rsynnott

28 ms·

541.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
> But is there any country, whose economy has been sanctioned by the foreigners and crippled by it, where the people then decided to overthrow their government? Arguably the Soviet Union. There's also a fairly strong argument, I thi
542.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
And if you were old enough, you'd have heard it about the Soviet Union, too. And nothing happened... until, abruptly, it did.
543.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
> For normal political jobs, what’s the issue? That’s politics. Republicans appoint Republicans. Democrats appoint Democrats. You're presumably coming from a US point of view (the US has an unusual system where the entire top level
544.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
Incidentally, it's far from what you'd expect, but the US is actually probably more influential in public transport than private transport on an export basis; Cummins is very competitive in the diesel engine space for buses, and t
545.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
Big PO box; it's a little under 100,000sqm.
546.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
VW tried that, particularly with the eGolf (which was pretty much indistinguishable from a normal Golf); it didn't really work. A lot of people thought VW didn't even _make_ electric cars until the weirder-looking id3 and 4 came o
547.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
> The US is the most advanced country technologically Certainly not in cars. The US car industry really more or less stopped even _trying_ to compete internationally in the 90s or so. The sole exception was Ford, but they went for an unu
548.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
... Where are you getting that figure? BEV sales grew by about 30% in Europe last year. > And those will be removed as EU is going through energy and resources crisis. ... Which is making petrol cars more expensive to run. Right as EVs a
549.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
Residential. Very common in the UK to have a separate night rate, even before smart meters.
550.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
FWIW, I don't think there are any oil or coal power plants left in the UK. Certainly none in general operation.
551.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
The id.Polo is apparently starting at 22k GBP in the UK; the VW Polo's always been a pretty popular car (and also starts at about 22k). I'd expect those to sell very well.
552.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
The id.Polo starts at 22k GBP. The ordinary, petrol-driven Polo also starts at 22k. You can see how massive increases in the price of petrol and diesel might influence purchasing behaviour there...
553.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
> Same as a hybrid but you can charge up the hybrid battery at home And, in practice, the battery tends to be much, much bigger. Some PHEVs are basically mediocre-range electric cars which happen to have a petrol generator.
554.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
Somewhat. But price rises for electricity aren't remotely on the same scale as price rises for diesel and petrol, and fuel/electricity was a smaller part of the TCO to _start_ with for electric cars.
555.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
... They didn't. Globally, and in the EU and China, they're rising fairly healthily (the EU did have a ~flat year in 2024, but 2025 and so far '26 have resumed growth). They're down a little in the US, but the US is a pa
556.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
I mean if you're elderly it's probably fine; it's if you plan to still be living there in a few decades that you might want to start worrying.
557.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
One thing we do in Ireland is that all public transport is free for people aged over 65. While I don't think this was the original _intent_, it definitely seems to encourage people to get out of the house more. (In particular, some peo
558.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
One caution there; if you read the small print, they're using PPP figures. Which is definitely better than using nominal figures, but doesn't account for anything. In particular, it doesn't account for transfers, either direc
559.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
Ireland actually arguably has a bit of a crisis coming up there; over the last 40 years or so one-off housing (ie rural housing completely in the middle of nowhere, rather than in villages) became more and more common, until the planners cl
560.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
Which models are these? Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_ID._series the only one released since (before the 2026 models) is the ID.7 Tourer, which does have buttons.
561.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
Did they? The id.Polo (I think the first car to come out since VW said they were reversing course there) has quite a lot of buttons. Like arguably a comical number of buttons.
562.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
I bet if you showed a room of people a car with a big iPad thing a couple of decades ago, they'd ooh and ah, without necessarily thinking that deeply about what it would actually be like to use. Users are bad at knowing what they actua
563.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
I'd assume some combo of NCAP and the new Chinese rules, yeah. Though consumer backlash may also be a factor.
564.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
Because it's no longer widely used.
565.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
Dublin has a very large urban park, called Phoenix Park, with a commuter train line running to the north of it. There's a station close to the park, within 10 minutes walking distance. About 20 years ago, Irish Rail opened a new statio
566.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
3 was likely in practice a reason that prosecution was pushed for, but IIRC those claims were the only ones she won on.
567.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
In MacOS it advances to the next search result _even if the search widget is not currently open_.
568.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
That's largely a product of work in the 2010s. What's their next Azure? Clippy on steroids probably won't cut it.
569.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
I mean, 'definitely' is strong, but if you're willing to cut corners on the most visible part of your business, there is a good chance you're willing to cut corners on the rest of it. "Uses generative AI images&quot
570.
by rsynnott 6mo ago
> This isn’t just a story about an AI logo, it’s a story about locals who feel the business they frequented was replaced by someone trying to make a quick buck. An AI logo is consistent with that, though. I _do_ think that, in general, u

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