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COASTER1921

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COASTER1921 ,

The problem is that this isn’t really even trickle charging. Customers would absolutely complain and say it’s not working because it couldn’t charge the battery more than 1-2% in an entire day of sun. EV batteries are 60kWh+ yet getting more than 2kWh/sq meter daily from residential panels is hard for much of the US. Add to that the:

  • weight of panels
  • cost of panels
  • heat trapped in the car from having a roof literally designed to absorb solar radiation
  • fragility of panels (although all these glass roof EVs have that problem already) And it’s really not worthwhile.

One solution to the apartment street parking problem is adding charging ports to streetlights (they do this in Europe). But for most of US apartments there’s already dedicated parking space so also space for chargers. The unruly size of new vehicles is a much bigger problem in my mind, if there were actual motivation to fix this problem in government it would already be solved through some tax credits.

COASTER1921 ,

New outlook is less functional but much better UI design (it’s just outlook web access after all). Outlook hasn’t changed in forever because so many corporate high ups use it and think they know how it works. They always respond to emails that are already answered because they didn’t see the newer reply in their inbox. I suspect this resistance is why it’s a totally separate program to the old outlook. Yes, there are settings to group threads in outlook, but the interface is still pretty unintuitive and the vast majority of these users don’t change their default settings anyway. In my experience the terrible defaults create more problems than outlook solves. And the server syncing can be really slow at times. Personally, I’m very happy that MS is finally showing some interest to modernize outlook, the more people who use it the easier my job will get.

Also ya the name is stupid. Teams (New) gets me the most. Idk who possibly thought this naming scheme was a good idea.

COASTER1921 ,

Firefox mobile isn’t there yet. Passwords will conveniently autofill from your Google account thanks to the Android level implementation of password management, but more importantly it’s resource heavy and bad UI design. Ublock support is nice but some websites just don’t deal with it well. The nightly builds do fix my main problems with the UI but they crash all the time. So there’s hope for the future, but for now it’s not great unless you absolutely need proper browser level ad blocking rather than Blokada.

COASTER1921 ,

So maybe my experience is unique but websites don’t always test with Firefox now and some simply don’t work with it. I use it anyway out of principle but occasionally I need to open Chrome.

On mobile it’s even worse. Firefox is stuttery on my Pixel 8 Pro and doesn’t handle more than ~20 open tabs well. The nightly version fixes the stutter but crashes all the time (it’s a nightly build after all so this is expected).

COASTER1921 , (edited )

Just ublock origin with default configuration. My complaints aren’t for page loading so much as scrolling. Stutter when scrolling is really annoying to me. Interestingly as mentioned the nightly version fixes this, even when ublock is also installed on it.

My occasional page related complaints are for stuff animating correctly. This is very rare and a minor inconvenience usually, but sometimes stops you from being able to do what you came to accomplish (usually on jank websites, rental car companies for example).

Pretending Firefox mobile is already great is counterproductive to fixing it’s issues. They don’t have extensive development resources particularly for the mobile version so it makes sense it’s worse. But to a non-techie switching to it isn’t a good experience yet. It definitely can be in the future but without at least acknowledging it’s current flaws why would anyone switch who has previously tried switching?

COASTER1921 ,

They take pork products particularly seriously. At least on their flag carrier, China Airlines, it would be incredibly hard to ignore the video played prior to landing with the talking pigs specifically pointing this out.

COASTER1921 ,

Almost no countries allow meat products due to potential exposure that couldn’t be easily seen. Sometimes for commercially prepared meats there are exceptions but these are in relatively few countries. For countries with substantial livestock keeping diseases out is critical to their economy and therefore treated with such a high level of urgency.

COASTER1921 ,

This has been the case forever. Itemizing receipts for hotels is always a pain and at least my company’s expense tool has buttons for more than 7 different tax fields each night. It’s like filling out a whole spreadsheet it the nightly rate varies.

COASTER1921 ,

Yep, and the Chevy Silverado EV manages 200kWh now. This cargo ship better be small and efficient because 250 American pickup trucks worth of battery really isn’t much.

COASTER1921 ,

It’s still not a lot of energy though. Some rough napkin math for how far this would get you is below:

Typical medium size cargo ships in the Panama Canal travel around 25 knots burning 63000 gallons per day of fuel with 5000TEU of cargo. That’s roughly 600mi/63000gal or 1142miles per ton gallon. That Silverado EV somehow weighs 4 tons (totally safe to be driving at highway speeds), so this is the equivalent of roughly 285.5mpg per Silverado. The Silverado is 67mpge on its own, so the ship is just over 4x as efficient (and slower which is ignored here but would impact the vehicle efficiency).

