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When Wiener ignores these messages, will you vote against him in the next election, even if that means voting republican? Because if not, you can expect more laws like this one.

If you want different laws, you need to elect different politicians.

Aren’t newer washers/dryers full of electronics because of laws mandating higher efficiency? My parents have an old Maytag washer that uses around 30 gallons per load while my washer uses less than 8. I know Speed Queen makes dumb laundry machines, but at least one of their models was banned for residential sale by the Department of Energy. They ended up figuring out a workaround by gimping the default cleaning mode and encouraging users to not use that mode.[1]

But I don’t see how mandating removable batteries helps this situation with phones. I don’t replace my phone when the battery degrades, as it’s pretty cheap & painless to replace the battery after a few years. I upgrade when my phone stops getting security updates, or when a new phone comes along with some feature I want.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/speed-queen-revie...

I not sure how much we’re disagreeing here. Applying my argument of taxing externalities to certain food additives would result in taxes so high that it would effectively be a ban.

The externalities of integrated batteries are that people probably replace their phones sooner than otherwise, resulting in more electronic waste. But phones are only a tiny fraction of e-waste. Most e-waste is from household appliances, displays, & HVAC equipment. Phones are less 10%. I mean, how could it be otherwise? Phones are small and people use them for years before upgrading.

I’m not sure what the Android/iOS duopoly has to do with removable batteries. Mandating removable batteries would not change the operating systems available. And while there isn’t much choice in which OS you can run on a phone, there is enough choice that you can buy phones with removable batteries. If anything, this is an argument against mandating removable batteries, as governments are not mandating/subsidizing another phone OS despite far less choice in that area.

Lastly, I don’t see how banning people from having phones with integrated batteries gives them more choice. Most people (such as myself) don’t really care about removable batteries, and would rather have a phone that is smaller, cheaper, and/or more resistant to the elements. The way to give people the most choice is to tax externalities commensurate to the harm they cause, and let the market figure out what people actually value.

Phones with removable batteries are rare because only a small fraction of people want phones with removable batteries. Phone manufacturers also dislike removable batteries because customers buy cheap 3rd party batteries and complain when these batteries perform poorly or malfunction, sometimes by exploding. And then the headline is, “Phone made by company X explodes.” not, “Cheap battery explodes.” Removable batteries also introduce new failure modes like contacts degrading, causing phones to power off unexpectedly when jostled or flexed in certain ways. That increases the risk of a recall and bad PR.

I and millions of others want a phone that is smaller than the current offerings. Heck, my 13 mini is too big for my tastes. But I don’t think that means the government should force phone manufacturers to make smaller phones. So too for features like removable batteries, physical keyboards, or headphone jacks.

A lack of physical port makes troubleshooting more difficult. Apple didn’t remove the diagnostic port from their watches until the series 7. Also I think certain governments require that phones have a USB-C port.

It really depends on the model, manufacturer, & luck. I’ve never had a phone lose its water resistance. The phone I use today (a 13 mini) is almost five years old and I clean it by running it under the faucet.

The point is that people have different preferences, so the EU should not force people to buy phones with removable batteries. People who want such features can buy those phones, and people who want smaller, thinner phones can buy ones with integrated batteries.

At most the EU should tax externalities like electronic waste, though that would be a rounding error compared to the cost of the phone itself.

I think a small level of it is fine. It’s like sports teams. You can be a Giants fan and I can be a Yankees fan, and we’ll bicker & make fun of each other for supporting a different team. But we can still work together & be civil when it comes to lots of other stuff.

It was installed in the middle of a street owned by the government. Police are guarding it to prevent vandalism or removal. Both the Westminster City Council and the Mayor of London have praised the statue and called for it to be preserved.[1][2]

If the man holding the flag had been wearing a thawb instead of a suit, or if the statue had been of a woman, I think the establishment's response would be quite different.

1. From https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y9wlnwl85o "We're excited to see Banksy's latest sculpture in Westminster, making a striking addition to the city's vibrant public art scene. While we have taken initial steps to protect the statue, at this time it will remain accessible for the public to view and enjoy."

2. From https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/30/world/europe/banksy-londo... "Banksy has a great ability to inspire people from a range of backgrounds to enjoy modern art. His work always draws great interest and debate, and the mayor is hopeful that his latest piece can be preserved for Londoners and visitors to enjoy."

You joke but phone mounts for firearms are a thing. People use them to record gun PoV videos and to make range estimation (such as dope charts) more accessible.

I think in almost all states DUI applies to private roads accessible to the public, such as parking lots and driveways. Mythbusters drove drunk on a closed course in California and that was legal.

Only a few states absolutely forbid operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated (I know Washington is one). That said, you’d have to do something pretty absurd to attract the attention of law enforcement if you’re staying on your own land.

Do F1 cars have VINs? I’m pretty sure you don’t need a VIN on a car if it stays off public roads. Also driving is not a right enshrined by the constitution.

