25c is the retail cost when there is demand, when there is no demand, the energy company has to do âoesomethingâ so the geothermal plant doesnâ(TM)t blow up.

But the fact they can pay for the âoeunusedâ energy means they can lower the price elsewhere. Even if it is 5c which is well under the break even point for crypto mining, that is money they can use to offset the cost, thereby providing more people with energy which drives down cost etc.

What other process soaks up energy but can scale up and down in seconds? Most industrial processes require stable energy, renewables are anything but and things like geothermal and nuclear ideally require a constant consumption. Bitcoin and certain cloud computing can scale up and down very quickly, these are countries where no stable currency exists either so it helps them with a method of global money exchange. In Africa, much of the Middle East and even South America, mobile, decentralized payments are king.

Tire rotations and oil changes on a modern non-EV car are once every 12,000 miles or once per year (whichever comes first). Tires on EV are much more expensive and various gearboxes, motors, rotating parts etc also have oil. Turns out lifetime maintenance of an EV still exist and yes they are slightly less ($4600 vs $9200) they do not make up for the cost difference of the car + fuel.

They're still used in appliances, although if they ever redesigned the board, they are using the eZ80 which is binary-compatible but not pin-compatible with the Z80.

There are plenty of places you find ancient processors like the 8088, PIC, the Z80 and Motorola 68000. They all can have mini-webservers and other relatively modern plugins, they all have sufficient power for everything from thermostats to washing machines and even vending machines. If it ain't broke, don't fix it applies tremendously to the appliance game, even my 'modern' heat pump system has a controller board that has hand drawn traces, it is used in heat pumps, aircos and plain gas heaters going back to the 90s and thus drop-in replacements are easy to find, all they do is solder a different number of relays and change some jumpers, it has a chip that looks like a Motorola but they are encapsulated in resin, so it's hard to know for sure.

There is some really good music art out there still, even if it is all digital these days. The majority of the generic mainstream music isnâ(TM)t worth that investment though.

So you mean like a pressed CD? The encoding of the wave form is relatively simple, even if you totally forgot how it worked, a laser, a simple stepper motor and a DAC is no longer that technologically advanced.

That already happened and they already did. Chinese subsidiaries are all controlled by the communist government. Apple and Microsoft infrastructure in China is ran by a government cloud provider, Google, Facebook and other social media sites has Chinese censors employed. Gaming and porn companies have compulsory identity verification and Android is required to install government spying and tracking apps.

China is not much different than East Germany, Cuba, Soviet Union or Venezuela, just a little more technically advanced.

Even if they get caught, they get instantly released because this is a non-violent crime and even violent criminals are release on current no-bail policies. Literally nobody cares, if they get caught, it's one of the middle men that has pissed someone off for thousands of dollars and is easy to catch. The Mexican drug cartels are too much paperwork.

Except that people are less happy and die earlier. In Japan, their entire economy has stagnated as a decreasing number of young people are caring for an increasing number of elderly people which causes less people to work and rely on the welfare. This cannot continue, GDP has stopped growing in Japan meaning there will soon be no more welfare, then what do you do as an 80yo without children? You just die.

No, I'm saying when the EU (the European courts have declared the EU a sovereign nation state) splits apart in the next decade or so (if they keep their current policies in place), then you may see a return to individual countries and laws, some more, some less religious. The point is that there is no constitutionally governed requirement to have the state be separated nor a legal requirement to give you a choice. That is the difference between a right and a privilege.

Yes, Palestinians are Jews. What we call today Palestinians is what Arabs in the early 20th century called themselves to get a claim to the land they invaded.

The reason Christians living in Bethlehem have to get permission from the IDF to go to the Church is the same reason Jews aren't allowed to pray by the IDF on their first and Islam's third most holy place - because they have given in to the local terrorists to run that place and thus people that want to go there need personal IDF protection or else they would be killed by the "peace loving" Palestinians. Seriously, do your homework before calling out policies on that side of the world. There is a reason neither Egypt nor Jordan nor Saudi Arabia want anything to do with that population despite them originally residing in their countries (read up on how Jordan, Egypt and the Saudis treated Palestinians when they were still in their actual home country, if you want to talk about genocide).

For desktop/workstation stuff, by the time you wear out a modern high-end SSD, the original owner will probably be dead.

If you're in the market for a $6k workstation, you likely have a $30k NAS already.

PFAS are mostly inert and in most cases better than the alternative which are actually harmful. The problem is that this is regulated solely by the EPA without scientific proof or action and investigations from congress. It will drive manufacturers into making really bad choices.