theluketaylor

With home HVAC, fridges, water heaters, and dryers all using now able to use of dependent on heat pumps I wonder how long it be before we see modular appliances that connect to coolant lines where the temperature differential is supplied by a central high efficiency heat pump.

Cars already have heat scavenging that can move heat from where it's being created through losses to places where it's valuable, like the cabin or battery pre-heating. Especially in cold climates it feels like homes should be next.

Since Apple doesn't offer trials I have no issue with a dev offering some limited free download with IAP to unlock. The limits need to match the app in some way, like a limit on total queries or a timer.

Subscriptions have to be either something that has recurring costs to the developer (like they depend on a 3rd party API that charges for access) or the dev is upfront that it's an optional opportunity to support them. I'm also fine with some nice-to-have features locked behind a paywall if they are not core to the app functionality.

Carbon fibre is incredibly expensive to manufacture. It requires a lot of manual part manipulation and yields can be poor.

BMW made a big bet that batteries would remain expensive and weight would matter for EVs. i3 and i8 were studies in scaling up structural carbon fibre mass production based on that bet that failed pretty badly.

Structural batteries are already a thing. Carbon fibre won't be the housing without a bunch of innovations.

The money is being piped to the MTA for exactly the transportation improvements you’re looking for.

Opportunity cost of not having protected bike lanes or dedicated transit right of way. Especially in a place like Manhattan improving cycling safety and getting busses out of traffic would be a huge net gain for the city compared with huge amounts of space dedicated to large private vehicles.

> Having your vehicle serviced by someone other than the dealer could void your warranty and poses a safety risk

Good tongue in cheek post, but in the US Magnuson-Moss prohibits warranty claim denials merely on the basis of non-OEM parts and service. It also puts the burden on the manufacturer to demonstrate the defect or failure was the direct result of the non-OEM part. Other jurisdictions have similar laws on the books.

Right to repair already exists in certain aspects and needs to be expanded (and enforced. Tons of those ‘will void warranty’ stickers are lies and you have legal rights to poke around)

MLB could move the mound back or lower it again like was done in 1969 after the 'Year of the Pitcher', but it's not that simple.

The other crisis baseball faces is pitcher arm health. The mere act of throwing a ball 90-105 mph is damaging to the arm, and it only gets worse the harder you throw. Every pitcher is chasing velocity and spin rate since the resulting success and money is undeniable. Pitchers frequently need major surgery and extended year+ time recovering as a result.

If the mound is moved back or lowered pitchers will respond by doubling down on chasing velocity just to stay level, leading to more injuries and UCL replacement surgeries.

The same incentives apply to other options to give batters an edge, like juicing the ball or shrinking the strike zone. Pitchers will respond with velocity and blow up their arms.

There is no playing ball. Trump has made no actionable demands and we have already spent a ton of money on the border. Less than 1% of fentanyl enters the US through Canada and we have already slashed that negligible number in the last few months.

He isn't even moving the goalposts; there are no goalposts. This is economic warfare to take over Canada's resources.

Incorrect.

PHEV have plenty of motor power to go electric only for extended periods; the only limit is battery capacity. The key distinction is the plug in part of phev.

Mild hybrids cannot go electric only

Hybrids can go electric only for very short distance.

PHEV can go electric long distance and use wall power. Most can mechanically couple the combustion engine to the wheels and do so in certain circumstances, like long distance highway use.

EREV is an emerging term for vehicles that have a combustion engine not mechanically connected to the wheels that only drives a generator. BMW i3 is one of the oldest examples. Volt is not; it can put mechanical power to the road.

Fun fact on i3. California zero emissions rules offered more credit for vehicles with more battery range than gas, so bmw artificially limited the tank using software for i3 sold in North America. Owners can flash the euro firmware to unlock physically present tank space as usable.

Way over simplifying.

A study was done on washing machine prices during tariffs of the previous Trump administration. Rather than undercutting foreign goods on price, local manufacturing raised their prices to absorb extra profit. As a kicker, the price of dryers also went up even though they were not subject to tariffs.

The US and Canadian economies have become deeply intermingled over generations. Many materials cross the border multiple times on the way to becoming finished goods and will be subject to tariff each time. There will be 2nd, 3rd, and 4th order effects for a long time even if these tariffs go away quickly, not to mention the poisoning of the closest relationship between nations the world has ever seen.

My fellow Canadians are horrified and enraged at the tariffs that amount to economic warfare and the continuous violations of our sovereignty. I have never seen the whole country this united on anything before. Canadians are furious and every grocery store has American produce rotting on shelves. We will not forgive and forget quickly.

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20190611

The long range PHEVs china has been building would also be ideal for Canada. Plenty of daily range even in winter and no range or infrastructure anxiety when you need more distance.

REM is a rare example of anglosphere building, which is ironic since it's driven by french Quebec.

