I'm curious what they're going to use up power dragonfly?

  Sure the atmo density should make flying easier* but that distance and air density combine to make solar basically impossible.

*I'm not sure that's as "given" as they make it sound. Low air pressure on Mars meant that even hurricane-speed winds aren't that forceful. At 1.5bar, I'd assume the force of even a gentle breeze will be significant.

Ingenuity leveraged daily solar charging to avoid having to lug hefty batteries around; certainly that won't be an option for dragonfly.

I kind of gave up the dream of selling my spare solar power back to PG&E. They don't really pay me much under Net Energy Metering and Net Surplus Compensation (NSC). They're billing residential customers around 40-50 cents per kWh but they only pay a whole sale rate of a 4.256 cents.
I still do net metering to offset my usage. But the idea that I'm going to some how break even with these guys isn't possible anymore, not after they jacked rates so much in the last several years.
I did end up getting a whole house battery, mostly as a backup. The math doesn't work out where it's going to save money in my situation. While the utility bill is lower with a battery than without. The amount doesn't actually cover the cost of the battery for the life of the battery. As for the "life" of a battery, I'm going by the manufacturer's 12 year warranty.

Incorrect. It's been shown that Meta is extremely partisan, and anyone who's even moderate can plainly see it. They openly banned hundreds of satire and news sites during the last election, largely under the banner of "fake news and disinfo". Was it? Sure, much if not most of it was. Some of it wasn't, though - and it isn't their job to do that. What it was, was a highly partisan purge.

Stick around the West long enough and you'll have a chance to be convicted while present for political crimes, too. It's already happening throughout Europe and the UK for years.

You've got to be fairly significantly partisan to think any of what you just said. It really doesn't reflect well.

If Trump was a fascist dictator, he was the absolute worst fascist dictator - or dictator of any kind - ever.

Even the most professional of officers would be tempted if he was was cheating on him or if someone delivered a credible threat to the safety of his children.

The best way to prevent this kind of abuse is to make it impossible.

LK

Edward Snowden showed that this is not as true as you seem to think it is.

LK

Then, let them serve the warrant.

What is different is that for the first time in human history, it's not only possible but it's practical to have encrypted communications that no one can access except for the intended recipient.

All of "the most heinous of crimes" take place in the real world, there is some physical action that can be detected and punished. I don't care if this makes the job of law enforcement harder. I want law enforcement to be a difficult and time consuming job. Idle and bored cops tend to find ways to fill their time and it's never good.

LK

Correct on all of that.

Nevermind that leather is biodegradable, environmentally friendly, and a low carbon option vs a petroleum derivative.

They were just catering to their ecoterrorist customers who lampooned them for killing animals to make a profit/product.

I wouldn't be surprised if they try to go back to leather. It's a natural choice - literally.

I've been thinking about adding solar panels to my house. I would love if I could get a federal subsidy to do it. However, just like with my student loan forgiveness, I'm NOT giving Biden my vote in exchange.

LK

"He'd like to see the government encourage more competition"

I think we all would like that, but let's be clear that is an ECONOMIC preference and (in essence) an ideological preference, not a security one.

I do NOT believe that the security environment of the US government - a government were a lot of sites (esp internal) look more like myspace pages - would be materially IMPROVED by having a vast array of churning alternative vendors of uncertain provenance being managed by IT depts that can barely keep up with one vendor, either.

No, the 'security-focused' answer is that if I'm putting your (MS's) code on government-critical and security-critical machines, that code is
- transparent
- only accessible to a hot box of HIGHLY secured and vetted A-team of MS coders (ie vetted to the standard of actually working in the agencies it's deployed in)
- every patch is critically vetted by that same team to the last byte, and yes, this means those patches are going to come out slower to the secure ecosystem.

Let's be clear that this has been the experience for a LOT of people in a lot of companies.

My firm is an ardently left-leaning European manufacturer who is all-in about a host of left-of-center values such as sustainability, DEI, etc etc. ...and we too are compelled to move to Onedrive, despite lots of objections and (by now) many examples of Onedrive's shortcomings.

Maybe the point of this isn't political, it's about a shit piece of software that's not ready for the critical needs to which it's being put, management choices that have little to do with actual staff needs, and IT accountability for following those dumb fads.

WHETHER we're talking about an organization led by an orange-colored nutball, or a senescent child-sniffing grandpa.

As someone in logistics, I'm more interested in the actual performance.

Amazon's operations run at scale that is usefully simulative of real delivery-truck operations, more telling than the performative 'tech demonstrations' of other companies (eg a truck or two that they trot out for pictures when the Sustainability C-suite is giving a speech) where it's impossible to discern if the trucks are providing a value/performance that means EVs are *actually* interesting for businesses.

The comments to the OP referenced article are few, but the one is positive:
"The Amazon Rivian vans are great. Quiet in the neighborhood, and the drivers I have spoken with love them. They also carry more packages than their older trucks. "
+ Drivers love them is a huge plus. They could make all the economic sense in the world but on a practical level, if the drivers hated them they're going to find reasons to make them fail.
+ More packages than other trucks is also huge.

In short, this is promising. Local-region delivery vans that can charge nightly, deliver during the days, lots of start/stops (ie the absolute WORST performance envelope for ICE in terms of efficiency, wear, and pollution!) is a great place to see where EVs can leverage their strengths.

So far, so good. But let's be honest: while the costs for this are large in absolute numbers, Amazon profit was $30bn last year. In terms of what they spend on shipping logistics, $200 million could still be a performative, boutique, tech demonstrator for them.

One question I would also like to know is regarding these vehicles being custom-built for Amazon purposes. I am curious if somehow the EV 'frame' is more amenable to easier/cheaper/more varied internally custom body builds than that of an ICE: that could be a compelling plus in favor of EVs as well? Would Amazon's mentioned benefits - driver preference and better capacity for the kinds of loads they handle - have been available in a custom-built ICE vehicle? If not, why not?

If that's the standard then dairy products wouldn't be available in parts of the US. Stuff is subsidized and regulated up the wazoo because people at the time felt it was a good idea to feed kids a regular supply of protein and calcium. (this was before we mandated feeding them corn syrup)