standeven

This executive action blames forest management for increased wildfires, but the IPCC has predicted this exact problem for decades. Unsurprisingly, climate change is not mentioned.

I guess we’re to believe that forests are being poorly managed by every government in every country around the world?

The IEC 61131-3 languages, though 95% of my work is Structured Text. Anyone need a PLC programmed?

Ukraine wants peace with a security guarantee. US wants ceasefire with no guarantee, allowing Russia to recoup and reinvade in a year or two.

At the current rate of collapse, we might be seeing “USA (Lower Canada)” below the 49th first.

Where?

I agree with most of what you’ve said, but there are some niche uses.

https://www.liebreich.com/hydrogen-ladder-version-5-0/

“The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

-Steve Bannon

First you need to have a cult-like following among your base and a partisan Supreme Court who owes you favors. Only then can you enrich yourself and your pals by abusing your position of power to promote meme-coins.

Somewhat anecdotal, but I follow the used Tesla Model 3 market fairly closely in western Canada and have seen the number of listings triple over the last month or so.

I really wish we could remove the 100% tariffs on solar panels and EVs from China and let the free market do its thing. It feels like lobbying and red tape are the biggest things holding back the energy transition at this point.

Good point regarding snow and fog, but I’m assuming operation would slow or stop in those conditions and that would be acceptable.

Does a truly featureless wall/road with no visible edges actually exist in the wild? I’d expect cameras with high enough resolution, spacing, and FOV would handle any real world examples but maybe I’m wrong.

LLC liability protections are not absolute. I wouldn’t be surprised if this would fall under gross negligence or callous indifference or some other legal umbrella that voids the liability protection. I also wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some fine print in the account agreement that creates a personal guarantee.

The quoted latency and neuron counts can also be questioned, but my point stands: it's hard to compete with the human eye and brain with current (affordable) camera and processing hardware.

I think vision-only approaches can work, but our eyes and brain are amazing and it would take some serious hardware. Our eyes have a 200-degree FOV, providing a 576 megapixel landscape, with 13ms of latency. Plus there are 6 billion neurons in the visual cortex alone to process the images, which are then fed to another 80 billion neurons that can interpret and react to the data.

Peppering a few webcam-quality cameras around a car and plugging it into an Intel Atom processor probably won't be better than our eyes and brain, even if the cameras don't blink or get tired. It's only going to get better though.

There are some chapters in a fantastic book, "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, that explain how luck has a huge amount of influence on the events in the world.

-USA stops supporting Ukraine war efforts and Ukraine is forced to cede large portions of land to Russia, creating a DMZ along vast stretches of the new border.

-Expanded land use restrictions and federal tariffs against solar and wind, resulting from pressure from fossil fuel lobbyists and the new head of the department of energy.

-Another CEO is shot.

-Crypto has a major correction; bitcoin finishes the year well under $100k.

-US grocery prices are higher than ever.

-Pierre Poilievre is the new Prime Minister of Canada and holds a majority.

-EVs continue to grow market share at a linear rate in North America.

That’s incredible, I had no idea this was even possible. Are most auto manufacturers modelling their vehicles this way? Seems like an amazing way to search for optimizations, predictive failures, etc.

And unfortunately, gas and coal in the meantime.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/sep/15/data-cent...

I have been in a similar position.

Do you want to write code, and get better at writing code? Then probably find a new job with better mentorship.

Do you want to grow quickly in this company and are okay with being a manager? Then stay on your current path, hire some solid software developers to your team, and embrace the responsibility you’ve been trusted with.

Weapons proliferation is definitely a strike against nuclear. A few other strikes:

  - It still requires mining, so is it any cleaner than solar + storage?
  - Waste is significantly less recyclable than other green energy waste.
  - High cost and long timelines to build.
  - Major risks when damaged by weather, accidents, or damaged intentionally.
  - The biggest proponents of nuclear seem to be the oil/gas industry, and politicians aligned with oil/gas. Hmm...

When I was a young teen, I volunteered at the local YMCA to help set up a "haunted house" (actually a squash court) for Halloween. One of the decorations I pulled out of a storage closet was a display skeleton. I set it up and was having fun playing around with it when I noticed it had some metal fillings in the teeth...and everything was a bit TOO realistic.

I still get the heebie-jeebies thinking about it.

These are used for switching light displays to celebrate Vesak, seen here: https://youtu.be/pqFLHIJ-I4M?si=Xu-NsUs_qycqGIrV

Tesla superchargers are rarely down. Not sure what they’re doing differently, but it shows that EV chargers CAN be reliable, but a lot of companies haven’t figured it out yet.

Yes, about 2000 moving parts in a combustion engine compared to 20 in an electric motor. The only reason ICE cars are comparable in price is the 100 years of supply chain competition.

EVs will win, but gas and diesel will persist for a long time in niches (enthusiasts, long-haul towing).

If it's 50 sheets of 1/8" balsa wood, it's about 166 lbs.

If it's 50 sheets of 1.25" lignum vitae, it's about 13,100 lbs.

3000 lbs seems like a reasonable estimate.

And that’s why carbon taxes are so beneficial. It’s a shame they’ve been villainized and are unpopular.

It would still speed up behind-the-meter installations for existing grid connections. Rooftop solar, commercial and industrial customers adding battery energy storage, etc.

Who cares about the optimal climate, we just need the rate of change to remain at a low enough level that nature (including humans) can adapt. We seem to be on the edge of that limit already.

Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) is available in more and more EVs and will allow for this.

Is this a big deal? This report mentions electrolyzers hitting 80-95% efficiency back in 2004: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/36705.pdf

The big H2 inefficiencies are still the compression, transportation, and conversion back to electricity.