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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • A 300 Mi charge would mean if you can’t charge daily, you would be able to go a couple of days without having to do so.

    Given most trips are less than 3 miles, if you had a 300 mile range vehicle, that’s about three months of average driving, not a couple of days. My point was that people don’t go on long drives the vast majority of time and don’t more than fifty or so miles of range.

    I’ll use Tesla as the example here only because it’s the prominent electric car brand. Directly from them:

    A 120 volt outlet will supply 2 to 3 miles of range per hour of charge. If you charge overnight and drive less than 30 to 40 miles per day, this option should meet your typical charging needs.

    They go one to say you can get a 10x improvement on the miles per hour when charging from a 240v outlet. Even accounting for installation of a new outlet to the garage or side of the house, this would be far cheaper than buying a vehicle with hundreds of miles of range and using a supercharger every other week.



  • People largely don’t vote. The informed voters are an even smaller slice of the pie chart. Even so, it seems most politicians can be bought for shockingly cheap.

    Money would have to get out of politics, voting in any election big or small would need a paid holiday, voting itself would have to move off the first passed the post system, etcetera. There’s so many steps to be taken in order to get out from under the corporate boot it’s hard to keep track of them.

    When the entire economic and political landscape has been turned into a casino, it’s a steep climb to beat the house at its own game.


  • Sodium could easily replace lithium in EV applications if people would acknowledge that only 2% of trips are more than 50 miles. Though it’s probably moreso the auto industry’s fault that people have this assumption they need to prepare for a three hundred mile journey on a moments notice.

    If manufacturers were putting out cars that had four figure price tags with double digit ranges, they would become the best selling vehicles within a decade and no one would care if it was sodium, lithium, or sawdust. Of course, there is less profit to be made from smaller vehicles and so the corporations won’t bother.


  • While the labels give retailers the ability to increase prices suddenly, Gallino doubts companies like Walmart will take advantage of the technology in that way.

    “To be honest, I don’t think that’s the underlying main driver of this,” Gallino said. “These are companies that tend to have a long-term relationship with their customers and I think the risk of frustrating them could be too risky, so I would be surprised if they try to do that.”

    Rather than seeing an opportunity to use surge pricing, Gallino says retailers are likely drawn to electronic shelf tags to ensure consistency between online and in-store pricing.

    This person must live on another planet.

    Sure, the prices won’t be changing every six seconds, but anyone with half a mind can see these tags won’t be used only when stock or expiry are a factor. The prices will be up on the weekend to start. Then later it’ll be changing through the day to get higher prices between 4:00-7:00 when people are getting off work.

    The arguments of no longer needing people to do yet another menial task and increasing utility of labels for consumers both have merit, but this alien even says the primary factor:

    “The bottom line … is the calculation of the amount of labor that they’re going to save by incorporating this."


  • Agreed. The whole idea of these huge payouts could be eliminated and replaced with what exists for everyone else - severance pay. Calculated off a regulated minimum formula, based primarily on how long the person served the company.

    I also agree with you that the top and bottom salaries should have a correlation. The C suite making the salary of a shelf stocker in one day should not happen. I think I could accept that the top gets somewhere around 10 or 20 times higher salary. Even 100x would be an improvement to the way it is now.

    Like you point out, between stock options and whatever else, an executive salary could be a few hundred thousand, even if their total compensation is tens of millions. In fantasy land it would be nice if, once a company grows to a certain point, say a billion dollars in value, if it were required to convert to an employee owned cooperative entity.

    It’s a shame things are the way they are. Maybe one day we won’t have politicians that can be bought. That’s a different discussion altogether.






  • I see what you’re getting at but this would be difficult for a publisher to stick with in the event the game does horribly. Requiring them to keep their word to the date advertised would end up with them only guaranteeing a week, or send ramifications through all industries requiring truth in advertising.

    A middle ground would be simply to legislate that when games require online connectivity for any reason, the appropriate software is released to allow a locally run server to enable online function at the time the company decides to decommission their servers. Then require them to hold these files in an accessible manner for at least as long as the servers had been active for.

    That would be difficult in the event the company goes out of business, but I’m sure this would be a difficult thing to explain to most politicians so maybe not so simple after all.


  • When 52% of all trips made are less than 3 miles and less than 2% are over fifty miles, I don’t think battery swapping is something any individual needs on a regular basis.

    I could get on board if manufacturers were making $10,000 sub 50 mile vehicles that were compatible with a swap station so you could switch to a larger battery for the weekend. This would have to be a standard adopted by all however, and even before that, they’d have to make small cars. Which they won’t, because we all know they are too busy making trucks and SUVs.


  • I see what you’re saying, but it wasn’t too long ago a similar sentiment was said of motorized construction and farm equipment.

    Ultimately, if each piece of equipment had a viable electric alternative that would operate all day without needing a charge, it wouldn’t take that smart of a bean counter to realize there were a lot of savings to be had if they started projects with an electrical charging area for the new equipment that could potentially be repurposed for customer or resident charging once the job was done.

    It would become an anticipated start-up cost, similar to the transport of the equipment itself, delivery of materials, set up of portable offices and toilets and the like. Obviously this would be out of reach for a small operation, but a company that’s building out row houses or shopping centres I could see making the switch.






  • I’ve been using Shokz for a decade now. They’ve replaced a couple sets at no cost. I wear mine every day. Even for the occasional swim.

    Listening to podcasts definitely gives longer battery life than listening to music. Though even the odd time I’ve drained the battery in a day, I charge it with a battery pack for fifteen minutes and it’s charged again.

    Not many products I’d say are worth every cent, but from the quality to the customer service, Shokz are great.



  • I agree. A truck can be a good option for some, but as you point out, most people aren’t doing a DIY project each weekend. The F150 can be optioned out to a six figure price tag. It’s inconceivable to me.

    I’m acquainted with the owner of a middle sized plumbing company, and he had a close call with a dog that got loose one day. Not his fault, and he was able to stop in time, but nonetheless it bothered him. Couple months go by and he switched all his service trucks out for transit vans.

    The newer style vans with the slanted front end gives far more visibility, twice the cargo space without having to climb up into the bed, they don’t weigh as much, and are more fuel efficient. All at the same price point.

    An unfortunate side effect of modern life is that many people see purchases like a vehicle or a house as these monthly costs that, on the face of them, they can afford. The trouble is they don’t consider the overall cost of the purchase, let alone the ongoing cost in terms of routine maintenance and unexpected repairs.

    It’s a shame, but when something is marketed as though it’ll make you the toughest in town, who wouldn’t pay $181.50 weekly at 0% APR ~for the first three months~.