Yes, all of those are equally problematic.

Polymarket here is one example among the companies causing the problem. Legislation that addresses the problem should affect all the listed companies and more, not just Polymarket.

There are two different factors here.

One, as you noted, is that electric motors can apply full torque from a stop, increasing perceived acceleration.

The other, and more impactful, is that electric motor power scales with cost much more cheaply than gas motors, so vehicles will oversize their electric motors.

There's a third factor. Ev's need to support fast charging. So they need to do support super high voltages and currents. That's much of the expense of a powerful EV. A powerful motor is relatively inexpensive in comparison.

If you can charge a car in 20 minutes, the battery and some other circuitry can support discharging in 20 minutes, which is an insane power level.

A powerful motor needs more copper between the battery and motor and more silicon in the inverter to handle the current. The motor is also heavier. This is all extra cost.

All that fast DC charging requires are cells capable of handling the current.

You don't get a powerful motor for free just because you can fast charge.

> are cells capable of handling the current.

Which is the most expensive part of an EV

That's not exactly true. There is some shared wiring between the DC fast charger and the motors, but not so much that the powerful motors are "free". The wires that run between the motors and the battery are long.

I think the larger third factor is regenerative braking. That uses the exact same circuitry as powering the motors, and if you want to be able to brake quickly without the brake pads, that's a lot of kW to be absorbed.

Any way you cut it, I agree, it's an insane power level.

There's a reason I emphasized the battery in my comment. :)

Got it, I skimmed that part the first time I read it. We're on the same page :)

The specific claim made was a spike in voluntary resignations, which should be distinguishable from any bubble popping effect.

Best they can do is hire more admin staff.

They’re going to expand the tuition-base into new markets, any decade now!

If a country tries to strategically weaponize trade that's something you can predict. That's what makes it strategic.

A predictable relationship is preferable to one where you need to keep wondering whether this week's threat of military action that could draw you into a war, is one of the ones that might actually happen.

Household electrical usage has decreased, not increased, since that time. Your scaling is backwards.

Old aluminum wires in your walls were designed for a time when you lit your home with 100 watt incandescent lamps rather than 12 watt LEDs.

Only true for lighting circuits though, and most household circuits are mixed.

The quantity and (edit: aggregate) power draw of modern appliances is far greater now than 60 years ago, so the overall load on the old wires is much higher.

> power draw of modern appliances

Here's a article that claims that refrigerator energy efficiency has improved dramatically from 1972 to 2012.

https://appliance-standards.org/blog/how-your-refrigerator-h...

I'd bet that modern TVs are more efficient that CRT televisions. Do most people even have desktop computers anymore, or have they mostly been replaced by laptops, tables, and phones? I'd be interested to see the efficiency numbers for electric clothes dryers over time. I wouldn't be surprised if they are also slightly more efficient than older models, even if they are still using resistance heating. Due to smarter electronics that automatically turn the unit off after the clothes are dry (air humidity sensor). I think electric ranges, dish washers, toasters and coffee machines have been ubiquitous since the 1960s (but are probably about the same energy-consumption wise). Air conditioning units are one thing that I'd believe are much more common today than in the 1970s and 1980s. Household sizes are also smaller, so less electricity used for electric water heaters, and the oven, etc.. Electric vehicles are an up and coming user of electricity. What other appliances are likely to be using more now than before?

These are good points, but having worked on a few older houses, I usually see overextended and overloaded circuits, not the opposite.

Standard small-house service used to be 60A, sometimes as few as 4 circuits! It's now 100A minimum by code, with 200A common.

Ovens/ranges have gone from 30A to 50A (dedicated) circuits by code. Microwaves also require dedicated circuits now. Gaming computers with big GPUs are common. Air fryers and electric pressure cookers are newly-common countertop appliances. People definitely use resistive electric space heaters more now (very cheap, much safer than the older options). And there's a trend away from gas and to electric ranges and water heaters. Heat pumps are also increasingly common. You mentioned air conditioners and EV chargers. Kitchens and bathrooms are now required to have dedicated (and GFCI) circuits. Household sizes are smaller, but houses are larger.

So I guess I'd say that, properly expanded, individual circuits should carry less current than they used to. But very often, appliances (AC, microwave, gaming rig, air fryers), are just "plugged in" to an unexpanded system, with varying results.

If you're lucky, they pop a breaker and you call an electrician. If you're not lucky, they push the power draw into uncomfortable zones, esp for Al wire.

>Gaming computers with big GPUs are common.

Is there a good way to quantify this?

My best guess would be the size of the GPU market, before the AI crush.

