Even worse? Senior devs that are confidently incorrect but are trusted completely because they created an “amazing” VBA macro for Excel 97 once.

Id2 is the actual successor. It’s planned to be the first VW “affordable” EV with a starting price below 25000 euros when it releases in 2025. At least they now try to target the budget market, but I’d never recommend a VW. They have done so much bad quality cars since the late 90s…

Laying even 10 times the cable should not be more difficult when you have 60 times the total population (335mio in US vs 5.6mio in Finland) and hence more resources.

And sure, Alaska definitely it’s expensive and inefficient to service, having a pop density of about 0.5 inhabitants per km². But unlike Northern Finland, most of Northern Alaska is in fact entirely void of human life and more akin to a desert. There really mostly are a handful of oil industry clusters and native communities. And still, the extremely low pop density means it’s only 730 000 people living in Alaska. That is 0.2% of the entire population of the USA. If you were to completely ignore and not service Alaska, you should have a an even easier time providing service to the vast majority of the US population in all the main states. I think it’s pretty clear this is a political failure and not a matter of financial resources or natural obstacles.

You are absolutely correct that distribution matters. However, Finland has an even more uneven population distribution than the US. 75% of the population lives in the costal cities, with 30% of the entire population living in the capital region( density of 193 persons/km²). The entire rest of the country is not empty dessert ( which would require no services), but very sparsely populated rural woodlands, down to 2 people per km².

Density still is an overall useful quantifier given that extra knowledge, as providing services for a small population of only 5.6mio inhabitants is not easy either. Sure, providing coverage for the 75% in the cities is fairly easy. But that still leaves 1.5mio rural residents, which require huge investments in cable to supply with broadband. And due to the vast distances, you definitely cannot cover them with wireless alone, if you were thinking that.

Finland is not a small country compared to its population density and distribution.

Finland has 18 inhabitants per km².

USA have 35 inhabitants per km².

What’s your source on the reverify thing? I use matrix a lot, and this hasn’t been an issue I ever experienced anymore since they introduced cross-signing a couple years ago.

Same goes for the common clients such as element. It has been clunky in the past, but after the past major overhauls ( also years ago now) everything has been silky smooth for me, if not better than others. The one thing left I prefer from Signal is the one-time photo share.

Matrix is great, clients are great too, only the server part still is annoyingly complicated and messy. Would only recommend that for tinkerers, on that case it’s a great path to learning about the complexity of addressing lots of security concerns that others gloss over.

Edit: to add - there’s a reason why the French government and the German military decided to build their secure internal IM infrastructure on Matrix. Obviously they are hosting their own private network, but if the concept is good enough for European government and military, it is an indicator for quality especially in terms of security and privacy.

Absolutely true, but that still does not make phev the universal solution to climate friendly transportation :) .

It’s more of an awkward stop gap measure. It’s expensive and complex to make and maintain (!) and only really profitable for manufacturers due to subsidies as well.

That makes no sense. The electric motors are an entirely different, separate system from the ICE. As such, using the e-drive will not heat up or spin the pistons in the ICE at all.

The ICE is only connected to a generator to charge the battery while driving, thus providing extra charge for more range and/or peak torque/speed.

I wasn’t talking about auto stop/start at all?

It also has no bearing on what I was talking about. Start/stop automatic triggers when the vehicle is stopped, but only if the engine is warm already. This is exactly for the same reason as I pointed out above: starting a cold engine is bad. Starting an engine that is already close to its operating temperature takes very little effort and puts very little strain on the system.

Even if used “properly”, plug-in hybrids are a bad idea:

They are more complex than either a pure ICE or electric vehicle would be.

When used properly, the ICE plug-in will only activate during high load phases, e.g. highway travel. However, the engine at that point will be effectively cold-starting. Not only is thus the least efficient phase of generating energy from fuel, it also means the engine oil is not warm and fluid yet. This necessitates more expensive, less durable low viscosity engine oil. Also, engines deteriorate much quicker during irregular usage, especially during cold starts.

There’s really no upside except getting government subsidies whenever the lobbies manage to get their Plugin-Hybrid qualified for it.

How do you deal with all the pee splatter? Or do you piss on the sink? Or are you a dwarf?

Pissing while standing is only ok when a proper urinal is available. Pissing in toilet while standing imparts too much kinetic energy on the pee, causing violent splashing. Yes, even if you aim at an angle. And aim will always falter at the end anyway with decreasing water pressure…