Thanks for the analysis and insight!

I found at least one of the posts, and you’re right, that’s not really what impressed them. It just stuck with me because I’m a hardware girl.

I’d believe it because I remember the same being true for TikTok.

I don’t have the links on me right now, but I remember clearly that when tiktok was new, engineers trying to figure out what data it collected found that the app could recognize when it was being observed, and would “rewite” itself to evade detection.

They noted that they’d never seen this outside of sophisticated malware, and doubted that a social media company had the resources to write such a program.

In hot weather, I use silica gel neck wraps, which slowly release water to keep you cool (if soggy). I really want to try making an equivalent out of sodium sulphate gel and see how it compares.

Solid point. A laptop battery is around 60Wh, and charging that in 1 minute would pull 3.6kW from the outlet, or roughly double what a US residential outlet can deliver.

Supercaps stay pretty cool under high current charging/discharging, but your laptop would have to be the size of a mini fridge.

The research paper itself was only talking about using the tech for wearable electronics, which tend to be tiny. The article probably made the cars-and-phones connection for SEO. Good tech, bad journalism.

Yeah, this matches my experience.

A supercapacitor buffer will cost around twice as much and deliver around 1/10th the watt-hours of a similarly-sized lead acid battery. And lead acid isn’t exactly great to begin with.

Capacitors are useful, but only in applications where the total amount of energy stored is more-or-less unimportant.

Yeah, no. This is not about chargers or batteries or phones or cars. This study is about improved charge/discharge rates for supercapacitors.

Supercaps have very high flow rate, but extremely low capacity. Put them in a phone or a car and it would run very fast for five minutes. Supercaps are useful, don’t get me wrong, but they’re not batteries.

Very cool research from UC Boulder, but the journalism leans way too far into clickbait.

Transportation is a necessity, and I believe every inelastic market deserves a nationalized alternative to prevent price gouging. Like how the USPS keeps UPS and FEDEX in line. With that being said, nationalization doesn’t fix this particular problem.

China is run like a giant capitalist cartel (in all but name), and appropriately, their ultimate weapon in their hunt for global monopolies is the provision of slave labor. The number of slaves in Xinjiang alone is estimated in the hundreds of thousands, and their labor has been credibly linked to the production of cotton (face masks), polysilicon (solar panels), and aluminum and lithium (EVs).

It’s no coincidence that these are the industries being slapped with tariffs. No amount of subsidization or nationalization can level a playing field that’s been tilted by slavery. You don’t outcompete slavery, you either penalize goods suspected of involving it, or you go full John Brown.

Even with unlimited funding, you want to scale the size of the train to the population that could potentially ride on it.

A P42 locomotive pulling 7 Amtrak superliner cars is 700 tons of steel getting 0.4 miles per gallon of diesel. That’s a crapton of mining and drilling and CO2, and it would be incredibly wasteful if it ended up carrying, like, two people at a time.

Lets drop this whole “lesser of two evils” thing […] it certainly doesnt work with comparing governments.

I think it is deeply unwise to take that to heart.

I grew up deep in the American Midwest, surrounded by Evangelical-leaning Christian fundamentalism. Out there, committing one sin was considered as bad as committing a hundred (see also: Matt 5, James 2:10). They dropped the whole “lesser of two evils” thing, and you know what happened? They treated gays the same way they treated murderers, because the two sins were equally easy to condemn. They put rapists in pulpits because in their eyes, molesting a child was just as easy to forgive as ogling an adult.

When you tell people to reject nuance in ethics, that there is no “greater evil,” you remove 90% of their moral compass. They become pliable and easily manipulated by whoever can seize power or respect (see also: Trump).

Every person has flaws, and every system, government, or ideology created by people is likewise flawed. If we refuse to judge the severity of those flaws, refuse acknowledge that there are lesser evils in government, then we claim our own ideologies are no better than fascism – after all, both have their sins, and we just claimed that all sins are equal.

Gives me these kinda vibes.

Toyota’s been promising that solid state batteries are just around the corner for about 13 years now. They keep bumping the goalposts back every few years.

