I feel the same way about anyone's church's tax exempt status no matter who they are, or what their faith is. Let them earn it like any other organization, by proving they're spending their money in beneficial ways or otherwise having a positive impact (e.g. through volunteering.)

I don't entirely disagree with what you're saying. In the case of native filesystems with case-preserving mount options, I can agree that is something that doesn't belong in the kernel. When it comes to locally mounting a NTFS filesystem or similar, when it is done in the kernel at all, it has to obey the restrictions of the filesystem in order to not cause harm.

OTOH I'm not even sure what I would get if I tried to mount a NTFS filesystem on my system right now though, and I wouldn't be surprised (or dismayed) if it was done through FUSE. Therefore, I might even be agreeing with you here and not know it. I only use NTFS in virtual machines. (I would have to think about how to even mount from one of those images. Set it up on a device with mdadm or something? Oh no, I see it's losetup or kpartx)

It was unhealthy then and it's unhealthy now

There is. Those upper layers are on another operating system and no source is provided. Remember we really need this only for interoperability.

All my supported filesystems are modules, even the one my root is on, updates are rare, rebooting doesn't take very long. That's just not compelling.

ID.Buzz has a somewhat elongated nose. I'm surprised it passed the crash testing requirements though, especially partial offset.

To my mind peak truck shape was the F150s with the sloped hoods from the 2000s. Unfortunately nobody else agreed so they went back to big flat hoods you can't see over.

Improved interoperability.

What about the idiocy of using file extensions? It's smarter to analyze the files to determine their formats. For performance, you reasonably want to cache that information, and I was sure the filesystem would do that for us by now, but trusting the extension is just about the last thing you should do anyway.

I honestly think the case insensitivity of those ultra limited platforms was a reasonable idea, because statistically nobody was using GUIs at the time and managing those filenames would have been irritating with the terrible CLIs in CP/M, DOS and so on, which were necessarily bad in order to save memory on systems with 64kB or even less. I believe that the failing in Microsoft land was that they didn't go to case sensitivity when they moved to long file names. They could have easily stuck with case insensitivity for the short compatibility names and for DOS and 16 bit Windows programs only, and gone case sensitive for long names and 32 bit Windows programs, but they decided not to and here we are in crap-land.

This pickup is being discussed as a solution for workmen who need a basic vehicle, but it's not adequate for that on an American scale.

If they can raise the cargo capacity a bit (heavier metal in the suspension, beefier springs and bigger brakes should be all that is required) and with the bigger battery, it could be okay.

What I question is whether it makes sense to do a pickup at this scale at all. I say start with the SUV model, then bring in a pickup later with more reasonable specs. This modular stuff is silly, they have tried a few vehicles with features like that in the past and nobody wanted them.

I have some of that paper here, in A4. Sometimes I print european automotive documentation and that's what it expects, so if you don't want it shrunken when it's already got dinky text, that's what you need. And it's just a lot harder to read the small text on it because of the decreased contrast, so it doesn't actually fulfill its mission. What I want on the rare occasion when I print something is nice bright white paper with a lot of clay in it. Ink also spreads less on it, so if you have to fill out some typical forms (where there's really not enough room to write using normally sized letters, because whoever made the form DGAF that humans are involved with it apparently) you really don't want the grey stuff for that either. My letter size paper is bright white, and I wind up using that instead of A4 unless I actually run out of it.

One potential solution is to provide a normal DIN ISO stereo slot way up at the top of the dash. They did this in the Sprinter vans and now people are able to install aftermarket stereos there which look factory. This is arguably better than having the stereo come with the vehicle because you can upgrade it later. Putting it there means having it not block climate vents, and also being able to have the screen up where you want it where you can glance at the map easily.

I did look at the renderings, and they are showing semi-hidden vents across the whole top of the dash, but A) designs can change before production and B) there's still plenty of room where those big flat panels below the vents are to implement something like this. Also C) it's not that much of a problem to need a stereo styled for the vehicle any more. In my Versa I have a Chinese Android stereo with a 10" screen in portrait orientation, which came with all of the plastics needed for graceful integration. I paid about $125.

It's less than some American minivans. With two Americans in the vehicle you've got less than 1000 lb left for cargo. It's enough for small households, and it's fine for an individual landscaper with a couple of tools, but it's inadequate for anything else. Typical landscaping trailers are around 3500lb gross in the USA. Outside of cities we aren't all limited to twee little lots the size of a postage stamp, people need to move materials here. I've done scrap and dump runs over 2000lb with an Astro. A modern chrysler pacifica has a load capacity of about 1700lb.

I'm 100% not driving a small cabover in the USA, because I want to live if someone stacks me from behind with their Brodozer and shoves me into the vehicle in front of me. Flat front vehicles mean you're the first one to the scene of an accident. We own a 1999 Blue Bird Q-Bus registered as an RV, and it's a flat front, but you also sit up pretty high and the odds of anyone pushing its ten tons very far by crashing into the ass of it are remote, and I rarely drive it over 60 mph because MPG goes straight in the shitter when I do. Only when going through a city where everyone drives 70+ do I go quicker than that, just so that I don't cause accidents by perturbing traffic. If I'd kept it that slow getting out of Sacto (we got it in Roseville) it would have been terrible.

It's almost certainly only enough to do the design and make some slick materials based on it in order to get more funding.

But it's also not a tall order, we've known how to make small simple vehicles like this for a long time, we just haven't been doing it because it's not profitable.

The question then is whether enough of the bits and pieces have come down in cost enough to make it profitable now, so that it's actually possible to get that additional funding, and I don't have a strong opinion on that. If the vehicle is simple and well designed enough, it could be reliable enough that it doesn't cost much to support. A large amount of the unreliability of modern vehicles comes from their complexity, which in turn comes from automakers competing on in-cabin features because they are cheaper and more profitable to implement than improvements in the vehicle itself.

What I will say is that even very cheap cars have impressive improvements over older ones. Like, I drive an '08 Versa. It's got a whisker over 120HP. It weighs the same as my '89 240SX did. It sure doesn't go around corners the same, but it actually has less body roll and goes over bumps much better. They accomplished this with literally one more piece in the front suspension, even with a staggeringly inferior rear suspension (it's torsion beam where the 240SX was 5-link.) A modern Wrangler drives like a car, albeit an old body on frame one that's been lifted, but still night and day compared to how they used to be. So I can easily believe that we can have a cheapass light pickup that drives okay now thanks to advances in suspension research. Whether they will actually accomplish that is of course anyone's guess, but even pretty bad cars are now pretty good so they damned well ought to be able to.

Wankels aren't more efficient. They also have worse emissions unless you go to heroic lengths to make them more irritating. The answer is going to have to be a recirculating gas turbine or a boxer. You could possibly use a BMW MC engine and find someplace to put it underneath. Boxers are sensitive to coolant quality, but otherwise are very reliable and compact. For a small engine, the cost difference of an advanced coolant like Evans NPG would be minimal, and might be well worth the reduction in maintenance. I'm not aware of any practical microturbine generators with good efficiency which are already designed and ready to go; I'd love to be wrong about their nonexistence, but AFAICT the last efficient small turbine designed for terrestrial use was from Chrysler decades ago, and was too large for this application.