If Twitter & Bluesky are for thoughts, and Instagram is for thots, Threads is where the "thots go to share their thoughts."
All jokes aside, it's an endless stream of takes from people who don't have an internal monologue. Plus some influencers trying their hand with unoriginal bait threads. Like the other poster said, it's worth checking out every now and again just to read some comments from folks who aren't thought leaders.
"Vehicle will not break when accelerator pedal is applied" is displayed on the screen in AutoPilot mode. The system warns you this every time you have foot on the pedal in AutoPilot mode. I wonder if it did that back in 2019 as well or if accidents like this spurred that as a UI change.
Also, how the heck is Mr. McGee supposed to come up with the other 67% of this judgment?
Yes I'm pretty sure that my 2015 Model S has always warned me that the car will not brake if I command it not to with my foot on the accelerator. It certainly did in 2019.
> Also, how the heck is Mr. McGee supposed to come up with the other 67% of this judgment?
He probably can't. Assuming the amount stands on appeal, and assuming that he doesn't have an insurance policy with policy limits high enough to cover it, he'll pay as much as he can out of personal assets and probably have his wages garnished.
He might also be able to declare bankruptcy to get out of some or all of it.
An interesting question is what the plaintiffs can do if they just cannot get anywhere near the amount owed from him.
A handful of states have "joint and several liability" for most torts. If this had been in one of those states the way damages work when there are multiple defendants is:
• Each defendant is fully responsible for all damages
• The plaintiff can not collect more than the total damage award
In such a state the plaintiffs could simply ask Tesla for the entire $329 million and Tesla would have to pay. Tesla would then have a claim for $220 million against McGee.
Of course McGee probably can't come up with that, so McGee still ends up in bankruptcy, but instead of plaintiffs being shortchanged by $220 million it would be Tesla getting shortchanged.
The idea behind joint and several liability is that in situations like there where someone has to be screwed it shouldn't be the innocent plaintiff.
Many other states have "modified joint and several liability". In those states rather than each defendant being fully responsible, only defendants whose share of the fault exceeds some threshold (often 50%) are fully responsible.
For example suppose there are three plaintiffs whose fault shares are 60%, 30%, and 10%. In a pure joint and several liability state plaintiff could collect from whichever are most able to come up with the money. If that's the 10% one they could demand 100% from them and leave it to that defendant to try to get reimbursed from the others.
In a modified joint and several liability state with a 50% threshold the most the plaintiff can ask from the 30% and 10% defendants is 30% and 10% respectively. They could ask the 60% defendant for 100% instead. If the 60% defendant is the deep pockets defendant that works out fine for the plaintiff, but if it is the 10% one and the other two are poor then the plaintiff is the one that gets screwed.
Finally there are some states that have gotten rid of joint and several liability, including Florida in 2006. In those states plaintiff can only collect from each defendant bases on their share of fault. Tesla pays their 33%, McGee pays whatever tiny amount he can, and the plaintiff is screwed.
"The scam of income tax is that it's progressive on paper but not in practice."
Perfectly put. It's always bothered me that the tax brackets don't continue on in a logarithmic fashion, e.g. new brackets at 1.5 million, 15 million, 150 million, etc.
Focusing on brackets for earned income is a distraction. Those only apply to relatively rare sports stars, actors, etc. The real cheats are things like tax rates being lower for capital gains, and that people receiving rental/royalty income can subtract all of their expenses (whereas wage earners cannot).
Arguably a bigger cheat is that if you have enough wealth tied up in stocks, you can realize capital gains for the sake of taking out loans to live off of without having to realize the gains for the sake of taxes. Then, you can pass those investments onto your inheritors with a stepped-up cost basis so they don't have to pay tax on the gains, either.
Yes even though I'm no fan of taxes, allowing borrowing against gains is clearly "realizing" them, it is an absolutely absurd fiction that allows this to be untaxed.
