Back in the day, electronics as an example came with schematics, with the assumption that the user may want to service or have his items serviced. Spare parts for prior purchased items were also typically available for a number of years (for those manufacturers still in business of of course). So what changed? A couple of things come to mind:

  - more manufacturing has been moved to low cost, offshore entities
  - products have become cheaper while onshore labor has become more expensive -- making repair less realistic
  - more companies have been lured into the "subscription" model, even where it really makes no sense (i.e. why does my stove need to be connected to the internet?)
  - the product release cycle has been shortened considerably (for hardware, but particularly software) (back in the 80's, one bought a word processor on floppy and used it unchanged for years, learning to live with many flaws -- now, it might be updated weekly/monthly)

All of that being stated, physical items which are purchased, are purchased and the new owner should be able to modify or repair as necessary, and physical parts should be available for a period of time. There are a number of gotchas in this regard, such as timing, costs and lately, the desire to only provide replacements as "subsystems" as opposed to individual parts, unnecessarily increasing repair costs.

Regardless, some of these repair requirements will likely increase purchase costs. The days where only the rich could afford a color TV or take a airline flight are not coming back, so arriving at a balance of increasing purchase costs for some of the products in order to get longer life and easier repairability.

Certain types of apps will end up being regionalized behind new "great firewalls", particularly those which deal with news, anything social media, allow comments, etc. Think of a European TikTok, A U.S. TikTok, a Chinese TikTok, etc., which completely different content inside each region, some subject to heavy state censorship, some lighter or more targeted and some remaining uncensored.

In most countries around the world, a president can certainly wield significant power over the electorate, however, the citizens of the U.S. are blessed with significant rights as specified in the Bill of Rights (i.e. they can say and read what they want, worship who they want, they can provide for their own defense, they are afforded due process rights and juries of their peers, etc. In addition, unlike in parliamentary systems, the U.S. Constitution defines three co-equal branches of government (although the only judicial entity spelled out in the Constitution is the Supreme Court). Legislative functions (including the power of the purse) are assigned to the House and Senate, judicial functions to the judiciary and all executive functions are carried out by the executive branch, led solely by the elected president, with delegation to the Senate confirmed cabinet level officials (and who serve at the pleasure of the president).

When in the first 6 words of your reply, you allude to the democratically elected leader of a constitutional republic as a "dictator" -- the rest of your response can likely be heavily discounted.

Just don't see many federal DA's prosecuting most of these of these fraudulent transactions. Might there be some outliers (say $5,000+), low on the intersectional hierarchy, etc. My opinion could be wrong of course, and the DA's are all primed up to file criminal charges against all of these folks, which would also involve the banks showing up in court with the appropriate evidence for each of these prosecutions -- I just have my doubts...

While I agree that federal DA's tend to be more strict in adherence to the law (compared to some localities at least) -- but if one is dealing with many smaller prosecutions (i.e. perhaps less then $1,000?, $2,500?), I suspect them to not associate much DA time to move those prosecutions forward.

Agreed, but I suspect it would fall under the "venal" category, i.e. pay it back, we will close your account and we won't press charges, if not, look at proceeding with civil/criminal charges (although in the case of criminal charges, the bank will have very little to say about that at the end of the day -- if the DA decides not to charge -- then that crime will not be charged).

Strong likelihood that their first step was to request repayment/restitution from the withdrawer (as agreed to in their customer agreement). Even if the withdrawal was malicious, assuming the customer had not spent the money, restitution could have been satisfied by returning the monies so obtained. Now whether you would call that "arbitration", I do not know, but certainly from a banking perspective, hiring lawyers is not a cost free exercise and typically not pursued by a bank without first attempting more cost effective strategies...

Let's be honest -- I upgraded an iPhone XS to an iPhone 14 Pro several years ago, and other then it being a bit faster with a bit more memory, there was no discernible difference between the two. The result is that the only time I purchase a new iPhone is when my previous phone is lost/damaged or when iOS is no longer upgradable, hence I have ever owned 4 iPhones (iPhone 3GS, iPhone 6S, iPhone 10XS and now iPhone 14 Pro) -- and I suspect this pattern is becoming more prevalent...

