You might want to read up on how current hybrid vehicles actually work, 'cause it seems you have more than one misconception going on.

I have. For instance, my latest vehicle is the Ford F-159 XLT,, the full-hybrid model of the F-series pickup truck line. Power train is:
  - 6 cylinder dual-turbo engine. (runs low power but approoximately doubles output when a lot is needed.)
  - 47 HP motor-generator "pancake" on the engine side of the ttransmission, to scavenge / return power to./from a 1.5 kWhr lithium battery.
  - 10-speed automatic transmission, working with the lithium battery;s main alternator to fine-tune match the engine/mogen to the current driving situation. Max power of engine plus hybrid mogen; 430 hp.
  - full four wheel drive.

So it's primarily a gas-engine power train with an electric-car motor mechanically coupled to the engine shaft. Many other hybrids, from the venerable prius onward, are similar, with plug-in variants having a big scavaging/peaking battery good for pure electric operation of tens of miles rather than a minute or so and a wall-powered charger added.

What I'm looking for is essentially a pure electric - totally electronic "transmission" consisting of alternator(s) between the batteries and the motor(s), plus a tiny engine-generator able to burn gas and feed some teens of KW of charging power into the batteries when running down the road or parked near it.
 

Do the Waymo batteries use one of the lithium chemistries including cobalt, or a non-cobalt chemistry such as lithium iron phosphate?

Cobalt chemistries have a higher power/weight and energy/weight ratio, which made them the go-to chemistries for vehicle batteries. But they also produce oxygen when the cells overheat, leading to an unextinguishable runaway fire hazard: A burning cell makes enough heat to ignite the adjacent cells, so the whole assembly of them goes. Bad enough when it's a car's worth, but a disaster if it's a shipping-container sized module of a utility energy storage site. (And even worse when the site is a building full of racks, which someone had "protected" from fire with water-spraying, equipment-shorting system, so the whole site burns up, as happened recently with one in California creating a toxic mess.)

That's why purpose-built stationary lithium energy systems use non-cobalt chemistries - heavier, but a shorted cell just kills itself without getting hot enough to light off its neighbors.

I want to see inexpensive plugin hybrids.

But not like the current ones, which are primarily an engine/tranny powertrain with a motor/generator + small battery for scavenging downhill/braking energy for later accelleration/uphill/cruise/power-boost.

I want ones that are primarily a battery-electric with a small aux engine-generator (say 15-20 HP range), big enough to power crusing with a bit left over for gradually charging. That would let you range-extend by the size of your gas tank plus fillups (i.e. indefinitely if only gas is available) or go from battery empty to back on the road in a couple tens of minutes.

The backup engine would only run at max-efficiency speed and could use an atkins-like cycle (see "liquid piston engine") to get the max power out of the fuel. Most operation would use power-grid charging (when available and cheaper than fuel).

This will wreck some customers. Expats overseas without vpn access. Anyone working or living in a remote location without internet access. Military around the world, both on land and on sea. Maritime workers on ships.

Basically take a bunch of people who rely on gaming devices for their entertainment because of the remote nature of their job or home, and cut off access to stuff they already paid for. Well thought out plan, if the plan is to get people to switch to a different company's products.

They'll try to say that it's only AI that's providing the monitoring and filtering. They'll conveniently omit the part about the AI training itself on your kid's dick pics.

The solar compatible meter does a couple of things. First, it allows solar generated power to go back to the grid if on-site usage is below generated power levels. Second, it communicates with the utility company so they can manage the entire grid. Third, I *think* it both prevents consumer-generated power from leaking onto the grid during outages, and notifies the utility that there is on-site power generation. The last point is critical for safety - If your house is "hot" during an outage, that power can't be permitted to leak onto the grid otherwise it would be extremely hazardous to workers that are restoring service.

The balcony solar kits are supposed to monitor grid power and they're supposed to shut off the power if grid power goes out. That's a lot of *should*. A certified solar compatible meter and panel solves that part of the problem, but it's stupidly expensive due to the regulatory requirements for permits and electricians to do the work. A homeowner can't simply ask the utility company to put in a solar meter. There's more to it and it makes the costs skyrocket.

I've started getting ads in my area (southern california) for "legal" balcony solar add-on kits. Under 2KW systems that as you say, just plug into a socket. Unfortunately they still require the solar meter which requires permits and an electrician, all of which is several times the cost of the actual balcony solar kit.

For an owner like me with a regular meter and panel, I can't just buy one of those kits. I'd have to get the meter and panel modified first. And that's very expensive.

Yes, it'll just become mandatory with credit card or ID age verification even for free accounts.

