Here, we have to differentiate two things. First, what you can trust, and here i agree with you. And second, what you can claim. And just because I should not believe you in the first place, does not give you the right to claim false things about someone else.

You are still guilty of libel, and as the court decided, the false claims were not in the links, but hallucinated by the AI. And because Google coded the AI and operated the AI, its products are products of Google, and Google can not claim that they are just reporting about libelous claims as they could have argued with unredacted search results, they just linked to.

Obviously pious concerns about fraud are...not...the motivating force here; but I'm curious where on the scale from 'secondary but real' to 'frankly absurd' the burner-powered fraudsters actually live.

It's not like bad prepaid phones are expensive; but, especially if you are actually burning them with any frequency, they aren't really cheap unless you are doing some sort of scamming rather more lucrative than spamming people about nonexistent aftermarket warranties with sub 1% response rates. Are actual SIMs, or even actual phones, remotely competitive with the VOIP equivalent of bulletproof hosting if you want an in to the phone network?

In a similar vein; what's the breakdown of phone-using criminals between people who actually go to the counter and pay cash, where the FCC now wants them carded, vs. the various PO box companies that tend to show up on weird phone charges? It's not a surprise that they are running with the excuse; but the idea that telcom enabled crime is actually substantially the domain of something as clunky as burner phones/SIMs, rather than more efficient services that nobody cares enough to chase down, seems very implausible.

Apple has not the size to forego 400 million potential customers. And they can still sell iPhones without Siri in Europe. Hence, the shareholders will pressure Apple management to realize the revenue, even if that means not installing Siri on the devices.

Besides that, many companies operating in both North America and Europe want the same mobile devices on both sides of the pond, to streamline roll-out and control processes for the devices, and if they decided for Apple in the U.S., they will try to strong-arm Apple into selling law-compliant devices in Europe, by threatening to look for alternatives for North America too, so they can avoid doubling their IT structures.

I don't claim any different.

You mean countries who had escaped Russia's grasp asked to join NATO so they wouldn't get invaded by Russia. Fear of Russia made the Baltics ask to join NATO. And of course, Russia then invaded Ukraine, a country not in NATO, showing the Baltics were right to be worried. On top of that, to invade Ukraine and then continue its car with Ukraine, Russia had to remove troops along the borders with NATO countries, showing that the Russian government, for all its claims otherwise, understands that NATO is not a threat to Russia except in so far as it stands in the way of the Russia government's imperialist ambitions.

As I have used an EV, I can safely confirm it causes less pain.

Basically any service you can think of only costs as much as it does because there are limits to how much quality and reliability it actually promises. Electrical utilities tend to keep the grid pretty stable most of the time; if you want better than that you end up talking to Eaton or similar and running increasingly involved onsite equipment; just as people who want internet access to be very reliable rather than mostly reliable end up buying redundant links.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are cases where it would make sense for the utility to operate and sell the additional reliability, rather than the customer DIYing it, whether because there are grid topology things they can do to get the result more effectively or just because they have greater experience with alarming AC gear; but that would be a tier above the standard offering, not a concession that it's reasonable to run the entire grid at the level of the worst-case customers.

You could get into the same argument about water. Hospitals and precision chemistry applications often have fairly elaborate onsite setups to provide sterile or ultra low ion water for their particular requirements because that's not the standard to which utility water is normally held. In theory you could shuffle around ownership and responsibility for the additional processing steps, and in some cases it might even make sense; but it's not terribly compelling to run the entire water system as though it is being piped into a burn ward or a chip fab; and, at least in agricultural areas, there's often another tier below the 'standard' for non-potable irrigation where you can worry less about microbe counts and whether there's matching sewer capacity because it's just getting sprayed on fields.

The ICE industry seems to be full of lies. Every proponent will tell you internal combustion engine is the best thing in the world, but they won't tell you the pain they go through just to go on a trip. Then they tell you the flying car is coming. Apparently it isn't.

I don't get it. Governments require many things, and most of them are to be bought privately.

I never had any issues handing my children a lighter. None of them became an arsonist, not even an accidental one. Make lighting a lighter the most boring thing to do, and they will use one only to perform some boring task.

I suspect it's a straightforward incentives problem. If you can get away with making it the grid's problem there's not much incentive to pay for more expensive facility power setups. Presumably this is why ERCOT is testing current and prospective customers and making noise about it; and why there are at least some standards for how ill-behaved a load can be while still being allowed to hook up; with some awkward interactions between very large sites that also have the ability to shut down rapidly at relatively low cost. If you are 'mining' crypto you presumably prefer the gear to be online because it is depreciating by the minute regardless; but the risk and inconvenience of shutting it down and booting it up again isn't particularly dramatic compared to having to cold start an aluminum smelter or something.

⦠which is comically high for the U.S., but not anywhere else. As soon as there is a sizeable market for used EVs, the prices stabilize. Until a year ago, used EVs on offer were either first gen types long superseded, or EVs with extremely high mileage of 150,000 miles or more, which indeed did not sell well. Right now, this changes at least in the E.U., and resale values increase.

I'm sure that there are worse options, probably being actively considered since this is no longer getting them what they want; but an opaque 'public/private partnership' slush fund that spends its time slathering a thin layer of dubious military justification on random projects seems like a very, very, dodgy way of doing things.

...a lot of people online were saying there was an upcoming event called The Halvening that would change everything.

I guess this is it?

This is a 30 year old module. It was originally made for MIR and has now been in space for 25 years. Even good engineering is in space is going to start having leaks at that point. Space is really hard.