Yeah, boo Larian, making games more fun and interesting. The fuck they thinking? /s

Oh well certainly it’s not universal. It would be pretty silly to paint 330M people with that wide of a brush. You can see why I wouldn’t have gotten that from your post. But OP mentioned Europe, with its tighter walkable cities, slower winding roads, particularly narrow roads, etc. where compact cars like these do VERY well historically. Just based on the historical sales numbers of comparable cars in the US, it’s still absolutely safe to say that it is unlikely to do well in the US. For instance, Hyundai isn’t shipping the 2026 IONIQ 6 in the US because sedans don’t do well in this market; they’re not shipping the new IONIQ 3 because compact SUVs/crossovers don’t do well in this market.

So to your point, at least a big part of the reason is definitely cultural. Cars are a status symbol in the US, which is ridiculous to me but here we are. But the other part is the wildly different geography and common travel distances between the two, which was definitely a contributing factor that created the divergent car culture in the US vs EU.

I was not suggesting someone go BUY a backup ICE car, but a family in the US often has more than one car and is unlikely to replace both/all simultaneously with EVs. The backup ICE car is something you already have, while using the EV as primary. You only buy your first car once, so I imagine MOST vehicles are sold to someone who previously owned one.

Oh I completely agree, I was simply answering your question. I’ve lived basically my whole life nowhere near a major metropolitan area, so I am all too familiar with a long commute from more rural areas, and about a quarter to half of the people I’ve worked with in my small city were in the same boat.

I wasn’t taking a stance - because I know that this car is exactly enough for PLENTY of people in the US. The Bolt EV, Bolt EUV, and the Leaf are decently comparable options in the US that have sold okay, but for the people that do buy them - they ADORE them and become fanatics. If you live and work in the city, have a short commute, and travel infrequently or have an ICE backup for road trips, low range but affordable EV’s can be a dream. If you live in the right place and have the right sort of lifestyle, cars like these give many of the EV benefits like MUCH cheaper energy from charging at home, no gas station stops ever, and silent operation, all at a way better price because you were simply shopping appropriately for your range needs.

Now, I’m not exactly sure what worst case scenario you’re talking about - you just buy the car that serves your needs. I was speaking of possible worst cases in hypothetical in my previous post, thinking about all the places I’ve been that were relevant to answering your question. Lived experience where I know I could not have made a car like this work to my benefit. If you’ve got a 120 mile round trip commute every day right now, you just might not want the car that has 140 miles of range in the summer and gets less than 100 miles in the New England winter. If you’re regularly driving out into the backcountry for weekend hikes, bikes, or skiing, you at least need to be able to get from the last public charger to your destination way up hill in the mountains. Public charging is a worse value vs gas (in most US states), so if you’re very rural and have to drive 50 miles to get to town for some errands and groceries, you’re only getting half the benefit of garage charging if you must charge in public on every trip out of the house. Situations like these might necessitate a high range EV, or just sticking to gas while adoption, infrastructure, and battery chemistries catch up in your area.

Oh definitely, Y2K babies got thrust into adulthood rapidly at 20 thanks to the pandemic but at least they made it through school without hiccups. Kids not much younger than them have had a rough go too.

I had a pretty rough 1 hour/60 mile (97 km) commute for two years, but most of my commutes before and since have been around about 30 min/25 miles (40 km). Plenty of people around me commute into the city, and that’s about a 50 mile (80 km) commute. With a range of 140 miles (225 km), it would really limit your ability to do much else on a work day, without a public charge anyways.

Just a few data points from one person… But the US is VERY car-brained, very big, and VERY spread out, so I believe this is pretty common. And while a lot of our land is inhospitable like Canada’s, it’s easier to deal with super hot than super cold so people are literally everywhere, while Canada’s population of course hugs a narrow strip of the southern border. We went to visit my family for Christmas, only 3 states away, but we drove 1200 miles (1930 km) to get there.

The other things to consider are the 19 second 0-60/0-100 speed, and the top speed of 78 mph/125 kph. A lot of our commuting is at high speed on freeways from suburbs to urbs. The slow acceleration could be a liability on super tight freeway ramps and just generally at high speeds in traffic. And it’s incapable of going the posted speed limit of 80-85 mph (129-137 kph) that we have in some jurisdictions. Freeways that fast are uncommon and most do top out at 65-75 mph (105-120 kph), but I have a feeling that needing to push the car to its absolute limits could be dangerous.

