Computers are the new primary conduit of communication and learning for this generation.
Bullshit.
The primary conduit for learning, especially in the younger grades, is being shown a skill, being shown the particulars of how that skill works, and then practicing that skill until it's mastered. You don't need computers to learn how to add or divide or to solve for a variable. You don't need computers to learn how to form sentences in language. You don't need computers to learn how to interact with the same people day in, day out in a fashion similar to how one will interact in the workplace once out of school. And you'll learn a lot more about the natural world by actually observing the natural world as opposed to just reading about it or conducting fake virtual experiments though a poorly written educational "simulator".
Ironically the one place that computers would be perfect is in social studies. History doesn't really change, only interpretation of it does, and computers as a conduit to access databases of historical information are perfect and would allow for one to read about differing positions on the reasions for historical events.
And sitting in a boring classroom for hours on end enhances their ability to learn?
That's a false dichotomy and you know it. There are lots of teachers that can manage a classroom to make it interesting to those kids that are willing to pay even the littlest bit of attention, and there are far too many teachers that have to rely on electronic babysitters just to maintain enough order in the room to keep their jobs.
How about holding parents accountable when they don't provide an environment at home that's conducive to their kids doing well in school? Most of the problems start in the home, and punishing the schools because the kids aren't taught by their parents that they need school in order to do well in life doesn't make the situation any better for those kids. I guess it's too much to ask parents to turn off the television and actually talk with their kids or to check over their homework, or to read to them before they go to bed...
Schools do not know how to use computers for primary school students. They simply don't have the curriculum and they're unwilling to take general-purpose PCs and turn them into specific-purpose PCs that don't let one get off-task. They're also addicting and kids that aren't using PCs but see PCs in front of them are jonesing for their next fix.
I grew up in the tail-end of the era of the Apple II in schools, and the beginning of the Macintoshes, before wide-spread TCP/IP networks and before Internet connectivity. The Apple II was well-suited to educational use, as the student could only run the program that they were given the disk for. They couldn't distract themselves from the educational goal. They had one program and one program only, so they could either use that program or do nothing. PCs running DOS had a similar situation, though that was usually more because of DOS being hard enough to use that if one exited the game one generally didn't know how to go about distracting one's self.
Then the Macintosh and early Windows came around. Now they could do some other things in addition to the assigned program, but admittedly there weren't a whole lot of other things to do, so it was fairly easy to keep students on-task.
Then the local area computer networks came about, and if a campus had multiple tasks on their computers, then the students could often figure out how to do those other tasks not for the curriculum for the current class, and suddenly it became that much hard to keep on-task. It became possible to share things with other kids without the teachers catching on, or possible to mess with other kids. Proto cyberbullying if you will.
Then the Internet came along with the browser and general-purpose computers with hundreds of preloaded programs and at least tens of thousands available through the Internet, and now it's almost impossible to keep kids on-task. They can do anything, and with 9,999 wrong choices but only one right choice, that one right choice simply gets drowned out.
Primary school kids need to learn how to read, write, perform basic mathematics, and to learn how to find information the old-fashioned way. They need to learn what an index is, and how information can be sorted and archived, and how to sort the information that they want to present. Learning these skills manually will teach them how these skills work when they can do them electronically or with some other form of automation. Technology as classroom aids in elementary grades needs to be limited to special-purpose machines, like things that help present curriculum, or help in classroom discussion to let the teacher or the students aid their point, or if they're used for things like testing to make grading easier, they need to be locked down so that they only do the function that they're called upon to do at that time.
Once the kids get to secondary school, then start introducing the general-purpose machine. Let them learn how to use a productivity suite, or how to do research electronically, or how to use programs to aid in science education. At least at that point it's possible for the skill to actually still apply to the person's life once they reach adulthood where it might have to be applied.
He never should have mounted an argument in the first place. He never should have spoken with authorities without his own representation, and probably not even with his own representation.
