lovemenot

I heard that the pachinko industry got its head start from the post-war surplus production of ball bearings. Perhaps the quality you mention is now feasible as a result of the scale economics from pachinko ball production.

I am not the person you responded to. I bought a house in Nagano last year. After living in Tokyo a long time The paperwork was not too difficult. Takes about 3 hours to walk through it all, in the presence of the seller, realtor and scrivener. Hand over the cash and take ownership.

The neighbours have been unexpectedly wonderful. Very kind. I live there most of the time and wish to contribute. I actually think it's advantageous to be a (European) foreigner. They realise all the little nit-picks that Japanese do to each other in the service of community would be mostly lost on me. YMMV.

Diversifying is worthwhile only amongst good options. It's more like "stop buying broken eggs, they are useless."

The report is really all about the failure of H2 policy, and is persuasive. There may perhaps be some political story about budget allocation between alternatives, but there is little indication of that.

Renewables like solar and wind could be used to charge a battery or to electrolyse H2. This report argues against the latter. Or rather, against the Japanese government's current implementation of an H2 policy.

I don't think we need to be cynical here. The report can be read on its own merits.

>> Consider that our brains are the only organ on the planet that is able to understand the concept of life, reason about itself and all other life around it, understand the concept of evolution, and even conceptualize time billion of years into the past and future.

Here is where words like "narcissism" tend to land. It isn't personal against yourself, so please don't take offence. It is a philosophical viewpoint that is often stated, but appears to lack evidence. I don't have any counter evidence, but I strongly suspect it to be factually incorrect. And I believe the burden of proof is on those making this claim.

Further, even if we allow the above claim to pertain, this position makes the strong assertion that the very qualities that modern humans are uniquely superior in, are the very things that must be held uniquely special. To some of us, this just seems circular and too convenient.

Is it more likely that humans hold such characteristics to be the epitome of success because there is some objective model of success to which we alone conform (e.g. conceptualisation)? Or because it merely suits us to do so? I believe the latter, though you may disagree.

I am not the person you responded to, but I generally agree with them.

I guess they prefer to take an extreme Darwinian view. Since complexity is not the goal of life, merely a side-effect, there is no life on this planet that is more advanced than any other. Assuming a single abiogenesis event, all extant life has been evolving for approximately 3.8B years.

We may choose to think of brains, and our human brains in particular, as the bees-knees. Objectively, they are not though. Just one of many successful branches of the tree of life.

But if it has a has, it's a has.

I suspect your parent intended to imply that in practice "truth" is largely socially-generated. So your objective definition would be moot.

Not that I'd necessarily agree, its just an interpretation.

>> Most companies seem to not know that nuance.

Toyota's tier-two suppliers surely know it pretty well. Their suppliers a little less well. And so on, down through the supply chain.

It isn't the case that Toyota has some magical vision (though they are clear-thinkers). The key difference is that Toyota is at the end of the supply chain for all their suppliers.

Think of pulling an elastic tether on a solid object, which pulls an elastic tether on a solid object, which pulls an elastic tether on a solid object. Friction accumulates and it doesn't disperse evenly.

So the Toyota model is great iff you are Toyota or similar OEM. With diminishing returns as you progress further down the supply chain.

So what if it is exactly that? If pedals opens those regulated markets which Honda has surely researched, then all the better.

This could be aiming at Gogoro and the like, which have a pretty good sized market in Taiwan and are just beginning to expand from there.

It'll be interesting to see whether Honda follows Gogoro with swapable batteries, charging infrastructure, sharing apps etc.

These machines look more robust than an e-bicycle: better suited to rental markets, and perhaps in countries with lower quality road infrastructure.

Go ahead, build an app to dethrone the latest king of social media. If you don't someone else surely will. In the meantime, these guys are actually trying. I for one remain open-minded about their chances of success.

I don't mind what information a platform might display to me, as long as in practice it only shows what I want to see.

Give me control over the algo that filters my wheat, and let the chaff flow in abundance.

You could be right, and I hope you are. But, given the current state of development in agrivoltaics and such, your prediction has too much certainty.

All power to those projects, but they are really just experimental at this point. Not inevitable.

You are right. I believe the disconnect with many of those who argue like your parent is that they expect no societal changes should be forthcoming. So nuclear (both kinds) is the only way to continue with this lifestyle. As wastefully as we may wish, since massive over-provisioning is a possibility with these technologies.

I disagree with the premise and therefore with their conclusion. Renewables (plus storage, plus demand management, plus HVDC transmission) will get us there. But there isn't here

It's a tricky calculation for sure. Depends on the likelihood and duration of those pipelines ever being used again, and the take-up of alternate, renewable energy sources - or just doing without.

GreenWar: a hypothetical sibling of GreenPeace. Of course I don't actually believe this.

However, considering the war and today's sabotage purely from a global warming perspective, it could be net positive in the long run. Accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels.

It turns out that "Clever Hans" was reading subconscious body language cues from Magnus

Is command language the ultimate interface? I doubt it. Similar to how GUI supersedes CLI in most use cases, we should be able to indicate "warmer" / "colder" preference to generate new images from previous attempts.

>> if something can't be eaten raw - it should be avoid in any form.

Some foods are changed by cooking. For example, kidney beans must never be eaten raw, but are tasy and nutritious cooked.

Assume you were thinking of nitrous oxide N2 O.

C O is deadly when inhaled

I live in a house with a fixed awning at the front, as it was formerly a shop.

I bought a dozen flexible panels at around $1 / watt. These are very lightweight and I was able to install them on top of the awning without going on to the roof.

Not a high powered system, nor particularly efficient in terms of space. But low material cost and self-installed.

That one photo looks like it might have been taken near Sangubashi.

>> autistic people cant acknowledge when they are wrong

The only acknowledgement made in the article is internally: I read more, I investigate things I don't know.

Other than this, the person seems to fail to acknowledge the possibility of ever being wrong to us readers. Indurectltly justifying the presumed prejudice of allistics.

It was a little rude, certainly.

Whether uncalled-for or not depends on your intent. Only you are in a position to know for sure. My own feeling was that the comment was mostly deserved.

Objections and problems raised against proposed solutions to critical issues, just left for someone else to solve feels disingenuous. Whether not it actually is.

Maybe, next time try to solve your own objections and we won't get the drama.

Your panels are still working fine. Essentially, your problem is that you supplier is unwilling to invest in storage and management systems and doesn't provide inter-connectivity to the grid.

Could you create a separate grid in your home? Off-grid or maybe hybrid, having no connection to your domestic power connections nor the supply. You'll be able to reuse nearly all of the existing solar equipment and will just need to invest a bit more to re-architect some of the electrical system in your home.

It may be a little awkward to use, since you'll be sometimes unplugging appliances from one supply to another. But if you were willing to invest in energy storage too, there'd be more consistency from your solar and less need to unplug appliances.

>> Nuclear plants may or may not be reliable, but outages at multiple nuclear plants are usually not corellated.

Japan has seen a decade-long shutdown of most plants following a single incident.

Not at all. You are commiting the fallacy fallacy fallacy: incorrect reasoning about fallacies above first order.

In Japan many people use flimsy locks on bikes. It is not to deter a determined thief, but to mitigate the possibility of an opportunistic "borrowing".

Speaking of Kei cars, the first two EVs that fall into the Kei car regulatory category were recently released in Japan.

https://www.motor1.com/news/587022/nissan-sakura-electric-ke...

https://www.mitsubishi-motors.co.jp/lineup/ek_x_ev/special/?...