I didn't really go into the amperage of the circuit, just the voltage since it didn't seem like it really had to be a whole thing. As another poster pointed out though, in a kitchen, you're typically going to have 16 Amp circuits in the Europe these days, just like kitchens in the US should ideally have 20 amp circuits in kitchens. From my experience of Europe and the US though, more European houses seem to have updated electrical than US homes. That might just be my impression though. For new homes in either region, you should expect 20 Amp in the US and 16 Amp in kitchen outlets. So that's considerably more power available typically in Europe. Also, I think 6 amp electrical outlets are pretty rare in Europe these days.

Of course, as far as electric kettles go, you're right that a well designed electric kettle should work well enough in the US. So, it could be more a cultural thing. Of course, it could be typical US reluctance to design things well. I'm not entirely joking when I note that the US seems to almost have a grudge against the concept of efficiency in designing things. I am thinking, for example, of things like water-efficient toilets. The typical approach taken in the US for many years as far as I could see was to simply ignore anything resembling engineering principles and just take an existing toilet design and give it a smaller tank while rejecting ideas like having buttons with two flush levels, etc. Of course, the idea that it's because of some sort of cultural attitude might be wrong. It occurs to me that maybe intellectual property law is to blame. Maybe there were actually patents on the various methods of making water-efficient toilets actually work well and no-one wanted to pay to license the patents. Maybe the same thing was an issue for things like electric kettles. I would not be surprised if he insane patent regime would grant patents for brain-dead simple ideas like putting the heating elements in the water itself so that half the heat isn't wasted, etc.

So, I guess in the end it's not clear why electric kettles never really caught on in the US.

I don't think they were filtering the light, rather they were filtering out the voltage leakage of the CCDs.

The hallucination issue crops up in the AGI models, like ChatGTP, where a digital system is attempting to reproduce a chaotic analog system (yes, I know the terminology isn't exact) and is trained while including the garbage data that analog system produces. When AI is trained on strictly digital data with definite limits on inputs/outputs is where it shines. That's why an AI can teach a robot how to unload a truck, make a latte, or in this case sharpen an image.

AI has its place, and is revolutionizing the workplace as we speak. Just watch the YouTube vids of food factory automation, they're amazing, they can pick up and box frelling croissants without creating a crumb, and all those robots use an AI trained on the strictly limited data of that section of the job. The packing bot doesn't need to know anything about palletizing, and the pallet bot doesn't know anything about packing. If you were to train the AIs on every step of the process you'll end up with a garbage process which might even hallucinate that the croissants need to be stacked on the pallets.

It's the old KISS rule, Keep It Simple Stupid.

Another issue is the lack of affordable public charging. Especially here in Europe with our sky high petrol excise, an EV might be a bit more expensive to purchase but a lot cheaper to run than an IC car. If you can charge at home, that is. Charging at a public charger can be twice as expensive, and if you're forced to use a fast charger it's even more. That changes the economics of EVs rather a lot.

Political partisan bias has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that often " when you click through to the linked reference page, you often find information that directly contradicts what the AI summary is telling you." That happens because the AI has no real understanding of the material and does not understand what the reference material is actually saying.

You mean like Mecha Hitler?

Even if and when that actually happens, that is still a failing of the AI. I don't know if you've noticed this, but Wikipedia entries tend to have extensive citations. A standard part of an academic citation of a source that might change, such as a web page, is to note when the page was accessed. Wikipedia pages have extensive records of edits and you can find out what the page was actually like when accessed on a particular day. Current LLMs do not produce anything remotely resembling proper citations.

It is different in the US because US homes use half the voltage so the same volume of water can be heated a lot faster with European residential current. There may be other cultural reasons as well, but electric kettles are simply more convenient in Europe.

It looks like it may be more than just this. I think one problem is that the summary and TFA seem to be generalizing about all PHEVs. I don't know if the actual report does. The problem seems to be that many PHEVs sound like they are greenwashing to a certain degree. The idea they promote is that the vehicle functions like a BEV while it has battery charge and like a hybrid the rest of the time but, really, it uses the combustion engine a significant portion of the time even when it is supposed to act like a BEV because the EV parts of it are too low spec and can't actually keep up with driving conditions. This is a problem with a lot of hybrids in general. The electric components are token electric.

So, basically many drivers end up with a PHEV that, whether they keep it charged or not, can not act like a BEV. Even with an unlimited source of electricity, it would not be able to hold up to normal driving conditions without the ICE engine. So it seems like a lot of them may really be scams intended to deceive customers into thinking their vehicle is something that it is not. There may be some PHEVs that function as customers expect, but not enough of them.

I hope that doesn't mean the modern game system experience.
80s console: Turn on, 5 seconds later the game is ready to play.
Modern gaming conveniences: Turn on, wait 30 minutes for the console to patch, then another 30 while the game pulls in a 1 GB update.

Dunno about other countries, but in Peru at least Nescafe is made with local Peruvian beans so it's definitely better than in the US.

My wife is Peruvian and we fill our suitcases with coffee from Cusco and Quillabamba on the way back. The way to make coffee there is they have a small pot with what looks like a small tin can on the top with holes in the bottom. Fill the can halfway with coffee, pour boiling water over it, and let it drip into the little pot. Do that two or three times, depending on how strong you want and how much you filled the can. Now put hot water in your cup and pour the coffee concentrate you've extracted into it.

Heaven

Poster name fits.

Or Iran. Or Somalia. Or Yemen. Or maybe just give the weapons away to someone else who can use them to commit more war crimes for us.

More like Loser: North Korea AND South Korea AND world stock markets. They could flatten Seoul in about 20 minutes with the dug-in and pre-aimed artillery they've had next to the border since the armistice, which is probably the only reason that the South hasn't invaded yet. Imagine the effect on the NYSE of Hyundai, Samsung, Kia and LG instantaneously decapitated.

It likely won't be any worse than the humans at the Pentagram have done over the last 80 years. The only place that we definitively "won" in that whole time is Grenada, when the "opponent" was around 50 Cuban engineers extending runways for the tourist trade. We've had some pretty dramatic losses though, including to a bunch of goat herders with 40 year old Kalashnikovs.