The value of money is determined by the economy that underpins it. That is why the US is hell-bent on ensuring that the dollar remains the currency for international oil trade. That's also why governments can print a little extra money without triggering inflation, if there is economic growth.

There is an economy underpinning Bitcoin as well, of sorts. But it's tiny.

We actually had one of those at our school for a while. Endurance was an issue, until EASA lowered the required reserve. Even so it saw little use, and it doesn't have the range to fly the cross country solo. Kinda sad that I never got to fly in it, it looks like fun. Just like electric cars and boats.

Range is still a bit of an issue, even if you're just doing touch & go's at your local field. You need 1 hour endurance for the lesson, 15-30 minutes alternate fuel (in case you have to divert), and 15 minutes emergency fuel (normally 45 mins, but EASA issued a waiver for electric aircraft). In practice you want an aircraft with at least 2 hours "trip fuel" (the portion used for the planned flight), so that student pilots can complete the cross-country solo flight they are required to fly. Only now are we starting to see some electric aircraft that have the battery capacity for that.

Then there's the recharging. At the flight school I attended, the airplanes would typically go up 4 times on busy days, sometimes 5. With recharging, that drops to 2-3 flights a day (you're not draining the battery completely on each flight). But if operating costs for electric planes are significantly lower, perhaps having a few extra planes might turn out to be economical... but it does mean you can't pass that savings on to your students.

That one probably uses different battery technology. Same as the Alia aircraft by Beta Technologies, which is in use by the Royal Mail in the UK.
The point of using solid state batteries is that they store more energy per kg.

Not an EU country.

He doesn't have a trillion in dollars in a warehouse like Mcscrooge. It almost all stock in a company that has the most ridiculous over-valuation in history, not actual dollars taken away from other people. I don't mind him having such virtual wealth. What I do mind is the concentration of power and influence that comes with it. And the fact that he can borrow against this fortune, to live large without paying a dime in tax. (To be fair: he did at some point sell stock or pay dividend, and paid the taxes due to the tune of $10 billion)

Nope. Not even one little bit. There are plenty of concerns, mostly about the fact that these things kill indiscriminately, opening the possibility for this weapon to commit a war crime (even when the operator had no such intention). But that doesn't make them a war crime in themselves.

Those are not the same. The drones in Davydov's video are piloted, the operator selects the target, then engages Auto mode for the terminal flight. That's designed to get around the electronic warfare stuff carried on some vehicles, and because the radio signal tends to degrade rather a lot the closer you fly to the ground.

The drones in this test are fully autonomous hunter-killers. The drone flies to the designated area, finds and selects the target, then goes after it. It offers advantages over the drones with Auto mode: no operator is required (saving manpower, which Ukraine is short on) or endangered by having to sit in a forward base near the front (saving lives).

Next step is to make these things loiter. Perch on a building and keep looking for movement; with a decent battery they might watch an area for a couple of days.

That's a reasonable argument for some situations. We've gone from range anxiety to charge anxiety: even in N. Europe with a fairly dense network of fast chargers, you may find lines at chargers during the holidays, when there are large groups of motorists on long journeys.

A Plug-in Hybrid may be a good option for people who have to make the occasional longer trip. Some models can do over 100km on the battery, which means that for typical users the vast majority of shopping trips and daily commutes will be done on the battery. Especially if they can recharge at work (which by the way, even here in Europe, is still pretty much non-existent)

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not feeling or seeing a great deal of excitement about the arrival of AI on our personal devices. I'm also at a loss about what the compelling use case is supposed to be. Of course there are coding assistants and AI-driven help desks, which are great, and the AI summary in Google search is becoming more useful, but outside of corporate (read: easily monetizable) applications, where is the killer app that warrants, the trillion dollar investments, and the terawatt data centers?

Which would raise some ethical concerns. LLMs are not sentient, not even one little bit, even if they appear that way. But a "brain in a vat" might become sentient. Does it get rights? Or is it relegated to a living hell, an eternity of figuring out which ad to best serve up next on thousands of streams?

Sounds to me the cameras are working just fine, but law enforcement is using them incorrectly (and there's no recourse or oversight).
The data should have cleared him as a suspect.

No. The average dash cam records to an SD card, the footage untouched until you need it in case of an accident, or for uploading amusing content to YT. Glassholes don't just record, they stream. To their own channel, and/or to the Meta mothership, for god knows what purpose. That footage is going to be analyzed, AI-ized and monetized 6 ways from Sunday.

Example: Microsoft shared personal details, emails and meeting minutes of Dutch regulatory officials with the US House of Representatives, under the CLOUD Act. MS (and a few other BSA members) supported the act when it was proposed. So now they can lie in the bed they made.

"Billionaires in the US only invest there because they pay next to no income tax. The consequence of that is that the middle class gradually disappears"
Yes, billionaires pay little to no income tax (or more accurately: capital gains tax or tax on dividend). Yes, the middle class is gradually disappearing. But no, one is not a consequence of the other. Taxing billionaires on realized gains is not going to bring in enough revenue to save the middle class. The middle class is not being squeezed out by taxes, but by corporations / private equity increasing prices on basic necessities. It's an odd application of the old communist tenet "from each according to their ability". If you are in the income group that can afford to pay €2 for a €1 item, they'll try and charge you €2 if they can get away with it. And if they can corner the market on a scarce item (or create that scarcity), they'll charge you even more.