International Bond ETFs are normally dollar-hedged.
There are some unhedged ones that are in the local currencies and better at tracking foreign exchange rates. e.g. BWX is an unhedged international treasury fund.
I wanted to replace my gas Macan with the new EV one. After a test drive I decided to just keep the gas one.
As an EV it is excellent. But Porsche is known for engaging driver's cars, and without the visceral sounds and vibrations of an engine it is bland and boring. The flaws in a gas engine's power curve give it character. Letting the driver manage that power curve is fun. A perfectly linear sub-3s 0-60 with fake electric sport sound played through the speakers does nothing for me.
I'd have probably bought it at $75K, but at $125K it needs to be more special. Especially considering the rate at which they depreciate. Its not a surprise to me that their EVs aren't selling as well as hoped. The Taycan sure is pretty though.
Prosche specifically is facing huge losses, and with this strategy is doomed to die. There are already rumors of potential bancrupcy.
EVs grew 20% globally in 2025, with developing markets surging 40%+.
When EVs under $100,000 can hit sub-2.5-second 0–60 mph (0–100 km/h), all this fake "benefit" talk about exhaust notes and luxury engine refinement sounds exactly like people cheering for Vertu golden buttons at the dawn of the iPhone era.
EVs are growing incredibly fast—despite the West's biggest EV supplier deciding to commit marketing harakiri by alienating half its customer base.
New battery tech has made EVs affordable, and that's why adoption will keep accelerating in China, the EU, and the rest of the world. There'll be some irrelevant fluctuations in the US, but those will eventually even out regardless—because the rest of the world and technological progress will move on with or without them.
we are on the edge of go-to-market of billions of dollars of investments into battery development. It will deliver both much cheaper where needed and more capable batteries on the market. Guess what it will do with legacy cars.
EVs as a whole are growing. Porsche however is struggling because of their "sports car" identity. Taycan sales dropped 22% year-over-year [0], and their 2025 EV sales only rose because the Macan EV is new and they discontinued the gas one in the EU. (Even then: Half of all Macan buyers worldwide went for the 11-year-old gas design over the EV.)
The market for EV sports cars is soft. The Rimac Nevera R broke 24 performance world records and yet nobody wants to buy it [1]. Even the CEO of Rimac has said people want an engine sound. Meanwhile Ferrari can launch an even more expensive gas car and it sells out before its officially announced [2].
I'm pro-EV and my partner owns one. They are practical appliances that are perfect for the 90% of people who just want to get from A to B. But the stats show that it's not just my personal preferences. The average sports car buyer wants an engine and exhaust.
My theory is that people buy mass-market Porsche cars because the 718/911 guys tell everyone how cool these cars are, but not everyone wants or needs a kidney-busting two-seater, so they compromise with a Panamera or Macan.
If there's no electric 718/911 version to hype them up, there’s not going to be any demand. There's also the issue that they're known for their small sporty cars, yet they're trying to sell 5m-long sedans and 'soccer mom' SUVs and failing at it.
The "soccer mom" SUVs are their best sellers and literally saved the company. I beg you to test-drive a Cayenne Turbo GT if you think they can't deliver a sports-car-like experience in a large SUV. Or a Macan GTS (which is only 7" longer than a 911 btw.)
The Taycan is pretty close to being an electric 911. There's a 718 EV coming out soon but Porsche realized there was not enough demand so now they're retrofitting a gas engine into the design.
The lack of demand for the 718 EV boils down to EVs being heavy, and therefore less chuckable than the gas one, and the lack of soul & engagement in cars without an engine. Solid state batteries will eventually solve the first problem. I'm not sure how we can solve the second one. Perhaps kids of today will grow up caring less about mechanical sounds.
> But Porsche is known for engaging driver's cars, and without the visceral sounds and vibrations of an engine it is bland and boring. The flaws in a gas engine's power curve give it character
Personally I experienced this the strongest in my friend's restored mk3 Ford Escort. I recall it as a feeling of not actually being inside a car due to the wind and engine noise.
Meanwhile the BMW 5 Series I rented a while ago didn't provide any of those feelings. Granted, it was a diesel automatic, but when I floored it, it just went and the engine noise was barely noticeable - at least compared to my poorly noise insulated daily Toyota.
The best thing about that car was that I could take my family on a 400km trip, the last 100km of which were mountain roads and not even break a sweat.
Who says it's supposed to boring? It's supposed to be safe and you're supposed to drive with the consideration of others, but I don't think it's supposed to be either fun or boring, that's up to you.
