The legal process in USA is not trustworthy, it’s been shown time and again that USA punish people with extreme sentences to make an example of them. USA even tried to kidnap Kim Dotcom bypassing normal New Zealand procedure.

I have no particular sympathies for Kim Dotcom, but the way USA behaves in cases of “national interest” is scary.
Never forget Aaron Swartz! Who was driven to suicide, for copying data he had legal access to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

estimated to have 3 years of reserve.

That would have been a very optimistic estimate 2-3 years ago. The reserves were supposed to hold much longer, like 10-20 years of embargo against Russia, But a lot of foreign currency has been frozen in western banks. The value of their gas and oil has been hit by Europe importing way less than we used to, and oil having embargo with a price ceiling mandated by EU.
The sanctions hit harder as Russian stock runs dry, and they can’t replace it with Russian products. First because they already produce at capacity, second because they sometimes lack the know how.
The Russian government has run at enormous deficits, and that’s despite mandating low prices from weapon producers. Something they used to be able to recoup with exports. But exports are halted now, because Russia needs it all.
So major industries are running at huge deficits, like the gas and oil companies and the military industrial complex. But the problems are even more widespread than that, because the high interest rate, makes it near impossible to invest in expanding production, and hard to even just maintain current production levels.

Inflation is estimated at just above 8%, but Russia has already had to emergency import eggs, butter prices are up 30% and potatoes are up 70%!
Next year there will be shortage of sugar, because they can’t import seeds from Europe.

So even if they still had emergency funds to pull from, a lot of these problems can’t be solved by throwing money at the problem.

But the speed of economic change in Russia is increasing

Absolutely, that’s been pretty clear for the past few months. The Russian economy was surprisingly resilient early on, but they are running out of tricks, and pouring money into the economy used to work, but now it will only make it worse.

Kremlin is blaming Western activities and sanctions for economic issues in Russia,

So the tone has taken a 180, they used to say that Russia would be fine without the West, and it would only hurt us more than it would hurt them.
Well look who is whining now!

The problem is not that they are billionaires. But one is run by an obvious malignant narcissist, and the other is not.
One is responsible the other is not.

Here’s a very down to earth explanation of why Twitter after Musk became an ethical problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8zfgIgZ4c0

The chatbot is a front end to an LLM, you are being needlessly pedantic. What the chatbot serves you, is the result of LLM queries.

LLM is the technology, Chatbot is an implementation of it. So yes a Chatbot as it’s talked about here is an LLM. Although obviously chatbots don’t have to be LLM, those that are not are irrelevant.

You’ve been listening to a lot of anti EV propaganda.

the hybrid electric engine of the Prius line, produces enough greenhouse gasses in the production of a single Hybrid/EV car to completely eclipse the lifetime operating emissions of a single ICE car.

This myth has been thoroughly debunked multiple times, even from official sources:

https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths

FACT: The greenhouse gas emissions associated with an electric vehicle over its lifetime are typically lower than those from an average gasoline-powered vehicle, even when accounting for manufacturing.

The electricity that powers the Tesla might be “clean”, but if it was produced by burning fossil fuels at a power plant, it’s just shifting the method of combustion

No even if a Tesla drives on pure coal based electricity it’s still slightly cleaner. Because powerplants are more efficient than a car engine and don’t idle, and the emissions are more efficiently treated from a powerplant. This is also when accounting for transportation and charging of the electricity, but without accounting for the waste when producing and transporting the fuel to suit an iCE car. So there is a healthy margin in favor of EV and PHEV. So even when driving a Tesla in say Poland which is the most coal heavy country in EU, an EV still pollute less than an ICE car. When you drive it in for instance Denmark, France Sweden, the EV pollute less than a fourth of an ICE car.

it’s arguably worse than economy ICE alternatives

Yeah an economy ICE is obviously not as bad as a NON economy. For more than half a century, We’ve had the option to mandate “economy fuel consumption” on cars, but haven’t done so. I agree that that’s a failure of policy.

This is true Russia is running out of options, and even if the 3 latest interest rate hikes didn’t do much, I’m still pretty sure they’ll have to do it again.
Every little bit helps as they say.

The batteries are full of rare earth metals and toxic as fuck.

Batteries can be repurposed and recycled, and new batteries are free of rare earth metals.

https://thenextweb.com/news/the-cobalt-free-electric-vehicle-batteries-are-here

No, lithium-ion batteries do not have to use cobalt.

The newer LFP (Lithium Phosphate) batteries already widely in use do NOT use rare earth minerals, and are better than older batteries.
Old fashioned car battery uses lead, and is heavily regulated in EU, and is recycled. The new LFP batteries will probably rid os this use of lead.

Although I do agree with some of your other points, I don’t see any of them really relating to the better sustainability of an EV over an ICE. I also don’t see an argument against working towards better sustainability.

That’s bullshit. EU has halved pollution and energy consumption since 1985, don’t tell me it doesn’t make a difference to work towards sustainability.

Considering the hoops they’ve jumped to support it yes, but the rate was reasonably stable from August 2023 to September 2024.
But the “circus” started already February 2022, and since then Russia has used all sorts of tricks to keep the Ruble high.
Russia basically banned currency trading already back then, so it’s been almost like the Soviet times since.

Absolutely, the past 2 weeks were the really bad ones. I just went with the scale of the graph.

It may seem misleading to you, but that’s how currency and stock graphs are shown.

Most likely the Russian central bank will have to increase interest rates before the end of the year. The Ruble continues to decline and inflation continue to increase, despite the already very high interest rates.
We are definitely seeing the signs of the Russian economy collapsing now.

“only” increase by about 8% compared to the ruble.

In 1 month, 8% is massive, especially since Russia has increased central bank interest rate to 21%. While Ukraine has lowered theirs from 16 to 13 this year.

Goddam I’m happy to live in a place where these things are well regulated!
This is an absolute horror story, people chose a saving account they thought was super secured, and instead it’s a total scam.

If you want a more environmentally friendly car, which would you prefer: A Tesla or a Prius?
A lot of Tesla cars were sold when there were very few to no alternatives if you wanted an EV.
Also 2.1-2.4 is not normal for a Tesla. That’s the very fastest of them.

That’s Exactly my experience with Tesla drivers too (Denmark), Tesla drivers generally drive “comfortably” as I see it, and I’ve never seen a Tesla show off at a red light.
In my experience Tesla drivers are responsible drivers as much as everybody else. So I am pretty sure this is NOT a driver issue.

I haven’t noticed that at all for Tesla, and I did absolutely notice with BMW and AUDI for many years. Not so much driving fast, as driving like assholes. Yes an EV often starts quicker at a read light, but I’ve never seen anything wild here that I recall, and we have a lot of Tesla and other EV cars here now (Denmark).

But to be honest, it may be different here, because ICE cars are generally manual, which is way more fun to drive. With A Tesla you just press the speeder like an Automatic. It just responds faster. But a Tesla can also be driven for comfort, and it seems to me that’s what just about everybody does here.

Yes that is weird, maybe you have a cache problem? I always have a backup browser that uses another engine to test if it’s a browser problem when such things happen to me.
And for me it works exactly the same in both my primary (Firefox), and backup (Falkon).