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There is also the issue of "full self driving." Tesla has been charging for this feature for years, and never delivered. https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-promises-full-self-driving-next-year-for-th-1848432496?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=dlvrit&utm_content=jalopnik So far they have got away with it, but not much longer, apparently. California has made a law that forbids to advertise cars as fully autonomous unless they really are (Teslas aren't). https://gizmodo.com/tesla-elon-musk-full-self-driving-autopilot-1849930860 There are also criminal investigations: https://www.reuters.com/legal/exclusive-tesla-faces-us-criminal-probe-over-self-driving-claims-sources-2022-10-26/ There are also lawsuits from customers. Tesla's defence is ... interesting. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-12-08/tesla-lawsuit-full-self-driving-technology-failure-not-fraud

Former Roscosmos boss Dmitry Rogozin has been hit in the arse by a shrapnel while celebrating his birthday in Donetsk.

Austria.

I don't know about Austria, but you definitely don't get Germany over the Winter on wind and photovoltaic. Both fail completely for prolonged periods (a day or longer) several times a year ("Dunkelflaute"). The Powers That Be, led by Merkel, decided that gas was to be the backup. Alternatives would have been coal and nuclear, both of which the Greens (whose votes in the Bundesrat have been necessary for any serious piece of legislation for decades now) heavily opposed.

Cars lose a lot of value over the first three years, so getting a new one that often would cost you a lot. Which raises the question if the tax of 12 % per year isn't a bit low. There's also the issue of social security. The employer saves a lot on that by not paying a higher salary. The whole thing is of course a big marketing machine for the carmakers. The German premium brands make more than half of their domestic sales this way.

They'd better be a bit faster. ULA relies on those rocket engines for their Vulcan.

And that's the downside. It doesn't move traffic from the road to the railway. It creates extra traffic. People do railway trips for fun on the cheap. The railway (and the commuters using it) have to deal with the extra load.

The launch has been scrubbed for today. Next opportunity is 2 September. If the problem has been sorted out by then.

They did, but that change happened in 2003, as I just found out on their web site. Same model since.

They haven't really changed. I bought mine in 2016 and they still sell that identical machine. The mechanical part has probably been the same for decades, with the only thing changing being the computer. But even that is still the same as in 2016.

IIRC, Toth is a school teacher. So he probably works a lot at home. If he doesn't have a dedicated office space, the ergonomics is probably poor, i.e. not the ideal posture when sitting in front of the computer, etc. That could be the reason for some of his complaints.

The question is, why is Scholz dragging his feet over Ukraine? Is that him or the party? He certainly isn't being held back by his coalition partners.

Well, the SPD are still doing better in the polls than they used to before Scholz. And one shouldn't forget that he doesn't lead the party, so technically he can't be held responsible for what happens at state level. But yeah, his first six months in office haven't been particularly great. Cabinet ministers from the SPD don't particularly shine either.

Don't forget that prices in Europe include VAT, usually about 20 %.

Not much. But it could be seen as a snub against the country.

So what exactly has Nehammer been doing in Moscow? Meanwhile, the German president Steinmeier has been told not to visit Kyiv. That's the second snub from the Ukrainians after the ambassador refused to come to a concert at Bellevue Palace.

If you need Wagenknecht, something has gone wrong quite badly. The whole thing just hasn't been handled well. If you are in government, you are supposed to have a majority. Trying to make a law against parts of his own coalition wasn't a particularly smart move by Scholz. Maybe a deal with the Christian Democrats could have been found, but he would have had to give them something in return.

Looks like Die Linke is toast in the west. And even in the east they're low double digits, except in Thuringia. It was obviously a mistake by the SPD not to take in former SED members back in the 1990s. But that's spilled milk. Merging the parties now? Not a smart move for the SPD.

So Scholz has announced an extra 100 billions for defence and to raise the regular defence budget to those 2% of the GDP. I wonder how much support he has in his own party for this. The Putin shills are quiet for now but how long will that last?

Gerhard Schröder was German chancellor before Merkel (1998-2005). He was the leader of the Social Democrats, the party of the current chancellor, Olaf Scholz. He is also on the board of Gazprom, and a big buddy of Vladimir Putin.

So Nord Stream 2 has been stopped for now. Schröder should follow Gerard Depardieu's example and become a Russian citizen.

There's also the case of the (now former) chief of the German Navy who had to resign over some rather remarkable statements made on a trip to India. The gist of it is "screw Ukraine, we need Russia as an ally against China." The government denies that this is their position but the Ukrainians are not convinced.

So, Scholz has been elected, Merkel is out. No surprises there.

Well the Greens declared Baerbock candidate for Chancellor. That got her a lot of attention, but also put her under close scrutiny, which she couldn't stand up to. She simply wasn't up to the task. (Neither will she be as foreign minister.) On the other hand, 15% is the best result ever for the Greens, they just raised much higher expectations in their support base.

We don't know yet. They haven't announced a cabinet list yet. They'll probably wait till the parties have approved the coalition deal.