Simple. We're waiting for wind and PV to get such a market share that an inconveniently timed period of dunkelflaute kills a few hundred elderly during a cold spell. The actual costs of wind and PV are hidden by acting like having full peak demand capacity worth of fossil backup plants is an actual solution and, on top of that, acting like batteries could take their place (ref: OP). Those are totally unrealistic expectations and it's just a matter of time before we will learn that the hard way.

Spoken like someone that makes way too many assumptions and does not have a clue what they're talking about.

I have a family of 5. We almost exclusively use refurbished or second hand phones which tend not to last as long as you obnoxious know-it-all new phone buyers may be used to. And even refurbished phones are shipped with brand new chargers without exception. Over the 20 years or so that we will be a family of 5 living in a single house, we're likely to accumulate about 50-80 chargers from phones alone, which is totally ridiculous.

So, yeah, well, if you're feeling all wastefully Brazilian and all and cannot be arsed to buy a phone without a "critical" charger even if you already have one, that's fine, but do understand that you are part of the reason we have many times more chargers than humans on this planet.

Sounds like a horrible idea to me. I have tens of unused adapters lying around and really don't want or need any more than I already have. These days, shipping a charger with a phone is totally ridiculous. Soon laptops and all other battery-powered devices with a USB-C connector will join that club. Brazil seems to be doing the exact opposite of what would be common sense: forbid tying accessory sales to phone sales.

It will be eventually assuming that the nausea-problem is solved for all users.

The "seeing a screen" use case already works just great for watching video's or even playing video games that do not have VR support. Actual desktop replacement will require some serious resolution upgrade and HID-upgrades, though.

And the desktop metaphor will probably be an important step in such a transition but eventually it has to go; it's a useless limitation of the actual capabilities of VR.

You seem to have missed a bit of history lessons regarding Iran. Iran was a democracy. Then the US and the UK came and overthrew their government so they could grab the oil. Afterwards the Iranian people have seen the US do stuff in Iraq and Afghanistan and we all know how that ended. These people are not idiots; why would they put their lives on the line for a few years of freedom before the US steps in again and reinstates the religious goons like they always do?!

No need to dig a trench; just driving a tank through there would be more than enough to make a nice radioactive dust cloud...

Nato won't get going at all. The only way to get Nato going, is to attack a Nato country. With the exception of 9-11 this has never happened and because no Nato country is involved in this war, Nato simply won't do anything. Nato never was an actual threat to Russia, that's just what Put wants you to believe.

What you're saying only makes sense if they actually have control over the development of that software. If not, it makes more sense to send the product managers out on the street and not the employees that collectively probably have the largest amount of ignored issues on the backlog.

My solution works just fine and is the de facto solution for new houses in my country (with a climate very similar to New York).
For older houses, some investment in insulation is required but since this year, actual drop-in replacements for traditional gas heating have become available too.

There are many reasons people keep spending money to put CO2 in the atmosphere. In specific cases it might make economic sense but in the vast majority of cases it is ignorance, incompetence or a lack of funds to make the initial investment.

You'd need a COP of 1.7 to break even. Modern average heat pumps achieve a COP of 1.7 at -20C. Over an entire year the COP will be significantly higher. Climate has to be much colder than it is in New York for Heat Pumps not to make sense.

Sorry, but that's nonsense.

Modern combined cycle gas power plants hit 60% efficiency and modern heat pumps easily achieve a COP of 3, meaning that heating buildings with heat pumps driven with electricity from such a power plant will be about 180% efficient, compared to a mere almost 100% for a modern condensing gas heater. 150% if you must use a COP of 2.5, which I believe is unreasonably low these days.

Sorry, but that's utter uninformed nonsense.

Buildings are heated with heat pumps. These have an "efficiency" (COP is the word) of at least 300%. The maximum efficiency of modern gas heating is 100%. Therefore, heating buildings with electric heat pumps powered by electricity from a gas power plant will produce significantly less CO2.

For a modern combined cycle gas power plant that powers a modern heat pump, slashing your CO2 emissions in half is a very reasonable expectation. Also, if you live in a country with reasonable energy taxes (I don't live in such a country...), this will also be significantly cheaper in the long run.

Coating the news with extra middle-manager bullshit-sauce has nothing to do with respect. On the contrary. Just let the person making the decision break the news.

I wouldn't bother looking at sea ice extent statistics anyway. It hides thick possibly perennial ice being replaced with thin seasonal ice and can therefore be rather misleading.

What really matters is ice volume.

If I understand correctly, in the specific case of COVID-19 it almost certainly does. Two reasons. The first is that there really is not much else on the outside of the virus that the immune system can work with; other stuff is either too small, not specific enough (e.g. your cells may have it too) or not essential enough to the virus. The second is that the spike protein plays a key role in infecting cells; it is what must be neutralized to stop the virus.

This also means that the spike protein is what makes COVID-19 so contagious and dangerous and therefore it also means that if a mutation were to occur that does not have the spike protein as we know it, causing the vaccines not to work, it is also almost certainly a lot less dangerous and contagious.

All this may not be the case for all viruses nor for all mutations, though. I believe for example influenza viruses do change on the outside all the time.