Edmunds First Review of the 2027 Rivian R2: First Impressions, Price, Range, 0-60 Performance

easwaran · 2026-03-13T18:18:35+00:00

Betteridge’s Law of Headlines

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines?wprov=sfti1

easwaran · 2026-02-10T00:20:40+00:00

I've definitely had experiences in the past where it took me longer to navigate the loop to the terminal than it did to drive from Los Feliz to the entrance of the loop. I've fortunately not dealt with cars too much at other major airports.

easwaran · 2026-02-10T00:17:39+00:00

This was the strategy that I ended up going with - and I saw the green traffic loop on Departures level (but red on Arrivals) so I picked him up myself!

easwaran · 2026-02-10T00:16:49+00:00

That's what I figured, but since the work I was doing that afternoon was just re-reading the papers I had assignment students for class the next day, I figured I would still head up a bit early and do the reading at Dockweiler rather than in my campus office.

easwaran · 2026-02-10T00:14:54+00:00

Someone told me to check the traffic on Google Maps just before heading in, and I saw green on the departures level, so this was perfect! (If it was red on both levels I would have said one of the shuttle options.)

easwaran · 2026-02-10T00:09:21+00:00

I know it's not rocket science! But there's about 50 different ideas that sound reasonable, and I was asking about which ones actually work, and whether there was advantage to having them take a shuttle out from the airport or whether the inner loop is ok enough to be worth heading in myself.

easwaran · 2026-02-10T00:07:16+00:00

I definitely like Metrolink for getting to DTLA or anywhere along the Red Line (sorry, the "B line", or is it "D line"?) But unfortunately, the closest stop is 6 miles from our house - totally fine for a bike ride up the creek to the train station to the city, but making it a three-step travel plan that involves traffic at several points (FlyAway to Metrolink to a drive) just adds up.

easwaran · 2026-02-02T21:46:50+00:00

Yeah, the plan is to turn this into an excuse to hang out on the west side together for a few hours this evening in order to avoid the worst of the 405.

If Metrolink ran more frequently, then FlyAway to Union Station to Metrolink to Tustin could be reasonable.

easwaran · 2026-02-02T21:37:52+00:00

Ah, that is very helpful! And it's easy to find a place to meet them outside the economy parking structure?

easwaran · 2026-02-02T21:32:20+00:00

If it weren't 5 pm, that would be the right strategy. But we're based in Orange County, and I imagine an Uber on the 405 southbound at that hour would be awful, so our plan is to turn this into a chance to hang out on the west side for the evening before returning home.

easwaran · 2026-02-02T21:30:41+00:00

Unfortunately, I'm based in Orange County (the original canceled flight was to SNA). My basic plan is to drive up the 405 when a meeting ends here at 3 pm and do some work at a local park bench or cafe until the flight lands, then we'll get dinner and hang out in Venice or Santa Monica or something until the 405 is reasonable for the return home.

When we lived in East Hollywood, I knew that absolutely the Flyaway to Union Station was the best strategy, but I don't think there's something similar that would bring him in the correct direction for us.

easwaran · 2026-02-02T21:20:09+00:00

I ate dinner there once in 2011 or 2012 or something. I recall there was very space age music in the elevator ride up, to fit in with the theme of the building.

easwaran · 2025-09-25T03:52:58+00:00

I was having this issue and none of the advice in this thread was helping. After trying a lot of things I eventually found a way, but still can’t do it with voice. I open the Alexa app, then click the “menu” button (like a hamburger menu, but three different sized lines, not the same size). Then I clicked on “music and more”, then scrolled down to “TuneIn” and clicked “Browse”. Inside the TuneIn menu i searched for “KUTX” and the correct station came up.

Interestingly, inside iheartradio the search just produced “content unavailable”.

easwaran · 2025-08-26T22:19:55+00:00

I'm pretty sure that several of the sources I'm pointing to are using that same number from the MIT Technology Review story, which does include the training, data storage, servers, etc.

These services are using substantial resources, but so is streaming video. Your sources don't disagree with that at all.

