I think they're going too far as soon as they're making medical claims without some sort of medical certification. And on their residential product page, they specifically say that their air purifiers were "Developed to address COVID-19", and in their FAQ, they say "The powerful ISO-Aire filtration system was purpose-built to address COVID-19 and other droplet and/or airborne-based infections in healthcare settings."

They repeatedly mention the CDC on their website, and in most places just word it along the lines of the CDC recommending medical-grade HEPA filtration as a strategy. However, on their "Why Iso-Aire" page, they word it as "CDC and ASHRAE recommended in purifying the air with medical-grade HEPA filtration, a key mitigation strategy in the fight against COVID-19" which implies that their produces specifically are recommended by the CDC, which they are not.

I think it's also a case of picking the endpoints to suit your narrative.

Because big things happened between 2005 and 2025, namely the iPhone and the economy behind it that lead to Android and it basically wiping out all the traditional cellphone companies like BlackBerry and Nokia and such and turning the US into a mobile powerhouse, a position formerly held by Europe and Japan.

And it's also excluding the effects of Trump on the economy - the numbers are looking bad enough that they US government has to censor them - the GDP is being "recalculated" and the head of the BLS fired for not reporting the "right numbers".

Europe might be losing, but it seems the US is giving the world a few years to catch up.

I've seen many companies use a @gmail.com address. It's rather shocking how many will have a website and then email from hotmail, gmail, yahoo or other site.

If you're paying Microsoft to host your email on M365, you can probably pay for a domain.

should steal more ideas from Denmark. Not land.

But if you don't tax books, where will the money the government needs to rewards the billionaires come from?

Books are often exempt from sales tax though - I know in BC, we don't generally pay PST on books. We still have to pay the GST though.

240V outlets are not required to charge EVs, but are there any US homes that do not have at least 240V?

I would say many would have maybe 1x 240V outlet in their laundry room, for the dryer....unless they just do a gas dryer, etc....

But other than that...that's just usually the only one in the house that I've ever seen.

Exactly, it's a stupid narrative because for a lot of people, 120V charging is perfectly fine. And we really should be pushing for more 120V outlets in parking lots at offices and such - because it's far easier to install a bank of 120V outlets than 240V ones. If your car is parking for hours on end, 120V is adequate for home and work. And it should be much easier to run a bunch of 120V outlets to parking spaces at apartment buildings.

240V might be useful for more itinerant traffic that spends an hour or two - a supermarket or shopping mall, for example.

But for a remarkably large number of people, 120V is adequate, and not having a garage to charge is solved with an extension cord. They even come in outdoor ratings.

The UK has funny regulations regarding EV plugs - you would think since they have 240V that people would just use the wall sockets but it seems not.

The only times 120V might not be suitable is if you have a horrendously long commute, go on daily road trips, or have one of those monster cars they also make in EV form factor.

The Pro-EV crowd really needs to push the point that EVs can charge from regular wall outlets and your lifestyle probably suits that just fine.

Because quantum annealers haven't shown anything to the effect? I mean they can impressive demonstrations, but a classical computer can do the same demonstration faster and likely more efficiently.

We can see the future with quantum computing that there will be certain operations that a QC can do that will beat a classical computer. The only question that remains in quantum computing is can we get there and how long it will take.

We can't say the same with quantum annealing - we can't even prove there is something a quantum annealer can do that will beat a classical computer doing the same task. We've seen some impressive demos, but they usually fail when you compare a contemporary classical computer could've done the same thing in a similar or less amount of time.

And we may be making tremendous progress with quantum computing, yet the days when even 2048 bit RSA falls seems ever distant still (I think we can classically brute force 1024 bit nowadays).

Honestly, I miss the days of skeumorphism. Sure the felt and leather was excessive, but to me it gave texture and depth to things. At the very least it also got rid of the whole hiding controls because they're just blocks of text look by replacing them with buttons that look like buttons.

