Nice.

Still running a Samsung note 8, probably the biggest thing I dislike is kinda wish it was a little smaller. It might fit in my pocket better, would probably be easier to hold, and I would be fine having other devices for stuff where I need a bigger screen. Not a huge deal, but I do kinda miss having a medium sized smartphone.

I remember playing Rollercoaster tycoon on windows 95.

I kinda suspect it’s the latter. I drive around pretty randomly for fun, and the amount of Trump signs and flags in yards is arguably higher than it has ever been. That being said, I think it’s pretty telling they rarely have a Trump/Vance sign, so if Trump were to step down they’d probably lose pretty heavily.

I hope so, but I have my doubts. I’m in greensboro now, and I see his signs pretty often. My only hope is that Trump supporters actually listen to what he says, because they tend not to actually like him when they look into what he says (had at least one coworker that’s a trump supporter express support for him, but when he actually looked him up, he didn’t like him that much).

Heating/cooling probably, but renovation of older structures is generally expensive and complicated, whereas grid batteries can scale until newer construction (which should be more insulated) can keep up. It’s not an either or, but more of both that will compliment each other as time progresses.

But then you’re just having another system for storing energy, which probably isn’t very easy to implement. An easier solution if you don’t want to use grid batteries is just to improve housing insulation and schedule heating/cooling for non peak hours, so that you are just using less energy overall. The problem in my mind is that that would require a lot of renovation on older homes, which is just more expensive and slower than adding grid batteries. Don’t get me wrong, those changes should be mandated for newer housing, but expecting it to be implemented in older housing probably isn’t gonna happen.

There are plenty of alternatives for lithium batteries, chiefly sodium and a redox flow. Heating/cooling is good as well to store, but not every structure is energy efficient enough that it would make much sense. Good thing to work towards, but grid batteries would probably be faster and easier to implement. I have reservations towards pumped hydropower, in part due to watching how hard it is to decommission a lot of hydroelectric dams these days in US as well as the cost to create the areas to hold the water (a lot of the areas that are geographically advantageous for pumped hydropower tend to be nature reserves or national parks, soo…).

Yep. Grew up with my grandfather working on small engines (read:lawnmowers, either push or driven) and one of things he would do when doing maintenance on them was to sharpen the blades with an angle grinder. Mades mowing a lot easier and generally looks more uniform as well. The other thing was that it almost always is the carb if the engine has issues.

But the price increase kinda is a symptom of the underlying issue. For reference, the reason that subway subs were $5 for a long time was that the company was trying an advertising campaign to grow the brand, which it did amazingly well (honestly, far too well). However, those were not sold at a sustainable price, but whenever the company tried to raise the price it was perceived very poorly by the market. So they kept the price low for a long time, and eventually had to raise it but due to inflation (and decreasing the sub size to compensate for the low price before that), but the price increase was pretty drastic to most of the customers who often stopped going there.

In other words, the company kept the price down artificially to keep their stock price high, and foisted a lot of the actual costs onto the franchisees, of which they had tons. Which is obviously not a sustainable business model, and it’s why less people go to subway anymore.

My father has had two heart attacks. The first was a pretty standard one by heart attack standards, required a stint to be put in and two days at the hospital. The cost was ~$40k and after insurance we were left with I think a $4-5k deductible (pretty good county employee insurance). His second one luckily (ha) happened while on the job and required another stint to be put in (he got amazingly lucky, as it was a widow maker of a heart attack) and was covered under his works insurance.

For reference, I’m healthy and in my late 20s, I pay ~$250 a month through my employer’s health plan, $25 for an office visit, $500 to walk through the doors of the ER, with a $3k in network deductible ($6k out of network). Believe me when I say you are amazingly lucky to have the NHS.

Yeah. A lot of those sites are actually translating them, often from donations by the users. I doubt anyone is getting well paid on the unofficial sites, as when they release official translations a lot of people flock to those as they are often higher quality images.

I read your argument as being that since we aren’t quantum leaping ahead with technology, it’s a bit of a wash with the pushes for future battery standards. But my point is that this battery update, while not being a 10x in performance, is more likely a 2x and will be viable to scale with pricing decreases as time progresses. I’m in the trucking sector, and one of the things I have noticed about transitioning to electric heavy duties is that a lot of the issues aren’t completely on battery density, but rather that there isn’t an infrastructure that can charge the batteries at high voltage without beefing up the power grid around stations. If you could instead give a cheap enough battery backup to create a buffer that fills up during lower use hours, then a lot more of the solutions for that could charge ev trucks quickly would make more sense (it’s actually what has made the Tesla Semi have such good numbers). It’s stuff like this that actually might push the transition, which has to happen, not waiting for next quantum leap.

I mean, lithium cells were used for fringe use cases 20 years ago, now they are seemingly everywhere. The difference with this tech is that they know it’s currently expensive, so are aiming for use cases where the added cost is justifed. Give it 5 years and the tech will more than likely become easier to produce, lowering costs. That and sodium batteries are probably going to dramatically lower cost for grid storage, which should make it easier to have consistent power delivery.

Plus the possibility of an added dick joke.

It’s a lot more rare for sure. Some still do have nice stuff, but it’s much, much more of shitshow than it used to be. Unfortunately not many independent thrift stores around me, and the few that are generally have nice deals even less often than goodwill.

“Looks at current price of sugar” - Lemon juice it is!

Also very, very obviously an open beta.

Because I rent an apartment, thus can’t add a socket. I had a coworker trying to get them added our work parking lot, but to no avail.

Oh, I don’t doubt it’s possible, but getting the avg person there is the issue. At my milage, if I really absolutely wanted to go electric, an ebike would frankly be a better option (admittedly, much harder to haul stuff, much less safe, and annoying during the summer which is very hot in my area) for low range stuff. Phev Hybrids are a decent option, but again, if you don’t have a place to charge at night a lot of the benefits are neglected. Not gonna lie, I do actually suspect that that will change in the next 10 years, as tesla have finally hit critical mass I my area, and they are much cheaper to fuel, something that isn’t highlighted enough in my opinion. And I suspect that sodium batteries will more than likely cause it. Having something incredibly cheap to drive is more than likely what will turn the tide of evs, and it is why I am very annoyed that Chinese evs aren’t being imported into the US without insane tarriffs. Once cheap evs are common, the need for charging might actually get some real notice. That being said, I think my considerations aren’t very far off from the concerns of many buying cars right now, and at the current moment those without a range of at least 200 miles are a much harder sell (and why lower range vehicles don’t seem to sell on the used market).