When you look at the regulatory environment and enforcement under the Trump admin, even before they were best buds, it's very clear that Elon is absolutely terrified of a Harris administration. The moment Biden took office, he was almost instantly under investigation from basically every letter agency in the USA, and they've been slowly chipping away at his Jenga tower of fraud. He sees Trump as the only way to hold on to his ill-gotten gains and avoid a prison cell.

See: the cyborg soldier subplot of Metal Gear Rising: Revengence

Instant Pot was a product so good that customers rarely needed to buy another one. The company went bankrupt.

Bull-fucking-shit. That's just not how any of this works.

There are plenty of companies that make appliances that last a long fucking time, and don't have to rely on fucking DLC micro transaction AI bullshit. The reason Instant Pot went bankrupt is the same reason a ton of popular companies have recently had issues: They got bought by private equity (who also owned Pyrex and fucked them over), saddled with a shitton of bad debt, squeezed of every bit of brand value they had, and then left to fall apart as the PE firm made off with millions.

The fact that the writer correlated "quality, durable good" with "unsuccessful business and bankruptcy" is absolutely one of the worst takes, and really shows just how pervasive this disgusting idea of "must be disposable to be profitable" really is.

So, I'm going to be a voice of reason here, also working for a a major US automaker: there's a 0.0001% chance this would ever be a thing implemented, and is almost definitely just something someone brainstormed and threw in the patent/IP registration system for a nice bonus. We're heavily encouraged to submit ideas, even if there's no real plans to ever implement them, and you can make more than $2k for a couple day's worth of work in some cases.

I've come up with some hilariously dystopian ideas, and I'm more than happy to submit them because I know we'll never bother with implementing them, it keeps other more "ambitious" OEMs from doing it, and the aforementioned monetary bonuses. Just because something is patented, doesn't mean it's going into production next week.

Also, because I know what sub I'm in, before everyone crucifies me here because I work for an automaker, I do so because I want to make a change from the inside, and my job focus is primarily on making vehicles safer for pedestrians and cyclists.

I mean, that's one interpretation. The other one is the reality that the Soviet Union didn't always treat political prisoners particularly well, and being a former/current western spy, he was pretty smart to err on the side of caution in case they were the ones in charge.

It's honestly a great joke just because it can be so multi-layered given the character of Austin Powers being a free-love, hippy-ish, world-class spy. He genuinely could have both genuinely hoped that communism won, but also a smart tactic to potentially avoid being sent to a gulag, knowing that if he was wrong, the potential repercussions would probably be less severe.

"Backorder" meant "Idiots with a couple hundred dollars". "Orders" were a whole $100 fully refundable deposit. It was a complete non-commitment, and I know a ton of people who literally bought them solely to resell their "spot in line".

I knew a dude who put in an order for 5, just to ensure he could sell his "spots on the list". Dude was a service tech that couldn't afford even the fake $40k price, let alone the current $100k price. I've seen tons of stories like his as well, so there's a 0% chance even 20% of those are actually converting to sales.

He was technically a founding member, but left the company. Literally all of this is because he's jealous he can't pull a Tesla and claim all the credit for another tech company.

This is also what a lot of people forget how it was at the time, thinking "if only" they had been early adopters and how they'd be millionaires. I was one, and had found it was great for traveling said "trade route", but also watched when Mt Gox collapsed and tanked the price 75% while stealing millions from people, and decided to take my winnings and leave the table.

How many people would see that shit and be like "Yes, I'm going to hold onto this for the next 10 years when it's worth something" and then sit through the number of 50+% loss events that happened?

You would have done exactly what 99% of early adopters did, and considered yourself incredibly lucky that you managed to make 1000% returns and sold.

As an American auto worker, I like our move to EVs and the jobs at the massive new factories we built. But I guess wanting blue collar workers learning new skills and technologies makes me a gay communist.

Seems unrealistic. In reality, they'd be asking how often the seizures occur and would figure out if the increased ad revenue from going to 90% would offset any potential lawsuits.

And GM, the epitome of "slow and bloated legacy dinosaur", who in the time since Tesla announced the cYbErTrUcK, managed to design AND RELEASE a truck before Tesla even had prototypes. At this rate, I think they'll technically have 3 different trucks out before a single cYbErTrUcK is sold.

I mean, VR Chat is still a thing. It's not massive, but even 20k daily users isn't nothing.