I'd be kind of worried about the forces that the struts for the outriggers would have to endure. On a canoe the outriggers make a narrow boat wider, but still not that large. On a barge you'd have to have quite a long extension to get much more stability.
I would instead propose using a platform supported by underwater pontoons like deep sea oil rigs. So long as the pontoons are deeper than the troughs of the waves the platform should be rock steady. Makes towing it a lot more fuel inefficient, Though you can increase buoyancy to bring the pontoons to the surface when you need to move it. Just leave it low and stable until the weather improves then float it to haul to shore.
I can't recall the source I read it in but apparently no one is actually 100% immune to whatever virus, vaccinated or not. The population group that we consider immune is just able to handle exposure pretty well. However if an immune person is exposed to a large enough sampling over a long enough time they will likely become infected. Which is just another reason that keeping the vaccination rates high is important so that exposure is limited for everyone and there are fewer opportunities for the virus to adapt or spread to more people that can't be vaccinated.
I know some people that are so strapped for cash that they would probably jump from service to service. But most people I know would rather just let the subscription run than have to go through the hassle of stopping and starting services regularly. Personally I hate messing with that stuff, and every time I have to arrange billing online I'm thinking about what could go wrong and result in my CC information spread far and wide. So I buy stuff from Amazon even when it's not the cheapest. I think the last time I cancelled Netflix it was because we hadn't used it in almost six months. I'm pretty sure I'm still subscribed to a VPN service on an annual basis that I haven't used in a couple years. If Disney manages to keep the price down as well as Netflix has I expect my family will be subscribed for the next decade at the least.
GPS would be completely unaffected. GPS relies on timed radio signals from various satellites in orbit and determines the location of the GPS unit based on the time differences.
Compasses would flip, but all compasses with needles already point both directions and it should be a simple matter to remember that the red end now points south, so take readings using the other end.
As the pole flips it could produce an incredibly weak push of DC current for a single cycle that would have a single period that would be the duration of the time it takes for the pole to actually flip. It should have essentially no impact on any electronics.
I know some states consider opening a car door "operating" and so sleeping it off in the backseat is still considered illegal because you had to at least open the door. Though maybe you could argue someone else opened the door for you.... It is all kind of silly honestly. But the laws are frequently written such that if you're drunk you had best just stay the hell away from any motor vehicles you could possibly start.
Technically in most jurisdictions there are prohibitions on stereos being played too loudly. However those laws only seem to ever be enforced once you're already drawn the anger of a law enforcement officer. Using headphones while driving has been illegal in most jurisdictions probably since the invention of the original Walkman cassette player. Using headphones while driving is not normal or acceptable behavior. If you want to listen to music in your vehicle fix the stereo and use it responsibly.
I expect the difference is that people who are hearing impaired are completely used to living life without having audio input. People who aren't hearing impaired take the ability to hear for granted and don't compensate appropriately when their hearing is artificially impaired.
This could also be likened to the vaccination debate. Society is willing to accept the risk of a relatively small number of people that pose a slightly increased risk on the roads because they can't hear. But when people take deliberate selfish action and engage in similar risk it it draws the ire of everyone else.
Netflix is fighting it because of the the experience of TV movies. Netflix can see that if they want to be able to attract quality acting talent to make their own movies they have to fight to make that material eligible for the awards shows. Of course if the Studios weren't so hell bent on extorting every penny possible out of their licensing agreements for streaming, Netflix likely wouldn't have pursued creating their own content to the point that they are now in direct competition.
The trash in the streets might get picked up by concerned citizens, the city certainly isn't sending round work crews except on the most heavily trafficked roads. Most of the time though it gets washed into the storm drainage system, which eventually flows to a river.
It very much depends on the locality and circumstances. I had a supervisor once that was hired away from a GS spot because they offered him twice the pay. I've known others for whom moving to GS was a significant immediate raise. I work with some technical people that are well payed enough as contractors that they would have to be upper management if they were hired on as a GS.
