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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • the US continues to artificially prop up its EV market ex-China.

    It’s not even that: a little protectionism is normal trade policy globally. This would be fine, if it were temporary and if there was a goal to develop the domestic industry.

    The real problem is the combination of protectionism, while also rejecting the technology change and shrinking down to the home market. The protectionism will stop at some point. Realistically it has to. But when it does, American legacy manufacturers will find themselves struggling to sell buggy whips to a world that sees them as museum displays. We’re trying to milk a few more years out of the legacy technology at the cost of totally ignoring the future


  • Yeah, I have to say, I still see Tesla as the leader by far here in the us. And given how price of cars has skyrocketed, teslas are now also “affordable”. It’s a shame they seem to be abandoning the car market. There’s finally some EV choice but not much, half of the choice was just cancelled, and most are not good.

    Rivian is our best choice for the next compelling EV, but R2 cost significantly more than Tesla.

    • A lot of people online like the Equinox and it’s inexpensive, but poor efficiency, horrible software and no CarPlay. Also I’ve never seen one. GM cars in general don’t do well in my part of the US so it would be challenge to get people to see they exist
    • Lucid looks great on paper and I’m excited to see their mass market vehicles in a year or two, but they e really been struggling. I hope the saudis continue to see it through
    • Hyundai/Kia have been kicking ass on choice but low efficiency and still haven’t kicked their historical reputations for poor quality and easy to steal




  • My experience with a Pi4B has been rock solid and plenty fast for what I’ve tried so far, at low power consumption.

    While I had problems in the beginning, it was all from the micro-SD card. People here will recommend staying away but I’ve had no problems since buying an “extreme” card. Well, starting to hit the size limit now - I can no longer kick off multiple concurrent updates because limited free space available on, I think, 16G card. Get bigger


  • If you’re starting with ha, don’t feel confined to only one.

    IMPORTANT: a local area mesh is not just a low powered way of connecting devices but is inherently local-only. Highly recommended

    The more common local area meshes include

    • Zigbee - open standard, lots of inexpensive sensors
    • Z-Wave - devices need to pay for certification but are more standard. I found more smart switches using this in my area
    • Thread - the new standard. Same frequency as Zigbee but IPv6 based. Slowly rolling out.

    The new Matter/Thread standard has support of the major players (Apple, Google, Amazon) so seems like the way to go for the future, but products are slow to roll out so you can’t count on it yet

    Personally I found the strengths of each compelling so quickly added all three of the above to my ha setup. Ha is fine with it so why limit yourself

    I follow the principle that devices must work “as expected” for my users, automation adds capabilities but does not replace them. This comes together with a focus on smart switches

    • can be used interactively just like any switch
    • continue to work as expected even if ha is down
    • typically act as routers to strengthen your local area mesh. I have switches acting as routers for Zigbee, zwave, and Thread, so all my local area meshes are solid everywhere
    • then I can automate

  • Yes and no. The problem pattern of ammunition production follows defense contracts: buy enough for stock, then don’t buy anymore. The industry is not configured for steady production.

    Now we’re using a steady number but don’t have steady production to replenish stocks, but it seems like more of a production or industry configuration issue than a usage issue.

    It’s also part of the reason weapons are so expensive: there’s no steady market to support steady production






  • The problem is this is the way it’s being pushed. This is how it’s being sold. There are no guardrails.

    …… and that’s the biggest problem. I’m frustrated as hell on the commits I’ve had to unwind because someone doesn’t know how to check the changes before committing, then has it try to fix itself, again without checking on the changes , then again. It’s horrible.

    …… and I’ve seen it too. Trying to have it do only code reviews - the ai points out useful things but then wants to commit a crapload of changes without going over it with me first.

    …… and people are playing with mcp agents, which are really great for letting the ai get data from systems and integrate with those systems . But with few to no guardrails. There’s no no review, the user doesn’t necessarily follow what’s changing, it just gets done. Sometime badly very badly

    We’re all focused on whether the ai works, and it does do a pretty good job with coding but the tools don’t keep the human in the loop, or humans don’t know how to stay on the loop



  • For sure, any longer term presence outside orbit will hinge on finding resources. And i don’t think it even matters if we’re able to harvest helium-3 or something that might be worth bringing back, but to be able to use enough resources to make it affordable. Every pound lifted from earth to outside orbit will always be too expensive and local resources much much more affordable. While it starts with shelter and radiation shielding (ie live underground), we’ll need to generate bulk consumables like water, oxygen, fuel, and we’ll need to grow at least some of our own food

    But we don’t even know if we can live on the moon. Microgravity has bad long term health effects such that we really don’t want to spend more than a year there. Does the moon have enough gravity to be substantially better?

    If we do establish a larger off earth presence, we’ll have to compromise on enough gravity for long term health and livability vs as little gravity as necessary to keep space accessible


  • I agree that large colonies are an enticing science fiction image that doesn’t look likely.

    But we’ve proven that we can support an “international space station” to maintain a continuous scientific presence in space. A great next step is the same but on the moon. It seems quite possible with relatively little technical development. This is desirable to advance our technology, our science, our society, to use our imagination to look forward , to have hope, to see a positive future for humanity.

    Here’s the problem with fixing local problems first: you can’t. You either stagnate, looking within, looking behind, looking down, and still have the same local problems or you take a portion of your civilizations product and also move everyone forward.

    Here’s the problem with using those resources: it’s not enough to matter. The space program is a tiny percentage of the government budget, almost invisible next to what is needed to fix our problems. If you want to fix our local problems, it starts with social justice, environmental justice, safety nets, quality of life and most importantly equity in taxes, and greatly reduced income inequity. Elon musk’s wealth will soon be 40x NASA’s entire annual budget yet is barely taxed. If we were able to tax one persons wealth at a mere 2.5%, we could fully fund NASA at no cost to anyone else. Most of us pay a lot more than 2.5% of our income so why is he excepted?


  • Fast chargers aren’t the only option

    • Tesla already has fast chargers with megapack, and with solar. There are fast chargers that don’t impact the grid much
    • we definitely need to build out destination chargers. Charging at work is no different from at home, except for when. And build out of solar can make peak energy available just when needed
    • there are proposed answers such as streetlight chargers

    Obviously we don’t have an answer yet, haven’t built out the infrastructure, but we do have options

    Imagine places like Kansas city or Chicago or LA.

    I’m imagining park and ride stations with fairly slow charging. People in the suburbs can leave their car on a slow charger all day and take a train into the city.

    • My home charger is 50a which is too fast for this.
    • My work has 30a chargers and most people take turns for half a day
    • so we’re talking 15-20a, or again, something smart enough to spread the load

  • I’ve read the same but am skeptical because no one ever pulls out any numbers. I know every country does that same thing to some extent so just saying they do it doesn’t mean anything.

    I’ll believe it when I see actual data

    It’s also not necessary for the current reality to have happened. Following the K.I.S.S. principal, the current Chinese car industry is explainable by consistent government policy over many years, out in the open, so why are we blaming it on things we don’t o ow or don’t see? I’m not saying it’s not there, just that we’d be in the same boat whether it is or not