There *are* GDPR issues, of course. Consent to process someone else's data can be time limited and is revocable any time. How do you implement that with uncontrolled, unsafe, irrevocable local storage of screenshots? Then there's remote data, supposed to be only SHOWN on your screen, that may be illegal to keep (VPN into corporate network, then opening your corporate Keepass, or camera images from Teams / Zoom / whatever).

I definitely do not want that to happen.

And if I scale this installation (picture in the link you provided) up 10-by-10 (kinda huge now, eh?), I will have 1 GWh capacity, or enough to store the output of ONE halfway recent NPP over ONE hour. The installation looks like it could fit on 50x50 meters, so we'd be talking 500*500 = 0.25 km^2 / 1 GWh.

Germany's electricity consumption (gross) is about 577 TWh/a (before moving to heat pumps for heating btw), and if we wanted to store 1% of that, we'd need 5770 GWh storage capacity, or 1440 km^2 / 0.4% of Germany's land (using the design shown).

Ofc our TOTAL energy consumption is about 3500 TWh/a. And maybe we'd have to find storage for more than 1% of our electrical consumption.

I'm not ruling that out, that sodium-based batteries are feasible, but probably not with this kind of land & resource use.

Next step: Criminalization of the 20-40% of mostly unseen terminations in the first 12 weeks. Will they construct criminal neglect by the woman? We're only one step from preemptively arresting all women (or giving them fanat... eh, "judicial oversight").

Where do those crazies in the legislature and jurisdiction come from?

Is driving around the country, crossing multiple states, really such a thing? I thought that's what planes were there for.
I'd never drive from Germany to Spain (a good 2000 km, which I could do filling up once in the middle with my car, I agree) because that would mean sitting in a car for 21 hours (!). Flight + rental is the obvious choice, even (or especially!) with family.

I just googled the numbers for Germany and the US. Was shocked to find that the number of car thefts in Germany (2021) was 9,805, while the total for the U.S. recently crossed one million (2022). Unbelievable.

Adjusted for the number of cars in both countries, a car is 17 more likely to be stolen in the U.S. than in Germany.

It's actually not that hard to identify Romanian - whenever I believe I've heard some Italian sounding words in a less familiar sounding language, it's Romanian.

I should add that the cumulated happiness will, in fact, be negative: People tend to have uneven utility functions and value losses more strongly than gains.

Nope, Christmas lights make people happy. The cumulated happiness of Bitcoin investors will, at the end, be a net zero.

Maybe in this situation, people will actually read what they receive for a commit instead of the current "Looks ok'ish, here, commit done".

Whenever I see those guys, I wonder if these are really from troll farms (I saw an older pic of many, many cell phones being wired to one PC). But then I remember to "Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice".

That being said, I just keep a list of interesting sources (mostly political/military analysts and journalists), tend to chat a bit within my (automatically generated) echo chamber, and ignore everyone else. I always knew people with exactly my own world view were the only bearable chat partners to begin with anyway.
Wonder what Elon would make out of it. Can't get any worse than today!

Just make better driving assistants mandatory.

My BMW (Driving Assistant Professional) cuts a *significant* amount of risk out of that equation:

* It cuts the reaction time: It alerts the driver with a *very* alerting beeping.
* It brakes by itself (albeit with less than 100%) when you're still not acting.
* It cuts the brake distance by pre-setting the brakes, so every touch of the brake becomes a FULL step on the pedal.

Oh, and it's radar-based, so unlike Tesla, it can see further in the dark,

For a driver in a car like that, the 250 ft is way beyond the real braking distance.

So, for a typically large 10kWp rooftop installation (about 60 m^2), this would generate a baseload of... 3 W. Or the equivalent of 3-4 USD of electricity per year, before subtracting daytimes and accounting for adverse effects on daytime solar efficiency.

It's one of these situations where amortization will never happen.

Yes, there is an industry trying to convince people - but in the end, if you don't understand what you're investing in, it's like jumping from a cliff without knowing if there's water or rock underneath.
Many of my colleagues invest in crypto, but they don't bet any large sums. It's like penny poker to them, a social game they play and chat about when they have some spare time. They are not stupid - they know exactly that they're playing the "Greater Fool" game.

The mortgage crisis was a little different in that investors were relying on a regulated market, though they, too, were just too lazy to look closely at the product they were buying. Which was also true for institutional investors.

I think people just want to spend money on luxury items. And that's ok. Also, I still don't know why multibeam headlights should be subject to much obsolescence, as they usually have no moving parts. In case of a failure of the camera used to control the beams, they will just be regular high beams. In case of failing beams, they will just have a single faulty beam somewhere. If you buy/lease a new car, the obsolescence is usually not a cost factor driving your decision - you're probably not planning on keeping the car forevery, anyway.

Wow, where *are* you? Here, someone would just call the police the if this ever happened, and the car would be confiscated. You'd lose your license, and probably require a psychological exam to be allowed to try and regain it. Your insurance would be void if this caused an accident.
Also, with mandatory car checks every two years, nobody would go through the hassle of even trying. Just not worth it. We have more issues with "invisible" tuning, like electronically controlled, loud exhausts, and - of course - speeding.