I don't know about the EU, as I don't live there, but here in the USA I see plenty of Joe Blow pieces of shit littering on a regular basis. The mayor of my city even ran on a campaign a few years back of enforcing litter laws and whatnot. When I tried to call and report littering that I had seen I got laughed off the phone line. Each offense is supposed to be a $500 fine, which you'd think the municipal government would be tripping over themselves to collect, but nope. Around here it definitely isn't an immigrant problem, it's a jackass problem.
You can manage a good bit of that risk by picking and choosing which government agency/department you work in. Even during a shutdown a very large part of the work force continues to work and get paid. I think only about a third of the workforce was not working in he last shutdown.
Speaking of pay it isn't all that great if you live in an expensive part of the country. In places where the cost of living is more normal though the pay can seem pretty generous. The other benefits like 4 hours of sick leave per pay period, which accrues indefinitely can be hard or impossible to match in the private sector. Vacation time is separate from sick leave and you get 4, 6, or 8 hours of it per pay period depending on years of service, with military time counting towards the gates. There is a well managed and inexpensive 401k equivalent that gets matched up to 5%. The health insurance options are pretty good with the government paying around two thirds of the cost.
The retirement plan isn't as good as it used to be before it was overhauled in the 1980's. The new system has employees pay into Social Security, which they used to be exempt from. If you put in at least ten years then at retirement age you can get 1% of your high three salary for each year of service. That goes up to 1.1% per year if you retire a little later.
I would say one disadvantage to the guest, though some might view it as an advantage, is that the experience isn't predictable. My family almost always uses a specific chain of hotels because we've always been happy with the rooms we've rented so far as cleanliness, smell, amenities, furnishings and in particular the feel of the mattresses that they use. It's the same reason chain restaurants are so popular, they provide a consistent experience.
Boo fucking hoo! If a state wants to have a bigger voice perhaps it should work on making its self less irrelevant and earn that voice. I don't mind keeping the senate but it's power should be reduced considerably, it is largely an artifact of a bygone era where people considered themselves citizens of some state before the Nation. Now people usually view themselves as Americans with state affiliation being a relatively minor sub classification. The electoral college should just be abolished as an obvious remnant of trying to appease slave owners.
That said the House should be returned to representing the population by getting back to the one representative for every thirty thousand citizens. Sure we'll end up with more than ten thousand congress critters, and I'm just fine with that. Doing so would make Gerrymandering more difficult for both sides. Lobbyists work would get more expensive since there would be far more votes to be bought. Citizens would have a much better chance of actually being represented by someone who understands their situation and needs. Not enough seating in the historic building? Build a new one with an amphitheater for the open discussions and voting, and then build a large office building full of cube farms for them to work out of as offices. Let each congressional district or state set their own pay rates and put them on the public healthcare system in their home state.
The Supreme Court definitely needs to be stuffed. Neither party should have the opportunity to fundamentally fuckup a whole branch of the Government for decades because someone died or retires unexpectedly. The court should be made up of enough judges that losing one or two unexpectedly should not shift the balance in a significant way. And the political opinions of the judges should be varied enough across the court that it doesn't readily fit into two sides.
The "odd" 2018 results are because many of the seats that were up for election were in areas where trumpites were in the majority. Provided the Democrats manage to avoid committing political suicide in the next year or so I would expect them to have super majorities or close in both houses within the next four years. But then again that seems like a long time for any political party to not have a ridiculous scandal.
Roku devices will let you control the device with a smart phone or tabley app, which can use an on screen keyboard for searching. But even that is a PITA, I agree. I always do my searching for content and list management on a computer, then us the TV just to watch it. What's amazing to me though is that even on the computer Amazon's UI is such a useless piece of crap.
From what I understand it is actually the CCD that is reflecting the IR. If there is an IR filter on the camera then you would probably get a reflection off of that unless it is actually completely absorbing the IR. If the filter is in front of the lens it might not stand out against the background but it would probably still look different to some degree. That said it is very unlikely that you'd find a camera that is being used for voyeurism with an IR filter since that would mean it couldn't be setup for effective use in the dark. Most digital cameras that I have ever seen worked in the infrared to some degree and the CCD is not going to be perfectly black and so reflect IR back through the lenses. You can actually test this with whatever random digital camera you have available, point a typical IR TV remote control at the lens and press some buttons. You should be able to see some flashes of light in the camera picture. The IR reflected through a lens looks distinctly different than a reflection off of pretty much anything else. If you've ever seen an animals eyes reflecting back at you from the dark you'll have an idea of what I'm talking about.