Once cringe, always cringe.

Yep - it’s a good thing they just IP block users in ID check states or this could have been REALLY bad.

I mean, the math isn’t hard here, given the obvious pandemic time marker: College aged. If you were born in 2000, you couldn’t, in the middle of a pandemic, go out to the bar with friends for a drink on your 21st birthday for instance. And just generally, people’s early 20s often slowly ramp up, a fun warm up to proper adulthood; a time where expenses are at the lowest they’ll be for the rest of your entire life and the world hasn’t beaten you down mercilessly yet; so yeah, I imagine some of that what OP meant.

… as Democrats step up criticism of the Trump administration’s “lawlessness” for keeping records under seal.

Oh good! And here I was wondering if they were going to DO anything at all, but they’re on the case! Silly me for doubting the dems.

There was also HBO Now and HBO Go, so there’s even more runway for Microsoft to spend years floundering on their naming before they catch up.

By a variety of definitions around the world, yes it is. At least until farmers lobbied to redefine it because they didn’t want to be associated with GMO’s: (emphasis mine)

The definition of a genetically modified organism (GMO) is not clear and varies widely between countries, international bodies, and other communities. At its broadest, the definition of a GMO can include anything that has had its genes altered, including by nature. Taking a less broad view, it can encompass every organism that has had its genes altered by humans, which would include all crops and livestock. In 1993, the Encyclopedia Britannica defined genetic engineering as “any of a wide range of techniques … among them artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization (e.g., ‘test-tube’ babies), sperm banks, cloning, and gene manipulation.” The European Union (EU) included a similarly broad definition in early reviews, specifically mentioning GMOs being produced by “selective breeding and other means of artificial selection” These definitions were promptly adjusted with a number of exceptions added as the result of pressure from scientific and farming communities, as well as developments in science. The EU definition later excluded traditional breeding, in vitro fertilization, induction of polyploidy, mutation breeding, and cell fusion techniques that do not use recombinant nucleic acids or a genetically modified organism in the process.

There is no doubt in my mind that we are genetically modifying a plant when we are selective breeding it for specific genes. The fact that the mutation occurred naturally doesn’t change the the fact that there was human intervention.

Just don’t get caught.

They do, for specifically the missions they’re fulfilling as a government contractor. This is just Elon effectively buying them from himself, moving inventory from the public company where he has accountability to his private company where he has none.

No, but it IS still the internet, where nobody can hear your tone of voice or see your facial expressions. How do you suppose anyone is supposed to tell the difference between OP and someone saying the EXACT same thing, totally serious?

Well great - a customary /s would have left no doubt.

What? The news calls out dems because it’s already safe to assume that the R’s are doing everything their dear leader demands as always. The dems betrayed their constituents again, that’s the only thing news worthy thing here.

I like your take. An optimistic me would be fully onboard with it. But this isn’t a single change in a vacuum. I think the reason people aren hating is because they’re seeing it as yet another symptom of enshitification, and I don’t disagree.

There are rare examples of outstanding companies like Steam that talk the talk and walk the walk. But with Firefox, they’re headed the wrong direction. They cut 30% of their staff this time last year, cut their internet freedom advacacy group, and I think that was the point where they started a hard shift away from who they were. They’re harvesting and selling user data now (removed the old “Nope. Never have, never will” [sell user data] from their FAQ), they’ve got a CEO that’s taking an absolute fortune off the top of a struggling company, and they’re steadily removing long time features like pocket integration and compact mode.

The last straw will be if Google ever pulls their deal as Firefox’s default search engine… Mozilla will very likely pivot hard to nasty, modern money making practices to keep themselves alive if they lose 80% of their revenue all at once like that.

Sorry, you’re well out of the loop on this one, boss. Sideloading has been common practice for thousands? millions? of users since the beginning of android. There are plenty of apps not listed on Google Play - the ones that come top mind are Fortnight for a time and now the Epic Games Store app, and some VPN apps that couldn’t offer features like ad/malware blocking in their Play store versions. Sideloading means downloading an executable install file (an .APK file in this case) rather than installing from Google Play. And they are SEVERELY limiting this ability next year.