So using the Silverado’s 450 mile optimal range we can say it has at most an optimistic 7 gallons equivalent fuel in its 200kWh battery. 50 MWH would be enough for a theoretical 1750 gallons equivalent if efficiency were the same. But for the efficiency difference this corresponds to a 4.2x improvement to 7350 gallons equivalent. Therefore this is enough to run that typical ship above for 2.8 hours. So with 65000 tons of cargo in the above ship to do a 200 mile route this ship would need roughly 3x as large a battery. More likely it will just carry ~1/3 the cargo or have charging stops en-route.

The 19.4km/h top speed of this ship suggests they’re well aware of the extremely limited range this will have for its size and it sounds like the Shanghai to Nanjing route will be pushing it’s limits despite being less than 200 miles.

COASTER1921 ,

True but efficiency is not the same and not as simple to compare since we don’t know how much of the ship’s battery is converted into motion. Similarly we don’t directly know it’s mass. ICE cars can use ~20% of the energy in fuel while EVs 90%+ of the energy in a battery. But now much can that ship effectively use? I have no idea how efficient boats are or aren’t, hence the roundabout method above.

COASTER1921 ,

When they charge many $100s for an extra 8gb the value of the bare minimum 8gb doesn’t look so terrible (if only comparing to Apple). Especially considering the performance of swap on a fast SSD.

COASTER1921 ,

Part of the difference is that the Apple silicon Macs aggressively use SSD swap to make up for limited memory. But that’s at expense of the SSD lifespan, which of course isn’t replaceable.

I’d never recommend a Mac, but the prices they charge to get a little more RAM or SSD over base are crazy. The only configurations offering any “value” are the base models with 8gb RAM.

COASTER1921 ,

This is just going to lead to people using outdated Windows 10 for various reasons. I don’t use Windows much but have it installed. The trackpad gesture customization is basically gone in Windows 11 but was at least serviceable in Windows 10 (to change virtual desktops and volume easily).

COASTER1921 ,

I love when phones place the usb on the top. I have no idea why the bottom is standard, nobody uses docks anymore.

COASTER1921 ,

Although it doesn’t solve the problem long term it buys enough time to not deal with it for another generation. Ethically applying a tax to all but the wealthy doesn’t make sense anyway, so the public backlash for this option should be much lower than all others proposed with this level of impact.

COASTER1921 ,

Employer sponsored 401k plans usually don’t give that much choice in how you allocate the money.

That being said our whole economy is tied to the stock market, in my opinion to the point it’s “too big to fail” (at least catastrophically). Betting against it on the order of decades would be a very bad idea as our whole economy relies on inflation of the dollar.

COASTER1921 ,

Spoofing app version stopped working. Luckily if you simply patched a newer version it still works correctly.

COASTER1921 ,

Maybe it’s just variable location to location but if you haven’t been to one over the last 5 years they have really stepped up their game in my area. The selection certainly isn’t quite as good as the normal supermarkets but the quality well above Walmart for a lot less money.

How often do you change your mobile phone plan?

I feel like every two years I need to call my carrier and complain if I want a decent deal. They will do things like upgrade my plan on their website to have 10 extra gigabytes of data but won’t upgrade me to it until I contact them. There’s also all the new member exclusive deals that I feel make it impractical to just sit...

COASTER1921 ,

Every other year or so, but only because there somehow keep being better deals. Over the last 8 years mint mobile has been consistently good pricing even for returning customers provided you’re willing to pay for the whole year up front. That’s my baseline. From there other small carriers come along offering unlimited for less and you join for a year or two until they go bust. Right now I’m on Spectrum mobile since it’s free with even the cheapest home internet available to my address (for 12 months).

Roku TV bricked until agreeing to new terms of service

See title - very frustrating. There is no way to continue to use the TV without agreeing to the terms. I couldn’t use different inputs, or even go to settings from the home screen and disconnect from the internet to disable their services. If I don’t agree to their terms, then I don’t get access to their new products. That...

COASTER1921 ,

This is referring to the Roku built into many TVs. So you have no choice but to deal with it at least a little bit for switching between your HDMI/PC inputs. The reason this case is so bad is that it literally prevents you from using any input or device until you find the Roku remote that came with the TV and click accept. The TV is a “brick” until you do this.

COASTER1921 ,

The first time I saw this I was shocked. Every single paycheck of mine is there and there’s basically nothing you can do about it without having negative credit impacts for having manually disabled it. Why on earth is this opt-out rather than opt-in? Then it wouldn’t look like you’re trying to hide something if you value your privacy at all.

