I hope it is

Batteries are certainly part of it. I think China has pushed its industries to innovate and compete whereas the US has sat on its ass due to complacency and bad policy and now its fucked.

Yeah sure it is. As soon as these devices get sent out it will become instantly obvious they are OEM trash phones made in China, Taiwan or somewhere. If they were "made" in the USA, then the effort will be about as substantial as somebody replacing the original covers with hideous gold ones. God knows what firmware they run but expect that to be as shoddy and insecure as the hardware itself. I'm sure researchers will have a field day exposing all the vulnerabilities and questionable software these garbage devices have installed on them.

Volvo is owned by Geely which is Chinese. They also own Polestar, Smart & Lotus. I have no idea where they build/assemble Volvo vehicles but just because the parent is Chinese doesn't mean they don't have a plant somewhere closer to the intended market for tariff / logistical / PR reasons.

The main reason being that US auto manufacturers are so far behind the curve that Chinese manufactured cars would annihilate them in a fair market. A bit like Honda, Nissan, Toyota did in the 70s but Japan is in the same boat now. CEOs of car companies go over to China to see what's going on and come back looking haunted - heavy automation, manufacturing which is a decade ahead of anything they're doing. And then rather attempt to catch up, or recognize which way the wind is blowing they lobby governments to weaken EV regulations and slap tariffs on everything. And will it work? Of course it fucking won't. But enjoy your shitty 22mpg pickups.

I'm sure there is a website somewhere which has compiled a list of lies Musk has uttered at one point or another. And people are still stupid enough to fall for them. From the price of new vehicles, to new battery tech, to "self driving", to rockets to Mars, to hyperloops. It's just bullshit stacked on bullshit.

Well play that scenario out - if you live in a city you'd call an ambulance. And you could still rent somewhere with a parking place and drive the kid. Worst case you'd flag down a taxi or other car. It's certainly NOT a reason that a city should be choked with vehicles just for your exceptional situation. And assuming you had an emergency do you want a city choked with traffic, or one which is free for emergency vehicles to reach your kid?

In summary it's not a credible concern and certainly not a good reason that an entire city should be one perpetual traffic jam because planners are so fucking useless they can't provide decent public transport or zone properly.

Dublin introduce the "Luas" (tram) about 20 years ago. Some of it is dedicated track/lanes, with the inner bits sharing space with pedestrians/vehicles. There are occasional disruptions when idiots disobey traffic signals or some pedestrian steps out in front of a tram, but generally the service operates extremely well. The main complaint is that what's there is not sufficient and people want extensions going out to the airport, commuter towns & other public transport hubs.

Meanwhile Dublin is strongly deterring private motorists from using the city centre as a rat run from one side to the other with speed limits and traffic restrictions which incentivizes people to be using the M50 which is what they are meant to be doing. I wouldn't be surprised if congestion charges happen as well. I still remember the horrific jams in Dublin before any of this - I once drove from Cork to Dublin to catch a ferry and spent an hour stuck in St Stephen's Green and this was a normal day. St Stephens Green is now before it became a lovely pedestrian area. Less traffic is a good thing all round.

It's strange how many European cities make it work successfully. Cars have little reason for going into a city, certainly not when good public transport exists. Vehicles cause traffic jams, accidents, air pollution, noise pollution and lower the quality of life for people who live there. Sensible cities plan accordingly.

Light railway services have their own forms of delay - people falling off platforms, failed signals, power disruption etc. But I think the comparison between a guy running flat out and a train/tram that stops and starts collecting people is pretty stupid. I'm sure there are certain sections of the Circle Line in London where the same stunt could be achieved (running from station entrance to station entrance before the train below reaches the platform) but equally pointless.

It's even more humiliating every time ESTA changes. These days they merely want to know everything about visitors before they arrive - occupation, family history, social media, photograph etc. The poor bastards not eligible for ESTA probably have to show up at an embassy for a grilling. The reasons for this have transformed from merely homeland security into political vetting. A meme or comment someone might have made about Trump in the past could destroy a trip over. Not to mention people who've seen visas revoked or gotten themselves deported for exercising free speech in a country which no longer believes in or protects it.

The talent goes where the opportunities and money are. If a country makes the foreign talent unwelcome they'll go somewhere else. I could even see many US engineers & scientists deciding to decamp to Europe, Canada or elsewhere if they think the opportunities are better.

I went to Thailand recently and had an eSim researched, purchased, installed and ready before I set foot in the country. When I arrived it just worked. It was to my obvious benefit to have this done before and not waste time at the airport trying to get a physical SIM.

... would be to make all major highways & roads pay per mile with a basic standing charge and have a common unified system for collecting revenues. It would collect more money than tolls, put the burden of road maintenance on those who use it most and incentivize people to reduce car use. But that's too sensible and America didn't become grotesquely reliant on oil and tarmac by being sensible.

The point, the obvious point is you don't call an "open()" and get an int. You use a RAII struct which protects your code. I linked to such an implementation. You are right that it can't enforce RAII on an int because it's a stupid assertion to begin with. And no it's not comparable to C++ and fstream because people aren't copying the terrible mistakes of C++ when implementing or using Rust.