Phoenix is the 5th largest city in the US. I joke and call it the biggest city no one has ever heard of. Granted, we don't have as much water as we would like for agriculture, but we do have enough for the city. As for the workforce, making chips is pretty blue collar. We have lots of qualified people for those jobs. On the engineering side. there's lots there too. ASU, amongst the top universities for technology and the top for innovation in the US is based here too. Maricopa county, where Phoenix is, is also the fastest growing county in the United States. On the seismic side, this is amongst the most stable places in North America. It's not number one, but is pretty high up there. That's one of the reasons why there are so many Data Centers and other wafer fabs here too. All said, it's not a bad place to build a new Fab.

Even though the algorithms used to generate this artwork are undoubtedly the work of many people over many years, it was still the submitter who used them to generate the award winning image, therefore he is the "artist." It might seem easy to do, but for those of us who have used "AI's" to generate pictures, it involves countless hours of hitting enter, saying "Nope," tweaking things, then hitting enter again, saying "Nope," et. nausium. Current AI's have no comprehension of what images are. It's up to people to decide when what is on their screen is actually "art."

Here's a *tiny* fraction of the silliness:

$4.8 Billion - DOD duplicating computer systems
$100,000,000 on a harbor and airport for a town with 75 people in it.
$2,000,000 for an intern program that only hired 1 intern.
$16,400,000 paying for food stamps for dead people.
$8,500,000 for Bio Fuel @ only $424.00/gal
$12,000,000 for DOD Bio Fuel "Going Green" project @ $27.00/gal ...and more
$Billions and Billions on Department of Education with only 65-70% actually going to classrooms.
$45,000,000 for cameras in Chicago which were destroyed right away by weather.

The rest of this list is way to long for here, but you get the point.

Ive made a tremendous contribution to Apple under Steve Jobs's authoritarian rule, but lost touch with customers after he was made completely responsible Apple's product design. Newer post-Ive MacBook Pro's have *ports*, a better keyboard, a larger battery and lost the silly touch bar. Ive's contributions to Apple will be around for a long time to come, but it's better for customers that he's moved on. It was time.

It sounds like you have done quite well.

Our house is built for a radically different climate than yours, and would probably dissolve in UK weather. It's built more like a thermos bottle. (Using US measurements,since that's what is used in construction here.) It has thick walls 2x12" studs, a vapor barrier, and a 2" foam panel surface which is finished with a thin layer of concrete stucco. The roof is covered in ceramic tiles. Windows are triple glazed with a reflective coating and a low-e inner barrier. Concrete, ceramic, glass and metal are about the only things that can stand up to the sun here long-term. We tend not to use bricks outside because they have a high thermal mass. Rain is not much of an issue. Pipes *never* freeze.

I've lived in colder climates where we used gas for heating. There was quite a bit similar to what we did there for energy efficiency compared with what we do here.

Differences aside, the less energy you use, the better it is for you and the less it will cost for everyone in your market. It shouldn't matter if it's gas or electricity. Less is better.

So true!

Air conditioners use so much electricity that a normal backup generator can't handle the load.

We live in a newer area, so we don't loose power for a significant amount of time often... but when it happens in the summer, we pack up and leave for a place with power.

We paid about $9,500.00 for the heat pump and installation. We bought it because the old one died after 19 years and had to be replaced. It's one of two units on our house. The other one should (hopefully) make it to next year before we have to replace it too. Its difficult to quantify the total energy savings, but for the past few months since it's been installed, we are saving around 10-15%. For our yearly energy bill, the savings will be somewhere between $600.00 and $1000.00+ Over the next decade, it should pay for its self. The energy we are not using benefits our community in a way that I can't calculate the monetary value of.

For reference, a year ago that same unit with installation would have cost about $6500.00, which would have made it an easier investment with a much quicker ROI.

Hopefully, prices will back off a bit before we have to replace our second unit.

For the European readers here, it's a good sign that you should probably invest in what you can before demand soars and prices go too high for it to pay for its self in a reasonable amount of time.

Long and short is this. The more efficient your home, the less energy you use. If you have a newer home, it's already good so you have less work to do than if you have an older one. This means that newer homes aren't as much of an issue for energy use than older ones. In the UK, homes are a lot older on average than they are here. There's a lot of room for improvement. The less energy used in a given market means that resources aren't as strained and prices are driven lower. This is applicable to every place, no matter where you live.

Cooling is often around 4 times more efficient than heating. It's also true, though the delta between outside and inside temperature matters quite a bit. There are also other factors to take into account.

So, if it's 0c outside and 21c inside, that's a delta of 21 degrees. If it's 46c outside 23 c inside, that's a delta of 23 degrees. You'd think you can divide it by four and get a correct answer for the cost of heating versus cooling, but there are other factors. Here, we have to take into account, not only the ambient outside temperature, but the radiated/absorbed heat from the sunlight. On a hot day, it might be 46c outside, but the temperature of surfaces easily exceeds 70c. That's a lot of energy which is absorbed through structures and then needs to be removed. It makes air conditioners work harder and longer than heaters. So, here a 232 square meter house often uses > $6,000.00 (USD) per year in electricity alone. Gas bills are not a big of a deal for us since we don't use it for heating in the winter. We have a gas water heater, but it uses < $40.00/month in the winter and quite a bit less in the summer. In fact, though it's true, I joke that we run out of *cold* water around May and don't get it back until November.

Our home energy bills are *far* above the predicted maximum of what is predicted in Europe. When the outside high temperature is > 41c for several months out of the year, you need to be more aware of not only the energy you use, but that which you save. To combat the expense, we invest in efficient heat pumps, better insulation, better windows, shading and a host of other things which help keep our bills tolerable. For example, going from a 10 SEER heat pump to a 16 SEER one has reduced our energy usage by more than 10%. "Cheap" energy makes people invest in the wrong things. There is little incentive to fix the insulation on a home when the ROI is not there. Perhaps higher energy costs in Europe will beget better use of energy, therefore will reduce the amount used per capita and lead to lower bills. It could happen over time.

How about Mr. Fusion?

Apple is still 6 to 8 weeks back ordered ion their higher end machines. Lack of hardware makes developing for the new platform difficult.

The US Supreme Court decided long ago that corporations are people too; that corporations have free speech, and that free speech is money. The odds of a law like that would restrict those "rights" even getting proposed in Congress is minimal. If it were to happen, it would die in committee. If a State were to pass something like that it'd be killed in Federal Court. American voters are too swayed by those who claim to be their saviors, but are really trying to get them to buy an expensive bag of seeds for after the Zombie Apocalypse.

The guy had Omicron. They tested a package that was in his residence, therefore exposed to Omicron. They detected the virus on the package. So, therefore, it came from Canada!!

Why is it that the other obvious, the package was contaminated by him, isn't a thing here?

Could be that, Xi is still having a spat with Canada.

From what I can see, 3879 BTC has hovered between about 50 million and 64 million in the past few months. It's still a lot of money, but makes you wonder where the rest of it is. Probably lost in journalistic best intentions...