I agree with the statement and think a lot of people miss this, but I also wonder how many people probably don't care for good, they only care for 'good enough'.

Many large systems can’t be built good enough because they just fall apart. Try letting a junior dev make an ERP or a database system.

I have a Polestar with a big touch screen on the dash. You can disconnect the cellular module in about a minute and everything still works fine. There are many such vehicles, I think this story is a little overblown.

Think you're greatly underestimated how unreliable carburetors can be.

Diabolical devices. Anything between 1990-2015 is sort of the gold era of cars. A modern engine swap was the best thing I did for a number of my vehicles. And there are FOSS ECUs that are extremely capable.

Pricing a product in an attempt to capture the cost of the negative externalities is probably not a bad idea. Also, the UK tax is supposed to raise every year to incentivise a move to EVs but they famously haven't increased it for years.

> capture the cost of the negative externalities

sounds plausible, but also at the same time that'll have some pretty bad side effects since the only people who can get by without driving a car are the completely destitute who don't have anyplace to be (but are a massive burden on the taxpayer in general) and the very wealthy who can afford to live in places like NYC, or like the 5% of addresses in SF that have good transit that could take you to your work in a reasonable time.

So if we made our fuel prices go from £2.50 to £8 what we are really doing is administering an ongoing massive punishment to everybody but those two groups. The middle 80% or so. (And also, hurting transit agencies too since buses run on diesel).

And they’re introducing an EV tax that’ll be charged per mile.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8jw9l7gx92o

I'm curious because Mac OS effectively has the same model. You can use local accounts but it's highly discouraged through dark patterns and selected features of the OS don't work correctly.

i didn’t have that issue at all when installing with a local account on my macbook? [0]

but even if i had, like i said it is definitely not just the local account issue. it’s so many things just piled up on top of each other. it’s become aggressive. from the nonstop pestering to use onedrive to edge, to microsoft reverting settings i’ve changed after os updates, to ads on my computer to copilot ridiculousness to recall awfulness and on and on and on. and yes, ms actively removing local accounts.

mspaint now tries to push for a login… yep that’s right, mspaint…

[0] when i setup my MacBook pro last month i didn’t have to sign in to appleid at all. it asked but there was a “setup later” or something and i just skipped right past that. no dark patterns or anything for me.

I'll take the 30 seconds of plugging my car in when I get home than the 20 minute detour to the petrol station. Especially because my electric at nighttime is so cheap. But you do you.

Woah hold on there. Where is the evidence for both increased dust and increased pollution levels?

EVs generate next to no brake dust due to regenerative braking, most EVs have mechanisms to forcefully use the friction brakes at some points to stop surface rust for this reason.

It's true they're generally heavier than the equivalent ICE vehicle, but this is usually around 200-300KG heavier - it causes a small increase in tyre wear and associated particulates but these are heavy large particles - the majority larger than pm10. That's a problem for water courses and micro plastics but nothing that'll get in your lungs or bloodstream. Anecdotally, my EV tyres (a particularly heavy model too) have lasted fine - my last set did 53k miles.

ICE cars produce plenty of pm10s, pm2.5s and smaller particles as well as nitrogen oxide, carbon dioxide and plenty of other harmful pollutants that EVs inherently don't. Even the power generated for them is usually produced away from the majority of the population.

Azures physical servers actually use a similar technology apparently. They both have some kind of proprietary HSM module that stores keys on the device and is resistant to tampering. I've read that Azure servers actually break this protection when removed from the rack so the server is made entirely useless if it's removed.

This is not just Azure (although the proprietary bit is true, that's basically souped-up Pluton), but basically most high-end HSMs deployments, including at major could providers (Google Titanium, AWS CloudHSM). There is even a built-in battery to ensure this happens (https://docs-cybersec.thalesgroup.com/bundle/v2.21-cdsp-cm/p...; https://nshielddocs.entrust.com/security-world-docs/hsm-user...).

I have even heard of a major cloud service mandating absurd earthquake-proofing (to prevent any movements inside the datacenter and triggering an HSM reset) but I cannot find any verification regarding this (maybe this is ultimately an urban legend).

Seems pretty disrespectful to your wife and women in general to be honest.

They're also closing down coal plants faster than anyone else and actually faster than planned because of the price of solar. Check your facts.

Believe it or not, you're both correct! China is closing more (old, inefficient, polluting) coal plants than anybody else, and opening newer ones than anybody else.