Also, I would like to kindly remind you of the concept of "time". This was 25 year ago. The alternatives would have been worse. These days a C15 would be electric.
Obviously the OP is tounge-in-cheek, so keep it lightly.
But it does have merit: If you wish to measure your environmental footprint, you must look at the total lifetime of car, most importantly the manufacturing part. There is a difference between 900 KG of parts for a C15 vs 1,900 - 2400 KG for a Ford Ranger. These days most PM come from braking. Stopping 2000 KG will obviously cause more emissions from the brakes than stopping 1000 KG.
All in all, the point really is: The ratio between weight/size of the car itself and what is inside (people and/or server racks) has gotten completely out of hand. No, you do not need a 2,000 KG tank to move your 50-100 KG of flesh around. It's insanity, no matter if your care about the planet or not.
And it weighs less than half of the other two (less than a ton), so less power is needed.
I agree though, the C15 is slower than the other two, but less than you’d perhaps think.
I own a Citroën 2CV. It has some of the same qualities: super robust, incredibly off-roady, simple mechanically, but I take my “regular car” (2017) for road trips > 100km…
I’ve done numerous long road trips in the 2CV though, before I got the other car. Some longer than 1000km.
I agree with the TFA, that many overestimate their needs, but older cars are also less luxurious - obviously!
The post is a hot take, slightly tongue-in-cheek, isn’t it? :)
It's also unsafe. He's comparing it to a modern Ranger, not the Ranger of the same year as the C15 (which was much smaller and got better fuel economy), and he completely ignores the fact that the Citroen wasn't sold in North America.
He seems to imply there would be no appetite for one here but I disagree. In western Canada I see imported Kei trucks everywhere and these fill a similar niche!
My point is that a modern vehicle of the same size is much safer. The Ranger changed size categories but let's take a Tacoma from 2005 and 2025: you're much better off in the new one with it's better crash structure, airbags, etc.
> My point is that a modern vehicle of the same size is much safer.
The point is that there are not really any equivalent vehicle of the same size. We've just somehow accepted that we needed 3 times as much machine to carry the same amount of human.
The other point is that this amount of machine is absolutely not required to do serious work (TM), as most people who bought pick-up tanks like to argue. The C15 is European, but you can make the exact same point with Japanese small trucks, which are also a reasonable solution.
You can crash into things that aren't other vehicles and don't have people with them, at which point the logic of your trolley problem flies out the window.
That’s fair if you only account for usage emission. The compared tanks weight 2/3x as much (more ressources to extract, manufacture, transport…) and are made of intricate polymers, composites, wires & electronics… event the metal alloys are very technical (saving them to weight even more) and can’t be recycled into newer car. Old cars are mainly… steel.
Actually, the fine amounts to over 200% of Italy-sourced revenue ($17 million fine vs. $8 million in revenue in 2024). Why would you continue doing business in Italy?
They are a conglomerate and per Matthews words "an internet infrastructure provider". Why does the local revenue matter when they are serving a global market?
EDIT: And fwiw, "Why would you continue doing business in Italy?" is not what is being proposed. They are threatening to block 55 million people from ~20% of the world wide web.
They're threatening to remove servers from Italy. They're explicitly NOT threatening to block Italians from being able to access sites through Cloudflare.
I have my fair share of problems with CF, but I assume here that they're threatening higher latency (i.e. requests from Italian users would have to go to a neighboring country to be routed) rather than blocking.
How freaking expensive do you think infrastructure is? It's not that expensive, and certainly not anywhere close to the point where it would make a noticeable impact on GDP.
> EDIT: And fwiw, "Why would you continue doing business in Italy?" is not what is being proposed. They are threatening to block 55 million people from ~20% of the world wide web.
There is no mention of blocking people in Italy from using sites protected by Cloudflare. From the tweet:
> we are considering the following actions: 1) discontinuing the millions of dollars in pro bono cyber security services we are providing the upcoming Milano-Cortina Olympics; 2) discontinuing Cloudflare’s Free cyber security services for any Italy-based users; 3) removing all servers from Italian cities; and 4) terminating all plans to build an Italian Cloudflare office or make any investments in the country.
If they do not want to comply with introducing censorship, then withdrawing from Italy is the only other option.
Italian citizens and residents are unfortunately collateral damage.
What else could they do? The government represent the country. If their business model is not welcome there then they withdraw. It's very fair to say "if you insist on those rules I choose not to play". They owe Italy nothing.
Btw, I recently "threatened" Switzerland to withdraw my business from there because the cost of doing business there (complying with their VAT regulation) is higher than my revenue from there (maybe 1-2 licenses a year). The whole Switzerland will not be able to buy my software because of that. I didn't think of posting about it on Twitter though.
> What else could they do? The government represent the country. If their business model is not welcome there then they withdraw. It's very fair to say "if you insist on those rules I choose not to play".
They can just not threaten the population of Italy? They are a 2 billion dollar company that has apparently scheduled a meeting with the vice president of the US on short notice? This is going to be resolved politically.
> Btw, I recently "threatened" Switzerland to withdraw my business from there because the cost of doing business there (complying with their VAT regulation) is higher than my revenue from there (maybe 1-2 licenses a year). The whole Switzerland will not be able to buy my software because of that. I didn't think of posting about it on Twitter though.
You have not given "free services" to 20% of the world wide web that you are now using as leverage.
Politic is not separate from the population though. Pressure from the population (hopefully) sways political decisions. This is why google news pulling out of countries were public.
It absolutely is. Why should people receive a free service while their democratically elected officials enact laws that enable them to target global revenue in their fines?
I'm not a security researcher, but I do believe in the ingenuity of others. If all else fails, this kind of law in my own country would lead me to running apps within a virtualised environment (if possible), or a dedicated cheap device in a drawer with my actual device still being mine.
This kind of checks would prevent you from running the app in virtualized environments too. You'll need the cheap device, assuming it doesn't get too old or its keys get leaked and your device also gets distrusted as a consequence.
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