Yeah, specific battery packs can be faulty. It also depends a lot on whether the car properly manages battery temperatures. My first EV was a 2011 Nissan Leaf, and the Leaf has no battery cooling so in hot climates the batteries often die quickly. That said, it's 2024 and that 2011 Leaf still has about 60% of its original range (my son bought it from me). We live in a temperate climate, but it does get pretty hot in the summer.

I live in rural America, and EVs are great here. Oh, public charging infrastructure mostly doesn't exist, but that's fine because I have electricity -- get this -- at my house!. I even have flush toilets, 'cause we're high class. The nearest Supercharger is ~100 miles away, but I have a garage, and a barn, and I put EV chargers in both. For normal daily driving, it works fine to just charge at home -- car is fully charged every morning -- and when I go on a long trip, well, the Supercharger network has me covered.

Works perfectly.

It's not clear that will ever be needed. EV batteries don't just stop working (barring some unusual fault); they just gradually decline in capacity, and the decline is very slow after the first 1-2 years. So expect to have 95% of capacity after two years, 80% after a decade, 60% after two decades, 50% after three, etc.

So it's just a question of when the capacity drops so low that the vehicle no longer has enough range -- but over time charging infrastructure is going to get better and better, so long range will become less and less important. Also, batteries are going to get cheaper.

So, yeah, it seems entirely reasonable to me to replace the battery in 20 years (if you haven't replaced the vehicle by then). Especially since the fuel savings over that time will far more than cover the replacement cost, even if the replacement cost hasn't come down, which it will!

The exponential growth achievable by Von Neumann probes that don't mind traveling for millions of years to get to the next galaxy make space small.

What are these scientifically-sound indicators?

I suppose some of that may be down to the difference in the value of the change. It was worth about 2.5X what it is today back when I was working convenience store night shifts, so people might have cared more about getting it correct.

Even more, people at Starbucks are paying $7 for a cup of coffee, so they're clearly not very price-sensitive. If the customer doesn't bother to look to see whether they got the correct change, should the cashier waste everyone's time getting it right? I think yes, but I could see where people might disagree.

I know people at the convenience store got pissed when they got shortchanged, which is why cashiers who couldn't count change out got fired pretty quickly. They might last longer at Starbucks today. Especially since most customers don't pay with cash.

That's not new. I saw the same problem when I was working at a convenience store in the late 80s.

The fact that they can get a job in another country easily doesn't mean they don't fear being required to leave this one. Most immigrants like the US and don't want to leave it, and even if they didn't care about the US in particular they've often built lives here that they don't want to uproot. I've seen several really smart, talented people get booted out of the country over bizarre rules or immigration snafus, even with help from expensive immigration attorneys. It's stupid.

And, of course, many more are willing to be abused by their employers in order to stay. I don't see that problem so much, because although I work with a lot of people on H1Bs, my employer (Google) treats them well, pays them the same as citizens, etc. But it make sense that there is a lot of abuse in the broader industry.

That doesn't happen much, not unless the worker is forced to go back because of crappy H1B policies. The fact is that nearly all foreign workers would love to stay permanently.

Well, there is a non-zero probability that the Earth could enter a runaway warming cycle and become another Venus, with surface temperatures exceeding 400C. The planet wouldn't be destroyed, but life would probably be wiped out. AFAIK we haven't found any life form that can survive above about 120C.

That seems unlikely, though, given that Earth's hottest phases so far (after the crust cooled, anyway) have been considerably cooler than that.

I don't see any indication that Google thinks Vids are better than Docs.

So... remain in Mexico is the only one? Mexico has said they won't agree to reinstate it, and without their cooperation it would put the US in violation of our treaties. The president can't legally break treaties; Congress needs to act for that.

To be clear, I'm not arguing that this is good... only that it might be less bad than it seems. I don't like video either.

I hear you. This is Google, though, and they already do automated transcripts of Meet meetings and YouTube videos. Odds are good that you'll be able to easily get a skimmable and searchable transcript, and to be able to jump into a location of the video by clicking on the transcript. Might not be there in the first release, though.

We'll see, but I suspect that integration into Google's other office tools may give it a solid place. It doesn't have to be the best, it just has to be good enough, and well-integrated.