"Free Speech" in the American legal sense (1st Amendment to the Constitution) applies to government prohibition on speech, with a particular emphasis on political speech.
It doesn't prevent one person from prohibiting speech... I can tell a pastor to stop preaching on my lawn. But, the government cannot tell a pastor not to preach in the publicly-owned town square (generally, there are exceptions).
There are arguments that certain online forums are effectively "town squares in the internet age" (Twitter in particular, at least pre-Musk). But, I always found that analogy to fall apart - twitter (or whatever online forum) is more like an op-ed section in a newspaper, IMO. And newspapers don't have to publish every op-ed that gets submitted.
Also, the 1st Amendment does not protect you from the consequences of your speech. I can call my boss an asshole to his face legally - and he can fire me (generally, there are labor protections and exceptions).
There is no detail at all about what caused these accounts to get suspended. The Guardian just wants us to blindly trust this leftwing propaganda group when they say it was due to political censorship rather than a consistent application of Facebook policies.
Feels a lot more like the reporter already had a problem with Meta and chose the examples most favorable to their anti-Meta slant to report in the article. Of course on HN we're all just to happy to eat it up as it aligns neatly with our little bubble. Here's some still publically available posts from Sex Talk Arabic who they directly quote in the article complaining about these shadow bans. It makes it a lot harder to trust the reporting here when these examples were so easy to find.
Corporations aren't people, but in the end it's still people that are responsible for this crackdown on liberal content. It's someone at Facebook making these decisions, someone who is a person, we just don't know who the responsible person is.
Zuck has shown he's more interested in money/power than the well-being of other humans (the "dumb fucks"), he's cozied up to Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.
Donald Trump's co-opted the religious nuts that are anti-abortion and anti-LGBT, and Zuck is more than happy to please him rather than risk prosecution and losing his money or freedom. What a model of cowardice.
Legally, they’re all motorcycle. Unless they’re mopeds (50cc, speed limited).
But colloquially, if it’s a step-through, it’s called a scooter. Most of which have a CVT transmission, where most motorcycles have a 6-speed manual (toe shift) transmission.
My Vespa Sprint 150 gets ~100mpg around town. It cost ~$5000, much of which is a brand premium. 150cc scooters from other brands (Genuine, etc) are much less.
right, EV city scooters are arguably already doable, modulo annoying charging, since in places where you'd feel compelled to ride a scooter you'd be less likely to have dedicating parking with charging for it. Motorcycles though require more range to be useful, it's pretty typical to fill up at least once on every ride.
How realistic timewise is plugging e-bikes into plain old wall power ? Is it any improvement over trying to charge a e-car from wall power (i.e. all-night plus) ?
Depends on the battery size (which depends on bike weight).
For a pedelec (actual e-bike meant to be pedaled), wall charging with a brick/wall-wart works fine. That's how they all work, at least any that I've seen. Some have removable batteries to make that easier, but the high-end models tend to have the battery wedged into the down tube and not removable (with complete disassembly of the bike).
For an e-scooter or light e-moto, wall charging should work fine, but it won't be fast. YOu're looking at 3+ hours to charge. Fine for most commuters and running errands, but not suitable for a delivery vehicle - they'd have to hot-swap batteries (or complete bikes).
Not sure about large electric motorcycles - there aren't that many out there right now. I'd guess similar to e-scooters, just with an even longer 10-80 or 0-100 charge period.
In the context of the above posts, which is young people eschewing dancing in favor of using smartphones, old is an adult that is expected to behave at or near peak maturity compared to a younger person whose is just coming into their own (presumably 20s).
Yeah, depending on the speed of these vehicles, it seems like bike lanes are the appropriate place for them. A smart city could even offer companies an opportunity to fund the buildout of additional bike lanes if there aren’t any existing in the neighborhood in question
The point of infrastructure is to have a common substrate where members of society can provide services to each other. Sure, in some sense there are subsidies but we have to account for the positive externalities. After all, a tennis court has very low utilization of space so that's a "subsidy for rich guys to talk about crypto". And golf courses likewise.
It's just not a meaningful way to think of infrastructure. The point of infrastructure is that it benefits society, and it will benefit some people more than others. Nice sidewalks benefit the rich people who live there more than they do the poor people who have to drive from the suburbs to work there.
And this business about "have to move out of the way" is really a bit much. If they're impeding the disabled then that's of some significance, and ensuring that those who need wheelchair access can still get places is worth it, but any able-bodied person can easily step aside.
I find the online reaction to so much of this stuff hard to fathom. Occasionally, I'll walk by a Lime / Bird scooter that's fallen over and I just pick it up and place it on the side. The net gain to society of having easy-to-access last-mile transportation is probably much greater than this happening occasionally. I really think these things are far overblown. But if you go online, you'd think that sidewalks are completely unwalkable. I principally walk and bike (now e-bike) places and this has never been a problem either in San Francisco or London - both cities where a large contingent has constantly insisted that it is.
I think you’re right that liability concerns are probably what motivated companies to design for sidewalks instead of roads. That being said, I think it’s very unlikely that a robot weighing 100 lbs and moving 15 mph is going to kill anyone. Could certainly cause some property damage or break a bone, but is that worse than blocking a disabled person on a sidewalk or pushing deliveries into full cars?
I think the problem is that if they're in the road their liability and required smarts go up a lot. Right now it sounds like they're at least partially relying on being the largest thing on the "road" and everyone else will naturally get out of their way.
A slow-ass cooler-sized wheely boy filling up the entire bike lane and stopping randomly, that'll be super safe for cyclists, yep. On the bright side maybe some of them will get knocked into traffic by people who don't bother looking for bicycles coming up behind them when they open their car door, never mind low-riding bots that are much harder to see.
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