I’m personally offended you didn’t list BF1942 in your list of fun games. It was broken in so many hilariously fun ways. How much fun is it to be a sniper flying on the wing of a plane? Or suicide bomb a person in a plane only to eject and pop your parachute 1ft above the ground safely? Or to park your tank with the turret inside the door of a spawn point just blasting away?

Are you insane or just fucking stupid? Serious question here. Not trying to be insulting.

This entire topic of conversation is about this bill: https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-sheehy-introduce-bipartisan-bill-to-guarantee-military-right-to-repair-its-equipment

None of the stuff you posted about or linked about in 80pt font is in the bill everyone else is talking about. The stuff you are ranting about is in the Big Beautiful Bill, which is a different legislative bill that Senator Warren (and every other Democrat) voted against.

None of those things are involved in this bill. Everything you mentioned is all about the reconciliation budget.

Please say what could have been done on this bill, which is completely separate legislation.

OK, take that Fresnel lens that you were using to melt pennies and then focus it on a PV cell that is also made of metal. What might be the expected response? The science in this case is making PV cells that can handle the intense heat.

It isn’t that. They have been talking about Fresnel lenses on PV for decades. It’s solving the heat issue and the size issue. A Fresnel lens gathers a large area of light and focuses it down, including focusing the heat. Normal PV cells cannot handle that amount of heat.

OK, what should they have done in this case? Please give concrete steps what they should have done.

I agree with you they should have been doing a lot more to deny a functioning government for the last 6 months, but in this case the very best they could have done was not co-sponsor the bill and then vote Yes on it. Because, again, this bill is a GOOD THING. It isn’t the best thing, but it is a good thing.

Got it. Since what they did wasn’t 100% perfect and a fix to everything, they are tone deaf and terrible politicians. It’s a really good thing what they did, but since it doesn’t help you personally, then it is a terrible thing. They recognized something that needed fixing that will save billions of taxpayer dollars and hurts large corporations, but since they didn’t fix the thing that impacts you then it is bad.

Also, this is the OPPOSITE of sending the message that corporate interests are more valuable. This is saying that corporations that are making billions off taxpayer funded contracts will no longer be able to bilk us (as much).

Yes, they should absolutely go after the right to repair for everyone, but maybe (and I’m just spitballing here) Warren knows that she couldn’t get the Republican majority to vote yes on a full package and went for the win she could get instead of blocking something that does do good. You do realize, right, that the Democrats do not have a majority anywhere in the federal government?

While this isn’t as far as I’d like them to go, this is extremely big news. The amount of money spent on absolute bullshit fees by defense contractors is bonkers. Us taxpayers are shelling out billions of dollars to buy a single jet that we then have to spend millions of dollars per year to maintain, simply because we aren’t allowed to maintain it ourselves.

What is tone deaf about this?

This is the likely scenario. They are predicting an incredibly unpredictable consumer market in the next 4-8 years but a very predictable defense industry market in that time.

I did two full playthroughs plus a lot of restarts mid-way to try different endings or different side things. The only voice I can clearly hear in my head is the mage, whose name I can’t even remember. I can’t even remember what my own character’s voice sounded like (the vampire).

The writing in this story is not accurate. Iran isn’t turning it off for the country. They are talking about switching government services to use receivers that use Beidou as primary source of timing and maybe selectively turn off using GPS on those devices.

They can’t jam GPS in the entire country. That kind of jamming is very localized to strategic sites. Country-wide jamming would be wildly expensive. They could (and probably already do) jam it at military bases and nuclear facilities, though.

They can’t shut down the satellites over Iran. That’s not how GPS works. They aren’t geostationary with tight beams like comm satellites. Every GPS satellite goes around the earth twice a day and has a beam that covers the entire earth plus something like 10 degrees on the sides out into space (circular, not actually side to side). While the US can turn off broadcasting while directly over very large swaths at a time (like, say, China and Russia), it isn’t actually turned off on the ground because there will still be satellites over Europe or northern Africa that will be on and sending data at a higher angle to that large swath. It will be lower powered in that region because the signal power is lower at the edges, but it isn’t off. Also, Iran is in the same region as US allies and US military bases: Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, etc; so the US would be unlikely to want to lower GPS power in that region.

Starlink is very different in how it sends signals to the earth, which is why it can shut off services to areas.

“Have any of you realized how much money we spent on this?!”

No. The answer is only no.

Longhorn… the hype was strong with that one. I don’t even remember what the hype was about, just that Longhorn was supposed to be amazing.

So when I get home from a 200 mile round trip to the desert on Sunday night, I have roughly 20 miles of range on the Bolt. If I can add 40 miles of range to my car overnight (10 hours of charging at 4mph), that gives me 60 miles of range to do a 20 mile round trip commute. But what if I want to go to the Dodgers game after work? Or if I need to run a bunch of errands after work that I skipped while in the desert? People want their car to be able to go places when they want to go places.

You are talking to me as if you think I didn’t own multiple full EVs as my only car for over 6 years. I lived with a 90mile range Toyota Rav4 EV without DC fast charging and took it on road trips. I also lived with that car without L2 charging for a month. That month was miserable, and I would have never kept that car if I didn’t upgrade to L2.

If you have a second car, then you don’t need a 300 mile range EV and also don’t need L2. If you have a very short commute and don’t do anything after work or on the weekends, then you don’t need L2.

That depends on what is meant by usually. You seem to think it means “most daily situations,” but I think it means “most house installations.” Yes, a usual day in a person’s life does not require L2. But the usual person does require L2 if they want to use their car like most people prefer to use their car. Once a week I need L2 charging because of all the stuff I do that isn’t commuting. That is 1 day in a 7 day week, so usually I don’t need L2. But I would not be able to have an EV if I didn’t have L2 unless I had a second car (which I don’t have). I think most people fall into this category, so the usual person needs L2 even if they don’t usually need L2.

Congrats on finding a solution that works for you. I have a short commute (16 miles round trip) and was OK to use L1 charging on a “usually” basis. However, I do more things in my life than just going to work and back. After work I might drive another 90 miles round trip to meet some friends at a brewery. Or I might drive only a couple miles to a buddy’s house and not get home until 11pm, so I now only have 7 hours to charge at L1 instead of 12 hours. And on weekends when I’m maybe driving a couple hours to hike in the desert and come back, I now have 16 hours to charge for work on Monday after driving 210 miles round trip.

Switching from L1 to L2 charging at home made driving an EV go from a daily chore to something I almost never thought about.