Good morning one and all to another glorious day!
179 Killed After Plane Veers off Airport Runway in South Korea and Crashes
Biden Shelled Out $80,000,000,000 For IRS Enforcement. Congress Has Already Revoked Half Of It.
Mexico Develops App to Aid Its Citizens in US Facing Deportation
Key senator says U.S. vaccine safety system failing, urges reforms to testing and liability
Joe Biden’s Legacy: Homelessness Hits Record with 18 Percent Increase in 2024 Alone
Republicans Secure Majority in Minnesota House After Democrat Resigns Over Residency Issue
Louisiana faces Supreme Court showdowns over redistricting and religious laws
Why tech giants such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta are betting big on nuclear power
2 Oregon Men Die From Exposure in a Forest After They Went out to Look for Sasquatch
That’s all I got for today. I’ll leave you with a song and move along with my day.
LOL Trump is a blowhard but I have to prefer that to the usual gibberish.
A one way 50 lane bridge. Wake me up when I can legally purchase property in Mexico you globalist cunt.
It’s almost like people making these noises have motives other than personal freedom in mind.
In her case, I’m guessing the motives are likely more about remittances and exporting troublemakers.
I mean, remittances are among the top industries in Mexico.
Trump should add a 50% tax on all remittances.
I’m all for using bridges to move people back where they belong.
Morning y’all. Tragic Jeju Air flight. From Thailand to Korea. That certainly got my attention. RIP, all. Damn. Horrific.
Why tech giants such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta are betting big on nuclear power
Because the people that work there care about running a profitable business, and now acknowledge that the green grift is counter productive to that goal?
Unfortunate that what they really want the power for is the continuing erosion of privacy, but at least we get nukes, I guess.
Maybe I don’t have the “vision” these guys do but so far I find “AI” to be a colossal waste but at least it’s a shiny new thing to play with.
AI is the latest IT gold rush.
Phase 1: New IT product comes out and some big shiny gold nuggets are easily found.
Phase 2: Early adopters start to flood in and also find some gold
Phase 3: Now everyone rushes to get on board, but by now all the easily mined gold is gone. The only ones making money by this point are the the stores selling mining equipment, saloon owners and the whorehouse.
I was just listening to a podcast by an AI skeptic and he was going over the amount of money that AI is losing right now and with no end in sight. It was a staggering amount.
I still don’t know what the real AI product is.
I don’t think anyone knows what the “real” AI product is. Seems to be all fever hope and snake oil, and a huge push to make everyone think it is just as important as getting a PC or smart phone was.
Pope Jimbo:
I know in the call center world, there’s several companies that are pitching
AILLM virtual agents. Based on sales videos and the like, they seem adequate for simple tier one level work. Based on real technical implementation, I don’t know of anyone who’s using them in a production environment as anything more than a fancier voice recognition system.Neph:
You are giving me the PTSD bringing up voice recognition. In the late ’90s I was working on a project that was trying to do voice recognition for airline reservations. Because of my mumbling way of talking, I became the gold standard for testing.
The number of times I had to try to book a ticket from Dulles and kept getting flights for Dallas was over the top.
The problem with the virtual agent isn’t that it can sort of do it, but that if you had to pay the real cost, you’d hire a human. It only works if the big IT companies keep subsidizing the costs.
Pope Jimbo:
I’ve been dealing with nightmare scenarios with ASR for the past several months. One of the big complaints was low confidence scores, when they were testing with ESL and TTS for testing.
@Pope Jimbo – they must have sold the failed product to Cadillac for use on their CUE system.
I hate those things with the heat of a thousand suns.
I don’t think I mumble but when it takes two or three tries to understand my birthdate, your tech sucks.
If you expect me to talk, your tech sucks.
AI is already reshaping multiple industries. It’s not a 100% replacement for people but can do much of the heavy lifting. So a team of 3 can do the same job as a team of 10 and for much less cost.
-> Editing. AI has gone through editors like the Reaper’s scythe. I know of agencies that have laid of half to 2/3’s of their editorial staff because AI does it better and cheaper.
