A big factor driving EV sales recently is the introduction last year and this year of new, lower-cost (but 200 mile range and under) EV models from the likes of Hyundai/Kia and Renault. Renault, especially with the 4 E-Tech and 5 E-Tech models and the upcoming Twingo E-tech, models well-suited for the narrower streets of Europe.

The southwestern quadrant of the continental USA has some of the best climate conditions in the world for solar power. Much of Australia and lands along the Mediterranean Sea are the same way. Indeed, that's why there are large solar farms in Spain itself.

But do we REALLY need gigabit broadband for everyone? I think for most Americans, 256 megabits/second download speed is more than sufficient for most uses including working from home.

Maybe the standard for everyone should be 256 megabits/second download and upload.

Correct. Air pollution is definitely a defining factor. We still have many who grew up when air pollution from automobiles was still a serious issue, The long list of air pollutants from the exhaust of gasoline or diesel fueled engines can be quite long.

Here's the problem: one bad winter and all that renewable power goes out the door. And Europe north of the Alps can experience harsh winters.

...Solar power is viable because the Mediterranean climate is high conducive of solar power installations. I can see a lot of them in Spain, Italy, the Balkans and Greece.

But northern Europe? Not so much. In winter, shorter daylight hours and harsh winter weather makes solar power much less viable.

Because this report is almost telling use to just stop eating meat from cattle, pigs and even chickens, let alone seafood. It almost sounds like they want us to switch to an insect-based diet, which may or may not be a good thing given that we haven't really tried to harvest insects for food on an industrial scale. Besides, the phrase "everything in moderation" makes way more sense for a health perspective.

Those hybrid systems found on many Toyotas sold outside the USA aren't the sophisticated hybrid systems like we see on Prius or the current year Camry models. I do think we'll see much more advanced battery packs on the US market Toyotas with hybrid drive to improve fuel economy and/or offer even more range on inital battery power (maybe over 100 km or 62.1 miles) by 2028.

I expect that to drop dramatically because Toyota just recently opened a new battery plant for their hybrid models. And I wouldn't be surprised that Toyota will start sourcing battery packs from third parties for their burgeoning hybrid lineup.

Also, all these battery plants could be supplying hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles out there. Toyota is aggressively pushing hybrids, Honda is starting to do so, and I expect Nissan to go that way (if they survive).

But given the sometimes-wonky nature of EU regulations, good luck growing a tech company in Europe.

THIS is why I bought into a YouTube Premium account. That way, I don't have to frustratingly deal with ad interruptions all the time, especially on longer videos. Yes, I know it's US$13.95 per month, but given the cost of a premium Starbucks drink or even a fast food meal nowadays, it's definitely worth it.

Unfortunately for Google, iMessage is so entrenched nobody wants to really switch to RCS, even with the GSMA working on an open end-to-end encryption standard. Most everyone in the USA are either on Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp as their primary messaging platforms.

Well, there's been a clamoring by environmentalists to remove several dams along the Columbia and Snake Rivers to increase the salmon population. Mind you, there are many opposing such an idea, including many farmers in eastern Washington and Oregon dependent on the water stored from these dams for irrigation water, let alone removing the power generation capacity from these dams needed for the type of large server farms you mentioned.

There is one solution: put the AI data centers at locations where cleanly-generated power is plentiful. And that only means two countries, Iceland and Norway, where you can tap into the huge amount of geothermal energy available on Iceland or the huge excess of hydroelectric power from Norway's many dams.

At least that's the solution in the short to medium term. Long term, it's time to starting building cleaner and safer Generation IV nuclear reactors in modular form with each small reactor generating about 100 to 250 MW of power, which should be enough for a fairly large-sized AI server farm. Why Gen IV nuclear power? Because the physical footprint of power plant will be a tiny fraction of a large solar farm or a large installation of wind turbines.