rm_dash_r_star @ rm_dash_r_star @lemm.ee

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2 yr. ago

Propaganda is alive and well in the USA too, especially if you consider it in the most liberal sense.

There's an incredible amount of advertising in the media telling me what I need to think about any issue you can imagine. Most people just ignore it, but it annoys the crap out of me. I'll make up own damn mind, thank you.

This is a modern development, you never saw that crap forty years ago. I'm old enough to remember the before time. Most of it I can avoid simply by not watching commercial TV and blocking ads on the internet. Though sometimes it squeaks through on the TV and it makes me want to throw a chair at it.

When I do have the misfortune of seeing that garbage it's usually on TV and has an Ad Council logo on it. Who are these people and how are they able to egregiously spend the large amounts of money it takes to repeat ads on TV like that. That's a lot of money consumed in a futile attempt to brainwash me through repetition.

They could take that same ad money and actually use it to provide relief for some important social issues, like starving children. Instead they'd rather use it to try and influence my opinion in a futile way. Man that is really fucked up when you think about it.

The big problem is the higher the energy density the greater the release of energy in a catastrophic failure. For example if you were to increase energy density ten fold, then the release of energy due to catastrophic damage to the battery would be ten fold. Materials aren't even in the consideration, it's going to be an explosion.

We'd certainly welcome an EV battery that weighs greatly less, but safety is always going to be a forefront issue only by the physics of energy storage.

Still there needs to be a lot of improvement. I think the weight issue is the outstanding one. Higher energy density and greater longevity would certainly be welcome, but I think safety will always be skirting the edge. It's not been a fast track toward these goals, but it's still come a good way. Unfortunately I expect lithium-ion technology to hit a wall sooner than later.

There are solutions for battery safety with Li-Ion battery types. It's just these cheap products are not using them. They use the cheapest batteries which also have the least safety. Then they use the cheapest charging components which again increases the hazard. Charging faults are a common cause of Li-Ion battery fires.

Safer Li-Ion battery types are commonly used, but may be heavier and/or more expensive. For example the safest Li-Ion battery is the lithium iron phosphate type (known as LiFePO4). It's quite safe against fire, but it's heavier and more expensive. Next safest is the lithium manganese iron phosphate type (known as LMFP). It's considerably safer and still has the weight advantage, but more expensive. That type is used a lot in cars and home energy solutions.

It globally affects anyone who buys products that don't meet safety standards. For example if you live in the EU, you can buy and ship products sourced from cheap labor markets through sites like Alibaba.

For products powered by Li-Ion batteries a good rule is always buy a trusted name brand. You can save money buying some cheap no-name brand, but then you may be putting yourself at risk for fire. And Li-Ion battery fires are especially nasty because they burn anaerobically, in other words they don't need oxygen to burn and are difficult to extinguish.

Remember those popular side-wheel scooters from China that burned down so many houses here in the USA? People stopped buying them because everyone became aware of what a fire hazard they are. You don't see them at all anymore.

China and a few other countries with cheap labor markets are really bad about consumer product safety. They just don't have any law enforcing safety standards. They use maximally cheap production resulting in unsafe products and there's no local legal framework to disallow it. People buy products from these markets without being aware of the hazards. They assume domestic safety standards and that's simply not the case.

New York city and state law can be intrusive and I consider them and California examples of what I call "nanny" states, but that's one I agree with. Upholding safety standards is one of the few situations where I favor regulation of imported products.

I don't see much of a difference between this and current technology. NASA has been using nuclear reactors in probes and rovers for quite some time. Presently deep space probes use nuclear reactors to generate electricity. Propulsion is produced by using electricity to accelerate ions. The ions come from gas stored in cold liquid form.

I don't see any breakthrough technology here. From what I can tell reading the article, it's just a lightly different way of creating propulsion, pressurizing the gas with heat instead of accelerating it with an electromagnetic field. Seems like a step back actually.

They transport cars with no gas in them. When I was going to school I used to work part time for a service center that prepped cars for the dealer after overseas transport. There were a lot of things that had to be done. The cars didn't even have oil in the engine.

They transport EV's with a 40% charge which is the industry standard storage charge for Li-Ion batteries. At storage charge a Li-Ion battery is greatly less likely to spontaneously combust due to a manufacturing defect. It can still happen, but a lot less of a chance. More likely an internal short will drain the battery to zero charge before catching fire.

In any case they don't know the cause for sure. They're stating an EV as a possible cause, but it could be anything at this point. They can't know the cause for sure without an investigation and that won't happen as long as it's burning. If the ship sinks there may be no investigation at all.

You'd think aerospace engineers would have it down to reflex that things need to be fail safe. It's ironic a system designed to make the plane safer actually crashed the plane. That one should get an award for world's worst engineering.

Like any accident it wasn't just one thing. The maker implemented a safety system that was not fault tolerant, then the airline neglected to train pilots how to deal with a failure of that system. In fact that particular airline didn't even know the system had been added to their planes. Bad engineering, communication, and training still happens in the industry, but really it's pretty amazing how safe these machines are overall.

Pilot error is still the cause of a majority of accidents. A big problem is bad pilots that don't pass regular exams can slip through the system because of management deficiencies. Like pilots it happens in the medical industry where bad doctors or nurses just get passed on from one hospital to the next. Employers fail to do proper checks on previous job performance.

how much CO2 is created making batteries.

That's actually an important consideration. I think there might be a failure to understand the overall environmental impact of forcing all cars to electric.

