radpanda

Were there international car ferries to/from Australia? I’m not aware of any currently.

Wow, you can take a 10-minute walk around the block in Stockholm and see the Zeekr, Lynk & Co, Polestar and Volvo stores: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Zeekr+Center+Stockholm,+Hamn...

Zeekr and Lynk & Co are both available in some European markets.

https://www.zeekr.eu/test-drive?c=001 https://www.lynkco.com/en/market-selector

> I think traditional US and German automakers are going to be in huge trouble when facing Chinese made EVs in the open market

I think it's pretty clear that US automakers won't face Chinese carmakers in an open market.

Joe Biden, a few weeks ago: "China is determined to dominate the future of the auto market, including by using unfair practices. China’s policies could flood our market with its vehicles, posing risks to our national security. I’m not going to let that happen on my watch." From https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

Volvo is being clever here and avoiding import tariffs by offsetting them with exports on vehicles made in the US. BYD, Chery, etc won't be able to do that unless they set up production in the US. Even Volvo, who manufactures 2 or 3 models of cars at its single American plant wouldn't be able to import a massive amount of cheap Chinese imports tariff-free via this mechanism, unless they also scaled up their American manufacturing.

No question that Volvo Cars is making more money now than under prior ownership. I think there's still some question if Geely has a brilliant overall plan or is just trying lots of stuff to see what works.

There's Polestar, which is headquartered essentially next to Volvo Cars HQ and sells fairly similar vehicles. Although, Volvo Cars recently announced they were going to stop funding (and actually sell a ton of shares in) Polestar: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volvo-...

Geely owns Lotus now and plans to make EVs that are completely different from previous Lotus cars, but investors don't seem confident about that play: https://www.carscoops.com/2024/03/lotus-shares-tumble-40-sin...

Then there's Zeekr and Lync & Co: https://electrek.co/2024/04/19/zeekr-unveils-deluxe-mpv-marb... https://www.autoevolution.com/news/lynk-co-07-emp-sedan-is-a...

Oh and there's Proton too, also owned by Geely: https://technode.global/2024/02/22/malaysias-national-car-pr...

And that's not even all of Geely's brands ... so the big question is does Geely have a coherent plan with all this? Or will these various brands eventually need to be consolidated? Maybe Volvo Cars absorbs all of the surviving Geely brands one day?

Volvo Cars is a different entity than Volvo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_Cars

> Much of the landscape is virtually impassable. It's the first time I've really ever seen such a vegetatively sparse landscape that was so inaccessible simply due to the terrain. In some areas, relatively "flat" landscapes were so rocky that I can't even imagine how one might traverse those.

There are certainly areas lacking in vegetation for natural reasons but much of the land is vegetatively sparse because the Vikings cut down all the trees:

> At the time of human settlement almost 1150 years ago, birch forest and woodland covered 25-40% of Iceland's land area

From: https://www.skogur.is/en/forestry/forestry-in-a-treeless-lan...

> This is already happening with more than ~80% of products that are "Made in Vietnam" and at least ~40% of products that are "Made in Korea."

The Philippines are famous for this too.

https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/201...

https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/201...

https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Vol_48_No_...

I mean, I hear you if you're posting your opinion as comment 18,753 on an r/news post about the former president. But I've had some genuinely helpful interactions on smaller subreddits - things like getting guidance on how to repair old Nintendo Game and Watch hardware. It's not about getting one's opinion heard, it's about giving and getting help among folks who share the same hobby.

I don't have any affection for Reddit itself, but there are a couple of subreddits where I guess the small but critical mass of folks for a hobby somehow ended up there, and I hope they land somewhere else as Reddit commits suicide.

In my mind it's where we get the most stuff that we couldn't get elsewhere. Sure, we can harvest more or less hardwood, or import more or less from Canada, Sure, if we have issues with Guatemala we can buy our t-shirts from somewhere else. But if we want the devices that our information economy requires, there seems to be no where else to build them. Apple's attempts to build iPhones in India for example: https://www.firstpost.com/world/apples-india-production-face...

There are often a lot of weasel words used instead. In US Defense circles China has been described as a "pacing threat" over the past few years: https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/26...

I guess that's one way to describe the tense rivalry without completely calling your most important trade partner an "adversary".

I hear ya. I've also been using Docker for years and have encountered this scenario: Now-retired Cowboy Coder "got things working" using vanilla "docker run" commands before he departed but didn't document it or script it, now I need to figure out what he did to firstly understand it, and secondly extend it. I don't have his bash history, I just have the running container. I get it if you can't conceive of a use for this but apparently at least a couple of us think it could occasionally be useful.

But what if the person who started the container didn't use docker-compose? Sure, it's nice to run your stuff in documented, reproducible ways - but if you find yourself inheriting a server and wondering how a container was started, this seems like a nice easy way to try to reverse engineer how to use that container. I've been in that situation before and was shocked that Docker didn't include that functionality to begin with.

> This is more of an industry problem than an EV problem

Look at the door on a classic Mini though: https://www.rwclassicminis.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/...

If you told the designers they had to make a car the size of the classic Mini but comply with all modern safety regulations I suspect it would become shockingly small on the inside (I mean, even more-so than a Mini already is).

So it's a governance problem - government's answer to road deaths has been bigger, stronger cars built to do well on safety tests (and hopefully in real-world crashes).

Which really is a people problem - many other safety measures like more stringent vehicle inspections, thorough driver's education, lower speed limits, limits on vehicle power, are big government overreach to many.

Two countries that both have McDonalds would never go to war with each other though. I mean, except for all of the times they have. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree...

The website for X1 advertises "End free trials automatically with auto-expiring virtual cards" [0] - if that takes off, would services just start blocking folks from signing up for free trials with X1 cards? Is that a feasible thing to do, to say "yeah, we accept Visa, but not Visa cards issued by X1"? I feel like I've heard something slightly similar recently about Google Ad services blocking payments from virtual cards or other "weird" cards.

0: https://x1creditcard.com

This feels like it matches my anecdata as well. Some folks in positions where they have the choice to work or not work are staying on the sidelines. I know a school administrator who retired earlier than planned rather than deal with the madness, I know a college kid who just took the summer off rather than get a summer job, I know a speech therapist turned stay-at-home mom, etc.

Rather than a few years ago when people's decision calculus was "do I want to trade my time for $X/hr to do some work?" it feels like it's become "do I want to trade my time for $X/hr AND risk getting myself or family members seriously sick AND deal with unhinged people at a time of political strife?" And sure, the X in $X/hr has gone up, but apparently not enough to convince as many people to wait tables as in 2019.

Sometimes I learn the name for something and think "I've noticed that thing before but never had a name for it, but this fits!". I'd never heard the term 'social cohesion erosion' before reading this article but honestly, it fits my mental model of how things have been going over the past couple of years.