Really? What equipment could I buy in 2009 that would allow me to power my home from a traction battery from any EV available at the time. You claim that it's been worked on for a decade. Bear in mind that the Nissan Leaf wasn't even on the market in 2009, the Chevy Bolt EV was 8 years away, and the Tesla Model S wasn't available until 2012. Hell show me what I could buy off the shelf in 2015 to power my home from the traction battery of my EV.
Obviously they still are research projects. About 1000 cars are involved in Germany.
That means it hasn't been done. I don't give a shit about research projects. Those mean nothing. There are fusion power research projects too if we're talking about technology that is not useful to to anyone today. I know people have been working on the problem but there really wasn't anything commercially available prior to 2017 and still isn't anything widely available to power my home from an EV traction battery despite it being technologically not all that challenging.
No it hasn't been done for a decade in Europe or anywhere else. There have been some baby steps in the last 2-3 years. Nissan and some others have been working on the problem recently but we're just now seeing early versions of the technology roll out. I am not aware of any technology for a Tesla or Bolt EV that would permit direct use of the traction battery to power your home much less the grid. This isn't because it isn't possible but just because they haven't bothered to work on the the problem.
Honestly it seems ridiculous to me that EV makers (Tesla especially) aren't using this as a fantastic way to show how they are better than ICE vehicles. The marketing almost writes itself.
The Li-Ion battery prices are following a 7 year half life curve. We are at the cusp 100 $/kWh at pack level magic number right now. Tesla claims it is at 120$/kWh at pack level and below 100$/kWh in cell level.
Bear in mind that for grid level power, Li-Ion is not the only or even necessarily best type of battery to use. There are cheaper batteries that are bulkier but have good characteristics for grid power. Li-Ion is popular because its power to weight ratio is good but if we don't care about that lots of other battery chemistries become viable. Tesla is using Li-Ion because they are trying to achieve economies of scale with that technology for their vehicle production with a dual use technology so it makes sense for now. But a company that only cared about grid power could probably produce a different and cheaper battery chemistry and get the cost per kWh down further.
The good news is that renewables can be "rich people friendly" too and there is actually progress like this.
That's my usual response to people who are ideologically against renewable energy. I just ask them "are you against making money?" because they almost invariably are conservatives who would sell their own mother for a tax break. They either have to admit they are just arguing against it because of tribalism (they don't like tree huggers) or they have to admit they don't understand the economics involved. It's obvious that there is huge profit to be made in renewable energy technology and that the technology is advancing very rapidly. Arguments that it it only profitable because of subsidies apply to fossil fuels too which get $5 trillion in direct subsidies annually globally and even more if you count the cost of the pollution they are permitted to dump without cost. Anyone interested in energy sector investments for the long run had better have renewables as part of their portfolio because the economics of them make way too much sense. Coal and natural gas really aren't going to benefit from advancing technology substantially. Solar and wind very much will.
You nailed the problems on the head. Using an EV to supply battery back to the grid is like loaning out your car to the general public... You had better be paid princely for the "miles" they put on your vehicle, in this case, the charge-discharge cycles put on the battery.
Sure there is a cost to that but if the price is right then so what? You're certainly right that there is a wear and tear cost to cycling the battery but that's fine if the economics of it work for all parties involved. In a high demand situation (hot day with everyone's AC going) I could see it making more economic sense than to fire up a peaker plant or similar. I don't think it would make sense as an every day go to solution but I could see it being a sometimes solution for some situations once there are enough EVs in service.
Actually I think the more useful thing to worry about doing in the short term is to allow EV cars to act as battery backups to private residences for power outages. I have a Chevy Bolt EV with a gigantic traction battery pack. I'm not really interested in feeding the grid but it is criminal that I cannot use it as a battery backup for my home in the event of a power outage for the 1-2 power outages I experience per year. It's got enough power to keep the lights on and refrigerator going for 1-2 days but I have no means to make that happen. (yes I know you can do some 12V hacks to get a bit of power out but it's not worth the trouble)
Most vehicles are not wired to allow this at residential level - the J1772 standard doesn't allow the vehicle to pump inverted AC power out, although that would be a neat trick (and probably feasible in future cars).
From a technical standpoint, feeding power out would be an almost trivial endeavor even today. I'm honestly kind of irritated nobody is seriously trying to do it already from EVs. The hardware requirements could probably be figured out in about a weekend and then you just need some sort of transfer switch for private use. Hooking into the grid would add some complication but it's not crazy hard to do. But for powering your home without a grid tie is something that should already be possible for those who are interested.
