I’m having a hard time parsing your sentence. Who is the “they” in the main clause?

You make it sound like the American left pushes a lot of symbolic issues. Which ones are you thinking of?

Hot take: the American left loses on the material issues because it has lost on solidarity, symbolism, ideology. Don’t you know that healthcare and vacation days will “hurt the economy”? There are many poor working class people who still oppose Obamacare even though they directly benefit from it. The material gains matter a lot less if people reject the ideas behind them.

I’m not sure if the timing of Labor Day is important, but I wouldn’t underestimate the power of symbols.

The real holy grail would be all this open source. “Free for now” doesn’t inspire much confidence.

Lots. Toasters, refrigerators, robot vacuums, thermostats, smart home lights, etc.

The reason why self-driving cars are extra tricky is both because they have a much more complex task and the negative consequences are sky high. If a robot vacuum screws up, it’s not a big deal. This is why it’s totally irresponsible to advertise something as having “full” autonomy when the stakes are so high.

Strongly disagree. Trains are nice everywhere in the world. There’s no reason they can’t be nice in the US. Cars are trash. Strip malls are trash. Giant parking lots are trash. The sky high cost of cars is trash. The environmental impact of cars is trash. The danger of cars is trash. Car centric urban planning is trash.

Self-driving cars are safer… than the most dangerous thing ever. But because cars are inherently so dangerous, they are still more dangerous than just about any other mode of transportation.

Dreaming is nice, but that’s all self-driving cars are right now. I don’t see why we don’t have better dreams.

Conant and Ashby’s good regulator theorem in cybernetics says, “Every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system.”

The AI needs an accurate model of a human to predict how humans move. Predicting the path of a human is different than predicting the path of other objects. Humans can stand totally motionless, pivot, run across the street at a red light, suddenly stop, fall over from a heart attack, be curled up or splayed out drunk, slip backwards on some ice, etc. And it would be computationally costly, inaccurate, and pointless to model non-humans in these ways.

I also think trolley problem considerations come into play, but more like normativity in general. The consequences of driving quickly amongst humans is higher than amongst human height trees. I don’t mind if a car drives at a normal speed on a tree lined street, but it should slow down on a street lined with playing children who could jump out at anytime.

I don’t doubt that iPhones are harder to repair than they need to be. What I seriously doubt is that other major phone manufacturers are better about building with repairability and longevity in mind. (Remember, the beginning of this comment thread is claiming iPhones are especially disposable.)

That’s a good point. If iPhones are more expensive to repair, then many people will dispose of them rather than repair. But I looked this up, completely expecting you to be right, and it looks like android phones like Samsung are often even more expensive to repair. So I’m still not seeing the justification for the original claim that iPhones are more disposable.

Are Samsung and Sony providing repair kits in “good faith”? I think they’re all horrible, but no one has a problem getting their phones fixed.

I feel like we’re getting old. Is this our “kids these day can’t even change their own oil” moment?

No need to be rude.

Again, youre wrong. Both Apple and Samsung release repair manuals and provide replacement parts. Literally no one has a problem getting either phone repaired.

I’m all for right to repair, but android phones suck for planned obsolescence so acting like they’re better about this is delusional. Don’t give them a pass.

Why does epoxy matter for it being “disposable”? No one has a problem getting their iPhone fixed.

Anything that I will experience the use of a lot. Computer, shoes, daily bag, etc.

I think a daily takeout coffee that lasts just half an hour a day, on the other hand, is an expensive luxury.

I think that really understates the financial difference. Before Musk, Twitter was at just about break even for years and even had a few profitable years. Now, X is near bankruptcy. It’s saddled with a billion dollar loan while revenue is simultaneously way down as advertisers flee. When I say that Twitter was stable, I also meant financially stable. They had runway to raise more funding or take out loans, and the user base and advertising was growing. X doesn’t have any of those benefits.

We spend billions subsidizing oil and gas, which are industries with dimming importance in the future. Meanwhile, we have some of the best artificial intelligence, computer science, cognitive science university programs in the world, and we send all of our graduates to the US.

We should nurture a tech sector in Canada, not just focus solely on natural resources.

I don’t know about that. Twitter seemed like a pretty stable platform before the acquisition, not a platform on the decline. Lots of problems, but now it’s a whole different level.

To be fair, the word “liberal” has two meanings. In the US and Canada, the word commonly means “vaguely leftish”, as when people say “the liberal media” or “college makes you liberal”. I think the person you’re responding to is using it this way. This usage is slowly phasing out I think.

The definition you cited is another totally correct usage of the term. It is close to the idea of libertarianism, and is associated with conservative economic policies. So it has the opposite meaning.

Blame the laws and three decades of Borkian precedent.

Americans support a lot of things they don’t vote for. Most Americans want universal healthcare, higher taxes on the rich, more government services, etc. But many famously “vote against their interests”. Abortion is turning out to be the surprising exception.

At this point, I only keep Chrome around for the odd website that only works on Chrome. It’s astonishing how quickly Google is burning through good will lately.