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amalgamated_inc

512 karma · joined November 13, 2022

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amalgamated_inc··on Ask HN: Is SWE a Dead Job?
It's a local downturn, but I don't think the industry or career is dead. It's still a darn good job compared to most others, even if not quite as over the top.
amalgamated_inc··on Study links adoption of EV with less air pollution and improved health
Well, language like "reactionaries" is a dog whistle obviously. Pretty offensive tbh. Tells me what team you're on and what you're up to.
amalgamated_inc··on Study links adoption of EV with less air pollution and improved health
Watching this video now. Impressions:

- In most of the city shots, you can clearly hear that road/tire noise and honking are by far the loudest noises. EVs won't change this.

- In the Delft segment, a train was the most significant source of noise so they removed it. Yes, public transit is incredibly loud, much louder than cars.

- The video specifically says that road/tire noise is louder than engine noises for most cars at certain speeds. EVs won't change this.

- Cars are not at all the loudest vehicles he measures, and heavy cars were louder than lighter ones. EVs are significantly heavier than equivalent ICE cars.

- He specifically says that EVs are probably worse noise offenders at higher speeds due to being heavy and having wider tires.

- He specifically measured passing Teslas and they were the exact same loudness as ICE cars.

Hence the arguments make my point for me: EVs are not going to improve city noise levels much if at all. I dislike noise too. But EVs are not the solution here (and if you've ever listened to most public transit, neither is that).

amalgamated_inc··on Study links adoption of EV with less air pollution and improved health
Switching lines, waiting on connections, and coordinating, of course.

This is true of all public transit systems, even the best ones. Unless you live directly at the source station and have a direct shot to your destination station, you're going to waste a lot of time changing buses/trains and waiting and coordinating.

And not everybody can live near every transit hub, not even near _a_ transit hub, by definition.

Cars are point-to-point. The very best public transit can do is match it in terms of pure speed.

Public transport has a much higher bandwidth at the expense of individual travel time. It's a trade-off. Naturally there's a limit to how many cars can dive at any given time in any given city, but I'd definitely expect the average public transit time to be 2-5x the equivalent individual transportation (bicycle if possible/car) transit time.

amalgamated_inc··on Study links adoption of EV with less air pollution and improved health
> most new cars sold in the US are trucks

source?

amalgamated_inc··on Study links adoption of EV with less air pollution and improved health
Yea, that's true. But I can walk around plenty of cities with cars driving within feet of me and not hear much noise besides the road noise at all. I suppose the design of the city makes a difference, e.g. are there sound-reflecting bare concrete walls everywhere (like many drive throughs).
amalgamated_inc··on Study links adoption of EV with less air pollution and improved health
Of course, as they should be. The last Cultural Revolution didn't go so well, remember?
amalgamated_inc··on Study links adoption of EV with less air pollution and improved health
I know these places. They are poorer and have less freedom and I'm not interested.
amalgamated_inc··on Study links adoption of EV with less air pollution and improved health
Yes, of course. This faux environmentalism is just an excuse to take people's freedoms of individual transportation away. I am aware.
amalgamated_inc··on Study links adoption of EV with less air pollution and improved health
False; most modern cars aren't very loud. At city speeds, the loudest part is the tire noise. At highway speeds, the wind noise. You only really hear the engine in ICE cars under heavy acceleration or if the car is designed to be loud (e.g. a sports car).
amalgamated_inc··on Newsrooms that move beyond ‘objectivity’ can build trust
Of course it's from the WaPo :D
amalgamated_inc··on [dead]
It is an interesting question, isn't it? I'm not saying I believe that, but really, which one IS morally better? Is the numerical population of your species a moral good? Is it the average quality of life? What if the chickens had a great life and got surprise-killed, never knowing harm? Does that make it ok to kill them? Or is killing them not a moral problem to begin with?
amalgamated_inc··on What New Weight Loss Drugs Teach Us About Fat and Free Will
Thanks for the archive link, just read the article.

Yea, I mean, all of this seems quite obvious. Hunger/appetite is a biochemically regulated system just like thirst or pretty much any other desire is. As the article points out, this has been demonstrated as early as the late 1800s. It is also quite obvious to anyone who's ever dieted.