I don't know how much time you've spent offshore, but sea spray is highly corrosive and requires constant maintenance to keep things made of metal and carbon fiber and fiberglass from literally falling apart in a matter of a few years.
Got any more off topic strawmen you'd like to eviscerate? Yes they require maintenance. So what? You think coal or gas plants require no maintenance? Those boilers don't magically run without some serious upkeep. Maintenance is a cost for every form of power generation. Nuclear plants have huge maintenance costs. At the end of the day the maintenance is just one factor among many in determining the economic viability. Increased maintenance is (often more than) offset buy not having to buy any fuel stocks.
Renewable capacity is not really comparable to fossil fuel power station capacity because the coal / gas ones can run 24/7...
I don't know if you've ever been offshore in the North Sea but the wind blows there about as close to 24/7 as you are likely to find. Same thing with most hydro power - dams are quite predictable and steady at large scale. Geothermal is super steady. You really are just talking about solar and to a lesser extent on-shore wind. Sure solar is variable and wind to a lesser extent but with built in battery buffers and enough capacity that can be mitigated. And that variability can be an asset in the right circumstances. Solar power is a fantastic fit for use cases like refrigeration and AC which tend to draw the most power exactly when the sun is shining the brightest. Plus once you get enough renewables installed to the grid they statistically balance out and proved effectively a baseload. The wind is pretty much always blowing somewhere and you can route the power from there to where it is needed.
It's more than possible to power most needs of a typical house with a solar roof and a large battery pack. Coal and gas have their utility and are going to be with us for a while but the whole baseload argument really is not supported by the facts unless you (wrongly) assume we aren't going to make any changes to the grid. Plus if you need a constant carbon free power source nuclear is more than capable. I wouldn't call it clean per-se and it certainly isn't renewable, but it's arguably less dangerous than fossil fuels on grid scale.
Sounds like you had a decent deal going. Maybe it was a little too good?
This was a good I dea for who exactly?
Me for one. I got better coverage for similar money once the ACA was passed. Our company was able to save a decent amount of cash too. Most of the other employees at my work previously covered by our (rapidly becoming expensive) company health insurance got similar or better coverage for similar or less money. A few ended up paying more - mostly older folks who smoked.
While I know of plenty of people getting raises after the recent Tax Cuts and Jobs Acts helped boost the economy,
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc? Just because something follows doesn't mean it was caused by what it follows. You might know people getting raises because the economy is doing rather well for the last several years (no Trump did not cause that, nor did Obama) but I defy you to prove that anyone you know got raises because of the recent tax cuts.
I have never heard of a single person getting a raise from their employer because of all the money Obamacare saved them.
Why would someone get a raise because of a cheaper health care plan? Employers will pocket the difference if there is any. When the ACA passed the economy was in the shitter thanks to the real estate market imploding and NOBODY was getting raises. A few years later the economy is getting better and people start getting raises. In neither case does it have anything to do with a law passed by congress.
It wasn't that computers are less efficient than old school / antiquated methods. It was a matter of incompetence. Before the transition all people involved should have been properly trained.
Having dealt with software system roll outs in health care, I think you are right in some cases but in others you are blaming the victim so to speak. My wife is an MD and her practice has a EMR system they purchased a few years ago. It's probably best in class for their type of practice but that doesn't mean it is perfect. My wife has spend literally entire days on the phone and in meetings trying to get fairly basic aspects of the system fixed. Simple stuff that even a lay person would look at and know that the software was badly buggy. That's time she doesn't get paid for to fix software that was rolled out before it was ready.
Let me be clear, the problems were NOT training - they were problems of very poorly done and buggy software development. To give one example, at one point if a physician assistant entered incorrect data early in the patient visit there was no mechanism whatsoever for my wife to correct that incorrect data later on. This isn't some rare corner case that doesn't happen much - this is something every practice will deal with multiple times daily. This is the sort of thing that can cause patients to get hurt if not corrected and it took them months to fix the problem.
Then there are problems of sharing data. The software at my wife's practice literally cannot talk directly to all but one of the local hospitals. Why? Because there is no economic or regulatory incentive for the software company to do so. They want medical practices and hospitals to use their software and nobody elses. So when my wife's practice has to send a patient record to an outside practice or hospital (happens daily) they have to use a fucking FAX or send paper records. Absolutely insane but that's the world we live in.
Doctor is trying hard to build a nest egg to retire as a bazillionaire but software and accountability stops him from exploiting patients and staff.
I'm sure that makes sense in your cynical brain but like many simple theories it is wrong.
