the silent majority) too much.
One or two exceptions - Project Hail Mary, for example.
But the decline of Marvel, Star Trek and Star Wars franchises has been stark.
* massive TVs are cheap now
* people behave disrespectfully in cinemas
* cinema tickets are now unaffordable for the low end of the market
* the experience hasn't modernised and become luxy enough to retain the high end of the market
* streaming services have high budgets now
Never expected to see the Critical Drinker mentioned on HN. I find myself agreeing with the majority of points he brings up in his videos, but I suspect the majority on HN would disagree with him.
I'll be curious to see if others chime in.
This was my first thought upon seeing the OP as well. I haven't been to a theater in years, and part of the problem is I don't know what I'd go there to watch.
I've been pretty explicitly told that Hollywood does not want to sell to me or my demographic by this point, and it's also pretty evident in the media that is being produced.
And the media I do consume, I don't really feel a need to see in theaters.
I feel bad, because I have many fond memories of going to the theater as a kid with my parents. With the way things are going, they may be long gone before I ever get a chance to replicate that experience for a family of my own.
> Never expected to see the Critical Drinker mentioned on HN. I find myself agreeing with the majority of points he brings up in his videos, but I suspect the majority on HN would disagree with him.
Sadly you're right. At times like this I wish Silicon Valley was in Texas or Florida rather than one of the most leftwing / collectivist states in America.
This should be for the market to decide, not EU bureaucrats.
If I want a thicker, clunkier, less waterproof phone with a user-replaceable battery, I can already buy a Fairphone or a Samsung Galaxy XCover6 Pro, or whatever.
The reason people buy iPhones and flagship Samsung phones is they want the benefits that come from a design that doesn't have to make sacrifices to accomodate a user-replaceable battery.
> This should be for the market to decide, not EU bureaucrats.
Ohh sweet summer child... We are in an era of obscene consolidation, in pretty much every sector, wealth is being consolidated to degrees unseen before, oligopolies enshrine their dominance via regulatory capture and a plethora of unfair practices. There's just no competition left to suggest that "markets can decide" of anything beneficial for our skinny bottom lines..
ok, now bring-up a photo and datasheet of the flagship model from each of those brands, and articulate how they effectively depart from one another on metrics such as ergonomics, operating system, and hardware specs such as CPU/GPU/modem.
- The ergonomics story is: all those devices look and handle the same
- operating system is: a duopoly between Android and iOS
- chips: a triopoly between Qualcomm, Samsung and Apple
those manufacturers are not innovating as much as copying each-other's formula, using a very short list of identical suppliers, with no room for error. If that's not the definition of consolidation, please show it to me.
Alongside talk from the UK Labour government about intervening on VPNs, I'm getting uneasy vibes about this move, especially since Microsoft is one of the most government-friendly corporations in the big tech arena.
The surveillance state is growing more sinister every day (especially in the UK), but the efforts are somewhat thwarted by the existence of VPNs.
Once they find a way to undermine VPNs, the UK govt will have literal CCP-level control over our access to information and communication.
CCP-level control over access to information is not actually very tight, technologically nor ideologically, but it does enable a form of rule-by-law which is far more useful.
The problem is that the social media companies have not been dealing with abusive posts of various sources. Governments can't take action against the bad posters are they are from another Government (and in some cases are employed by that government to cause trouble). Thus Governments have to take actions which they can control, unfortunately these actions will affect more than the bad abusers.
You assume your premise. No the government actually doesn't 'have to' take action about mean things on the internet. The UK has such an obsession with regulating what is, essentially, politeness.
While I don't particularly care for the UK's approach to these things, I can't help but be shocked at how many governments seem to all of a sudden have dreamed up the same idea. Independently, I'm sure.
I suppose the US is the unique one really, when it comes to a history of protecting certain types of speech. They've never really regulated (what I would call) politeness between people in any form.
The UK, and I assume much of Europe, criminalizes truly petty levels of speech. For example, it's illegal to insult someone and cause them 'alarm' or 'distress' in the street.
Thus the non-technical populace see rudeness on the internet as the result of some kind of wild west situation that the government needs to control, to bring it in line with the rest of the public realm.
This should be made a problem for the social media companies (which it largely has, hence all the age verification fiasco), not absolutely everyone on the internet.
It would be illegal to post such rhetoric, and I can't name a single social network CEO who's been investigated and found guilty of posting such rhetoric. Perhaps I missed a court case somewhere?
Wait, you think it's illegal to post something racist online? That is absolutely not the case in the US, and I have no idea why you'd think it was. It's also pretty confusing why you think simple descriptors are "slurs".
It only takes one quick google search to show that he helps promote white supremacist rhetoric:
Their posts on X are getting multiple millions of views. Yes, that has declined, but I need to see whether their viewership on Facebook has declined similarly before I can pass judgement on X.
People don’t use social media in the same way they did ten years ago.
And in any case, they’re still getting massive viewership on X by most people’s standards, surely?
I’m not convinced “X is declining” is a good faith argument here.
I use Gmail with my own domain (you have to pay for the privilege but Google Workspace has been very reliable and flexible for my purposes)
I'd rather use Google's web storage than my own. I don't have the time nor the expertise to implement multi-region replication etc.
I understand that granting Google access to one's emails might be a dealbreaker for journalists, dissidents etc, though - so clearly Gmail is no good if you have legitimate need for PGP.
Expanding the acronym really works well here. Gmail is no good if you have a legitimate need for pretty good privacy.
I would argue everyone does, most people just don't really think about what they are giving away. And how many emails a day are you receiving that a daily or hourly incremental offside backup wouldn't give you almost all of the benefits of "multi region replication"?
I have two or three emails a month get through my spam filtering. I don't consider fixing that to be worth the price of letting the world's most notorious advertising company have access to my emails
If we cared about reducing road casualties, then objectively speaking, we should ban bikes. Roads are designed for cars (people in protective metal boxes with hundreds of sophisticated safety features).
Roads were never intended for people on flimsy two wheeled contraptions with nothing more than a polystyrene cap to protect them.
Seems about 5x as many pedestrians die on the roads than cyclists, so by that logic pedestrians are banned from roads too? No more pedestrian accessible roadside shops?
I want BYD to compete with Tesla, each having distinct stacks. I want Ford to differ from GM.
The pace of EV innovation since the 2010s came from companies like Tesla breaking the mold and doing things differently from legacy auto, sometimes with stubbornness and audacity that caused the media to shame them, and claim they’d be bankrupt within weeks.
IMO we need that sense of urgency and existentialism injected back into the industry. We need EVs to be exciting if people are to be inspired to make the switch. With one or two exceptions (eg charging standards), the last thing we need is the imposition of supranational standards, regulations and homogenisation that brings innovation to a grinding halt and leaves all carmakers with a lowest-common-denominator generic solution
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