Oh, I long for the day when the US president had scandals about things like pronunciation, spelling, or clothing.

Can we please go back to arguing about the lack of of a flag pin rather than war crimes?

Q: What's in the box?
A: We don't really know, lol, but it seems to work okay!
Q: Will it keep my data secure?
A: There's no way to know, let's just hope for the best!

If you are trying to do what is called technical trading - looking at graphs to decide which day to buy or sell - this is why you do not become rich. The people that invented the math based trading 50 years ago have moved on to this super fast analysis and trading.

For those of you that think these a-holes do not contribute anything, they do provide liquidity. It keeps spreads tight - and lets you do option trading in between the bid and ask. (When the bid is 105 and the ask is 115, the technical traders snap up your options trade at 110 - but only if you do the limit order.)

1) Actual cost of electrical charger is minimum. Pennies. The chargers themselves are also cheap. The main cost is installation.

2) The reason electric cars do not reduce the demand for gasoline are the hybrids. Because charging is cheap at home but incredibly expensive away from home, smart people buy the hybrids and get gasoline when away from home. If we can bring down the cost of charging on the road, gas prices will drop.

3) Oil companies cannot stop the inevitable move from gas to electricity. They can slow it down - by driving up the cost to recharge your car. Hence issue 2 above.

4) You are not Subsidizing electrical cars - the electrical cars subsidize you. Trump killed all the minor electrical subsidies - but the current bill has the US government spending $40 Billion to subsidize oil companies.

5) I suggested the apartments, offices, and condos offer charging at cost rather than subsidize them.

You are experiencing "But but me..." Syndrome. When the someone suggests a new project to equalize things, the other people think "Oh, they want a benefit but do not want to give me the same thing".

What they do not realize is that you were ALREADY getting massive benefits, and the new people are just asking for the same stuff you already get. If you want to know what happens a country actually subsidies electrical cars go to Europe - the gas prices are twice that in the US.

Energy has always been the main constraint on economies. The growth of our economies has generally been the growth of our energy sources. At first it was wood, then coal, then natural gas, etc. etc. etc.

From the day Edison and Tesla started to electrify the world, electricity has been the main constraint of economic growth.

It will continue to be so until we get some new, Star Trek energy source. (Off topic but.... Star Trek because Star Wars is really Wizards in space, while Star Trek is Science Fiction. If your heroes use swords to save the day, that is fantasy. If they ask the Engineer - whether he is missing a finger from WW II or was blind from birth - that is Science to the rescue!)

First, people overestimate how intelligent our technology is. Humans are a generalist species that are given about 20 years education on general knowledge and then spend 4+ years specializing. That is we first learn everything and then succeed by learning one thing. We take AI and do not give it any general knowledge, rather instantly teaching it in a specialized manner. This is why we do not have to teach a human not to lie in court, that when we say no elephants not to put an elephant in a drawing, or that we need to check our work. All of those things had to be added on to AI because they did not know it at first. Humans know so many things - while the AI knows so little. We only think AI is smart because we test it on things it is good at. In general, it is a moron. Ever ask a text AI to sing? Of course not, we know it can't do it. But you can ask any story teller to sing - they might suck, but they can do it.

Second, we think there is no limit to how smart an AI can become. This is not true. This is because when you look at charts vs time, they look exponential - showing how each year the AI not only gets smarter but also gets more smarter than it did last year. Those charts so capability vs time but ignore the cost and hardware increases. In reality these charts are NOT showing AI advancements - they are showing Moore's Law.

Because of Moores law, each year we get exponentially better chips. But AI itself is not improving, it is the HARDWARE that is getting better - along with the money we spend on the AI. Hardware improvements affect speed, not capability. AI with better hardware is faster, but it can't really do more or give you better answers.

The honest truth is that all of AI's improvements in capability - the better answers- are entirely caused by HUMANS. The humans detect a problem - putting elephants in a room when told not to - and fix it. The humans realize that AI gives better answers when told to check it's results - so the AI is told to replace "What is the best political party to vote for" with "What are the problems with my answer to what is the best political party to vote for".

Consider how easy it is to write a book that has some of your knowledge, but impossible to write a book that has more knowledge than you have.

Similarly, it is extremely unlikely that a species can create an artificial intelligence that is actually smarter than the original species. How could we tell if we succeeded? If it answers a question we cannot answer - how would we know it is right? Because that is how we make AI better - we have it try a bunch of things and pick the one that we know works.

Third and most important, if we can create a super intelligent AI we will not create a single one of them. Instead we will create hundreds of them. There will be the prototype and the one made that fixes the first mistakes. There will be China, Russia, Japans, America, Germany, one. And Microsoft's, Googles, Amazons, etc.

And all those Super intelligent AI's will argue and fight among themselves.

We do not need to fear that Alcoa's AI will collect all the Aluminum to make Aluminum cans because 3M's AI will be stealing their Aluminum to make wind turbines, etc. etc. etc.

Not the encore dump? Shame, shame!

