throwaway473825

Have you tried the Copenhagen Metro? It has a twin-bore tunnel system that allows 24/7 service with a higher frequency than the New York City Subway. It's cheap to use thanks to the efficiency of driverless trains.

What does Boring Company bring to the table? Tunnel boring machines already exist. Having cars instead of trains just increases the cost of operation.

BankID has been a security nightmare with a lot of fraud. It's relatively easy to get a BankID in someone else's name, which then allows the fraudsters to do anything in your name, including stealing everything you have.[1]

This is a great example of when privatization is a bad idea. Fraud is clearly a loss for the society, but the banks couldn't care less. A more secure solution would cost more for them, and it's someone else who has to carry the burden.

Fortunately, BankID doesn't fulfill the EU's security requirements, so Sweden finally has to make a proper eID, despite the bank-friendly politicians (Sweden is very "pro-business") not wanting to.[2]

[1] https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/uppsala/filippa-lurades-av...

[2] https://www.sweclockers.com/nyhet/37412-statlig-e-legitimati...

What's your concern with Galileo? Many experts consider it to be the best GNSS currently available:[1]

> The US constellation isn’t as accurate as the newer networks, said Roberts, the Sydney-based professor. “It used to be GPS was out in front,” he said. Now, though, the EU’s Galileo is in the lead, with China’s BeiDou close behind, he said.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-20/russia-s-...

Germany has very high taxes on electricity:

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/ber...

It also doesn't help that Germany still uses a lot of gas and coal, the two most expensive common sources of electricity.

Gas heating is heavily subsidized in most European countries:

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/eus-energy-taxa...

When the subsidies are gone - and they will be after Russia's invasion of Ukraine - reality will catch up fast.

There was no shelling before the Russian invasion in 2014.

The point of Signal having end-to-end encryption is to avoid trust. Telegram, on the other hand, relies on trust. Obviously that's going to attract more criticism.

If it's very cold, yes. But the average should still be well above 3:

> Similarly, in Finland, tests of air-to-air heat pump systems from various manufacturers resulted in COPs of 3 at -10C and 2 at -20C.

Source: https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how-the-energy-crisis...

Storage will probably use sodium-ion batteries in the future. Those have none of the four elements you mentioned.

> If Russia had invaded Belarus or Tajikistan instead of Ukraine, I doubt there would have been any real consequences.

You don't need to speculate. There were no real consequences when Russia invaded Georgia, and that's even a democracy, although unfortunately too small to be relevant.

It's also interesting to compare which countries have banned gas in new buildings (the Nordics, the Netherlands) and which countries have draconian surveillance (China, Russia).

Sweden isn't exporting electricity for free. The money is there - it just needs to be redistributed from companies to the people.

Germany has never had competitive gas prices compared to the US or China. Germany competed despite the energy prices (electricity is even more expensive). Since Germany mostly sells premium products, they will probably be fine.

So far automation has only created more jobs. Why would this suddenly change?

Basically nobody uses Google Messages in Europe. Still, if Google breaks the law, there will be consequences.

Western Europe has a lot of immigration and the population is actually increasing. Japan has stagnated for about three decades now.

> EPRs are on the high end.

This is an understatement. The three largest nuclear power reactors in the world (Taishan 1, Taishan 2 and Olkiluoto 3) are all EPRs.

Western countries have the best food security in the world:

https://impact.economist.com/sustainability/project/food-sec...

Brazil didn't abstain.

5G isn't a "Chinese tech", especially not in the US where Huawei is banned.

Many companies will surpass Google's current valuation due to inflation. However, I don't see how Epic could replace Google as the third most valuable tech company. For one, Tencent owns almost half of the company.

Isn't this criticism of Telegram about hate speach rather than encryption? If you wanted to ban encryption, Telegram would be the least of your worries.

Can't speak for the Netherlands, but contactless payments seem to dominate in many European countries: https://www.nets.eu/Media-and-press/news/Pages/The-DACH-regi...

Not necessarily. Apple tried to push small phones (for various reasons). People refused, and Apple had to cave.

No. Given that the link was used as a source, I thought I would see a list of countries where the payment feature is supported.

This is what I see when I click on your link:

> The payments feature on App is not available in this country.

It's still true outside the US.

Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, and they still haven't left. You're right that the same can't be said for NATO, but in a totally different sense.

Almost nobody wants to live in Putin's sphere of influence (for obvious reasons: economy, freedom). While Russia and Belarus are dictatorships, Ukraine is a democracy with free elections. What is there to "talk" about?

Satoshi couldn't care less about a scammer like Craig Wright, assuming Satoshi can move the coins.