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.

This isn't surprising, but I know what the best offer they're likely to get is.

Every single day, it seems like the White House does something to keep the ongoing Epstein Obstruction Scandal in the news. It's been the top story for months and every single day there's new news about it.

On Thursday, Todd Blanche, presumably acting under orders, spent all day obstructing the release of the information. And then he did the same thing on Friday. And now there's this UFO story, looking almost custom-made as a silly distraction. Blanche or Trump clearly wants to keep the illegal obstruction on voters' minds, as an evergreen topic so that it never goes away. But why?

What does Trump get by working so hard to persuade every American that he disagrees with a law that he signed, implying that laws is a bad idea and shouldn't be applied or enforced? What advantages are gained by an explicitly pro-crime agenda? What's the advantage of campaigning on releasing the files but then breaking my campaign promise?

I (naively?) think if I were in his position, I would comply with the law so that I don't go to prison for obstruction, and so people wouldn't notice every day that I'm still casually and continuously committing crime. I would let, no make the files come out, so that everyone can see the criminal witnesses confused me with the actual rapist, Biden. That would put me in a position where I'm seen as pro-law instead of anti-law, and it would also put to rest all the speculation that the "Epstein" files are actually mostly about me. Seems like that would be good for everyone, including myself.

So why commit obstruction when the releasing files will exonerate you and make all the problems go away? This strategy doesn't make any sense. What could I possibly be missing?

I feel like there's something incredibly obvious that everyone with a more-than-50 IQ has figured out about the president's lily-white innocence, but somehow I'm just too fucking stupid to figure it out. It's humbling, and makes me question my deeply-held faith in the president's genius.

If a company builds touch-screen support into their OS, you expect affordances to the UI to support actually using the touch screen. If they don't want to do that, they shouldn't support that feature, that's why. This is the dumbest comment I've seen on slashdot in a long time.

I don't think everyone hates touchpads. A lot of people likely prefer them (at least the Apple ones) because they've spent so little time at desktop computers. A lot of (most?) computer users that don't JUST use touchscreen devices are on laptops. The Macbook is Apple's best selling mac, after all.

At nearly every price tier, Macs are competitive with PCs, at least when we're talking about laptops. If you spec out a $3000 Macbook Pro, you'll be hard pressed to find a PC laptop that performs as well for less money. The real difference is that Macs only come at quite discrete price points, so you might not be able to find something that's going to match your budget.

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.

Working from home is an alternative, one that we should use more.

(Of course, I WFH full time and have for 20 of the last 30 years, so I have a bit of a bias.)

You do know that Musk doesn't actually have a trillion dollars in *money*, right? He doesn't have anywhere remotely close to that much money. His total liquid assets are extensive, sure, maybe as much as a few billion, but nearly all of his incredible net worth isn't money. You could probably call it "potential money".

And everyone should keep in mind that this is true for basically all of the billionaires. Not that there isn't real wealth there, but it's a lot fuzzier than the numbers appear. Basically everyone with astronomical wealth mostly owns shares in companies, and how much of that value is real in any near-term sense depends on a lot of factors.

Musk's wealth is more speculative and fuzzy than most because his companies' valuation is based not on the revenues the companies generate now but theories about what they might generate in the future. Tesla's high valuation is all about the promise of self-driving cars restructuring transportation. SpaceX's is a little bit about cheap access to space changing a lot of stuff and more about AI. In all cases the high valuations are bets on world-changing technology being becoming real, and on Musk's companies being able to capture a good chunk of the resulting revenues.

Not an EU country.

Then We The People need (or have needed) to become post-newspaper, indeed post-any-sort-of-centralized-media, since all centralizations are pressure points for coercion and compromise.

Make Usenet Great Again? There is No Cab-NO CARRIER

That analysis is utterly wrong. Far, far worse than the smartphone theory.

It is, in fact, the almost exact opposite of the truth. The truth is that wealth is what causes fertility decline. Wealth and female education, actually, which come hand-in-hand. This story is strikingly visible everywhere around the globe. As a population becomes wealthier and its women become better-educated, fertility falls. Without exception, and the effect is so powerful it overrides culture, religion, everything.

This is the primary driver in the US, too. In fact, wages have not stagnated, not when you look at the full picture including government transfers, and every generation is wealthier than the one before. Somewhat surprisingly, given the current housing price bubble, each generation even has higher home ownership rates than the previous generations at the same ages. Houses and apartments are also significantly bigger and more luxurious (which explains most of their higher prices, actually; do some comparisons on a per square foot basis over time, then adjust for the higher quality and greater amenities we have today).

But if you look at how Americans spend their money over the years, the biggest change you'll find is that we spend less on housing, food and clothing as a percentage of our income (in spite of bigger, nicer houses, far more restaurant and delivered food, and much larger wardrobes) and much more on entertainment -- and that in spite of the fact that entertainment has gotten dramatically cheaper.

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)