The problem is that the voters mostly vote along party lines and so end up focusing on a few points of policy. Meanwhile lobbyists bribe their legislation through. You can be damned sure Disney is going to get their next copyright extension pushed through while the politicians are squabbling non-stop about whatever hot button topic is in the press. In the rare case that the voters actually do mount a campaign against something the lobbyists are pushing the voters always lose eventually. Sure TTP got killed but we're going to end up with every provision from it implemented in the next decade or two while the voters are focused on something else.
You can look for the shine of the CCD using a camera that can see in the IR spectrum and a bright directional IR light. Pan the camera and IR light around together in any suspect areas. Any bright reflective spots should get close scrutiny, especially if they are pin points on an otherwise non-reflective surface.
The military very clearly makes money, it just doesn't post on their own balance sheet. Private business tells congress critters that they want to over throw the government of that country and put in their own more business friendly ruler. congress critter takes bribe/campaign contribution and sends in the military. Private business profits. There is also of course the entire military industrial complex which needs periodic engagements to use up material resources so that they can replace those resources with newer more expensive ones.
Amazon allows for this with some products. We ordered Nerf guns for the kids for Christmas in what they labeled "hassle free" packaging. They arrived loosely wrapped in cardboard and brown paper inside a regular amazon box. Not a bit of plastic in sight, no zip ties, no plastic bonded to cardboard, and no hassle. I'm hoping that means Amazon gets the Nerf guns straight from the factory with no packaging and boxes them up themselves, rather than getting the regular packaged thing and simply removing it from the packaging before boxing it.
There are different kinds of sand which are suited to specific uses. The kind of sand that people are concerned about running out of is jagged stuff used for concrete. Sand is used in concrete as an aggregate and the rougher it is the more surface area it has to make contact and form bonds. Much of the accessible sand is older and has been worn down such that the grains are smoother and so less suitable for making concrete. For making glass you don't care whether the grains are smooth or jagged, they are going to get melted down anyways.
As I understand the problem with recycling glass though the problem is dyes. The most in demand color of glass is clear. If you want to make recycled clear glass you have to be incredibly selective about your intake of recycled glass material, a single bottle of the wrong color can contaminate an entire batch. But it's not just about picking out a bottle, it's a bottle that is already smashed into little pieces. Even when a customer might want colored glass for their product they want a specific shade of a specific color, good luck figuring that out when starting with a hodge podge of recycled material that is generally sorted as brown, green, and clear with of course the random improperly sorted pile of shards. It winds up just being cheaper to start with sand fresh from a quarry that is a known quantity all around.
In the end the price of glass is a red herring. The critical part is the cost of clean sand and big brands being willing to use glass of mixed colors.
The tank you referenced only holds 2kg of hydrogen, and the other link says that's only the equivalent of 2 gallons of gasoline. How is 2 gallons of gasoline more miles than an 80kWh battery pack? I'll grant you a few tanks would get you more miles than the battery with considerably less weight.
The cost is a bit disconcerting, of producing the hydrogen. The 2nd link does math with an off hours rate. Many areas don't have off variable rating depending on time of day. I know my area doesn't allow for different rates and my rate is more than quadruple what they used. Which makes the hydrogen actually more expensive than gasoline. Gasoline though is likely to get more expensive at a quicker rate than grid electricity.
The amount of electricity required also raises the question of whether or not this would require us as a nation to build a lot more power plants. I know some people are already concerned about this with EVs, it seems like it would be even worse with Hydrogen Fuel Cells given that you'd need about 160kWh to produce the hydrogen the replace the 80kWh battery. That's just to produce the hydrogen, I imagine there is significant amounts of energy needed to compress it to the 700 bars needed for storage.
Thank you for the links, it does seem like fuel cells are a more viable technology than I had thought.
