Ambient Irony

Saturday, April 26

Daily News Stuff 26 April 2025

Murmuration Edition

Top Story

What this country needs is a really good $20,000 electric truck. Apparently. (The Verge) (archive site)

I mean, given what vehicles cost these days, it's worth a shot.

There are a few corners cut, to be sure. The Slate Truck is available in one colour - slate grey, has no sound system, and only does 150 miles on a charge. And the body panels are plastic, not metal, though that's not a first even on much more expensive models.

And it's designed to be repairable by the owner, though how far that goes is something that we'll have to see when it comes out next year.

Tech News

Netflix now has dialogue-only subtitles because of the current trend for actors to mumble incoherently through their lines. (Ars Technica)

No, it's not your hearing going. I mean, that might also be true, but the younger generations also watch TV with subtitles on because they can't tell what the hell the actors are saying.
Microsoft's Recall spyware is here. (Tom's Hardware)

Also Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC is cheap (if a little fiddly to install) and receives security updates through January 2027 - and no new features at all.

Just saying.

If you can find the IoT edition that's supported through 2032 but I don't know where to get that.
If you mention the /etc/hosts file - found on all modern operating systems - Substack sends etheric ninjas down the wire to terminate you. (Substack)

Or more specifically it raises a 403 error when the editor attempts to automatically save your post.

Potato, potahto.
This mini-ITX NAS motherboard has 10Gb Ethernet. (Liliputing)

And costs $139 if you can find someone who will ship it to you, given current tariff uncertainties.

There are many such boards on sites like Aliexpress, but most of the cheap ones don't have 10GbE.
Why are companies lining up to buy Chrome? (The Verge)

Perplexity, OpenAI, and Yahoo are all among the bidders should the government force Google to divest its browser.

But you can already get Chrome-based browsers like Brave and Vivaldi for free.

These companies aren't looking to buy Chrome. They're looking to buy you.

Musical Interlude

Disclaimer: Blip.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:12 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 372 words, total size 4 kb.

1 I like the idea of an owner repairable retail road legal vehicle, even in an EV. ICE emission rules drive the tuning computer, whose parts and interfaces make long term user servicing a challenge. If you don't need a tuning computer, good, but I would guess that the power handling electronics could be tricky to do anything but module replacement with.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, April 27 2025 02:51 PM (rcPLc)

2 Forget EV's why can't anyone produce a $20k ICE truck?
Pickups aren't work vehicles any more, they're luxury vehicles. Those of us who want a strong, basic truck for work are just SOL.

Posted by: Sailorcurt at Wednesday, April 30 2025 01:41 AM (iIviZ)

3 Re: price on trucks, I could not tell you whether it was inflation, regulation, supply chain, or lack of competition. My gut is that regulation has screwed most US vehicle manufacturing, and that it would be practical to fill other market needs if they did not have to 'balance' trucks against shoeboxes. I do not know how to test and prove this idea.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, April 30 2025 06:55 AM (rcPLc)

4 Pretty sure most of the pick-em-up truck factories are at capacity (or whatever you would call the bottle-neck, the scarcest item in the supply-chain) so there's not really any incentive for them to reduce prices as long as they sell everything they make. And the manufacturers couldn't give an owl fart if it's all soft-hands and hair-gel driving their trucks: they don't make 'em for work, they make 'em to sell.

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, April 30 2025 07:45 AM (bg2DR)

5 Normal's got a great point there, but as to why trucks are so big now, I read that it is, in fact, CAFE standards. The oversimplified version is that the car makers knew they couldn't meet the oncoming requirements for fuel efficiency with their existing trucks, because it was apparently based on the footprint of the truck, but that if they made 'em wider and longer, they wouldn't have to hit as high a target.
I don't know how true it is or how strictly accurate what I said was; I can't find the reference again.

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, April 30 2025 12:41 PM (1zWbY)

6 Basically where I was going with the regulation comment. There are physical limits on what sorta vehicle can be engineered with given constraints. The currently in force regulations have a per manufacturer 'fleet' set of criteria, and there are basically trades in the various designs based on those incentives. Actually, I just looked up CAFE on wikipedia, and it is all right there. Yet another thing that congress should be crucified for.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Thursday, May 01 2025 02:20 AM (rcPLc)

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