First thing to remember is that many of the processes used by health care providers were paper based systems that were developed without much if any information about best practices used elsewhere. Out of necessity we had a bunch of doctors and hospitals coming up with systems and procedures and documentation that maybe made sense for their practice but often did not match or even resemble procedures used by other hospitals or practices.
The problems being experienced with making software to manage health care systems are many. But the key problems seems to be that A) health care data is REALLY REALLY complicated and hard to standardize, B) processes for managing the data historically varied from practice to practice and doctor to doctor - not for any malicious reason but because there was no mechanism to force standardization, C) big bespoke software systems are really hard to do smoothly, D) there are shockingly few regulations about how to do it nor much data about best practices for how to gather and store data electronically, E) for competitive reasons the companies making the software to manage these health care systems are reluctant to open up their systems to cooperate with other software systems even when doing so might be helpful to patients and doctors.
When I say health care data is hard to standardize I'm not kidding. I'd worked in the field doing process engineering and even seemingly simple tasks have ridiculous numbers of steps and dump off all kinds of data, some of which is difficult to put in a nice tidy database record. My wife's practice went to an EMR fairly recently and even though the one they use is probably best in class for what they do, it still has all sorts of problems that occasionally bite them. The software engineers are mostly doing their level best (not always but mostly) I think but they aren't experts in the day to day practice and administration of medicine and the resulting products often show this.
Most people have never even heard of the Fairphone, and just buy from major brands.
And it seems unlikely they ever will. I like the spirit of the thing. I just think economic reality is going to bludgeon it to death in its crib. (though I'd be pleased to be wrong about that) The problem is that designing a product that is modular and easy to repair costs extra and most people don't seem to care much about that these days.
The Fairphone is far from perfect, mind you, but the modular approach seems like a good idea.
Modular can be a very good thing and I think their approach is a reasonable one. But modular comes in many flavors and the on the Fairphone has taken is just one of them. I think it's unrealistic to expect Apple and Samsung to follow their lead but there are reasonable if lesser forms of modularity that they might be willing to entertain. I'm suggesting one of them which would require fairly modest changes to their devices that maybe they might consider. (doubtful but not impossible)
It works perfectly fine with my Fairphone. I think it's a good idea.
judging by sales you are in a vanishingly small minority. Please note I'm not being critical of your choice of device, just observing the reality that most people demonstrably have approximately zero interest in repairing their own device or digging around in the guts of them or dealing with the tradeoffs involved. It's cheaper and easier for most of them to take their phone to a store and get a warranty replacement or whatever accessories they need.
Now as for your comment about case modularity. Well it's a nice thought and the argument makes sense down to the point where it defeats the overall objective. Here things have scaled down to the point where the case is taking up a significant portion of the volume. Having two cases is nuts when you could have a bigger battery in the same volume.
There are several problems with your argument. Here are just a few: 1) None of the smartphone makers are going to change from the current case paradigm for a variety of reasons. 2) There is utility in a second casing since the device remains useful without the outer case. This allows multiple cases for different purposes. 3) Obviously people are fine with adding secondary cases. 4) User applied cases are going to have substantial problems with water and dust proofing. (they definitely won't be waterproof) 5) Phone manufacturers would incur substantially increased warranty costs from users mucking around with the internals.
In principle you are correct that having a second case is wasteful of the space budget but there are important practical reasons why this does not matter so much.
One could imagine having a replaceable cover on a phone without a structural inner case.
You could imagine it but it wouldn't be a very good idea in day to day use for most people.
He wrote solar noon. It's the exact and only definition of that.
Solar noon has ZERO relationship to the number 12 on our clocks. We can define noon to correspond to whatever number on our clock we want it to be. For part of the year we move it to be a different number than 12 because it's practical to do so.
It's not tradition for the sake of tradition, it's a clumsy attempt to get our mechanical clocks to align more closely with our biological clocks.
At this point in time it very much is tradition for the sake of tradition. Since most people's daily activities have shifted towards later in the day it makes sense to change our time keeping to match that with the greatest utility.
Without any clocks, people naturally synchronize their activity to the sun, waking earlier in the summer and sleeping earlier (and longer) in the winter.
So what? We have clocks and are always going to have clocks so how about we set the time of day to have the most utility for the lives we actually lead?
It's noon when the sun crosses the local meridian. Solar noon is the only thing that matters or makes any sense for time keeping.
That is an arbitrary definition of noon. You could just as validly define 1pm or 3pm to be the time when the sun is at the highest point in the sky. Saying it has to be exactly at noon is just pointless tradition. The definition of the fundamental unit of time (the second) has zero relationship to the location of the sun in the sky. 1 second is defined to be exactly 9,192,631,770 cycles of a caesium atomic clock.
