Re: Ghost in the Shell, I find it amusing that Gibson's 1984 opening line: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." used to mean grey, but now could mean bright blue (or even black?) due to the march of progress...
Has Philip K Dick called the 21st century better than Asimov or Clarke? https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7444685-the-door-refused-to...
And yet you all wish you didn't. Well, maybe not everyone, but it's the dominant view.
This brings back a memory of a HN comment from a little over a decade ago:
I'll just quote it in full:
<quote cite='natural219'>
If you want to track the death of the cultural vision of Silicon Valley -- the belief that some people, at least, can rise above petty human squabbling and competition and are legitimately working to better humanity -- look no further than this thread. Every top comment is a skeptical one. "This is clearly a great PR move, but has no teeth." "How do you enforce this guarantee?" Etc.
These are reasonable questions, but as Shaw said, all progress comes from unreasonable men. I cannot help but be fundamentally depressed as I read these comments. In my view, Elon Musk has, moreso than any other human except maybe Bill Gates, given every absolute inch of human effort and genius to fight to solve the world's biggest problems. And all we have for him, after benefiting freely from the fruit of his labor, is skepticism. We want more. It's not enough. It's never enough.
Yes, Tesla Motors is a company operating in a media-hyped 2014 America. I know some of you are butthurt that he engages in the same "dishonest" PR tactics that other companies do. GET THE FUCK OVER IT. The end product he's producing will save humanity. That all of America has not rallied behind Musk and Tesla as the most important movement and achievement in the last 100 years of human history absolutely blows my mind.
Not only do we not recognize his goals or his achievements, we actively try and bring him down and shit on his accomplishments. "Well, they invented a pretty cool electric motor, sure, but they were kind of dishonest in that one press release that one time."
Go fuck yourself.
I want to say "I'm done with Hacker News", but we know that's not true. I'm supremely disappointed in all of you. Godspeed, Musk. I thought this was a great announcement, and I'm behind you 100%. I just hope you can finish your work before our shitty, myopic, destructive society tears you down. Here's to faith.
</quote>
Elon Musk may have changed for the worse since then, but nowhere near as much and as fast as our "shitty, myopic, destructive society", and in particular the Internet commentariat.
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ursulakleguinnatio...
The drug use became known in 2017, and it seems to be getting worse.[1]
The timeline of Tesla shows the successful innovation happening before then.[2] Then bad stuff started happening.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/business/elon-musk-illegal-drugs-e826a9e...
[2] https://www.thestreet.com/technology/history-of-tesla-150889...
Also, obligatory meta complaint: the site seems to break trackpad forward/back gestures at least on Firefox :/
"nearly 38 percent of the world's population lived on less than 2.15 U.S. dollars in terms of 2017 Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) in 1990, this had fallen to 8.7 percent in 2022"
https://www.optimallyirrational.com/p/the-aim-of-maximising-...
Consider this 1940s ad for a "house that runs like magic", powered by gas:
https://wip.gatspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/AGAAd-1...
I'm already living this dream life from the 1940s. I have a range, a refrigerator, "permanent hot springs", heating, and air conditioning.
I've had that stuff all my life. It's normal for me. I don't appreciate it.
Perhaps in addition to Progress Studies, we need some sort of neo-mindfulness gratitude journaling movement, focused on appreciating all of the awesome technology that's already widespread.
People demonstrate sophistication by explaining why things suck. It's not cool or fashionable to dwell on life's simple pleasures. Perhaps it's time to take a bold stand for naivete. https://xkcd.com/606/
It was a short-lived experiment. Motorola was sold to Lenovo, and the plant shut down, within a few years.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2013/9/11/4717796/made-in-america-a...
That kind of assembly could be totally automated. Pick and place to make the boards, stack and rivet to put it together.
Modern phones have little pieces and wires all over the place.[1] You'd think these things would be designed for automated assembly, but they're not.
[1] https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/2020/11/15/part-2-ifixit-iphon...
Good point: Timothy Leary was moving in cyberpunkish circles shortly before his death, and my only IRL interaction with John McCarthy was at a cyberdelic-influenced party in a Bay Area tract house.
