You're touching on what is probably the real reason. Volvo has an extensive dealer network in the US, and dealers are traditionally involved in the political process (i.e. they lobby extensively). Also Volvos enjoy a decent market share and brand recognition. Polestar on the other hand only sold in single digit thousands in the past couple of years and are definitely not as well known. There's not a lot of difference otherwise, Polestar 3 is 95% identical to Volvo EX90 and they're both manufactured at Volvo's South Carolina plant mainly from Chinese parts. Polestar 4 is indeed diferent, based on Zeeker 001 and manufactured in South Korea. Anyways, my guess is Polestar didn't jump through the hoops and didn't grease the right wheels, probably because it was not worth the trouble for what is about 5-6% of their global market share
If you need a new vehicle, the you can certainly go with a quality EV. I live in NJ, it gets cold here in winter, with temps dipping in teens and single digits in Jan/Feb. Don't have a garage either. As long as you can plug your car in overnight, there are absolutely no issues. Range does drop a somewhat in winter, but as long as you're aware of it you can work around it. You don't need chargers in your area, your home will be the place where you charge the most, just make sure you have a high power outlet/wall charger installed at your home. Regular 120V outlets are not really feasible unless you're driving very little. 3d party chargers matter only when you go on road trips/vacations. That being said, maybe you can hold on to your car a couple more years, let the market cool down and EV offerings improve.
To your first point, you cannot operate a commercial airliner from a carrier, for a multitude technical reasons. That being said, I seem to remember that, back in the day, the Navy would post ships at various remote points in the Pacific ocean to be there in case airliners had to ditch.
To your second point, yes, to some extent it would be more efficient to make refueling stops, but you need conveniently located airports, and all those landings and takeoffs add to the duration of the flight and to the stress on the airplane, so it has to be balanced.
I don't think you understand the concept of free speech. It allows you the right to express your opinion without fear of government oppression. It does not allow you to yell your opinion through a megaphone, in front of my house, at all hours of day and night.
Worth noting that there was no Russian presence in Romania at the fall of communism back in '89. Russian military withdrew peacefully starting in '58 through early 60s.
+1 on this. Gorgeous landscape, very fast and cheap internet and cell networks. Decent number of people speaking decent English, especially amongst the urban youth. Not as cheap as it used to be, but still cheaper than Western Europe.
To be honest, you'll most likely encounter corruption if you intend to operate a business, especially if said business has anything to do with any level of government. As an ordinary resident you might have to deal with bureaucracy, but that's not different than in any other European country. I might have a rosy picture of the state of things, since I only come here on vacations and to visit family, but I was born and raised here and I think I can see significant improvements on this front.
My house has 100amps service and I was able to install a 14-50 outlet (240V/50amps) which allows me to charge at sustained 32amps. It all depends on what other load do you need to handle, for me the only other significant load was the A/C, everything else is gas powered. Don't even have to go that high, even a 240V/30amps outlet (24 amps sustained) will still charge a car in a reasonable amount of time. Keep in mind that you will rarely need to charge from 0 to 100%, most of the time will be a fraction of that. For me it's usually 70% to 90%, but, of course, YMMV.
1. I am tired of hearing this rehashed over and over again. Yes, overall density in US is lower than most countries in Europe, but even high density places like New Jersey still have plenty of spots with only one, overpriced, shitty provider. For example, I am paying $98/mo for 400/40mbps cable, and that's my only wired option. My dad's country side house at the foothills of the Romanian Carpathian mountains gets 900/450mbps FTTH service for $10/mo.
2. Back in the late 90s, both Romania and my NJ neighborhood were at the same point, twisted copper phone lines and cable TV service over coax cable. Yet 20+ years later, the differences are stark.
Don't get me started on cell phone service :)
If the problem you're solving can be easily split into many independent, low volume, maybe long running, communication oriented tasks, you owe it to yourself to look into the Erlang ecosystem. Think handling signaling for calls, chat connections, inputs from millions of IoT endpoints.
Hot swapping support in Erlang is first class, but even with that, it is not an easy feat to accomplish in large systems. Which is why, in my experience, people tend to avoid it if they can do without it. Systems i have worked with either had scheduled downtime periods or one could easily take down a node for upgrades without impacting the general availability of the system. In such cases, there is no real incentive to invest time and energy in managing hot swapping. But if you absolutely need all parts of your system be up 24/7, Erlang has the best story I've heard so far.
I was concerned about that myself, but so far so good. I suspect the ability to charge on either side makes a difference. I usually plug in on whatever side is closer to a wall and out of the way. Combined with all the other usb-c/tb benefits, i think the tradeoff is worth it.
To add more color, the top few high schools in Bucharest at the time were all highly competitive, with low % admission rates. So the student body was naturally skewed towards more academically inclined students. In a sense, if you made it in you were more or less a "nerd" compared to the general population.
For an English speaker, there's no problem. We visited about 10 years ago and the one person not speaking any English was an old lady keeping a convenience store somewhere in the north-western corner of the island.
Maybe this is a New Jersey thing, but here you don't need to be a Costco member to buy gasoline at Costco stations. It's also not that good of a deal, at maybe 10-15 cents less than regular gas stations. Sometimes it's just not worth braving the gas queues just for $1.5 in savings.
It's accurate. Just got back from spending a few weeks at my dad's country house that's wired with 940/450mbps fiber. No problems remote working from there, except, of course, time zone differences. Here's the ISP link, in Romanian unfortunately: https://www.digiromania.ro/servicii/internet/internet-fix/fi.... The price is 40 Lei / month, which is approximately $9.5 at current exchange rates.
> The BMW 320d, which is sold all over EU etc. and has better performance and better fuel economy than the Toyota Prius? CA won't allow its sale because of their regulations.
The BMW 320d that is sold in Europe is exactly the same car as the 328d that IS sold in the US, including in CA. I know, because I have one.
No longer the case. However, they only allow devices that are certified to work on their network, and that means support for legacy CDMA. But if your phone is unlocked and it has the necessary bits, you can certainly bring it in. Also, all smartphones they currently sell are unlocked, as part of a deal with the FCC when they won the rights to some 700Mhz band
I did exactly that. It actually costs about 5% less. And driving the German Autobahn or some twisty mountain roads in The Swiss Alps is an unique experience.
Trust me, the vast majority of Romanians at the time did not mind their execution one bit, they in fact cheered for it. I know because I was there and cheered along. It's hard to fathom the intensity of hate that the average Romanian had for "Dear Leader"
Romania and Poland were never soviets. Communist, yes. Behind the Iron Curtain, yes. Members of the Warsaw Pact, yes (Poland is kind of obvious on this). But never soviets.
Two notable differences: Akka Actors concurrency is done at library level and an actor can block a JVM thread if not coded carefully. Erlang processes concurrency is support at VM level and there's no way an Erlang process can block a VM scheduler (native code aside, but with native code all bets are off)