Why would you replace it if doing so is uneconomic?

Panel lifetime is very high. The scope for efficiency improvement is not huge (unless there is a cost breakthrough in multi band photon capture). It's not a car, phone, or computer. It's more like the rest of the house electric infrastructure.

I had my rooftop solar over 10 years ago and basically intend to leave it until some maintenance issue forces action.

(Also, the kit secondhand value is hard to determine but far from zero; 30-50% maybe?)

I am not convinced that the "dark factory" / "gas town" people are actually shipping anything that isn't also part of the AI ecosystem. At least the noise/ship ratio is incredibly high.

What about shipping tweets and blog posts? Also team demos "how to use AI for basic imaginary hello-world scenarios".

You'd be surprised. I think Waymo have already proven this; not perfectly safe, but below the care threshold. And the demand for childcare is huge. Of course, what then happens is how the ensuing child neglect case falls out.

We're probably going to end up with the situation where the burden "it is considered criminal child endangerment to leave your child alone with the robot" falls on the parents, not on the robot manufacturers.

That's not how product liability laws work in the U.S. or in the E.U.

The first time a child gets harmed by a robot, the company making that robot will go spectacularly bankrupt. If a child gets killed by a robot, it would likely end the consumer robotics industry for a decade or more.

People tried to hold gun manufacturers liable for dead children, and the law was simply changed to exempt them.

Robots and AI have too much money to be held liable.

Teslas have killed probably hundreds of people at this point and the only changes to self-driving laws have been to allow more of it.

Tesla sales have cratered in all but 2 countries.

It's probably easier to handle as civil negligence. Criminal damage has an intent component. Of course it would hinge on discovery - as soon as you find an email to the effect of "we know this will cause damage, let's test it on someone else's house", that counts as intent.

> Customers expect some products to be dangerous and rely on product reviews to determine which ones.

.. which are of course the easiest thing to fake.

> then overpriced incumbents use their influence over the laws to target any new supplier that tries to establish a trusted brand, which causes the foreign suppliers to have to sell through dozens of unknown labels so they can continue to dissolve them if any of them get prosecuted.

This is not an accurate description of new market entry for .. well, anything? And what are the new entrants being prosecuted for? Is it by any chance unsafe products?

> .. which are of course the easiest thing to fake.

How do you get Consumer Reports to publish a fake product review? Can you point to even one instance of that actually happening?

> This is not an accurate description of new market entry for .. well, anything?

Huawei is a pretty conspicuous example of it actually happening. They were starting to establish a brand and then regulatory destruction was imposed. Meanwhile there seem to be a huge number of other products from the same country with white labels or rotating unknown brands for some reason even though they probably come out of the same factory.

> And what are the new entrants being prosecuted for? Is it by any chance unsafe products?

That there is a difference between regulatory compliance and actual safety is obviously the point. All the incumbents need is for the rules to be complicated enough that compliance requires you to be a massive bureaucracy, or that nobody is really complying but selective enforcement gets imposed when someone undesirable is starting to look like a real challenger.

> How do you get Consumer Reports to publish a fake product review?

No need. Just have dozens of companies produce hundreds of new junk products every year. Then there's no way all products can be reviewed, and no way they can be properly reviewed: what's interesting about a review is the failure mode of the products, which you have no idea about when you have 10 new Samsung smartphones coming out every year.

> [Huawei] were starting to establish a brand and then regulatory destruction was imposed. selective enforcement gets imposed when someone undesirable is starting to look like a real challenger.

Yes, selective enforcement is the problem. Not regulations. Regulations are not strong enough. But they need to be applied evenly. Why is it legal for Apple and Samsung to produce junk, but not Huawei? (rhetorical question, please don't answer) We need proper consumer protection. Any company producing a product should have 10 years or 20 years warranty, and should be legally mandated to produce/sell spare parts for 20+ years (as in, real spare parts, not "replacement motherboard" which costs the entire smartphone).

Suddenly, the junk makers would produce less junk. Maybe there'd only be a new Samsung/iPhone every 5 years, but it would probably be as solid and repairable as older Nokias.

And in other blue collar union environments, following the book is known as "work to rule" and considered a mild form of sabotage/industrial action.

Some of this just needn't apply, especially from a UK perspective; you can operate as a sole trader with very little paperwork until you make £85,000 and have to register for VAT. You don't need a company shell or a business bank account.

"Social security" equivalent: as a sole trader you do have to pay National Insurance above a minimum threshold.

(one of the massive differences between UK regulatory culture and the EU is that the UK is very good at having "de minimis" thresholds so you don't have to worry about compliance until you've actually made decent money. EU rules tend to apply as soon as you sell a single item, which is ridiculous)

> Electronics specific. CE compliance is expensive.

This on the other hand is a real problem. WEEE as well.

> shipping rates

It is insane that it is cheaper to ship from China than intra-EU.

Not really, no.

The product launch was a group buy of minimum 400 units. You can choose one of "compete with China" or "expensive product testing requirements for small-run products".

This is one press release. It tells us nothing about how much other enforcement action has taken place, much of which is supposed to be local. The EU does not care about individual corner shops, report them to your local trading standards body.

(I also find it odd how we get lots of nationalist complaints from the US on here when EU rules are applied to US companies; now EU rules are being applied to a Chinese company and people are still complaining?)

> "Neptune Deep will start delivering natural gas in 2027."

This is a "forward-looking statement", and presents special problems because you cannot really evaluate it until that date. You can only assign "likely or unlikely".