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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Hey nice to have ya!

    Friendly reminder that the Fediverse is awesome, and you have the power to control the content in your feed not only by which subs you subscribe to or instances you make an account on, but also which you can block - including specific users if it comes to that. Of course, instance admins can do the same, and if that happens to content you want to see, you can always make a new account on a different instance and see everything.

    It takes a little to understand the Fediverse structure, but imo it’s one of the best ways social media can be structured.




  • Michael Thackeray filed a patent under Argonne National Laboratory for the leading EV battery chemistry worldwide today, Lithium Nickel-Manganese-Cobalt Oxide (NMC), sometime around 2007-2008.

    The first cars with that specific technology started coming out in the US market in 2013/2014 IIRC, with EVs coming out before then basing their battery chemistry on NCA (Tesla) or LMO (Nissan Leaf & Chevy Volt).

    That’s a 5-7 year timeframe from laboratory to mass production.

    If you consider new technologies today like Samsung’s battery in this article, and make the not so unrealistic leap that we’re better at battery production today than in 2013/2014, it’s very possible that we see this technology hit the market in 5 years or less.

    Technology always improves. It’s CAPEX that hinders it, and I’m willing to bet that there are financial interests out there to keep the main battery chemistry NMC and secure steady profits.


  • EE here. Chargers put out power in units of kW, while batteries store energy in units of kWh or MJ or what have you. Otherwise, you’re absolutely correct.

    Typically Distributed Generation (DG) scale solar PV and battery storage sites are sized anywhere from 1 to 10 MW.

    At 1 MW, you could run (1) charger at a speed of 1 MW, or (2) at 500 kW, etc. Usually need just (1) transformer for that size installation too.

    At 10 MW, you can run each charger at 1 MW or so, but you’re also talking about probably (4-10) transformers @ $250k USD a pop. Installation prices go up the more you demand in power transfer.

    Then you need to consider that most DG projects need to pay for the upgrades to their downstream grid architecture, meaning reconducting or upsizing cable, breakers, switches, transformers, reactors, sensors, relays, etc.

    Not saying it’s impossible. You could co-locate and DC-couple solar PV or Wind parks next to charging points to get around some of the grid upgrades, but most people live in areas that require homes and grocery stores and other buildings than flat land meant for solar PV or Wind.

    When it comes down to it, it’s so much easier to just trickle charge your EV at night via arbitrage and when you’re sleeping so all of this infrastructure doesn’t have to been upgraded - and I’d argue upgraded needlessly because we need to save that copper and iron and materials for upgrades to the parts of the grid meant to interconnect renewables.

    But there is no silver bullet to these things so we’ll likely see more, larger chargers come through unless regulators stop it from happening.


  • I agree with all of this as an electrical engineer in the field. Base load is only base load because of the load profile of devices connected to the grid having either an on or off switch. Most of the time this means motors/HVACs, but the world of electronics is coming to that equipment just like how inverters have changed how we export solar PV and wind to the grid. VFDs, soft starters, and the like will make our industrial processes that much more efficient. We just need to spread awareness and ramp up implementation, just as much as for renewables themselves.







  • Yeah I thought OpenAI came out and said that they modeled the voice of a different actress, and they don’t want to share their identity out of a respect for privacy.

    It could just be a coincidence that Altman tweeted the image from Her, and people made the connection between the voice and ScarJo, especially since she did something extreme similar in that movie.

    Could be coincidental. Could not be. We don’t really have the evidence to say either way, but maybe ScarJo’s suit will affect change so that better rights are granted to people and their digital twins.






  • Charging at home is the way to go. You may be able to refinance your home if you haven’t paid it off, and rope in upgrades for new charging circuits.

    Plus, there are programs being developed - note none have been finalized - to allow EVs to give power back to the grid and so you could one day make money back from keeping your car plugged in over night. There are already time of use rates too for many markets in the US and EU. Plus there’s peace of mind knowing that your car will always be fully topped off every morning.

    As an electrical engineer that has studied the idea of Plug-in Hybrid EVs (PHEVs) and Battery EVs (BEVs), personally I always try to persuade people to look into PHEVs for personal and societal reasons, but even if you don’t go with Tesla for your BEV purchase I think it’s still worth it to go electric. Maybe consider the Chevy Bolt EUV, Nissan Leaf, or Volkswagen ID.4. On the PHEV side, there’s the Ford Escape Plug-in Hybrid and Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe. Lots of tax credits out there too for new ($7,500) and used ($4,000) so EVs are definitely still an opportunity!



  • Yeah it’s an interesting problem.

    If we go down the path of ideas in the mind and the representations we create and visualize in our mind’s eye, to forbid people from conceiving of others sexually means there really is no justification for conceiving of people generally.

    If we try to seek for a justification, where is that line drawn? What is sexual, and what is general? How do we enforce this, or at least how do we catch people in the act and shame them into stopping their behavior, especially if we don’t possess the capability of telepathy?

    What is harm? Is it purely physical, or also psychological? Is there a degree of harm that should be allowed, or that is inescapable despite our best intentions?

    The angle that you point out regarding writing things down about people in private can also go different ways. I write things down about my friends because my memory sucks sometimes and I like to keep info in my back pocket for when birthdays, holidays, or special occasions come. What if I collected information about people that I don’t know? What if I studied academics who died in the past to learn about their lives, like Ben Franklin? What if I investigated my neighbors by pointing cameras at their houses, or installing network sniffers or other devices to try to collect information on them? Does the degree of familiarity with those people I collect information about matter, or is the act wrong in and of itself? And do my intentions justify my actions, or do the consequences of said actions justify them?

    Obviously I think it’s a good thing that we as a society try to discourage collecting information on people who don’t want that information collected, but there is a portion of our society specifically allowed to do this: the state. What makes their status deserving of this power? Can this power be used for ill and good purposes? Is there a level of cross collection that can promote trust and collaboration between the state and its public, or even amongst the public itself? I would say that there is a level where if someone or some group knows enough about me, it gets creepy.

    Anyways, lots of questions and no real answers! I’d be interested in learning more about this subject, and I apologize if I steered the convo away from sexual harassment and violation. Consent extends to all parts of our lives, but sexual consent does seem to be a bigger problem given the evidence of this post. Looking forward to learning more!