Indeed, I seem to recall that a germanium diode had a ~0.2V forward voltage drop which made them better in rectifiers and such than the silicon diodes with ~0.6V. At high currents, that voltage drop means less power wasted by the device. With transistors, that means a much lower base open voltage, though I don't remember exactly why or if that was useful...

That's plain wrong. All else being equal, AWD is always faster off the line because you are usually traction limited at launch, and AWD allows you to hook up all your tires when you dump the clutch. They are slower afterwards because of the extra weight and drivetrain losses, but no doubt they can take off like a bat outta hell from a full stop.

All the laws about mandating electronic records need a provision that forbids all entities that handle the data from "exporting" it overseas in any way. Whether that is storage or processing or analysis, do not send my data overseas. Period. The same standard should be retroactively applied to bank records, credit data and the like.