They disrupted the status quo back in 2003 (2001?), then in 2009 they were doing Linux ports, then in ~2015 they were doing HTPC stuff (and also funding Linux graphic driver dev the entire time, Linux gaming in its current state would not exist without Valve), there was their Steam Machine experiment somewhere in there (it flopped but that doesn’t make it cost any less), then they were doing Steam Deck stuff. They’re still paying Linux graphic devs BTW.

Yeah, Steam is a monopoly, but 1) they’ve been a monopoly since forever and there hasn’t been a Comcast-ish disaster, and 2) more competition doesn’t seem to actually benefit us here but could potentially make things a lot worse.

In principle, Steam is a Sword Of Damocles just like any other Monopoly. In practice, the alternatives are EA and Epic, no thank you (I know itch.io is a good competitor, but they don’t have any pull on AAA publishers so I don’t expect them to take the market if Steam implodes).

Also, Valve is innovating in ways that nobody else seems willing to - not just their Linux ports (represent!), but also their attempts on HTPC gaming (which was unnecessarily a huge pain in the ass on PC, for no good reason) and their steam controller. And their portable PC gaming with the Steam deck (which to be fair GPD probably did first).

All in all, I’m happy to pay the Steam tax for what they’re doing. I have no illusions that Epic Games Store would provide serious competition in terms of the goodies I want, because they already aren’t, and they’re still in their sweetheart phase.

The PineNote. Depending on your definition of “proper”, since it ships with GNOME and AFAICT only supports Wayland, and Wayland doesn’t have many compositors that work well on a device with no keyboard.

My 150 mile commute

Is that 150 miles each way, or is it 150 miles roundtrip?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p954EFd0VMI

Depending on your definition of “possible”:

1. Unban kei cars. Cars are cheaper if there’s less car.
2. Build more public transport (particularly trains, electric of course) so more people don’t need cars, then tax ICE cars heavily
3. Make all greenfield street grids use narrow streets (that means a max width of 6m(20ft) wall-to-wall, for 80% of streets) and over time convert existing grids likewise, which (strongly increases pedestrianism and) encourages any urban car drivers to drive kei cars.
4. If most drivers of big cars are rural, then let the big ag subsidies cover it. Although honestly, if urban drivers stop driving cars (and ~80-90% of people are urban (that includes suburban)), then we’re 80-90% of the way there anyway, and the last 10% doesn’t matter.

Point 2 and 3 would require major political buy-in (and they’re also sort of the same step anyway), which strains the definition of possible. But it’s quite financially feasible.

They’re $15k because the government is paying for the rest of the car, they control the lithium, they don’t give a shit about environmental regulations, and they use slave labor to produce these materials and cars.

Hey, maybe it’s because:

1. They put heavy emphasis on EVs since 2009
2. They don’t kowtow to ICE car companies; ICE cars have a cap system that makes them expensive, every ICE car has one day of the week they aren’t allowed on the road (determined by number plate)
3. Their car companies aren’t all pre-invested into massive ICE car factories
4. The govt has very consistently supported EVs - western countries tend to flip-flop, e.g. when a conservative govt is elected
5. They’ve more extensively vertically integrated their EV manufacturing (which to be fair, is an extension of point 3)

The industry experts have done teardowns of chinese EVs, and concluded shortcutting and labor abuse alone can’t explain the low pricepoint. As shitty as the CCP is, if we don’t recognize that China is ahead on EVs then they’ll eat our lunch. EU/US tariffs on Chinese EVs won’t stop them, because they’re selling to the entire world, not just the EU/US. It’ll be Harley Davidson all over again (who received protectionist tariffs against japanese motorcycles until Harley Davidson could “catch up” on affordability - and the rest is history).

Even if Chinese labor standards were the problem (and people don’t mention that US/EU cars have plenty of Chinese components, made by Chinese workers with Chinese wages - Ford, Tesla etc have ), the result of the tariffs is that they’re setting up factories in Mexico (just like Ford/etc) where they’ll be bound by the same labor standards as everyone else. And they’re still undercutting everyone.

