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Comment by smoldesu | Hacker News Reader

> A-OK until there was "actual injury", and even then, it is only the injury that would be wrong?

Hah! No, they argue that the injury is right.

For example: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/sikh-nijjar-india-canada-tr...

After the diplomat assassination kerfuffle, it appears that Canada invoked a communications backdoor for national security purposes. It's hard to feel bad for the dimwitted killers who plotted the entire thing on a smartphone, but it's also a statement about how widespread and de-facto surveillance is today. Even when backdoors surface, we shrug them off.

So... yeah. Until there is actual injury, and the injury isn't someone who people don't like and also don't care about. Then it will be a problem, and God help us all then.

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Let's keep our older cars on the road as long as possible.

Let’s face it, in an energy starved world the car of the future is an e-bike. Side effect it’s free of connected BS. So far…

We will not be "energy starved" anytime soon, short of an actual apocalypse happening. What we use for energy may change, but energy won't.

We live on free energy, free as in "dig a hole and voilà": energy. No nuclear, no solar, no wind can replace the sheer amount of energy we extract out of oil and coal. I’m afraid privacy in cars is going to be the least of humanity’s problems unless we make fusion working.

> No nuclear, no solar, no wind can replace the sheer amount of energy we extract out of oil and coal

What are you basing this on? You realise we have localised grids that go 100% renewable regularly, and could easily keep doing that with electrified transport?

Well, global surveys show how oil, gas and coal are going.

https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption

Well sure, we’re consuming more fossil fuels because they’re cheaper. Nothing I’ve seen suggests we can switch primary production to clean sources. It would be more expensive. But that’s far from a hard limit.

I’m genuinely curious if someone is credibly speculating we are unable, versus economically unwilling, to replace fossil fuels with clean options.

My understanding is that there are no clean sources able to replace fossil fuels. Or we would need to cover useful land with solar panels (largely produced in China with coal electricity btw).

Anyway, we should transition to EV and these cars manufacturers bad practices are just keeping old inefficients cars on the streets.

> we would need to cover useful land with solar panels

About the land area of New Mexico, if we went 100% solar [1]. Remove current hydroelectric, potential geothermal and then mix in wind and nuclear, and you have a realistic mix that could replace fossil fuels.

[1] https://www.axionpower.com/knowledge/power-world-with-solar/

If only there was some giant naturally occurring fusion reactor that we could siphon a bit of power from to power our things.

Exactly! But if it’s energy density hasn’t increased since the middle age it’s probably only good enough to support middle age lifestyle.

As fossil fuels get more expensive to acquire and renewables get cheaper and cheaper, it's really a self-solving problem.

Energy is necessary for modern society to function. It's not going anywhere nor will it decrease just because one source of it is inconvenient.

> Side effect it’s free of connected BS. So far…

"So far" is the right qualifier. As electric scooter rentals have clearly shown, it's trivial to add in the connected BS.

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