80% of power stations in the USA use fossil fuels to generate power. However power plants are much more efficient than IC engines. Powerplants can be as much as 50% efficient and an electric car can be as much as 80% efficient. End to end efficiency is around 40%, but considering 20% of power stations don't burn fuel let's make that 50% efficient.

So around half of the fuel consumed to power an electric car goes to waste. An IC powered car is around 20% efficient so 80% of the fuel consumed goes to waste. An electric car wastes less, but it's not an enormous amount, a waste of 50% versus 80%.

Then there's the environmental impact of producing and disposing of batteries. An electric car battery contains around a thousand pounds of materials and is industrially intensive to produce. I don't know the numbers as far as how much pollution is created in making batteries and how much environmental impact there is in materials, but were talking about a huge number of cars in the USA, around 300 million which equates to around 300 billion pounds of batteries. That's definitely going to leave a mark.

There's some other considerations like electric cars consume tires faster because they're heavier. Also an amount of pollution is created to refine gasoline which is not required for power plants that use coal or natural gas.

At this point I don't think there's a huge advantage in electric over gasoline in terms of environment impact. However gas will always present the problems it does at the level it does. As power generation relies less on fossil fuels and as battery tech improves the benefits could be dramatic. So it's more a matter of poising ourselves for future tech rather than an immediate fix.

I mean that’s all I can really do.

Unfortunately when my bank or other critical institution rejects Firefox for failure to use attestation, I can't even do that. I'll be forced to use Chrome. Firefox would have to adopt WEI to remain compatible. In that case I can use Firefox, but it would be the same as using Chrome.

I'd say the monopoly Google has with Chrome is way more threatening than in the early 2000's with MS and IE. That threat resulted in an anti-trust lawsuit, but not a peep from any government about the destruction Google is doing.

We’re doomed. We were always doomed.

I'm afraid that's always been the case because the mass majority just don't a give a shit. They'll happily conform to whatever the monopolies tell them to.

There might have be a time when Google tried not to be evil, but they've been Satin himself for a good number of years now. It just took them a while to realize the irony of their mission statement. It's funny I used to get mad at Microsoft for being evil, but they've got nothing on Google.

This is the problem for me. If my bank or other critical institution decides to refuse me access with Firefox, I can't use Firefox. This is the crux of the issue. Google is creating a browser monopoly with it's market dominance and attestation scheme.

MS tried to exert control in the early 2000's with its IE dominance and was thwarted by an anti-trust lawsuit. Google will probably skate on this one. Nowadays the consumer is only a resource to be plundered. The customer is shit.

Being a billionaire means using it to acquire more money which provides more power which provides more control. Shit floats to the top.

Let me fix that;

People in rural areas can have problems getting service because there has not been enough proper government subsidy to deploy infrastructure.

I mean if the feds just toss money at these providers they'll use it how they please. It should be a matter of government doing what it is necessary to deploy service as widely as possible. Without oversight it's just giving them free money.

I suppose now that the cell network is able to provide "hotspot" service that could be an out for subsidy, but it sure won't make a 100Mbps standard. On 4G the best my phone can do is 50Mbps when close to a tower, less when signal strength is lower. You can get much higher speeds on 5G, but it's even more affected by tower distance. You're not going to get that in a rural area, same infrastructure problem.

Big problem in the USA is infrastructure. Even cable service can be unavailable for people in rural areas. There have been situations where people had to co-op the cost to lay cable to their area. The cable companies won't spend the money to extend coverage without the return in customer numbers.

Fiber deployment has lagged cable by at least ten years, probably more. It's a bummer because fiber is greatly better. There are populated areas you still can't get fiber.

People in rural areas can have problems getting service because there has not been enough government subsidy to deploy infrastructure. In some rural areas the cell network is the only option for service, and not a good one either.

The Obama administration made a call to increase subsidies for the expansion of internet infrastructure, but nothing ever came of it. If the political climate had been the same when they proposed the interstate highway system, we'd all still be driving on dirt roads.

It's ironic the country that invented the internet has done such a poor job of deploying the infrastructure for it. Other countries are doing a greatly better job. So it doesn't do much good to increase the standards if it's not possible for them to apply in the first place.

Infrastructure is a big consideration that is sort of glossed over by governments enacting legislation to force the adoption of electric cars. When gas powered cars initially came about, law makers and manufactures had to go to some lengths to set up an infrastructure for fuel delivery and accessibility. It wasn't just about making the cars, a whole system had to be deployed.

Not much thought about infrastructure has gone into the adoption of electric cars. It could easily end up being a situation where there's too many cars and not enough support. The EU is already thinking ahead, but I think its likely the USA will get caught with their pants down.

For example California has already enacted legislation forcing all new cars to electric after 2035, but has not passed any legislation about infrastructure for them. There are over thirty million privately registered cars in California. You need places to charge all of them and support the power demand for it. The power grid in its current state would not be able to do it. They already have problems when existing demand gets too high. So it's not going to be a small issue by any means.

When charging an EV it seems the last 10% takes longer than the first 90

It has to do with a li-ion battery's charging curve. In the main phase of charging the charger runs in what's called constant current mode. State of charge and charge time are linearly proportional. When the battery gets to terminal voltage (about 90% charge) the charger runs in constant voltage mode where current falls off as the battery approaches full charge. You can save time and skip CV mode if you don't need that last 10%.

I'd love to have an electric car, but yeah, shortage of charging stations in the USA and also they're more expensive. Though what I'm paying in gasoline would offset that an amount. Also cheaper maintenance (other than replacing the battery). No problem for me on daily driving range, but doing a long trip with one would require some planning.

Great software, used it a lot. Also Handbrake.