Instant Pot was a product so good that customers rarely needed to buy another one. The company went bankrupt.

Bull-fucking-shit. That's just not how any of this works.

There are plenty of companies that make appliances that last a long fucking time, and don't have to rely on fucking DLC micro transaction AI bullshit. The reason Instant Pot went bankrupt is the same reason a ton of popular companies have recently had issues: They got bought by private equity (who also owned Pyrex and fucked them over), saddled with a shitton of bad debt, squeezed of every bit of brand value they had, and then left to fall apart as the PE firm made off with millions.

The fact that the writer correlated "quality, durable good" with "unsuccessful business and bankruptcy" is absolutely one of the worst takes, and really shows just how pervasive this disgusting idea of "must be disposable to be profitable" really is.

"It's about sending a message"

I mean, VR Chat is still a thing. It's not massive, but even 20k daily users isn't nothing.

Howdy fellas, my name is Kenichi Smith.

I'm a 27 year old Japanese Toonaholic (Cartoon fan for you foreigners). I draw cartoons and comics on my tablet, and spend my days perfecting my art and playing superior American games. (Halo, Gears of War, Call of Duty)

I train with my revolver every day, this superior weapon can shoot straight through steel because it kicks ass, and is vastly superior to any other weapon on earth. I earned my gun license two years ago, and I have been getting better every day.

I speak English fluently, both the American and the British accents, and I write fluently as well. I know everything about American history and their Constitution, which I follow 100%

When I get my American visa, I am moving to New York to attend a prestigious High School to learn more about their magnificent culture. I hope I can become an animator for Nickelodeon or a game designer!

I own several cowboy outfits, which I wear around town. I want to get used to wearing them before I move to America, so I can fit in easier. I keep cool to my elders and seniors and speak English as often as I can, but rarely does anyone manage to respond.

Wish me luck in America!

I mean, that's one interpretation. The other one is the reality that the Soviet Union didn't always treat political prisoners particularly well, and being a former/current western spy, he was pretty smart to err on the side of caution in case they were the ones in charge.

It's honestly a great joke just because it can be so multi-layered given the character of Austin Powers being a free-love, hippy-ish, world-class spy. He genuinely could have both genuinely hoped that communism won, but also a smart tactic to potentially avoid being sent to a gulag, knowing that if he was wrong, the potential repercussions would probably be less severe.

So, I'm going to be a voice of reason here, also working for a a major US automaker: there's a 0.0001% chance this would ever be a thing implemented, and is almost definitely just something someone brainstormed and threw in the patent/IP registration system for a nice bonus. We're heavily encouraged to submit ideas, even if there's no real plans to ever implement them, and you can make more than $2k for a couple day's worth of work in some cases.

I've come up with some hilariously dystopian ideas, and I'm more than happy to submit them because I know we'll never bother with implementing them, it keeps other more "ambitious" OEMs from doing it, and the aforementioned monetary bonuses. Just because something is patented, doesn't mean it's going into production next week.

Also, because I know what sub I'm in, before everyone crucifies me here because I work for an automaker, I do so because I want to make a change from the inside, and my job focus is primarily on making vehicles safer for pedestrians and cyclists.

As an American auto worker, I like our move to EVs and the jobs at the massive new factories we built. But I guess wanting blue collar workers learning new skills and technologies makes me a gay communist.

Well, are you going to tell us the story?

He was technically a founding member, but left the company. Literally all of this is because he's jealous he can't pull a Tesla and claim all the credit for another tech company.

My favorite was arguing with a much older (late 70s) friend of my dad's about how Obama ruined the economy and stock market, and when I told him that was objectively not true and the GFC was in full swing well before Obama was even elected, he was like "I know because I owned stocks and stuff, how would you even know?" Even when I pulled up a graph of the S&P 500 and showed the days he was elected and sworn in, he just said "Oh, that can't be right, the graph must be wrong". Showing the DOW and other composites from multiple sources did nothing to convince him. He was absolutely positive his retirement fund was doing great up until Obama was elected.