It’s crazy this is legal. So dystopian.

COASTER1921 ,

They should write it as “you must allow targeted advertising at least once every 5 years before submitting a new opt-out request for the next 5 year period”.

So dumb this is legal, I just sent my email.

COASTER1921 ,

If they hadn’t applied the same charges to legitimate 3rd party applications they could still do this and have avoided the massive community backlash.

Considering their horrible track record with advertising and selling Reddit premium this should be the single best way for them to finally monetize their platform. They didn’t need to destroy what little credibility they had remaining to their users to get to this point, but for whatever reason they did.

COASTER1921 ,

Not only did they have the option, as I understand it the API was even configured as such since all requests from an app shared the same API key. They’re basically whitelisting like this now but only for the accessibility oriented 3rd party apps.

COASTER1921 ,

The chemistry from holding that last 20% of charge for a while is what causes the degradation. The BMS can tell the system to stop charging before it’s full but it can’t do anything itself to prevent the cell from slowly being degraded by full charging.

This is is a problem that occurs on the order of years and that’s why the EV companies care but phones historically don’t. More easily replaceable batteries is the real solution here, not software stopping you from fully charging.

COASTER1921 ,

Yes, but to increase longevity energy density goes down substantially. Manufacturers (and many users including myself) would not make this decision for something as weight and size sensitive as a phone. The lithium ion batteries currently used already last for 2 years after all and are relatively small. A single model S battery contains 7104 individual cells for comparison. Further, lithium battery recycling has made substantial progress over the last year and will already need to be done at scale when higher volumes of EV batteries have reached their end of life. The impact of the of life phone batteries even from the entire world will be dwarfed by that of the 26 million EVs already on the roads today with thousands of cells each (or equivalent if using prismatic cells).

Some cars use LiFePO4 batteries for the superior longevity. But the range is reduced to somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 their lithium ion counterparts. The industry is moving away from this trend in recent years in favor of traditional lithium ion with a software limited charge/discharge range.

COASTER1921 ,

It doesn’t help that the first EVs most manufacturers are focusing on are their large SUVs and trucks. The Chevy Bolt and Tesla Model 3 both certainly aren’t small cars in a general sense, but in the land of EVs they are. Both weigh under 4000 pounds which is less than the best selling vehicle in North America, the F150.

COASTER1921 ,

Lol what state is doing this? That should basically kill EV sales there while simultaneously bringing their gas tax revenue to literally zero. Terrible financial choice.

COASTER1921 ,

The 2024 leaf is 3509lbs according to the Nissan USA website.

COASTER1921 ,

To be fair to Netflix before other networks took streaming seriously they were charging very little to license their content on Netflix. That’s why it had everything and was so good to be better than piracy. The royalties from Netflix couldn’t be enough to fund these networks. Even Netflix themselves as the studio has struggled substantially promoting these price hikes and the effective recreation of cable TV.

As they lose more of the licensed content they’re forced to focus on their own. Unfortunately for the just part they can’t compete with constant new mediocre shows and movies. The streaming industry as a whole has lost sight of what made it popular in the first place.

COASTER1921 ,

And despite being designed to run on potatoes with a 2G connection it somehow felt just as smooth as modern mobile browsers (at least as I remember it). It’s crazy how well it worked considering the hardware and network limitations of the time.

COASTER1921 ,

Exactly this. Lower resolution and added compression. You could click to view full version if needed, but this was a feature as it meant faster loading and a small fraction of the data usage.

COASTER1921 ,

AA is the last United States based airline to even have one. This move is an industry-wide trend now that lie-flat business class seats are standard. Business class has gotten much nicer in the past 10 years and taken away the customers that previously would have flown in first.

I’d rather fly Qatar qsuites or many other si-enclosed business class seats than the first class ones remaining on European airlines like British Airways, Lufthansa, of air France. And doing so is a fraction of the price.

Elon Musk demands another huge payday from Tesla (www.cnn.com)

In a series of posts on X Monday night, Musk said that he would not want to grow Tesla to become a leader in artificial intelligence and robotics without a compensation plan that would give him ownership of around 25% of the company’s stock. That would be about double the roughly 13% stake he currently owns....

COASTER1921 ,

I’d argue we’re at the point where that would be a good business move too. It wouldn’t fix my main issue of but allowing 3rd party repairs so I wouldn’t buy one, but I know several people who have bought other brands due to Elon.