Mass transit is the only way that is sustainable

EVs cut lifecycle emissions to about 45%. [UCS][ANL][MIT][IEA]

Public transit cuts lifecycle emissions to… about 45%. [IEA][AFDC][USDOT]

Neither is a magic bullet. Both get their asses kicked by bicyles. Both get better with increased passengers per vehicle. Both can be fueled with renewable energy for additional reduction. Both can be manufactured with renewable energy for additional reduction. Both take surprisingly equivalent amounts of steel, aluminum, and glass.

Public transit offers unique advantages from an urbanist perspective and the liveability of cities, but that’s objectively different from sustainability.

Exactly. Hertz vocally blames higher repair costs and long repair times for the Teslas that make up the bulk of their EV fleet. Other EV manufacturers don’t share those problems.

So let me get this straight. VW’s US sales (EVs in particular) have failed to meet expectations because people don’t like their overdependence on buggy, outsourced software.

…and VW’s response is to outsource even more software while incorporating a technology base known for being unreliable.

We simply don’t have the time left anymore for any one solution to be expanded to the point it can solve the problem on its own, if that was ever possible to begin with.

This is such an important point. We are too late in the game to have the luxury of choosing a single sector or a single solution to pursue before the others. We need to hit all sectors with a diverse barrage of solutions, and we need to do it yesterday.

To quote UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, “In short, our world needs climate action on all fronts – everything, everywhere, all at once.”

we don’t have the grid capacity

For those not in the industry, “grid capacity” here doesn’t refer to power generation, but power distribution. With renewables, generation is comparatively easy (storage notwithstanding). But getting the power where it needs to go is not. Right now, thanks to a grain-oriented steel squeeze, the lead time on transformers is longer than the commissioning time for an entire solar farm. Switchgear is also hard to get your hands on, especially with SF6 being phased out.

The good news is that these long lead times are caused by demand. Right now, utilities are racing to expand and reinforce the grid in preparation for the next 30 year’s worth of EV demand, renewable storage/transmission, and distributed generation. Utilities are risk-averse by nature, and do not move without conviction, so it’s rare and noteworthy to see this kind of industrial momentum.

Source: I design MV distribution equipment in the US.

In addition, while some companies try to blame workwrs for recordable incidents, safety is always ultimately management’s responsibility. Safety controls or procedures missing? That’s management’s fault. Workers disabling safety controls out of malice or hubris? Managment is at fault for hiring them. Workers so overworked and tired they don’t notice mistakes while operating lethal equipment? Management. Workers having to choose between having a job and doing it safely? Management. Lack of safety culture? Management.

With power comes responsibility, and in modern corporations, management has all the power.

I’m an engineer who works in an industrial environment, and I regularly have to repair or reprogram hazardous equipment. Here are a few takeaways I got from the descriptions of the Tesla incident:

• Lockout/tagout was not being respected. If you don’t have a lock, yank the fuse and stick it in your pocket. But whatever you do, when working on a machine, you must maintain exclusive control so nobody activates it while you’re inside the approach boundary.
• Why was the engineer in the approach boundary for a “software update?” I feel like I’m missing some important context there.
• Where were the hazard indicators? A hazardous device needs sound or light indicators, so nobody forgets they left it plugged in.
• Where was the machine guarding? If it can kill you, entering the hazardous area should shut the machine off with or without LOTO. I’m partial to interlocked gates, but cordons and light curtains are popular for a reason.
• If the machine guarding was disabled, where were the observers? The last time I activated a machine with the light curtains overriden, I had three other engineers on standby, one at the E-Stop, one with a rescue hook, and one just to watch.

Windows 11 needs Secure Boot and/or TPM workarounds, and while Linux is better than it used to be, but it still hates peripherals. Only 5% of Americans work in the tech industry. Fry cooks and forklift operators often lack the education needed to find these workarounds, and are too busy and tired making ends meet to seek out that education.

In the modern corporate environment, most companies would rather replace their machines wholesale than risk unplanned downtime due to unforeseen glitches. They apply the principles of preventative maintenance to IT.

I like Linux (Mint is good stuff), and I believe in what it stands for. But the human desire for simplicity, reliability, and familiarity should never be construed as a lack of virtue.