The only people I know who have an electric car own or have pre-ordered Teslas. They are all status symbols. I don’t know anyone who needs an electric car. Maybe the problem is just as much lack of demand as it is lack of big auto commitment?
I agree. If you're buying anything more expensive than the $13k Nissan Versa, you're buying features you don't need. So saying people don't need an electric car so there's no point in buying them is kind of a silly statement.
I think you are vastly underestimating what some people use their vehicles for. Where I drove today would have totaled a Nissan Versa. Trucks and other utility vehicles have their place.
Yes, and the wide variety of all-electric trucks and utility vehicles on the market prove that your use case is a direct and unquestionable comparison to what we're talking about right now, which is vehicles that are directly comparable to a Tesla or Bolt or Volt or Leaf.
You know, I think the Prius is really underrated as a pickup truck.
Indeed, and that's why I was careful to say "most." There certainly are legitimate needs for fancier vehicles. But I'd guess 95% of personal vehicles purchases go beyond what the buyer needs. Which is totally fine!
No need for me to quibble with your sentiment. The question is: if they don't solve a problem, why buy one? Prius offered people clean hands, and not much more. When gas is cheap the price of fuel isn't a big motivator, and Detroit is happy to churn out SUVs. So unless the state changes current market conditions I see no reason why people would choose to buy these electric cars.
But it demonstrates less demand than 400,000 people buying actual cars for their sticker price. $1000 is pocket change for the buyers of new cars and how many of those in the long run take delivery of a vehicle remains to be seen, plenty of people give up their slot once the time arrives to pay up the remainder.
I have an electric car and I know many people have electric cars. Each have their own motivations, for some people it is to save on gas. Others for carpool access, while still others are for environmental reasons. I doubt Nissan Leaf is a great status symbol
For sure. I see a lot of leafs around town and around the neighborhood. Its an unapologetic econobox. No problem with that. If I had to drive 101 upstream everyday, I'd go get a cheap used leaf in a heartbeat.
A friend had a Bolt and likes it a lot. Of course lots of Teslas around, too. Tesla has range, and is stylish. Bolt has range. Leaf goes from point A to B for a modest subset of points.
> Leaf goes from point A to B for a modest subset of points
That could be great for some people, but for more people a 10-year old Toyota Corolla would also be great. That's the problem, there isn't a compelling reason beyond interest in new technology or eco-sensibility to buy one of these cars.
I came very close to a Bolt for these reasons. My local power generator offered a $75 discount on the charger, plus free charging for the car on weekends. That's enormous: I could charge on weekends and drive 238 miles for free during the week. As a local commute or grocery getter, it's hard to beat free miles.
Interesting. Made me think of how now in Australia we have so much solar installed that wholesale electric spot pricing can go $10k+/MWh negative during some parts of the day. Wondering if one day they'll be willing to pay consumer electric sinks... EV charging is perfect.
Yes, any place with a lot of solar (daytime) loves having electric cars plugged in during the day, and any place with a lot of wind (which often blows strongest at night) loves having electric cars plugged in at night.
And if the car has a big battery and doesn't need to charge to full all of the time, you can use solar or wind predictions to choose when to charge.
And with some "smart grid" upgrades that are proposed, a busy electric grid could even "borrow" power from that big battery of a sitting car (with nowhere else to be) in periods of high demand and then repay what it borrowed, plus "interest" once demand drops.
I have a plug-in hybrid (Toyota Prius Prime) which may not exactly count (though if the Volt does...), but here in Portland OR I see a huge number of Nissan Leaf-s. They can be bought used for a song, making them an ideal in-town car.
I've seen lots of Bolts in Silicon Valley in the past few months, far more than Model 3s in fact. And if you just stuff their seats with memory foam, they're quite comfortable to drive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dgxWTOnVn8
but I await the Camaro/Mustang/Challenger equivalent electric car at roughly the same price point before I'll switch. The acceleration is just too useful for highway merges and other assorted road nonsense that's increasingly my daily commute experience.
The Model 3 is about as fast as a BMW 340i, and probably similar to a V6 Mustang or Camaro.
I drive a Prius and I'm rarely able to use its full power on a highway merge because I'm stuck behind slowpokes who think it's reasonable to merge at 40mph. If I owned a Mustang I'd be constantly frustrated at never being able to use it to its full potential.
