Most customers are not Lemmy users. Slapping some pics into a document and just printing that out has never looked good. That was more acceptable for small businesses in the past, but now it’s so cheap and easy to make it look more professional using some AI prompts. Skipping that step looks like much lower effort.

It’s fine to hate AI, but when someone has a family to feed and employees to pay, it’s understandable if they have to be a bit more open-minded.

Most of them didn’t. Most still don’t.

It’s not easy to own a small business. Sometimes they just have to try whatever fits within the budget.

Haha well it didn’t have much of a reputation for efficiency, did it? I heard it would come back as a hybrid though, which might be cool if they can pull it off without sacrificing too much interior space.

Surely the Linux kernel gets used by those same organizations too, in some way

I recently heard that Honda might be bringing the Element back in a few years. I hope it’s true. I really wanted an Element when they were still in production, but couldn’t afford one back then

Doesn’t seem any closer today than, say, 2 years ago.

Have you seen what small, open-weight models from Chinese labs are capable of doing on consumer-grade hardware? They’re much more advanced than any flagship LLM running on VERY expensive hardware, 2 years ago.

I have no idea how close we might (or might not) be to the bubble bursting, but surely it’s closer than 2 years ago.

Are people actually using the term “SI” now?

🤔 what’s the logic here?

Not sure about the can, but I’d recommend not eating any canned fruit that had its liner dissolved into it. I don’t think the liner was made to be consumed.

To be clear: I’m not a doctor, nor am I an expert in anything I just said. I’m just guessing here

🤔 I think that’s considered grooming, in some cultures

Yeah that’s understandable. I pay more for auto insurance because I don’t give them my data, so I get that. Hopefully this niche market will be big enough for Slate to survive.

Sure, there’s absolutely no way that data from China can end up in the US. Even if offered money, you can trust that no data collector in China would ever accept money in exchange for user data. Also, they’re all excellent at keeping it secure, so rest assured it will never get leaked!

I really doubt needing to find an American buyer is a barrier. Plenty of Chinese companies have become very good at finding American consumers. TikTok and Temu, for examples. (Or Alibaba, as a huge B2B example.)

Seems hard to justify $25k for Slate (if you add absolutely nothing to it) vs. something from an established automaker for a similar price. For example, I think the Ford Fathom will also ship in 2027 (same year as Slate) for <$30k.

I love Slate, but there’s something (perhaps irrational) in my psychology that blocks me from paying $25k for a vehicle with manual-crank windows. I remember what it’s like to reach across the cab to awkwardly roll up a window that a passenger left open. I paid <$1k for those old beater vehicles.

And the price is right.

Starting at $25k, it’s really not a great price :/. Seems like it’ll be hard to compete with options like the Ford Fathom. EVs aren’t as expensive as they used to be.

I love the Slate, and I hope to own one someday, but I’d probably shop for one that’s a few years old.

If I had to take a wild guess: Government bailouts