Strictly speaking, our current work hours are tradition for the sake of useless tradition.
Quite true but getting that to change will be nigh impossible in any sort of organized fashion. Much easier to just change the clock for everyone. Defining noon as the time of day when the sun is highest overhead is an equally arbitrary and useless tradition but FAR easier to change.
It is funny that you call out Apple when they trend for iPhones has been towards increasing thickness for the past four years. The iPhone X is thicker than the iPhone 5.
The difference is 7.7 vs 7.6mm. That is hardly what I'd call a meaningful difference. Actually I just took a pair of calipers to my X and it was 7.62mm. And let's not pretend that Apple doesn't keep bragging about how thin their devices are every time they announce one. They are thinner than is functionally necessary.
There already are cases that use wireless charging instead of a pass-though connector
That's fine but it is both A) inefficient and B) doesn't transmit data. I can't put an SD card or other equipment onto a case and make use of it unless the case has a clumsy and bulky USB pass through.
iPhone battery capacity has been trending up for for the past nine years.
The battery pack capacity has modestly trended up but has been offset by more power hungry devices. Functionally I have effectively the same amount of battery run time as I had 8 years ago - i.e. about a day.
Basically, the things you want already exist.
What I am suggesting most certainly does NOT exist. There are crude and clumsy approximations of what I am proposing and nothing really properly supported by the OEM smartphone makers. What I want is a set of low profile contacts on the back of the case that provide an interface for high speed data and power transmission from a case to a smartphone. That does not exist on any smartphone currently on the market today that I am aware of. Preferably the interface would be standard between devices but that's probably never going to happen.
Why do we even need a separate case? All those super thin phones are pointless if you need to put them into a bulky case to protect them.
The modularity of the cases has actual utility. It's cheap to replace a damaged or worn case. Plus it provides an opportunity for people to personalize their device both aesthetically and functionally. The problem is that Apple and others have ignored the function component of cases. It's a huge missed opportunity.
And some people like the thin phones and some don't bother with a case. So by making cases as functional as possible you increase utility to the largest quantity of smartphone users with the fewest trade-offs. Speaking for myself I'd like a case with a bigger battery and better camera optics. Other people would probably like a 3.5mm audio jack or a SD card slot. By making a way for the case to provide this functionality people can get the device they want and Apple/Samsung/etc can focus on making the core device as tight as they like.
It seems screamingly obvious to me that most people would prefer a little extra daylight after work. That has the most utility to the most people. Make DST year round and be done with it. There is no reason that noon has to be the time of day when the sun is highest overhead. That's just tradition for the sake of useless tradition.
All that has to happen is that smartphone makers (Apple I'm looking at you) need to stop the obsession with making every device thinner than the last one and add a bigger battery pack or make a decent interface for a battery case that doesn't involve a clumsy and bulky pass through of the USB port.
There are a lot of us (myself included) who wouldn't mind a modestly thicker device in exchange for a bigger battery, better camera, etc. I'm going to put a case on anyway so why not facilitate putting some real utility into the case while we are at it? In an elegant way rather than the clumsy hacks we've seen to date. It would be trivial to allow people to add the audio jacks to the case for those who want one while permitting those who don't care to add something else. As big as the market is currently for smartphone accessories I think it could be a LOT bigger than it currently is if Apple and others would get their head out of their designers asses and look at how people actually use these things.
A tablet is a pretty useful media-consumption device.
Sure but to think of them as just a media consumption device is a gross under utilization of what they can do. Tablet's should be the go-to device for replacing tasks that currently are done with a pad of paper and a pen. Simple example: it's nigh impossible to take notes in a math class with a keyboard and mouse. A keyboard+mouse is a terrible interface for that application. A stylus and touch screen is vastly preferable and a tablet with some good note taking software should be the ideal tool for students taking notes in classes or for business people in meetings. As an engineer I'm constantly annotating prints of products we manufacture and a tablet would be great for this task. We use them for providing work instructions to our production staff in a portable format which works great.
The problem is that Apple and other companies have been lazy about the software to take full advantage of what a tablet could possibly do. They instead write some software for smartphones with the limitations of smartphones and then call it a day. Or they slap on a shitty keyboard and declare it to be a laptop without really spending any time or effort making the software work well with a touch interface or stylus.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes it has. I worked on such projects.
Really? What equipment could I buy in 2009 that would allow me to power my home from a traction battery from any EV available at the time. You claim that it's been worked on for a decade. Bear in mind that the Nissan Leaf wasn't even on the market in 2009, the Chevy Bolt EV was 8 years away, and the Tesla Model S wasn't available until 2012. Hell show me what I could buy off the shelf in 2015 to power my home from the traction battery of my EV.