-> Financial consulting. My BIL got axed from the one of the Big ones . AI replaced his job. In fairness, he wasn’t very good at it to begin with but his entire department was cut.
-> Creative Design. AI is replacing mediocre designers, and the smart ones are using it for the brunt work on design. By combining offshore labor and AI, they are cleaning up on sites like Fiverr with it. Top rate work for pennies on the dollar.
SSD, what kind of financial consulting work?
Just curious, not disputing.
Does AI have any suggestions for what to do with the useless meat it created?
I don’t know the details of his work, but it involved reading through and summarizing hundreds of clients’ documents. AI was able to do it just about as well under human supervision.
I didn’t witness the financial one so it could be false, but I have seen something similar with literature reviews. Clients are increasingly insisting AI at least partially be used for extracting data from dozens to hundreds of articles for lit reviews. And of course with a substantial reduction on price.
I’ve tried different AI powered software for this and it does an excellent job. You still need a human for the critical analysis and synthesis, but the AI can summarize and extract key data just about as well as a person (which is the most time intensive part). You’ll need to add sometime to review the AI extraction, but it’s about 10% of the time would’ve been expected without using it. I’d guess the AI makes fewer errors in extraction than junior staff.
SSD, I can see it for SEC filings for sure.
McDonald’s is already making money off of it.
I just had my order taken completely by AI in the drive thru in a rural town in a busted up part of rural NC.
I’m sure AI will be important, even if normies won’t see it’s implementation.
Daily Ray of Sunshine
“George” ? How old fashioned.
Now, his Mom will always be in fashion.
That’s wonderful! Go George!
I’m finding this hilarious. I guess those “sustainability goals” weren’t so important after all.
Nor the claims that nuclear will make us all glow orange.
This made me fall out of my chair:
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a major media outlet in my lifetime not freak out about nuclear.
Will I at least get a glow in the dark dick and balls?
I thought that’s what the microplastics were for, Ted.
Today is going to be a very stressful meeting for reasons unrelated to why my meetings might be stressful.
I’m delegating something I know I could handle in my sleep so that one of my direct reports has the chance to learn it, but we’re at the kickoff meeting with the stakeholders from outside my team. I have to fight the urge to barge back in and take over for the sake of things going smoothly, but know that any missteps reflect upon me as the guy responsible for his training and management.
🤞🤞
The expression I want is not available in the windows Emoji set.
Why does Peacock schedule replays?
If I had linked the live game on MyStuffWhatever, it would be there, but
since I didn’t, I must waitn until some arbitrary time later.
The IRS would likely conduct 2,000 fewer audits of corporations and 6,000 fewer audits of high-income earners over the next five years without the full enforcement money allocated to the IRS under the IRA, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyamo told reporters in November.
You don’t get much for $20B, do you?
They don’t mention how many audits of middle-class people they can bully that will no longer occur.
Because they will be expanded.
That’s only 2.5mm breakeven cost per audit.
This guy wrote a good article about the Sasquatch hunters too.
https://redstate.com/wardclark/2024/12/29/two-unprepared-oregon-sasquatch-seekers-perish-from-exposure-n2183715
Sadly he did not mention bringing condoms and lube on Sasquatch hunts in case of a STEVE SMITH sighting.
STEVE SMITH IS ALL ABOUT RAW DOGGING.
“EXPOSURE” – STEVE SMITH LAUGH.
condoms and lube on Sasquatch hunts
STEVE ALREADY HAVE TRASH BAGS AND MOTOR OIL.
One of (((you people))) needs to talk to the space lazor guys, ’cause the weather is borked.
It’s going to be 80 F today in DFW.
Yeah, but it’s Dallas
Go back a post and see the beautiful snow that Lily had to play in. It’s now mud. I am unhappy, also with the mosquitos that hatched overnight.
Unrelated to weather, I should have enough of my permit paperwork together soon, and I wanted a second set of eyes on it before I started formalizing everything. (Still need to schedule the safety course, fingerprinting, etc).
