The pandemic was not a normal situation. There are centuries of evidence about cities, pre- and now post-pandemic.
Some clear empirical data is housing prices: People are willing to pay far more to live in many cities than anywhere else, often for much smaller residences.
Different strokes for different folks. There's an attraction to having more space/less noise/etc. and being able to travel into a big city for activities without too much hassle/time. There's also an attraction to having a probably smaller place and just walk/cab/transit to those activities.
I ended up mostly gravitating to the former but I understand the attraction of the latter and, who knows, I may change my preference some day.
If Apple hadn't adopted USB for the iMac, especially the fruity colored iMacs, which then spawned hundreds if not thousands of brightly colored accessories, who knows if it ever would have taken off on the PC side of things. I still see the occasional motherboard with a PS/2 port :p
Based on what? The receiver knows where it is since it has GPS. Starlink knows the orbits of their own satellites. Why wouldn't they queue up connections to upcoming satellites and then hand off from one to the next in anticipation of the one you are on eventually rotating out?
What's up with the apparent assumption they only track one satellite at a time or until there is a communication problem? That would be stupid (and why they obviously don't do that).
A fossil fuel fire can be extinguished by snuffing it. By a fire extinguisher if it's caught small enough, or by a fire department with sufficient quantities of water.
Lithium Ion battery fires are self sustaining. Like with thermite, they produce their own oxidizer - they can't be snuffed. You might be able to flood one and cool it to the point where it self extinguishes (creating a flood of heavy metal contaminated water), use special equipment to drown it, or just let it burn itself out (spewing toxic gasses and at least three times the heat of petroleum fires) but once they are going, they are far more of a disaster than other kinds of common fires.
And even if put out they can re-ignite later forcing salvage yards to keep them physically isolated; causing all kinds of follow on problems that don't exist with traditional vehicles or other battery tech.
As others noted, this study did NOT explore these follow on effects, which is unfortunate. Perhaps they really aren't as bad as they appear - it would be nice to see them studied as well.
I stopped needing gas long time ago but if I needed gas I sure as heck am not going anywhere where I can save $0.10 to pay in cash (probably spend 2x that in gas needed to get to the gas station to save $0.10 per gallon). or for that matter ain't going to any place that has a different price depending on my method of payment.
I was also going to say, between the Costco executive membership's 2% rebate, and CC incentives, it's probably a wash anyways between that or the 10¢ difference.