REM is an extreme outlier though. Canada is filled with failed or failing transit projects that are all desperately needed:

Metrolinx is many years overdue and billions over budget on Line 5. Line 6 is also overdue, but is getting a pass since it's only bad and not horrifying. Metrolinx seems to have learned some lessons for the Ontario Line, but it's also over budget and unlikely to keep anything close to its schedule.

Calgary has spent over a decade working on the Green Line and is still a long way from putting shovels in the ground.

Vancouver keeps slipping on delivering the Broadstreet Skytrain expansion. At least Translink does seem to have reverted to the original Skytrain design pattern that has been so incredibly successful for the Expo Line expansion.

Quebec City tried for a LRT and couldn't even get the project started the cost spiralled so much and got down to a single bidder before they scrapped it and started again.

My own home of Kitchener-Waterloo managed to build an LRT and keep costs reasonable, but costs on phase 2 to Cambridge are terrifying for at-grade construction. Many euro nations have delivered full underground metros for much less per km. We've also been promised and are waiting for all day regional rail service for a decade+.

I'm a huge fan of transit, but it's hard to be optimistic.

I am glad to see CDPQ (who did REM) is part of the high speed rail proposal. They have shown a real ability to make smart value engineering choices and actually deliver projects. Is it enough to actually build some trains? I'm not sure, even if we ignore the political uncertainly surrounding the project.

> A 50% + 1 margin of victory should result in the law becoming void the moment the parliament composition changes.

I do like the idea of built in timers on laws, but instant revocation seems too extreme. A marginal law expiring at the end of the new term seems more conducive to stability. That gives time to debate, discuss, and pass (or not) a modified version so everyone affected has time to participate and plan for revisions.

> Constitutional changes should essentially require unanimity ( and a referendum on top of it) since they are the only permanent laws.

Here in Canada the bar on constitutional amendments has been set so high it's unlikely we will ever be able to change it for any reason. Too much change isn't healthy, but neither is none.

Not American, but I do think their bar for constitutional amendments has also been set too high and I think it's contributing to polarization. Setting it even higher seems counter-productive. I have similar feelings about the filibuster.

More laws passing would let people live with the consequences, good or bad, of all the stuff being proposed. Voters would be able to vote based on reality rather than the boogey-man each side portrays of what the other side might do with power. There should be a high bar to change a constitution, but it needs to be clearable more often.

I'm really against mixed-member proportional (and pretty much all form of proportional representation) since you end up with party hacks unaccountable to voters. When parties control the order of the lists there is also really strong incentive by representatives to tow the party line to avoid relegation.

The mathematical challenges of voting systems is one of the reasons I've come to support multi-member districts. When only a single person can represent a jurisdiction you're always going to have people disappointed in the choice and we have have plenty of proofs that perfect voting isn't possible, so we need to aim for best reasonable compromise.

Voting is even more about identifying who didn't win than who did win. In a multi-member district a much smaller slice of the electorate 'loses', making it much easier to build broad consensus around results.

Some of the sharper edges of many ranked choice or scoring voting systems are blunted by multi-member districts. They are not winner-take-all, so small changes in expressed preference that would have changed the winner in a single member district just re-orders the winners. Specific candidates could still find themselves losing when another system would have elected them, but the electorate as a whole still ends up with representation they can tolerate.

It's not arbitrary and it's not just CO2. The Euro 6 and upcoming 7 standards also test for carbon monoxide, unburnt hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxide, and particulates from the tailpipe, brakes, and tires. The Jimny couldn't pass on those and Suzuki decided it wasn't worth the price of compliance to add things like gas particulate filters and change the brake pad material.

95% can absolutely be done by someone with far less training than a medical doctor, but the real job of being a doctor is having the expertise and experience to spot the other 5% and sometimes to respond quickly enough with extreme skill to prevent medical catastrophe.

I want to see far more involvement in direct patient interaction happen with nurse practitioners and physician assistants, with doctors supervising cases to ensure no one falls through the cracks. I'd love to see more specialization of NPs and PAs to handle cases that are complex but routine within a speciality.

The problem is a lack of respect for NPs and PAs, with many patients only wanting to see a doctor. We need to promote these occupations as the highly trained and licensed professionals that they are and make sure they get the respect they deserve.

Congressional votes don’t need to be secret, so we have tons of technology that would permit remote participation and voting. That also frees up members to spend more time physically in their district.

When I’ve pictured this it’s with member counts in the low to mid thousands, not tens of thousands.

Floor debates are already mainly performative, with little bearing on changes to bills. All the real work happens in committee and by the Speaker’s office. I’d think about embracing this with more different caucuses of various members who come together on specific issues and bring versions of bills and amendments for committees to adopt or reject, maybe even a few levels of committees to build consensus slowly so the final floor vote is more formality than debate.

1 and 3 are pretty related problems. Freezing the size of congress means each representative covers more population, so getting their election message out is more expensive, forcing representatives to raise more money.

With a magic wand I’d massively increase both the house and senate, publicly fund elections, and switch to 3 member mixed districts to increase the chances every citizen of a district has someone they feel reasonably represents their major views.