Since I also need to get your signature/paperwork for character referencing, would you be willing to give it a once-over?
Sure.
👍
Thanks.
First impressions. What are they good for? Absolutely nothing!
I normally would have guessed that the driver was a chubby Somali woman wearing a hijab, but the car wasn’t a minivan which is what they all drive. Since we now allow anyone to get a drivers license regardless of legal status, it could be someone from any number of vibrant countries.
Chaska.
That was White Bear Lake (Go Bears!).
Learn you Minnesoda geography!
That’s what search gave me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But also the gals I had in mind. If they weren’t Chaska, who was? I know it was mentioned.
Uffda. We are both right. One of the gals was from Chaska and one was from LeSeur (but went to high school in White Bear Lake).
25 years?? GTFO.
Here’s a bit of good news about the spending bill.
Richie Rich Fight!
So rich heiress buys some property and now all the other rich people in the neighborhood (and Bryn Mawr is ritzy) are mad because they don’t get to use the property for free.
Props to Dayton though for this:
What would be worse than having a rich neighbor? Having several new rowhouses of neighbors who are “historically disadvantaged”.
Has she considered just throwing her money out a window?
Build a halfway house and homeless shelter.
Lol – well played Ms. Dayton, well played.
I like her strategy, though:
“OK, don’t want me to build a farmstead here? Fine. Let’s go with some projects for Somalis. You choose.”
That got a smile out of me as well. Hoist on their own petard if you will.
It seems that Bryn Mawr is ritzy no matter the state you are in.
In PA it’s part of the “Main Line” series of ritzy suburbs outside of Philly. Like most of these suburbs they have a private college in town as well.
Something similar is happening in my neighborhood. A developer wants to put up some homes on some land people use for walking their dogs or riding their bikes (ahem). A rich lady is leading opposition to it. Not that she wants to buy it of course. It’s been zoned for housing since the 70s so it’s no surprise. The rich lady got the Center for Biological Diversity (I think that’s the name) to say that it’s habitat for endangered species including fairy shrimp, which is a real animal but it requires standing water. The property doesn’t have any standing water though. The owner of the land is being punished for not fencing it off and putting up No Trespassing signs.
Oh, and the rich lady gets written up in the local paper as some kind of hero next to articles about the high cost of housing in our area.
Whenever you have (any risk of) folks using your land, you should consult your state law to see if a couple of tactics will maximize your rights.
a) visit, inspect, use, and improve your land regularly and conspicuously so that it can’t be said to be abandoned and squatters can’t claim they are doing more on your land than you are
b) post general license (signage on the land and annual paper-of-record notices) so that no easement right attaches: a license can be revoked, and no easement can attach while a license is in place
IANAL, but I raised one, and I’m pretty sure these two notes are worth exploring: YMMV.
Good summary on the H1-B affair…
https://americanrefugees.substack.com/p/the-great-fake-h1-b-controversy
We still have the best secondary education in the world – I suspect there is no more than a handful of positions that meet the latter criterion.
Jobs Americans are unwilling to do …
We still have the best secondary education in the world
Might be true, but does that funnel into ‘perform complex scientific tasks’? In my experience, limited in scope/field as it may be, lots of the post-secondary education in technical fields are filled by foreign students. The natives tend to focus a lot more on ‘public outreach’ and the bureaucratic side of the scientific endeavor. That’s of course only a subtle trend and there are highly capable technical domestic students focused the right stuff, but the bias is definitely there.
Drop the nonsense degrees and programs, and watch the ratios change, rapidly.
Drop government student loans and watch the useless degrees and programs wither.
Jobs Americans are unwilling to do, at third world wages.
nonsense degrees and programs
useless degrees and programs
Agreed, but my point is more subtle perhaps? Take a degree or program in highly technical scientific field. Within that field one can focus on different things, be drawn to emphasize different aspects. My biased observation is that domestic students will be much more likely to be focusing on the, for lack of a better term, softer side of the field. Public outreach, how to write a grant proposal with matching color pallets and dumbed down but fancy graphics, teaching/outreach to under-represented and historically marginalized groups, etc. Everyone will come out with the same degree from the same program, but one is much more likely to be well trained in the technical aspects of the field.
