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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • What this article doesn’t mention is that California is such a massive market that their state-specific regulations often dictate the behavior of car manufacturers country-wide. Why?

    Nobody wants to buy a car in TX that cannot be bought or sold in CA. No car company wants to sell a CA-only model vs. a 49-other-state model of the same car, so they meet the California standard for the entire product. There is a national ripple effect that causes the federal fuel standards to become functionally redundant.

    Good luck getting the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to go along with these changes, let alone the 17 other states that have adopted the same CA-leading standards.








  • To be fair, there are millions of Americans who upgrade their phones with their cell carrier every year. Technically this is a 2-year loan that will pay off the device if you do nothing, or give you the option to trade in the device after 1 year of payments in exchange for a new device. This pays off the original loan, assuming the device is in good working order.

    The details matter here, but this is also very similar in the end result as a lease. You pay every month for an installment, get to use the latest and greatest hardware, and can trade it in for a new model. This model works very well for phones. Why not apply a similar principle to a laptop, but amortize the upfront cost over 4 or 5 years with the option to trade-in and upgrade after two years?

    It’s interesting enough for businesses that it may be a great model. The amount of older e-waste laptops filling closets and IT departments is staggering.