laurencerowe

4 ms·

1.
by laurencerowe 7d ago
Wow. Equivalent ones built in England are around 1/3rd the price £350k = $470k. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjq45vw3n4go
2.
by laurencerowe 16d ago
Economy 7 and storage heaters. Heat up bricks overnight using cheap rate electricity so they can keep your home warm during the day while you’re out working. In fairness it probably works ok for homes insulated to a much higher standard tha
3.
by laurencerowe 16d ago
> The Netherlands, while technically highly urbanized, has remained more like a bunch of small towns instead of a few highly populated cities like as is seen in the US, so it is much closer to the rural days of yore when the US was able
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by laurencerowe 23d ago
You absolutely need broadly based taxation for social democracy. But specifically for clawing back benefits from higher earners you can absolutely tax those same higher earners instead. Dan has actually criticised a similar situation in the
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by laurencerowe 23d ago
Broad based benefits tend to receive more public support. Just tax those with high incomes to get it back. Otherwise the bumpy effective marginal tax thresholds (which increase and the decrease again as income increases) end up incentivisin
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by laurencerowe 23d ago
This is never going to happen because the US Social Security system is almost entirely pay-as-you-go since current contributions fund the vast bulk of current payments. The social security fund is a bit of an accounting fiction since it is
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by laurencerowe 23d ago
> once your income is CAD >95k/indiviudal OAS starts getting clawed back (IMHO it should be clawed back much sooner). The downside of means testing pension payments is that it acts as a disincentive to discretionary pension savin
8.
by laurencerowe 24d ago
> The reserve chute is the Canada Pension Plan. The CPP was originally intended to cover one-third of Canadians’ retirement income, but these days it’s more akin to what you might get from a part-time job: a sheet too small for most beds
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by laurencerowe 1mo ago
These cuts have gotten expensive as they're now quite popular. Lengua, beef cheeks, and oxtail are no longer cheap.
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by laurencerowe 1mo ago
> The real question is what's the optimal size for a bus if you don't have to pay a human to drive it? It will depend on the area. Where I am in San Francisco we have articulated buses designed for 100+ people running every few
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by laurencerowe 1mo ago
Most of the city buses in my UK home town are now battery electric double deckers. These carry up to 85-90 people (with 25 standing), weigh 11 tonnes, and is 10.5m long. A typical jaguar Waymo usually carries up to 4 people (usually just on
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by laurencerowe 1mo ago
As someone from Britain with Scottish ancestry I don’t really tan at all. The melanin in my skin clumps in freckles, severely limiting its effectiveness at blocking UV. I can spend time outside in a t-shirt during the long summer evenings i
13.
by laurencerowe 1mo ago
Is there a difference between a 120V bulb and a 130V bulb? I thought we basically had 110-130V North American voltage and 220-240V Euro and others voltage as the actual voltage you get from the grid varies within a range.
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by laurencerowe 1mo ago
In California consumer electricity is high because of distribution costs stemming form wildfire risks from distribution in rural areas and sprawl into the wildland-urban interface where many people live as urban areas have historically bloc
15.
by laurencerowe 2mo ago
One of my employers had that incentive but only for one year. I assume they wanted to demonstrate that as a population we were low risk but after testing us once there was no reason to do so again.
16.
by laurencerowe 2mo ago
Annual exams were included in the ACA but as I understand it there is no evidence to show that they improve health outcomes. I had one once in 15 years when it was incentivised by my employer (presumably trying to show that we were low risk
17.
by laurencerowe 2mo ago
I just took this flight and that was not my experience. Food was served in the first 2 hours and the last 2 hours of the 10 hour flight leaving 6 hours of dark for sleep. Unfortunately my toddler did not want to sleep beyond his late nap so
18.
by laurencerowe 2mo ago
> and an EU adapter (which, off the record, also works for UK outlets so it covers anywhere I normally travel to). What type of adapter is this? EU and UK plugs are very different.
19.
by laurencerowe 3mo ago
James Braidwood established one in Edinburgh in 1824. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Braidwood
20.
by laurencerowe 3mo ago
Unfortunately it can’t since their cell size will never be sufficient for more than a small number of customers in an urban area. Mobile data cells here are a few blocks radius rather than the 10-20 miles in rural areas where Starlink reall
21.
by laurencerowe 3mo ago
I had the same problem in San Francisco with Comcast. The only alternative was wireless service (which was somehow much slower than my iPhone) or slow fixed wireless as my street doesn’t get fiber. Ended up getting my partner to resubscribe
22.
by laurencerowe 3mo ago
Wasn’t booting other operating systems supported from early on (two months after release of M1)? It was reverse engineering the graphics hardware that took time and effort.
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by laurencerowe 3mo ago
Sometimes companies demand you print/sign/scan a document.
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by laurencerowe 3mo ago
I am very pessimistic about the economics of nuclear power but Finland is basically the best case scenario for it.
25.
by laurencerowe 3mo ago
> You are correct. But transmission lines do exist and synchronization would be possible. The baltic countries have done so in 2025 to get away from the Russian grid. There's no point in synchronizing the Nordics / Britain &#x2
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by laurencerowe 3mo ago
Being part of the same grid doesn't matter so much as the amount of interconnection available. Finland has a higher proportion than Spain since France has stalled on building more interconnection capacity as this will likely reduce the
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by laurencerowe 3mo ago
Solar and batteries will be extremely expensive if you have no other backup but you could probably get to 80% quite cheaply with solar and around 12h of storage. Geography absolutely matters since seasonal dips in solar generation is basica
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by laurencerowe 3mo ago
The Chinese demonstration plant is only 2MW thermal / 300KW electrical with the one currently under construction expecting to up that to 60MW thermal / 10MW electrical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMSR_(Chin
29.
by laurencerowe 3mo ago
All of the EPR builds in Finland/France/UK have seen enormous construction cost (3-4x) and time (decade+) overruns. France expects its EPR2 builds to cost about 30% less but even if they manage to hit that target it will still be
30.
by laurencerowe 3mo ago
My electricity bill is roughly 1/3rd 'CleanPowerSF Electric Generation Charges' vs 2/3rds 'Current PG&E Electric Delivery Charges'. The big problem is that PG&E covers most of rural California so its ur

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