Obviously they still are research projects. About 1000 cars are involved in Germany.
That means it hasn't been done. I don't give a shit about research projects. Those mean nothing. There are fusion power research projects too if we're talking about technology that is not useful to to anyone today. I know people have been working on the problem but there really wasn't anything commercially available prior to 2017 and still isn't anything widely available to power my home from an EV traction battery despite it being technologically not all that challenging.
It is done in Europe since a decade.
No it hasn't been done for a decade in Europe or anywhere else. There have been some baby steps in the last 2-3 years. Nissan and some others have been working on the problem recently but we're just now seeing early versions of the technology roll out. I am not aware of any technology for a Tesla or Bolt EV that would permit direct use of the traction battery to power your home much less the grid. This isn't because it isn't possible but just because they haven't bothered to work on the the problem.
Honestly it seems ridiculous to me that EV makers (Tesla especially) aren't using this as a fantastic way to show how they are better than ICE vehicles. The marketing almost writes itself.
GBP1bn will therefore take 1,000,000,000 / 65.36 =
15,299,877 hours to pay back, at full generative capacity.
15,299,877 hours = 637,495 days = 1,746 years.
You forgot to divide the megawatts out to get to units of just hours.
GBP 1B / 65.36 GBPperMWh / 659 MW = 23,216 hours or around 2.65 years payback.
The Li-Ion battery prices are following a 7 year half life curve. We are at the cusp 100 $/kWh at pack level magic number right now. Tesla claims it is at 120$/kWh at pack level and below 100$/kWh in cell level.
Bear in mind that for grid level power, Li-Ion is not the only or even necessarily best type of battery to use. There are cheaper batteries that are bulkier but have good characteristics for grid power. Li-Ion is popular because its power to weight ratio is good but if we don't care about that lots of other battery chemistries become viable. Tesla is using Li-Ion because they are trying to achieve economies of scale with that technology for their vehicle production with a dual use technology so it makes sense for now. But a company that only cared about grid power could probably produce a different and cheaper battery chemistry and get the cost per kWh down further.
The good news is that renewables can be "rich people friendly" too and there is actually progress like this.
That's my usual response to people who are ideologically against renewable energy. I just ask them "are you against making money?" because they almost invariably are conservatives who would sell their own mother for a tax break. They either have to admit they are just arguing against it because of tribalism (they don't like tree huggers) or they have to admit they don't understand the economics involved. It's obvious that there is huge profit to be made in renewable energy technology and that the technology is advancing very rapidly. Arguments that it it only profitable because of subsidies apply to fossil fuels too which get $5 trillion in direct subsidies annually globally and even more if you count the cost of the pollution they are permitted to dump without cost. Anyone interested in energy sector investments for the long run had better have renewables as part of their portfolio because the economics of them make way too much sense. Coal and natural gas really aren't going to benefit from advancing technology substantially. Solar and wind very much will.
You nailed the problems on the head. Using an EV to supply battery back to the grid is like loaning out your car to the general public... You had better be paid princely for the "miles" they put on your vehicle, in this case, the charge-discharge cycles put on the battery.
Sure there is a cost to that but if the price is right then so what? You're certainly right that there is a wear and tear cost to cycling the battery but that's fine if the economics of it work for all parties involved. In a high demand situation (hot day with everyone's AC going) I could see it making more economic sense than to fire up a peaker plant or similar. I don't think it would make sense as an every day go to solution but I could see it being a sometimes solution for some situations once there are enough EVs in service.
Actually I think the more useful thing to worry about doing in the short term is to allow EV cars to act as battery backups to private residences for power outages. I have a Chevy Bolt EV with a gigantic traction battery pack. I'm not really interested in feeding the grid but it is criminal that I cannot use it as a battery backup for my home in the event of a power outage for the 1-2 power outages I experience per year. It's got enough power to keep the lights on and refrigerator going for 1-2 days but I have no means to make that happen. (yes I know you can do some 12V hacks to get a bit of power out but it's not worth the trouble)
Most vehicles are not wired to allow this at residential level - the J1772 standard doesn't allow the vehicle to pump inverted AC power out, although that would be a neat trick (and probably feasible in future cars).
From a technical standpoint, feeding power out would be an almost trivial endeavor even today. I'm honestly kind of irritated nobody is seriously trying to do it already from EVs. The hardware requirements could probably be figured out in about a weekend and then you just need some sort of transfer switch for private use. Hooking into the grid would add some complication but it's not crazy hard to do. But for powering your home without a grid tie is something that should already be possible for those who are interested.