What a long strange surf it's been.
Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgR6UNeQxXEv
(see also >>41826083 )
Well they are trying. Purism has a "Made in America" phone: the Liberty Phone.
https://puri.sm/products/liberty-phone/
Why do you think cars are leaving the US? Tesla is a fully American manufacturer with some of the most US sourced components, GM/Ford aren't moving their cash cows out of the country anytime soon. and the Japanese and Germans are expanding their presence in the US. You cited a long declining brand that has had an agism problem. Thats your best evidence? I guess you can make the argument that there are too many brands in the car industry but the car manufacturing sector in the US is still quite strong.
To conform to it you must not have:
"asserted, helped others assert or had a financial stake in any assertion of (i) any patent or other intellectual property right against Tesla or (ii) any patent right against a third party for its use of technologies relating to electric vehicles or related equipment;"
In case you do not understand, Tesla is stating that for Tesla to not assert patent rights, you must not assert patent and copyright and trademark rights against Tesla as seen by the inclusion of "or any other intellectual property right" beyond the statement of just "any patent...right". This is a exclusive and intentional carveout for Tesla in particular as explicitly identified in (i). All other parties are governed by (ii) which only states you must not assert applicable patent, and only patent, rights against non-Tesla parties.
They then make double plus sure that it is clear that Tesla is uniquely allowed to assert their copyright and trademark rights against you as seen by the third clause:
"marketed or sold any knock-off product (e.g., a product created by imitating or copying the design or appearance of a Tesla product or which suggests an association with or endorsement by Tesla) or provided any material assistance to another party doing so."
To gain access to Tesla patents, you must give Tesla access to your patents, copyrights, and trademarks. The sheer audacity to call that a "patent pledge" is astounding. No person with even a cursory knowledge of law and contracts, as required for any business executive, could mistake it. As such, it can only be a deliberate and intentional deception in a attempt to launder credibility by aping the name. It is truly unfortunate that it seems to work on people such as yourself.
[1] https://www.tesla.com/legal/additional-resources#patent-pled...
What people actually pay for it, though, in terms of mortgage payments as a share of income, is at basically the same level (6%) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MDSP
As long as people buy houses on credit, high house prices only reflect that mortgages are cheap.
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declini...
https://blog.plan99.net/i-want-to-see-a-libertarian-star-tre...
Issues (and maybe possibilities) about reading works out of context and time. There's often a need / tendency to place those ideas relative to your own.
On the issues: Downloaded and started looking through Etymologiae by Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636, Catholic Patron Saint of Computers and Internet). [1] The striking part reading through the later year discussions and critique though was how often writers needed to place their own later meaning and rearview criticism on an archival encyclopedist from ~1300-1400 years ago.
> an encyclopedia of all human knowledge, glossed with his own derivations of the technical terms relevant to the topic in hand. Derivations apart, it was lifted from sources almost entirely at second or third hand ..., none of it checked, and much of it unconditional eyewash – the internet, in other words, to a T.
> His reductions and compilations did indeed transmit ancient learning, but Isidore, who often relied on scholia and earlier compilations, is often simplistic scientifically and philosophically, especially compared to .. figures such as Ambrose and Augustine.
On the maybe possibilities: Neuromancer's pretty great. In the first paragraph you're already transported to another world:
> “It’s not like I’m using,” Case heard someone say, as he shouldered his way through the crowd around the door of the Chat. “It’s like my body’s developed this massive drug deficiency.” It was a Sprawl voice and a Sprawl joke. The Chatsubo was a bar for professional expatriates; you could drink there for a week and never hear two words in Japanese. [2]
By the third paragraph Gibson's already discussion "antique" seven-function force-feedback manipulator Russian military prosthesis' and who invented nerve-splicing beneath the towering hologram logo of the Fuji Electric Company.
[1] Etymologiae, WP, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymologiae
[2] Neuromancer, Ch 1, penguinrandomhouse.ca, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/293994/neuromancer-b...