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User: Firethorn

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  1. Re:Just cut the cord myself on Cable Industry Finally Fights Cord Cutting With Fewer Ads (dslreports.com) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I live in a fairly rural area and have about 4 non-religious stations within reach. Consider that OTA stations are all advertising supported as well.

    I'd argue that it's just the opposite: I have so little free time that $8/month for a Netflix plan is well worth it.

    https://www.statista.com/stati...

    They say 693 seconds of advertising per hour, average, for broadcast TV. 11 minutes and 33 seconds of ads.
    That is 5 hours, 46 minutes, 30 seconds per month, assuming that you average 1 hour/day.

    Using Netflix as a plan to avoid that? $1.38/hour to avoid advertising. That's less than minimum wage. Worth it.

  2. Re: Wait wait wait CHINA?! on US Doctors Plan To Treat Cancer Patients Using CRISPR (technologyreview.com) · · Score: 1

    of course, they conventiently ignored the fact that most embryonic stem cells came from fertility clinics doing IVF(in vitro fertilization) rather than cellular tissue from abortions.

    Abortion materials, if I remember right, are more used in medical treatments than research.

  3. Re: Toys for Thugs on LAPD Is Not Using the Electric BMWs It Announced In 2016 (cbslocal.com) · · Score: 1

    Nothing more expensive than paid for and not used - indeed. If they aren't being used otherwise, why NOT use them to get lunches and such? That's better than nothing! Hell, it still prevents a little pollution used that way.

  4. If you have species that are that sensitive to the cold, not to mention the gradual change given the heavy moderation of all the water in a fish tank, you'll have an automatic heater in there.

    But yes, any "internet connected" thermostat should still have a minimum allowed temperature (mine is 55F) that you can program in, and the worst case is that it is a bit chilly when you get home and turn it up manually.

  5. This sounds like the true fix to me. Perhaps have a weight modifier. Airlines charge more for overweight baggage, and water is probably about the cheapest heavy item sold.

    You can still have a discount for buying multiple cases, because it should still be easier to grab 5 cases of water than 1 case of water and four other unique items.

    That said, I just had the thought that maybe these people should run around with a dolly or something to make it easier. Automation for the win.

    Hell, something like a powered dolly using segway type technology could pay for itself if you're delivering stuff in a professional role.

  6. Indeed. This is why I support something like a BIG - Basic Income Guarantee.

    That said, I'm a dirty libertarian who supports a BIG, as I've gone so deep into the looking glass that I came out the other side. It'd be cheaper and provide more liberty than traditional welfare programs.

    My basic proposal is to have the BIG be ~$6k per person*, while eliminating the tax rates below 25% and the standard exemption(Deductions stay). The 25% might need to become 26%. Whatever. Neutrality is around $30k of income, where the BIG is neutralized by the extra taxes(same money to federal coffers otherwise). You pay more than $6k substantially sooner than that, of course. It doesn't really increase the taxes of those that make more either. Those earning less than $30k are better off on an even slope, except those that were experts at exploiting our welfare systems before. Response to them: It isn't your right to live alone on the government dime while you're unemployed. GET A JOB. Also, should help with keeping whole families because it wouldn't be like current welfare and encouraging single mothers.

    *Yes, this isn't enough to live alone, much less in the bigger more expensive cities. If you want to live alone or in a big city, GET A JOB! Note: Meets the federal poverty line of $24k with a household of four.

  7. Just want to point out that a lot of libertarians want to end all the welfare programs as well. I just want to consolidate them all into a basic income guarantee.

    Basically, by removing welfare cliffs, we can encourage people to achieve all that they can, while providing just enough of a floor so that people aren't starving on the streets. This way you don't have people hitting a point and then just stopping because earning any more would cause them to lose effective income.

  8. Re:cheaper to raise cattle, and improve the qualit on Can We Reduce Cow Methane Emissions By Breeding Low-Emission Cattle? (popsci.com) · · Score: 1

    Less methane means they're utilizing more of the energy from the feed. Less feed = cheaper. Improved meat quality is harder to assess, but might amount to paying more attention to those factors while reducing methane.

  9. Re: it's what's for dinner on Can We Reduce Cow Methane Emissions By Breeding Low-Emission Cattle? (popsci.com) · · Score: 1

    Sounds more like you've bought the worst CFLs in existence. I've seen real differences by brand. Regardless, you should probably be buying quality LED bulbs these days.

    For toilets, there were really sucky ones back when the standards were first introduced. These days, buy a high rated one and you'll need to flush multiple times less often than the old models. Considering I have one of each in the house, I know.

    If you want a 100 watt infrared heater, buy one. They're still available. Hell, install a radiant heater.

  10. Re: it's what's for dinner on Can We Reduce Cow Methane Emissions By Breeding Low-Emission Cattle? (popsci.com) · · Score: 1

    "We're nowhere close to any lower limit on energy use that would affect anyone's quality of life. Lowering consumption would likely raise most people's quality of life for getting them to think about what they do more."

    Even for third world people living in poverty?

    Dropping first world people down in energy consumption won't make up for raising third worlders to it.