Sure, that's on par with base $25K Camaros/Mustangs. It's not on par with the sort of Camaro/Mustang one can procure for ~$50k or the same price as a Model 3 that isn't barebones (and I just tried to config one on Tesla's web site and alas you can't so I can't give an exact number here).
For ~$50K, ICE sports cars are sub 4 seconds. That said, it is on par with low-end sport coupes so I see some of the appeal. It's just not appealing to me.
I'm with you. I'm a car nut, and I'd love a bare-bones performance EV. The instant torque sounds amazing.
Just give me something that's affordable, reliable, as light as possible and all-weather capable. It's fine to cut corners on interior materials and gadgets. Keep the electric windows, just give me the torque!
We've already had plenty of pointless discussions about the word "affordable" on HN. If you want to cast aspersions on "a very particular demographic", be my guest.
And this is why I listen to car people about cars, not techies. I drove a Bolt, I like the Bolt, but it's no sports car. To put this into perspective, do you make your SW/HW decisions based on the suggested content from Twitter/Facebook?
Yes he did, apparently you didn't read the bit about wanting the torque, which electric cars have from 0-20, and then peter out (except Teslas).
For a mainstream electric car, the Bolt is exceptionally good in driving more like a 2009ish Rav4 than a 2017ish Kia Soul, but it's no sports car, even in sports mode. But in a world where people think a Scion FRS is a sports car, I can understand the confusion.
Indeed I did. I like the Bolt. If I lived in a city, I'd probably buy one right now. But sport mode != sports car. Just like Elon Musk != Skunk Musk...
Who is automation for? What end does the technology serve? If the economy doesn’t serve humanity then to hell with it. Offer people decent lives, or at least don’t act surprised when the luddites come to smash your precious “labor-saving”.
I, for one, am glad that I'm not sending this message via pigeon by the light of a candle, because I wouldn't be sending it - I'd probably be spending my days plowing some field somewhere were it not for "job killing" technological innovation.
50% of the United States used to be farmers, now it's 2%. We sure as hell don't have 48% unemployment, and I'd guess that nearly every American has it better now than they would have in the same social strata then.
Tesla saw the promise of electricity and automation as a magical force that would free men from toiling away doing things they actually needn't do. And I think he was largely right! Think of where we would be if Tesla, Edison and Westinghouse refused to work on electricity, lightbulbs, and electric motors because it would put the people that stoke fires for a living out of a job.
What happened when tractors came and took all of the farming jobs away? Food became much less expensive, and we all ended up doing different things - the vast majority of which are much better than farming. And the luddites would have smashed the tractors?! What a counterproductive way to try and help people.
It's not always beautiful in the short-run, but the economy cures itself relatively quickly, and the people that fill the gaps are handsomely rewarded. To fight innovation for the sake of jobs, so far as I can tell, is almost always short-sighted.
> What happened when tractors came and took all of the farming jobs away?
Have you heard of “The Grapes of Wrath”?
No one is talking about fighting “innovation” for the sake of jobs. I questioned to point to the central conflict of who benefits from all of this. The old socialists were the most technologically hopeful, because they believed new technologies would spare workers from drudgery. Yet if you look at the vast interior of the United States, almost every community is worse off now than it was 25 years ago. Old, bad jobs at least gave people dignity and a sense of place.
Your naïve faith in high school economics fails to address a key question of our times: as technology races ahead of social ability to adapt and integrate it, how will people manage? Leave behind Ayn Rand and look to history: this same crisis has played out in the 1st century BCE in Rome and the 18th century in France just to name two famous examples. Depriving common people a decent living leads to disaster.
People need to make a living. Immigration alone has provoked widespread resentment. When self-driving cars and the like displace more workers at an unprecedented pace the outcome will be violent. Rhetoric and greed will not stem the high tides of blood.
> Your naïve faith in high school economics fails to address a key question of our times: as technology races ahead of social ability to adapt and integrate it, how will people manage? Leave behind Ayn Rand and look to history.
We don’t need to look to Rome for that. It’s happened a dozen times in the United States. This isn’t a new scenario. Though it certainly is simple to call anything that disagrees with your understanding of the world “high school economics.”
