When it comes to a lot of metals it is kind of amazing how some of the biggest mines of this stuff are some of the oldest. It makes sense as we go for the low hanging fruit first and they are the biggest deposits.

Alas, as an aggregate, the ratio of overburden on mining has been going up for almost a century now and it is starting to catch up in some materials. Copper, nickle being a big two. Iron... not so much. So far we have managed to 'Red queen' ourselves out of the situation by throwing massive amount of resources (mostly energy), but one does wonder what happens if we even hit an energy plateau. Many have speculated, most are wrong, time will tell.

About a year back here in Australia, so a wealthy country, my local council had the issue where over night, 500 meters of copper water pipe was stolen over night. Have to admit I was kind of impressed at the scale of it.

What I did find interesting in OP's article was the mention of the US Tariffs. I didn't create the problem but it certainly will accelerate it. Interesting times.

As to your Tesla *. I do endless tire of folks who are like "But what if you want to circle the planet!?! Check mate EV dorks!". For 99% of the time they are absolutely fine.

A friend of mine had one as a work car and drove the 940km (580 miles)from Melbourne to Sydney with only a single charge up of $20 half way through, got lunch at the same time. I mean yes if you really stretch it, you could do it on a single tank of fuel on a combustion engine but it would be a tight run. Also to the recharge time, that drive takes about 9 hours if you do not stop. I have never done it in less than 12 hours because you end up having a lot of down time on trips like that. There is plenty of time to charge if needed. Like you say, for the most part these are solved issues.

Always neat to see this kind of stuff however. Very cool.

Alas, it can be taken away without choice, hopefully not.

Yes, we should try and work against this but I am just looking at the silver lining.

The old three envelope joke.

You become CEO and there are three envelopes on your office desk, a note says "Every time there is an issue you open them in order and do what is inside". First envelope says "Blame your predecessor.". The second says "Blame yourself". The third says "Prepare three envelopes".

Cloud is just being the cloud, the AI stuff they are excited on but maybe at the detriment of everything else, Xbox is dying a slow sad death as they are directionless and Windows is just a dump truck for all the more questionable business decisions possible.