jandrese

12 ms·

211.
by jandrese 7mo ago
In the old days people would convert diesel trucks and cars to run on "biodiesel" which was lightly processed used cooking oil. You could tell who did that because their cars always smelled like french fries.
212.
by jandrese 7mo ago
I mused about the idea of a version of Hypercard where you could load cards from network resources, or even just stacks. Ultimately though it would have been an even bigger security nightmare than the original Javascript. Hypercard was de
213.
by jandrese 7mo ago
There is an argument that all manned fighters are already obsolete thanks to the proliferation of cheap drones and that establishing air superiority is a very different task now.
214.
by jandrese 7mo ago
Domestic auto manufacturers can also set high prices on their EV offerings to prevent them from effectively competing and lobby the government to put high tariffs on competitive foreign EVs, or even completely block them at the border. Peop
215.
by jandrese 7mo ago
There is another dimension to this. All of the legacy auto manufacturers, without exception, have been dragging their heels on EVs. Lots of people talk about corporate inertia and shareholders and whatnot forcing the companies to be irrat
216.
by jandrese 7mo ago
No offense, but a Lesswrong link is an immediate yellow flag, especially on the topic of AI. I can’t say if that article in particular is bad, but it is associating with a whole lot of abject nonsense written by people who get high on thei
217.
by jandrese 7mo ago
More commonly these days is the message that CO2 is plant food , and climate change is a nefarious plot to kill off the plants by starving them in order to reduce the Earth's population. I can dig up several tweets this week pushing
218.
by jandrese 7mo ago
Probably hard to cut a deal like this with someone you are actively engaged in a hostile bidding war with.
219.
by jandrese 7mo ago
They're going to have to start advertising nine fives of reliability.
220.
by jandrese 7mo ago
Imagine what a better world we would live in if the Tolkien estate was able to kill D&D in the cradle as they would have liked... /s
221.
by jandrese 7mo ago
Congratulations. I didn't think they could get any more nerdy and yet you found a way.
222.
by jandrese 7mo ago
It’s not fake money, it’s a fake speculative asset.
223.
by jandrese 7mo ago
This is also the rumor every time a crypto exchange is “hacked” and loses all of the stored crypto. It was never obvious if the people running the exchanges were incompetent or criminal, but I suspect it was a combination of both in many c
224.
by jandrese 7mo ago
I was disappointed to discover that my e-bike could not charge and power the drivetrain at the same time. Visions of range extending backpacks were dashed in an instant.
225.
by jandrese 7mo ago
It is kind of a shame that recumbent bikes are expensive and bike nerd coded. A recumbent e-bike with an aeroshell would be fantastically efficient and useful in so many situations, but if you tried to buy one today it is going to cost as
226.
by jandrese 7mo ago
E-bikes suck pedal if the motor is not helping. Also, someone going that far is almost certainly doing it at the maximum speed of the bike, and power use goes up quadratically with speed. You could probably do that trip with plenty of pow
227.
by jandrese 7mo ago
Yes, always have a fire plan in mind when starting a lithium battery project. They go up very quickly and generate a ton of choking smoke. It only takes one oopsie with a screwdriver or dropping a cell to start a fire.
228.
by jandrese 7mo ago
You can get a perfectly workable brand new E-Bike for about $1,000 in the US. While that isn’t cheap as chips it’s also not a major investment for middle class individuals.
229.
by jandrese 7mo ago
When I think of throttle assist in an e-bike my thought is not about dirt bikes but instead the incredibly common low end cadence sensing e-bikes that are hard to get started from a stop.
230.
by jandrese 7mo ago
The answer is cyclist gatekeeping? Or did I misunderstand your point?
231.
by jandrese 7mo ago
Why not just define the law in terms of maximum speed and be fine with it? Why nitpick over control modes? I can guarantee that if I asked 10 random cops what the restrictions are of a Class 2 e-bike not more than 1 could answer, but if I
232.
by jandrese 8mo ago
On Facebook? It's ads for products where they do a bait and switch or claim to have some kind of "difficulty" and never ship a product or ship some garbage instead. Example: My wife saw an ad for decorative skulls that were
233.
by jandrese 8mo ago
You have a very different profile of junk mail than I do. While the services may be overpriced or of dubious quality, they are rarely outright scams the way FB marketplace frequently is.
234.
by jandrese 8mo ago
Is this going to be appealed up to the Supreme Court? They are usually pretty eager to expand the power of qualified immunity so this judgement may be short lived.
235.
by jandrese 8mo ago
Solar plants don’t need much maintenance. The lack of moving parts means mostly it is just mowing the grass. The transmission infrastructure does need maintenance. Batteries have pretty low upkeep too.
236.
by jandrese 8mo ago
It's just the AI singularity discussion again. AI Techbros insist it will be here before the end of the decade. Like you I am skeptical about it. I tend to think AI capability is already plateauing and ever more effort is going to b
237.
by jandrese 8mo ago
Trains are one of the easiest forms of transport to electrify. Yes, the US is going to drag its heels on doing so, but the rest of the world is already moving on.
238.
by jandrese 8mo ago
Transatlantic shipping also. Planes require highly refined fuel though, while ships can burn most anything flammable, even really crappy biofuels. Hardly anything is worse than heavy fuel oil.
239.
by jandrese 8mo ago
Not being able to charge below freezing shouldn't be a problem if you keep the batteries indoors. Is there a reason why you wouldn't? Fire concerns? Or is it just a space issue?
240.
by jandrese 8mo ago
$1,000 is definitely too ambitious for that much energy. Even just the charging plug for the car is going to take a sizeable bite out of that. Another way to think about this is that $1,000 is about 20 tanks of gas, assuming you get 400 mi

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