FYI, their statement about Iceland is wrong. BEV sales were:

2019: 1000
2020: 2723
2021: 3777
2022: 5850
2023: 9260
2024 (first year of the "kílómetragjald" and the loss of VAT-free purchases): 2913
2025: 5195

Does this look like the changes had no impact to anyone here? It's a simple equation: if you increase the cost advantage of EVs, you shift more people from ICEs to EVs, and if you decrease it, the opposite happens. If you add a new mileage tax, but don't add a new tax to ICE vehicles, then you're reducing the cost advantage. And Iceland's mileage tax was quite harsh.

The whole structure of it is nonsensical (they're working on improving it...), and the implementation was so damned buggy (it's among other things turned alerts on my inbox for government documents into spam, as they keep sending "kílómetragjald" notices, and you can't tell from the email (without taking the time to log in) whether it's kílómetragjald spam or something that actually matters). What I mean by the structure is that it's claimed to be about road maintenance, yet passenger cars on non-studded tyres do negligible road wear. Tax vehicles by axle weight to the fourth times mileage, make them pay for a sticker for the months they want to use studded tyres, and charge flat annual fees (scaled by vehicle cost) for non-maintenance costs. Otherwise, you're inserting severe distortion into the market - transferring money from those who aren't destroying the roads to subsidize those who are, and discouraging the people who aren't destroying the roads from driving to places they want to go (quality of life, economic stimulus, etc)

Make more what? Dragon capsules? Currently SpaceX has no plans to make any more dragons beyond the five they currently have. I believe the fifth capsule had its inaugural flight this year with the private Axiom-4 excursion. These dragon capsules are currently rated for just five flights each, but SpaceX and NASA are working to extend their certifications to 15 flights each. Currently the contract with SpaceX does not include additional missions that would have been flown by Boeing. While it's possible NASA could try to buy some more flights, I don't think they will. SpaceX has the falcon 9 pretty well booked, and their other resources are fixed on Starship. I'm not saying NASA "needs" the Starliner, though. Just that it's not a simple thing to substitute Dragon for Starliner.

Well, I'm about to find out if I need to do my first chargeback, I have a delayed response on a return authorization for where I was sent the wrong item. They advertised a different version. This might be confusing for them since the difference is small - yet critical. But there really should be no confusion because they advertised the other version both in the images and the product name/listing title.

They have been having decreases in their ability to grow food, so yes they absolutely want Ukraine. You really think people around here know dick.

I have overly expensive cable internet already, I don't need to also pay for CATV.

I got a Google TV because I knew it would have the best app support. Looks like you didn't.

My desktop TV-used-as-Monitor has stupid LG WebOS, but I also don't need a TV-specific app since my desktop is connected to it and I don't connect the TV to the network, only HDMI.

Most iPhone owners didn't buy them outright.

World trade was headed to destruction. Now it's just heading there a bit quicker.

Because that will not pacify the poor. Printing money constantly will cause monetary inflation, so only the rich will be able to buy anything of significant value like homes. You'd have to also give away housing. It makes much more sense just to take the money from the rich and give it to the poor, the rich will end up with it again anyway.

It's not wrong to say that America is largely at fault. We got Ukraine to give up nukes in exchange for vague and non-binding promises that we would protect them from Russia. Obviously this is a deal they should not have taken, but it was our sleazy idea.

I buy from AliExpress all the time. (Same business, different storefront.) As a rule they are roughly as responsive as Amazon. Shipping takes longer but prices are much better. Pretty much all the cheap crap on Amazon comes from them and it's much cheaper from the source. So far they have processed all of my complaints gracefully.

I agree that's the main problem in this context, but there are other large ones of course. The nuclear isn't just a problem in construction, it's also a problem in maintenance, and in decommissioning. Nuclear is also not cheaper than fossil fuels if you consider full lifecycle costs of operation. You might say it's cheaper because it's possible to contain the waste and that's not possible for fossil fuels, but fossil fuels shouldn't actually even be in the running.

Well it's a problem or the US too. The last bastion of American industry is heavy equipment including construction and agricultural machines. Interestingly this is also a prime industry for Europe too. A lot of stuff is still made locally. But China is now making their own versions and just beginning to exporting them. And it's a double whammy. They can make them cheaper, but choose to just barely undercut western equivalent products (say by 20%), making a huge profit.