The author’s other stories like Ra and Fine Structure have the same issue, in my opinion. He has interesting ideas, but cannot seem to write an ending.

Also wouldn't it only work for aircraft that are flying away from the launcher? IR & light signatures are much weaker from the front. At best I think this guidance system would only be economical for ground-based launchers, as the cost of aircraft and their limited payloads mean you want the most effective weapons onboard, not the cheapest.

Annoyingly, I can't find any information online about such a simple guidance system. The earliest homing missile fielded by the Soviets was the K-13[1], which used technology reversed-engineered from the AIM-9 Sidewinder[2]. Later systems seem to be improvements upon that technology, not simplifications.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-13_(missile)

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-9_Sidewinder

Unless it was nighttime or the engagement happened at low altitude on a cloudy day, wouldn’t that usually lock onto the sun?

I don't think that's true. When I was in Italy in 2003, I saw plenty of anti-American and anti-Bush sentiment. eg: Rainbow flags with "pace" on them and "Yankee go home" graffiti.

I never said that North Korea was similar to China. I was simply applying your argument to another country to show how it isn't a good argument for whether or not to trade.

Doesn't that prove too much? For example, North Korea treats their citizens horribly, but since it's not a threat to westerners, would that mean that trade deals with them are acceptable?

It's hard for me to come up with a standard that encourages trade with China but discourages trade with North Korea. I'm not saying that trade with the US is therefore a good idea. There are many reasonable moral standards that would forbid trade with both the US & China.

SF Muni & BART both stopped service in many areas. Though most of the trains still had electricity, many sensors and control systems were inoperable. Also underground stations had no lighting, so it would be hazardous to allow people to board or exit there.

Waymo's problem is obvious in hindsight, and quite embarrassing for them, but it can be solved with software improvements. Tesla's FSD already treats dark traffic lights as stop signs, so I would bet on Waymo fixing this as soon as they can.

But transportation that depends on infrastructure along the whole route (such as trains and busses powered by overhead lines) are always going to fail in these situations. I think that's acceptable considering how rare these events are.

That's one person claiming an update bricked their car, but it's unclear if that was due to a bad software update or a hardware failure that coincided with the update. Tesla usually explains what they fixed, so it's odd that the poster never replied with more details.

Even if every software update was perfect, you would see individual stories like the one you linked to. There are millions of Teslas in the world, and they all get updates frequently, so a hardware failure will sometimes coincide with a software update. If a bad update were shipped to customers, it would be a story similar to this Jeep issue: thousands of cars affected at once, lots of furious customers, and news articles about the failure.

I've seen the same thing happen in smaller discussions among experts on Bluesky, but I didn't link to those because: 1. It's harder for non-experts in that field to judge whether my claims are true. 2. It might reveal my identity.

The incentive structure is the same as larger discussions. If anything, a smaller community makes it easier to create echo chambers, as you need to block fewer people before reaching epistemic closure.

In general that's true, but it's because on Bluesky, blocking causes the blocked person's replies to be hidden from everyone who views the original post. It's much easier to block than to engage with a contradictory reply (especially if the reply is correct and you're wrong), so disagreement tends to result in a block.

This behavior is common enough that it creates a chilling effect for anyone who disagrees. Why take the time to craft a reply correcting the poster if it will likely be hidden from everyone? And so you end up with echo chambers.

The effect is quite stunning on some topics. For example: Quite a few people on Bluesky believe the Trump assassination attempt in Pennsylvania was staged[1], that the Charlie Kirk assassin's text messages are fake[2][3], and that the recent ICE shooter was a false flag.[4][5][6] Notice the amount of engagement these posts have. Thousands of likes, with little to no disagreement in the replies. The lack of feuding is what allows people to believe these falsehoods.

1. https://bsky.app/profile/jlyncochran.bsky.social/post/3ldy2f...

2. https://bsky.app/profile/cwebbonline.com/post/3lyzvxijtmc2f

3. https://bsky.app/profile/cwebbonline.com/post/3lyz22btupk2k

4. https://bsky.app/profile/junlper.beer/post/3lzlxfrqguc2k

5. https://bsky.app/profile/realtexaspaul.com/post/3lzlwg2ueic2...

6. https://bsky.app/profile/gilmored85.bsky.social/post/3lzm53d...

Could you elaborate? I have no idea who “Theo of internet drama fame” is.

I don’t know where you heard that. According to every article I could find, Borhanian was shot by Lind in self-defense[1]:

> Court records show that Lind shot two of his attackers, injuring one person and killing 31-year-old Emma Borhanian.

Back in 2019, Borhanian was arrested and charged with felony child endangerment and false imprisonment in a protest against a rationalist group.[2]

1. https://openvallejo.org/2025/01/27/man-killed-in-vallejo-was...

2. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Mystery-in-Sonom...

