A pound of dead battery doesn't help me when I'm camping 10km from the nearest access to the power grid. (There are actually powerlines not even a kilometre from my favourite campsite, but those are going to be measured in kV, and so aren't really useful to me.)
Now, if I had enough solar panels in a mobile setup, probably folding out of a trailer, I could make it work, but solar panels are expensive.
If you're making your diesel from CO2 pulled from the air, pollution aspects don't really apply (at least, CO2 emission issues don't, there's still NOx, but that's what cat piss is for).
Problem is, converting atmospheric CO2 back into fuel makes the efficiency issue drastically worse. Maybe with enough solar panels and windmills, and use the Fischer–Tropsch process with the excess energy that the grid isn't consuming.
Of course, that would be for mobile fuel, if solar plants were going to do anything like that for later use generating electricity during peaks, making diesel is dumb; you'd want to use hydrogen or ammonia for in-place energy storage.
Vehicles making noise actually is good, for pedestrians' sake, but yeah ICE vehicles make far more than they need to. Some (? many? I'm not sure how standard it is) electric vehicles make a sort of beeping sound for that reason.
I'm hoping that as EVs become more common, conversion kits become a thing. Both straight-electric and PHEV; I would love to pull the oversized engine from my truck (it's a 4.0 in a Ranger, wtf, it doesn't need that kind of power) and replace it with a diesel-electric motor-battery-generator combo. With a half decent battery, I would be running on electric 95% of the time; for the other 5% (which is camping on rough trails, no I'm not renting a truck for it), there'd be the diesel generator backup
Ah. I'm generally skeptical of any plant-based 'green fuel' because they generally take up agricultural capacity that would otherwise be producing food
I used to frequent the same IRC channels as Randall; I always got the impression it's a case of "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life"
Title text: Theranos partnership: Sorry, we know, but we signed the contract back before all the stuff and the lawyers say we can’t back out, so just try to keep your finger away from the bottom of the phone.
There’s a very broad range of plausible arguments about how to read American law. Saying “my interpretation is that this violates the First Amendment” or “I think the better reading is that obstruction of an official proceeding requires violence or perjury” are not lies, even if they are bad arguments....
Earlier in the pandemic many news and magazine organizations would proudly write about how working from home always actually can lead to over working and being too “productive”. I am yet to collect some evidence on it but I think we remember a good amount about this....
xkcd #2948: Electric vs Gas ( xkcd.com )
Alt text:...
xkcd #2946: 1.2 Kilofives ( xkcd.com )
Alt text:...
xkcd #2919: Sitting in a Tree ( imgs.xkcd.com )
https://xkcd.com/2919/...
Lobster(ule) ( lemmy.world )
cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/13587870
A drugmaker’s feud with the DEA is exacerbating the ADHD meds crisis ( archive.is )
xkcd #2831: xkcd Phone Flip ( imgs.xkcd.com )
xkcd.com/2831/
xkcd #2824: Abstract Pickup ( imgs.xkcd.com )
xkcd.com/2824/
People Are Lying To You About The Trump Indictment ( popehat.substack.com )
There’s a very broad range of plausible arguments about how to read American law. Saying “my interpretation is that this violates the First Amendment” or “I think the better reading is that obstruction of an official proceeding requires violence or perjury” are not lies, even if they are bad arguments....
Almost all remote-work news is negative now but was positive in the beginning of the pandemic. Have you noticed this or am I going crazy?
Earlier in the pandemic many news and magazine organizations would proudly write about how working from home always actually can lead to over working and being too “productive”. I am yet to collect some evidence on it but I think we remember a good amount about this....