I'm having a blast rolling down the highway in the middle of the night blasting music and singing, am I not allowed to do this because driving is supposed to not be fun?
You can have plenty of fun without putting other drivers in danger. I used to drive a NA Miata that took 9 seconds to get to 60 mph and it was the most fun car I've ever owned. But I'm a slow-car-fast person.
Most people can safely wring out their cars in 1st and 2nd on a highway on-ramp, or from a traffic light on an empty 55 mph country road. I own a fun weekend car that I take out at dawn on a Saturday to carve up a mountain pass - which is fun even at the speed limit. In a lightweight sports car with excellent brakes, I am safer than all the trucks I see on these roads.
I agree with this for the most part, though there are times and with specific cars that you can have a blast. I can have a lot of fun in an old M Coupe, or Miata.
I used to have a GT3...it was a dream car of mine and I finally got it. The sad reality was that in order to have fun with it on public roads I was either going to kill myself/someone else, or go to jail. The only way to really experience that car in a responsible way was to go to the track. Which I just flat out didn't have the time to do with young kids.
Things were very different 20-30 years ago. Roads were less crowded and people were much more respectful on the road. Now, especially where I live, it's a free for all Mad Max cosplay.
The E-GMP Hyundai/Kia EV platform is also unreliable. Around 1 in every 50 of these cars will suddenly lose power while driving due to ICCU failure. Search any forum for the EV6 or Ioniq 5 and this is all over. Mine broke down and got towed back to the shop so many times, where it sat for ages because my dealer was sharing a single EV-qualified tech with 2 other dealers. I eventually had the car Lemon Law'd. As far as I know this issue is still unsolved after 4+ years. (The software recall made no difference.) I loved the car when it was working though.
Likewise. I've had the 40" version for about a year. Higher DPI than the 52". It replaced 2 x 27" monitors and I'm glad I made the switch. I generally have 2 apps running side-by-side just like before, but with the ability to go full wide-screen for movies or gaming.
This monitor really does everything. It's crisp enough to read text on all day, unlike many gaming monitors. But the 120Hz is decent for gaming whereas most 5K+ monitors are only 60hz.
Even 1 teaspoon of salt can be twice as salty as the recipe's writer intended. e.g. Morton's has denser flakes which are 1.8x as salty by volume compared to Diamond Crystal.
For baking where its almost an exact science, it baffles me why recipes still use cups and spoons. I specifically search for recipes where the measurements are in grams. SeriousEats is often where I end up.
SeriousEats is great most of the time, and if you can "acquire" copies of any of the Modernist series (Modernist Cuisine, Modernist Cuisine at Home, Modernist Bread, Modernist Pizza), those are all done by mass with baker's percentages.
IMHO digital entertainment doesn't make up for being stuck in a cramped cabin for up to 19 hours (the longest international flight) around people (with varying levels of considerateness, contagiousness, and personal hygiene). Not to mention the increased risks of DVT and radiation exposure.
I travel each year to see family abroad, a minimum 2-leg trip totaling at least 27 hours. I can't sleep on planes so I arrive exhausted and am useless and cranky for the first 2 days after this trip. I would happily pay 2x the fare to cut that trip in half.
If you can afford supersonic travel, then you could also afford first class. And supersonic travel will probably be like flying economy. The concord was pretty crammed compared to today’s first class.
If you're flying half-way around the world, sleeping on the plane or a shorter flight isn't going to help much. I've done it twice and the jet lag is killer for the first 2-3 days regardless of how well you sleep on the plane (I usually sleep very well).
Under the assumption that it was a suicide, there have been changes that resulted from the similar Germanwings incident. Most airlines adopted a policy of requiring at least 2 people in the cockpit at all times.
Edited to add: There are also discussions underway on how to better handle pilots suffering from depression, since pilots are currently incentivized to never disclose mental health problems for fear of losing their livelihoods. Mentour Pilot talks about this too at the end of his Germanwings video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lotcRYD42e0
I'd pay good money for a dumb 4K OLED TV that does nothing but show whatever is coming in through the HDMI port.
I use a Playstation 5 for everything including Netflix, Apple TV and so on. But every time I turn on the PS5, my TV detects the Playstation and automatically changes the TV's Sound and Video modes to "Gaming", which makes dialog difficult to hear on TV. So I change the setting manually using its horrible remote control, only for it to change back to Gaming the next time I use it.