Yes Jerry, I'm sure that the entire stock market was just wrong, and it's not the fact you consume nothing but FOX News and will only refer to the 44th president as "The N*gger" potentially causing a bit of bias.

Batteries are rated for a certain continuous current draw, and if you try drawing too much, you're going to have a bad time. Some of these flashlights can draw a ridiculous amount of power, and if you're putting a cheap knockoff 18650 in it with no internal protections, it's not going to be a fun time.

It's the same issue people had with vapes exploding. The original included batteries might only be rated for a continuous draw of say, 10A, and they're adding these crazy high wattage coils trying to get 30A from them.

Seems unrealistic. In reality, they'd be asking how often the seizures occur and would figure out if the increased ad revenue from going to 90% would offset any potential lawsuits.

This is also what a lot of people forget how it was at the time, thinking "if only" they had been early adopters and how they'd be millionaires. I was one, and had found it was great for traveling said "trade route", but also watched when Mt Gox collapsed and tanked the price 75% while stealing millions from people, and decided to take my winnings and leave the table.

How many people would see that shit and be like "Yes, I'm going to hold onto this for the next 10 years when it's worth something" and then sit through the number of 50+% loss events that happened?

You would have done exactly what 99% of early adopters did, and considered yourself incredibly lucky that you managed to make 1000% returns and sold.

And GM, the epitome of "slow and bloated legacy dinosaur", who in the time since Tesla announced the cYbErTrUcK, managed to design AND RELEASE a truck before Tesla even had prototypes. At this rate, I think they'll technically have 3 different trucks out before a single cYbErTrUcK is sold.

"Backorder" meant "Idiots with a couple hundred dollars". "Orders" were a whole $100 fully refundable deposit. It was a complete non-commitment, and I know a ton of people who literally bought them solely to resell their "spot in line".

I knew a dude who put in an order for 5, just to ensure he could sell his "spots on the list". Dude was a service tech that couldn't afford even the fake $40k price, let alone the current $100k price. I've seen tons of stories like his as well, so there's a 0% chance even 20% of those are actually converting to sales.

Latine is at least pronounceable, and doesn't sound like you're describing your former spouse from South America.

Don't forget the Saudis! They'd love to entice Trump with a tacky golf resort in the middle of the desert in exchange for some more environmental deregulation and looking the other way on human rights violations

I couldn't help but imagine the Jetstream Sam meme, and was inspired to create this

![] (https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/136a4ef2-323c-46d1-b8dd-05aeeaaea826.png)

*Reich kind

Sandy Munro lost all credibility when it came out that, while going on about all these wild claims about Tesla's incredible manufacturing prowess and how everyone else was shit, he held a fair bit of Tesla stock and even went on to gloat about how much he made off it during 2020.

Absolutely zero integrity and no reason to trust a single word he says anymore, because not only has he shown that he won't disclose serious conflicts of interest, but that he'll also gladly abuse them for personal gain. He realized he can make way more money shilling Tesla and selling merch than he ever did with his normal business, and rides off his company's past reputation.

Even if you ignore that, his analyses are basically entirely cost focused, and having seen some of the reports on projects I personally know quite well, he takes an incredibly simplistic view towards component design and focuses on almost entirely on cost/simplicity, with basically zero regard for longevity, function, NVH, etc. Which, for the massive 500+ page reports that are purely for cost and build analysis, is totally fine. However, he then spouts it to the public as if everyone else is an idiot for not wanting their cars to be rattling shitboxes.

He'll praise things like Tesla re-using the suspension from the Model 3 1:1 onto the Model Y because it saves on manufacturing costs and such, but will completely ignore that, until some fairly recent part changes, the Y had literally one of the single worst rides of anything on the road today, because they added 100s of pounds of weight and didn't even bother to change the spring rates.