> Without renters there would be no housing Ponzi scheme
If by "housing Ponzi scheme" you mean house prices increasing then this isn't necessarily true.
Even in a world where private renting was illegal and people were forced to choose between home ownership and homelessness, house prices could increase over time because of restricted supply, increased populated and wage growth.
Obviously if Co-op were negligent in their handling of member data they're also guilty of something. But even the best organisations have some level of exposure to phishing related attacks.
We recently experienced a cyber incident where malicious third parties attempted to access our systems. As part of this, data was extracted from one of our systems.
I am not sure victim blaming is really an issue given this applies to the hyper-rational world of corporations.
One of the problems with victim blaming is that it typically ignores power dynamics at play and blames the powerless. I think the coop has the resources to be able to stand on its own two feet and take appropriate security measures.
Note the purported response is "put in place enhanced security measures to minimise disruption and protect" ... which were evidently lacking at the time.
My understanding is that V2G (vehicle to grid) requires transfer switches etc to be installed to your home electrical setup so you don't accidentally backfeed electricity into the grid. So it's never going to be a simply a matter of getting a better EV.
Why exactly do you want a backup? If you're looking to maintain a few key appliances or internet during a grid outage a vehicle with V2L like an MG4 or BYD might be sufficient.
You probably already know this, but for the sake of providing context to other readers: V2G - vehicle to grid, providing power to the grid from your car battery like is common for home solar batteries; V2L - vehicle to load, a power outlet using energy from your car battery.
Transfer switches are trivial to have installed. I already have a manual, interlocked one for a portable generator.
I have a 13kW array on the roof and live in a place where ice storms make power outages a thing most years. My solar inverter is grid following. Even if I can't get grid forming from a car I'd only have to pay for a small battery and grid forming inverter to cold start the whole operation rather than $10K of extra batteries for them to do the grid forming. Then I can let the solar and vehicle do their thing and follow the islanded grid during the outage.
> To me buying new cars is just throwing away money
Why should a car manufacturer care about your preferences if you're never going to buy new from them?
It's annoying but people like us who care about things like TCO are probably never going to buy new cars under any circumstances, so our concerns about electronic components don't motivate designers.
Even if we might help residual values of leases and buy used parts, our influence over car companies is radically lower than new car buyers.
> Beyond that, the chinese EV brands are in market capture mode right now. The competition is cut throat and the margins are extremely thin.
BYD is profitable. Admittedly that's more of an exception than a rule for Chinese EV brands, but BYD is also the most important.
> It‘s a market skimming strategy that will presumably be a last man standing scenario. If the winner(s) are decided, prices will definitely not remain as low as they are right now in some places.
Even if most of the brands disappear we're very unlikely to get to an n=1 monopoly scenario. Even a couple dozen or so companies competing in the EV space should prevent margins from getting too high.
In the olden days the ICE industry was at times run by fewer than 10 companies per country, that was enough competition to prevent consumers getting too screwed by pricing.
Perhaps the next big programming language will be designed specifically for LLM friendliness. Some things which are human friendly like long keywords are just a waste of tokens for LLMs, and there could be other optimisations too.
The Romans never referred to the Greeks, Jews or Egyptians as barbarian. If they did it certainly wasn't with great frequency.
It almost always targeted at the tribal Anglo, Celtic or Germanic peoples. And in these circumstances it was really an insult at their style of government rather than their ethnic identity.
