You Don't Actually Own That Movie You Just "Bought."
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/prime-video-lawsuit-movie-license-ownership-1236353127/

Amazon is actually being sued over this. We, of course, all know about this, but did not realize that with respect to music, artists get paid a lot more when their music is licensed than they do when it is sold, but Amazon and other digital "sellers" of music *license* the music to us but account it as a *sale* when they pay artists and Cory Doctorow explains.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/26/sole-and-despotic-dominion/

Tesla denied having fatal crash data until a hacker found it - Ars Technica

The data was key evidence in the death of a pedestrian in 2019.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/08/how-a-hacker-helped-win-a-wrongful-death-lawsuit-against-tesla/

Plug-in Hybrids Now Emit 5 Times, on Average, What Official Tests Claim — EU Data

https://cleantechnica.com/2025/09/10/plug-in-hybrids-now-emit-5-times-on-average-what-official-tests-claim-eu-data/

>> Plug-in Hybrids

I think this is a bit misleading. My understanding is that this is not like the Volkswagen thing where they are gaming the tests.

The problem with Plug-in Hybrids is that it turns out that you have to plug them in. Who would have guessed?

So the official tests are based on the assumption that if the car has X miles of battery range, the first X miles of a trip will always be on battery. But it turns out that if you don't plug them in, you just have a hybrid with 150 pounds of extra battery.

When we were shopping for our car, we ran into someone who had the exact car and we asked about how much battery range he got and he literally did not know that it was a PHEV. He had had it for several months and never plugged it in.

I feel like this is more like the situation where early climate models tend to be off (they predict less warming than we have seen) not because the science was wrong but because they misjudged human behavior. They assumed that as data rolled in, people would take action, but that didn't happen.

Similarly, I feel like the car companies and agencies who set testing protocols got the tests right, but misjudged human nature (i.e. they would rather go to the gas station and pump gas rather than taking 14 seconds when they get home to plug in the car). Also, of course, some people don't even consider that their only parking is on-street and they have no means to charge the car. With a full EV, they would simply have to trade the car in, but with a PHEV they drive it like an HEV and call it a day.

ergo, that makes a lot of sense.

Quote from: Brad on September 14, 2025, 09:48:07 PMergo, that makes a lot of sense.

To the extent that it makes sense to buy a plug-in hybrid and then not plug it in :-)

With my car, the P was something like a $4000 upgrade over the plain HEV and you end up with an unnecessarily heavy vehicle with unnecessarily expensive tires.  DOH!!