I had that problem back in the day with an original Leaf, and its small battery. Would pop in to IKEA for some free charging and lunch, and my phone would notify me of the charge ending before I was done eating.

You would have less illegal immigration if there were more legal ways to immigrate. Not just work visas, but family reunion visas too.

Work visas need to be for more than just skilled people. Americans don't want to do the hard, unpleasant work of picking crops for minimum wage. That's fine, it's a choice, but you need someone to do it.

Then there's the fact that your whole economy is based on the premise of never ending growth, and your birth rate is falling. Either you start with the handmaid bullshit, you make up the numbers with immigration, or you tell the billionaires that they need to adjust to a shrinking economy while still increasing your wages.

Human beings are not machines, they do not produce a constant stream of output while they are working. Outside of simple manual jobs, at least. They get tired, they have lives outside the office, stress and overworking make them sick.

Turns out that 5 days a week is less efficient than 4 days a week for most people, i.e. they can get the same amount of work done in fewer hours if the duty cycle is reduced. It's a win-win - the employee has more free time and better quality of life, the employer loses nothing in terms of productivity and saves money on their energy bills.

It's main advantage seems to be that it knows where the pieces are on the board.

I've had ChatGPT forget the current state of things with other stuff too. I asked it to do some web code, and it kept forgetting what state the files were in. I hear that some are better like Claude with access to a repo, but with ChatGPT even if you give it the current file as an attachment it often just ignores it and carries on blindly.

In fact one bug it created was due to it forgetting what it named a variable, and trying to use a similar but different name in some new code.

Speaking of which, EV articulated lorries (big trucks) are a thing in Europe and seem to be working just fine. Norway has EV ferries too, some with wireless charging.

Once people own an EV and understand what the range means and how charging works, they tend to lose interest in hybrids. You have so many downsides - a whole ICE that you have to lug around and maintain, combined with a small battery.

To give you an idea, Bjorn Nyland does 1000km tests of EVs against a reference PHEV that he filled up with dino juice. The PHEV clocked in at around 9.5 hours, and the best EVs are under 10 hours. He hasn't tested the ultra fast 5m charging ones yet.

Most people will want a break on a 9.5 hour journey, so in practice the difference is zero. Charge while you get a coffee. Even the more affordable cars like the MGS5 and Renault 5 add less than an hour, which again is typically less than most people spend on lunch and comfort breaks.

25% VAT is normal in Europe. To be part of the EU or EEA you have to have VAT between something like 20% and 25%, I forget the exact numbers. It's on the high end, but not massively out of whack with what most Europeans pay in tax on cars.

As for it being a "small" country, it is physically large and has a fairly hostile climate. That makes it good for stress testing EVs, and they have proven to cope better than fossil fuel powered cars. In particular, EVs offer much better comfort in terms of things like climate control and noise levels, as well as driving better in low grip situations. Some of them charge faster than you can refuel a fossil too.

Most EVs in Norway are not made there, they are imported from elsewhere in Europe, or from China. There is no shortage of vital materials. The issues in the US seem to be largely because of Trump's tariffs and China's reciprocal limits on exports of rare earths there.

It's getting to the point in Norway where it's inconvenient to need fossil fuels. Pumps are being ripped out and replaced with EV chargers and battery swap stations.

Implementation detail, really.
The X-43 still used a rocket after released from the carrier plane.
Just required smaller rockets to get it up to scramjet speeds if launched from a plane.

Really, they're the same thing, one just launched from the ground. The thing I don't get is why they're calling transition from rocket power to (sc)ramjet power a world-first, when NASA did it in the early 2000s.
The sources also continuously use the term "ramjet" rather than "scramjet", while ramjets are utterly useless at those speeds with their subsonic combustion requirement.
If it's a world-first because NASA did it with a scramjet and not a ramjet then, uhhh, "Good job at being teh world first at something nobody cares about?" (Implying that the mach 12 was purely under rocket power)

So ultimately it's just not clear whether the mach 12 was under rocket power, or (sc)ramjet.
In the case of the X-43, that was scramjet power. The rocket was just used to get the plane fast enough for the scramjet to work without having to come up with some kind of crazy turbojet+ramjet+scramjet hybrid motor.

lol- Incel says what?