I agree that traditionally, they have focused on power as capacity (i.e. MW) -- which was a useful metric for generation sources with high capacity factors. However, as we look to leverage actual batteries (or pump generation plants) as part of our electricity mix to smooth out the demand curve -- it is important to not equate sources of generation (which could include solar and wind, regardless of it's intermittency) from sources of stored energy.

An older example would be the pump generation plant at Niagara Fall (U.S.) which at peak generation is about a tenth of the actual hydroelectric generation at the site. During the night, they divert excess electricity generation to the pumps to move water into the upper reservoir, and during the day, they leverage the pumps in reverse mode to generate up to 240 MW of additional power based on increased daytime demand on the grid.

Batteries effectively work on the exact same model, but one could never replace baseband power generation as they only store and do not "generate" electricity -- so just equating their power output as equivalent to other generation sources without also understanding the actual energy stored just seems simplistic at best and deceptive at worst.

Every battery I have ever purchased has always been rated in the amount of power it could deliver for what period of time, whether it was a marine battery, rated at 80 AHrs at 12V, or a laptop battery measured in wHr or a cellphone battery measured in wHr. Without knowing for what amount of time a battery can deliver its stated power, you have no idea how much energy it contains. Power does not equal energy.

Go buy a Tesla: How much energy does a Tesla battery produce?
The capacity of Tesla's batteries ranges from 50 kWh on a standard range Model 3 to 100 kWh on all Model S and Model X variants.

Again, without knowing the time -- then you don't know the energy contained in the battery.

Power is measured in watts, Energy is measured in watt-hours.

P = V I where P is power in watts, V is potential difference in volts, and I is current in amperes, while Energy = Power x Time

Thought experiment: Replace existing electricity generators (which convert chemical, potential (hydro), wind, solar, or nuclear energy to electrical energy) on the grid with "battery generators" (assuming fully charged) -- how long can they keep the grid supplied with energy?

Sigh... No, megawatts does not refer to energy, but rather power, per:

Energy is the capacity to do some physical activities or work, such as running, jumping, etc., while power is defined as the rate at which the energy is transferred, or the work is completed. The unit used to measure energy is joules, ergs and calories. Power is measured in watts. Where 1 Joule = 2.7778E-7 kWh or one kilowatt-hour is equal to 3,600,000 joules.

Put another way: The power of a storage system, P, is the rate at which energy flows through it, in or out. It is usually measured in watts (W). The energy storage capacity of a storage system, E, is the maximum amount of energy that it can store and release. It is often measured in watt-hours (Wh).

The reason why this is important in this context is that an energy storage mechanism (ex. battery) that can provide 1000 megawatts (MW), but only do so for a very limited timeframe (ex. 1 hour) cannot in any way be compared to say a nuclear power plant (ex. 1000 MW) with a typical capacity factor of nearly 93% (i.e. it can deliver that 1000 MW nearly every hour of every day of every month of the year.

Additionally, energy storage mechanisms generate exactly zero energy, but rather just store that energy first generated via another technology such as solar, wind, coal, hydro, gas, nuclear, etc. As technologies like coal, gas and nuclear do not require storage mechanisms while intermittent ones do, in order to fully understand the competitive costs of those intermittent sources, storage costs must be added to them if they ever are positioned to provide base load power capacity.

The proper unit of measure for energy storage capacity is megawatt-hours (MWh) or kilowatt-hours (kWh). Duration: The length of time that a battery can be discharged at its power rating until the battery must be recharged."

So when I see content like "storage capacity of 3,280 megawatts" and "In 2019, the state had just 770 megawatts of storage capacity." in the initial posting, the only conclusion that I can draw is that it was written by someone who is scientifically illiterate.

They don't appear to be too concerned with the safety and efficiency of the landings associated with the Atlas or Vulcan rockets...