Huh? Apple does not charge for CarPlay. Some automakers are trying to give them the boot, but that has nothing to do with Apple's greed and everything to do with the automakers' greed. They want their own ecosystem of apps.
I'll let you in on a secret. Ask yourself what the business case of CarPlay is. "Why" should Apple do CarPlay. Put yourself in the shoes of a VP at Apple pitching CarPlay. Are they saying "let's invest millions of dollars in inventing the UI for cars and give it away for free, for .. goodwill?"
Nope, the slide deck would say 'Cars are the next computing platform. That's where most people spend time. So imagine is we (Apple) were meaningful present there .. and that's why we need to invest in it'
So, yes CarPlay is a move to control another computing formfactor. One they do not manufacturer (like tv and Apple TV) ...and unfortunately for them, car makers are wiser this time around.
A simpler explanation is that all of these little conveniences add up to keeping customers firmly embedded in the ecosystem, repeatedly buying new iPhones. And sure, if we can offer another environment where an App Store purchase can be used, great.
> unfortunately for them, car makers are wiser this time around
Maybe. Ditching CarPlay does not currently seem like the wise decision, given how many of us have decided that omitting it is a deal killer. I love my Lightning, but I do not for one nanosecond trust that Ford would keep the app ecosystem on my truck running as long as Apple will keep iOS working on iPhones.
I've seen this at a couple banks now. Including my local credit union. One person in the lobby that is really just a helper to point you in the right direction. All the 'tellers' are videoconference machines. Basically an ATM with an ID scanner and videoconference setup. For the moment the teller you talk to is still a real teller with the credit union, just at their main branch, but give it time.
They took away the one reason I had for maintaining my credit union membership.
It'd be a win for me, probably not for him. Or investors, sadly, at least not in the short term. I would turn off the non-Amazon sales platform. It might be feasible to save the brand, but of course the immediate effect would be a loss of that revenue stream from all the random Chinese "brands" that flood it with cheap garbage and counterfeits.
Or at least make a persistent toggle switch in the UI where you can say "I never want to see a single product that is not shipped-from-and-sold-by-Amazon." And end commingling with any product that Amazon itself sells, if that is occurring.
That's why they don't let morons like me run big business :). I care about things that only matter when you are a small business apparently.
Ah, focus on quality of products being listed. And, maybe that means there is room for a high-end competitor to Amazon eventually (am not seeing this anytime soon, but maybe in a couple decades??)
> The result will be a much more responsive, dynamic system where Congress cares more about what we voters think.
Or an overwhelming switch the other direction, just as chaotic and unpopular, continuing to swing back and forth every four years.
Who knows, maybe the overreach of the current party in power (even though "won the last national elections" meaning less than 50% of the cast vote, but that's another discussion) will cause a swing the other direction so hard that the opposition party gains a supermajority in congress. Things will be more stable in that case, if not universally popular, because well-crafted legislation is a good bit harder to reverse than executive orders.
That can be stopped easily enough. The Constitution makes it clear that Congress is the ultimate source of power; the SCOTUS power of judicial review was granted to itself by itself. Congress can (and has, a few times, though not often) make legislation not subject to judicial review.
The problem is that it is far, far more difficult for the legislature to "fix" a decision by SCOTUS than it is for SCOTUS to "fix" an unconstitutional law.
Supermajorities in both houses + 3/4 of the states is unlikely to ever happen again unless we face an existential threat or civil conflict.
The funny thing is that the discussion we're having, about congressional representation, already has an amendment out there floating around, waiting to be ratified. Already has 11 or 12 states who have ratified it (I forget). It can't be canceled or expired or cockblocked. If you live in a state outside of New England, you could petition your state legislators to ratify it tomorrow. And if even one state were to ratify it, others would notice and follow.
It's not unlikely. It's just... I don't know. It's as if some Svengali is out there hypnotnizing you dolts to ignore it. No other explanation makes sense. Seriously, this could be down to 2-3 jackass state representatives in Iowa or New Mexico or Florida just getting a wild hair up their ass.
