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diebir

384 karma · joined April 30, 2015

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diebir··on Winnebago’s Electric Motorhome Prototype
The US rockies region get to negative F all the time. The area around Antero Reservoir gets to -20F -30F all the time. Winter Park overnight parking is commonly around -10F overnight.

Camping in a car is not an issue at all. Living in a van or an RV is an entirely a different game. For that you need from 2 to 4 kilowatts of heat, for days on end. If you let the temps inside drop below freezing even once, you are dead, all the plumbing is frozen and batteries are out of commission until you warm them up.

Solar is useless in winter. Finding shore power is hard.

There are solved problems in van life and unsolved ones. The heat is solved with gas/diesel. The AC is not solved at all.

As far as the range, I drive a disel van with a range of 400+ miles. It's okay but often times I wish I had more.

Forget it, EV RV is a dumb idea and is never coming. It does not mean they won't be selling one. There's always a sucker to buy.

diebir··on Winnebago’s Electric Motorhome Prototype
60 kwh at 4 kilowatt gives you 15 hours of heat in a van in cold weather. Granted, you may not need full 4 kilowatt of heat at all tines, so let's say it's one full day. You drive to BigSky Montana to ski and after two days your RV is frozen solid, including all the water and everything is dead and leaking. All you can do at this point is to try and find a shore hookup or an EV charger. But of course the batteries won't even charge because they are too cold.

Electric RV, you just can't, sorry.

diebir··on Winnebago’s Electric Motorhome Prototype
One does not need heat to sleep in a car (slept dozens of nights at ski resorts). This does not mean that you can heat up a van/rv with electricity.

(I have lived for a month in a van in Montana/Colorado/Wyoming. Camped in a Forester for months all over. Lived and worked in a van for 30 days in PNW in spring).

diebir··on Winnebago’s Electric Motorhome Prototype
12 kilowatt hours of battery storage gives you 3 hours of heat at 4 kilowatts. In 3 hours you freeze, literally (it's -0F/-18C outside, around Antero, Colorado).

12 kilowatt hours of battery is close 10 $10K in cost and takes 6 feet by 6 feet area and weighs 200lb.

Whatever you may think, in RV world:

1. Heat only can be done with gas/diesel/propane 2. AC consistently only on shore power 3. Cooking on propane 4. You will still be not living consistently in cold areas (like the Rockies) or warm areas (like FL). 5. Most of those long term rviers just hang on campgrounds for the electric power reasons (and sewer hookup).

So, electric RV is a dumb idea and will never be here.

diebir··on Winnebago’s Electric Motorhome Prototype
I just own a camper van. In current state of affairs, heat is a solved problem with diesel. Air conditioning still does not have a viable solution, aside from shore power. You can't practically use electric for heating or anything really beyond powering the lights and the heater fan.

Most vans max out around 3kWth. I have seen people use a used Tesla battery, but only have seen one report.

diebir··on Winnebago’s Electric Motorhome Prototype
I mean that trying to heat with electricity is not feasible for a van. You need 2-4 kilowatt of heat to stay warm in winter. In summer, AC is another unsolved problem: most of these RVs hang in campgrounds on shore power because this is the only way to get consistent AC in warmer locales.
diebir··on Winnebago’s Electric Motorhome Prototype
Good luck heating this thing with electricity. Or air conditioning. Nowhere to go w/o good old fossil fuels.
diebir··on Tesla rival Rivian posts losses of $1.7B, with worse to come
What a strange idea to build an el camino (unibody pickup) for a flagman ev by a company... It is not a good pickup. It is not a good SUV. Why? Because Ford sells a lot of pickups? But Ford pickups are actually useful as pickups, Rivian is not.
diebir··on U.S. takes unprecedented steps to replenish Colorado River's Lake Powell
Many people and myself included, would love to see Lake Powell drained. It serves little purpose and we would be better without it. As a bonus, we'd get wonderful Glen Canyon back.
diebir··on Van life (cancer edition) finale
I am in the same boat as this woman, probably got a few good months left. I am planning self deliverance with helium as soon as symptoms become significant. For now I am just checking things off my bucket list and trying to have as many adventures as possible (I am an outdoor adventurer and a software engineer).
diebir··on Joe Rogan, confined to Spotify, is losing influence
Whatevs. Joe Rogan, as far as I could tell is some sort of loud macho redneck type that does not have anything interesting to say.

On another note, Spotify is so buggy an application I am surprised how/why anybody is using it. The most common thing is that it crashes on my iPhone. I was considering buying it, but not after discovering how bad/buggy it was.

diebir··on California family dies under mysterious circumstances
Similar case in Colorado 5 years ago:

https://denver.cbslocal.com/2015/07/28/father-and-son-were-k...

