No, it's not supposed to make it better. It's worse. "His tunnels are oozing with sludge" is mysterious, meant to draw readers in. The truth is, like every goddamn thing he's ever done, he's mismanaged it so hard and cut so many corners that he's caused yet another entirely predictable, entirely preventable industrial disaster.
I can hate Elon Musk and clickbait at the same time, mate.
According to the article, it's not the completed tunnels, but rather, the dig sites. It's mostly normal digging byproduducts (silt, rock dust, sand, water), but also chemicals for making/setting grout. All of that stuff is "normal", but the outrageously lax safety standards have let it build up rather than be dealt with.
"Elon Musk Tunnels Oozing with Skin-Burning Chemical Sludge" is a sensationalist clickbait take. "Elon Musk's Tunnels-In-Progress Full of Improperly Stored/Disposed-Of Dangerous Chemical Waste" wouldn't spark the imagination so hard.
I can't even understand what he's trying to say. "You claim the system is broken, but it made you mad, so I guess it's working 😎"
The headset even says "Mac User" a few seconds before this.
Why the fuck would I have any attachment to a company that has no attachment to me? Eat dicks.
Really we should just abolish capitalism.
No arguments here
Capitalists finding a way to tap into the market of "people who can't afford motorcycle air bag vests" means poor people have access to it when they previously didn't. Is it worse than a world where anyone could get one for free from the DMV or take it out from a library or something? Yes, absolutely. That's easily preferable to this. Is it better than a world where poor people had no way to access it? I would say so.
Of course it occurred to me, which is why I framed it the way I did. I don't disagree, obviously it should be easily available. However, villainizing this specific company for finding a way to make it more easily available than their counterparts who price poor people out entirely is a step backwards. Villainize the government and the system for putting us here. Villainizing a company that found a way to work within the stupid framework we're stuck in to do something, even if it's less than perfect, to make it more affordable, for taking basic steps to make sure they don't go out of business for it, is nuts.
It doesn't cost them nothing. If they left it on without payment, then people would just buy the subsidized one and never pay the sub. The company can't afford to sell all the vests at half price. Then they couldn't afford to offer the subscription option anymore. Without a method to enforce payment, the only option is to price poor people out entirely. That's worse, not better.
What's the functional difference between "disable the vest remotely" and "send repo men to take the vest away"? In either case, you no longer have access to the air bag, but in the former case you can resume paying for it much more easily. I would personally far rather a "subscription" than a traditional lease; I can stop paying when I don't need the thing or can't afford it, and seamlessly resume using it when I need to and have money.
In your opinion, would it be better if the lease scheme didn't exist, and the only way to have one at all was to pay $800 up front?
Again, it's not like it's going to catch you by surprise. You are alerted well before you ever even get on your bike, as you're putting the vest on, that it's inactive. You have to make the choice to ride with an inactive vest. It doesn't check your payment status mid-crash or shut off mid-ride. Other vest manufacturers only offer a full-price one-time-purchase. These guys have gone out of their way to make it more accessible to people who can't pay $800 up front. If they simply never checked, people would just buy the vest for "half price", and the company quickly couldn't afford to offer it. They've made it as safe as possible while not letting themselves go out of business. I'm not sure what else you want them to do.
It's more of reskinned lease scheme. These are expensive devices, and you can either buy the whole device up-front, or you can buy a cheaper version and pay a monthly fee to make up the difference. Either $800 up front, or $400 up front + $12/mo or $120/yr for three years.
There is no world in which you die because "your airbag's ping is too high". It checks your subscription once a day before you leave home; part of getting ride-ready is making sure your airbag is prepped. If you have no sub, the device warns you, the same as if the airbag was faulty or unready for any other reason.
It's absurd on the face of it, but I'm not sure it's worse than a world where motorcyclists don't get airbags if they don't have $800 right now.
That's what they call it here in Canada. Oat beverage, soy beverage, almond beverage. Everyone still calls it milk, but 🤷♀️
There's a part of me that feels a bit philosophical about it, like, there's something zen about the fact that all this time I thought I was being ignored, it's because I was talking into a void and didn't know it. Obviously I don't want it to stay broken, but it puts an interesting perspective on my social media use lol
Thank goodness
That's probably true, but perfect can't be the enemy of good. Getting everyone who currently uses the worst method (a single global password) to use a better method means that better method has to be easier than that, and as things lie right now, most security researchers agree that the method most likely to succeed is removing roadblocks, both client-side and server-side, to make password mangers even easier and more secure (whether you want to store it locally or not is really up to you, and again, it is already an option). We're not talking about people who already try to stay secure, or care about the exact details. You and I already know we care about security and do our best, presumably. The crucial thing is to onramp Bob Q. Public, the middle manager whose password on everything is rover73 because he loves his dog, and any solution more complicated than remembering one password and clicking one button is going to be too much change for him to get around to doing it
Okay, I'm glad you have a system, but it's not really relevant? I didn't say you should use a password manager. I said it's good for the majority of people who can only remember one or two passwords.
Most people do not. The average user has one or two passwords, and maybe swaps out letters for numbers when the site forces them to. Because remembering dozens of passwords is hard. If you, personally, can remember dozens of secure passwords, you're some kind of prodigy and the use-case for a password manager doesn't apply to you, but it still applies to the majority.
In general, yes. Big sites get hacked all the time. Passwords from those sites get cracked all the time. Anyone who uses the same password on multiple sites is almost guaranteed to have that password stolen and associated with a username/email at some point, which goes on a list to try on banks, paypal, etc.
Conversely, to my knowledge, there has been one major security breach at a password manager, LastPass, and the thieves got more-or-less useless encrypted passwords. The only casualty, at least known so far, is people who used Lastpass to store crypto wallet seed phrases in plaintext, who signed up before 2018 when the more secure master password requirements were put in effect, chose an insecure master password, and never changed it once in the four years prior to the breach.
It's not perfect, but the record is lightyears better.
Put it this way: Without a password manager, you're gambling that zero sites, out of every single site you sign on to, ever gets hacked. From facebook, google, netflix, paypal, your bank, your lemmy or mastodon instances, all the way down to the funny little mom-n-pop hobby fansite you signed up for 20 years ago that hasn't updated their password hashing functions since they opened it. With a password manager, you're gambling that that one site doesn't get hacked, a site whose sole job is not to get hacked and to stay on the forefront of security.
(Also, you don't even have to use their central servers; services like BitWarden let you keep your password record locally if you prefer, so with a bit of setup, the gamble becomes zero sites)
Sorry, did you think that was meant to be a defense of the man? Do you think his fanatics would ever describe him as "outrageously lax"? Read, mate, read.