Sure, that was already mentioned and I skipped mentioning it again because focusing too much on that one thing is likely to distract from the overall problem. It's not bigger, it's just different. It has also been made less attractive now that interest rates exist again (at least for the time being until Krasnov gets his hands on that lever of market manipulation)
(another one in the same vein is that when you donate an appreciated asset, you get a tax deduction of the unrealized value)
"Hurry up and idle" for CPU design ended up being great for power efficiency. Nature came to the same conclusion for biological organisms a long time ago.
"Because all of the included participants were from infertile couples, this appears to be a limitation of the study..."
Pretty big limitation, and their discussion really is just there to justify publishing anyway. Both groups, bald and shaggy, may as well have been shooting blanks.
I'm not convinced that Scott's suggestions will move the needle. Most are good ideas (e.g. term limits, more vocational training opportunities), but some I find distasteful (e.g. forced identity verification for internet services, not being entitled to social security if you've accumulated too much, etc.). We've made too many terrible decisions for too long as a nation, to the point now I feel like the spiritual malaise for the young can only be cured by hard asset prices collapsing by 30% or more.
His end slide recap is below.
Economics:
// Increase minimum wage to $25/hr
// AMT for high income and corporations
// Re-fund the IRS
// Negative income tax (i.e. UBI)
// Eliminate capital gains exemption
Technology:
// Remove 230 protection for algorithmically-elevated content
// Identity verification
// Break up Big Tech
// Age-gating
I don't know how anyone can look at what's going on with AI and think that now is a great time to make it illegal for people to work for less than 50K a year. It would be absolutely devastating for young people especially.
Can you actually outperform the KEFs and Perlistens of the world? They seem to have so much engineering put into their designs I don't believe a hobbyist can realistically match them.
I will admit that stuff like "speakers with quasi-active noise cancellation behind them" sounds intriguing. That's probably a good reason to get into this rabbit hole!
> Can you actually outperform the KEFs and Perlistens of the world? They seem to have so much engineering put into their designs I don't believe a hobbyist can realistically match them.
Absolutely. Don't forget, these guys are: a. Humans, and b. Operating for a company to make a profit. When you're DIYing you're (generally) not concerned about the latter part at all.
There's a few more reasons why DIY is so capable:
1. High quality drivers are available to purchase. There are companies like Tymphany/SB Acoustics etc that are OEM/ODM manufacturers selling to the big names. You can get the same/very similar models from parts express and other sites.
2. A lot of the engineering principles are well understood, public science. In fact many experts hang out on websites like DIYaudio.com. They're human. You can see their workings, opinions, doubts etc up close.
3. Some speakers like the Dutch&Dutch 8c's started their lives on forums like diyaudio. Which is to say, they went from DIY level to "well-reviewed" level in a manner that's quite clear/transparent to anyone familiar with the forum/DIY. No "hidden" black magic involved.
4. You have a lot of amazing designers on these forums putting their designs out for free. Jeff Bagby, Paul Carmody, Troels Gravesen, Perry Marshall etc. Check out Perry's comment on his speaker below. Btw, he's a professional designer having worked across a number of audio & car companies designing AV systems.
Now, if you want to design your own speakers and not use an existing model, yes you'll need to learn a lot. But it's very much doable. It may take time/money/effort, but beating a top of the line system for a fraction of the (material, not labour) cost is possible and has happened.
BTW Perry had made another comment about how his speakers sounded better than almost all other speakers at AXPONA and his kids agreed, but I couldn't find it right now. And many of those speakers were high 5/6 figure speakers.
Bing is pretty great now. You get Bing points (redeemable for ~$100 in swag per year) and free Chat GPT that usually answers your question before you decide which link to click on.
All jokes aside, it's an endless stream of takes from people who don't have an internal monologue. Plus some influencers trying their hand with unoriginal bait threads. Like the other poster said, it's worth checking out every now and again just to read some comments from folks who aren't thought leaders.