Once I see it doing what I want, I'll be interested. But in order to do that, it needs to be able to understand the action of the fiction I'm asking it to read. E.g. if it's reading "Alice in Wonderland" it needs to use a proper voice for Alice talking to herself as she falls down the rabbit hole. (And for the editorial comments interspersed.)

O,. and it needs to be able to do this without an internet connection.

Most out-of-warranty service isn't done at dealers, because they tend to massively overcharge compared with independent garages. Most out-of-warranty repairs are done with parts salvaged from wrecked vehicles, i.e. they are factory parts.

Repair for $4k + labor or replace for $9k. Still not a write off.

Nissan Leaf batteries can be obtained for $4,000 to $14,500, depending on capacity. I assume that is plus installation, but not certain. That's considerably less than what the resale value would be after the repair, so not a write-off.

Okay, sure, in Canada, where the number of EVs is already low and access to used parts is almost nonexistent, someone scrapped a single copy of an extremely unpopular toy EV with a tiny battery that sold only 22,000 units in total that model year worldwide.

That's not an EV problem. It's an ultra-rare car problem. Rare ICE cars have the same problem.

FWIW, when you can actually get them, used batteries for that model of car cost only about $4k. But you'll probably spend another $2,000 on shipping it by boat from Europe, because there are more people living in my immediate neighborhood plus the one across the street than there are 2017 Ioniq EVs in all of North America.

So let me restate that. There are no *popular* EVs that are getting scrapped because of the cost of battery replacement. After all, you could make that battery from scratch today for about $3,000, give or take, if somebody actually cared to do so. But they don't, because there's no market for it. You could also replace all the cells in that battery for under $3k, not including the labor. So a $50k estimate falls into "don't make me laugh" territory. It's a ludicrously inflated price, probably because they don't actually have any of the batteries left, and would have to spin up a production line just to build more. :-D

These are not use cases. These are driver incompetence.

First, modern EVs typically have support for telling you how much range you have left at your current speed, and telling you whether you need to slow down to reach a supercharger without running out of juice. The number of times I've had range anxiety in almost a decade of driving my Model X is in the single digits, and I've never run out.

Second, most people charge their EVs overnight, which means you aren't ever waiting for for the vehicle to charge. Or they charge at work while they are working. Five minutes for a refill is an eternity compared with the roughly zero minutes that the average EV user spends.

No, the problematic use cases are:

• Towing. This depletes batteries or fuel a lot more quickly, and EVs just don't have the battery capacity to do it well. What is needed here is a universal standard for powering cars from a secondary battery in the trailer.
• Apartment dwellers with no access to at-home charging. This is mostly solvable through a combination of incentives for apartment complexes to provide charging, laws requiring new apartments to have charging, and market pressure, but it doesn't happen overnight.
• Ultra-high-miles-per-day driving. If you're driving more than the range of the car every day, an EV might not be for you.

For approximately every other use case, EVs are better hands down.

WTF are you talking about? People replace EV batteries all the time. They also rebuild packs by swapping out modules. There are companies that specialize in doing so, and have a high rate of success. They charge single-digit thousands of dollars to rebuild a Tesla battery, depending on how many modules have to be replaced and other factors.

The number of EVs written off because of battery repair costs should be within the margin of error of being zero, because there are no used EVs that are worth less than $10k at this point. Even the cheapest, low-end EVs with a tiny battery are worth that much.

And if the number isn't zero, it is likely because some cars have such an undersized battery pack that nobody would want the car even with a refurbished pack, and therefore it isn't worth the effort to do so. While this might be a good reason not to buy short-range EVs (under 200 miles of range), it isn't a reason to avoid EVs in general.

While your points are good, this looks like negligence to me. So, yeah, our "justice" system needs reform, but that facility should be made to change it's practices. (Not that I'm sure this decision will cause them to do that.)

The problem is that TMI was NOT a really bad disaster. It was frightening, and could have been bad. Actually, though, it was quite contained. But the more reactors you have, the greater the chance of a really bad disaster. If one of these is small enough to be thrown around by a tornado, you have new possibilities of a really bad disaster. (I didn't check. I assume it's too heavy. But perhaps it could be broken open.)

OTOH, smaller reactors have a smaller "worst possible case". I'm not really convinced that they're a good idea, but I could be. (If it's intended for use in space, what happens if there's a catastrophic launch explosion? That might be a good use, if they can handle the heat, but I'd prefer that the fuel be mined on the moon.) Low probability accidents that are possible WILL eventually happen. (Or at least one should plan that way.)

It's a new model, so the only way to really know whether it's safe or not is to try. But modelling gives VERY useful indications.

WHY is it wonderful news? The reports I've seen say that small reactors are less efficient than larger reactors and have increased chance of dangerous results (though the size of the danger is smaller).

Just asserting that it *is* wonderful gives me no reason to believe you.

I "sort of" agree. But my estimate of this is low enough (cost-including-pollution vs benefits) that I don't think it should be subsidized including being granted favorable legal treatment. In fact I'd be in favor of eliminating bankruptcy protections for any damage it causes.

First, both Zvezda and ICM have propulsion. That was the entire purpose of those modules. So I *think* that such a mission could at least ostensibly involve the old Russian module giving the rest of the Russian segment a small push with its thrusters, followed by a push back the other way to stop the motion away from ISS, followed by undocking, followed by Zvezda doing a deorbit burn to pull it downwards and away from ISS, followed by ICM doing the same basic set of maneuvers in reverse.

Second, even if that is determined to be too stressful on the interconnections between modules, the ISS has Canadarm2 permanently attached, which is what was used for most of ISS construction. As far as I know, the shuttle's arm (Canadarm) just moved each piece or module out of the Shuttle's bay and handed it off to the ISS arm, which put them in place. Note that Zvezda wasn't brought up by the shuttle, and nothing would necessarily require a self-propelled module like ICM to be launched in a shuttle, either. Even when fully fueled, it is well within the weight capacity for a Falcon 9 in its reusable configuration. It's slightly lighter than an fueled crew Dragon capsule. They would probably need to give it some sort of protective shell or something, but it seems like it should be a pretty straightforward lift.

It's probably worth noting that apparently ICM was never fully completed, and it could take as much as 2.5 years to finish it, but it is still in storage at last check. And apparently others have proposed a similar solution for keeping ISS operational without Zvezda, so this isn't an entirely crazy idea. :-)

For a moment, I read that as "supercriticality" and was more than a bit concerned. :-D

But seriously, that's great — both that it successfully reached that point and that it did so on the first try.

Seems like Zvezda should just be scrapped. Launch the ICM that NASA built in case Zvezda wasn't ready; presumably it is still sitting in a NASA warehouse somewhere. Then jettison Zvezda and connect the other Russian modules wherever you can fit them.

I didn't mean to claim that I though trade secrets in code were a good thing, merely that they were a reason a company might not want to open their source code. Patents are not such a reason. (Also, I don't believe software patents should be valid. Copyright, yes. Trademarks, yes. Trade secrets, yes. But software should not be patentable. [And copyrights should have a much more limited duration.])