I also think people seem to be casting these new drugs and this "what it teaches us" in a completely wrong light. They seem to use it as an excuse or nihilistic "see, it's impossible to lose weight!" thing just because the answer isn't "just use a lot of willpower." The answer is, of course, to keep looking for answers, not to throw our hands up until these drugs will save us.

amalgamated_inc··on The KLF: Chaos, magic and the band who burned £1M
Wouldn't it have slightly raised the value of everybody else's money?
amalgamated_inc··on Shell reports highest profits ($39.9B), and double last year's, in 115 years
Nice. Good for them!
amalgamated_inc··on What New Weight Loss Drugs Teach Us About Fat and Free Will
Let me guess: nothing
amalgamated_inc··on I bought a CO2 monitor and it broke me
Or just do it to find out your bedroom/office/kitchen is unhealthy.
amalgamated_inc··on A trillion-dollar platinum coin could defuse the debt-ceiling standoff
Why not just legalize forgery? Same thing. Even suggesting this suggests somebody is not a serious person.

Related: My game https://fedupgame.com/ allows you to mint trillion-dollar (and more) coins :) (Sorry, not mobile friendly)

amalgamated_inc··on Rivian to lay off 6% of its workforce as EV price war concerns grow
Yea it kind of seems like everything is Pascal's wager now. My argument is correct because any alternative is eternal hellfire. And even if my argument isn't very convincing, we should still do it because 0.1% chance of eternal hellfire is still eternal hellfire.
amalgamated_inc··on To combat diabetes, treat obesity like other diseases
> Medicare, which currently refuses to cover treatment for obesity until it causes significant health problems like diabetes or heart disease

Of course the problem could be that there is currently no known treatment for obesity.

amalgamated_inc··on [dead]
Mmm eggs :) Love those on my steak.
amalgamated_inc··on Rivian to lay off 6% of its workforce as EV price war concerns grow
I suspect if Chevy does the Equinox, they're gonna do the Traverse and other vehicles soon after.
amalgamated_inc··on Rivian to lay off 6% of its workforce as EV price war concerns grow
Yes to all of the above. I like EVs and am kind of a nerd about them, but realistically it doesn't help the adoption of a technology to push it before it's ready. We just don't have the manufacturing capacity for batteries, they're still quite expensive and finicky (try charging your EV in sub-zero temperatures) and heavy (so no gross capacity limited vehicles like F350 and no sports cars).

It's just like with wind and solar. Why can't we just be honest about what these are good at, use them appropriately, and let the tech develop and improve organically?

amalgamated_inc··on Rivian to lay off 6% of its workforce as EV price war concerns grow
Yea the Equinox (only driven the ICE as a rental) is a decent car that 80% of people would be happy with.

$30k for that would indeed be a very good bargain, and quite a bit cheaper than most EVs. I think most comparable EVs are quite a bit more pricey - ID.4 at $40k base, Mach-E at $45k.

And especially, it'd only be a $3k premium over the base ICE model. Even without subsidies, that's low enough that many people will switch.

amalgamated_inc··on Americans have been gaining weight for as long as records exist
This would influence weight, but probably wouldn't influence BMI much. There are slight discontinuities with BMI in relation to height, but I don't think people have grown THAT much.

But yea, for sure they've gotten taller.

amalgamated_inc··on Americans have been gaining weight for as long as records exist
> One that’s gotten very popular on the internet right (though there is prior art from Mother Jones on the left) points the finger at “seed oils.”

What? The right? This idea is so old that I remember it from when I first started reading about dieting. Has this guy never heard of Paleo? This is not a successor to "trans fats theory." Author clearly has no clue what he's talking about.

> Population aging has a mechanical impact on average obesity that is unrelated to changes in diet and nutrition.

He apparently hasn't read the very articles he's quoting. The Slime Mold Time Mold series quoted earlier in the article explicitly explains how this is in fact a new phenomenon - people actually used to get lighter and thinner as they got older, because they lost muscle.

Overall, typical useless punditry by someone who doesn't know a thing about the subject.

amalgamated_inc··on Americans have been gaining weight for as long as records exist
Brazil, India, China, Singapore
amalgamated_inc··on Rivian to lay off 6% of its workforce as EV price war concerns grow
Also known as the "F150 Lightning starting at $39,900" phenomenon lol

You can't get them below $70k

amalgamated_inc··on Rivian to lay off 6% of its workforce as EV price war concerns grow
What's the price target?
amalgamated_inc··on Type faster and more comfortably with ZipChord
Thanks for testing! I suppose that was you I was racing then ;)
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