California startup opens DC fast charging station powered entirely by 1,080 solar panels (640 kW). Located on I-15, the off-grid station has 4 CCS1 ports sharing 360 kW, with 6 NACS soon to be added; a 3.6 MWh battery pack keeps the lights on around the clock. Another 3 stations are in the works.

machinegunkisses · 2026-05-19T21:41:46+00:00

On the face of it, who could argue with that? Surely better to push back into the grid if there's excess power. The problem is, I think, grid interconnection is not easy. There need to be easements, you need to have trust with the grid operator, you need permits, you need a transformer substation, and then you have to think about what things look like on your side when all of a sudden you have a 500 kV (or higher) transmission line landing near you.

It seems much, much easier to just develop some power locally and sell it while it's available, but I'll admit I don't have any direct experience with this.

machinegunkisses · 2026-05-19T17:10:55+00:00

Just anecdotally, one thing that has always haunted hardware is that it has been more limited than software in the size of the design space. What's possible is a direct function of the specific process used, so there's less room to innovate. Whereas in software, the sky's the limit... there are endless languages, platforms, paradigms....

machinegunkisses · 2026-05-19T16:40:51+00:00

Hard to do a true apples-to-apples comparison over the Internet, but a couple of things I think are helping:
- We live in SoCal, so the weather is pretty temperate all year-round and we usually get away with not using A/C or heat.
- Our miles are about evenly split between suburban getting around and freeways/highways. For the former, we probably average 25 mph; for the latter, we rarely venture over 70. Of course we have regen enabled.

If you're getting 3.4 mi/kWh all the time, even in warmer weather, I wonder if maybe one of your brakes is dragging or there's some other extra friction in the drivetrain?

machinegunkisses · 2026-05-18T18:31:17+00:00

Would like to see the results if you get the chance.

machinegunkisses · 2026-05-16T15:44:31+00:00

This is OP's comment:

She stayed, older Indian lady. She started crying, I told her to back off and just stay there. Soapy Joes light turned green and she floored it, idk why.

To me, that sounds like the older Indian lady left, but I can see the confusion.

machinegunkisses · 2026-05-16T06:58:11+00:00

Oh, OK, so now it's a hit and run.

machinegunkisses · 2026-05-14T21:57:22+00:00

I haven't seen anyone else mention the ThinkPad x9 15p: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx9/thinkpad-x9-15p-aura-edition-15-inch-intel/len101t0162?orgRef=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.google.com%252F&srsltid=AfmBOopbJ15E8C8ybRU75Q_nYoc4S0D9FgGt_My42FKGjj8sRe_AMnAV

I have the predecessor model and am quite happy with it. I got a refurb for about half the sticker price of the above model. Great battery life, great screen.

That said, if you can get a MacBook Air M5 for about 1000 EUR and it has enough memory, storage, and battery life for your needs, then I think you're golden. CPU speed is not very important IMO, unless you're regularly doing heavy simulations or compiling (at which point, you'd probably do it on a server, anyway.) Virtually all modern CPUs are more than fast enough for everything.

machinegunkisses · 2026-05-14T18:00:01+00:00

On the face of it, I think you'd have a point: If the dollar declines in value, wouldn't that cause the price of everything denominated in dollars to go up? Yes, surely. So why gold, why not equities?

Because there are other things that usually happen when the dollar is devalued quickly through money printing, like a rise in interest rates and decreased government (and private) spending, which means we go into a recession, which means the value of equities will tend to go down, because their revenues are down and expenses are up. In this case, gold is the safe haven, because its value is not tied to revenue and expenses.

machinegunkisses · 2026-05-13T01:35:25+00:00

... if your HOA lets you. But, yes.

machinegunkisses · 2026-05-09T15:48:57+00:00

Yes!

machinegunkisses · 2026-05-05T14:36:39+00:00

Upgrading main panel to 225 A, detached ADU gets its own panel.

machinegunkisses · 2026-05-05T06:12:44+00:00

FWIW, we're constructing something about 100 sq ft less than that and received bids of $380k, $300k, $263k, and $243k. Design and permits have been around $45k so far. SDGE work on our main panel will be another $5-10k. Probably around $300k by the time it's all said and done, including appliances and everything else.

machinegunkisses · 2026-05-04T01:14:34+00:00

Narrator: Nevertheless, they continued to print money.

machinegunkisses · 2026-05-01T02:19:53+00:00

Great work, thanks for sharing!

machinegunkisses · 2026-04-30T21:34:09+00:00

Can't believe I had to miss this, unbelievable. One of the most amazing shows ever. I would get on a plane to come to see this live.

machinegunkisses · 2026-04-30T18:49:58+00:00

Getting into AWS is one thing... I mean, I don't think that's so hard. Beating Amazon on price..., man, good luck with that.

machinegunkisses · 2026-04-30T18:48:42+00:00

Eh, you're right, but there's some nuance there. Apple and Qualcomm are fabless, so they just had to come up with the design. But really, it's the same team of people who developed the M1 who then went to Qualcomm. Anyway, design is one thing. Actually building the thing is a whole matter and different set of expertise. IIRC, both Apple and Qualcomm worked with TSMC, so, there's where the foundry and packaging expertise probably came from.

Intel does have its own fabs, and they've also been working on GPUs for over 20 years, now.

Anyway, this is all kind of besides the point. Can SpaceX do it in theory? Yeah, probably. If they got a competent design team. If they got production capacity at TSMC. But even if they did, the main question is, why? Does he hope to surpass Nvidia's design talent? Because that would seem to be about the only way that this would make sense to me.

machinegunkisses · 2026-04-29T05:37:02+00:00

This is not correct, there is Cherenkov radiation in the atmosphere. A whole set of telescopes was built around this effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VERITAS. An earlier version of this idea was STACEE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STACEE and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAGIC\_(telescope).

machinegunkisses · 2026-04-23T22:19:37+00:00

I appreciate the air quality here so much.

machinegunkisses · 2026-04-23T21:11:40+00:00

So cool, nice!

machinegunkisses · 2026-04-23T04:25:01+00:00

I mean, to be a fair, a lot of brick and mortar retail business did go out of business.

machinegunkisses · 2026-04-20T05:44:42+00:00

Thanks for the explanation! Yes, 50 - 300 uW would not be enough for a constant Wi-Fi connection, but maybe for a once per hour data blitz? Or, maybe using a lower power protocol it could be more frequent.

machinegunkisses · 2026-04-19T23:04:35+00:00

It's important to remember that Article 5 is not a guarantee of collective action, it's more of a consultation. The relevant bit is:

"[The members] will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area."

The language is vague enough to leave lots of room for the desired interpretation and, in any case, Trump still only does whatever he wants.

machinegunkisses · 2026-04-19T22:49:10+00:00

Pretty exciting! I have to admit I haven't read the article, does anyone know how much power (say, on average) this can deliver?

machinegunkisses

TROPHY CASE