Ignoring for a moment that his choice to act maliciously was what truly screwed him, law enforcement authorities are quite practiced at getting people to admit fault or to use language that allows the authorities to claim an admission. The only winning move is to not participate.
Never attribute to maliciousness what you can attribute to stupidity.
I suspect that weev's problem is that he lived a very insulated life by his own choice and wasn't forced to confront the realities of the rest of the world. Once he ran directly afoul of those realities he managed to work the reaction that he received into his existing world view, which served to reinforce it rather than to dispell it. I wouldn't be surprised if such a situation contributed to his being put into solitary confinement, and that what we're seeing is simply more reaction to how his life as he structured it came into conflict.
I've been friends with a few other people that went through this, albeit to a lesser extent. For each of them it was a result of being surrounded only by people that either shared their view and acted as a mirror, or didn't challenge their view and thus provided essentially no help. In the case of the last friend that I found in this state I did challenge his world view, and as a consequence lost him as a friend for it.
This is partially why education is important, and I don't mean education solely on subjects that the student wishes to learn, but general, broad education. Having one's beliefs challenged from time to time, sometimes successfully, helps keep people grounded in reality as opposed to perceiving the world to be structured in a way that it isn't. Being surrounded by only like-minded people that encourage only one view ultimately leads to disaster when things get out of hand.
I'm not saying that weev was solely in the wrong in this instance, but I don't doubt that he actually made the situation worse for himself.
You can't choose who you live with (that would be 'racist'), so you are a prisoner.
You mean I can't live with Scarlett Johansson? Darn the luck!
You can't simply GET AWAY from people you don't want to associate with (murderers just released from prison, paedophiles just released from prison, gang members, etc.) so you are a prisoner.
There are no violent ex-cons or gang members in my neighborhood or at my place of work...
You aren't entitled to a fair amount of land, from birth, just for being alive, because somebody else STOLE the land from your parents, so you and they have to work as indentured servants in order to just be able to afford a place to live. The 'laws' are made so that you can't build any sort of house you want, even if you did have land - you have to spend a fortune on a house, so you are still a slave - still in prison.
No one born with a hungry mouth is truly innocent.
Let me repeat that, so it sinks in...
No one born with a hungry mouth is truly innocent.
There are only so many resources on this planet. We are all in competition for those resources. Communities, cities, nations, alliances, are all there for the purpose of attempting to ensure the best access to resources. Different cultures throughout history have been better at it than others, and I'm certain that the current balance will eventually change. Within those spheres of cooperation exists a degree of competition though, as cooperation doesn't automatically mean succor. If parents want their children to succeed then they need to set their children up on a path to help make them succeed. That generally requires having a certain degree of stability of their own to start with, and then generally requires the parents to make some sacrifices of their own to commit the time and resources to the children that they might otherwise want to spend on themselves.
My very strong opinion is that if you can't afford to have children, then don't have children. 'Afford' includes the willingness to commit that time, effort, and money required to do right by them. There are so many ways of avoiding having children while still enjoying a full life that it's stupid to have kids when one isn't prepared to go all-in.
Land isn't your birthright. Your birthright, whether born in Beverly Hills or in Khartoum, is to struggle to get or to keep what you need to live. That's it. The universe owes you nothing.
It's not power so much as distance. Radiation is subject to inverse-square law, and the closer the emission source and the wider the emitter, the more radiation received by the subject. Since the point of these machines was to invasively scan the entire body it would make sense that it would subject the body to a lot of radiation.
The solution will probably be something as pedestrian as special goggles that the prisoners are given the option to wear, something that looks like those small swim goggles but are made out of a different material. Of course prisoners won't really understand that, won't be told of the health risks, and thus won't ask for them, so they'll just hang on a peg on the operator's console and gather dust.
Not true at all. If a prisoner sues the prison believing the machines to be unsafe, the prisoner is more likely to get a fair hearing and the prison unlikely to to get away with glossing over health and safety issues related to the machines....whereas the TSA had the carte blanche in the name of Fatherland Security!