Intellectually, I accept that bringing in low-rent talent is much like international trade: it makes my life more affordable. I accept that free travel is a libertarian ideal (even though government owning muh roads is not one of those ideals). So H1B are great things, just like my maid or lawnboy only with calculus.
As a manager and an engineer with decades of corporate product development experience, I’ve seen a few things:
* almost none of the H1B I knew actually delivered “highly specialized knowledge”
* two of the most creative men I ever knew were H1B
* all H1B I ever knew were employed simply to avoid paying Americans the going rate for engineers
I don’t believe for one minute that there is anything intellectually available in the rest of the world that is not substantially available already in the 350M genepool/workpool we already have. The value propositions of importing talent works just as well if one argues for bringing them to a desert island somewhere for them to do their genius work….or they could stay in India and do all their genius work there: all I want is a cheap phone; I don’t need them here to get that.
Lastly, I hate everyone, so my resistance to immigration isn’t racist: I don’t want anyone new. The country was better when there was just 200M of us and the rest of you weren’t clogging up the left-hand lane of wherever I am.
But, again, intellectually, I know I am a bad person for feeling this way.
I too am pretty supportive of the H1B program. I’ve worked with a lot of very smart people who were here on a H1B.
One of my old clients was bought by another company. Everyone in Minnesoda was told that the new owners would be moving the offices to Chicago. The only employees who took the job in Chicago were the H1B holders. Everyone else told them to pound sand.
The new owners were so impressed with the leverage that they had over the H1B workers that they tried their best to replace everyone with a H1B worker. It wasn’t the money they saved, it was the slavery aspect.
I think the probram needs to be torn out root and branch and burned. It is the worst of all worlds.
Seems to me like H1B immigration is like unions. Fine in theory, but utterly fucked up by the government in execution.
Vivek wrote something on X that was fairly obvious but nonetheless sent his adversaries further up the wall—that the American educational system has been bad for so long that we didn’t have enough domestic talent to fit all the necessary tech roles.
That’s not what he did.
If the bitching commenced because someone didn’t get their share of gravy, then fuck the original complainers.
I need some of you smarties to enact some labor for me. How bad are PFA’s really? I’m asking because I just saw this article about the glories of a new PFA free Minnesoda.
So the Trifecta here in Minnesoda (both houses of the legislature and King Walz) jammed a law through even though there hadn’t been enough time to debate the impacts or prepare alternatives. Don’t worry, it will just cost you extra money.
feature, not bug
It’s important you don’t waste your money on what you want.
sadly, no one in Minnesoda knows anything about PFA
Hope the microwave oven will kill them.
If all these dangerous chemicals would have killed us the Fourscores would have been dead long ago from eating smoked suckers caught below the Ford Dam in Mpls. More recently there were signs in English recommending not to eat any fish from the area. The Cambodians were only happy that there was not competition from the regular ethnic groups.
It’s not clear. Once again, there are a gazillion health markers that are pretty bad. Instead of treating them as almost unfathomably complex problems, people would rather find a boogyman. PFAS, seed oils, microplastics – take your pick.
Personally, I wouldn’t use the shitty cookware anymore. There are so many better and safer alternatives, why not? WRT to clothes, just be careful around open flame lol.
How Is Ammunition Made? A Tour of Sellier & Bellot’s Factory
Forgotten Weapons
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RN2vDgLIY4
anyone ever shoot ammunition from these guys?
never had any trouble with them
can’t speak to accuracy because I was shooting offhand
although my only experience was when being required to buy range ammo for a range rental gun
I have. Good range ammo, as far as I am concerned. And about 90+% of what I shoot is range ammo – the stuff optimized for punching holes in meat rather than paper is too expensive to shoot other than the occasional function and zero check.
