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Electric cars aren't cheap, and electricity prices are very high in Europe.

Not true. No new car is cheap, and electricity is now cheaper than gas or diesel.

My parents just bought a new BYD Dolphin, and it cost 3 EUR to go 150 km, whereas my diesel car costs 15 EUR for the same route.

I don't know how people can say electric cars aren't cheaper. It's a 5x difference!


The initial car is more expensive. You'll typically make it up, but it depends on how much you drive.

And you have to pay interest on larger car loan.

But in practice, yes, when charging at home EVs are dirty cheap to charge.

The total cost of ownership (toc) for an EV is much lower. But you are paying it all upfront.


I don't know about that, this car cost 23k EUR which is cheaper than a VW Polo, which is roughly in the same category.

I’m sure your specific circumstances apply to everyone else equally

Oh you're right, these cars and this fuel pump are made exclusively for me.

BYD EVs are affordable. Electricity will get cheaper with more renewables, oil will not.

Define affordable. A €40k Seal is anything but affordable. Eastern Europe (and I don't put Slovenia in this case here, they are much closer to Western Europe in every sense) will not mass change to EVs suddenly when everyone is shopping for 10 years old diesels from Western Europe for maximum €10k

New cars have questionable affordability for most people. Particularly when you factor in dubious design choices and expensive marketing. Cars and driving are expensive. If that was a barrier there wouldn't be many people on the road.

Also, the Electric polo is supposed to be released at around 25k Euros. Given the lower running costs that seems like a good deal relative to legacy designs. For all those people will to spend 40k on a car you could put the money into solar panels instead.


If you think the Seal isn't affordable then don't buy one.

You can buy a brand new Dacia Spring for only £12,240. Personally I don't think it's a great car but it's certainly doesn't cost 40K.

If it were my money I'd spend a bit more on either a used Jag ePace or a Renault 5 but some people prefer new cars I guess.


Thanks for the nerd snipe! I just found the Citroen e-C3, for a couple thousand more than the Spring. Both look fine. They should just be station wagons, but this is our timeline.

> Define affordable.

Cheaper than the total cost of ownership of a combustion vehicle at $150-$200/barrel for prolonged periods of time.

Are We Approaching an Unprecedented Energy Crisis? - https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/dispatch-energy/iran-war-... - March 26th, 2026

France confirms oil crisis, says 30-40 percent of Gulf energy infrastructure destroyed - https://www.france24.com/en/france-confirms-oil-crisis-says-... - March 25th, 2026

Even the best-case scenario for energy markets is disastrous - https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2026/03/22/e... | https://archive.today/5OhRI - March 22nd, 2026


> Aren't these the same people who apparently used Signal with a journalist in the chat, and had military conversations in that very chat?

Signal is one of the most secure communication platforms out there, but it is obviously not immune to human error or social engineering.


Also wildly illegal to use to conduct government business, especially confidential government business. (and yes the messages were auto-deleting and largely lost before anyone chimes in with technically they could be archived!)

It was a custom (presumably DoD-approved) build. And the story gets much better than that:

https://youtu.be/KFYyfrTIPQY&t=724


Ok? Signal is not the topic of my comment really, nor has anyone claimed it's less secure than other chat apps.

This makes sense, for that kind of money you could always build a beastly workstation in a real ATX case with standard components. Install Linux and the Mac looks like an expensive toy in comparison.

People should not use proprietary formats for obvious reasons, but XLS has been largely reverse engineered.

That little PC should be able to run a lot of additional stuff in addition to the packet filter. My setup is similar, but I use an old gaming PC instead, and run dozens of services including email, nginx and various game servers on it. It does not break a sweat.

> These are definitely worth avoiding most of the time.

They may not be ideal for desktops, but they are great low power home server CPUs. In fact, they are much better than ARM alternatives like Raspberry Pis for the money.


Yeah, I consider home server to be non-interactive. If it's got your connectivity needs (and won't self-destruct), n/atom is a good fit.

Then guess what, criminals will use Linux phones running semi-custom apps for their encrypted business while honest citizens will be spied on.

> The "Chat Control" proposal would legalise scanning of all private digital communications, including encrypted messages and photos.

How would this be enforced in practice? In other words, what would prevent E.U. users from using encrypted services outside of the jurisdiction of the E.U., to "illegally" encrypt their hard drives or to run their own private encrypted comms servers?


They won’t need to enforce this rigorously. They’ll just need to show some scary examples of people being arrested or having computers seized for using illegal forms of encryption. The mainstream media will go along with the EU, demonising these dangerous individuals, who must have been up to something nefarious if they were using technologies sanctioned by the EU

The same way you can't send money to the best Korea and watch porn on youtube.

There is a long chain of actions that ends with you having e2e on your phone (or what not). At the starts of it there is your physical body living in jurisdiction and transacting with (mostly) other people being somewhat present in the same jurisdiction using government-captured money. There are multiply choke points, controlling which will not result in 100% enforcement, but will make whatever you want to do a huge pain in the ass, so most people will not bother (case in point -- jailbraking). Whoever is left self-selects themselves for selective enforcement.


I am not sure I follow. I can't watch porn on YT because YT decides not to host it. But I can absolutely use a VPN and access porn in a jurisdiction that does not block it. I can also, and in fact do, encrypt my hard drives. Even China can't reliably prevent communication over private encrypted networks or services hosted overseas.

Monitoring and influencing majority is enough for having power over citizens. Real criminals will use other unmonitored channels, of course.

Yes, I think so. Another analogy is firearms. They can be used to commit or facilitate crimes, yet nobody is suing gun manufacturers.

Federal law says you can't. The PLCAA passed in 2005.

Wrong, because then that government knows exactly what services you have accessed. It's a huge and extremely dangerous privacy violation. The real solution to the age verification problem is not to have one. The Internet has existed for over 30 years without it; it's solution to a problem that does not exist.

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