My comment about how long you keep a car was more about new buyers who turn over their cars frequently. In this case parts are not an issue as it is under warranty and therefor the importer's problem. Actually here the supply of parts would actually extend well pass the seller's warranty due to our strong consumer protection laws, but that would not be true in the USA.

Again the BEV part is not relevant, it is Chinese part that is relevant. I would share your concerns about some Chinese brands, but Great Wall Motor for example, has been selling well here for over a decade is consider an ok brand. BYD likewise are a reputable brand that have been around a while, they are the makers of the world's fastest production car, the Yangwang U9 Xtreme. From what I can see the junk Chinese brands don't export yet, the brands that can pass the international vehicle standards are the brands that have been around a while and have learn how to do proper engineering and after sales support.

Depends on how long you plan to keep it. However when old enough it could be valid point, BYD simply don't have the history outside of China to say how that will play out. However that has little to do with BEV vs ICEV and more to do with China being a new player in the international market. I would say that BYD have been around for a long time and have been selling BEVs for about the same amount of time as Tesla have. I had a BYD from 2012 to 2014 when I was living China and found BYD easy to deal with back then.

A pretty fair summary of things. Not so sure about "Toyota likes making money, so they'll figure it out." given they are pretty much the most indebted company on the planet and are moving a glacial pace to develop credible BEVs while still loudly shouting how BEVs will fail because hydrogen is the new miracle fuel to will take over real soon now. A shame as they did know how to make solid quality vehicles.

Where the keys pre-shiny so the grease wouldn't show on them when typing while eating KFC?

I doubt it, here in New Zealand you can already by a BYD BEV, with no subsidies, for the same price as the mid model Corolla and save money on running costs from day one. Top be fair maybe Corollas will still be selling well in the USA in 10 years because ..., well because it is the USA. But in the rest of the world the days of the Corolla being a top seller are number already.

I was in Japan for 10 days this September and made a mental note of all the BEVs I saw in Tokyo and Sendai:
4 x Tesla Model 3s being driven on the road.
1 x Porsche Taycan parked at a home.
1 x BYD Atto 3 being driven on the road.
1 x Nissan Leaf or Ariya parked on the side of the road.
1 x Tesla dealership in Sendai.
1 x Nissan display across the road from Tachiyo's hotel in Ginza with a formula-e, an Ariya and a Hyper Force.

No FCEV of any brand or any Toyota or Honda BEVs were noticed. By contrast once back in New Zealand I saw more than 7 BEVs on the 5 minute bus ride between the Auckland International and domestic terminals. I do like Japan but they feel really behind the times when comes to BEVs.

I like the idea of AI but I am uncomfortable with the reality of how it is unfolding.

Learn to code was a reflection of the rise of power of the individual in the 1990s. The mainstreaming of the Internet allow individuals to freely communicate and share ideas. The rise of coding tools like gcc allowed individuals to create new things. The rise of open source allow those individuals to create communities that further improved what individuals could do. All of these things allowed individuals the freedom to create and achieve things they wanted under their own control.

Enter AI. At first you had things like ML where individuals could train with resources at home and potentially create a useful solution to a niche problem. But it then pivoted to AIs being all about LLM using massive resources to create the latest models. The power to do this was only in the hands of corporations with deep pockets. The role of individuals this new vision of AI was to be the consumer. The 'Learn To AI' is just a way to say learning to pick which corporation you will be paying your subscription too.

So I am learning to use AI to ensure I can best understand its current abilities and limitations, but I am not excited to do so. AI had so much promise back when it was science fiction, but the reality today is depressing. I would be interest in replies that see a different path for AI that gives some control back to the individual.

Home is New Zealand, hence the comment about getting away from winter. It is worth noting New Zealand has a poor history for BEV subsidies, they didn't exist when I brought my BEV 5 years ago and we have none currently. Regardless BEVs are pretty common here now.

