Right, so for the rest of us who don't live in the USA you're saying we shouldn't buy USA made products? OK, fine by me.

I was amazed a few years ago when I discovered the USA doesn't have a National Grid, nor strategic national oversight of the power generation or transmission/distribution market. Considering that was done in the UK in the middle of the 20th century, and we're often a bit behind the curve, I'd assumed the USA had done it many, many decades ago. No wonder the UK, EU and China appear to be streaking ahead in their energy systems overhaul.

If a train derails as the result of what is effectively an emergency brake application, the US railways have bigger problems on their hands!

You appear to be saying that like its a bad thing? I don't think it is. I think it shows we're finally getting some maturity in software development so that we're not constantly churning out new systems developer and coders who want to write their stuff in the latest and greatest innovation. Firm foundations, good system design and clear and maintainable code is what people who actually use and pay for the systems we design and maintain want to see.

The even more interesting question is what will these new technologies look like when they're designed by the AIs, for consumption by the AIs.

I've read the back-and-forth in these comments about what constitutes the percentage of "film stuff" to make a film American or unAmerican, but I think there's a wider issue here. Lots of the film processes are services rather than physical products, so Trump is going down the road of tariff taxing foreign (to the USA) services. If that starts a "services tariff war" then the USA is royally screwed, because they export a load of highly lucrative services. Want to use a US hosted cloud service in the UK? That'll be a 100% tariff on top of the cost. Fancy exporting financial services to the EU or Asia? Cough up those countries' retaliatory tariffs then. Could be great for the local service provides in those other countries that currently get shafted by the US megacorps. We live in interesting times...

I don't know about Belgium, but in the UK your devices can spot Grid loading without any IoT nonsense or even smart meter: they can watch the Grid frequency. If it starts to dip until 50Hz, the Grid is likely experiencing load, such as at peaks, if its over 50Hz there's more generation capacity than demand (middle of the night). These are only fractions of a Hz, but it turns out electronics is good at detecting them.

I once owned two real 132 column tractor feed Centronics printers back when I was a teenager in mod-late 1980s. They were broken second hand units from some large computer installation that a friend of my Mum sourced for me, and I cobbled together one working printer from the two. I couldn't use it very much though, despite getting it working with my Acorn Electron... mostly because it was incredibly loud. If you thought an Epson FX80 chuntering was noisy that was practically silent compare to these beasts.

Umm, didn't Air Fuel Synthesis do this in the UK some years ago, before they went bust because (at the time at least) there wasn't sufficient market for the synthetic fuels they produced?

My corollary to this: "There is no technical task sufficient short enough that a random human will not fuck it up". We've all met folk like that after all...

That's not strictly true. You can "island" but you need an DNO approved device that will cut your house system off from the grid when the grid supply is down. That's an extra cost item, so isn't usually included in home solar installations where the grid is reliable, which is most of the UK. Can be done though - see Robert Llewellyn's video where he showed off the Tesla unit he has that does this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Sounds like the US staff could do with a free-at-the-point-of-use National Health Service.