Most of the Zizians who lived in Vallejo moved there from the Berkeley area. The reason they moved was because Curtis Lind felt empathetic and offered them extremely cheap rent. After not paying rent for years (despite at least one of them being an engineer at Google), they ambushed Lind, then tried to behead him and dissolve his body in a vat. Fortunately he was carrying a concealed firearm, so he shot them in self-defense, killing one. Three years later, Lind was murdered by another member before he could testify at the trial for his other attackers.

If there's any sort of marginalization by Lind in that story, I'm having a hard time finding it.

This group formed in the SF Bay Area, which is known for being one of the most accepting places in the world for LGBT people. If marginalization were the main cause, it seems to me that the group would have been located somewhere else. I think it's more likely that these people had an underlying mental disorder that made them likely to engage in both violent behavior and trans identity.

One big difference the Zizians have with the LessWrong community is that LW people believe that human minds cannot be rational enough to be absolute utilitarians, and therefore a certain kind of deontology is needed.[1] In contrast, the Zizians are absolutely convinced of the correctness of their views, which leads them to justify atrocities. In that way it seems similar to the psychology of jihadists.

1. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K9ZaZXDnL3SEmYZqB/ends-don-t...

In practice, hydrogen cars take significantly longer than gas cars to fill, and the filling station can’t have a high duty cycle because the nozzle will freeze to the car. (Ideal gas law means the hydrogen cools as it goes from high pressure to low pressure.)

Synthesizing fuels from CO2, water, and electricity seems like a better solution. It works with existing infrastructure and doesn’t have the storage or safety issues of hydrogen.

All those points are true, but it doesn't change the fact that Starlink will be quite profitable for SpaceX.

Currently, each launch of 23 Starlink satellites costs SpaceX around $50 million. To get 1,000 direct to cell satellites in orbit, they'll need to launch 44 times, costing them $2.2 billion. Due to the low orbits, air resistance causes the satellites to reenter within 5-10 years, so to maintain the constellation they'll need to spend $220-440 million per year. These costs will be much lower when they switch from Falcon 9 to Starship.

Now let's say only 1% of the population wants Starlink direct to cell. That's still 80 million people. If SpaceX charges cell companies $10/month per user for the service, that's almost $10 billion per year. And that's not counting the money they make from selling Starlink Internet, which currently has over 4 million subscribers. At $100/month, that's $4.8 billion per year in revenue.

So Starlink is profitable without direct to cell technology, but since they're launching the satellites anyway, they might as well collect more revenue by adding cell capability. DTC only becomes unprofitable if the cost of the extra hardware and mass is less than DTC subscriber revenue.

Your claims are simply incorrect.

First, Musk has been talking about Mars since before he founded SpaceX. Other people such as Adeo Ressi, Robert Zubrin, and Reid Hoffman have reported Musk talking about colonizing Mars as early as 2001. It was only after that that he went to Russia to try and buy old rockets, thinking that landing a greenhouse on Mars would excite people about space again.

Second, Falcon 1 was named 18 months before the DARPA FALCON project existed. And the contract that SpaceX was awarded was less than half a million dollars. Nine other companies got similar contracts, including AirLaunch and Orbital Sciences Corp. Only Andrews Space, Lockheed Martin, and Northrup Grumman got phase two contracts.

Third, the Starshield program is almost entirely a product of the Biden administration, and its capabilities are nothing like SDI. Current Starshield satellites are similar to that of Starlink, but owned and operated by the US government. They have better encryption and probably some observational capabilities, but they are incapable of intercepting ICBMs. An SDI program would require technologies very different from what SpaceX has been developing. For example: SpaceX uses liquid fuels, while interceptors would have to be solid boosters.

And finally, SDI is unworkable for several reasons. It takes time to launch a satellite constellation, and during that time an adversary would be incentivized to launch their nukes (since it becomes a use it or lose it situation). Or they would build more anti-satellite weapons and ground based lasers, allowing them to take out enough interceptors to launch a devastating nuclear exchange. And even if the system remained intact, it would do nothing to stop hypersonics, bombers, submarine launched ballistic missiles, and nukes being smuggled into the country. People realized this long ago, which is why (in addition to cost) SDI was cancelled.

The only way your model of the world could be correct is if Musk was a brilliant con man who has spent the past quarter century risking his fortune to develop reusable rockets for the sole purpose of building a system that everyone knows would not protect the US in a global thermonuclear war. And he's somehow kept this secret from the public this entire time, even though he's leaked many other embarrassing secrets. Musk is far from the sanest person around, but such a claim stretches credulity to the breaking point.

These databases (which include collision risks) are public. Satellite owners use them to make maneuvers so they can avoid getting too close to debris or other satellites. Since these collision risks can be predicted days in advance, it takes very little thrust to prevent them. Even cubesats without propulsion systems can change their orbits, as their orientation affects how much drag they experience.