Evil_Shrubbery

Yes, this.

And prob not what op is looking for but I also have a bunch of esp32 cams, different PCBs and with different sensors/lenses.

They ain't much but also cost like 3 monies with shipping (and is enough to eg normally recognise people etc).

to shrink reliance on Big Tech

Right there in the title

Being notified about Raspberry Pi > raspberry pie > cream pie delivery.

Finally AI in my favourite code editor!

/s (both)

Yeah, good advice.

For my parents house with NAS in their living room I still use WD Red Plus (not Red Pro), so pleasant & quiet (which was basically my only concern). But smol. Can't find new ones as quiet tho.

How is the noise?
Did you make any model selection based on that?

We share that sentiment!

Sorry, I didn't see any other connection from when you said this:

My point is just, what infrastructure can you do with say <$1b? It’s a lot of money but not building a whole new railroad kind of money. You can get a few station upgrade projects, a couple of electric trains, etc.

There’s room for private funding of a new electric car company. Save the tax dollars for big infrastructure projects.

My bad, but I don't see the relevance otherwise - the tax dollars are already being saved & spent on big infrastructure projects, and the privately funded car company is also underway. Both are already facts.

Nobody is getting rid of cars or making any transitions overnight. How did you come to this anyway?

Using 1bn of gov money for car production isn't political willpower?

And political willpower is already finally literally building new rail. Why take that money away and back into cars?

Also, the two issues; cars with or without solar panels, and solar panels on buildings are separate. And panels are ultra cheap.

So cars with solar panels are more efficient simply bcs there is more solar palens that way, regardless of your building having panels or not.

Every panel is a net positive, super effective or slightly less super effective ones.

And you are not putting any more or less panels on your house if you buy a car with or without the 200$ solar panels on/in it.

Why not say that if you can't build a railway system for 20$ then you should stick with the current system that is just so great?

Sorry, but what sort of conclusion is that? I don't understand, it's divergent things.

Lots of tech that cars offer I can also have at my house, like a sound system or massage chair.

Car prices don't reflect constriction costs.
Cars won't be more or less expensive bcs of 200$ of solar panels.

Also people with budgets constraints dont buy new cars, why would they?

New electric car companies only intensity the always insufficient highways & daily rush hours adding time to peoples commutes.

Also cars cost money, we tend to forget that when talking about rail.

With less than 1bn you can build railroads between cities.

Some random sniplet (californiapolicycenter.org:

According to the HERS analysis, adding a new lane to an interstate on flat terrain in a rural area costs $2.7 million per lane mile. To do the same thing in a major urbanized area costs $62.4 million per lane mile, more than twenty times as much. Even minor projects display wide ranges in cost. Resurfacing an existing lane of a principal arterial in a flat, rural area costs $279,000 per lane mile. To do the same in a major urbanized area costs $825,000 per lane mile, three times as much.

(That is without car related costs with fall on individuals, or environmental costs that arent counted at all.)

California at the same time is building high-speed rail between LA & SF at 66 million per mile - that is including the railway stations & the city tunnels mentioned previously at billions per mile.
And that's also a stupidly mismanaged project with 200+ million dollars in literally just planning mistakes and human errors (or sabotage).
With low maintenance & basically unlimited capacity I can only see that as a cost efficient project that should have been done 50 years ago.