It's probably worse in the US, most things related to solar are. In Europe there are loads of really good off the shelf options. Every solar installer will offer you a battery system.

I'm not an astronomer, but I recognize a hack when I see one. Dark matter was a hack. Dark energy was a hack on a hack. Now they're hacking the hack to the hack

The article is about Dark Energy, not Dark Matter ...
However ...

Dark matter is not a hack.

It is just like viruses.
When they were discovered (1890s?), they were yet to be seen for decades.
The basic story is that a solution from infected tobacco leaves caused mottling on healthy tobacco leaves. Bacteria were suspected, but the scientists used very fine filters that excluded bacteria, and the leaves were still infected!
They called it virus from the Latin word for poison.
It was not seen, because they were smaller than the wavelength of visible light, and that was what optical microscopes use.
It was only in the 1930s when they were actually seen by electron microscopes.

So Dark Matter says we observe effects of something unseen through its gravity.
It may turn out to be a particle, or primordial black hole, or something else.

There are many other examples of sports science pushing records though, so even if there is doping it's likely also down to improvements unrelated to that as well. For example, women's sports science was a long way behind the men's up until the 90s, when women started to improve rapidly.

How is the gender and age verification "critical" to retain? Once someones gender and age has been verified, it doesn't need to be re-verified. Or if it does for some reason, they would want new, current data, not data from years ago. Over the span of years it is possible to change your gender, for example.

Same with location data. While it may be necessary to verify that they are, say, in the US when signing up, or when logging in, there is no reasonable justification for retaining their precise GPS coordinates after that check is complete. Even for advertising, they could narrow it down to a general area, or some kind of token.

Even if they ask for opt-in, explicit permission, the use and retention still has to be reasonable. Effort has to be made to reduce the risk and the harm in the event of a breach.

You need better consumer laws to stop companies getting away with this.

In the UK, when Sony removed features from the PS3, people got partial refunds from the shops they bought them from. I don't know if Amazon and the like chased Sony for the losses, and I don't really care. As long as someone in the chain pays, that will discourage the practice.

Tech Bro just invented the petrol station with attached shop/restaurant. Those things we have had for decades, and which (at least in Europe) many charger locations are modelled on already.

As for Tesla's robots, they are rubbish and the demos were rigged. Their solar and battery offerings are over-priced.

I've never been to a US gas station (I assume it's use from the use of gallons) but in the UK you drive up, often have to queue, and then park by the pump. If they have pay at the pump you put your card in, enter the PIN, takes about a minute for some reason. Open your flap and remove the cap, pick up the nozzle and fill up for a few minutes, then reverse it all and drive off. Add another minute or two if you have to pay at the kiosk.

The petrol stations are sometimes at supermarkets so you don't have to go too far out of your way, but not always.

Plugging in at home is much nicer, especially if you have a garage. For public charging, Nio is the ultimate with battery swap. You don't even have to get out of the car.

I'm sure you can find some idiot, probably a false flag, saying that. Or twist something someone said to imply it, the classic one being that beyond 1.5C is pretty bad and we had about 20 years to prevent it. But that's all it was, fringe stuff and lies.

There were plenty of credible sources, plenty of people on the political left accurately relaying the scientific consensus.

What does it matter though? Even if what you claim was true, that's no excuse for you to continue to ignore the science.

The biggest lie is that there were all those credible claims that world would end in 20 years.

They typically have on-site batteries for those chargers.

You are saying that rather than trying to understand the science or listen to the scientists, the fact that people you disagree with politically have championed it is making you reject it.

It's just a milder form of this: https://files.libcom.org/files...

Imagine how much time you waste going out of your way to petrol stations and standing around pumping the stuff into your car.

300 mile EVs are sometimes cheaper than fossil cars now. In the UK at the moment you can get a deal on a pre-reg MG S5 with just under 300 miles of range for £23k, which I think is about $28k (accounting for differences in taxes). It's a very nice car, refined, quiet, powerful, comfortable, and MG has a good reputation for reliability. Charge time is about 30 minutes 10%-80%.

Of course the cost of owning it will be much lower too, due to lower maintenance. It's got some nice features like Vehicle 2 Load (you can plug mains powered devices into it, up to 2400W), and with a compatible charger that means you can also do Vehicle 2 Home/Grid.

Are there any confirmed cases of EV battery fires causing loss of ships? I know there are lots of rumours, but they usually turn out to be false. Like the one about Luton Airport car park, which turned out to be a fossil.

In any case, LFP batteries don't have the same issues with releasing oxygen to keep the fire self sustaining. For a start the cathode doesn't have a negative temperature coefficient, so the main cause of thermal runaway is eliminated. Manganese dioxide has stronger bonds than cobalt, so oxygen is released much more slowly, at a rate which cannot sustain a fire. They don't experience expansion to nearly the same degree either, so mechanical safety sealing is unlikely to fail.

They are very resilient oxygen loss in general, so an exothermic reaction is very unlikely. They don't decompose at high temperatures either.

All that adds up to make them less likely to catch fire than an ICE, and if they do the fire it can be put out with water. Here's a video demonstrating that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Note that you only see flames because they are exposed to the air, not in a sealed battery pack, and water works to extinguish it. Most of the burning is the wiring and the plastic housing, not the battery cell itself. And that's after they attacked it with power tools.

They are hoping that there will be enough of a backlash against it to nix the technology, so they won't have to adopt it.

I hope that happens too, otherwise I'm going to need an AI agent to screw with their AI agent until it gets me the best prices.