230 prevents sites from being prosecuted. So, right now, they do b all moderation of any kind (except to eliminate speech for the other side).

Remove 230 and sites become liable for most of the abuses. Those sites don't have anything like the pockets of those abusing them. The sites have two options - risk a lot of lawsuits (as they're softer targets) or become "private" (which avoids any liability as nobody who would be bothered would be bothered spending money on them). Both of these deal with the issue - the first by getting rid of the abusers, the second by getting rid of the easily-swayed.

USENET predates 230.
Slashdot predates 230.
Hell, back then we also had Kuro5hin and Technocrat.

Post-230, we have X and Facebook trying to out-extreme each other, rampant fraud, corruption on an unimaginable scale, etc etc.

What has 230 ever done for us? (And I'm pretty sure we already had roads and aqueducts...)

I'd disagree.

Multiple examples of fraudulent coercion in elections, multiple examples of American plutocrats attempting to trigger armed insurrections in European nations, multiple "free speech" spaces that are "free speech" only if you're on the side that they support, and multiple suicides from cyberharassment, doxing, and swatting, along with a few murder-by-swatting events.

But very very very little evidence of any actual benefits. With a SNR that would look great on a punk album but is terrible for actually trying to get anything done, there is absolutely no meaningful evidence anyone has actually benefitted. Hell, take Slashdot. Has SNR gone up or down since this law? Slashdot is a lot older than 230 and I can tell you for a fact that SNR has dropped. That is NOT a benefit.

Charging on the road is actually more expensive than buying gasoline. Charging at home is MUCH cheaper and most of the charging gets done at home.

But the real issues are rentals, condos, and work. The lack of charging at these sites is an issue.

If your apartment/condo has parking spots, some should have electrical chargers and the price should be at cost, not a profit center for the apartment/condo. Same for work places.

This needs to be a law, otherwise bad landlords/condos/offices will try to make a profit here, thinking they are offering a 'service' and should be compensated. They are not offering a service unless the locations are open to the public.

The worst nuclear power plant disaster - Chernobyl - is NOT a disaster even 40 years later. The wildlife around it is thriving because while the radioactivity is dangerous and deadly, it is less so than the humans used to be.

Even now, with Russia bombing it to kingdom come, Russian bullets are killing more humans than Chernobyl radioactivity.

The highest body count from nuclear power plants is from nuclear bombs whose fissionable materials were created in nuclear power plants.

Burning coal releases radioactive thorium, maddening mercury and stupefying lead.

Any logical person would replace all coal power plants with nuclear ones.

Solar and wind have a max desirable amount. You do not want more than 25% in either of those intermittent sources because then you end up spending more on batteries than you do on power plants and distribution.

Hydro is the best of the green energies because it is more consistent and predictable. The countries that have more than 80% renewables do it with at least 30% hydro or geothermal. You can max out those two without concern.

Nuclear has less of an effect on the environment than Hydro (because you need to flood lands that were not deserts because they were close to water). Coal causes more deaths from radioactivity than Nuclear does. (Because coal includes some radioactive material in it that goes up in smoke). The only exception is if you were a soviet designer that insisted your plant in Ukraine did not need the same safety precautions they used in the West.

If Germany wants to get better they need to man up, ignore the scaredy cats terrified of nuclear radiation and end the Coal based radiation by shutting down the coal plants. If they did that, they could make themselves a green country.

But people are stupid and think nuclear = radioactive death and coal = smelly air, rather than coal = radioactive death AND Climate Change AND smelly air.

1) Is this a major focus of Chinese spies?
1a) Yes. They love to scare their ex-citizens. They threaten anyone they think is 'important', especially if they speak out about China because they think their reputation is valuable. Which is a joke. China is part of the 'face' cultures - they care more about what people say publicly than think privately so spend an inordinate amount of time shutting people up publicly even though their real reputation is worthless among anyone that does not fall for stupid propaganda.

2) Was he corrupt?
2a) Yes. He had assets seized. A Chinese general cannot legally obtain assets worth seizing. That is like asking an American that owns a car if he ever broke the speed limit. He might have only done it by 1 mph, but he definitely did. The real question is was he more corrupt than other generals - and that we do not know.

3) Could the US stop this?
3a) Yes. It is not that hard to figure out who is doing this. The Chinese operatives are rather slipshod. They get away with crap because the US does not care. We spend more money on arresting hispanic citizens of the US than stopping this crap. This article came from Midland, Texas. I've driven through there on the way to El Paso. If he did not bring a wife and/or children with him, then he is there for nefarious purposes.

4) Should we stop this?
4a) He gave us nothing. Probably because he knew nothing we did not already know. Is China planning on invading Taiwan? Yes. Have they set a date? No. Are they building massive numbers of ship? Yes. Are they small ships less effective than ours? Yes. Do they have missiles? Yes. Are they good missiles? He does not really know - people below him probably lied. Do they have drones? Yes. Are they cheaper and not quite as good as ours? Yes. etc. etc.