While in Japan I was really interested to see if I could spot my first FCEV actually moving on a road. I saw none. I didn't mention it in my post as it was possible I had seen one and not noticed it as the Mirai excels in looking boring. I was excited about FCEVs when I first read about them, that was around the time of the first space shuttle launch. I became anti-FCEVs when it looked like they were being used as a tool to delay the uptake of BEVs and to maintain the business model of gas stations. I had until recently believed that there where still niches where fuel cells made sense such as long haul aviation and shipping but from what I hear those too are non-starters. If you look at recent numbers for hydrogen fueling stations and sales of FCEV they appear to be in decline.

I really like Japan and the tech they make. I really enjoyed my trip there and plan to go back next year. Up until 5 years ago all my cars and motorcycles where Japanese, now they are American and British. I would single out the power of one person, Akio Toyoda, for the difficult position Japan is now in. While China was always going to be a threat to Japan with car manufacturing Toyoda really made it easy for China with his stance that ICEV and FCEV were the future and BEVs would never sell.

My statistical sample of one was from 10 days last month mostly in Tokyo. I had picked September in the hope that it would be past the the peak of summer and a chance to get away from the peak of winter here. It was hotter and more humid than I expected and comments from a local I was talking with is it has been a hotter summer than normal. While it didn't have the polluted smell that some big Chinese cities have there was a haze present all the time, enough that I never needed the protection from sunburn I need from summers back home.

The other thing that stood out was the lack of BEVs, I counted 6 of them that I noticed over the entire stay. I had been making a mental note as I was interested in the adoption rate there. By contrast I counted more than that on my 5 minute bus ride from the international terminal to the domestic terminal once back home. On the other hand I loved the train network, used it a lot and it works really well.

For many people I think the solution will be to use the Vegas based player or a Chrome Cast for 'approved' software such as Netflix and a second RPi based LibreELEC player for 'unapproved' stuff. The big tech companies are getting really aggressive these days about stopping you from running anything on their hardware that does not earn them money directly.

I wonder how long until they stop developers offering any free apps that don't include ads they serve without a bogus fee such as a 'security' fee. Google is already using 'security' as an excuse to block the install of apps and add ons they don't like, such as ad blockers.

You must have got lucky and not had the enshitification updates yet. I brought one, it was great, start the sideloaded app, it ran fast and reliably. Turn off the TV and when you turned if back on the app was still running. Magic, I brought 4 more, they worked great too.

Then came the first enshitification update. Now when you turn of the TV it has returned to the Amazon home screen and you had to navigate to the app and relaunch it everytime.

Then came the second enshitification update. Now when you turn of the TV it has returned to the Amazon home screen and play loud adverts for Amazon services until you gave it attention.

Then came the third enshitification update. Now the app would lock up periodically, more often over time. That was the straw that broke its back. They where no longer fit for purpose.

Replaced them with 2GB RPi4s with a PoE hat and set up to PXE boot LibreELEC from the NAS. Reused the Fire TV remotes with them. Makes for rock solid solution open source solution free from enshitification updates.

It is not really clear if they are selling i.e DRM free, or renting i.e. DRM infested books. As best I can tell they will still have DRM, just not Amazon's, so you can't really buy the book, only rent them for an unknown period of time.

My money is on Kodi not being able to run on it. 1GB sounds pretty light on memory these days when working with video.

The Android Fire TV had become so enshitified it was useless and all that hardware has been retired here. So they are offering a pre-enshitified product. Based on Amazon's track record with Fire TV anyone who buys it deserves what they will receive.

Depends on the time of year and thickness of clouds. I can fully charge the house much of the year even with all day cloud if the cloud is not the thicker storm clouds. In winter with the short days and thicker cloud then will be days when I get less than 14kWh in a day. Hence the desire to get my wind turbine online as there is plenty of wind on many, but not all, of those cloudy winter days.

I'm not claiming a 100% 24/7/365 solution, if it could do that I would go off-grid and save myself the daily grid connection charge. However it as been 100% so far and I expect it to be way past 90% over the rest of my life time. Worse case if the power is off too long I shutdown my servers until the grid is back online or the sun shines.