Right. Because being a prisoner guarantees one's rights, access to legal counsel, timely medical care, and protection from being violently abused...
There wouldn't be any advantage in using people to make orbital bombing runs.
Come to think of it, there probably isn't even an advantage in making orbital bombing runs in the first place. If you want to get exotic, it would probably be far cheaper to float a rocket up to the edge of space with a balloon, then point it at the ground target and fire the engine.
And for capturing satellites, if the goal is to modify them in-place then humans might be better at it than an entirely robotic mission, but if the goal is to grab them to return them dirtside then I don't see humans being any better than a robot.
I think this one's pretty friggin' obvious. We discontinued our man-rated means to low earth orbit before we had a working replacement. It's the exact same way we lost Skylab, except we were theoretically cooperating with Russia this time, while last time we weren't. Obviously our degree of cooperation was misunderstood, and they have chosen to exploit our weakness.
Mind you, our man-rated means to low earth orbit was ridiculously inefficient compared to what it was supposed to cost, and the turnaround on our pretty little space planes was orders of magnitude worse than the week-or-two expected between launches. It was so expensive that our politicians wouldn't push for a small, inexpensive (relatively speaking) method to reach space for when we didn't need a crew of ten and a payload of ten tons. Had we spent the money to either refine the Saturn-series to make them less expensive and more efficient or started on a new project after the Shuttle finally got going then we probably wouldn't be in this predicament now.
At least it'll be good for a relative up-and-comer in SpaceX and to a lesser extent to Orbital/ATK.
This hopefully will be a lesson for not discontinuing one's own abilities before being ready with a new program, but you'd think that Skylab falling from orbit and burning up would have taught us that lesson.
True, which is why I don't think that it's a realistic permanent ruling, but if the existing automakers decide that they want to make life difficult for an upstart they could attempt to make the claim, especially if it becomes difficult to source the batteries elsewhere due to demand created by Tesla.
Such tactics are underhanded and dirty, but certainly not beyond companies to try if they feel that there's any chance of getting more benefit than they cost. All that they'd hve to do is to sour the public on Tesla, not actually get a favorable ruling, and if they can soil Tesla's image by showing how their own hard working employees are suffering it could be effective, even if they're suffering because their employers failed to innovate.
That's not the point though, the article submitter is looking at protecting his chattel property when he's not there to do himself; he did not ask about defence against violent invaders.
The best bet for securing electronics are Kensington cable locks tying equipment down, or rack-mount equipment making it difficult to quickly abscond with. If the gear can't be stolen quickly then the burglar generally won't try for long enough to make a lot of headway; the longer they're in the house the more chance for being caught red-handed.
More importantly even than the fact that the auto industry is full of sourcing parts from competitors is without being faced with serious competition they're unlikely to make any significant changes. If he wants electric cars to eventually become well and truly mainstream then he needs to give his thoroughly entrenched competitors a reason to manufacture them, which is to force them to build electric cars to compete.
If he goes to a batteries-only platform then he's sunk, as they'll simply not bother to buy his batteries because they just won't innovate to where they need them.
The only real danger that I see is if he's so sucessful at compelling his automaker competition to electricity that if he sells batteries to them, they push antitrust regulation against him for being a vertically-integrated monopoly that's bad for their purchasing power. That's an awful long time down the road though.
Don't completely discount the Phoenix area or even Tucson, there's a whole of of military/industrial complex that has led into microchip manufacturing and other high-tech business. Generally these defense contractors don't like to advertise their presences, but Honeywell and Boeing are still going strong, as are some of the Motorola divisions that got spun off a decade ago.
The extreme lack of humidity is good for manufacturing.
I'm fully expecting a Digital:Convergence Cue Cat Scanner-type debacle out of this. Someone will figure out how to make the printer work without the expensive software, Autodesk will get pissed off, try to sue them, but the "security" to prevent the printer from working without Autodesk's software will be so poor that it could be proven in court, and in the end, they'll be angry and bitter.