Isn't the "Gaming" setting doing exactly that (giving you "whatever is coming in through the HDMI port")?
What you describe about it being hard to hear dialog is exactly what I'd expect from someone who has their TV turned down as a result of using the score/soundtrack and loud sound effects as a reference point, which consequently is too low a volume to hear the dialog.
I wouldn't be surprised if you're actually experiencing what your TV's processing turned off is like and sound balancing is actually what you (as in you, personally) _want_ it to be doing.
> Isn't the "Gaming" setting doing exactly that (giving you "whatever is coming in through the HDMI port")?
Not on my Samsung oled - there is an effect to boost the brightness of dark scenes (turning completely black screens into a gray smudge) that cannot be turned off completely.
I used to feel this way, at least about having the TV do zero processing.
Something that recently changed my viewpoint a little bit was that I was noticing that 24-30 fps content was appearing very choppy. I couldn't figure out why it looked like that. It turns out it's because modern OLED TVs can switch frames very cleanly and rapidly, CRTs or older LCDs were not like that, and their relative slowness in switching frames created a smoothing or blending effect.
Now I'm considering turning back on my TVs motion smoothing. I'm just hoping it doesn't do full-blown frame interpolation that makes everything look like a Mexican soap opera.
All you need to fix that is 3:2 pulldown, which all modern TVs should be able to do.
Unfortunately this is another basic feature that tends to be "branded" on TVs. On my Sony Bravia it's split into a combination of features called Cinemotion and Motionflow.
3:2 pulldown (or other telecine patterns) is what was used to go from 24 FPS film to 30 FPS interlaced NTSC video. Your TV or video player needs to undo that (going back to the original 24 FPS) in order to fix a judder ever 5 frames. But that is not going to fix the inherent choppiness of fast camera movements with 24 FPS film and is also not relevant for most modern content because it is no longer limited to NTSC and can instead give you the original 24 FPS directly.
Don't have personal experience with these devices, but a passthrough EDID emulator might solve this. I expect it would make the TV unable to recognize the specific device you have plugged in.
I’m not sure about your TV but it may be a setting you can disable to automatically change the sound.
I agree with you though. We have a Sony Bravia purchased back in 2016 for $900. It has thr Android TV spam/bloat/spyware but it’s not used and never connects to the Internet which has made the TV quite usable over the years. Apple TV is connected, Sonos too, and everything works fine without any crazy settings changes. I’m not looking forward to whenever this thing needs replaced (which will likely be it actually breaking versus being outdated).
I bought a not too expensive TCL qm6k with game master mode. Whenever it detects Xbox series S input, it turns on the mode by default. On menu it stays at 1440p but when I start a game, it switches to 4k 120hz- and the input lag becomes horrible!
Turns out it does not even care if I set lower resolution in Xbox display settings. So I had to just disable game master mode. And I don't miss anything.
Second hand public information monitors is what you want.
I have a nec multisync, which is a banger. Its also designed for 24/7 duty cycle, so its less likley to burn out. It also goes brighter than normal TVs.
However I don't think they do OLED yet. I think you're stuck with LG.
my "smart" tv from 2008 is delightfully dumb. I am not sure if it does anything without being prompted except scan channels when the coaxial is plugged I am pretty sure, it's been almost a decade since I watched cable on this thing.
I see no reason not to believe them. This is the company that invented the seat belt and made the patent free to all other manufacturers. They seem genuinely passionate about reducing road deaths regardless of make.
Volvo is technically capable of making a car that drives 250 kph. That was the top speed of the Volvo 850 T-5R way back in 1995, so its a bold claim to suggest that lowering their top speeds is because they're incapable.
But "250 without issues" is easy to achieve under perfect conditions, but it is far from safe. The driver only has to sneeze at that speed, or hit a puddle of oil or some debris dropped by another car, and it is game over. They're right that safety tech won't save you at those speeds.
Volvo doesn't want anyone dying in their cars, regardless of whether its the driver's fault. Nobody needs to drive that fast and "people who will drive at >180 on the autobahn" is not a common enough use case worldwide to be worth optimizing for.
If you do hit gravel/oil, tracks at least have runoff areas or soft barriers, and no oncoming traffic or cliffs to worry about.
Every track day I've attended required the cars to have been inspected for leaks and loose components. And they were quick to clean up any debris or oil.
Not that tracking cars is the safest hobby, but if someone is gonna drive like that regardless its far safer at a track than on public roads.
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