The other side however has the "if you restrict us, China will win" argument on their side.
That argument is easy to politicize and selectively ignore. See: renewables and EVs.
Readit Newspanopticon commented on GPT Image 1.5 openai.com/index/new-chat... · Posted by u/charlierguo
panopticon commented on Ford kills the All-Electric F-150 wired.com/story/ford-kill... · Posted by u/sacred-rat
I guess you’d call my Chrysler Pacifica an “EREV” then.
It’s honestly perfect for us. 32 miles on a charge, we barely touch the gas except for the winter when it’s so cold out we need the engine to warm us up. Any other time and the battery is all we need, and it charges overnight on a simple 110V wall outlet. Long trips are still possible, you just drive. We go through maybe 8 tanks of gas per year with our occasional long trips (compared to having to stop at a charging station for an hour, I’ll take it.)
No. The ICE isn't connected to the drivetrain in an EREV; it's only used to provide power to the EV drive system.
The Pacifica is what you'd call a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) because the ICE is still connected to the drivetrain.
That's just one facet of EVs that is severely overplayed in my book. They have plenty of other benefits, but for some of us the environmental aspect is a "nice-to-have".
Agreed. Convenience, maintenance, and operating costs were all top of mind when we bought an EV. Environmentalism was hardly a consideration.
panopticon commented on AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/mfiguiere
30 years ago in the US, there were a handful of major TV news outlets, and most people got their news from one of those and/or a newspaper, of which there were also a limited number.
The thing about those sources is that for the most part, it wasn't really economically viable to alienate half the population by leaning hard right or left. Any reduction in audience would likely translate to a commensurate reduction in advertising revenue.
Today, there are many, many sources of 'news' available in various forms around the internet, and of course people are free to choose what to pay attention to. This means it's entirely feasible for each source to cater to a particular viewpoint, even at the expense of definitely alienating half or more of the theoretical potential audience.
I theorize that the reason for this is that people have voted with their feet, balanced sources aren't as profitable and that's why there are fewer of them. It makes sense, a more balanced take on events is by definition not nearly as sensational, and almost always requires more mental effort on the part of the listener.
That by itself would probably be enough to explain the current situation, but on top of that, we also have the fact that many people receive the above mentioned information via algorithms designed to feed them more of what they already like (i.e. agree with) and nothing else, which of course only amplifies the effect further.
I have no idea how we get out of this situation (or if in fact we will), but in my mind it's not surprising at all.
The cracks in the media were already visible 30 years ago. Conservative talk radio was taking off, people were beginning to call CNN "Clinton News Network", and Fox News was right around the corner. There was clearly an appetite—and a market—for partisan news. This was further fueled by the growth of national radio and TV networks that were less beholden to capturing local audiences.
I think the internet just supercharged a change that was already well underway.
panopticon commented on The Game Genie Generation tedium.co/2025/07/21/the-... · Posted by u/coloneltcb
Some of the hidden stuff in Goldeneye was available without memory hacking, it just required a long sequence of button presses that was unknown for a fair amount of time. I believe stuff like invisibility in multiplayer or the special developer models are only available via button sequences.
I memorized the invisibility sequence. Grabbing Oddjob and smashing in that invis cheat was a sure way to make everyone hate you at a party. Oddjob was a good pairing because you weren't completely invisible, so his short stature/hitbox made the effect more scummy.
panopticon commented on Jellyfin as a Spotify alternative coppolaemilio.com/entries... · Posted by u/coppolaemilio
I just googled owntunes and can’t find any information. Can you provide a link?
I presume they meant owntone https://owntone.github.io/owntone-server/
panopticon commented on Jellyfin as a Spotify alternative coppolaemilio.com/entries... · Posted by u/coppolaemilio
I embarked on a similar journey last year after YouTube Music took down some albums I listened to religiously.
I settled on Plex + Plexamp instead. I'm mostly satisfied, but there are some rough edges like Chromecast and web playback.
This is how it is in semi rural Olympia, WA. I'm about 20 minutes from the state capitol, but the only options are 1.5mbps ADSL, or starlink. 4g/5g arrived last year, which is a great backup when starlink is down (frequent).
My situation is slightly different but also in semi-rural WA. I'm on Verizon Home 5g and it's way faster and more stable than Starlink.
I'm always surprised when I talk to people that use Starlink who haven't considered cellular.
panopticon commented on COBOL has been “dead” for so long, my grandpa wrote about it wumpus-cave.net/post/2024... · Posted by u/hardburn
> A rewrite or a replatform is very, very hard and risky as a result; the system is now defined by how the mainframe runs the processes, to a very large degree.
And that's why so many neo-banks/fintechs are eating the lunch of the established banks left and right, same for insurance. The "old guard" is unwilling to pay the costs of not just upgrading off of mainframes (aka the rewrite work itself)... but of changing their processes. That is where the real cost is at:
When you have 213.000 employees like BoA has and everyone needs to have at least 10 hours of training and 2 weeks until they're familiar with the new system enough to be fully productive, that's like 2 million man-hours just for training and 16 million hours in lost productivity, so assuming $50/h average salary it's around 900 million dollars in cost. Unfortunately for the dinosaurs, the demands of both the customers and (at least in Europe) regulatory agencies especially for real-time financial transfers just push the old mainframe stuff to limits, while at the same time banks don't want to cede more and more of that cake to Paypal and friends that charge quite the sum for (effectively) lending money to banks.
In contrast, all the newcomers start with greenfield IT, most likely some sort of more-or-less standard SAP. That one actually supports running unit and integration tests automatically, drastically reducing the chance of fuck-ups that might draw in unwanted regulatory attention.
Eh, I think the tech stack is less important than the legal and regulatory structure.
Most fintechs aren't banks and partner with a Real Bank™ to provide the actual bank accounts. Fintechs are under much less regulatory scrutiny (for now—that may be changing with recent, high-profile screwups) and can move with much more freedom regardless of the tech stack they've chosen.
They have value in the code because they save time when someone has to deal with that code a couple of years later. Certainly the explanation could be in the code reviews or the commit message, but it's easiest if it is right there.
Yup. Our operating principle was that if a question was asked in a code review, someone will likely have the same question when reading the code weeks/months/years from now and there should be a comment.