Yeah, Verbatim still remains… For now.

Oh that’s right - I forgot that the drives were slowly going disco too. Bleak indeed.

I have bad news for you - Panasonic, Sony, and Samsung have all stopped production on BR-R discs.

Well last time we had the deplorable, violent racists trying to run the show, they had to be crushed into submission - so maybe, yeah. They must be shown that their vile ideas and actions have consequences. CLEARLY they haven’t received enough consequences lately, given their utter lack of shame in <current year>. When it really comes down to it, I’d bet their small minority can’t possibly put up a large enough fighting force willing to stick their necks our for racism anyways, certainly none of the octogenarian monsters at the top.

I’m absolutely not an expert and not qualified here. But if we accept that you’re 100% right and need way more broad options, is it even possible to solve this at scale? (I’m assuming we’re all talking about the US since our education is atrocious). 350M Americans spread out across 3.5M sq miles - only smaller in landmass than China, Canada, and Russia, but with substantially LESS uninhabitable land and a relatively large population. That means our population density is nearly ¼ of China’s.

How many different learning styles do we support? Do they each get their own tailored schools, each with their own full staff? How do you equally support the 1/5 of the country (60M+) that live in all those spread out rural communities? And what time scale can we even fix this problem on, understanding that we’re in the midst of a teacher shortage as it is?

I think proper spending on education absolutely is part of this equation, but someone will have to gut our military spending, so that’s hurdle number one. But regardless, tax dollars being a limited resource… I wonder how much spending doing this right would cost. For a full educational overhaul.

It’s hard to believe, I know. 😅

Agreed - we’re a LONG way past Touchwiz nightmare fuel at this point. Other than the Samsung branded bloat, it’s pretty close to stock android these days. The home screen has tons of customization features, and Goodlock adds even more. I stopped using Nova because of a LONG time Android bug with 3rd party launchers where apps would just show a blank screen or otherwise wouldn’t launch when opened immediately after going home. I found Pixel launcher to be passable (but I heavily preferred Nova), and found that Samsung’s launcher might have actually been better when I switched phones later.

I jumped on a Google issue tracker thread in 2023 that still sends me emails because it gets a flood of people all these years later still reporting the issue is not resolved.

Now I’m on a Fold 7 anyways, and Samsung handles your home screen while folding and unfolding pretty well, I don’t expect that Nova does.

You’re definitely right about them prohibiting devs from pointing to a web browser to subscribe. They can’t link, can’t even use language that explains WHY you can’t subscribe in the app (if the dev decides to forego using Apples payment system entirely). I think that THIS was what Apple recently was forced by a judge to relax, after the Apple v Epic case.

I must have been conflating the policy that they ABSOLUTELY did have (but only til 2011) and the outside links issue. Hughes Hubbard

Under the February rules, if developers wanted to use content purchased outside of the app, they also had to offer the content for in-app purchase and it had to be offered at the same price or less than it was offered elsewhere, despite the fact that Apple takes a 30% cut.

Macrumors

Apple has quietly changed its guidelines on the pricing of In-App Subscriptions on the App Store. There are no longer any requirements that a subscription be the “same price or less than it is offered outside the app”.

None of us could afford to, but DAMN is it cheap to buy Diaper Don (relatively speaking). The tariff revenue that Americans would generate on Swiss imports FAR exceeds the value of a watch and a bar of gold.

Apple doesn’t allow this - they expect your price to be the same everywhere or they’ll remove the app from their store or decline version updates. There have historically been a few high profile exceptions privately negotiated, and I think they were forced to relax this in the last year or two, but here they are again trying to claw away money they did literally nothing to earn.

Boy I sure hope that’s not true, what an ENORMOUS amount of resources that would go to waste if so.

Stadia was Google and Bezos runs Amazon, who does have their own game streaming service, Luna, which is still operational.

I haven’t used either of those, but I’ve been using GeForce Now recently while waiting for a replacement PSU and I have to say, it works really well. The on-device apps (Samsung monitor, LG TV) leave a lot to be desired but once you’re in a game, the latency is negligible for me and they’re running games high enough that it looks as good as when I was running it on my own 3090.

None of that to say I disagree with you, but I do like that the option exists; it’s not black and white, good and bad. But it SHOULD be just that - AN OPTION. Not the only choice left after AI has demolished the market.

Take solace in the fact the AI bubble will pop and all these “sold” wafers will suddenly flood the market as they turn to consumer brands to try and offload them. I don’t think we’re headed for this “all compute in the cloud” future he wants. Not yet.

I fully support this strategy, can’t believe I never considered it myself. I will have to carefully suggest it to my wife who will NOT approve of this mutilation of one of her glorious pizzas.

Not all mozzarella is created equal. The best pizza cheese I’ve found in the US is Boar’s Head mozzerella. Nothing else melts right or holds up to the 550° oven like this one. I just get the deli to take a knife to the chub to cut off a block for easier shredding.

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

Now skydiving - hell yeah.

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.

I own an IONIQ 6 and can definitively confirm this is false. I’ve literally watched my break lights at night in the rear view mirror to confirm and understand how and when they work, and regenerative breaking absolutely lights up the break lights.

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.

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.

Once cringe, always cringe.

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