Part of it is the way the new company operates; the senior engineers are communicating with production staff (likely in India, Eastern Europe, and lower cost US cities), but the junior engineers aren't working directy with them on projects (to build rapport). Specific questions get answered, but the shoulder surfing doesn't happen, and that is really where the small lessons (that matter) happen.

You could try to create more formal training opportunities, but the things that are directly applicable to what you are doing [wrong] are significantly better ROI.

I retired last year and was back visiting my old partners recently; the company was recently acquired but there is minimal change so far.

The office has half the people working on-site on the "anchor" days. One project manager has his personal laptop on the desk in addition to the company laptop and is clearly doing "other things" during the day. Most of the people in the office are more junior, mainly there for the social aspect. Turnover is slowly increasing, but it is hard to see the trend from the cycles. Hybrid work is eating away at training since senior engineers spend the least time in the office.

All that said, profitability is up for now. Long term is where the big question marks are.

Given the complete lack of meaningful data, the current state sounds much more like UL making the problem out to be larger than it is, for the testing fees. That isn't to say there is no concern (or active problem), but the way it is being discussed is non-productive. Air transport safety rates are on the order of 6-9's. For batteries to be a problem there needs to be a failure rate of about 1 - 10^8.

There are about 1 billion air passengers per year in the US, so expecting 100 battery incidents per year does not seem surprising. If that meant 1 plane falling out of the sky per year it would be something, but current regulations seem to work. Beyond that we need better education, like what to do if your battery bank is acting up and you are flying.

While the metric "installed capacity" has merit, when looking at the big picture capacity factor should be taken into account. 75% x 20% CF = 15.6 vs 25% x 90% CF = 22.5, so non solar sources added are still capable of more energy generation.

How much of that corn you see is being grown for ethanol? Likely almost all... as in a negative energy proposition. Grid scale PV on agricultural land is stupid, but smaller scale agrovoltaics makes sense. Really though the focus should be on rooftop solar and getting as much solar as possible on other imperviable surfaces.

...but still the Democrats are unable to raise any effective opposition.

I know a farmer that has leases on three wind turbines on his land; he said the income was roughly equal to his average net profit from farming operations. Oh, and his crops are worth less than his break-even point with the tariffs. Still a loyal Republican.

I'm curious just how bad it would have to be for the Republicans to lose at this point.

If a PDF isn't fixed then you might as well go back to screenshots. Seems absurd to not make this a .pdf2 or something where standard .pdf's can be reliably considered a reference document.

It is a crisis in terms of funding and building replacement lines. 30 years and a ~50 year economic service life means you need to be spending enough to replace at least 2% of lines per year, assuming prioritization is efficient. If it isn't efficient then it is closer to 3.5-4% per year. The situation is quite similar to bridges in the US.

Ultimately, once the water gets mixed with salt it is "lost" and being an island that is pretty easy to do.

Locally it is becoming a big question. The police maintain that sensitive/personally identifiable information is included in the transmissions and therefore access needs to be restricted. Encouraging out-of-band communication for that ends up pushing OOB for other things and it becomes a slippery slope. Locally they are trying to solve it where (certified) media has access to one talk group... but then you have issues like the current federal pressure on the media to limit reporting on some things.

And then you have Apple, who will likely have to increase prices for extra 4GB from $200 to $400.

Yeah, losing de minimus kills a number of little DIY electronics projects for me. It just is not worth the pain. Make American Stupid Again.

Utility profit margins are regulated, not energy costs. When generation cost goes up (for the last incremental MWH), your rates go up by that much plus the utility's margin. When a utility makes a capital investment they apply for a rate case with regulators to increase their profit margin. Win-win for the utility company.

The California PUC requires large consumers to pay their connection costs-- line and substation upgrades for starters. Paying for generation upgrades as well is a pretty easy provision to force as well.

What it will ultimately do though is combine (or at least couple) combined cycle turbines with data centers for the majority of capacity. Expect big rushes to build data centers on Indian reservations and states with lax emissions regulations.

A few things for sure. Ostensibly, Norway has a diversified economy, but the dominant driver for soverign wealth really is oil. They have insanely high taxes-- a beer is $15 at a bar or $7 in the government monopoly liquor store. They do a good job with housing though, keeping costs quite affordable.

They import a lot of workers who end up paying additional taxes to fund the government and growth, but hard to really tell how sustainable that is.

Presumably the DoD is specifically who they are interested in. For anybody else, paying a 20% premium over Apple would be idiotic, especially as you go up in specifications. They you get beyond the hardware and have to ask what software is actually going to run on it and would that meet the same "security" guidelines.

Personally I am all for the US improving their ability to source full supply chains for critical goods domestically, although it would be much more efficient to look at it with allies, and could also improve redundancy. But you really need seed customers that are willing to pay a premium to make it happen and tariffs aren't the right tool for it.