I don't know how much time you've spent offshore, but sea spray is highly corrosive and requires constant maintenance to keep things made of metal and carbon fiber and fiberglass from literally falling apart in a matter of a few years.
Got any more off topic strawmen you'd like to eviscerate? Yes they require maintenance. So what? You think coal or gas plants require no maintenance? Those boilers don't magically run without some serious upkeep. Maintenance is a cost for every form of power generation. Nuclear plants have huge maintenance costs. At the end of the day the maintenance is just one factor among many in determining the economic viability. Increased maintenance is (often more than) offset buy not having to buy any fuel stocks.
Renewable capacity is not really comparable to fossil fuel power station capacity because the coal / gas ones can run 24/7...
I don't know if you've ever been offshore in the North Sea but the wind blows there about as close to 24/7 as you are likely to find. Same thing with most hydro power - dams are quite predictable and steady at large scale. Geothermal is super steady. You really are just talking about solar and to a lesser extent on-shore wind. Sure solar is variable and wind to a lesser extent but with built in battery buffers and enough capacity that can be mitigated. And that variability can be an asset in the right circumstances. Solar power is a fantastic fit for use cases like refrigeration and AC which tend to draw the most power exactly when the sun is shining the brightest. Plus once you get enough renewables installed to the grid they statistically balance out and proved effectively a baseload. The wind is pretty much always blowing somewhere and you can route the power from there to where it is needed.
It's more than possible to power most needs of a typical house with a solar roof and a large battery pack. Coal and gas have their utility and are going to be with us for a while but the whole baseload argument really is not supported by the facts unless you (wrongly) assume we aren't going to make any changes to the grid. Plus if you need a constant carbon free power source nuclear is more than capable. I wouldn't call it clean per-se and it certainly isn't renewable, but it's arguably less dangerous than fossil fuels on grid scale.
I had better care and WAY less expenses.
Sounds like you had a decent deal going. Maybe it was a little too good?
This was a good I dea for who exactly?
Me for one. I got better coverage for similar money once the ACA was passed. Our company was able to save a decent amount of cash too. Most of the other employees at my work previously covered by our (rapidly becoming expensive) company health insurance got similar or better coverage for similar or less money. A few ended up paying more - mostly older folks who smoked.
While I know of plenty of people getting raises after the recent Tax Cuts and Jobs Acts helped boost the economy,
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc? Just because something follows doesn't mean it was caused by what it follows. You might know people getting raises because the economy is doing rather well for the last several years (no Trump did not cause that, nor did Obama) but I defy you to prove that anyone you know got raises because of the recent tax cuts.
I have never heard of a single person getting a raise from their employer because of all the money Obamacare saved them.
Why would someone get a raise because of a cheaper health care plan? Employers will pocket the difference if there is any. When the ACA passed the economy was in the shitter thanks to the real estate market imploding and NOBODY was getting raises. A few years later the economy is getting better and people start getting raises. In neither case does it have anything to do with a law passed by congress.
It wasn't that computers are less efficient than old school / antiquated methods. It was a matter of incompetence. Before the transition all people involved should have been properly trained.
Having dealt with software system roll outs in health care, I think you are right in some cases but in others you are blaming the victim so to speak. My wife is an MD and her practice has a EMR system they purchased a few years ago. It's probably best in class for their type of practice but that doesn't mean it is perfect. My wife has spend literally entire days on the phone and in meetings trying to get fairly basic aspects of the system fixed. Simple stuff that even a lay person would look at and know that the software was badly buggy. That's time she doesn't get paid for to fix software that was rolled out before it was ready.
Let me be clear, the problems were NOT training - they were problems of very poorly done and buggy software development. To give one example, at one point if a physician assistant entered incorrect data early in the patient visit there was no mechanism whatsoever for my wife to correct that incorrect data later on. This isn't some rare corner case that doesn't happen much - this is something every practice will deal with multiple times daily. This is the sort of thing that can cause patients to get hurt if not corrected and it took them months to fix the problem.
Then there are problems of sharing data. The software at my wife's practice literally cannot talk directly to all but one of the local hospitals. Why? Because there is no economic or regulatory incentive for the software company to do so. They want medical practices and hospitals to use their software and nobody elses. So when my wife's practice has to send a patient record to an outside practice or hospital (happens daily) they have to use a fucking FAX or send paper records. Absolutely insane but that's the world we live in.
Doctor is trying hard to build a nest egg to retire as a bazillionaire but software and accountability stops him from exploiting patients and staff.
I'm sure that makes sense in your cynical brain but like many simple theories it is wrong.
