Maarten88

why settle for advertisements or user subscription when they could have the Chat AI make transactions for the user and take a cut from the seller. They could publish an API spec for many transaction categories and providers would be in line to sell products and services.

As long as safety for people is not prioritized over car speed, no amount of spending will make streets substantially more safe. Cars are the problem, they cause all the deaths.

As I understand it, the problem is not so much the revenue they made for the government. The issue is that they are making a much higher (and recurring) revenue that they keep for themselves, for running a website that the government may have paid, or that - as you say - paid for itself already.

Those same large agri companies are working behind the scenes to stir up the farmer protests, hiding behind likable small family farmers. See some recent TV commercials to positively frame farmers' image. But many of those farmers are not a small family business anymore, they are very profitable businesses and the owners want to continue making those profits, increasing emissions which are already too high for our very small country.

All true, it will take a while for EV supply to catch up with demand, and Tesla is in a very good position, they seem to have locked in a lot of battery supply, their production is very efficient and they have much better margins than all other manufacturers. Most traditional manufacturers sell EV´s at a loss, and talk about 50% EV´s in 2030, which seems far to little too late, I think they´ll need to move much faster if they want to avoid bankruptcy.

I do think Tesla´s position is very similar to Ford´s position over a hundred years ago. Ford initially had all the same advantages with the T model. Yet Ford was overtaken in the 1920´s by GM who started segmenting the market, giving customers different brands, models and options to choose from.

For the coming years no manufacturer will be able to really compete with Tesla, but I do think Tesla will need to introduce more models and start covering more niches in the car market.

Yes, there are still many problems in need of a solution in the Netherlands. I sometimes wonder if they'd get solved better when managed by boring bureaucrats who do thorough analysis and slowly implement consistent long-term policies, without too much politic influence, like our infrastructure.

The US had many beautiful city centers that were walkable and had public transport. It was bulldozed to make room for the car.

They went so far as to invent the concept of jaywalking to get rid of those pesky pedestrians on the road, so that cars could have all the space.

The surprise in this for people from the Netherlands is that this is a surprising statistic for people from other countries. Having lived here all my life, my first thought was: 2/3 seems a bit low to me. I had to read the article to see that it is a bit lower for primary school kids (who can often walk) and actually 90% for secondary school age.

The differences between our infrastructure compared to other countries somehow grew organically inside the Netherlands, not many people here were noticing that this was anything special. Even right wing politicians here don't really oppose bike infrastructure, except for a few lunatics. Now that everyone here "gets" it, it even seems to be accelerating lately. I think we must thank our politicians, civil servants, city planners and a few very effective activists in the previous century for their good work.

I wonder how that car (McMurtry fan car) would do in an acceleration record attempt, I'd guess it is in the same ballpark performance. And it is also electric.

I think in Visual Studio, if you start a comment block with 4 or more slashes and hut return, it will automatically start the sentences after that with 2 slashes so you can write more comment lines. Close with 4 slashes or more to end the block.

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I can get a straight torx screwdriver with shaft diameter smaller than the screw at my local hardware store. No need for worldwide shipping, I can get that on bike. There exist also torx bits with long shaft.

> being able to buy a custom “off the shelf” part without making a special internal part number

How does that work? I have been searching the internet for stainless steel M8 x 20 set screws with a torx socket, maybe uncommon but straightforward. I have yet to find these anywhere outside of having them manufactured in china by truckload - I need maybe 100.

> Unions...

MBA style management focusing on short-term economics and management bonusses seems more likely to me. I don's see how treating employees well leads to poor service and quality.

Long ago Microsoft had MSN Messenger, which was one of the leading messaging apps. It worked well, and many 'normal' users were using it. Then Microsoft dissolved the team behind it and screwed up the product so bad with bloatware and ads that everyone moved to WhatsApp (except in the US where people went back to texting).

Then Microsoft came out with Communicator, renamed it to Lync, which was a corporate messenger/meeting software. It used its own server, that could federate outside. It worked very well. They added LiveMeeting as a separate app for meetings, built on the same protocols. Our company used it with the "roundtable" camera from 2008, and it all worked amazingly well. We had meetings with people joining in from home and other offices over the internet using inexpensive webcams, 15 years ago.

Then they bought Skype and it went downhill from there. I don't know what happened, but they took a lot of time integrating technologies from Skype (peer-to-peer) with their own tech (which was more telecom/server based) and tried competing with ever-changing perceived competitors by copying parts of their features and UI, without ever making any feature really good. They integrated everything into a single program, Skype for Business, now renamed Teams, and made it bloated and obnoxious. Just try to get it to not start at login... It's like MSN all over again.

I think the Communicator/LiveMeeting software combo they had 15 years ago would still (conceptually) do pretty well as messenger/meeting software now, when modernized. It was much less intrusive and behaved like nice software that you actually wanted to use.