Ignored weeding and pests... All I can think here is that you've never tried growing anything outside of a pot on a windowsill. Hell even the grass on my lawn can't hope to compete with the weeds that end up there spread by the wind. Sure some crops you might be able to get away with that to some extent but it's a math problem at the root of it. To survive you need enough food for your family to eat, food for any working or food animals, plus some to sell and barter to pay taxes and buy stuff you can't make.
There are many factors that influence the yield of any given planting. Soil quality, rainfall, access to irrigation, weather extremes, field preparation, Planting methods, field maintenance, blights, and pests. Some of those factors are completely out of the farmers control like rainfall, hail storms, high wind events, floods, and large enough blight and pest events. So farmers did what they could to influence the other factors in their favor. If you try and get too lazy about any one of those factors it can easily result in requiring far more effort in another area, essentially by requiring more area be farmed.
Expanding the area to be farmed might not be possible at all because of space restrictions. Even where you have room to expand that isn't a low effort task. Other vegetation needs to be removed along with rocks. I can tell you that even as a strapping young man with access to chainsaws, tractors, and several other people clearing land for agriculture was exhausting, time consuming work. Then the soil needs to be broken up so that seeds can more readily take hold, every time before you plant. Then you still have to do the actual planting. You can go out and sow the crops, accepting that much of the seed will be lost to animals or you can more laboriously properly plant each seed.
You could still decide to make a big farm, but the bigger it gets the more you have to work to care for it. You end up with more distance to be traveled to do anything. There is more fencing/walls needed. There is more area to keep an eye on to keep large animals out of. There is good reason that people through the ages have sought better ways to increase their efficiency rather than just pile in with larger fields. Fields have gotten larger of course, but only as we've developed the tools to allow the farmer to keep up with it. You can be damned sure that farmers were out on a daily basis checking to see if their crops needed weeding or any other thing, after all the social safety nets that we have to feed the starving are a relatively new thing. And nobody has ever relished the idea of them and their family starving to death because they couldn't be bothered to go out and weed.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd be kind of worried about the forces that the struts for the outriggers would have to endure. On a canoe the outriggers make a narrow boat wider, but still not that large. On a barge you'd have to have quite a long extension to get much more stability.
I would instead propose using a platform supported by underwater pontoons like deep sea oil rigs. So long as the pontoons are deeper than the troughs of the waves the platform should be rock steady. Makes towing it a lot more fuel inefficient, Though you can increase buoyancy to bring the pontoons to the surface when you need to move it. Just leave it low and stable until the weather improves then float it to haul to shore.
I can't recall the source I read it in but apparently no one is actually 100% immune to whatever virus, vaccinated or not. The population group that we consider immune is just able to handle exposure pretty well. However if an immune person is exposed to a large enough sampling over a long enough time they will likely become infected. Which is just another reason that keeping the vaccination rates high is important so that exposure is limited for everyone and there are fewer opportunities for the virus to adapt or spread to more people that can't be vaccinated.
I know some people that are so strapped for cash that they would probably jump from service to service. But most people I know would rather just let the subscription run than have to go through the hassle of stopping and starting services regularly. Personally I hate messing with that stuff, and every time I have to arrange billing online I'm thinking about what could go wrong and result in my CC information spread far and wide. So I buy stuff from Amazon even when it's not the cheapest. I think the last time I cancelled Netflix it was because we hadn't used it in almost six months. I'm pretty sure I'm still subscribed to a VPN service on an annual basis that I haven't used in a couple years. If Disney manages to keep the price down as well as Netflix has I expect my family will be subscribed for the next decade at the least.
GPS would be completely unaffected. GPS relies on timed radio signals from various satellites in orbit and determines the location of the GPS unit based on the time differences.
Compasses would flip, but all compasses with needles already point both directions and it should be a simple matter to remember that the red end now points south, so take readings using the other end.
As the pole flips it could produce an incredibly weak push of DC current for a single cycle that would have a single period that would be the duration of the time it takes for the pole to actually flip. It should have essentially no impact on any electronics.
