grue

They also weren’t actually anti-technology, just anti-exploitation.

(Also it’s “bad rap,” BTW.)

They make it go through an app and a cloud service on purpose these days so they have an excuse to upsell you on a subscription.

Fines are just the cost of doing business.

Wake me up when corporate charters are dissolved and executives are put in prison.

(That’s why arrest data is required to be public, despite the damage it does to the arrestee’s reputation, BTW.)

they have the lawful right to seize and inspect your phone

Sure. They can look at the outside of the hardware all they like. But if they can’t access the data on it, that’s (Constitutionally-speaking) purely their problem, not ours.

My Ranger seats 3 in a pinch and is rated to tow 1600 pounds (2.3L I4, regular cab, manual, 4x4) so you can see how my perspective is a little different.

I don’t think aerodynamics are particularly relevant to towing?

Aerodynamics are extremely relevant to towing. “Aging Wheels” on Youtube did a test and found that payload weight makes basically no difference at all, but a trailer with bad aerodynamics can cut an electric truck’s range in half.

The Slate is almost the equal and opposite, it’s what r/fuckcars thinks of when they start a sentence with “Can’t you just make do with…” A 20 year old S10 kicks the Slate’s ass in every way because the Slate is designed mostly to play dress-up like a barbie doll. They’re taking pre-orders but they won’t show you where the tie down points in the bed are.

Speaking as a mod of !fuckcars and the owner of a 30-year-old Ford Ranger, I want a Slate truck and I don’t think my current truck would be able to kick its ass. (Well, aside from off-roading, since the Slate doesn’t have a 4x4 version yet. And, uh, ease of refueling in the wilderness. Hmm.)

Okay, so maybe it wouldn’t be an upgrade in all ways, but IMO those tradeoffs are still worth it because the lack of telemetry and other enshittification means it’s the first modern mass-market electric car (of any type, truck or otherwise) I’ll be willing to own.

It’s not a technology/research issue; it’s an economics issue. Trucks simply need an absolutely huge battery pack to brute-force not only themselves but a boxy trailer through the air for hundreds of miles, and all but one of them don’t actually have it (even at the very expensive prices they sell for).

IIRC, according to Aging Wheels on YouTube, of all the electric trucks, only one (the Chevy Silvarado) actually manages to have decent range while towing.

Think it might’ve been in this video? www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmKf8smvGsA

Yeah the electric pickup is such a no brainer for the US

Disagree. The truck market itself is a no brainer, but electric trucks have design challenges that electric sedans don’t. Namely, aerodynamics, towing, and aerodynamics while towing. It is much harder to make an electric truck capable of doing “truck stuff” with a reasonable range and price compared to making an electric car.

There are only a few companies that make the actual panels (regardless of how the finished TV or monitor was branded), and two of the biggest (LG and Samsung) are the worst offenders in terms of enshittification. It would not take much at all for the availability of new non-enshittified TVs and computer monitors to drop to literally zero.

“Karr”

LOL, appropriate

over the past few years, phones have just gotten more hallucinatory with their output images in an attempt to “fix” the photos they’re [taking]

Meanwhile, here I am with my non-stock-firmware and third-party camera app, and I’m not sure I even have access to those fancy computational photography features to begin with.