I actually hope that I'm wrong, but we'll just have to see.
...we know that Russia won't be able to stuff 100,000 paper ballots marked "yes" for a plebiscite into ballot boxes if they keep the current system...
Plus they might be able to make the vote look in favor of remaining away from Russia by simply manipulating the totals after Russia has manipulated them first...
...there's enough post-sale support to allow for a reasonable replacement of the batteries.
Our newest daily-use car is thirteen years old, and the two other regular-use vehicles are nineteen years old. We certainly could afford to replace them but they've not needed too much expensive service yet and they meet our needs, so we're fine with just continuing to drive them.
American Consumers are starting to get used to the idea of a car lasting 200,000 miles. Only getting 100,000 miles out of one because the battery charge cycles are exhausted wouldn't be a terribly good deal unless the car cost significantly less than gasoline or diesel powered models or had something particularly special to offer for the same price.
Unfortunately it could be hard to predict usage patterns to charge less often and to wait until batteries are low enough to need it, as while one's daily commute might be consistent most of the time, if an emergency or other need forces a change it would be terrible to be low on energy simply because the computer thought that you were only going to need a range of 30 miles that day.
The Soviets expelled or killed just about all of the ethnic Germans from Koenigsberg when they were awarded it and turned it into Kaliningrad after WWII. Makes me think that in hindsight, if it might not have made some sense for Ukraine and the other post-Soviet SSRs to have expelled those Russians that had less than four generations of family history in their countries.
I'm sure that we all would have looked on at this as a terrible thing, but maybe it would have been less violent and less harmful than what ultimately has happened. Russia certainly was in no position to do anything about it in the first couple of years after the fall of the Soviet Union, and given their own history of pogroms and violence against denizens of Russia and states under its control it would be difficult for them to claim the moral high-ground.
Slashdot Mirror
Bullshit.
The primary conduit for learning, especially in the younger grades, is being shown a skill, being shown the particulars of how that skill works, and then practicing that skill until it's mastered. You don't need computers to learn how to add or divide or to solve for a variable. You don't need computers to learn how to form sentences in language. You don't need computers to learn how to interact with the same people day in, day out in a fashion similar to how one will interact in the workplace once out of school. And you'll learn a lot more about the natural world by actually observing the natural world as opposed to just reading about it or conducting fake virtual experiments though a poorly written educational "simulator".
Ironically the one place that computers would be perfect is in social studies. History doesn't really change, only interpretation of it does, and computers as a conduit to access databases of historical information are perfect and would allow for one to read about differing positions on the reasions for historical events.
That's a false dichotomy and you know it. There are lots of teachers that can manage a classroom to make it interesting to those kids that are willing to pay even the littlest bit of attention, and there are far too many teachers that have to rely on electronic babysitters just to maintain enough order in the room to keep their jobs.
How about holding parents accountable when they don't provide an environment at home that's conducive to their kids doing well in school? Most of the problems start in the home, and punishing the schools because the kids aren't taught by their parents that they need school in order to do well in life doesn't make the situation any better for those kids. I guess it's too much to ask parents to turn off the television and actually talk with their kids or to check over their homework, or to read to them before they go to bed...
Schools do not know how to use computers for primary school students. They simply don't have the curriculum and they're unwilling to take general-purpose PCs and turn them into specific-purpose PCs that don't let one get off-task. They're also addicting and kids that aren't using PCs but see PCs in front of them are jonesing for their next fix.
I grew up in the tail-end of the era of the Apple II in schools, and the beginning of the Macintoshes, before wide-spread TCP/IP networks and before Internet connectivity. The Apple II was well-suited to educational use, as the student could only run the program that they were given the disk for. They couldn't distract themselves from the educational goal. They had one program and one program only, so they could either use that program or do nothing. PCs running DOS had a similar situation, though that was usually more because of DOS being hard enough to use that if one exited the game one generally didn't know how to go about distracting one's self.