Longer isn’t always better for trains. Longer trains need bigger platforms and stations are often the most expensive parts of the network. Big trains also weigh more, so they accelerate slower and have longer trip times.

Weight savings can also translate into cheaper bridges and viaducts, though that’s only true for dedicated track. If you’re sharing with freight they are always going to be far heavier.

Much better is upgrading signalling, automating the train, and running far more service because frequency is king for public transit. Many short trains at high headways vs less frequent long trains has the same total capacity but the short, frequent trains provide far more value. When people don’t have to think about the schedule and can just show up and ride public transit is great.

There are also limits to the value of standardizing rolling stock. You don’t want every train set to be bespoke, but there is also danger in every train being exactly the same. If there is a parts shortage or identified design flaw your whole fleet can be grounded all at once. If you have some diversity you can limp along if one design has to be sidelined.

That involves expensive external hardware converting AC to DC. I'm talking about native 3 phase charging embedded into every vehicle and the charging port design and specification itself.

There are certainly fleets that need rapid charging throughout the day and they will need expensive DC units. There are many fleets that only need lower speed, longer duration overnight charging at the fleet yard. Native 3 phase with load sharing charging hardware is the lowest cost way to achieve that. No need for expensive labour to move vehicles or power connections overnight, much lower installation cost than even the smallest DC charging hardware, and no need for expensive 400+V DC certified electricians.

> You also cannot buy a new Ferrari today unless you have a previous relationship with them

If you want the super special stuff like Monza SP1/2 or Daytona SP3 you need a longstanding relationship with Ferrari, but you can walk into a showroom and drive out with a 296 or Roma this afternoon if you have the cash, and let's not pretend a 296 isn't a very special car.

3 phase is a huge deal, especially for commercial fleets.

For public charging DC fast chargers are incredibly expensive, whereas a 3 phase AC charger is pretty cheap and effectively the same price as single phase charger. Delivering more power for the same install cost is valuable since it opens more charging use cases for low cost charging.

I think north america is going to regret not having 1st class support for 3 phase charging baked into all electrified vehicles in the long term.

No compatibility break as far as I know. I believe V3 superchargers speak CCS to 2019 and newer cars and fallback to the older Tesla-proprietary communication if necessary.

Tesla version 3 superchargers already use CCS for communication between car and charger for 2019 and later vehicles.

Version 2 superchargers do not speak CCS and won't ever be opened to non-Tesla vehicles and there are certain routes where that's quite annoying. My most common road trip has 5 supercharger locations along the way with 3 of them being V2, including the most isolated charger. Even once the NACS changeover happens taking a non-tesla on that journey will be a real pain.

Tesla has not put any resources into converting V2 sites into V3s. Some of the locations have been expanded with the new additions being V3, but I haven't seen much in the way of switchover.

George Herbert Walker Bush comes to mind as a native son of the US with multiple middle names. He used H. W. in politics, but that still includes some whitespace and non-traditional characters.

Yeah, I'm not sure large scale geothermal electrical production will ever be a thing outside some specialized locations like Iceland.

I do think geothermal has a part to play, specifically for heating and cooling of neighbourhoods and multifamily developments. The construction has to move a ton of dirt anyway, so might as well install some ground loops while you're at it. If you're forced to drill due to site conditions, the load is lower than pure electricity generation meaning the wells are not that deep. For private homes it's far too expensive to be much more than a curiosity, but amortized across a whole new neighbourhood or collection of apartment buildings it's very affordable. Especially in northern climates accessing the consistent ground heat source/sink that allows you to run heat pumps at max efficiency all year is a huge win and is a huge amount of electricity you never need to generate in the first place.

Also a fan of revenue neutral carbon pricing that uses a standard dividend. Pricing externalities does seem like the only realistic way to solve tragedy of the commons issues like climate change. The weight of regulating individual actions would be impossibly complex.

I also think pricing alone isn't sufficient since there are many poor people who can't really make different choices about their consumption even if they want to. Without choice carbon pricing loses effectiveness, since there isn't any way to optimize your costs.

The edge case I think about a lot is a poor urban/suburban renter without access to functional public transit. Since they rent they can't take steps to improve the efficiency of their dwelling. They can't rely on transit to get to work due to poor service reliability. Sprawling car-centric development means cycling is dangerous and far, so they must maintain a private vehicle, which is likely to be old and inefficient in order to be affordable. A dividend is unlikely to be sufficient to fundamentally change any of these conditions since this person is likely to be roughly revenue-neutral.

All the cloud networks are software (defined network) a very long way down, far below what is exposed to customers, so any overlay is going to have to be software.

If you mean overlays that don't require an endpoint agent there are plenty of solutions that will orchestrate cloud native SDN control enforcement capabilities like AWS network ACLs or Azure NSGs rather then trying to handle enforcement on the resource directly with an agent.

Actual studies have shown autopilot and fsd are at best average on safety. Given it spends an outsized amount of time limited access roads it's actually worse than manual driving for safety.