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The great thing about Tesla is they let you drive their car basically wherever you want during test drive. I was interested in the model X, so I took it to my garage and discovered it couldn’t properly open the wing doors due to pretty low ceiling and relatively narrow spots. So I passed. But that was a pretty basic consideration. Can’t blame Tesla here really.


"Since ordering the vehicle, Raddon's living circumstances have changed, he told Business Insider. He said that he and his wife separated and he's since moved into a new apartment complex, and his new Cybertruck doesn't fit comfortably in its parking space."

On top of the fact that the owner couldn't have known the above, I'd say one can blame Tesla: for their abusive contracts and bad customer service.


If I moved house, I can't imagine Honda or Subaru agreeing to take back a car.

Although the inability to sell it is bullshit.


You cannot test drive a cybertruck.


Yeah, the one ring


So don’t you want a gun to hit the target with no collateral damage? Imagine a different use-case, for example a mass shooter in a crowd. Where an AI controlled gum can take out the shooter and not the victims, the way police occasionally do.


Sounds like nyouve forgotten the history of failures in this field relating to identifying who is or is not human based on skin color.


Some of the victims will invariably be dissidents rather than mass shooters when nasty regimes get their hands on them.


So we’re back to the arguments against weapons generally. Yes, you can use a weapon for bad things.


In fact, the money not paid to France would be simply stolen by local kleptocrats


Looks like they are unionizing and starting a strike


First Law of Robotics (revised)

A robot may not join or form a union, or participate in work stoppages, strikes, or picketing.


OMG, this should be at the top!


What about linking?


The point of RSUs is to tie the employee to the company. Converting them to cash on the spot is about the dumbest thing they could do. Might as well wave most of them goodbye.


Its the point of options grants as well, its common to have change of control clauses that cause acceleration.


Absolutely, in early stage startup, not common in public companies.


This is because 99.99% of the population wouldn’t know what to do with such a device. Computers are consumer devices, they can’t be expected to meet demands for total user control without those users shooting themselves in the foot nonstop. This is the only logical way they can develop.


The question was: "In exactly which way is Stallman being inflammatory here? "

Nothing you say addresses that.


If true this is truly amazing. So rare nowadays to see countries move towards democracy instead away from it.


Yup excellent if it pans out - although Kazakhs remain sceptical.

But it is quite extraordinary to see parts of the government lead by Tokayev, eject an autocrat (Nazarbayev) and begin the process of democratisation. And it does seem to stem from a lack of willingness to carry out a crackdown on the people.

It is not likely to become a liberal democracy soon if ever (not that is needs to be a goal at all). A hybrid regime is very likely though.

You love to see it.


It seems like it is, but it's not new either.

Eg. This was co-ed with their president 11 years ago: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kazakhstans-steady-p...

Many signs that they have good-will for democracy, but I don't think it's easy in their position ( member of the CSTO and in Russia's "sphere of influence").

I have seen signs that they aren't just a puppet of Russia for example and I wasn't sure what was going on. But the article somewhat explained it.


That opinion piece is by the old leader Nazarbayev, who Tokayev just muscled out of power.


Thanks, didn't knew that.

But the ( natural) direction seems to be set either way.


I believe most successful democracies have became this way. Most European nations went from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional one.

The natural process of democracy seems to be: Dictatorship -> industrialisation -> democracy. Does any one knows any books talking about this?


I think you're missing the critical step of "widespread rule of law". It leads to both democracy (because once people have rights, they exercise those rights to organize and demand more) and industrialization (because people will only build factories if they have confidence that their investments won't be stolen).

England had a head start thanks to the Magna Carta (which established the Parliament) and the Civil War (which gave it teeth); by the time the steam engine was invented, the rule of law was well established and industrialists didn't need to worry about having their work confiscated.


> The natural process of democracy seems to be: Dictatorship -> industrialisation -> democracy. Does any one knows any books talking about this?

Watch this video ("The Rules for Rulers" from CGP Grey)[0], it's a summary of a book from de Mesquita ("The Dictator's Handbook")[1]. The video explains this process very well, imo.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11612989-the-dictator-s-...


Usually the monarchy/dictatorship was overthrown to be replaced by a somewhat more democratic government (both peacefully or violently). Autocrats rarely were willing to give up any of their power voluntarily and paradoxically in the rare cases where they did it only hastened their downfall

e.g. I’m pretty sure Loui didn’t expect in his worst nightmares that his head will be chopped of a couple of years later).

The only successful exceptions I can think are is Spain after Franco died, Taiwan and South Korea but these are all rather modern.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/38521576

Probably not exactly what you’re looking for, but it tackles the somewhat bumpy transition from industrialization to democracy (or rather why it didn’t exactly work out that way)


Killing Louis didn't lead to less authoritarianism it led to Robespierre and eventually Napoleon. Most of today's liberal democracies didn't come from revolution or civil war but from foreign forces deposing tyrant or peaceful transition. This includes France which only became democratic after Prussia ended Napoleon III


Yes, the transition wasn’t very smooth though. In cases with little foreign interference, it was more like:

Absolutist monarchy -> violent jacobin style revolution -> ??? (a lot of war and dead people)-> reactionaries come back to power -> a more moderate revolution/coup which brings a more balanced regime which establishes some kind of a rule of law based constitutional order.

Britain only had a single cycle of this, while France needed 2/3.

It not like the goal of Prussia was to establish a democratic regime in France, that was just side effect and arguably Napolean brought that war on himself (just like his uncle did with Russia)


>Autocrats rarely were willing to give up any of their power voluntarily and paradoxically in the rare cases where they did it only hastened their downfall

Read this section:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_revolutions_of_1848%E2%...

Summary: The King gave half the population what they wanted and then he used good old military force to struck the rest down and then he regained all of his powers.


Louis gave up his power voluntarily (to an extent, the kingdom was bankrupt and he had to make concessions) by accepting a constitutional monarchy. He bumbled his way to the scaffold afterwards, and he only got there because he had already accepted sharing authority with an elected legislature.

Many other monarchs gave up their "divine" rights under pressure, but without being really overthrown.


> The only successful exceptions I can think are is Spain after Franco died, Taiwan and South Korea but these are all rather modern.

What about the UK?

Mexico is another modern example; it became democratic gradually and peacefully in the late 90s or early 2000s. There was no sudden regime change, and the formerly ruling PRI is still a major political party that runs in the (now fair) elections.


It hasn't ceased to amaze me to see how many people from the US think of their ideology as the end result of a process. As their ideology is the logical conclusion of it, and some countries are more mature than others along this line of development.

What really brought it home to me, was a podcast of two boardgame designers working on the "tech" trees of a Civilization type game. One was for religion, which had to start with mysticism, to move on to theology. When my offense about this line of thinking passed I had to wonder: since Judaism -> Christianity -> Islam, are they going to stop the monotheistic track at Christianity or Islam?


Didn't work for China though. Even though everybody seemed to hope it would.


See the "Historical Materialism" of Marx and Engels:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism#Traje...


>The natural process of democracy seems to be: Dictatorship -> industrialisation -> democracy. Does any one knows any books talking about this?

"Capitalism, Alone" by Branko Milanovic discusses that, amongst other things.


T14 still only exists on paper


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