frezik @ frezik @midwest.social

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5,366

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2 yr. ago

You could run basic brushless motor and BMC firmware on a 99 cent 8 bit Atmel ATMega 328. That code requires almost nothing to run. It's all the extra shit baked in that needs all sorts of processing power.

So what you're saying is, there's software.

Brushless DC motors are the most efficient way to make an EV. The controllers on those require software. Battery charge balancing also needs software; it's dangerous to just feed voltage to lipos.

You can't have anything like a modern EV without software of some kind. You can make a glorified golf cart, but its range/efficiency would be shit.

Removable batteries aren't going to happen. The extra mechanical parts needed to make it happen take up space that could be more battery. This isn't a couple of AA batts, here; the voltage and weight mean everything has to be chonky.

Doubly so for a company like Slate that wants to keep things cheap. They need to pick existing parts off the shelf as much as possible. Removable EV battery parts don't exist.

We put in a preorder for a Telo. It's more expensive, but the extra range alone makes it worthwhile.

My wife drives a Mini EV, which has around the same range as the base Slate. It's enough to get them to work, but I had to do a long range trip a while back and I'd never choose to do that again.

Hummer EV is a halo car. They're intended as "hey, look at me!" and nothing more. Its 0-60mph time is listed near an Ariel Fucking Atom. Which isn't just ridiculous on its face, but seems downright dangerous considering the weight and driver visibility of a Hummer.

Best headline I saw for it was "the EV for people who hate EVs".

2nd most electric pickup. There's limited competition. Just based on history, the F150 Lightning isn't likely to reliquish the title now that it has it.

Some day, car companies will figure out that they are software companies with a manufacturing arm.

It's also important to note that Teflon (PTFE) is used in a multitude of stuff, and there's no easy replacement. Got a 3D printer? The tube connecting the extruder motor to the hotend is probably PTFE.

The PTFE industry isn't going to collapse just because we all switch to different cooking pans.

Nothing like that in ARM. Even microcontrollers have enough RAM that nobody cares, I guess.

Or option 3: the whole airport system collapses.

I don't know the full details, but I'm not sure how being more organized in the Reagan era would have helped. If the boss is willing to fire everyone, then a strike doesn't matter anymore.

I guess you could do more to try to prevent scabs from coming in? It's already incredibly difficult to train up the scabs in this particular niche, and they were willing to go that route, anyway.

Unilever is spinning it off again.

The number of people willing to put up with the round trip latency to GEO is relatively small. They would only do it if there's no other option. There aren't enough customers to justify the kind of mass deployment Starlink needs to be profitable.

You can put lots of sats in a low orbit and get low latency, but then they either need to be replaced every few years (the kind of capital expenditure that companies are allergic to in the long run) or self-boosting (expensive, and still eventually need to be replaced). You can put them in a higher orbit, but latency goes up noticeably, you need even more sats for coverage, and it's more expensive to put them there. You can put them in GEO and use fewer sats, but latency goes through the roof. These are the options orbital mechanics and current technology allows.

If we had a space elevator or similarly cheap way to access space, then it becomes more viable. Note that while Falcon 9 and Starship potentially make it viable to build one of the space megastructure ideas that have been floating around for decades, it would also crater SpaceX's business model. Chemical rockets would build their own demise (at least for launching from Earth, and there are probably better technologies for scooting around the solar system once you're up there). Musk likely knows that and would fight it.

Or you can build fiber to peoples homes and leave satellites for Antarctica or the Himalayas or such. That works, too.

More data showing that Montana might look deep red, but will make a surprise progressive move from time to time.

If you're not too stuck on modern AAA titles, PC gaming is cheap. Possibly the cost of the electricity coming out of the wall.

I always said that about the PS2, or early model PS3s if you can get one for a reasonable price. Backwards compatibility galore.

And this coming release will be the first time I'm not going to bother about a new Nintendo console going back to the original. For context, I even like the Virtual Boy. Nintendo has done everything possible to make themselves unlikable.

Wouldn't that imply it's not a growing market anymore?

There was a time when I thought the 2016 Brexit referendum was going to be the dumbest political story of the year. Then the US said "hold my watery beer".

Hate the game, not the player. Any channel that doesn't do this shit is doomed to obscurity.