Then the Macintosh and early Windows came around. Now they could do some other things in addition to the assigned program, but admittedly there weren't a whole lot of other things to do, so it was fairly easy to keep students on-task.
Then the local area computer networks came about, and if a campus had multiple tasks on their computers, then the students could often figure out how to do those other tasks not for the curriculum for the current class, and suddenly it became that much hard to keep on-task. It became possible to share things with other kids without the teachers catching on, or possible to mess with other kids. Proto cyberbullying if you will.
Then the Internet came along with the browser and general-purpose computers with hundreds of preloaded programs and at least tens of thousands available through the Internet, and now it's almost impossible to keep kids on-task. They can do anything, and with 9,999 wrong choices but only one right choice, that one right choice simply gets drowned out.
Primary school kids need to learn how to read, write, perform basic mathematics, and to learn how to find information the old-fashioned way. They need to learn what an index is, and how information can be sorted and archived, and how to sort the information that they want to present. Learning these skills manually will teach them how these skills work when they can do them electronically or with some other form of automation. Technology as classroom aids in elementary grades needs to be limited to special-purpose machines, like things that help present curriculum, or help in classroom discussion to let the teacher or the students aid their point, or if they're used for things like testing to make grading easier, they need to be locked down so that they only do the function that they're called upon to do at that time.
Once the kids get to secondary school, then start introducing the general-purpose machine. Let them learn how to use a productivity suite, or how to do research electronically, or how to use programs to aid in science education. At least at that point it's possible for the skill to actually still apply to the person's life once they reach adulthood where it might have to be applied.
Or about a half-acre, give or take.
At least they didn't hire Michael Bay. Then the enemy would have been made out of explosions.
He never should have mounted an argument in the first place. He never should have spoken with authorities without his own representation, and probably not even with his own representation.
Ignoring for a moment that his choice to act maliciously was what truly screwed him, law enforcement authorities are quite practiced at getting people to admit fault or to use language that allows the authorities to claim an admission. The only winning move is to not participate.
Never attribute to maliciousness what you can attribute to stupidity.
I suspect that weev's problem is that he lived a very insulated life by his own choice and wasn't forced to confront the realities of the rest of the world. Once he ran directly afoul of those realities he managed to work the reaction that he received into his existing world view, which served to reinforce it rather than to dispell it. I wouldn't be surprised if such a situation contributed to his being put into solitary confinement, and that what we're seeing is simply more reaction to how his life as he structured it came into conflict.
I've been friends with a few other people that went through this, albeit to a lesser extent. For each of them it was a result of being surrounded only by people that either shared their view and acted as a mirror, or didn't challenge their view and thus provided essentially no help. In the case of the last friend that I found in this state I did challenge his world view, and as a consequence lost him as a friend for it.
This is partially why education is important, and I don't mean education solely on subjects that the student wishes to learn, but general, broad education. Having one's beliefs challenged from time to time, sometimes successfully, helps keep people grounded in reality as opposed to perceiving the world to be structured in a way that it isn't. Being surrounded by only like-minded people that encourage only one view ultimately leads to disaster when things get out of hand.
I'm not saying that weev was solely in the wrong in this instance, but I don't doubt that he actually made the situation worse for himself.
...when the Star Wars fans were laughing at the situation with Abrams and the Star Trek movies that he made...
I've noticed that they're rather quiet now...
I've flown a dozen times in the era of the backscatter machines, and I never once been scanned. The two times that they attempted, "Opt Out" worked.
Yes, that meant a pat-down. But, a pat-down has less long-term health effects than radiation.
You mean I can't live with Scarlett Johansson? Darn the luck!
There are no violent ex-cons or gang members in my neighborhood or at my place of work...
No one born with a hungry mouth is truly innocent.
