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2 yr. ago

  • Thanks for looking through all of this. If I'm understanding right, it seems like Congress is asking NHTSA to do a task that is probably not possible, but they are required to at least go through the motions to try?

    It seems like they just told nhtsa to use technology to fix drunk driving so they can wash their hands of the situation and claim they tried to do something, but nhtsa couldn't figure it out. Why didn't they tell the NIH to eliminate the cancer while they were at it.

    I do believe the technology to detect BAC is too erroneous to inflict on innocent drivers, and technology that could detect impairment through driving characteristics, while possible for individual drivers could never work on a population level. There's going to be a lot of overlap between impaired drivers and just naturally bad drivers.

  • It really depends on the style of shoe. Something like a standard running shoe is going to have to be replaced fairly soon no matter how much money you spend on it. The uppers might hold together, but the foam itself is a consumable item. It can only bounce back for so long before it won't anymore. It doesn't really look obvious, but you might start to feel weird soreness or something that lets you know it's time to replace them.

    "Barefoot" running shoes with no foam, or traditional boots/shoes with leather midsoles don't have that problem, so spending more can actually let them last longer.

    Skate shoes, from what I know, are basically just standard sneakers for the most part, so they will have the same problem with the foam. If you are actually using them to skate, though, you might be wearing through the sole, or the upper, and in that case, a higher quality shoe might last longer.

    TL;DR, it depends how you wear through them.

  • Have any kind of source? Every source I've seen says that running oversize is worse. In my own experience, it led to humidity problems, too. In fact, every source in seen says its better to undershoot than overshoot.

  • Lol, that's exactly who I was thinking of. I have had several cheap kettle grills, and they only last a couple years, even taken care of decently. I got a weber, and it still looks new after a few years, plus the metal is way thicker so it holds steady temperature way better.

  • I mean, it's not going to break on me. I think there's enough debate on the "stamped vs forged" issue to show that it's not a huge difference that would be noticeable to most non-professionals. Maybe if I used my knives all day every day, I'd notice a difference in edge retention or ease of sharpening, but just making dinner ever night, I don't notice a difference.

  • Redwing still makes some good stuff, but they also make some "fashion" stuff that looks similar. Unfortunately happens with a lot of quality workwear.

    Rose Anvil on YouTube cuts boots and shoes in half and explains how and why they are designed the way they are, and where corners are cut, and what to look out for. He's a good resource for checking out a boot you are interested in.

    Most of your "good" brands still have some crappy stuff in their lineup, but you might not be able to spot it by just looking at a web page.

  • Lots of kitchen tools are like that. Expensive probably isn't the right word, more like minimum acceptable quality. Restaurant supply stores are great for this: a restaurant owner won't buy the fancy brands, but they also won't get something that won't do the job right. When you get something more expensive than the restaurant supply store, you are mainly paying for cosmetics.

    Food processors and mandolins come to mind: they are a pain to clean, so unless they work really well, you're better off using a knife.

    Stock pots you can get thin, crappy ones from Walmart that will never let a large volume of liquid get up to temp without scorching whatever is touching the bottom. Better to save your money for something with thicker material.

    Also,

    • Cookie dough and ice cream scoops
    • Instant read thermometers
    • kitchen scissors
    • cutting boards
    • enameled cast iron (cheap stuff flakes off)
    • measuring cups (do everything you can by weight, but when necessary, you want them made from steel, and with markings embossed on them, not painted)
    • charcoal (and probably propane) grills. Poor quality craps out so quick
    • probably a lot more things

    For non-kitchen stuff, one that immediately comes to mind cause I just bought one is plant grow lights. Even with LEDs, you need a pretty high power output for it to be worth anything, and power output isn't even the right metric. I'm far from an expert at it, but a couple of things to look out for is if it uses a USB port, it's junk. USB (specifically type a) cannot produce enough power to be remotely useful for plants, so all those weird no-name brands you see are just annoying purple lights. Good brands will tell you the wattage, the PAR, the brand of LED used, and so on.