> Supermajorities in both houses + 3/4 of the states is unlikely to ever happen
I agree, we seem to have perfected the art of splitting of the population into fairly stable tribes similar in size. Unless one side goes batshit insane (and even then, I think current evidence counters this idea) there is probably not going to be a supermajority in the foreseeable future.
I get what you are saying, but I think gerrymandering is a specific thing -- voters being chosen rather than being the ones to choose. You pick the state you want to live in, and the boundaries are not going to change. But at least every 10 years the congressional district you live in may change without you having any say. So it is definitely worse though I think the lopsided representation due to the senate is pretty shitty too.
> voters being chosen rather than being the ones to choose
With the Missouri Compromise, when territories were admitted, their voters were being chosen for political reasons. Territories were admitted two by two, slave holding and free to maintain a status quo. This falls under your definition of gerrymandering.
There is no justification for this gerrymandering. There's nothing so great about Wyoming such that it should have such an outsized influence on the body politic while possessing the GDP of a mid-sized county.
I'd like a hybrid system like we have in a number of states. A mechanism for nationwide initiative petitions would be nice. Then we can get nationwide consensus on the high-level issues and leave the rest for the people whose job it is to work out the details.
The worst laws come from direct amendments and petitions because only the stuff no lawmaker actually wants their name on (or could pass) goes there - and it gets gamed to hell.
See the CA propositions - they turn into insane population wide gaslighting competitions.
Why not a mixture of both? CA for instance had their populace vote to ban gay marriage in prop 8, CA then just told the voters to go fuck themselves and tied it up and overturned it in court.
So you can see even if you literally amend the constitution in california by popular referendum, those in power can just tell the populace to go fuck themselves and they won't be recognizing it, no matter that the constitution is the supreme law of the state.
> Why not a mixture of both? CA for instance had their populace vote to ban gay marriage in prop 8, CA then just told the voters to go fuck themselves and tied it up and overturned it in court.
> So you can see even if you literally amend the constitution in california by popular referendum, those in power can just tell the populace to go fuck themselves and they won't be recognizing it, no matter that the constitution is the supreme law of the state.
Your argument would make sense if the courts had overturned Prop 8 on the basis that it was unconstitutional at the state level. But that's not what happened.
The state case against Prop 8 was upheld by the courts. The federal courts ruled against it, in a completely separate case, on the basis of the Equal Protection Clause in the US constitution. Prop 8 amended the state constitution; it did not amend the US constitution.
It's also a moot point, because Prop 8 was also repealed by a subsequent ballot initiative, with 61% of the vote.
So you’re saying popular votes are not sufficient to avoid flip flops on contentious issues, and popular voting also can step on minority groups recognized rights on a whim?
What problem is it solving again?
And notably, California is one of the most consistently gay friendly states and still flip flopped on this exact topic.
The more direct the democracy (and the shorter the timeframes between elections!), the easier it is to game the population or poke people’s buttons and make them vote on things they later regret - or deeply enjoy.
The whole court system and bill of rights is to try to put guard rails, so there aren’t (for example) purges/genocides, removing a little under half the populations rights, etc. etc. but there is only so much rules can do.
So then it boils back down to 'most people are stupid' and the reason we have representative democracy is so we can cultivate a class of elites who are smart enough and have enough skin in the game to make good decisions for the rest of us.
People recoil at the idea, but isn't that sort of what the founders were doing? They had beautiful, lofty ideals on paper, but they were all wealthy, white, male landowners. Their idea of "the People" might have been a wee bit more limited than the generally accepted definition today.
It doesn’t require most people to be stupid. It just requires people to have other things they need to do, and pay attention to, and limited ability to give a shit.
If everyone has to be paying attention all the time (and it would be 150% of the time with modern society), everyone is susceptible to being drowned in bullshit and either checking out or being manipulated.