Let me repeat that, so it sinks in...
No one born with a hungry mouth is truly innocent.
There are only so many resources on this planet. We are all in competition for those resources. Communities, cities, nations, alliances, are all there for the purpose of attempting to ensure the best access to resources. Different cultures throughout history have been better at it than others, and I'm certain that the current balance will eventually change. Within those spheres of cooperation exists a degree of competition though, as cooperation doesn't automatically mean succor. If parents want their children to succeed then they need to set their children up on a path to help make them succeed. That generally requires having a certain degree of stability of their own to start with, and then generally requires the parents to make some sacrifices of their own to commit the time and resources to the children that they might otherwise want to spend on themselves.
My very strong opinion is that if you can't afford to have children, then don't have children. 'Afford' includes the willingness to commit that time, effort, and money required to do right by them. There are so many ways of avoiding having children while still enjoying a full life that it's stupid to have kids when one isn't prepared to go all-in.
Land isn't your birthright. Your birthright, whether born in Beverly Hills or in Khartoum, is to struggle to get or to keep what you need to live. That's it. The universe owes you nothing.
It's not power so much as distance. Radiation is subject to inverse-square law, and the closer the emission source and the wider the emitter, the more radiation received by the subject. Since the point of these machines was to invasively scan the entire body it would make sense that it would subject the body to a lot of radiation.
The solution will probably be something as pedestrian as special goggles that the prisoners are given the option to wear, something that looks like those small swim goggles but are made out of a different material. Of course prisoners won't really understand that, won't be told of the health risks, and thus won't ask for them, so they'll just hang on a peg on the operator's console and gather dust.
Right. Because being a prisoner guarantees one's rights, access to legal counsel, timely medical care, and protection from being violently abused...
There wouldn't be any advantage in using people to make orbital bombing runs.
Come to think of it, there probably isn't even an advantage in making orbital bombing runs in the first place. If you want to get exotic, it would probably be far cheaper to float a rocket up to the edge of space with a balloon, then point it at the ground target and fire the engine.
And for capturing satellites, if the goal is to modify them in-place then humans might be better at it than an entirely robotic mission, but if the goal is to grab them to return them dirtside then I don't see humans being any better than a robot.
I think this one's pretty friggin' obvious. We discontinued our man-rated means to low earth orbit before we had a working replacement. It's the exact same way we lost Skylab, except we were theoretically cooperating with Russia this time, while last time we weren't. Obviously our degree of cooperation was misunderstood, and they have chosen to exploit our weakness.
Mind you, our man-rated means to low earth orbit was ridiculously inefficient compared to what it was supposed to cost, and the turnaround on our pretty little space planes was orders of magnitude worse than the week-or-two expected between launches. It was so expensive that our politicians wouldn't push for a small, inexpensive (relatively speaking) method to reach space for when we didn't need a crew of ten and a payload of ten tons. Had we spent the money to either refine the Saturn-series to make them less expensive and more efficient or started on a new project after the Shuttle finally got going then we probably wouldn't be in this predicament now.
At least it'll be good for a relative up-and-comer in SpaceX and to a lesser extent to Orbital/ATK.
This hopefully will be a lesson for not discontinuing one's own abilities before being ready with a new program, but you'd think that Skylab falling from orbit and burning up would have taught us that lesson.
...what it won't be able to render. Things like tanks, or student-made banners being waived in squares, or barbecues in major metropolitan areas.
And if they decide to go cheap on the ambient condition effects, one might be able to see for miles and miles in Beijing!
Break plastic as in the side of the device where the lock goes through? Good luck pawning that one...
Remember, most things aren't stolen for personal use, they're stolen to be sold or quick cash.
True, which is why I don't think that it's a realistic permanent ruling, but if the existing automakers decide that they want to make life difficult for an upstart they could attempt to make the claim, especially if it becomes difficult to source the batteries elsewhere due to demand created by Tesla.