Plus the faux 3D shading and everything. Granted, the current design probably makes things a bit easier to find on the screen but I do miss the textures and such.

True, but often those words are simply not used because there are better words out there that aren't offensive to use and are much more meaningful.

Like your impromptu meeting - impromptu is a hard word, but it can also be called a gathering, or hallway meeting. If you went for coffee, a coffee klatch.

It's like using words "master" and "slave" when referring to things that don't have such a relationship (primary and secondary, for example).

So it's less "take offence" and more "update your vocabulary" with more accurate terms that mean the same thing. Heck, a "campfire meeting" works just fine.

To be honest, I don't think I've heard of a powwow meeting since the 80s. Even circling the wagons isn't something I've really thought of since the 90s. So maybe less people take offence and more outmoded and boomer terminology.

Or you could just call it a "meeting". Because it's still a meeting, regardless if it happens at your cube, on Teams or Zoom or in a special room designed for them. And sometimes with people with wall to wall meetings, you can only meet with them between meetings.

If you look at Iso-Aire's website, they're going way beyond the definition of MERV and claiming that their products were "developed to address COVID-19". Most air purifiers will just make a claim about capturing X% of particles of Y micron size.

There is almost no scenario where the initial cost to put things into orbit, and the increased cost to build them to exist there, maintain and support them there, and replace them when they fail is ever paid back by the efficiency gain in having it there though.

Unless you've got essentially unlimited free energy to put things into orbit ... but if you have that you probably don't need space solar panels in the first place.

I did say "all the reputable ones". I've never heard of "Iso-Aire", and none of their products are available for sale in any major retailer that I can find. Or any minor retailers either, from what I can tell.

I bought my air purifiers to get dust and shit out of the air, not viruses. None of the marketing on the air purifiers said anything about viruses or infections, in my experience the vast majority of air purifiers (certainly all the reputable ones) make no medical claims. At most they'll talk about what percentage of what size of particles they'll remove from the air. So what part of them is a scam?

They relied on their AI summary instead.

Yeah, that's a big one. Indoor air quality is often worse than outdoors for many reasons - including VOCs caused by offgassing of things. You buy a new couch, it's made with new materials and things like varnishes and waxes and coatings and that stuff off-gasses into the air. And your house generally doesn't have much air circulation - the whole point of the indoors is generally to keep the outdoors outside, so the stuff accumulates inside in a closed space.

And dust is composed of human dead skin cells that have flaked off, plus other things like paper flecks and such.

Finally CO2 can build up in doors - the Netherlands has installed CO2 sensors in every classroom with the explicit instructions that if they go off, the teacher must immediately open the outside windows. The CO2 sensors go off after CO2 reaches 1000PPM (current outdoor atmosphere is around 420 PPM). At 1000PPM you feel sluggish, groggy and generally unwell.

Indoor air quality can be quite bad. The air cleaners help in cleaning up most of the crap (they can't really do anything about the CO2). But it's also why we generally regard going outdoors as "getting some fresh air". Even though it can be hard with climate change causing wildfires, CO2 emissions hurtling the levels of CO2, etc.

So yeah, every little bit helps in cleaning the air. As does opening a window if you can when the weather isn't too hot or cold or filled with smoke or smog so you can get rid of the dirty indoor air and replace it with fresher air. It's a shame that while many commercial buildings have provisions for bringing in fresh air from outside, homes don't geneally have such facilities as part of the HVAC.

It doesn't, actually. The official description from the IEC says:

Emphasis mine. The standard test for IPX7 is submersion in still water to a depth of 1 meter for 30 minutes. IPX8 is "better than that". Apple, Google, Samsung, etc. all define how much better on their own. CNBC has an excellent video explainer on what exactly all this means.

These companies are designing to protect against people dropping their phone in the toilet, or maybe a kiddie pool. And yeah, as called out in the CNBC video, the advertising is very deceptive and unfair.