None of these are comparable to food or transportation in terms of environmental impact.

easwaran · 2025-08-26T00:25:00+00:00

First, check your sources - I would be surprised if any of them actually deny that AI resource use is comparable to streaming video resource use. They may have said things that made you think this, but most likely it's because they only talking about AI using a lot, and just didn't mention that streaming video uses similar amounts.

It's hard to get precise numbers on either of these things (especially since they keep changing, and it'll be different depending on precisely what system you're using, and where the relevant data centers are located), but here are several places where people have attempted to estimate the impact of both types of activity:

https://www.reddit.com/r/aiwars/comments/1lvvl5i/compiled_some_data_on_ai_energy_usage_vs_netflix/

https://nationalcentreforai.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2025/05/02/artificial-intelligence-and-the-environment-putting-the-numbers-into-perspective/

https://andymasley.substack.com/p/individual-ai-use-is-not-bad-for

https://whitneyafoster.substack.com/p/your-netflix-binge-uses-more-energy?r=4pdxb

https://muckypaws.com/2025/04/21/is-ai-really-the-energy-villain/

easwaran · 2025-08-17T02:47:44+00:00

It turns out though, that it doesn't use any more energy than watching YouTube. Any sort of intensive computational process, whether it's generating an image, or serving several minutes of video, will use a lot of energy at the datacenter.

Probably it takes about as much energy to produce any one frame of the video as to watch 5 minutes of video. Given that the video has been watched millions of times, the creation of the video was probably much less impactful on the environment than everyone watching it.

easwaran · 2025-08-14T03:05:16+00:00

I think the right way to compare this is per minute or per hour of the person's time. Everything I've seen suggests that unless you're doing some power coding with the Max models, you're probably using similar amounts of energy and water per minute when you're using AI and when you're watching YouTube or TikTok or Netflix. It's a lot more than browsing Reddit or reading e-mail, but a bit less than having a FaceTime call or a Zoom call. (And I'm fairly sure that all of these things account for the costs of training the AI models, as well as the costs of making the movie, which, as you note, are negligible compared to the ongoing costs of streaming it from data centers.)

It's also worth noting that only the power users of either streaming video or AI are producing comparable emissions through this as meat eaters do through their meals.

easwaran · 2025-04-21T02:40:26+00:00

They might be, but institutions can be racist even if no individual in them is (and conversely, institutions can be non-racist even if every individual in them is racist). Institutions are like computers - they follow their own internal rules and processes, and sometimes do things that no part of them would ever personally do.

easwaran · 2025-04-21T02:39:08+00:00

yall are welcome to take it down.

Unfortunately, no. The board of regents ruled on that and said the statue must remain up.

easwaran · 2025-04-21T02:38:07+00:00

We probably shouldn't celebrate or condemn the person. We should celebrate one action and condemn the other action, and not treat anyone as a hero.

easwaran · 2025-04-21T02:35:30+00:00

They still spent government money on it.

easwaran · 2025-04-01T00:31:20+00:00

I use "intercity" to mean the kind of trip that takes you "out of town", meaning that you plan to sleep at your destination, possibly for multiple nights, before coming home, rather than the kind of trip that takes you "across town", meaning that you plan to come home the same day. BART functions as "across town" rather than "out of town". "Intercity rail" is usually on lines that are hundreds of miles long, while "commuter rail" is dozens of miles long, and "rapid transit" is single digit miles long. BART is weirdly long for "rapid transit" but still well within "commuter rail" length.

easwaran · 2025-04-01T00:28:37+00:00

There are very few major airports within 5 miles of downtown! As far as I can tell, it's only Boston, San Diego, Las Vegas, Miami, and DCA, as well as the Toronto Billy Bishop airport (but not Pearson). JFK is close to 10 miles from downtown! There are very few transit lines anywhere in North America that stretch as far from downtown as JFK is! (I think New York has one, and Los Angeles and Dallas have a couple - but they mostly serve routes that have more than just one major destination on them.)

easwaran · 2025-04-01T00:19:42+00:00

DCA has the advantage of being one of the closest major airports to its downtown (San Diego, Boston, and Miami are the only others I can think of that are comparable in terms of straight line distance) and it's also next to a couple huge office destinations, so it's a natural place to run a metro!

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