It's not his job. It could be argued it's not the federal government's job either, but it's definitely not "owed to us" by a private individual.

Did Verizon and Comcast donate to make this happen... oh wait

https://www.nationalreview.com...

It's too bad this administration is so ANTI Elon Musk that they don't actually negotiate for a slower service tier from Starlink, which is the only real carrier that will be able reach million and millions of these citizens.

Thanks for clarifying, I misread your original post.

One thing you overlooked that was referenced in the article. A lot of these are for new homes up in the mountains. That means they are likely paying $5k to $40k in connection charges to get hooked to grid for the first time. THEN you pay the ongoing monthly charges.

Honestly, if I was building a place out a bit where connection charges were going to be substantial, I'd be looking hard at what putting that plus say 5 years of expected utility bills would buy me in a self sustaining solar system and having more reliability too.

Particularly in a new build where you can build for efficiency from the ground up with LED lighting, high efficiency heat pumps, etc. The well pump and winter heat during extended overcast would be the only things that would really worry me and might drive solar+battery design costs out of feasibility.

Actually, I think you are conflating something important here.

New cars being sold had to be built for unleaded in 1975 (it ruins catalytic converters which were also being mandated in this timeframe).

But those cars built up to 1975 continued to be used for quite awhile (in fact, it was probably 1980 or so before you would see demand for leaded fuel in aggregate dropping at all).

Transition was painful for some. Quite a few engines had soft valve seats that were engineered to get lubrication from the lead in the fuel. It is a big, expensive job to put new valve seats in an engine, so most cars were just run on leaded as long as it was available at the pump, unless they were wrecked/scrapped/or had an engine rebuilt due to wear, at which point it was common to specify modern valve seats in so you could run unleaded in that car going forward.

And... Europe should be building port capacity for more North American and ME LNG imports. It's *almost* competitive with Russian gas prices once the terminal capacity is built up.

That plus continuing with renewable buildout and maintaining nuclear generating capacity would give Europe a LOT more wiggle room on where they want to send their money.

Exactly, I don't get the Musk hate. Sure he's bombastic, but he's put more ACTUAL results into the daily lives of people than anyone in recent history (maybe since the 60's?).

He challenged the oligopolies of car companies and is now doing that the defense.

It would be great to have a way to cut out Visa fees for the dozens (hundreds?) of transactions the average american makes. I think the ability for the governement to surveil is probably a little better with this system, but I'm not sure how much it really ads for them.

I think primarily the government wants to keep the US as a viable reserve currency, and doing this helps that happen.

I do not want to see a fully cashless society though. While digital payments are great, and very convenient way to get the money out of your pocket and into someone else's, I insist on having a cash reserve available for times when electronic stuff just won't work. (Disasters, buying something from someone that you don't want to become "connected to"). This last example sounds sordid, but it isn't necessarily so. Let's say I'm buying/selling a tool or car part. In most cases, you want to exchange the money and the goods and never talk to each other again. Cash is perfect for this, because it's usually less than a few hundred bucks, and it's easy to meet up and exchange.

I think the great grandparent or so poster was saying that

1. people say that luxury battery replacement on a high end tesla is 20K
2. an EQ gasoline car (a 7 speed mercedes) has similar or worse lifecycle costs to get a high performance luxury car (engine = $15k?, Tranny $4K, plus expensive and frequent brake and oil service jobs)

This isn't comparing a 100K electric car with every option checked to a Ford Escort, this is a fair comparison for a high end, high performance german gas car to a high end, high performance electric Tesla.

I think an entirely seperate comparison could be done on low end, and would likely find that at that end of the market, electric is still more costly in most cases.

This would be great in my urban area. I could keep it at home (hangars are not available, and if they become availalbe after years of waiting they are over $500/mo.

Drive 25 minutes to the airport.

convert to plane and preflight

Take off

Land at destination airport

Convert to car and drive to final destination.

Out here in the West this would be an absolute game changer. A lot of the places we want to go to don't have good ground transport options, but do have great little airports right near the attractions.

Also, regardless of how you feel about him, why would you villify someone for wanting to explore how an exploding trend could potentially help the government run more efficiently.

I see emails like this all the time, this is a "hey, there's something going on here, and perhaps there is a way to harness this to solve XYZ issue we're having". It's called being curious and open minded to look for new solutions, instead of just assuming that nothing can ever be done better.

Actually, the issue is that the higher paying jobs, generally don't scale down.

It's easy to find a part time $20/hr job. It's really hard to find a part time $150/hr job. The reason is, I think, because you're paid for what you know (some area of business, or technology) and if you're practicing part time (especially extremely part time, like 15hrs/week), you aren't going to be as sharp and current in what's going on.

It's a shame, as I'd love to move to a 2 day a week job later in my career, but it's hard to see how I would keep my hourly rate and go down in hours like that.

the middle ground is doing "projects' where you work 50 hours a week for a 6 month project, then take a couple months off. That's cool too, but it's different than a steady 2 day a week gig.

Consulting can do this sometimes, in some situations, but it's tough to find that spot.

Having led (as the business leader) several web design projects, some for very highly trafficked sites, I would disagree with you. You have to make a ton of compromises to make things even semi functional on mobile that absoltuely destroy the ability to help users navigate very high density information.

I'm sure in a "selling" site that might work, but if you actually need to communicate with your users to not just influence them, but also serve them across a broad swath of topics, it's hell and you're robbing peter to pay paul and leaving neither happy.

Yep, they can eff off. I have my problems with Apple, but I'm able to seemlessly text with people both on iphones as well as those on feature phones or android phones and when it's imessage, it works without cell signal (on an airplane) and it's at least encrypted to some degree.

Apple puts up zero barriers to me texting with contacts that don't have iphones. Neither they, nor I have to take any special steps, just punch in their number and hit send.

This smells of another grab for data and control by google and I'm not interested in playing their game. The only android device I allow in my ecosystem is my car stereo, and it only is allowed to talk to the internet when I let it hotspot to my phone for an update.

I don't understand the false "camps" of electric vs combustion engines. I'm a gearhead and am in the process of doing nearly frame off restorations on 3 1970's era big block truck/suvs.

We also have a Prius (hybrid) and BMW i3 (electric) and I find it to be great to have various capabilities depending on what mission we're going on that day. For the record, in the 4 years of driving the i3 nearly everyday, we've paid for charging 2-3 times total. Otherwsie it charges off a normal 15A 120V plug in the garage with the included, free charger. Works great for my wife's commute to/from the city and running errands under 70 miles total.