Canister stoves that produce a small amount of carbon monoxide have an unfortunate feature of making more CO with increasing altitude. Watch out: a stove in a tent that was perfectly fine at 5K feet becomes a source of CO at 8K feet.

diebir··on California family dies under mysterious circumstances
If they were backpacking, I'd say carbon monoxide from a stove most likely. Otherwise maybe only lightning makes some sense. All this "toxic gasses" seems way too unlikely.
diebir··on (Red Hat's) 5 useless Linux commands
What do you mean "bc is useless". I use it all the time!!
diebir··on The search for a ranger who was lost and never found
Wow, loved this! Beautiful mystery, Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid.
diebir··on Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help
IntelliJ and the rest rock. I switched from Eclipse 8+ years ago and never looked back.
diebir··on Notes on My Colon Cancer
Something to note. You do not have to be "sedated" for colonoscopy. I have had two and requested no sedation for the last one. It is mildly uncomfortable, but not painful.

The "sedation" is not really anesthesia, but rather a drug that messes with your short term memory (and makes you goofy). If you don't like the idea of somebody messing with your brain circuitry, ask not to be sedated.

Do get the anesthetic though.

As a cancer survivor, paranoia saves lives. If something seems out of order, go see a doc.

diebir··on My Eight-Year Quest to Digitize 45 Videotapes
Could you share the link to the place that digitized the VHSs for you?
diebir··on Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition
I could never understand the point of a gym. Just a pair of running shoes. Some dumbbells. I picked up slacklining and bosu ball training during the lockdown. Why does one need a "gym" ??
diebir··on How the Zoom macOS installer does its job without you clicking ‘install’
A lot of this is Mac OS X fault: it still does not have an easy canonical way of installing things and has no way for uninstalling. I don't get why in this day mac os can't have something like RPM or any number of other package managers.
diebir··on A Backpacker's Guide to Maps
Here's something on the next level:

https://thingstolucat.com/category/trip-planning/

Skurka is obviously is one of the great ones. But so is Luc and he extends quite a bit on the subject.

diebir··on Backcountry.com sues anyone who uses its namesake
I spend so much money on Backcountry.com, I get personal emails from a "gearhead" (a rep assigned to me). I have sent him a (very polite) email asking to inform the corporate that I will be suspending my spending until this is resolved.
diebir··on Apple’s New Mac Pro to Be Made in Texas
Ford
diebir··on Apple’s New Mac Pro to Be Made in Texas
I recently bought a domestic vehicle. What a mistake. The assembly quality is awful. I don't know how they assemble the body panels I thought it was all done by robots, but robots would not miss spot welds or misalign parts and retry welds after a miss. I think there was just a bunch of drunks manually assembling that Ford vehicle. The paint is peeling on the roof of a NEW car.

From my experience, don't buy made in the US. It is too expensive and the quality is bad. I think the pay structure in this country is such that nobody is paid "enough" to do quality work.

diebir··on Tourists Heeding Utah’s ‘Mighty 5’ Campaign Overpower Moab
There's little evidence that this is due to a campaign. RMNP in Colorado had a similar jump in number of visits, as well as Yellowstone and the Grand.

The problem is simply too many people, too little wilderness. Unless we stop growing and put some wild lands off limits (as wilderness), in a few short years there will be nothing left.

diebir··on GM, Volkswagen Say Goodbye to Hybrid Vehicles
Well, that's just stupid. Hybrids would be the fastest way to improve fuel economy for the most common types of vehicles that Americans are buying (SUVs, trucks, etc).

Maybe this will kill GM. Good riddance.

diebir··on A radio station that no one claims to run (2017)
Ha-ha I had to check whether this was the place where I served in 87-88. No, my unit work location was about 10 miles south along the same road. Also a bunch truck based radio stations, buildings, huge antenna fields, etc. We did radio surveillance on NATO countries in northern Europe, Unit 75752. Our transmitters were yet a few miles south of that location (you normally want to separate the transmitting and receiving as far as practical).
diebir··on If the number of children is not growing, why is the population still increasing
The world is overpopulated. Humans have already eliminated as many species as other great extinction events. Our industrial activity has changed the Earth climate. There is very little wilderness left anywhere. The forests are getting clear cut and eliminated. We have exceeded the Earth's capacity to support us already and there is no end in sight, unfortunately. Humans are the disease and unless we learn to live sustainably (as opposed to infinite expansion), the life is going to get worse for every subsequent generation and we are toast in the end.
diebir··on Windows gets a new terminal
I think in the US for the most part nobody cares much about Windows anymore. For the consumer Apple simply provides a better experience, for developers the Windows is in the past. Microsoft products are essentially the budget option, AKA "poor people use it". It could be different in other parts of the world where the "budget" part is essential. At my last 2 jobs (7+ years) I did not use or see any Windows machines around. Not even sure what it looks like these days anymore.
diebir··on The Mobile-Home Trap (2015)
Sorry, what is mobile home? A trailer in trailer park?
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