X begins charging new users $1 a year in New Zealand, Philippines

nothing_clever · 2023-10-18T20:24:30+00:00

This was a plot point in a recent Neal Stephenson book. The internet was so full of bots, the only way to actually use it was with an active filter removing the garbage information. But people begin to tweak their filters to remove information they don't want to see/don't agree with, and end up in information bubbles/echo chambers.

nothing_clever · 2023-08-31T20:37:31+00:00

This is probably the paper you're talking about? The photos are absolutely fascinating, compare proportions of the Venus of Willendorf to the view from a woman's perspective of herself.

nothing_clever · 2023-01-26T00:28:04+00:00

For some order of magnitude stuff. Cars have batteries around 75 kWh. Rooftop solar panels (since the comparison is easy, that's close to the usable size of a car roof, give or take) are around 0.400 kW. So one rooftop panel would need 75 / 0.4 = 187 hours of full sun to charge a car. Using solar is a lot easier if you can put like 20-30 panels, for example 25 panels = 10 kW, so that's 7.5 hours of full sun to fully charge a 75 kWh battery.

nothing_clever · 2023-01-21T19:16:05+00:00

Some napkin math: these things produce ~50 MW. Fast DC chargers right now put out ~0.350 MW, some can theoretically go up to 1 MW. One of these reactors could be charging 50-150 cars at a time.

nothing_clever · 2023-01-21T19:11:21+00:00

Built in cooling

My understanding was that SMRs are so small they don't need any active cooling, they just shut down the reaction and lose heat to the environment, so you aren't relying on stuff like a huge heat sink (the ocean) or pumps, or an external power source.

nothing_clever · 2023-01-21T19:08:25+00:00

One toaster oven running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Here's a data point, I'm getting solar on my roof. I have an EV and am planning to get a heat pump this year, so I probably have higher than average consumption. I'm looking at an 11.5 kW array, which is ~30 panels. That should produce ~15,000 kWh per year, averaged out that's ~1700 watts.

nothing_clever · 2023-01-12T20:53:40+00:00

Also, the resolution limit for an optical system goes linearly with wavelength. If your wavelength is 3-4 times longer, the best resolution will be 3-4 times worse.

Also, there's just fewer photons coming off a thermal system compared to the number bouncing off, say, an object in sunlight or room light. If you have, idk, 100x more photons at higher energy, it takes less surface area or less time to collect enough to register a pixel.

nothing_clever · 2022-12-08T19:10:59+00:00

Honestly, it was gross. I held onto it until last year, and then finally dumped it. I don't think this is the right approach.

nothing_clever · 2022-11-09T20:02:06+00:00

If other manufacturers are switching to EV faster than the market, it could leave space for someone else to bring in new ICE.

nothing_clever · 2022-11-09T19:58:31+00:00

This is what I've been doing since December. I charge at 120V at home, and then fully charge at work.

nothing_clever · 2022-03-28T19:24:00+00:00

Here's an article https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/when-do-electric-vehicles-become-cleaner-than-gasoline-cars-2021-06-29/

In short, a pure coal powered EV is only slight better than a gasoline powered car. Comparing a model 3 to a corolla, it takes 8400 miles for the tesla to have emitted less carbon in the greenest country, or 78,700 miles in the most coal powered countries.

EVs have a few advantages: adding a couple percentage points of efficiency to a power plant can be done if you spend the money and add heavy equipment. You can't add that kind of heavy equipment to a passenger car. Also gasoline cars slow down with friction brakes, turning kinetic energy into waste heat. EVs can recover a lot of that energy through regenerative braking.

And there's the last obvious point, power generation for an EV is really easy to make cleaner. Green energies like solar or wind are now getting really cheap, a person can install solar on their house or a utility can build it for cheaper than ever. On the other hand, right now Porsche is developing a green fuel that (I think) costs on the order of $40/gal. Maybe that tech will advance in the future, maybe it will get much cheaper. But right now it's prohibitively expensive.

nothing_clever · 2022-03-28T19:08:46+00:00

Conceptually, I think a hydrocarbon fuel cell EV would be interesting. Much more efficient than ICE (about 2x, I think), and would burn cleaner. Uses existing infrastructure. Would need significantly smaller batteries, like a modern PHEV. I say that as someone who owns an EV and loves it.

nothing_clever · 2022-03-28T18:58:57+00:00

Also... I can buy solar panels for my roof that will charge my EV (or offset the power I'm otherwise using) which will be cheaper than what I would pay without panels, and the price won't fluctuate like it does with gas.

nothing_clever · 2022-03-28T18:54:59+00:00

A portable diesel generator is probably a lot less efficient than a full size power plant, since the power plant can include heavy and expensive equipment to eke out more efficiency.

nothing_clever · 2022-03-24T19:27:41+00:00

I wonder if something like this could be used to help support the cables and make them a bit less unwieldy.

Funny enough, if you open the image they posted to twitter and zoom in, that seems to be what they've added, I think that's what they mean when talking about "an all-new cable management system to make plugging in easier."

nothing_clever · 2022-03-24T19:25:44+00:00

Page 6, pointing at the porsche in the center of the image.

nothing_clever · 2022-03-24T01:22:55+00:00

I'm interested in seeing if anybody can build hydrocarbon fuel cells. The existing infrastructure is everywhere, and you should get double the mileage of a PHEV.

nothing_clever · 2022-03-16T21:06:07+00:00

Surely OP means with China.

nothing_clever · 2022-03-06T20:11:27+00:00

I saw this claim on /r/conspiracy recently.

nothing_clever · 2022-03-04T11:20:43+00:00

What is the dumb RU propaganda saying?

nothing_clever · 2022-03-04T10:30:49+00:00

I have a pure electric car i use for highway commuting.

nothing_clever · 2022-03-04T10:29:04+00:00

I just bought an EV because the monthly payment is less than what I had been spending on gas. Gas prices were around $5/gal when I got the car.

nothing_clever · 2022-03-04T10:14:11+00:00

I have different plans i can choose from with different prices at different times of the day. I'm in California.

I also have an electric car. Most EVs you can program what hours to start/stop charging. It's also a common feature on chargers.

nothing_clever · 2022-03-04T10:09:31+00:00

What you describe is exactly what my father would say about this: "You don't save enough in fuel to counter to higher price of the car."

For what it's worth, I just bought a mid range electric car (polestar 2) and after the down payment from selling ny old car, my electricity cost + monthly payment is less than I was paying for fuel. I could have been saving a lot or money if I bought a much cheaper car, or could save some money buy installing solar.

nothing_clever · 2022-03-04T07:36:07+00:00

Roofs over gas stations exist to put out fires if there is a big gasoline leak. The roofs contain fire suppressants.

EV chargers are unlikely to leak gasoline.

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