    Ergo, we still need more energy production in cleaner ways.

  11. You know, looking at that link, I notice that it has the lowest drop at 3am and lowest increase during the day I've ever seen? Are we sure they aren't excluding industrial and business electricity use?

    https://energymag.net/daily-en... - this one shows a much larger difference.

  12. Re:Seems a good site on Power Company Kills Nuclear Plant, Plans $6 Billion In Solar, Battery Investment (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    It works out fine until over a third of homes have panels. This is because power usage is also higher during the day.

  13. Re:the pizza claims are bogus. on Robots Are Already Replacing Fast-Food Workers (recode.net) · · Score: 1

    Frozen pizzas, made in a factory, on a huge production line. I'd imagine that they'd taste even better if you grabbed one before it's frozen and finish cooking it up.

    The ability to prepare one using fresh ingredients and pre-cook on site in a space more 'restaurant' sized than 'factory' sized helps for the 'fresh' market. They can be closer to the customers, even if they ultimately produce fewer pizzas per square meter of factory space. You then finish cooking during delivery lets people get a 'superior' pizza, freshness wise. Though I'm disappointed in the level of automation. If they could have a robot making dough, spreading cheese and ingredients, then they'd be there, I think. The last would be switching to a self-driving delivery truck that finishes slicing and boxing the pizza that just came out of the oven moments before delivery.

  14. Re:Built In Doesn't Warn You About Police on Most Drivers Who Own Cars With Built-in GPS Systems Use Phones For Directions - Mostly Out of Frustration (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    The built-in apps on the car don't always give you updates on traffic, and they most certainly don't give you updates on the locations of police.

    The only time I was in a vehicle with built in navigation it was a rental and the system would lock the GPS system while it was in drive - and I was the passenger, not the driver, trying to punch stuff in. Truly annoying, and indeed, caused me to just use my phone.

  15. Re:News reporting creates cognitive biases on Dutchman Dies in Tesla Crash; Firefighters Feared Electrocution (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    Here, the news is reporting on every serious Tesla crash, creating the false impression that these are dangerous cars -- we aren't seeing a report on every Corolla crash, say.

    Indeed. For most car brands we'd be looking at a fatal crash story daily - not quarterly or less as with Tesla, usually with a crash so extreme it'd be newsworthy anyways.

    "Crash was so violent that it ripped the car in half and lodged the rear end a story up between a church and an office building". Made all the more newsworthy that the driver managed to be 'live' enough to make it to surgery, even if he subsequently died. This was for the first fatal Tesla crash I read about.

  16. Re:Not just Tesla on Dutchman Dies in Tesla Crash; Firefighters Feared Electrocution (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    Prius: 288V
    Tesla: 375V

    I wouldn't rate the Tesla as significantly more likely to kill you, but in a near-worst case scenario Tesla's battery has additional voltage to kill you with, and even more amps to make sure you're well cooked. ~85 kWh vs 4.4 kWh.

  17. Re:Tesla Battery Packs for Buildings on Dutchman Dies in Tesla Crash; Firefighters Feared Electrocution (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    As batteries become more and more efficient and longer lived they are going to start appearing in more and more locations.

    I've had to deal when designing a solar system for my house, or even putting in a generator. There's a switch on the side of my house that they can use to shut all of that off, and for something like the Tesla battery, I can see a "big red button" being required at the service entrance that, if pushed, deactivates a relay keeping the power connected.

  18. Dropped cases mean that they really didn't have a shot in the first place. Impacts to sales? I'm going to note that Teslas have shown themselves to be extremely safe - the drivers all walked away from the 3 car fires the class action suit was about. The Autopilot death was one of a handful of deaths in a Tesla, and an interested buyer can simply tell themselves that that guy was being an idiot.

    Somebody researching the car that might be turned off by those news items can look at the death rates for other vehicles on the road and note that they're all higher.

    As for the Autopilot feature - Tesla has shielded themselves pretty well by labeling it as an alpha feature and not a true autopilot where you don't have to still monitor the vehicle. They also have live updates, so fixes can be deployed over the air.

    Roughly speaking, after the car fires, Tesla stock took dips, but sales weren't actually affected, so the stock prices recovered.

  19. Biofuel is stupid, you're consuming your food supply to drive cars, don't even get me started on Ethanol which is the dumbest idea ever...

    Biofuel doesn't have to be from food sources- you have algae and cellulose based methods, for example. Turning corn into ethanol is stupid, I agree.

    I'm willing to bet that more than 50% of all new cars and light trucks in 2100 are still gas powered...

    Only if there's far, far less of them, because we'd have exhausted most of the reserves by then. At some point just growing the fuel becomes cheaper than trying to pump it out. Thus the biofuel idea. Of course, at the price point where biofuel is cheaper than dino-fuel, electric cars make sense as commuters.

    Oh, and where did global warming come into this?

  20. 0.6% to 0.5% to 0.4% is not moving the goalposts, those are rounding errors...

    They're huge when you consider the absolute number of EVs being sold. That's a 30% decline.

    Even at the same price of gas cars, even if they had 500 miles of range, a majority of people still won't buy them...