The price has nothing to do with patents, it’s economy of scale - LCDs ship at a rate of billions per quarter, and are included in every device under the sun, whereas e-ink screens basically only ship in niche luxury devices (ereaders/enotes) that can be replaced by your phone and an ipad respectively. As a result, LCDs ship several orders of magnitude more screens, and reap the resulting economies of scale.

Yes, EInk corp has patents, but that doesn’t prove that the price is caused by the patents.

Currently, our best hope of seeing prices come down is 1) if the fast-multidye tech (i.e. the Gallery 3 thing) takes off enough to give e-notes mass market appeal (color drawing and comic book reading could be huge, maybe) and thus some extra economy of scale, or 2) if GoodDisplay’s DES screens get their PPI up to 300 and thus are able to compete in the ereader space against E-Ink’s MED.

DES = Display Electronic Slurry, AKA the cofferdam tech. It’s a different method of creating an e-ink screen that (apparently) doesn’t touch E-Ink’s patents, and it works by creating a grid of ditches to be filled up with the e-ink liquid and ink (where 1 ditch = 1 pixel). In contrast, E-Ink’s MED (=Microencapsulated Electrophoretic Display) produces self-contained microcapsules that have the liquid/ink sealed inside, and then the microcapsules are sprinkled onto the screen’s pixel grid like Hundreds And Thousands, and each microcapsule is substantially smaller than a pixel, and each pixel toggles several microcapsules. The microcapsules sometimes overlap the border of the pixel grid (since they’re a bunch of packed circles basically), which breaks up the straightness of the pixel grid and is what gives E-Ink screen their ‘grainy’ look where DES screens are more noticeably checkerboarding. This could potentially give MED a long-term aesthetic advantage, although that might turn out to be a non-issue for DES with sufficiently high PPI.

The advantage of DES is that because it skips a layer (the slurry is directly on the substrate, rather than in microcapsules on the substrate) it could potentially be higher-resolution(/PPI), and higher contrast. Also possibly cheaper, since it might be able to skip a manufacturing step of making the microcapsules. Maybe.

Okay then, how does Hungry Jacks fit into that chain of logic?

“we don’t actually want to penalize people for having more efficient cars”

Yes we do - more efficient cars is not the same as more efficient means of transport, and even electric cars have far higher emissions per person than buses or trains or bikes or walking.

Everyone has this weird mental block where they can’t imagine a solution that’s not cars (mainly because our built environment is mostly roads), but the reality is that electric cars are just a stopgap except for in the boonies, and in those cases using petrol isn’t that big of a deal anyway (it’s ~10% of the population so it’s only a tiny fraction of the car-emissions problem, air pollution is less because there are fewer cars and fewer people nearby, and EVs are more expensive because you can’t just drive a cheap short-range city-car like the Nissan Leaf). So rural transport emissions should be a low priority IMO.

To be clear, I’m all for taxing the shit out of commercial trucks too. Most of that shit should be put on rail (and it would, if we focused on improving rail infrastructure like we currently focus on improving highways), and so should most car drivers.

Cars don’t make sense in a well-built city, you can walk or take a train and they scale much better. Electric motorbikes are five figures, which is waaay too expensive. Buy a motorscooters or ebike, either would be just as good.

Motorbikes are great in car-centric cities, but that’s because car-centric cities are failed urban-design abominations. It’s like building a city without stairs/elevators and then claiming jetpacks are practical.

likely economic deregulation

Friendly reminder that putting businesses in charge of regulation doesn’t result in deregulation, it results in different regulation - removing what hurts them and adding what helps them (protectionism, barriers to entry to hurt small fry, etc).

IMO, electric motorbikes don’t make any sense - they’re not for cities, and they’re not for road-tripping because their range stinks. They’re an insistence on round-peg in a square hole; they’re a mechanical horse.

What we need is tiny one-person electric cars - the limit on range at highway speeds is aerodynamics, and motorbikes just aren’t as aerodynamic as putting the human inside a shell.