I don't track that market (not a gamer), but it seemed substantial enough that I was aware of it. I do travel in geeky circles though.

Also, plasma TVs were big for a decade or so, and they run hotter than the CRTs that preceded them, or the LCDs/etc of today.

This is absolutely not true in areas where heating the air and water and cooking are done with natural gas. Every single appliance in a house is more efficient today than in 1970 due to advances in motor speed control, without exception. The only thing that didn’t get more efficient is electric resistive heat and it’s impossible to improve on that anyways.

I can’t think of a single appliance from 1970 that consumes less energy than its modern equivalent. Anything with a pump or fan is more efficient and so is lighting. LCD TVs use less energy than CRTs.

I also can’t think of an appliance that has become common in households that draws more than 100 watts of continuous load since the 1970 aside from just ‘computers’. An ancient 500W 80% efficiency PSU at max load only has 5.2A of current at 120V single-phase.

If you convert your natural gas furnace to a heat pump, you will use more electricity but excluding that and NG to electric HPWHs leaves only more efficient equipment.

Sure, but there are more appliances plugged in today than there were. The simplest evidence for this is that there are never enough outlets in an old (unrenovated) home.

In a renovated house, you won't have aluminum wire at all, so these concerns are null.

My original statement should be qualified. Since we were talking about aluminum wire it's relevant -- an updated house will have new (copper) circuits that can handle all this stuff. An NON updated house might have Al wire and be overloaded in a more severe way than it was in the 60s.

But FWIW, new >100W appliances:

  - microwaves (1200+W)
  - air fryers (1500W)
  - electric pressure cookers
  - rice cookers (mine claims 610W on the plate)
  - stand mixers (old: 80W, new: 475W)
  - desktop computers (esp gaming rigs)
  - resistive space heaters (1500W)
  - *bigger* TVs (compare 72" LCD to 19" CRT?)
  - air purifiers (mine clocks 175W on high)
  - towel warmers? :)
  - and the ubiquity of 10-20W small stuff has of course exploded, and it all adds up

> Sure, but there are more appliances plugged in today than there were. The simplest evidence for this is that there are never enough outlets in an old (unrenovated) home.

Perhaps, but none of them are continuous load, which absolutely matters.

Rice cookers, microwave, stand mixers, air fryers, pressure cookers, etc are all short duration usage, not continuous load. If homeowners decide not to add dedicated kitchen circuits and instead use a 120V 12A load on a 120V 15A shared circuit and trip the overcurrent protection, that’s their own fault.

These loads don’t really matter in the way a heat pump, air conditioner, furnace fan, or water heater does, it’s a bunch of random kitchen appliances that you won’t be using simultaneously. Your utility does not even take the full non-continuous load into account when calculating the kVA demand of your electrical service. IIRC a random convenience duplex receptacle for non-continuous loads only adds like 180 VA (this is 1.5A at 120V with a power factor of 1) to the demand calculation.

You are correct in a technical sense that people have more devices they plug into a wall, but most of the power consumed by a home is to devices that are hardwired in, aka continuous loads, not cord and plug connected appliances.

The continuous load of a home should be lower than ever without electrifying heat. Every continuous load (which are almost exclusively motors and lighting) in a home is more efficient now than in the past due to variable frequency drives and electrically commutated motors.

... but unless I'm mistaken, (something closer to) instantaneous load is the important factor for aluminum wire thermals.

Varying high loads are more significant than a continuous medium load in terms of the effects on wiring junctions.

> my worry is can renewables be quickly brought online to power industry / power hungry Data Centers etc at a reasonable cost

I mean, clearly the answer is yes. The problem is political, not economic.

Could you spell out the “clearly yes” part of this? I’d love it to be true but even more than that I’d like to have an answer to the climate sceptics.

We're commenting on an article that discusses how quickly and cheaply large scale renewables can be brought online.

Yes, that is also how the deposit on a can of soda works.

Which is fortunate, considering how asinine it is in 2026 to expect that none of the items listed will be accomplished in the next 3.9 years.

That person died in a car accident and they were wearing a seatbelt! Why would anyone wear a seatbelt? They are clearly useless.

> That person died in a car accident and they were wearing a seatbelt! But in any story not about this car accident people generally cast them as the useless.

This story isn't evidence that IRBs are always useless, but also it's not an example of them being useful. The thing this story shows is they are sometimes useless.

Yeah, that's reasonable.

That seems like a bad faith reinterpretation of the context that the question was being asked in. The statement that the question pertained to was, "in any story not about this Linux kernel fiasco people generally cast them as the bad guys."

But a lot of money was not involved here.