Such tactics are underhanded and dirty, but certainly not beyond companies to try if they feel that there's any chance of getting more benefit than they cost. All that they'd hve to do is to sour the public on Tesla, not actually get a favorable ruling, and if they can soil Tesla's image by showing how their own hard working employees are suffering it could be effective, even if they're suffering because their employers failed to innovate.
That's not the point though, the article submitter is looking at protecting his chattel property when he's not there to do himself; he did not ask about defence against violent invaders.
The best bet for securing electronics are Kensington cable locks tying equipment down, or rack-mount equipment making it difficult to quickly abscond with. If the gear can't be stolen quickly then the burglar generally won't try for long enough to make a lot of headway; the longer they're in the house the more chance for being caught red-handed.
More importantly even than the fact that the auto industry is full of sourcing parts from competitors is without being faced with serious competition they're unlikely to make any significant changes. If he wants electric cars to eventually become well and truly mainstream then he needs to give his thoroughly entrenched competitors a reason to manufacture them, which is to force them to build electric cars to compete.
If he goes to a batteries-only platform then he's sunk, as they'll simply not bother to buy his batteries because they just won't innovate to where they need them.
The only real danger that I see is if he's so sucessful at compelling his automaker competition to electricity that if he sells batteries to them, they push antitrust regulation against him for being a vertically-integrated monopoly that's bad for their purchasing power. That's an awful long time down the road though.
Don't completely discount the Phoenix area or even Tucson, there's a whole of of military/industrial complex that has led into microchip manufacturing and other high-tech business. Generally these defense contractors don't like to advertise their presences, but Honeywell and Boeing are still going strong, as are some of the Motorola divisions that got spun off a decade ago.
The extreme lack of humidity is good for manufacturing.
I'm fully expecting a Digital:Convergence Cue Cat Scanner-type debacle out of this. Someone will figure out how to make the printer work without the expensive software, Autodesk will get pissed off, try to sue them, but the "security" to prevent the printer from working without Autodesk's software will be so poor that it could be proven in court, and in the end, they'll be angry and bitter.
I actually hope that I'm wrong, but we'll just have to see.
...we know that Russia won't be able to stuff 100,000 paper ballots marked "yes" for a plebiscite into ballot boxes if they keep the current system...
Plus they might be able to make the vote look in favor of remaining away from Russia by simply manipulating the totals after Russia has manipulated them first...
...there's enough post-sale support to allow for a reasonable replacement of the batteries.
Our newest daily-use car is thirteen years old, and the two other regular-use vehicles are nineteen years old. We certainly could afford to replace them but they've not needed too much expensive service yet and they meet our needs, so we're fine with just continuing to drive them.
American Consumers are starting to get used to the idea of a car lasting 200,000 miles. Only getting 100,000 miles out of one because the battery charge cycles are exhausted wouldn't be a terribly good deal unless the car cost significantly less than gasoline or diesel powered models or had something particularly special to offer for the same price.
Unfortunately it could be hard to predict usage patterns to charge less often and to wait until batteries are low enough to need it, as while one's daily commute might be consistent most of the time, if an emergency or other need forces a change it would be terrible to be low on energy simply because the computer thought that you were only going to need a range of 30 miles that day.
The Soviets expelled or killed just about all of the ethnic Germans from Koenigsberg when they were awarded it and turned it into Kaliningrad after WWII. Makes me think that in hindsight, if it might not have made some sense for Ukraine and the other post-Soviet SSRs to have expelled those Russians that had less than four generations of family history in their countries.
I'm sure that we all would have looked on at this as a terrible thing, but maybe it would have been less violent and less harmful than what ultimately has happened. Russia certainly was in no position to do anything about it in the first couple of years after the fall of the Soviet Union, and given their own history of pogroms and violence against denizens of Russia and states under its control it would be difficult for them to claim the moral high-ground.
I donno, India and Pakistan have been going at it conventionally off-and-on since they both started manufacturing nukes...