True, but what happens when the smelters cool off? I know that a cooled off steel plant is basically scrap. Not sure about aluminum though.

The data shows mostly that those estimates were too conservative, the Tesla batteries have less degradation than previously thought. My Prius batteries also had a 5 year factory warranty, but they are still under warranty by Toyota even 10 years later as it turned out they never degraded to the point they had to replace more than a few per year.

Cars with no or insufficient thermal management are a different matter, but as long as you have good thermal management it shouldn't be an issue.

I fully expect smart batteries to become mandatory in cars in the EU in a few years, basically as soon as the standards crystallize to the point where there is a clear winner. However, that does require beefing up the power net and local transformers, which is a program that is underway at least in my country.

The transition won't be painless but it will end up providing a lot more power at lower prices with less environmental impact. It will just be a painful to get there as we need to do something in a decade that previously took up a century.

Not only that, but now that we're actively looking we are also discovering more deposits, for instance in Portugal. Belgium discovered minable deposits in the groundwater, that should long term provide enough lithium for 125K carbatteries per year, which should be plenty for Belgium. Italy, Spain, NOrway and Sweden also had Lithium discoveries recently.

I don't think Lithium supplies will be the issue. Really *cheap* lithium supplies, now that's another matter. EU mining will never compete with China or South-America on cost, since the safety measures are already more expensive than in China and S-A doesn't really need very expensive measures since it's surface mining.

If you think securities are secure, you shouldn't invest.

Pro tip: they're potentially worse than crypto in a number of cases. Unsecured securities are pretty standard. Basically, loans without the means for recovery.

That's not actually why they go slow. Nice conspiracy theory but not very realistic.

I worked at a regulator once. Discussed it with them as they were experimenting with crypto themselves. They don't want to kill off crypto per sé as it provides a valuable service in certain parts of the world. They also don't want to see it used mostly for tax dodging and drug money laundering. It's a tough choice but it's safer to go slow and not kill something of value by accident, than to go too fast and kill off a potentially interesting financial instrument.

They go IPO to transfer their losses to to other investors. Those are known as "marks" or "suckers", depending on who you ask.

If it was profitable or had a chance to become profitable soon, they wouldn't be sharing any control of either the company, or the profits. They'd just borrow the money and pay it back later.

But it could be that no bank is going to lend them any money. That's a warning sign I actively look out for when crowdfunding stuff: could they have done this through a bank, but did not? Then the banks probably didn't like the actual certified figures they were able to put on the table and now they're trying to offload their garbage to the crowd.

Similar, a small company with a number of private investors that are paid off through a new loan, is always a bad sign. It means the friends and family are being bailed out.

So no, I am not buying shares in Reddit. It seems like a huge risk for little gain. It's much cheaper to buy shares in say, Deutsche Bank.

To be honest: I really hate Apple's walled garden. I don't have any Apple products (although my wife wants an ipad to look at Youtube, but I managed to get her converted to Android so maybe it will be a Samsung).

However, I have to admit this is a very sleek gadget. It is a big leap forward over existing tech and the use cases start to become a lot more realistic. The pricing is peanuts for businesses.

One example. Imagine you work for ASML. They have VERY highly paid engineers put together their big machines at customer locations. How nice would it be if you could just see an overlay of the intended assembly, and it would also tell you what bolts to use, what torque to apply and indicate where you forgot a bolt or cable connection? How much money would that save you think, versus the price of this gadget?

That's not even going into aeronautics or the medical field.

You're probably right, and the correlation with zip code might well be very valid as the correlation with parental income is well known and the correlation with zip code and income is also pretty obvious.

The question is, IMHO, not exactly whether we see a correlation that is also causal, but as another poster said: who do we want to bet on, and what is the effect if that bet pays off?

A good idea, and not exactly controversial IMHO. Go do it :)

Duh, of course they won't address it. By the time this becomes a real problem, they want to be sitting on a beach somewhere. They couldn't care less that the bag... err... shareholders will be getting deep-sixed by the mess they created.

They really adopted the "embrace, extend, extinguish" motto there :)

And another thing about copyright theft.... here is a quote you might find interesting:

This guy is a rentseeker who had one good day at work and has since then been seeking rent. His children will be getting an income off of it too. As will his grandchildren.

No economy is sustainable in the long run if that's the main activity, and it should be strongly discouraged, not rewarded. The compensation is in no way related to the effort here.

There is no such thing as copyright theft. You cannot steal copyright (unless we're talking about big companies that pressure artists into signing away their rights) and you cannot steal copyrighted items, at most you can make a copy that you don't pay for.

The whole "theft" thing is a very explicit attempt by the IP industry to frame copyright violations as criminal offenses, where it usually is just a civil matter between two parties.

With everyone that uses the term "theft" I always have to wonder: what's their agenda?

Why? Are you new here? :)

Indeed - except you're old at 40, not at 80, if you're unlucky.