rgmerk

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331.
by rgmerk 3y ago
All full-size American pickups are pedestrian killers, particularly of toddlers.[1] There’s nothing unique about the Cybertruck in this respect. They also are more than twice as likely to kill the occupants of other vehicles in crashes.[2]
332.
by rgmerk 3y ago
There is something quite shocking (pardon the pun) to older car enthusiasts about just how fast off the line dual-motor EVs are. The super coupes of one’s youth are utterly obliterated on the dragstrip, not by EV coupes, but by family SUVs
333.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Any number of Fed chairs. Whoever started DARPA. America's global dominance, and China's challenge to it, depends far more on economic heft than the machinations of diplomats, even ones as ruthless as Kissenger.
334.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Hmmm. Neat, but I wonder whether it’s going to get pretty repetitive once you know a few key bottlenecks (eg the countries of Central America).
335.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Yep, that's fair! But my understanding is the default behaviour of most nuclear weapons (other than Hiroshima-style ones) is "blows itself to pieces without detonating the nuclear part", rather than "vapourises everyone
336.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Intercity passenger rail makes little sense over most of the USA, outside the existing northeast corridor. In a sane world Amtrak would shut down most of the long-distance routes, fix the northeast corridor, and focus on gradually expanding
337.
by rgmerk 3y ago
There are plenty of places with large expanses of flat water where a fast electric ferry would be useful. Yes, you get surface chop, but this craft is designed to keep foiling in up to 1.2 metres of chop. That’s heaps for many bays, estuar
338.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Good luck! I’m curious as to how much of the development of the follow-on ground-up airframe can actually be done in Australia, though. To my knowledge the largest aircraft ever designed in Australia was the GAF Nomad, and that was more th
339.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Yeah, I’m a snob. I get that… But, by God, have you seen them? Fisherman’s Wharf. Niagara Falls. Pretty much anywhere near a Hard Rock Cafe. Overpriced, awful food. T-shirts that say “I visited <location> and all I got was this lo
340.
by rgmerk 3y ago
The point of tourist traps is that you’re not poor when you enter the trap, but you’re poor afterwards.
341.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Ever visited a proper tourist trap? They’re awful places no sane adult would ever spend time in. They exist for people who don’t want to actually experience anything unfamiliar when they travel.
342.
by rgmerk 3y ago
They're already in Europe, and there is a price war. In response, European automakers are both innovating and pressuring governments for restrictive measures. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-launches-a
343.
by rgmerk 3y ago
This is a very easily solved problem. Right now people are buying charging systems that do things like only charge when there’s a surplus of self-generated rooftop solar, or offer a big discount on EV charging if you’re prepared to have it
344.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Thank you, that is fascinating!
345.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Depends on who you are. For towing, no. As a farm truck in steep terrain, the ability to get up and down rough tracks on steep slopes is absolutely part of the brief.
346.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Agreed on fentanyl, but there are other areas where nanny-stating saves lives. The evidence on higher tobacco and alcohol taxes, for instance, is pretty irrefutable. Or, moving up the implausibility scale in the American context, drastic re
347.
by rgmerk 3y ago
In short, yes. See the link in my earlier comment.
348.
by rgmerk 3y ago
This thread (and the accompanying article) are very informative (and damning): https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1641799627128143873?... Drugs and road accidents are other disproportionate contributors to th
349.
by rgmerk 3y ago
True, but we already have quite a lot of them, and we’re not going to remove them all immediately.
350.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Sure, it doesn't create long-lived waste, but it's a big stretch to assume that fusion reactors will be cheap. Even if you assume that the fusion part is cheap, you still have to convert the energy to electricity or at a minimum m
351.
by rgmerk 3y ago
The question is whether one or more of the seasonal storage technologies on the horizon, when combined with the seasonal storage we already have (conventional hydropower with big honking dams) turns out to give a cheaper electricity system
352.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Thanks for the informative reply. I suppose my question would be - are we in the early fifties or still back in the forties? By 1951 there were stored program computers that were running real programs that did useful things. Yeah, they wer
353.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Can somebody involved in the industry give a sense of whether there’s any reason to get excited about quantum computing? A lot of the hype seems to come from physicists excited about physics (understandably), and spooks who want to crack pu
354.
by rgmerk 3y ago
If this is a serious problem we should have seen plenty of evidence of cognitive problems among endurance athletes. Plenty of amateur cyclists expend equivalent amounts of energy to a marathon on training rides each and every weekend.
355.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Pretty sure the British figured out how to deal with military airships back in WWI.
356.
by rgmerk 3y ago
The real problem with US (passenger) trains is basically that they are only really viable in relatively small parts of the country, but they are run by the federal government so they waste a lot of money on stupid train services to win supp
357.
by rgmerk 3y ago
The key answer was “a more energy intensive power source and better aerodynamics”. Also, the question is not whether a big airship can be made to fly, because there’s little doubt they can. The question is whether a business model exists t
358.
by rgmerk 3y ago
The IEA predicts that energy-related CO2 emissions will peak in 2025. My guess is that a fair chunk of the predicted extraction by 2030 will never happen.
359.
by rgmerk 3y ago
If you’re going to insist on an internal combustion engine, it probably makes more sense to go to the extra effort of making methanol or even synthetic gasoline or diesel rather than deal with the difficulty of storing hydrogen.
360.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Most people still want hot water in the summer, so some of the surplus heat can be used for that. The thing to keep in mind is that solar panels are cheap, so it’s not that big a deal if some of the energy collected from them is lost as hea

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