Yep. Fine stuff.
I shoot it when it’s the cheapest available.
No problems with it — but I never have ammo issues* with factory centerfire of any kind.
CZ 4 lyfe!
*not 100% true — when using all-polymer Glock mags, Tula steel cased would bind inside the mag body. But that was an experimental carbine I don’t actually shoot. My competition carbine uses CZ mags, naturally.
Yup. Not my favorite, but it generally works well. S&B has been the OEM manufacturer for American ammo companies, too – Winchester White Box 9mm NATO used to be made by S&B.
Funny that the Ron Johnson (porn name?) “Key senator” link is health/monkey-senator…. Guess they ran out of forward slashes to delineate the day. Hovered over the link and thought for a moment they were going to talk about the SV-40 promoter that’s ubiquitous in the gene treatments. Or Steve Smith saw Fetterman and figured he too could be a senator.
At this point, the most mindful thing to do would be to clean up the city’s mess and donate to an affordable housing nonprofit that can be trusted to build sustainable family homes. Maybe for descendants of communities historically displaced or underserved by the governments of Minneapolis and Minnesota?”
The next best thing to putting a pig farm on the land.
Pig farm and paper mill.
President Pen-and-Checkbook
The United States on Monday announced nearly $6 billion in additional military and budget assistance for Ukraine as President Joe Biden uses his final weeks in office to surge aid to Kyiv before President-elect Donald Trump takes power.
Biden announced $2.5 billion in additional security assistance for Ukraine.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the United States has made available $3.4 billion in additional budget aid to Ukraine, giving the war-torn country critical resources amid intensifying Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure.
“At my direction, the United States will continue to work relentlessly to strengthen Ukraine’s position in this war over the remainder of my time in office,” Biden said in a statement.
Leave no dollar unspent.
Or unlaundered.
He just loves that Ukraine doesn’t he?
As a non american I have to say I find the H1B rather bad. Tying immigrants to a company is a recipe for suppressing wages. Also those people do not really have incentive to culturally integrate. Just give a smaller number of green cards to the truly talented and scrap the h1b stuff. But I can see how one can sell temporary etter politically than permanent. Maybe do a 3 year thing that can become permanent depending on metrics, but dependent on jobs in a certain field / wage range rather than one company
A U.S. official said the $3.4 billion in budget funding brings the total in U.S. budget aid to Ukraine to just over $30 billion since Russia’s invasion in February 2022. Most of those funds are used to keep Ukraine’s government running by paying salaries to teachers and other state employees.
——-
Yellen said continued economic aid for Ukraine was crucial to allow it to maintain government services and continue to defend its sovereignty, warning against moves to cut funding.
“Ukraine’s success is in America’s core national interest,” she said, vowing to continue to pressure Moscow with sanctions and to help position Ukraine to achieve a just peace.
“We must not retreat in this effort.”
She can’t be gone soon enough.
Um… Do we even need an article to tell us why?
“Here’s What You Need to Know”
Ugh.
They have HUGE wind farms in Wyoming. It’s a MAJESTIC site, in that MAN built these. It’s the same tingling down my leg that I get anytime I see or am close to Big Things Man Built, like trains.
It is also a blight on the landscape.
I would love to look at it if it weren’t such a grift. Also, Billy Bob Thornton’s character had a great rant on Landman about “green” energy, but his conclusion was off (something about we’re going to run out of fossil fuels and then what?).
We’re going to fun out of easily extracted fissionables at some point, too. Eventually, it all circles back to trudging along behind a large herbivore…
@Mo – I looked at that trunk and went “Are they mining bismuth for Pepto?”
I googled “Kennecott Copper Mine dump trucks” and grabbed the first pic that suited my purpose.
snotty, pedantic, semantic point: we never run out of anything (except maybe carrier pigeons); other things just become economically preferable
it all comes down to what you might wish to pay for oil, uranium, etc
but, yes: entropy always wins
double-down pedantry – we didn’t run out of carrier pigeons, we obliterated them.
yes, quite: my parenthetical “except” implies a different vector….and is the only reason to bring it up
Over a long enough time frame, the sun will expand to consume the Earth.
