Autonomous Vehicles

[treibeis]

I just had to Google this as well. I think I even own one, but I didn't know it was called a Billy bookcase.

This is good. IKEA - who I think are evil, although you're not allowed to say that in southern Scandinavia, where I live - claim that as many people have a Billy bookcase as have, I don't know, eaten a hot dog or whatever.

And there are three people, international people, on this thread alone who don't know what the fuck a Billy bookcase is. Suck on that, Mr. Kamprad.

[Sporting]

I just had to Google this as well. I think I even own one, but I didn't know it was called a Billy bookcase.

Now you've set me wondering if google always has to be capitalized.

[Hot Pepsi]

Indeed, the town I live in is called State College because the university here was once known as The Pennsylvania State College from 1874 until 1953. (The college was called the Farmers High School from its founding in 1855 until 1874.) The town was incorporated in 1896. Before the school was started, there was nothing here but few farms, timber operations and a few iron furnaces. The natives never even really lived here. They passed through, but there was no settlement.

When it became The Pennsylvania State University in 1953, there was a referendum to consider renaming the town, but it didn't pass. Instead, the university got its own post office, so technically the university campus is in University Park, Pennsylvania, while the town surrounding it is State College, Pennsylvania.

To make things more confusing, much of the town that is in the State College Area School District and Postal Codes are not in the Borough of State College. They're in various adjacent townships - Patton, Ferguson, Harris, College and Halfmoon. That's typical of Pennsylvania.

But I was lucky enough to grow up in the actual borough of State College and moved back here ten years ago, though I live in a different neighborhood than the one where I grew up.

https://www.statecollegepa.us/


No, we don't have an Ikea. The closest one is in Pittsburgh. I once went to the one in Northern Virginia - I still have the $30 bookcase I got - but I've never been back. Too crowded and chaotic.

[WOM]

Suck on that, Mr. Kamprad.

It's a fine thing when a random comparison between something pedestrian and something complicated ends up with denunciations of dead Swedes by ersatz Germans.

[ursus arctos]

That bookcase is almost certainly a Billy

The item name was much more prominent in Europe, though that is changing, at least around here.

[Hot Pepsi]

That bookcase is almost certainly a Billy

The item name was much more prominent in Europe, though that is changing, at least around here.

A quick Google suggests that is correct.

[treibeis]

It's a fine thing when a random comparison between something pedestrian and something complicated ends up with denunciations of dead Swedes by ersatz Germans.

You started it.

[WOM]

You started it.

Wasn't a critique. Just an observation.

[Balderdasha]

Now you've set me wondering if google always has to be capitalized.

I didn't intend to. It autocorrected and I couldn't be arsed to change it.

[Patrick Thistle]

If you're googling as a verb then it doesn't need a capital (imo). A bit like hoovering or xeroxing.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Jeez. Some people don't want to even try.

Me. I don't want to even try.

[ursus arctos]

Musk is at it again

[Eggchaser]

This is why I don't buy into the Cult of Elon. He might want to make a step change in transport and energy production and I love that, but in all other respects he's just another Randian shitheel who would be a Trump supporter if the President wasn't catastrophically hostile towards green crap.

Yet people hang on his words, conduct slavish hit pieces and infest comment sections and social media praising him like he's the Messiah, and woe betide anyone who suggests he or Tesla are anything other than perfect.

[ursus arctos]

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The first bit is idiotic nonsense, but the second bit is him trolling an idiot. Whatever the reasons the US backed a coup in bolivia, it wasn't to do with lithium. Bolivia does have enormous amounts of the stuff, but so do chile and argentina, and it's massively easier to extract in those two other countries, because In all cases, you make it by extracting brine, and then you add lime to remove impurities (primarily magnesium) and then you have to evaporate what is left, and sweep up the salt. So far, so bronze/early iron age trapani and marsala. The problem that faces bolivia is that their lithium has more magnesium in it, so you have to add a lot more lime. And when that is done, it evaporates very slowly as bolivian lithium is in low land, humid areas, which isn't as good at evaporating lithium as the atacama desert. Consequently lithium from chile and argentina is always going to be cheaper than bolivian lithium, and lithium is relatively cheap. It's about $13,000 a ton of factory grade lithium carbonate, so margins are very low. It's not something you can "invest" around.

These were the problems faced by the morales govt, that did talk a lot about exploiting Bolivia's (oops) lithium resources. They just didn't get anywhere with it. I wouldn't look too far beyond the hundreds of traditional reasons why US govts overthrow south american countries.

[ursus arctos]

Last graf - Bolivia, not Chile

[Gangster Octopus]

Ah, I was wondering about the invasion...

[ursus arctos]

They have always wanted access to the sea . . .

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

hah, corrected Also it's unclear just how long any lithium "boom" is going to last, as while there are unimaginably large amounts of money being poured into the development of lithium ion batteries, unimaginably huge amounts of money are also being poured into finding the next type of battery. One of the big dirty shameful aspects of the rise of battery technology is the use of cobalt, which is largely mined in the congo, and there is no end to the dirt that goes on in that god forsaken country. So instead of buying blood cobalt mined by child slaves, Tesla have developed Lithium Iron phosphate batteries to do away with the cobalt.

[Eggchaser]

Seriously, the artisan mining issue is nasty in the extreme, but it is a perfect example of perfect being the enemy of good (and the propaganda spewing out of the Koch machine) especially given that cobalt is used in the fucking fossil fuel industry.

It needs to sorted out and there are some developments in lower or no cobalt batteries, but it has to be said that weighing up the evil that men do in comparing the human and ecological damage caused by the battery and fossil fuel industries, I know which horse I would be trying to train to improve and which one I would be sending to the glue factory.

[Gangster Octopus]

They have always wanted access to the sea . . .

Well, they used to have it. Or was that Paraguay?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Well yes, most of it is used in the oil industry, but ideally you wouldn't use it at all, and already the tesla factory in china only makes cobalt free batteries. But that's not really an ethical thing, that's a cost thing. Cobalt is expensive Teslas also no longer seem to use any chrome.

[Eggchaser]

Mind you, China isn't exactly a barrel of laughs.

Perhaps Ivo Shandor was right.

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/jason_koebler/status/1524380194651312129?t=HUsbM1V4Gg7h5NQNtBJVLw&s=19

[Hot Pepsi]

Well, they’re spying on stuff happening on the street where there are already cameras and cops. Nobody has an expectation of privacy there.

I’m not so worried about the police using video to see actual crime, assuming they aren’t allowed to unreliable AI face recognition, etc.

I’m much more concerned about how they invent crimes to justify abuse, or abuse people who might actually be criminals but still don’t deserve to be beat up or killed.