  • Also, I'd distinguish between pointlessly expensive and quality.

    This is big RE: the kitchen knives. Science/engineering has figured out how to produce good steel, so it actually does not cost much to produce a very capable, good knife. Maybe you had to spend a lot for a good knife 200 years ago, but not now.

    I got a Mercer chef knife from a restaurant supply store years ago. Just looking it up, it costs <$25, and it's designed to be used all day by professionals. The often recommended victorinox fibrox is similar. They are easily sharpenable, and can do whatever you need.

    I also have a ~$200 chef knife I got as a gift. It's super nice, but the only real non-cosmetic differences are that the edges of the back of the blade are rounded over to make it a little more comfortable to hold while choking up on it, and it has a long warrantee that includes sharpening.

  • Yeah, if I recall what I had read about it, the part that was new was that oil well drilling technology was being applied that could really expand the types of ground it could be used in. I think the equipment has also gotten more compact, so it's easier to drill in smaller spaces to be able to install it in more existing houses. I don't think it's really been any technology breakthroughs, but more like improvements in the engineering of it

  • The main thing with heat pumps is that they obviously do heating and cooling. For most other systems, those two functions are separate, and can be sized appropriately.

    If you live in a climate that is mostly hot, with some cold days, you'd size to accommodate the hottest days. If you live in a cool/cold climate, where you'd only occasionally need cooling, you'd size for the coldest days. Going oversize is bad because it is inefficient and just doesn't work as well. It is often better to size the system to accommodate 99% (or whatever %) of days, and have a little backup heat and/or cooling capability for when the pump can't keep up than it is to oversize and run inefficiently most days.

    I lived in an apartment with a heatpump sized to handle the cold, and it kept me warm always with no trouble. It wasn't that cold of an environment, though. During the summer, it would kick on to cool the place, and it would cool very fast. That sounds good, but what happened is the temperature would be fine, but the humidity would be very high, and I would get condensation on my windows and mildew in my closets. I ended up having to increase the hysteresis of the system, so instead of letting the temperature rise a couple degrees above the set point and cooling a couple degrees below the set point, it had to swing much further. That made the system run long enough in one shot to decrease the humidity, but it basically made it so I'd have to either let the place get uncomfortably hot first, or cool it down to uncomfortably cool.

    If the system were smaller, maybe there would be a few days a year where I would have to wear a sweater inside, but I wouldn't have to worry about 150 days of too much humidity.

    The last thing to think about is air-source vs ground-source. Air source is basically a drop in for an air conditioner, but has a lower limit on temperature it will operate. That limit has gotten a lot lower over the years, but AFAIK, there are theoretical limits it can't beat, depending on the physics of the system and particular refrigerant. Ground source, aka geothermal, should work most places provided you have the space for it, and money to install it. Underground never gets cold enough that the physics of heat pumps aren't effective.

  • Windchill isn't relevant when it comes to how heat pumps work. It only effects how humans perceive the cold. Technically, I think wind would actually boost heating performance during winter, but I don't know by how much.

    Does you place require much cooling in the summer? I bet your system is probably sized for the winter more than the summer

  • Rebates on new cars are just handouts to the big corporations, anyway. I'd much prefer no blanket rebates on any cars in favor of a system that focused on getting discounts for the poor/working class. (Well, public transit and micromobility would be even better, but that's a different story).

    For anyone who thinks getting the % of EVs up is more important than being fair, you're wrong. It's more environmentally friendly to continue to drive an already owned ICE car till it can't be repaired to drivable condition anymore than it is to swap out a working ICE car for a new EV.

    The poor often don't get new cars until they are forced to (i.e, a crash or conplete breakdown), so you'll likely get more environmental (and social) bang for your buck by focusing public spending on them.

  • It's a plastic ball with a tiny hole in it. When you open the beer, the compressed gas, nitrogen and co2, sprays out of that hole into the beer, making it creamy and frothy. Guinness isn't meant to be carbonated like most beer, so it's never "foamy"