I know some states consider opening a car door "operating" and so sleeping it off in the backseat is still considered illegal because you had to at least open the door. Though maybe you could argue someone else opened the door for you.... It is all kind of silly honestly. But the laws are frequently written such that if you're drunk you had best just stay the hell away from any motor vehicles you could possibly start.
Technically in most jurisdictions there are prohibitions on stereos being played too loudly. However those laws only seem to ever be enforced once you're already drawn the anger of a law enforcement officer. Using headphones while driving has been illegal in most jurisdictions probably since the invention of the original Walkman cassette player. Using headphones while driving is not normal or acceptable behavior. If you want to listen to music in your vehicle fix the stereo and use it responsibly.
I expect the difference is that people who are hearing impaired are completely used to living life without having audio input. People who aren't hearing impaired take the ability to hear for granted and don't compensate appropriately when their hearing is artificially impaired.
This could also be likened to the vaccination debate. Society is willing to accept the risk of a relatively small number of people that pose a slightly increased risk on the roads because they can't hear. But when people take deliberate selfish action and engage in similar risk it it draws the ire of everyone else.
Netflix is fighting it because of the the experience of TV movies. Netflix can see that if they want to be able to attract quality acting talent to make their own movies they have to fight to make that material eligible for the awards shows. Of course if the Studios weren't so hell bent on extorting every penny possible out of their licensing agreements for streaming, Netflix likely wouldn't have pursued creating their own content to the point that they are now in direct competition.
The trash in the streets might get picked up by concerned citizens, the city certainly isn't sending round work crews except on the most heavily trafficked roads. Most of the time though it gets washed into the storm drainage system, which eventually flows to a river.
It very much depends on the locality and circumstances. I had a supervisor once that was hired away from a GS spot because they offered him twice the pay. I've known others for whom moving to GS was a significant immediate raise. I work with some technical people that are well payed enough as contractors that they would have to be upper management if they were hired on as a GS.
I don't know about the EU, as I don't live there, but here in the USA I see plenty of Joe Blow pieces of shit littering on a regular basis. The mayor of my city even ran on a campaign a few years back of enforcing litter laws and whatnot. When I tried to call and report littering that I had seen I got laughed off the phone line. Each offense is supposed to be a $500 fine, which you'd think the municipal government would be tripping over themselves to collect, but nope. Around here it definitely isn't an immigrant problem, it's a jackass problem.
You can manage a good bit of that risk by picking and choosing which government agency/department you work in. Even during a shutdown a very large part of the work force continues to work and get paid. I think only about a third of the workforce was not working in he last shutdown.
Speaking of pay it isn't all that great if you live in an expensive part of the country. In places where the cost of living is more normal though the pay can seem pretty generous. The other benefits like 4 hours of sick leave per pay period, which accrues indefinitely can be hard or impossible to match in the private sector. Vacation time is separate from sick leave and you get 4, 6, or 8 hours of it per pay period depending on years of service, with military time counting towards the gates. There is a well managed and inexpensive 401k equivalent that gets matched up to 5%. The health insurance options are pretty good with the government paying around two thirds of the cost.
The retirement plan isn't as good as it used to be before it was overhauled in the 1980's. The new system has employees pay into Social Security, which they used to be exempt from. If you put in at least ten years then at retirement age you can get 1% of your high three salary for each year of service. That goes up to 1.1% per year if you retire a little later.
I would say one disadvantage to the guest, though some might view it as an advantage, is that the experience isn't predictable. My family almost always uses a specific chain of hotels because we've always been happy with the rooms we've rented so far as cleanliness, smell, amenities, furnishings and in particular the feel of the mattresses that they use. It's the same reason chain restaurants are so popular, they provide a consistent experience.
Boo fucking hoo! If a state wants to have a bigger voice perhaps it should work on making its self less irrelevant and earn that voice. I don't mind keeping the senate but it's power should be reduced considerably, it is largely an artifact of a bygone era where people considered themselves citizens of some state before the Nation. Now people usually view themselves as Americans with state affiliation being a relatively minor sub classification. The electoral college should just be abolished as an obvious remnant of trying to appease slave owners.