First thing to remember is that many of the processes used by health care providers were paper based systems that were developed without much if any information about best practices used elsewhere. Out of necessity we had a bunch of doctors and hospitals coming up with systems and procedures and documentation that maybe made sense for their practice but often did not match or even resemble procedures used by other hospitals or practices.
The problems being experienced with making software to manage health care systems are many. But the key problems seems to be that A) health care data is REALLY REALLY complicated and hard to standardize, B) processes for managing the data historically varied from practice to practice and doctor to doctor - not for any malicious reason but because there was no mechanism to force standardization, C) big bespoke software systems are really hard to do smoothly, D) there are shockingly few regulations about how to do it nor much data about best practices for how to gather and store data electronically, E) for competitive reasons the companies making the software to manage these health care systems are reluctant to open up their systems to cooperate with other software systems even when doing so might be helpful to patients and doctors.
When I say health care data is hard to standardize I'm not kidding. I'd worked in the field doing process engineering and even seemingly simple tasks have ridiculous numbers of steps and dump off all kinds of data, some of which is difficult to put in a nice tidy database record. My wife's practice went to an EMR fairly recently and even though the one they use is probably best in class for what they do, it still has all sorts of problems that occasionally bite them. The software engineers are mostly doing their level best (not always but mostly) I think but they aren't experts in the day to day practice and administration of medicine and the resulting products often show this.
Most people have never even heard of the Fairphone, and just buy from major brands.
And it seems unlikely they ever will. I like the spirit of the thing. I just think economic reality is going to bludgeon it to death in its crib. (though I'd be pleased to be wrong about that) The problem is that designing a product that is modular and easy to repair costs extra and most people don't seem to care much about that these days.
The Fairphone is far from perfect, mind you, but the modular approach seems like a good idea.
Modular can be a very good thing and I think their approach is a reasonable one. But modular comes in many flavors and the on the Fairphone has taken is just one of them. I think it's unrealistic to expect Apple and Samsung to follow their lead but there are reasonable if lesser forms of modularity that they might be willing to entertain. I'm suggesting one of them which would require fairly modest changes to their devices that maybe they might consider. (doubtful but not impossible)
It works perfectly fine with my Fairphone. I think it's a good idea.
judging by sales you are in a vanishingly small minority. Please note I'm not being critical of your choice of device, just observing the reality that most people demonstrably have approximately zero interest in repairing their own device or digging around in the guts of them or dealing with the tradeoffs involved. It's cheaper and easier for most of them to take their phone to a store and get a warranty replacement or whatever accessories they need.
Now as for your comment about case modularity. Well it's a nice thought and the argument makes sense down to the point where it defeats the overall objective. Here things have scaled down to the point where the case is taking up a significant portion of the volume. Having two cases is nuts when you could have a bigger battery in the same volume.
There are several problems with your argument. Here are just a few: 1) None of the smartphone makers are going to change from the current case paradigm for a variety of reasons. 2) There is utility in a second casing since the device remains useful without the outer case. This allows multiple cases for different purposes. 3) Obviously people are fine with adding secondary cases. 4) User applied cases are going to have substantial problems with water and dust proofing. (they definitely won't be waterproof) 5) Phone manufacturers would incur substantially increased warranty costs from users mucking around with the internals.
In principle you are correct that having a second case is wasteful of the space budget but there are important practical reasons why this does not matter so much.
One could imagine having a replaceable cover on a phone without a structural inner case.
You could imagine it but it wouldn't be a very good idea in day to day use for most people.
He wrote solar noon. It's the exact and only definition of that.
Solar noon has ZERO relationship to the number 12 on our clocks. We can define noon to correspond to whatever number on our clock we want it to be. For part of the year we move it to be a different number than 12 because it's practical to do so.
It's not tradition for the sake of tradition, it's a clumsy attempt to get our mechanical clocks to align more closely with our biological clocks.
At this point in time it very much is tradition for the sake of tradition. Since most people's daily activities have shifted towards later in the day it makes sense to change our time keeping to match that with the greatest utility.
Without any clocks, people naturally synchronize their activity to the sun, waking earlier in the summer and sleeping earlier (and longer) in the winter.
So what? We have clocks and are always going to have clocks so how about we set the time of day to have the most utility for the lives we actually lead?
It's noon when the sun crosses the local meridian. Solar noon is the only thing that matters or makes any sense for time keeping.
That is an arbitrary definition of noon. You could just as validly define 1pm or 3pm to be the time when the sun is at the highest point in the sky. Saying it has to be exactly at noon is just pointless tradition. The definition of the fundamental unit of time (the second) has zero relationship to the location of the sun in the sky. 1 second is defined to be exactly 9,192,631,770 cycles of a caesium atomic clock.