COASTER1921 ,

The Galaxy A5x series is excellent value. It’s not the absolute cheapest but for ~$300 there’s nothing it does wrong. I’ve used a Galaxy A52 (older 4g version) for the last 2 years without any issues. Before that I stuck to Umidigi phones in the ~$120-$150 range which were all great except for the cameras.

Over Christmas I won a Pixel 8 Pro giveaway but except for in the lowest lighting conditions the difference is insignificant to my eye. I actually really miss some of the Samsung software features (namely secure folder and free-form windows).

Having a cheaper phone is also freeing to treat them less gently. I often found myself taking photos I might not otherwise due to the fact all my prior phones were so cheap. I’m not about to hold my Pixel 8 Pro out over a cliff, but for the Umidigi phones and Galaxy A52 that was no problem when traveling.

‘Front page of the internet’: how social media’s biggest user protest rocked Reddit (www.theguardian.com)

‘Front page of the internet’: how social media’s biggest user protest rocked Reddit::A mass user protest six months ago over technical tweaks had big downstream effects, and now the ‘front page of the internet’ is changed for ever

COASTER1921 ,

I personally had no problem with them charging for API access, the rate was my bigger issue. I suspect they were basing it off of the money and hype behind the large language models that were previously training using their data for free rather than the relatively few 3rd party app users. I don’t get how there weren’t more people using them considering how bad the official Android app is, but there’s no way it was substantially impacting their bottom line.

Charging comparable rates or even 2-3x what they would get from users of the official app seeing ads also wouldn’t be an issue to me, paying to support software is generally good as it aligns user and developer interests. But with 20x higher rates than they’d get from the user using the official app that couldn’t genuinely be the case.

COASTER1921 ,

I visit China frequently for work and feel that the impression most older Americans have of China is incredibly out of touch. The traditional media portrayal of the country is definitely a part of this. Yes, it’s certainly an authoritarian state, but this doesn’t change whether the people are nice or what they want in life.

COASTER1921 ,

Although they’re nowhere near marketshare of Apple they definitely haven’t had failure in the Pixels. Every generation I notice more and more people using them rather than the previous niche audience. They’re probably the best all-around Android phones out there for average people, and with the standard pixel 8 being $550 reasonably good value compared to their competition for all but heavy mobile gamers.

COASTER1921 ,

Seriously this is crazy. Apple somehow winning is way worse as there is simply no way to install third party apps on IOS. Android makes the risks clear but it’s still at least possible if you click install anyway.

In terms of being a monopoly, in the US ios has more market share anyway. Google’s lawyers must have really made some big mistake.

COASTER1921 ,

The home bought 15 years ago definitley helps. With higher interest and pricing explosions in growing Metro areas like DFW, I’d expect the housing payment to be well over 3x if you were to buy now. DFW median home price alone is up 2.63x over the last 15yr alone before considering interest rates.

COASTER1921 ,

If EU imessage usage were as widespread as in US it would definitely be subject to regulation. Such a shame.

COASTER1921 ,

Grocery store self checkout machines can be infuriating. The weight sensors are way too tightly monitored and often have the incorrect weight programmed. Every time I go to the main grocery store near me I need help from the employee due to their terrible sensors not detecting the weight of lighter items in the bagging area.

COASTER1921 ,

Any tips for speeding it up? Loading can be painfully slow at times. I was reading that it may be the database (I use MariaDB which in theory shouldn’t limit it with 32gb RAM and an R7 1700x).

COASTER1921 ,

I reverse proxy over tailscale to a VPS because I have double NAT… The connection to the VPS is direct with wireguard at least, no relay node. Adds ~30ms latency. But even when I connect direct locally it’s not substantially faster.

I’ll check my config.php for caching. I don’t recall adding anything for it so if it’s not on by default then that’s a likely reason. Thanks!

COASTER1921 ,

NVME only. I suspect caching just isn’t enabled based on previous comment. If it’s not by default then I didn’t change it.

COASTER1921 ,

And unfortunately there’s plenty of truth to this at least for those inside the vehicles. Driving my tiny hatchback in Texas can be really scary some days, the lifted trucks in particular have TERRIBLE visibility and simply can’t see sedans. Their headlights are often higher than the roof of most sedans. It’s so selfish and makes driving a worse experience for everyone else, propagating them too to get a massive light truck/SUV.

My parents recently sold their sedan for a SUV soley for the added safety and I honestly understand where they’re coming from. If I didn’t trust my reaction times as well as I do I’d want the same thing despite it making the roads less safe for others in the process.

COASTER1921 ,

Ya for the majority it won’t make a difference, but the working class will certainly still feel some crunch through job security or cost of living. From this perspective whether the economy is doing well or not is more a top 50% thing than 1% thing.

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