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ak217

5,756 karma · joined March 20, 2011

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ak217··on Nissan's third generation e-POWER powertrain
GM will go down in history as the auto maker that had nine lives and blew them all on canceling EV and high efficiency products.
ak217··on Toyota is taking the Corolla electric
Yeah, the subsidies for ICE production are indirect:

- repealing CAFE standards penalties (freeing manufacturers to externalize the costs of their pollution) - a more restrictive financing environment (no government guaranteed loans) for EV supply chain development, combined with

- consumer subsidies for domestically produced vehicles - but the domestic supply chain is not ready to support EVs without further investment

To their credit, they at least didn't yank all of the domestic battery manufacturing credits - though not for a lack of trying.

ak217··on Toyota is taking the Corolla electric
The US big 3 and VW canceled several EV product lines because the government policy flipped from subsidizing them to subsidizing ICE production. With the Iran war, the economics has shifted again and some of the products they canceled could have been made profitable, but it's too late for most of them now. This actually creates an opening for Rivian's downmarket R2 line expansion.

Meanwhile the Chinese companies are disrupting the overseas market for all of them (which is why Toyota is fretting). Many don't realize the disruptive potential of China's battery, EV, and solar panel supply chain combined with the oil shock - many subtropical countries are on the verge of flipping their economies to be linked to China's because of this. The long term consequences for American and European manufacturing supply chains will be major - not just in terms of present but future orders, since many of those countries are continuing to grow their consumer base faster than US/EU.

ak217··on Toyota is taking the Corolla electric
The 2nd gen Leaf (plus/extended range) is still a great car if you don't need it for road trips or continuous long driving. 200 mile range, built on a no-frills Nissan econobox platform, decent looks, very capable for its size. They are available dirt cheap these days, $10K for perfect condition ones. No fast charging, but you can get 10-90% in 5 hours of level 2 charging. It even has a heat pump heater, but no battery cooling or heating, so works best in mild climates.

Physical buttons. Carplay. 0-60 in 6.5 seconds and wide enough tires, so it can keep up.

ak217··on American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died
If you're interested in commercial aircraft and their maintenance process, check out Stig Shift on YouTube. He's another AA mechanic based in LAX, and makes interesting videos with some technical deep dives interspersed with planespotting.
ak217··on Suica, Japan's First IC Transit Card
Nooo the penguin is the best part of suica!
ak217··on About the security content of macOS Tahoe 26.6
Love to see this, now if only they could revert the whole shimmering oil slick disaster that is "glass" on iOS (unlike macOS, even if I "reduce transparency", the oil slick effect still appears in many places, in addition to all the spacing issues).
ak217··on LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent
Logitech all the way.

Logitech is a truly innovative company. They actually care deeply about ergonomics. They also introduced the first mass market application of programmable magnets (in the MX Master mouse scroll wheel) - that's incredibly advanced materials science.

ak217··on Kaiser nurses say AI, workplace surveillance are making their jobs, care worse
I agree (with the obvious qualification that there are excellent nurses out there who do a great job and don't let this stuff get in the way of helping their patients, some Kaiser nurses included). But I also see a marked difference in behavior and outcomes in other hospitals I've been to. Yes, there are still some unprofessional nurses in those networks as well, but judging by the outcomes, the hospitals don't let them do damage.
ak217··on Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse
Yeah, this whole discussion cracks me up. I have a number of direct experiences with Kaiser nurses. They repeatedly got into arguments with doctors in front of me, tried to countermand doctors' instructions, ignored their patients, and complained to each other about their patients while they were right there.

Repeated unprofessional behavior with no discernible change after trying to address it. My take is that the Kaiser nursing org has a serious discipline and customer (patient) focus problem.

ak217··on Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse
Well then their protocols suck. I have many anecdotal data points about them fumbling in major ways when it matters (missed major pathologies, messed up surgeries, etc.).

If you have a choice of hospital networks, research carefully. Kaiser might be fine for many people's needs, it's not fine when it comes to intensive care.

ak217··on I'm a USB-C Maximalist
Both Philips and the similarly sturdy Oral-B. You know they are good because they have a sealed design that uses induction to charge. By contrast the toothbrush mentioned by the OP won't last long with that flimsy door and the USB port in a wet environment.
ak217··on A dock that wakes up reliably
I use a bunch of Lenovo Thunderbolt docks, with both Macbooks and Thinkpads. The older models go for as little as $20 used nowadays. I had to update the firmware on the really old ones, but after that they work flawlessly and let me connect 2x4k60 monitors.
ak217··on Ask HN: Are systems ready for the first negative leap second?
No and they shouldn’t be. Leap seconds were never a great idea and they become an increasingly worse idea with every passing year. They are a great example of a standards making decision made without sufficient negative feedback from its implementation costs.
ak217··on The tech of 'Terminator 2' – an oral history (2017)
Robert Patrick in T2 locations: https://youtu.be/g_weC1AnDYU?is=BCovDJI83JzV2Zlj
ak217··on Airplane Boneyards List and Map
There are lots of great aviation museums in the USA, highly recommend visiting them. Many allow various degrees of access inside the aircraft, even more so if you chat up the museum staff. I don't imagine the boneyards will.
ak217··on The primary purpose of code review is to find code that will be hard to maintain
The primary purpose of code review is whatever your organization decides it wants it to be. The post makes a good enough point but undermines it with this dogma.
ak217··on Epidurals are a miracle technology
Good surgeons are a bit like major airline pilots. They have more pricing power than you think.
ak217··on Fossil Fuels Are 40% of Freight Shipping Tonnage, but Half Its Fuel Use
Highly recommend everyone watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM

Briefly, the most important reason an EV is better because it unlocks energy portability. You gain the flexibility to source your energy in many more ways than with a gas car. Oil energy is about as optimized as it's ever going to get. With electricity, we're just getting started.

ak217··on How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)
I don't think CHSRA is a well-run program.
ak217··on How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)
For many years, I observed the San Francisco Caltrain DTX (Downtown Extension, recently rebranded "The Portal"). This is the most important transit missing link in Northern California that is expected to connect two of the highest ridership transit arteries in the Bay Area and eventually unlock single-seat rail transit between Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and points south. DTX is a two-mile tunnel planned to connect the rail line terminus south of San Francisco downtown to Market Street, where the BART subway has the 4 highest ridership train stations in Northern California. The combined project (DTX and Transbay Terminal, the already built train station it's supposed to connect to) is about 15 years late and many billions of dollars over budget.

What struck me is a complete lack of urgency and accountability, combined with out-of-control meddling by politicians pursuing completely unrelated goals. The project spent several years in EIR and initial planning, which is to be expected. Then for over a decade, San Francisco's board of supervisors held the project hostage because they wanted to demolish a freeway south of where the actual project is, while bolting on an unrelated and unrealistic tunneling project (the "Pennsylvania Avenue alignment") and taking over the governance of the Caltrain board (Caltrain is the least dysfunctional transit system in the Bay Area, so the Caltrain board was not too keen on this proposal). Eventually, after wasting many years and tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars, the balance of power on the BoS shifted and they agreed to stop holding the project hostage, restructure the board (TJPA), and re-hire staff to actually plan the tunnel.

I've seen multiple project managers/directors come and go, and countless community input meetings happen discussing completely hypothetical project concepts. The money set aside for the project from the original Transbay budget is long gone, and numerous funding opportunities have passed by because the TJPA and its stakeholders were not ready to plan and submit a viable proposal in time.

Here are some things I would want to change going forward:

- Transit projects should be centrally planned by the state government (i.e. a regional subdivision of an agency similar to Caltrans) with structured opportunities for resident feedback and authority to override most input from local governments. This should include exemptions from CEQA and other review, and strong eminent domain powers.

- The Caltrans-like agency should have independent regional metro divisions (i.e. Bay Area, LA area, etc) with dedicated sources of regionally collected funding as well as a mandate to own and lease out land adjacent to transit stations as part of its funding. The divisions should have budgets to retain project management staff who accumulate long-term experience and manage multiple projects. They should have the independent authority to issue bonds and be required to publish construction efficiency and ridership statistics.

- Labor unions should be systematically prevented from influencing the course of planning, construction, and project execution. Unions meddle and cause many delays and project complications.

Unfortunately, even a structure like that is not a panacea. If you look at CHSRA, it actually has some of the features that I listed above. When CHSRA was first started, the planning process fell victim to meddling from state legislators (most famously the one who forced the route to go through Palmdale), followed by many wasted years fighting NIMBYs and doing useless planning. Ultimately, the only hope I see is to insulate the planners from political interference, set them up with independent funding, have one agency head who is responsible and accountable, and reduce the veto powers that California grants to citizens and governments.

ak217··on I hacked into the worst e-bike and fixed it [video]
You don't know much about Seth do you? That's not "AI", it's called a script.
ak217··on Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time
It's nice to have the luxury of deciding which of the horrible choices Ukrainians face are war crimes. But by that measure, a Grad MLRS is just as much of a war crime. Everything in the grid square it obliterates will also be dead.

(For those who don't know, the Grad is the most produced MLRS ever, and the Russian army's weapon of choice for indiscriminately bombarding enemy territory)

ak217··on The intracies of modern camera lens repair (2024)
Just want to mention how much I appreciate this discussion and the opportunity to learn from it. This is what I come to HN for (nowadays there are also really interesting YouTubers who do informative teardowns of power electronics and other devices, too e.g. Labo de Michel, Watch Wes Work, etc.)
ak217··on SpaceX, Other Mega IPOs Denied Fast Index Entry by S&P
So relieved to see this!
ak217··on Several injured in Boeing 787 nose-gear collapse in Frankfurt
The 777 and 787 programs have never seen a passenger fatality resulting from an engineering defect. That is a monumental achievement in light of the passenger miles served. Boeing has its problems, but that record speaks for itself
ak217··on I made my phone slow on purpose
I did something similar. I like to keep my phone limited (the only real useful/joyful things on it for me are family pictures, music and maps). So I used an iphone SE until it fell apart, now I use an iphone mini that doesn't have enough storage so it offloads all but the top ten apps I use.

I didn't make it slow and buggy on purpose though. Apple did that for me with Liquid glass. Which I guess works!

ak217··on Toshifumi Suzuki, founder of Seven-Eleven Japan, has died
Yes. The payments landscape has shifted pretty dramatically in Japan over just the past 3 years. It used to be that you had to worry about getting cash, IC cards, refilling said IC cards, going to an actual bank with your passport, etc. Now all you need is an iPhone (although I hear Android phones from outside Japan still can't use suica).
ak217··on Intuit to lay off over 3k employees to refocus on AI
I had a mixed experience with it. I think it has enormous potential but it needs to be more deeply integrated with their system (while staying read only by default, as you said).
ak217··on Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely
What are Growlers doing performing aerobatic maneuvers at air shows? They have tens of millions in specialized extra equipment on board. Seems like a poor use of taxpayer money. Send regular F-18s, not the rare expensive ones that look the same.
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