Strictly speaking, our current work hours are tradition for the sake of useless tradition.
Quite true but getting that to change will be nigh impossible in any sort of organized fashion. Much easier to just change the clock for everyone. Defining noon as the time of day when the sun is highest overhead is an equally arbitrary and useless tradition but FAR easier to change.
Why change the clock? Why not just change business hours if it's going to be year round?
Which do you think is easier? Mandating a clock change for everyone or convincing every business to simultaneously change their operating hours?
I suggest the former is the only practical solution.
It is funny that you call out Apple when they trend for iPhones has been towards increasing thickness for the past four years. The iPhone X is thicker than the iPhone 5.
The difference is 7.7 vs 7.6mm. That is hardly what I'd call a meaningful difference. Actually I just took a pair of calipers to my X and it was 7.62mm. And let's not pretend that Apple doesn't keep bragging about how thin their devices are every time they announce one. They are thinner than is functionally necessary.
There already are cases that use wireless charging instead of a pass-though connector
That's fine but it is both A) inefficient and B) doesn't transmit data. I can't put an SD card or other equipment onto a case and make use of it unless the case has a clumsy and bulky USB pass through.
iPhone battery capacity has been trending up for for the past nine years.
The battery pack capacity has modestly trended up but has been offset by more power hungry devices. Functionally I have effectively the same amount of battery run time as I had 8 years ago - i.e. about a day.
Basically, the things you want already exist.
What I am suggesting most certainly does NOT exist. There are crude and clumsy approximations of what I am proposing and nothing really properly supported by the OEM smartphone makers. What I want is a set of low profile contacts on the back of the case that provide an interface for high speed data and power transmission from a case to a smartphone. That does not exist on any smartphone currently on the market today that I am aware of. Preferably the interface would be standard between devices but that's probably never going to happen.
Why do we even need a separate case? All those super thin phones are pointless if you need to put them into a bulky case to protect them.
The modularity of the cases has actual utility. It's cheap to replace a damaged or worn case. Plus it provides an opportunity for people to personalize their device both aesthetically and functionally. The problem is that Apple and others have ignored the function component of cases. It's a huge missed opportunity.
And some people like the thin phones and some don't bother with a case. So by making cases as functional as possible you increase utility to the largest quantity of smartphone users with the fewest trade-offs. Speaking for myself I'd like a case with a bigger battery and better camera optics. Other people would probably like a 3.5mm audio jack or a SD card slot. By making a way for the case to provide this functionality people can get the device they want and Apple/Samsung/etc can focus on making the core device as tight as they like.
It seems screamingly obvious to me that most people would prefer a little extra daylight after work. That has the most utility to the most people. Make DST year round and be done with it. There is no reason that noon has to be the time of day when the sun is highest overhead. That's just tradition for the sake of useless tradition.
All that has to happen is that smartphone makers (Apple I'm looking at you) need to stop the obsession with making every device thinner than the last one and add a bigger battery pack or make a decent interface for a battery case that doesn't involve a clumsy and bulky pass through of the USB port.
There are a lot of us (myself included) who wouldn't mind a modestly thicker device in exchange for a bigger battery, better camera, etc. I'm going to put a case on anyway so why not facilitate putting some real utility into the case while we are at it? In an elegant way rather than the clumsy hacks we've seen to date. It would be trivial to allow people to add the audio jacks to the case for those who want one while permitting those who don't care to add something else. As big as the market is currently for smartphone accessories I think it could be a LOT bigger than it currently is if Apple and others would get their head out of their designers asses and look at how people actually use these things.
A tablet is a pretty useful media-consumption device.
Sure but to think of them as just a media consumption device is a gross under utilization of what they can do. Tablet's should be the go-to device for replacing tasks that currently are done with a pad of paper and a pen. Simple example: it's nigh impossible to take notes in a math class with a keyboard and mouse. A keyboard+mouse is a terrible interface for that application. A stylus and touch screen is vastly preferable and a tablet with some good note taking software should be the ideal tool for students taking notes in classes or for business people in meetings. As an engineer I'm constantly annotating prints of products we manufacture and a tablet would be great for this task. We use them for providing work instructions to our production staff in a portable format which works great.
The problem is that Apple and other companies have been lazy about the software to take full advantage of what a tablet could possibly do. They instead write some software for smartphones with the limitations of smartphones and then call it a day. Or they slap on a shitty keyboard and declare it to be a laptop without really spending any time or effort making the software work well with a touch interface or stylus.