I’m not terribly worried about predictions of resources running out – they have been a constant for a couple generations, and wrong every time. Even if/when they do eventually prove out, we’ll just come up something else.
Energy is good
Some day in a new clear age, they may understand our rage. They build machines that they can’t control, and bury the waste in a great deep hole. Power was to become cheap and clean, and grimy faces were never seen, but deadly for twelve thousand years is carbon-14.
It’s too bad that album is so lefty. It’s a really good album, but I’m a Sting fangirl, so…
Don’t stand so close to me.
I wonder if he’s enough of a Tru Beleever to have that song and Russians purged from his catalog.
the Jacket posted a great interview about Bob Dylan where J E Green discusses Dylan‘s transformation from Iron Range proletariat to quiet independent: he clearly realized at some point early on that collectivism is the natural enemy of the individual and accomplishment…certainly no artist wants to be treated like just an average man
Sting (anyone, really) should feel bad about closed shipyards and lost jobs or whatever, but I ask him, like anyone else: what are you doing to create jobs? Life, industry, and income are moving targets for us all…..what does it say about me if no one wants what I make and yet I sit in my own filth and whine about it instead of moving on to the next thing?
Rah rah journalism
In just a few years, generative AI has gone from a lighthearted curiosity — known for gimmicky chats and surreal images — to an essential tool for businesses.
As of 2024, nearly two-thirds of organizations are using gen AI for tasks like automating customer service, analyzing data and streamlining operations — double the adoption rate from 2023, according to a global survey by consulting firm McKinsey.
AI’s cultural and economic impact is only beginning to be felt, but Goldman Sachs estimates it could boost global GDP by $7 trillion in the next decade.
In the meantime, AI’s rise has generated both enthusiasm and concern among business leaders, with some hailing it as transformative as the internet, while others warn of slower innovation and ethical risks.
Go team go.
McKinsey, Goldman-Sachs – the best minds money can buy.
Generative AI (which I think they are using to refer to LLMs) is showing signs of already capping out in terms of capability, at least on current models. I wonder how much of that $7TT assumes it will continue to improve at a steady rate.
The interesting work, I think, is being done not in LLMs but in the other, harder kind of AI. I forget what it’s called, but it’s the kind of AI you can show a picture of a bird or plant to, and it will tell you the species, that kind of thing.
“We’re going to fun out of
easily extracted fissionableseverything at some point, too.”Not my problem.
delete one thing from Earth that would make it better
Just one?
Shit, it’s hard to narrow it down.
I’ve realized that my list of things to delete are largely ideologies and concepts.
Are we limited to an actual Thing as in an object or substance?
Ticks.
knock yourself out; I just liked the meta quality of the answer in the link I posted
I just see the question in the link, not a proposed answer.
Birds. They aren’t real, anyway.
https://birdsarentreal.com/
How about eliminating the principle that every living thing lives at the expense of other living things? I suppose that would fundamentally change the entire universe, plus it would be a very boring place inhabited only by immortal trees.
I have a problem with regard to my clients, or specifically, one client.
He writes sheet music. I was uploading it to Smashwords because they will/would format it into a printable PDF that people can buy and download. Now, if you’re a musician, you will know why you need a printable PDF. One beauty of Smashwords (among many) was that you could put in exactly what you wanted to get out. So I formatted this client’s work accordingly with best practices in mind.
Smashwords was taken over by Draft2Digital. Draft2Digital not only CAN’T do what Smashwords did, they actively lie in their FAQ to say that they CAN. The work is formatted horrendously and what you get out is an abomination of what you put in.
I need to write an article about this for my blog, but I’m so enraged right now I can’t begin to arrange my thoughts effectively.
Write a bodice-ripper about a musician and an editor who fall in love over their mutual hatred of Draft2Digital.
