Or more like "cloud infrastructure running within physical and legal jurisdiction of the EU is running locally to the EU" if you prefer .. if it's software they've written, running on hardware within the EU's physical and legal reach, voila, "sovereignty".

"The only way to ensure sovereignty and control is with software running locally with NO cloud dependency."

They're not talking about personal sovereignty. Cloud infrastructure an organization owns is "running locally" to that organization.

that particular amendment was voted down, bozo - the system works, no hand wringing required

doesn't mean hate speech doesn't exist

I'm pretty sure corporations are worse for the environment than people.

You're confident in suggesting that corporations don't cater to the demand of the market, the customers of whom seems to be waiting for the heads of those corporations to take the bus before they can be bothered to stop pissing in their own pools?

Tragedy of the commons to a tee.

I don't disagree with your first point.

I don't admire billionaires at all. I don't think they should exist. Wealth disparity is unchecked.

But that doesn't prevent me from operating within my own set of principles rather than in a sort of "you first" manner, which strikes me as quite child-like.

If every wealthy person on earth did the right thing, our environment would still be fucked, because they're vastly outnumbered by non-wealthy people.

So you're stuck on a sinking boat with a rich person, and you refuse to plug a hole until he or she plugs a hole.

The funny thing, by the time you smugly drown, they've already left the boat on a helicopter. The wealthy *be definition* will not feel the effects of worsening climate. You (and your kids) will.

I think it'd be far more intellectually honest to admit you just don't care. Nothing wrong with that, per se. It's a hell of a lot more logically defendable than your stated position.

I know it's really trivial, bordering on petty, but please oh please give her a different accent. She says "okay" so much, and the Valleygirl accent is never heard so pronounced as obviously as in that word that I really want any other accent. Mid Atlantic, Southern, Cascadian, Midwest, Irish, please anything other than Valleygirl.

You might want to read up on how current hybrid vehicles actually work, 'cause it seems you have more than one misconception going on.

I have. For instance, my latest vehicle is the Ford F-159 XLT,, the full-hybrid model of the F-series pickup truck line. Power train is:
  - 6 cylinder dual-turbo engine. (runs low power but approoximately doubles output when a lot is needed.)
  - 47 HP motor-generator "pancake" on the engine side of the ttransmission, to scavenge / return power to./from a 1.5 kWhr lithium battery.
  - 10-speed automatic transmission, working with the lithium battery;s main alternator to fine-tune match the engine/mogen to the current driving situation. Max power of engine plus hybrid mogen; 430 hp.
  - full four wheel drive.

So it's primarily a gas-engine power train with an electric-car motor mechanically coupled to the engine shaft. Many other hybrids, from the venerable prius onward, are similar, with plug-in variants having a big scavaging/peaking battery good for pure electric operation of tens of miles rather than a minute or so and a wall-powered charger added.

What I'm looking for is essentially a pure electric - totally electronic "transmission" consisting of alternator(s) between the batteries and the motor(s), plus a tiny engine-generator able to burn gas and feed some teens of KW of charging power into the batteries when running down the road or parked near it.
 

Do the Waymo batteries use one of the lithium chemistries including cobalt, or a non-cobalt chemistry such as lithium iron phosphate?

Cobalt chemistries have a higher power/weight and energy/weight ratio, which made them the go-to chemistries for vehicle batteries. But they also produce oxygen when the cells overheat, leading to an unextinguishable runaway fire hazard: A burning cell makes enough heat to ignite the adjacent cells, so the whole assembly of them goes. Bad enough when it's a car's worth, but a disaster if it's a shipping-container sized module of a utility energy storage site. (And even worse when the site is a building full of racks, which someone had "protected" from fire with water-spraying, equipment-shorting system, so the whole site burns up, as happened recently with one in California creating a toxic mess.)

That's why purpose-built stationary lithium energy systems use non-cobalt chemistries - heavier, but a shorted cell just kills itself without getting hot enough to light off its neighbors.

I want to see inexpensive plugin hybrids.

But not like the current ones, which are primarily an engine/tranny powertrain with a motor/generator + small battery for scavenging downhill/braking energy for later accelleration/uphill/cruise/power-boost.

I want ones that are primarily a battery-electric with a small aux engine-generator (say 15-20 HP range), big enough to power crusing with a bit left over for gradually charging. That would let you range-extend by the size of your gas tank plus fillups (i.e. indefinitely if only gas is available) or go from battery empty to back on the road in a couple tens of minutes.

The backup engine would only run at max-efficiency speed and could use an atkins-like cycle (see "liquid piston engine") to get the max power out of the fuel. Most operation would use power-grid charging (when available and cheaper than fuel).

The rare AI enthusiast

Hey, I know this is the site for devs who are so old that they're out of the game or enthusiasts who wish they could call themselves developers, but AI assisted coding is just plain normal today. It's not even controversial.

In all the projects you love, hate, or don't care about. If you're developing today and not using AI at all, you're the rare developer.

Fudge, obviously I meant to reply to the OP. Your post clearly has some basis in being informed on the subject.

I am obviously not an expert but... we know what happens when you remove a species from the food chain.

In other words: "I don't know what happens, but we (I) know what happens ... "

Like, honestly, dude.

Chances that you do this: zero

"I've seen the pictures" says another American who figures using the internet amounts to actually living life, going places, being less of a moron.