And you can quit it with the Ayn Rand strawman. Just because someone is discussing economics doesn’t mean they’re Randian any more than it makes you a Marxist.
> We don’t need to look to Rome for that. It’s happened a dozen times in the United States. This isn’t a new scenario.
I think you're being too optimistic. The only time I can think of where the US made the switch successfully was when creating entirely new job sectors. e.g. from Agriculture to Industry meant there were similar numbers of jobs in Industry, and then to the Services. But Automation seems to be a dead end: one worker is so productive he/she can manage an entire fleet of autonomous trucks (e.g.)! So there will most certainly be a lot of people losing their jobs and the kind of jobs opening up for them... don't seem to be many.
A few decades ago the most common job title in the USA was secretary. It certainly isn't anymore. Now it's truck driver.
Secretary went away (and wasn't simply replaced with a new title like admin assistant) because of IT. We don't have a secretary shaped hold in the economy. They mostly got other jobs, or retired.
Secretary didn't go away. Hot-type printing is a better example. Look at how healthy and well-performing the economy is doing. Real wages stagnating for almost fifty years, speculation enriching the gamblers. Millions of people have already given up finding work. Whole communities have become drug-infested hellholes. America is falling apart. Visit these towns where industry is obsolete or shipped abroad. Look at that, and then say "yep, accelerating this process will be wonderful".
> America is falling apart. Visit these towns where industry is obsolete or shipped abroad. Look at that, and then say "yep, accelerating this process will be wonderful".
Genuine question (not trying to flamebait): why are these failing communities "America" any more than the metro regions are booming like crazy and creating prosperity for so many Americans? Again, I'm not blaming them for their predicament, but I've met many Americans who grew up in rural areas but migrated to other places to seek work. Why should the rest of us be heavily taxed and regulated just to preserve these anachronistic, unproductive communities?
> why are these failing communities "America" any more than the metro regions are
They aren't. They do represent more of the population and land area. Also many cities, probably most, are awful. Memphis, TN or Dayton, OH are much more representative of the nation then New York or San Francisco.
> Why should the rest of us be heavily taxed and regulated just to preserve these anachronistic, unproductive communities?
That really hasn't been a question in this discussion. The international order is built on nation-states. Whether you like it or not, the nation implies collective responsibility. This was the "fraternité" part of the French revolution, for example. Your remarks reflect the prevailing liberal sentiments that we are all just individuals. If we are these atomic subjects, why should we be obligated to help some random other atoms? This is one of the reasons why liberal democracies are failing. The left and establishment have no good response to this. The alt-right has pushed people to revive ethnic (Richard Spencer) or civic (Steve Bannon) nationalism.
Perhaps I didn't phrase my question correctly. I wasn't advocating abandoning middle and rural America; my concern is that we shouldn't be pouring money (in the form of tax incentives and debt that hides the true cost of rural living) into sustaining rural America as it is now. I am certainly all for investing in retraining programs; hell perhaps even having a rural specific health insurance system.
But increasing tariffs to protect coal miners? Killing solar and renewables for the sake of those communities? That is not a tradeoff I want to make.
You do make a good point about why liberal democracies seem to be in crisis though. I'm kind of embarrassed to say that I too was influenced very strongly by libertarian beliefs (specifically Rand's system of less Government) in most of my youth and only recently have started understanding how poisonous and selfish that can be when taken to its extremes.
> I am certainly all for investing in retraining programs; hell perhaps even having a rural specific health insurance system.
> But increasing tariffs to protect coal miners? Killing solar and renewables for the sake of those communities? That is not a tradeoff I want to make.
What you've said in general makes sense. I'm only responding to point out that the question isn't just rural people and coal miners. Cities, suburbs, and towns are also affected. A few economic centers are doing well while _everywhere else_ is not.
Automation and the changing economy threaten the vast majority of Americans. Technical jobs will increasingly become critical, and tech workers can organize together to gain significant influence. If we don't, it will be up to the "masters of the universe" – Zuckerberg, et al. This industry is transforming politics, society, and culture. My hope is that we technicians take our role seriously.