Even with what we have now, that is exactly what is going on. Direct democracy would be even worse.
I probably need to go read the arguments at the time the 17th amendment was adopted, because my inclination is that we should repeal the 17th amendment right along with repealing the PAA. Then the senate can truly represent the States, and we can have representatives who more closely reflect their constituency.
Also perfectly fine with a repeal of the 17th alongside the PAA.
I think even with the 17th the Senate still quite closely represents the States so it's less of a priority, but the current status quo for Congress is just insane.
It could very much be gerrymandered in a way to keep the red-blue balance of power neutral. But it will never happen because the state governments would never give up any power.
It's certainly a conversation worth having, but a fundamental difference between the CT and something like an F150 is utility -- the CT is unapologetically a lifestyle vehicle emphasizing form over function. A regular pickup is very utilitarian. I know it's fashionable to argue that half-ton pickups are very commonly used as lifestyle pickups too, but at least the design is clearly aimed at function over form.
So the argument probably is less about how the design should change, but how to avoid incentivizing the use of utility vehicles for family duty.
Disclaimer: I drive an F150 Lightning, so I'm part of the problem I suppose; but damn if it isn't just about the most useful all-around family vehicle I've ever owned. As long as you don't routinely drive downtown, and I don't.
A pickup from the last century is utilitarian with their 8 foot beds and a box height low enough to reach in from the side. Modern pickups much less so.
I can't say I agree that "regular pickups" are very utilitarian, unless you're talking about the base trim work trucks. They seem to me to be incredibly expensive luxury vehicles for the most part.
The design 100% has to change. There is a marketing battle for the highest hood, since it looks dope as fuck. We should mandate a maximum hood height for all vehicles that's dependent on driver visibility. When the next F-150 needs three steps to enter because the hood is too high and we woke up and mandated that pedestrian visibility needs to be maintained, then that's when change will happen.
It's been slowly increasing in size. Pickups last century were slightly smaller but not dramatically so -- if you look at like-for-like. A bigger driver of size IMO is the appreciate we now have for crew cabs. Those used to be rare to see on the road, now it's regular cabs that are extremely rare.
> When the next F-150 needs three steps to enter
This is mostly an aftermarket thing, and a superduty thing. My Lightning has running boards that are a little awkward to use because it isn't tall enough to justify them. I use them when getting in and out but only because they're otherwise in the way of my leg, not because the truck is hard to just step into.
My kids are old enough right about now that if Ford were to come out with an electric Ranger, I might trade. I do like how the midsize trucks drive (though the Lightning is quite remarkable in how well it drives for a half-ton size truck).
Pickups are about 10 inches taller now than they used to be. That seems like a lot to me.
According to the youtube video that a different commenter linked (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpuX-5E7xoU), lowering the hood height by 10 inches will make the truck 81% less likely to kill a kid in a collision.
90s trucks sure. But they turned into tonka trucks over the last 30 years. The grills and everything just keep getting bigger.
It’s actually worse than that though. Ford got rid of the heavy duty package on the f150 and said to customers “just buy the f250 instead”. Which is even more tonka.
Playing devil's advocate, the positive of allowing legislation to include unrelated riders is that it promotes compromise. And compromise is how a healthy democracy should operate.
The compromise should be on the content of the bill specific to the subject. It is not a compromise to allow a rider that funnels money to some pet project. That is buying votes.
Oftentimes there can be no compromise on the specific subject. So the bill is either DOA or just immediately passed without any debate.
Allowing several issues to be passed as a singular unit provides opportunity for an agreement to be made about several issues at once. Think of it like a Collective Bargaining Agreement.
You don't need to have a bunch of unrelated riders to compromise. If the bill is healthcare funding, the compromise could be something like who receives the assistance, whether there are any cutoffs, how to implement it, etc.
Or if that's really impossible, you could compromise on separate bills. If people ever break promises, that's a reason not to trust them in the future and it's a lot more clear to the public about who voted which way rather than having a rider which no one really understands where it came from.
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