I wouldn't be surprised if they could get some more specific clues on what water it's been in - for example, marine growth species types or isotopic ratios - to help pin it down better than just general drift calculations (lots of places could dump debris on Réunion). There are could also be potential clues on how much sun or what temperatures it's been exposed to, such as rates of plastic degradation, and perhaps that might also help give them better ideas of what areas it's been in based on weather patterns since the flight was lost.

There are so many potential clues... each one rather vague on its own, but all together, I imagine they'll get pointed in the right direction.

And costs about a third as much to drive per unit distance.

The cost of a vehicle is not its raw purchase price.

While in general I think battery swapping is a stupid idea for cars (there's way too much need for different form factors, capacities, performance capabilities, etc, and it makes up such an integral part of the structure due to its size and mass and represents such a great amount of capital one would have to stockpile), I think it could actually work incredibly well for trucks. Rather than having them in the cab, I picture them slotting under the trailers (where various hardware is already often slotted), with a power connection to the cab. It would in such a situation be very easy to have a single form factor for the batteries and very easy to remove and reinstall them - you already have a standardized shape, easy undercarriage access, and the structural strength is already right where you need it. And whenever a truck picks up a new trailer that's been sitting around for a while, it could be already charged and ready to go. The cab would of course need its own batteries to haul itself around a good distance when not towing a load, but the trailers could basically hold the power for their own towing needs. And it would have little effect on an empty trailer's cost - it just needs the mounts for the batteries installed and the wiring to feed the cab, but would otherwise be a normal trailer haulable by any vehicle.

Indeed - and they can sell people on the concept pretty easily. Rather than saying "We're going to have you charge inside our store to tempt you to buy things", they'd sell the concept as "Remember back in the day when you used to have to fill up your car with gasoline out in the cold / heat / wind / rain / etc? Now we're enabling you to charge your car in comfort indoors in our stores because we love the environment so much and want to support people like you - you're welcome!"

Nice choice of Unicode; looks like a 2-character ASCII comic of you trying to smile but ending up with a blank face in the first frame (character) and throwing your hands up in frustration in the second.

Big rigs don't stop at your average corner gas station.

Indeed, the slower fill times on even 10-minute fast charging stations would probably give a much better rate on converting energy-customers into convenience store customers. It could even be a loss leader, so long as there's enough market penetration to justify the capital costs.

Now, for electric cars to put them out of business, they'd have to be a relevant percentage of total vehicles - and overall, that will certainly take time. But the case becomes different in specialty markets. Different states and localities will (and already do) offer different EV incentives, and the natural use case for EVs varies between locations (urban/suburban/rural, mild vs. hot vs. cold climate, terrain, geography (isolated islands or areas without good road connects to the outside world, for example), areas with different driver profiles, and so forth). So an overall EV adoption rate of 1% might actually be 10%, 20% or more in certain areas. That could well be enough to start driving gas stations out of business in such areas, creating a potential contageon effect.

That said, business owners aren't stupid, and one expects them to adapt. For example, where appropriate one would expect gas stations to respond to increasing EV penetration by adding rapid charge stations. Electricity is cheap, but if someone needs a rapid charge (for a road trip or whatnot), they'll pay the going rate, even if it's similar to the cost of gasoline per unit distance traveled. They're not just going to say "meh, I'll just plug into a wall socket and wait overnight". So if you have an existing gas station with all of its capital costs of installing tanks and pumps already paid for, one would expect them to keep selling gasoline even as an increasing percentage of their customers switch over to electricity. Maybe they'll find it cheaper to remove broken pumps than fix them. Maybe they'll eventually hit a point where it's no longer cost effective to maintain their fuel tanks and have to stop selling gasoline altogether. But neither of these things are a "suddenly going out of business because EVs just showed up" scenario.

(Of course, there's a counter to what I just wrote, which is that - given that only a small percentage of EV charging will ever be fast charging - you're looking at a smaller potential market)

You do realize that if the wind is blowing directly toward the wall, a person could hold their umbrella directed away from the wall, and not be hit by the direct rain, and it would be bouncing off the wall back at them. It's called geometry.

Indeed, but let's be realistic, these craft can't reach that altitude. If the "pilot" isn't being a douche and hanging around your property or buzzing your head, don't be a douche and shoot down his drone. Let him pass over and expect to see him again on his return pass. Of course, if he's making laps around your property or repeatedly passing over, take whatever action is necessary to stop him, starting with trying to locate him and asking him to stop and escalating from there as necessary. But if that drone is being a nuisance by hovering over your property or getting dangerously close to you, by all means, take it out.

I wouldn't be happy because my phone wouldn't work near the jammers, but I'd be delighted in knowing how jammers actually work. I'd probably knock on their door, greet them with a smile, shake their hands, maybe even brink a cake, pan of brownies, plate of cookies, or fruit basket, and say something along the lines of "Way to amplify the problem you're trying to prevent, dumbasses."

Indeed, and that would also have been the reasonable response to the drone had it been within that range, as well. Failing that, a longer-range approach is necessary.

Wrong. You have no expectation of privacy from satellites in their planned orbits or aircraft flying their FAA-approved routes over your property, but you still have expectation of privacy from people and their toys that have no business being there.

Been there, done that. Even after proofreading several times, passing the text to my wife for proofreading and having her point out the missing word, and reading it again myself, I'll still "see" the word there until she literally points at where the missing word should be. Quite a number of times I've proofread a post before posting, only to read it a week later (after I've forgotten the exact wording I intended to use) and catch the missing word. The brain is funny like that.

I think you fell victim to a typo. I'm pretty sure he meant "Most Americans are not rednecks like this"; the second clause in that sentence simply states that most gun owners are, likewise, not rednecks. I had to read it a few times to parse it properly, as well, because of the typo but, once you've done that, the meaning becomes quite clear.