    I think just the opposite would happen then. At the same price as a 'comparable' gasoline car with 500 mile batteries I think that they'd sell like hotcakes.

    At that point if charging time is still an issue we'd see battery swap stations.

    Too many EV fans forget that human beings are human beings, and don't give a crap about your rational arguments. Want proof? Look at the 600,000+ F-150 pickup trucks sold each year, more than half to people who don't need a pickup truck whatsoever...

    Actually, I think there's some very good reasons that people buy those trucks, and they're not always obvious.
    1. Tax benefits and EPA regulations: The vehicles are actually cheaper for their feature set.
    2. Ride height. My family includes a number of members that aren't quite as spry as they used to be. To be frank, I have several members who find climbing out of a modern car to be difficult, but climbing into a truck(or SUV) to be far easier. Ergo, they're driving trucks and SUVs despite no 'need'.
    etc...

  21. They may be in different market categories, but they solve precisely the same transportation problem,

    Roughly speaking, perhaps. You're forgetting the luxury and performance parts I think. The performance of Teslas are quite insane in short races - they peak quickly, but they reach that peak insanely fast. Stuff like beating a race car while towing said race car:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
    (okay, so it's a Tesla model X, not a S)

    The S 90D w/ 19" rims (not sure precisely where that stands in the Tesla lineup)

    It's their premium non-performance car. The 90 means that it has a 90kWh battery, and the lack of a "P" means that it's not a performance edition, which is a little less efficient, but much more powerful. The D means that it's all wheel drive.

    They're getting ready to come out with 100kWh batteries, which would be designated with model numbers like "S 100D", "S P100D"

    The reason why the S70 would take longer is that the 70kWh battery isn't capable of taking a charge as quickly as a 90. Also, if I remember right, it only has half the internal chargers of the 85 and up models, which also limits the speed at which it can charge.

    Eh, here's the ultimate deal, I think: Tesla has developed battery swap technology where you drive over the system and it swaps your battery for a fully charged unit(and can put a larger battery on to boot, so it can take off a 70kWh battery and put in a 90kWh one for your long drive), in ~90 seconds. However, among actual owners not enough interest has materialized to get Tesla to install them. They'd prefer to use the free superchargers than pay for a battery swap.

    My uses for a car are infrequent trips to places nearby (Dr, dentist, etc) and long road trips,

    That's fine. Not everybody takes long road trips.

  22. With more self driving features, the 'must be 21' will probably go away, and I mentioned car-sharing services for a reason. Hell, that's how USAA got started - car insurers wouldn't issue insurance to Army Officers, so said officers ended up forming an insurance cooperative to have insurance to drive around. The company ended up expanding to be both a cooperative insurance company and a credit union.

    Same sort of deal could happen with college students. We're probably looking at 25 years for this sort of stuff - 10-15 years for such cars to actually come out(or for EVs to become seriously common), plus the 10-15 year average lifespan of automobiles today.

    As for can't afford the EV - lots of college students don't have cars period, and there's always the used market.

  23. I know we all want cool automation, but just like Tesla is seeing the litigators won't let it happen. Fix laws and maybe.

    I'm seeing 1 settled lawsuit, 1 class action, and 1 'possibly liable' over the autopilot death.

    What I'm not seeing more lawsuits than I'd expect against any given company. The site that mentioned the class action said that it's almost certainly going to be tossed out in court, because it's tying stock price declines after news that a Tesla car had caught fire. 3 cars in total, all 3 after serious collisions. It's alleging securities fraud because Tesla didn't disclose that the battery pack could be pierced by road debris and catch fire, despite honestly getting the highest safety ratings*, and the news of such supposedly depressed sales which might of cost those who purchased securities money.

    *Which aren't actually about the car at all, but survivability for the people IN the car.

  24. No, it isn't... And FEWER were sold in 2015 than in 2014... Not a lot fewer, but it was fewer...

    You're getting a lot of exercise hauling those goalposts around.

    And what happened in 2015? LOWER GAS PRICES. Doesn't counterdict my statement that EVs sell better when gas prices are high.

    If you don't replace gas car sales, then who gives a crap about EVs? The whole damm point is to stop burning gas, if you don't do that, EVs don't mean anything.

    They do replace gas car sales, just not at a significant rate right now. However, if you keep improving range and reducing cost by about 2% a year, we'll start seeing EVs ramping up.

    I fully expect in the year 2100 we will still see gas cars being sold new. I think the problem is much, much bigger than you think it is...

    To be honest, I'd be happy to just see the year 2100, and yes, I'd see gas cars being sold new then as well. I just see them as being special purpose at that point, and they might be biofueled rather than petrol.

  25. 1. Used Passats and Teslas are in different market categories.
    2. Your trip is 800 miles, which is closer to 1300 km, not 1000 km in my reply to the original poster. That means another charge, so yeah, 3 charging stops, 1.5 hours of charging. Why the site has you using 4 chargers over 3 hours, I don't know. Also, it's 3 hours of charging on the site, not 4, and I already mentioned integrating breaks into it.

    That being said, it looks like the superchargers are 200 miles apart and assumes longer charge times.