Every decade or so there is a freakout out about China’s monopoly in rare earths. The last time was in 2010 when Paul Krugman wrote:

You really have to wonder why nobody raised an alarm while this was happening, if only on national security grounds. But policy makers simply stood by as the U.S. rare earth industry shut down….The result was a monopoly position exceeding the wildest dreams of Middle Eastern oil-fueled tyrants.

…the affair highlights the fecklessness of U.S. policy makers, who did nothing while an unreliable regime acquired a stranglehold on key materials.

A few years later I pointed out that the crisis was exaggerated:

• The Chinese government might or might not have wanted to take advantage of their temporary monopoly power but Chinese producers did a lot to evade export bans both legally and illegally.
• Firms that had been using rare earths when they were cheap decided they didn’t really need them when they were expensive.
• New suppliers came on line as prices rose.
• Innovations created substitutes and ways to get more from using less.

Well, we are at it again. Tim Worstall, a rare earths dealer and fine economist, is the one to read:

…rare earths are neither rare nor earths, and they are nearly everywhere. The biggest restriction on being able to process them is the light radioactivity the easiest ores (so easy they are a waste product of other industrial processes — monazite say) contain. If we had rational and sensible rules about light radioactivity — alas, we don’t — then that end of the process would already be done. Passing Marco Rubio’s Thorium Act would, for example, make Florida’s phosphate gypsum stacks available and they have more rare earths in them than several sticks could be shaken at.

Some also point out that only China has the ores with dysprosium and terbium — needed for the newly vital high temperature magnets. This is also one of those things that is not true. A decade back, yes, we did collectively think that was true. The ores — “ionic clays” — were specific to South China and Burma. Collective knowledge has changed and now we know that they can exist anywhere granite has weathered in subtropical climes. I have a list somewhere of a dozen Australian claimed deposits and there is at least one company actively mining such in Chile and Brazil.

…No, this is not an argument that we should have subsidised for 40 years to maintain production. It’s going to be vastly cheaper to build new now than it would have been to carry deadbeats for decades. Quite apart from anything else, we’re going to build our new stuff at the edge of the current technological envelope — not just shiny but modern.

As Tyler says, do not underrate the “elasticity of supply.”

The post Rare Earths Aren’t Rare appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

In an extract from her posthumous memoir, Virginia Roberts Giuffre remembers the day an ‘apex predator’ recruited her from Mar-a-Lago, aged just 16; how she was trafficked to a succession of wealthy and powerful men – and how everyone knew what was going on

I can still remember walking on to the manicured grounds of Mar-a-Lago for the first time. It was early morning – my dad’s shift began at 7am, and I’d caught a ride to work with him. Already the air was heavy and moist, and the club’s 20 acres of carefully landscaped greens and lawns seemed to shimmer.

My dad was responsible for maintaining the resort’s in-room air-conditioning units, not to mention its five championship tennis courts, so he knew his way around. I remember he gave me a brief tour before presenting me to the hiring manager, who agreed to take me on. That first day, I was given a uniform – a white polo shirt, emblazoned with the Mar-a-Lago crest, and a short white skirt – and a name tag that said JENNA in all capital letters. (Although I was called Virginia, everyone at home called me Jenna.)

While we chronicled the fall of Nikola, a company that promised over-the-road trucks built with hydrogen propulsion systems, it’s useful to note that it was literally only this past February that the company declared bankruptcy. What came before that was the company’s previous CEO, Trevor Milton. Milton made wild promises to investors in order to get more funding, including showing them video of its prototype truck zooming down a highway under its proprietary propulsion system. The only problem is that it was doing no such thing. Instead, it had been towed to the top of a hilly road and then it coasted down that road, with the footage being taken at a tilted camera angle to make it look like it was actually being driven when it wasn’t. Yes, it really was as cartoonish as that.

From there, the company suddenly lost a bunch of contracts, copyright was invoked in a failed attempt to silence criticism of its actions, and Milton was eventually convicted of fraud and sentenced to 4 years in jail. And then Donald Trump pardoned him, because of course he did. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the millions of dollars Milton donated to the Trump campaign and other Republican candidates, nor anything to do with Milton being represented by Brad Bondi, brother of current U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Milton never did a day in prison and lied publicly after his pardon, saying that the pardon indicated he was innocent, when it did no such thing. But never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that mere months after that pardon for fraud would Milton suddenly become the CEO of a well-established company.

The disgraced founder of Nikola Corp., who was sentenced to four years in prison for fraud for lying to investors about technological breakthroughs at the once-hyped electric-truck maker, has been named CEO of SyberJet Aircraft, the company announced Tuesday.

In a press release, SyberJet said Milton would guide the development of a new nine-seat light jet called the SyberJet SJ36. The company said it would be the fastest jet of its kind ever developed, with speeds clocking in as high as Mach .88.

Now, SyberJet is not a publicly traded company, unlike Nikola. But it is backed by private equity, meaning raising funds for this ambitious project is going to be important. And Milton has a lot of, ahem, runway to get this new jet off the ground. Deliveries on the product aren’t expected until 2032.

There is something of a con job already happening on the SyberJet website, where you can see this.

“Renowned”? That should be “infamous”. And these claims about what Milton did and did not bring to market are pretty laughable. The context about what happened after a few hundred trucks got sold is pretty damned important. For fuck’s sake, guys.