That said the House should be returned to representing the population by getting back to the one representative for every thirty thousand citizens. Sure we'll end up with more than ten thousand congress critters, and I'm just fine with that. Doing so would make Gerrymandering more difficult for both sides. Lobbyists work would get more expensive since there would be far more votes to be bought. Citizens would have a much better chance of actually being represented by someone who understands their situation and needs. Not enough seating in the historic building? Build a new one with an amphitheater for the open discussions and voting, and then build a large office building full of cube farms for them to work out of as offices. Let each congressional district or state set their own pay rates and put them on the public healthcare system in their home state.
The Supreme Court definitely needs to be stuffed. Neither party should have the opportunity to fundamentally fuckup a whole branch of the Government for decades because someone died or retires unexpectedly. The court should be made up of enough judges that losing one or two unexpectedly should not shift the balance in a significant way. And the political opinions of the judges should be varied enough across the court that it doesn't readily fit into two sides.
The "odd" 2018 results are because many of the seats that were up for election were in areas where trumpites were in the majority. Provided the Democrats manage to avoid committing political suicide in the next year or so I would expect them to have super majorities or close in both houses within the next four years. But then again that seems like a long time for any political party to not have a ridiculous scandal.
Roku devices will let you control the device with a smart phone or tabley app, which can use an on screen keyboard for searching. But even that is a PITA, I agree. I always do my searching for content and list management on a computer, then us the TV just to watch it. What's amazing to me though is that even on the computer Amazon's UI is such a useless piece of crap.
Not that things can't change but currently the CEO of Disney plans for the Vault to go away with the launch of Disney+.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/...
From what I understand it is actually the CCD that is reflecting the IR. If there is an IR filter on the camera then you would probably get a reflection off of that unless it is actually completely absorbing the IR. If the filter is in front of the lens it might not stand out against the background but it would probably still look different to some degree. That said it is very unlikely that you'd find a camera that is being used for voyeurism with an IR filter since that would mean it couldn't be setup for effective use in the dark. Most digital cameras that I have ever seen worked in the infrared to some degree and the CCD is not going to be perfectly black and so reflect IR back through the lenses. You can actually test this with whatever random digital camera you have available, point a typical IR TV remote control at the lens and press some buttons. You should be able to see some flashes of light in the camera picture. The IR reflected through a lens looks distinctly different than a reflection off of pretty much anything else. If you've ever seen an animals eyes reflecting back at you from the dark you'll have an idea of what I'm talking about.
The problem is that the voters mostly vote along party lines and so end up focusing on a few points of policy. Meanwhile lobbyists bribe their legislation through. You can be damned sure Disney is going to get their next copyright extension pushed through while the politicians are squabbling non-stop about whatever hot button topic is in the press. In the rare case that the voters actually do mount a campaign against something the lobbyists are pushing the voters always lose eventually. Sure TTP got killed but we're going to end up with every provision from it implemented in the next decade or two while the voters are focused on something else.
You can look for the shine of the CCD using a camera that can see in the IR spectrum and a bright directional IR light. Pan the camera and IR light around together in any suspect areas. Any bright reflective spots should get close scrutiny, especially if they are pin points on an otherwise non-reflective surface.
The military very clearly makes money, it just doesn't post on their own balance sheet. Private business tells congress critters that they want to over throw the government of that country and put in their own more business friendly ruler. congress critter takes bribe/campaign contribution and sends in the military. Private business profits. There is also of course the entire military industrial complex which needs periodic engagements to use up material resources so that they can replace those resources with newer more expensive ones.
Amazon allows for this with some products. We ordered Nerf guns for the kids for Christmas in what they labeled "hassle free" packaging. They arrived loosely wrapped in cardboard and brown paper inside a regular amazon box. Not a bit of plastic in sight, no zip ties, no plastic bonded to cardboard, and no hassle. I'm hoping that means Amazon gets the Nerf guns straight from the factory with no packaging and boxes them up themselves, rather than getting the regular packaged thing and simply removing it from the packaging before boxing it.