/ducking
Ted is a genius. Listen to him.
If there isn’t an inner monologue containing the phrase “moister than an oyster”, I will haz a disappoint.
STOP IT!!!
You’ve got it all wrong, Ted. it should be about an editor and a D2D developer who meet (cute, of course) due to her unrelenting hatred of his product. Gotta give them an arc, something to overcome.
There is a strong tendency in the tech world to fix and improve things until they are completely unusable.
Take an original brilliant idea and turn it into garbage. What is it with that? Not unexpected I suppose. It happens in the non-tech world all of the time.
Tell me about it. I’ve been mad about this for the last several years. Each “update”/”upgrade” is full of bloat, breaks the stuff I like, rearranges other stuff I like so I can’t find it, and makes minute changes in the icon design.
Let the surge continue!
US announces $5.9 billion in military and budget aid to Ukraine
https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-announces-25-billion-fresh-military-aid-ukraine-2024-12-30/
It’s like a going out of business sale.
“Delete one thing from Earth”
People. What did I win?
Well, you just deleted yourself, so you lose.
I watched Gangs of London S1. It was… ok. Too much gratuitous sadism and Hollywood violence (they had a slow-mo shot of a hand grenade literally disintegrating three people). As per the BBC, they literally killed off all the white characters. I felt no need to continue on to S2.
Whoops. How would you like all of your GPS data and enough information to identify it as you on an unsecured cloud server?
https://www.autoblog.com/news/massive-vw-group-flaw-left-800000-owners-data-publicly-accessible-since-the-summer
I kind of assume it regularly is.
Me too.
That’s how we’ve always done it
Another part of the plan was to sell the new Scout vehicles directly to customers online the way Tesla does. That second part does not sit well with Volkswagen dealers in the US.
In California, the dealers have hired legal counsel who have fired a warning shot across the bow of the parent company by sending a strongly worded cease and desist letter to the Volkswagen legal team. Cease and desist letters are how lawyers threaten each other’s clients without the expense and aggravation of actually filing suit. Autoblog reports that the California New Car Dealers Association claims the direct sales strategy violates a 2023 amendment to California’s State Vehicle Code which prevents automakers and their affiliates from bypassing their franchise dealerships.
Cut out the middleman? That’s preposterous!
They have a point. The manufacturers require them to spend obscene money on their facilitates, marketing, tools, etc.
I’d be pissed if they didn’t give me the chance to sell the shiny and new device.
Of course this is the same group that actively works to prohibit direct sales of autos from any manufacturer.
Hard to be sympathetic to the dealer cartel.
Scout Motors has argued that it operates independently from Volkswagen, a claim it says is central to its direct sales plan. The CNCDA disputes this, citing Volkswagen’s financial and operational involvement, including funding Scout’s new production facility in South Carolina. These connections, the association contends, make Scout an affiliate of Volkswagen rather than an independent startup like Tesla. A crucial difference may be that Tesla is grandfathered in the 2023 amendment to the California law whereas Scout Motors is not. In addition, Tesla had no existing vehicle manufacturing operation when it began selling electric cars.
Que?
I don’t believe Tesla has ever had franchised dealers.
I seem to recall Tesla pre-selling cars, in a way. You made a deposit (refundable, if memory serves) and got on a wait list. I think initially the wait turned out to be years-long.
I recall the first review after they rolled out of the factory but before they were sold. The author complained bitterly that he got less than half of the advertised range and got stranded in the middle of nowhere.
No shit.
The initial runs were, apparently, crap. Then the Muskian iterative improvement cut in and now they are, apparently, (much?) better.
Tesla did pre sell. But Tesla still needed to get regulatory relief from franchise requirements.
It only achieved that because of its “green” status.
How does one find an animal? You wait at a watering hole, food source or choke point. Steve Smith probably gave up his forest ways long ago and is sitting at home in Portland laughing at the story about the two dead guys. An animal that size has to have lots of food. If you walk around in the woods you might notice there isn’t much of that around. It would be easy to bait such a critter.