And I do mean “guys.” This is the kind of failing upward you can only get from a white guy. The ink on Milton’s pardon isn’t even dry yet, and he’s already a CEO of another company. And they say you can’t get justice in America anymore.

In a rarity for Apple’s streaming service, users will be able to buy bundled subscriptions to Apple TV and Peacock for a discount, starting on October 20.

On its own, the Apple TV streaming service (which was called Apple TV+ until Monday) is $13 per month. NBCUniversal’s Peacock starts at $8/month with ads and $11/month without ads. With the upcoming bundle, people can subscribe to both for a total of $15/month or $20/month, depending on whether Peacock has ads or not (Apple TV never has ads).

People can buy the bundles through either Apple’s or Peacock’s websites and apps.

Apple and NBCUniversal are hoping to drive subscriptions with the bundle. In a statement, Oliver Schusser, Apple’s VP of Apple TV, Apple Music, Sports, and Beats, said that he thinks the bundle will help bring Apple TV content “to more viewers in more places.”

Bundles that combine more than one streaming service for an overall discount have become a popular tool for streaming providers trying to curb cancellations. The idea is that people are less likely to cancel a streaming subscription if it’s tied to another streaming service or product, like cellular service.

Apple, however, has largely been a holdout. It used to offer a bundle with Apple TV for full price, plus Showtime and Paramount+ (then called CBS All Access) for no extra cost. But those add-ons, especially at the time, could be considered more cable-centric compared to the streaming bundle announced today.

Apple will also make select Apple Originals content available to watch with a Peacock subscription. The announcement says:

At launch, Peacock subscribers can enjoy up to three episodes of Stick, Slow Horses, Silo, The Buccaneers, Foundation, Palm Royale, and Prehistoric Planet from Apple TV for free, while Apple TV app users will be able to watch up to three episodes of Law & Order, Bel-Air, Twisted Metal, Love Island Games, Happy’s Place, The Hunting Party, and Real Housewives of Miami from Peacock.

Additionally, people who are subscribed to Apple One’s Family or Premier Plans can get Peacock’s most expensive subscription—which adds offline downloads to the ad-free tier and is typically $17/month—for about $11/month (“a 35 percent discount,” per the announcement). The discount marks the first time that Apple has offered Apple One subscribers a deal for a non-Apple product, suggesting a new willingness from Apple to partner with rivals to help its services business.

Apple tries growing its streaming business

Apple hasn’t disclosed how many subscribers Apple TV has, but Eddy Cue, Apple’s SVP of services, told the podcast The Town with Matthew Belloni this week that the service has “significantly more than” 45 million subscribers. Apple TV’s viewership is expected to be much smaller than the biggest streaming services, like Netflix (about 302 million subscribers as of January, currently estimated to have about 310 million) and Disney+ (128 million subscribers as of June). Peacock, meanwhile, has 45 million subscribers.

Apple’s services business, which includes Apple TV and other Apple services, such as iCloud, Apple Care, and the App Store, grew 13.5 percent year over year in Apple’s most recent earnings report. The tech giant’s services business is of increasing importance as growth for device sales slows (sales for Apple’s products grew 8 percent year over year in the same earnings report). Being more open to driving subscriptions through third parties could help Apple fuel services growth.

Apple hasn’t disclosed if Apple TV is making it any money. In March, The Information, citing two anonymous sources “with direct knowledge of the matter,” reported that the streaming service loses over $1 billion per year. After getting into streaming in 2019, Apple now appears more eager to make money, including by increasing the price of Apple TV this summer.

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The fact that there exist in our world flat rocks that make lightning when you point them at the sun is one of the most unappreciated bits of wizardry in this modern age. As hackers, we love all this of techno-wizardry–but some of us abhor paying full price for it. Like cars, one way to get a great discount is to buy used. [Backyard Solar Project] helped a friend analyze some 14-year-old panels to see just how they’d held up over the years, and it was actually better than we might have expected.

The big polycrystalline panels were rated at 235 W when new, and they got 6 of them for the low, low price of “get this junk off my property”. Big panels are a bit of a pain to move, but that’s still a great deal. Especially considering that after cleaning they averaged 180 W, a capacity factor of 77%. Before cleaning 14 years worth of accumulated grime cost about eight watts, on average, an argument for cleaning your panels. Under the same lighting conditions, the modern panel (rated to 200 W) was giving 82% of rated output.

That implies that after 14 years, the panels are still at about 94% of their original factory output, assuming the factory wasn’t being overoptimistic about the numbers to begin with. Still, assuming you can trust the marketing, a half a percent power drop per year isn’t too bad. It’s also believable, since the US National Renewably Energy Laboratory (yes, they have one) has done tests that put that better than the average of 0.75 %/yr. Of course the average American solar panel lives in a hotter climate than [Backyard Solar Project], which helps explain the slower degradation.

Now, we’re not your Dad or your accountant, so we’re not going to tell you if used solar panels are worth the effort. On the one hand, they still work, but on the other hand, the density is quite a bit lower. Just look at that sleek, modern 200 W panel next to the old 235 W unit. If you’re area-limited, you might want to spring for new, or at least the more energy-dense monocrystalline panels that have become standard the last 5 years or so, which aren’t likely to be given away just yet. On the gripping hand, free is free, and most of us are much more constrained by budget than by area. If nothing else, you might have a fence to stick old panels against; the vertical orientation is surprisingly effective at higher latitudes.