There are different kinds of sand which are suited to specific uses. The kind of sand that people are concerned about running out of is jagged stuff used for concrete. Sand is used in concrete as an aggregate and the rougher it is the more surface area it has to make contact and form bonds. Much of the accessible sand is older and has been worn down such that the grains are smoother and so less suitable for making concrete. For making glass you don't care whether the grains are smooth or jagged, they are going to get melted down anyways.
As I understand the problem with recycling glass though the problem is dyes. The most in demand color of glass is clear. If you want to make recycled clear glass you have to be incredibly selective about your intake of recycled glass material, a single bottle of the wrong color can contaminate an entire batch. But it's not just about picking out a bottle, it's a bottle that is already smashed into little pieces. Even when a customer might want colored glass for their product they want a specific shade of a specific color, good luck figuring that out when starting with a hodge podge of recycled material that is generally sorted as brown, green, and clear with of course the random improperly sorted pile of shards. It winds up just being cheaper to start with sand fresh from a quarry that is a known quantity all around.
In the end the price of glass is a red herring. The critical part is the cost of clean sand and big brands being willing to use glass of mixed colors.
The tank you referenced only holds 2kg of hydrogen, and the other link says that's only the equivalent of 2 gallons of gasoline. How is 2 gallons of gasoline more miles than an 80kWh battery pack? I'll grant you a few tanks would get you more miles than the battery with considerably less weight.
The cost is a bit disconcerting, of producing the hydrogen. The 2nd link does math with an off hours rate. Many areas don't have off variable rating depending on time of day. I know my area doesn't allow for different rates and my rate is more than quadruple what they used. Which makes the hydrogen actually more expensive than gasoline. Gasoline though is likely to get more expensive at a quicker rate than grid electricity.
The amount of electricity required also raises the question of whether or not this would require us as a nation to build a lot more power plants. I know some people are already concerned about this with EVs, it seems like it would be even worse with Hydrogen Fuel Cells given that you'd need about 160kWh to produce the hydrogen the replace the 80kWh battery. That's just to produce the hydrogen, I imagine there is significant amounts of energy needed to compress it to the 700 bars needed for storage.
Thank you for the links, it does seem like fuel cells are a more viable technology than I had thought.
Ignored weeding and pests... All I can think here is that you've never tried growing anything outside of a pot on a windowsill. Hell even the grass on my lawn can't hope to compete with the weeds that end up there spread by the wind. Sure some crops you might be able to get away with that to some extent but it's a math problem at the root of it. To survive you need enough food for your family to eat, food for any working or food animals, plus some to sell and barter to pay taxes and buy stuff you can't make.
There are many factors that influence the yield of any given planting. Soil quality, rainfall, access to irrigation, weather extremes, field preparation, Planting methods, field maintenance, blights, and pests. Some of those factors are completely out of the farmers control like rainfall, hail storms, high wind events, floods, and large enough blight and pest events. So farmers did what they could to influence the other factors in their favor. If you try and get too lazy about any one of those factors it can easily result in requiring far more effort in another area, essentially by requiring more area be farmed.
Expanding the area to be farmed might not be possible at all because of space restrictions. Even where you have room to expand that isn't a low effort task. Other vegetation needs to be removed along with rocks. I can tell you that even as a strapping young man with access to chainsaws, tractors, and several other people clearing land for agriculture was exhausting, time consuming work. Then the soil needs to be broken up so that seeds can more readily take hold, every time before you plant. Then you still have to do the actual planting. You can go out and sow the crops, accepting that much of the seed will be lost to animals or you can more laboriously properly plant each seed.
You could still decide to make a big farm, but the bigger it gets the more you have to work to care for it. You end up with more distance to be traveled to do anything. There is more fencing/walls needed. There is more area to keep an eye on to keep large animals out of. There is good reason that people through the ages have sought better ways to increase their efficiency rather than just pile in with larger fields. Fields have gotten larger of course, but only as we've developed the tools to allow the farmer to keep up with it. You can be damned sure that farmers were out on a daily basis checking to see if their crops needed weeding or any other thing, after all the social safety nets that we have to feed the starving are a relatively new thing. And nobody has ever relished the idea of them and their family starving to death because they couldn't be bothered to go out and weed.