As someone in the UK, I can buy a subscription to Amazon Prime Video, or not, I can buy a subscription to Netflix, or not. I can pay for a BBC licence so I can watch iPlayer, or not.
I can watch free TV on ITVx or Channel 4 switching a subscription for adverts.
That's not strictly true, there are plenty of streaming services that come out of the UK but they are tailored for the UK market; BritBox being the most prominent.
The parent was making a jibe at the TV License which is mandatory if you own a tv or "streaming capable device" (because the BBC can stream now.. sigh).
I'm in Canada, originally from Europe; and to simplify, I never really "understood" regional banks. I was an exchange student in Minnesota and banked with... "Bank of Fairmont". Tiny city of 11k people, and it had its own bank. Seemed horribly inefficient and weird; and then when you left your home town you were in a load of headache. Of course that was 25 years ago, but still, when I hear there are 4,000 banks in USA (not branches; separate independent banks), I cannot help but ask... why?? Until recently, USA seemed way way way behind on convenience and efficiency; and the "fintech innovations" that are happening now seem built on ridiculously sketchy framework.
Understood that small regional banks exist and it'd be senseless and disruptive to kill them off now, but if we take them as a historical artifact that we must live with, what actual advantages, in clean-sheet model, do they have, that would counter-act the poster's main point?
Because in before times, when you used to want to start a business or expand a business, or buy a home, and needed a loan, you had to go convince a bank employee to make that loan to you.
In those cases, a relationship between bank employees and the local residents mattered to establish trust between both parties.
Nowadays, a lot of high quality databases can do a lot of the work figuring out a borrower’s credit, so there is less need for those personal interactions, especially for something as simple as home mortgages.
These days a regional bank will have robust online and call center services and probably refund any ATM fees.
Unless you need a ton of cash real quick (which is rare and getting rarer) it's perfectly convenient to keep using your regional bank even if you've moved across the country. If you do need the cash you call them and have them raise your ATM limit for a day. The overall amount of inconvenience per year is equal or less than dealing with some big stodgy national chain.
Canadian but also lived in the US. Have not lived in the EU.
For Canada, while geographically large population wise it’s very small compared to the US. The big Canadian banks are targeting a similar sized demographic to California.
I’m less familiar with Europe, but I’m guessing most nations still have prominent national retail banks, with some having an EU wide market? Those national retail banks would effectively be regional in the US.
They're historically related to having shareholders which are also local, or backed by local foundations, or have special relationships with the local businesses (like the ones in Italy that will take a wheel of cheese or balsamic vinegar as collateral). Not "bank of $city" tho.
Credit unions will survive. Let banking regulators deal with the fallout of not permitting narrow banks.
“No narrow banks so we can encourage fractional reserve lending, but be responsible!” “Okay, fine, we’ll cover everything.” “Systemic risk!” “Narrow bank now pls?” “No! Fractional reserve lending responsibly!”
There are still credit union failures but less compared to bank failures.
Credit Unions are owned by the members instead of shareholders and are non-profit but yea seems very similar to a regional bank. What else are different?
I do wonder though, why SVB became so large compared whereas a credit union like First Technology Credit Unit which manages 15 billion in assets. Wouldn't a credit union be a better fit since they are local at its core. And credit unions serve the financial needs of a specific group of people who share a common interest or affiliation (in this case Tech/VC firms in Silicon Valley).
There's also the 250k insurance but by NCUSIF instead of FDIC
Enovix is already at 1,500 cycles w/ 88% capacity retention at *889 wh/L per core* (figure ignores packaging, like the Argonne figure) at 6C CCCV charge – 1C discharge.
And that is a commercially relevant sized cell that is being produced at Fab1 in Fremont.
The real future is a fully distributed series of microgrids, which affords all of distributed generation, smart grid coordination, and resilience. If you want to work on this, think about joining Enphase, which makes grid-forming microinverters and the software to coordinate on a micro and macro level: https://enphase.com/careers
A 'smart grid' that continues to give utilities a mainframe style monopoly position will not work and will never be the solution. They simply aren't capable of building or maintaining the infrastructure, at any price.
Well, just barely. They claim to have made some samples.[1] Read their SEC filing for Q1 2022.
They already went public via an SPAC reverse merger, with a nominal value around $1 billion.
The biggest concern is in the "Risks" section: "Our roadmap to improve our energy density requires us to implement higher energy density materials for both cathodes and anodes." That's a fundamental problem, and the story of too many wannabe battery makers. It would be much better if the SEC filing said they had a working prototype which met the announced specs, and the big risk was scaling up the manufacturing of the prototype.
Happily, you are misunderstanding their filing. They do have working prototypes which meet the announced specs.
They also have a plan to push beyond the current (and very impressive) 900 Wh/L energy density.[1] It is those future-looking plans which may (or may not) require higher energy density materials on the anode and cathode.
From PDF, page 10, note "Assumed 100% packing efficiency for pouch or prismatic vs 90.7% packing efficiency for cylindrical form factor". Some of the improved energy density seems to come from rectangular cells packed with no space for coolant flow.
The one picture of an actual battery shows it sitting on a huge heat sink.
I'm with you on all but this. Cleaning up the environment is a very expensive, time consuming process. There's still about 20 superfund sites in Santa Clara County due to its heyday of tech manufacturing.
Our local community has been fighting for the cleanup of a 60 year old disaster. That they agreed to clean up 20 years ago. But they've barely started.
Germany hasn't been doing any of that except immigration, and it has fared exceptionally well over the last decades. Taiwan's chip industry is the result of massive subsidies that got it started.
And watch as your fledgling local business dies due to hundreds of billions of subsidies for foreign fabs. South Korea alone is subsidizing Semiconductors with $450Bn [1]. If you want local fabs, you need to spend money. Or you get to watch your automotive assembly lines stop because of chip shortages.
