Electricity prices in Europe are around 2x what Americans pay. In Japan it is even higher. Each 9 added to uptime has a cost, and Americans have apparently decided they don't want to pay.

Most US population centers are in places east of the point in their time zones where the sun is overhead (or due south) at noon, and being a bit west is better than being a bit (or very, for New England) east. This means that DST is mostly the right UTC offset for the wrong reason: Boston should be on Atlantic Standard Time year-round, but Eastern Daylight Time is a name for the same clock setting that is already used there sometimes, so that's easier to legislate. Of course, the people who live west of their true noon line don't think permanent DST would be good, but the fact that we should have no DST and a different map is too nuanced for the position that there's got to be a single simple answer as to how to fix everything, regardless of the situation.

I don't think this is trying to get back into the US market. OnePlus is banned because it's part of a Chinese corporation. OPPO is... that corporation. It's not going to confuse any regulator who found something to complain about with OnePlus. This is more likely a mundane tactic of being liked in Europe for phones and wanting to expand that reputation to the parts of the organization that sell other consumer electronics.

I've been seeing a LOT more ebikes and small (250cc and lower) motorbikes on the road lately. I live in a state where summer is oppressively hot (winter is bike season) and most riders appear to be commuting to low-posting jobs. It seems to be the k-shaped economy manifesting on the road.

Not to mention these vehicles are a huge pain to work on. I changed the spark plugs in a 150/1500 class truck recently and had to lay down on to of the engine on a chunk of old mattress to reach any of them. And needed a 2-step stepladder to get up there. I've since changed to a Ridgeline and you can reach anywhere in the bed and most of the engine without a ladder. The interest in the Slate and recent sales of smaller trucks suggest that this is a growing market.

You use your coal to make steel, which needs the carbon from the coal for the alloy. Not all use of coal can be replaced by other electricity or heat production, even if getting blast furnace temperatures out of a nuclear reactor weren't considered bad.

There's trillions of dollars of investment wanting to be thrown at datacenters and the power is part of the package. If tech bubble money can be used to help with nuclear economies of scale and building institutional experience, I will not turn it down.

It's probably so they don't have to go fetch hundreds of cars if the update goes wrong. Same reason I don't update software when I have something important tomorrow.

Recent legal cases have been on the basis that the services are/were defective by design and, as a result, presented dangers which were independent of any specific post on the platform. It's not a specific post or set of content which was the issue. It's the whole system.

I think the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East are relevant here, although most probably not the dominant factor. Russia and Iran are undoubtedly spending down their Bitcoin reserves at a rapid pace to cover revenue losses elsewhere and move money sanction-free.

The only justifiable reason to tolerate coal is because it is one of the few energy sources that can store, independent of weather and other factors, large amounts of "fuel" at the project site. Generally sites will hold 1-3 months worth on the coal pile. The only other energy sources which can do this at a reasonable cost are nuclear, biomass, and geothermal, all of which are more expensive than coal (if you exclude health impacts).

The most likely outcome is that we will end up with the same deal as the previous one which Trump canceled. Arguably worse because Iran has demonstrated that they can indeed close the straight for all practical purposes. 60+ days of bombing by the most powerful nation on the earth accomplished basically nothing. A few more days will surely do it though.

It's worth noting that nuclear reactors don't really explode in the way people think of. What they can do is turn into radioactive lava, melt through the floor, and release the highly carcinogenic dust from their system into the environment. They're generally big water heaters without pressure release valves (because the water has the carcinogenic dust in it), so they can burst like any water heater, and they contain zirconium, which reacts with steam at high temperatures to release hydrogen gas, which can make fireballs, but the accident risk is much less about a shock wave destroying the site than airborne radioactive particles getting out. And, even if the reactor design is incapable of producing enough heat to damage itself without first shutting down, you still have to worry about whether the site is safe enough from external damage. The traditional thick concrete walls are as much about keeping runaway trucks out as keeping steam explosions in.

Many, many places in the world get their water from underground aquifers. These are not really part of the water cycle and are being depleted at alarming rates in many areas. Even if the water is taken from a river, someone downstream may have been counting on that water for their needs.

I have no doubt that the government was an important customer but the "free" advertising and virtue signaling gained them a lot of business.