I didn't.

I think it's important to really understand what The Fed is, and how it works.
QE has, indeed, led to a large increase of Treasury holdings by the Fed- but they're still only 25% of domestically held debt, and the debt they do hold, they use to issue dollars to banks so that they can loan those dollars to businesses, really just acting as a risk holder for the rich.

I don't think the Fed will reduce rates, because as you succinctly noted:
"Who wants to buy Treasuries at 2% rates when inflation is going to be 7+? The Fed.".
Well, I'd say not even the Fed- but they know they don't really have options.
Trump may replace Chairmen until it happens- who knows- we'll see... But it hasn't happened yet, so maybe we'll avoid that nightmare.

Typically, domestic forecasts are using the HRRR, which is ridiculously accurate (at least as far as meteorological models go), but only does the territorial US, and to a limited range in the future.
IFS (The Euro model) is global, as is GFS (NOAA's global model).

I love Cliff!

He has ragged on GFS significantly in the past- and it's well deserved. The GFS is not very good.
He has generally indicated he's quite impressed with the HRRR.

To be clear- things like "10 day weather forecasts" are not done with the HRRR, but those forecasts tend to be not-great no matter what model you're using, though significantly less not-great using better foreign global models.

Typically speaking, the HRRR provides the highest resolution (spatially and temporally), and most accurate weather predictions over US territory for the next 18h or so. It's the source of your "daily weather" (aggregate and hourly, etc.), and NAM handles major storm tracking over the US (which no model competes with, within that specific domain)
GFS is trash-tier though, and Cliff has been desperate to see that improve for a long time.
NAM, he seems to be a bit jilted about. He claims UW's high-res system is better, but then gets pie on his face when NAM outperforms his own predictions.
He's human like the rest of us.

I'm not a meteorologist, but since discovering Cliff a decade or so ago, I've read very heavily on the topic of meteorological modeling because it's pretty damn fascinating. All I can provide is a less "entrenched" view. In no way should my word be taken over Cliff's.

lol.
There's a joke about a land war in asian in here, somewhere.
You should read the accounts of when the Chinese crossed the border into N. Korea during the Korean war, and the first units to encounter the ominous bugling preceding the literal wall of humans that encircled and destroyed the UN units.
Everyone thought they were prepared for Chinese intervention, until they realized that meant a wall of humans with guns rushing toward you over the ground.
1) Taiwan's mettle isn't tested in the slightest. The last war they fought, they lost so badly they had to... well, run to Taiwan.
2) China's active-duty military is literally 1/10th the size of the entire population of Taiwan.
If they can land a good portion of them, Taiwan is done. End of discussion.

Basic game theory.
Taiwan is not fundamentally different than Georgia and Ukraine.
Helping is a different thing than direct military intervention. I do think we'd "help" Taiwan.

Fair :)

Na, it's DP-Alt. Third-party docks can even get the DP-Alt mode to enable after sending a specifically crafted VDM (basically, packet of the CC lines of the USB-C connector- used for Alt mode/PD/USB mode negotiation)

Spot on.

Nothing fast and loose about it. PCs use authentication methods before moving to TB+CIO Alt mode as well (for safety purposes).
This isn't covered under the spec, but is perfectly allowed.

It is shitty behavior, for sure. I'm not justifying it. Fuck them for doing it, in fact. I'm sure they'll come up with a "for safety purposes" excuse. But the spec does not demand that every UFP device allow the connection of every DFP device, and the CC channel exists precisely for that negotiation.

Just disappointing behavior all around. In an era of such good open standards, you'd think they just get rid of that shitty fucking old school vertical integration mentality.

Like my Raspberry Pi? ;)

Other than that- they're not.
I haven't seen any evidence of a compliance problem- but their dock behavior does appear underhanded. They appear to be using some kind of authentication method, but that is perfectly allowed. They complete the necessary parts of the DFP/UFP and PD negotiation. They just seem to be expecting some kind of vendor-specific VDM for "authorization" before they'll enable DP Alt mode, which is again, allowed. But a dick move either way.