What I referred to as high school economics are sentimental rhetoric like:
> Who is automation for? All of us
Your arguments have largely been innocent either by design or accident from the terrifying reality of daily life under our glorious economic system. I meant no personal insult to you of course. Your words reflect a broader notion that questions like automation are problems to be solved – a fine mindset from a technical perspective. But these are not just technical questions, they are grave conflicts where millions of lives hang in the balance. Slate Star Codex has a better exposition of this difference[0].
> Think of where we would be if Tesla, Edison and Westinghouse refused to work on electricity, lightbulbs, and electric motors because it would put the people that stoke fires for a living out of a job.
This is nearly identical to the plot from Ayn Rand's book "Anthem"[1].
> The next day he presents his work to the World Council of Scholars. Horrified that he has done unauthorized research, they assail him as a "wretch" and a "gutter cleaner" and say he must be punished. They want to destroy his discovery so it will not disrupt the plans of the World Council and the Department of Candles.
The Luddites smashed machinery because the ownership was using it to drop their cottage industries off the map without a moments notice. No negotiations, no winding down, retooling, retraining or nothing, just pack your shit and go starve out of sight. Can’t see how that wouldn’t happen again
Political economy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign.
-- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, introduction to Book IV.
This extreme rhetoric only strengthens the right. By condemning Nye for debating creationists and being a “combative white nerd”, this article reads like the Onion. Attending this event may be bad idea, but with friends like these who needs enemies? Who wants to even try and take part in public life? The moment you stand up you’ll be marked next for the pillory. Do we really wonder why liberal democracy is collapsing?
Maybe not on 1 billion devices, but ZFS was running on mission-critical Sun/Oracle hardware with expensive support contracts for many years. ZFS is currently probably the most reliable modern filesystem.
Still, rolling out APFS on such a large number of iDevices/Macs is a very impressive feat (although APFS is, of course, a simpler filesystem). The problems are with many of the 'edge cases' (RAID, etc.). This is not really surprising, btrfs has been in development since 2007 and still has problems with more complex setups.
> We find that doxing victims in our data set are overwhelmingly male, have an average age in their 20s, and a significant number are part of gamer communities (or maintain accounts with multiple video-game related websites). We also find that most doxes include highly identifying information of the victim and family members, such as full legal names, phone numbers and online social networking accounts.
I hope someone uses this research as a starting point for an investigation of why gamers are so heavily doxed. Might help us predict and prevent more doxing in the future.
Gamers are particularly bad about it, but I think it can apply to anybody who spends an inordinate amount of time attached to a computer or phone.
My theory is that they spend so much time playing games or screwing around, performing repetitive activities that have no consequence, that other activities they perform via virtual means just become an extension of their gaming mindset.
I think the same goes for Dread Pirate Roberts, the guy who wrote Mirai, perpetrators of cyberbullying and others-- they spend so much time wrapped up in a digital world where they get to play God with no consequence that the real-world implications of their digital lives start to become blurred.
* You can tell your parents you love them with the push of a button.
* You can have food brought to you with the push of a button.
* You can take a picture of your cat doing something stupid with the push of a button.
* You can send it to millions of people with the push of a button.
* You can buy clothes, household supplies or a car with the push of a button.
* You can conduct business with the push of a button.
* You can build and explore virtual worlds with the push of a button.
* You can create virtual life with the push of a button.
* You can destroy virtual life with the push of a button.
* You can tell someone they're ugly with the push of a button.
* You can distribute naked pictures of someone who trusted you with the push of a button.
* You can buy something expensive and make someone else pay for it with the push of a button.
* You can cripple the internet with the push of a button.
* You can put out a hit on someone with the push of a button.
You press buttons all day long for fun or for work, with no negative feedback. What's one more button?
I don't get what most of your comment has to do with getting doxxed. Are you saying that gamers spend a lot of time on the internet, and doxxing is a thing that happens on the internet, so they get doxxed more frequently?
>Are you saying that gamers spend a lot of time on the internet, and doxxing is a thing that happens on the internet, so they get doxxed more frequently?
Well, in some ways that make sense... Someone that rarely goes to the ocean is far less likely to get bit by a shark than a person that operates a saltwater fishing service.