Car drivers who hate bikes are dumb. Why don't they understand that every bike trip means one car less in traffic, thus freeing up space for their car?

Exactly what I thought. Laminar airfoils with max thickness far back do very well in the computer but they behave poorly. I would want to see proven that this plane is stable in all conditions.

Putting a hydrogen engine in it seems like a distraction.

> telling ourselves we'll find hypothetical solutions sometimes in the future

Or we just put in LFP batteries now. No cobalt and nickel needed. Energy density is a bit lower, but costs are lower and durability is better

Most Chinese brands use these; Tesla as well on some models

Yes. The affordability issues do not seem to affect Chinese car manufacturers, who are producing EV cars that are quite economical without subsidies.

EV's may introduce new challenges for the grid, but when a country is unable or unwilling to fix that then all those batteries could also present an opportunity to balance that same grid using software.

The problem that they do not mention is that they have huge investments in engine manufacturing that are useless for EV's. EV's are much simpler technology, the only hard parts are batteries and software.

Switching too fast will make their existing manufacturing capabilities worthless, and this is what is really threatening them. That is also making EV's "expensive" to build for them (but not for Tesla, or anyone building new factories).

I think that anyone in a developed country buying an ICE car now is already throwing money out the window: a few years from now nobody will want it anymore, depreciation will be very high.

There are many examples in the world of successful new city developments. I used to live near Java Island in Amsterdam, a newly developed neighborhood which is very densely populated (60.000 people per square mile) and quite popular. There are modern versions of traditional canal houses, which most people think look very nice. It is not inexpensive anymore, however.

I think in the US there are some comparable developments, where they also try building walkable neighborhoods with high density, having shops and restaurants mixed in. But that is still very rare in the US.

> People like to live in single family homes and live next to single family homes.

People like living in walkable neighborhoods with public transportation more, as proven by housing prices, but those are mostly illegal to build.

Also I think that society is now much more complex than the single family American dream of the past. And the US should wake up to the reality that in their society the poor are subsidizing the rich in almost everything, especially in housing.

I think the publication describes they scaled it to a 120L pilot reactor and ran the process continuously for 3 weeks feeding it 11 to 23 L of gas per min.

Yes, changing metrics often in unpredictable ways.

I have seen this in a company where they would change employee objectives every year, and also promote and demote people into unexpected new roles. This seemed to result in everyone understanding that next year things can be very different, and does not give people enough time to corrupt a metric. So everyone needs to build good working relations with superiors and subordinates, and not only try to meet objectives but also do well for the company in general, because next year roles can be reversed.

This system is tiring for everyone though...

Yes, it's funny that when the standard unit is a somewhat lower number (so the KW number is the same magnitude but just a bit lower / less impressive than in HP) there is more resistance to the change.

This is the genius of what the top 1% in the US have accomplished: they have convinced almost half of the population to take their side, against their own interest, by making them feel they are part of the upper class when they are actually not, or think they will somehow get rich shortly ("temporarily embarrassed millionaires") or that redistribution is for the weak, who do not deserve it and should work harder.

> which does not receive general fund support

This is the part that surprised me most. So instead of the government making sure that the market is kept fair using taxation, the AG finances this function by extracting money for its own use from offenders? That seems fishy to me.

I think Apple does not hold much sway over lawmakers here in the Netherlands. US tech companies are not very popular in general, and politicians are not corrupt for the most part. Many laws originate in Brussels.

Incompetence/cluelessness and lack of resources around tech is the bigger problem here.

> Blame the legislators. Those assholes left barn-door sized loopholes in their legal requirements for Apple's compliance.

Well that remains to be seen. The court just applied existing law for this specific conflict. Apple was found not complying, which is why the court issued this ruling. After implementing this narrow change they probably still do not comply. It would surprise me if dating apps would somehow be legally different from any other app. Apple is just stalling here. The next court case is going to cost money in addition to broadening the requirements on Apple, I think.

You could use the tax income to subsidize healthy foods. Or just redistribute it to low income people.

It cuts in many ways: save money and gain health by drinking water/tea/coffee instead of softdrinks. Use the money for healthier foods.

As a test I recently bought a pair of Li-ion AA batteries, that are recharged through a micro USB connector in the battery. They are rated 2880 mWh and are advertised to provide a flat 1.5v during the whole discharge cycle (they have internal circuitry to convert from the native 3.7v).

I wonder how those compare to my current rotating stock of Ni-MH ones that regularly stop working. Jury is still out, they were considerably more expensive though (something like €4.50 a piece).

I also recently got solar panels, they were calculated to provide more then my household consumes year-round, and should pay themselves back in 6-7 years based on 2021 energy prices and regulations. I anticipate having to get an electric car to use up all that energy :-)

One thing the author missed is that in the Netherlands you can re-claim the VAT paid on the solar installation, saving 21% of costs. Probably not worth the effort for a very small installation, but for a bigger one it saves considerably.