Practically speaking, you're probably not going to get 1000s of years out of any storage method. There's just too much stuff that breaks down.

Heck - a lot of historic dams are in the low hundreds of years old and are experiencing serious problems.

IMO, the shorter lifespan of batteries isn't that big of a downside as long as the "bad" batteries can be mined for raw materials eventually.

That is such a genius solution!

From the root level comment in this thread:

> Student test scores have worsened more than in other Scandinavian countries, and critics of the government say there are too many boondoggle tunnels and bridges to nowhere.

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> More importantly, what suggests that people are becoming less capable in an irreversible way? If people are less capable, but it is reversible, then wealth can fix it.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that this trend is irreversible.

But big trends like this can be difficult to turn around - if it were easy, the trend wouldn't have happened in the first place (or, at least, it wouldn't have been detectable).

> If people are less capable, but it is reversible, then wealth can fix it. As you said, you can use wealth to get other people to become more capable.

You can't just say "wealth will do x". That's really a semantic shortcut for saying "people will do x". But presumably people are already trying to improve the countries test scores. And people are already trying (at least to a certain extent) to spend government funds wisely. I'm not really sure how wealth will change what's currently occurring.

That may be a reasonable take at the level of an individual. But it's nonsense at the level of a country.

Wealth is the ability to get other people to do things. But if everyone is becoming less capable, then that's not a problem that wealth can fix.

Outsourcing may be a temporary solution to his problem, but I don't see it working well long term.

Precisely.

And on top of that some jewelry stores are worried that customers would consider a below wholesale offer to be insulting, so they often refuse to buy piece back at all.

Some people are very responsible with money - they have an emergency fund, contribute to their retirement fund, and don't carry a credit card balance.

Other people (who have a choice) spend to 0 every month, don't save, and have maxed out credit cards.

In the same way, some people drive very safely; they keep a responsible distance between them and the driver in front of them, and don't tend to speed much. I think this style of driving would naturally lead to what you say - less use of friction breaks in general, and especially at highway speeds.

And other people are constantly speeding, and tailgate the person in front of them when their path is blocked. For the people who drive this way, the greater acceleration of EVs just lets them drive that much more recklessly. Which ends up necessitating even more usage of friction brakes.

The number that I've seen bandied about is ~20% greater tire wear.

Objectively, I don't think this is accurate.

Most people who are overweight got that way slowly.

Dr Mike[1]'s theory is that modern processed food is to blame - not because it's unhealthy, but because it's too tasty. Companies that make food are in an evolutionary arms race with other companies to get consumers to choose their products. And one of the best ways to do that is to make the food as tasty as possible.

Another things many companies probably try to optimize their food for is low satiety[2]. That way consumers consume, and therefore buy, more of their products.

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1. From Renaissance Periodization

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satiety_value

It comes up from time to time if you watch Uber driver videos. There's a reason why many drivers have a camera that records the interior of the car: alcohol + entitlement can manifest in many ways.

Most commonly, passengers cancel the ride and expect to be driven to their destination anyways. But worse stuff happens from time to time.

There are lots of small operators, so I doubt that there's some industry wide list.

But there are only a few large operators. I'd be shocked if some of them didn't share info.

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1. Yes, I understand that these features were present in other phones, but the SE was the last phone actively sold by Apple that had them

I don't now if it's better, but it is different.

The benefit to the utility in this case is much lower capex - it's basically like the restaurant franchise model, but for power.

But like you imply, there's a tradeoff that can be made between capex and opex - in this case, the utility could own everything and consumers could pay for electricity on an ongoing basis. IMO, this model is superior due to reduced principal-agent problems.

I want to see a picture of that.

Apparently 1 kw fits on an extended box van [1]. But I don't now how you'd do it on a wagon without making it look like some sort of Burning Man art car.

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1. https://www.reddit.com/r/vandwellers/comments/1dpcxu4/if_any...

This isn't a profitable move from Apple's perspective - they try to keep the base unit at about the same price across generations. That's what happened when they moved from 8 GB of ram to 16 GB.

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1. https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage/resources/hard-drive...

For what it's worth, I completely agree with you.

But.

I suspect that Apple isn't solely doing this for profit. Apple's pricing structure aggressively funnels people into the base config for each CPU.

Thinking about getting an M4 with upgraded ram? A base config M4 pro starts to look pretty good.

In practice, this means that Apple's logistics is dramatically simplified since 95% of people are ordering a small number of SKUs.

> There's profit, and there's actively making your entire product experience worse in pursuit of profit.

It was really egregious when the base config only came with 8 GB of ram. I'll admit that storage can be a bit tight depending on what you're trying to do, but at least external storage is an option, however ugly and/or inconvenient it may be for some.

I mean, that's how it works for most websites. I think I have 2FA turned on for FB, but honestly the phone system is way less secure than email at Google/Microsoft.

And depressingly, even that isn't true - states are plagued with the principal-agent problem[1], as is basically every organization.

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1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...

Nah - the correct comparison is to an employee/contractor software developer. Copyright assignment is industry standard.

Most actors get paid either a fixed fee or hourly. It's only the top talent that can negotiate points. And honestly, that's pretty good for the producers, since that decreases their risk if the TV show or movie doesn't do well.

> If you hire a photographer for a wedding, you will pay him the same rate as a contract developer. But you won't own the rights to the photos and keep having to pay the guy if you want copies.

This part is so weird to me. But I honestly suspect that most photography customers don't care so much about owning the rights to the photograph they pay for, as long as they can use it how they want. And over time, the norm gradually became baked into the industry.