So not only are most of their lives available in digital form and most of the human interactions they have in digital form, there is also a competitive angle to this. John beats Bob at $game, or John says Bob sucks at $game. Bob in an attempt to defend his honor can use conventional retorts, but they are less useful on the internet. Threats of physical violence are generally thwarted by long distances between actors. Bob attempting to turn the crowd against John to save face may be difficult, especially if John is actually better at the game. This leaves Bob with the thermonuclear option, Doxxing. It is likely highly effective in communities like this too. John in his attempt to deal with the fallout from the doxxing will likely have less time to commit to said gaming, and will have to deal with the stressful real life issues this causes.
Individual choices are insignificant. The future of advertising is being planned by Facebook and Google. Blocking advertisments is a workaround for a broken web. Surfing the web has always been about discovery. Are we supposed to intuit whether or not to visit a site for the first time based on how we predict it will align to some kind of ad rubric? The fact that many websites have bad business models is noone’s fault but their own. In fact, tools like AdNauseum[0] show how broken this moralistic consumer thinking is:
Block all ads?
> That’s robbing sites of needed advertising click-dollars!
Click all ads?
> That’s robbing advertising companies of needed attention!
This is totalitarian capitalism: it’s not good enough to accept being tracked everywhere, spied on, and burdened with processing advertising. Not good enough even to click every ad. You must love the ads in your heart. It’s your duty, citizen!
The end game in both cases is ads become worth less, or worthless. It doesn’t matter which side of the scale you tip to cause that.
It’s so easy to understand what’s wrong with AdNauseam if you look into the spirit of the tool. The problem isn’t clicking every ad, it’s clicking every ad with the intent to throw a wrench in advertising.
If it worked well enough the end result would just be ads are worthless and sites lose money, just like if you block their ads.
You seem intelligent and I don’t mean this as an insult, but I think you’re missing the point.
To use an inexact metaphor, if I am selling gas no one is obligated to fill up at my station. Fuel efficient cars are not “robbing” me. People who take public transit are not ripping me off. My job as a businessman is to make money. Consumers owe nothing to me. If the gas I sell is leaded and no one wants to buy it, I have no right to complain.
If I cut out every ad from my copy of the yellow pages no one has a right to complain. Adblocking is no different.
When reading we’re free to skip and skim. Vinyl, VHS, Cassette, CD, and DVD allow us to seek or rewind as we like. When I buy a PC, I can install any software I choose to. When browsing the web, I can accept or reject any served content.
That’s not entitlement. Entitlement is the sentiment that users somehow owe advertising or web firms anything.
Mozilla is fighting an uphill battle, but that doesn't give them a free pass. The Pocket, Cliqz, and Mr. Robot controversies undermine Mozilla's core message. Whether or not they are simply failures of marketing and branding doesn't change the fact that they hurt the company. That being said, a lot of people will never know about these issues so the damage is not catastrophic.
I would also argue that "just being better than X" was shown not to be effective in the last US Presidential election.
Am I the only one looking at this and thinking that the so-called controversies are absurdly tame in comparison with the outcry associated with them?
They're missteps, not trust breakers. Quantum was a massive step in the right direction. The Mr. Robot Easter Egg was non-malicious poor execution. I don't think it's a free pass to just contextualize how small their missteps have been in the grand scheme of things.
I think you are wrong about them not being "trust breakers" and right about them being fairly tame.
The reason the response seems outsized is because of the breach of trust involved, much more so than the technical impacts.
Quantum is great, and I just like a lot of the UX decisions Firefox makes. But a major reason for my support of Mozilla is their stated mission. And regularly making bumbling moves that overtly compromise that stated mission makes you start to question their commitment to it. Is it really their mission, or is it just a thing it is good for them to keep saying? POSIWID and all that.
Of the named examples, you can only somewhat reasonably make the argument that it goes against the mission for Cliqz. The rest did not negatively impact making the internet a global public resource, accessible to all.
I’m afraid that the current environment means outcry is always around the corner. I’m rooting for Mozilla but I’d like it if they could learn to avoid drawing negative attention.
Despite the non-maliciousness of the easter egg, I do think the act of just installing an extension into a browser could be viewed as a trust-breaker. I think the other "controversies" are overblown, but them remotely installing an extension like that doesn't sit right with me.