I foresee almost all online services requiring an age verification (the kind everyone hates when porn services use it) and then an age tiered product being offered. I could easily see a 2 or 3 tier youtube, for example.

Tier 1 would be full adult access no different than today.

Tier 2 would be very limited youth access, utilizing big data to identify when kids are trying to cheat by using multiple accounts. This would have both content and time limits, but the content filters would be fixed based on the most restrictive criteria.

Tier 3 would be "premium" youth, unlocked with a subscription of course. It would by default permit both the restricted youth content, but also educational content that might have otherwise been automatically blocked by the generic tier 2 standard (things like biology class videos, current event discussions, etc). It could also have parental controls that permit modification of usage time limits and various filter settings to allow or block content such as "biology", "politics", "violence", "religion", etc.

They could monetize the crap out of this, especially since many school districts have standardized on google classroom and you can't block youtube without also blocking google classroom, which can't possibly be an accident. Schools using google classroom would have to pay an additional premium to first authorize registered students into the age restricted service tier, and then they'd have to pay AGAIN to unlock educational content that would be somehow mysteriously blocked under the free tier 2 service.

I hate to say it but until it can install solar onto an expensive "100 year" tile roof that is somehow also extremely fragile, I can't be bothered. My stupid 100 year tile roof would cost over $80,000 to replace, and "market rate" maintenance is about $150 PER TILE.

Until solar can be safely installed on THAT kind of roof (very common in my area), it's just something that other people do.

I'm interested in "balcony solar" since apparently it's kind of legal now in more areas, but I don't have the correct meter and installing a solar meter would cost 4x what a top of the line balcony solar kit would cost. If the utility would install a solar meter and associated panel hardware/wiring for free, I'd max out balcony solar tomorrow. As it is, there's zero payout ever due to the up front costs and outdated regulatory hurdles.

Can that robot install a solar-rated power panel and meter? That would be useful.

I've read the book already and I'm re-reading it prior to going to see the movie. The book has about as much "real" science as any Asimov or Heinlein or Pournelle book, and meshes that fairly seamlessly to the "what if" science and plot portions of the book.

My big challenge is to see if I can get my kids to read the book before going to see the movie, and if I can get them to do that while it's still showing in IMAX.

Some areas would need additional legislative work to eliminate bureaucratic hurdles. For example, where I live in California the physical installation of the solar panels requires multiple permits and a structural engineering design, review, and approval process. You can't simply prop some panels up on a flat roof, balcony, or in the back yard because of California's permit-based approach to public safety on private property. A required portion of the balcony solar legislation involves getting approval for installation and use without requiring main panel and meter upgrades/replacement, because that work could cost several times the cost of the actual solar equipment. But the panel mounting itself also needs legislative relief from the existing permitting requirements. A homeowner *should* be allowed to put 4-6 panels pretty much anywhere they want and however they want, but again the engineering design, review, build, inspection, approval permitting process is prohibitively expensive and again can be far more expensive than the actual solar equipment.

And a douche bag of a president who drops bombs next to schools and kills 135 kids . Should resign on the spot for that.

Look up "human shields", the practice of siting military targets among (or in or under) large collections of non-military civilians, in order to deter strikes against them or produce propaganda claims of atrocities when they're attacked anyhow.

In such situations the fault for the "collateral damage" is assigned to the side that set up the arrangement, not the side that hit it.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that the US has been trying very hard to use precision munitions and extreme military intelligence to take out military targets with as little harm to the innocents they're embedded among as possible, with impressive success. Compare the amount of collateral damage in this war to any of those conducted in the 20th century.

He's doing the bare minimum sniff test of verifying that *you* are the guy whose name is on the bookings and not someone sneaking in on someone else's name who can't even pronounce the name on your fake id.

At least in the case of people claiming to be returning citizens I've been told that they're comparing your accent to your claimed residence (or residence history).

Different words are acquired at different ages, and many are pronounced with regional variations. An expert can talk to you for a few minutes and come up with a pretty good age-map of where you lived as you grew up. An agent with a modicum of training can detect a mismatch between how you pronounce certain words and your claimed residence and pass you through quickly or keep you around and drill more deeply. (If you now live in an area with a regional accent wildly different from where you grew up it can help to answer a where-do-you-reside question with "Footown, but I grew up in Barstate".)

I presume they are doing something similar, though no doubt with lower resolution, on the world-wide level for visitors from other countries.

Turnabout fair play? Create "uncomfortable" videos using the likeness of the creators of these copyright violating vids. See how they react to hundreds or thousands of fake videos portraying them doing all sorts of things or participating in all sorts of activities.