As a Brit, pro-Europe and anti-Brexit, who is quite into my solar...

I think this is a good idea. The money is better spent elsewhere and it's increasingly proven risky to rely on things running across ocean floors. To our nearest neighbours across the channel, we're probably okay, we can monitor that stretch easily enough and none of it is international waters.

But round to Morocco? That's just a nightmare of a project to even start and keeping that cable safe for decades to come? Seems unlikely.

For that price we can build nuclear sites, or HUGE solar or wind farms and just solve the problem ourselves, or more interconnects to closer countries (but I don't think we're at capacity in that regard anyway).

Interestingly I was talking at the weekend to a guy who used to work for a soda company here. He said the glass bottles used to be made and filled locally where he worked because they were heavy and difficult to transport, but switching to plastic allowed the company to centralize production in a city hundreds of miles away and ship them here instead. And, obviously, sack him and most of the other local workers.

But the MBAs got a boost to their stock options.

We're no longer allowed to bury plastic because it requires digging holes and digging holes causes Climate Change or something.

This is why we now ship the plastic to the third world so they can throw it into the ocean instead.

It's not about scale. Fiber is inexpensive to make. But it's just more temperamental than copper. You need to keep the ports completely dust free. It's not ideal for a normal home and doesn't carry electricity so you can't power a device at the other end of the plug with POE.

There are $700 gaming monitors with those specs already. There will probably be $300 gaming monitors with those specs in a year or two.

Like a bike messenger? Why does a delivery rider need home internet?!

So when they shoved promotional content into your music library against your will and generated worldwide outrage, that WASN'T enough for you?

Microsoft spend decades shuffling where your stuff is stored around, while simultaneously letting every company in existence use that same storage however they liked.

That's on them.

In an ideal world, your documents folder would be under your control, have only your documents, and individual apps would have their own segregated storage that if you want to interact and open in other programs you have to grant permission to do so and it's done via a temporary conduit for just one file.

Having every cheap-shit app on your computer having full access to your documents folder to spam with whatever subfolders and junk they deem necessary was always going to end in tears. Don't even get me started on the two ProgramFiles folders, and the hidden-for-reasons ProgramData folder, and all the subfolders under your user profile.

There's a reason they stopped calling it My Documents. Because most of the crap that's in there isn't my documents at all.

Another specious argument?

Maybe educate your kid. Or lock the cable.

Gosh, if only there were thousands of locations all over the country, in which you could install dozens of chargers, which charge your car more than fast enough, and which were all conveniently located near roads, and which - for instance - could be sited on an existing, now going defunct, site which won't be used as much by ICE cars as time goes by.

The EV charging argument is dead - fast charging and high-capacity batteries. Same way that apartments never used to come with parking spaces at all... things will evolve. Same way they had to add telecoms, laundry rooms, Internet, cable/satellite TV, online rent payments, etc. etc. etc.

If they want the customers, they'll add in EV chargers to the existing spaces. It's really that simple. After a bunch of tenants associations demand it, it'll happen and become the norm. And they'll add their 10% to the cost and realise it's actually a direct revenue stream (unlike all the above which are just ways to entice customers) so long as they don't go silly with it (because then people will just charge elsewhere).

Saying that THAT's going to be the blocker? You're just looking for excuses. It's that simple.

Landlords will start lobbing in EV chargers with a 10% commission as soon as their tenants start demanding them. And then laugh at the free money for doing nothing, because people are too lazy to just drive it down the road to an already-existing gas station converted to have EV points on it.

I'm literally at a workplace with EV charging points, and EV vehicles for company use. They save a fortune on their own transport expenses AND they get revenue from... customers! Willing to charge their EVs! There are sometimes literal arguments over the spaces (e.g. when a non-EV car is blocking an EV charger).

On my way home are a dozen stations with EV charging. And MOST houses (not all, granted) can have an EV charger fitted very simply. And new-builds are starting to mandate them.

Sorry, but "oh the software's a bit clunky" or "my landlord might not want to" is literally the bottom of the barrel for arguments.

For reference, I don't drive an EV. My next car - without doubt - will be an EV. And I'll install an EV charger at home to do it. I literally bought a house years ago with the criteria for having an EV charger... before I ever had an EV. Because, to me, it's like buying a house that isn't on the electric or doesn't have broadband. Whether or not I need/use it this instant, I want my house to be able to do that.

So I bought a house which deliberately has a driveway, a porch with power, and an ideal spot for installing an EV charger. The only reason I don't change today... is an actual problem with EVs... it's a bit pricey to lay out for one up-front. But when my car needs more than a basic service... I'll be pricing it up.

It is a universal constant that when I have a machine, I want to tell it what to do, and I want it to do that.

I don't want it running off doing stuff I don't need it to, nor telling me what I can or can't do, especially when the restrictions are arbitrary and non-technical.

I've already decided at this point that my next machines won't be Windows. I ran Slackware as a primary desktop for 10 years, I'm not scared of it at all... and it did what I asked it to do. But even Linux has systemd nonsense that breaks my "golden rule" all the time now. It is, without question, however one of the closest modern OS to just doing what I tell it to (even if that's "remove systemd").

We lost sight decades ago, and Microsoft aren't making money from Windows any more so they don't really care. There won't be another XP / 7 / 10 in terms of just letting you do what you need to do and getting out of the way as an OS.

The purpose of an OS is to get the hell out of my way and do what I told it to do. Windows increasingly does the opposite. I've given up tolerating it again, and things like the Steam Deck and Valve's input have progressed my old classic gaming to the point where I wanted it to be back in the early Wine/Crossover/Steam Machine days. As usual, that was my only real hangout, because everything boring and technical I want to do could already be done on Linux and with open-source software for years.

Now... I really don't see a reason for Windows to even exist, let alone be the OS of choice.

Enjoy the few years before oil prices surge when everywhere else mandates EV and the demand for oil plummets.

As it is, for decades I heard about nothing else but the cheap fuel in the US compared to the rest of the world... and that's gone REALLY quiet for the last few years. Maybe you need to invade some more oil-producing countries again, that's bound to lower the price, right?

20% of new car sales worldwide are EV (not counting hybrid etc.). And we haven't even STARTED actually taxing/banning fuel based vehicle properly yet.

Embrace -- You are here.
Extend
Extinguish

Apple reinvents a mode present on countless millions of devices and dozens of architectures for decades and suddenly it's "news".

I think it will be difficult for the music industry to push 'this song was created by an AI in which 0.1% of the training data was a song we own' because that would pretty much destroy the AI industry which is based on being able to use other people's content without paying for it and the Tech billionaires are richer than the music billionaires. You're right though that the tech companies like Youtube might agree to block AI music 'because of unresolved legal questions' or some such nonsense.