Thevenin

Yeah, no. This is not about chargers or batteries or phones or cars. This study is about improved charge/discharge rates for supercapacitors.

Supercaps have very high flow rate, but extremely low capacity. Put them in a phone or a car and it would run very fast for five minutes. Supercaps are useful, don't get me wrong, but they're not batteries.

Very cool research from UC Boulder, but the journalism leans way too far into clickbait.

There appear to be some logical leaps and conclusion-shopping going on here, so I'm going to try to identify them systematically.

Capitalization of pronouns in the English language is used to denote divinity or royalty. If I refer to Jehovah with a small-h "he," I haven't misgendered him, I have blasphemed. I don't intentionally misgender people (even fictional ones), but I regularly blaspheme gods. I'm an atheist, it's what we do.

Being a man doesn't make one part of the patriarchy and doesn't confer superiority. Being divine ipso-facto makes you superior -- both socially and inherently. As I reject the notion that some people are inherently superior to all others, I blaspheme cult leaders who claim to be gods, demigods, or incarnations thereof, and I refuse to give reverence to prophets and monarchs who claim proximity to the divine. I believe this makes the world a better, less exploitative place.

I also see capitalized pronouns used (infrequently) in BDSM. Specifically, it is how some subs refer to their doms when in some extreme forms of 24/7 power exchange relationship. That's okay, but as with other BDSM activities, power exchange never includes people who didn't consent to be part of it, and consent is never obligatory. Doms who attempt to extend their authority beyond the confines of a scene are swiftly ridiculed or ostracized for consent violation.

So for anyone to make the claim that capitalized pronouns should be respected by everyone, they must first make the case that divinity is a gender. Second, they must make the case that associating with the divine does not denote inherent superiority. Third, they must make the case that compulsory use of capitalized pronouns is not compulsory submission that would violate consent.

Fashion accessories. For most fashion (not workwear), the expensive stuff is made from the same material and in the same factories as the cheap stuff, they just market it harder.

Body wash. It's watered-down soap. Just buy a bar of soap.

Amazon Prime. Amazon used to be space-age Sears. Now it's just Aliexpress. Fake reviews and bribery are rampant, dangerously nonfunctional products get top recommendations, used and broken products get resold as new while untouched returns get thrown into landfills, Amazon Basics violates IP, and they're putting ads in Prime Video now.

Microwaves and space heaters. The boxes may try to convince you otherwise, but the amount of heat these devices can deliver is bottlenecked by the power outlet. Every 1100W microwave is just as effective as the others. If you're paying more, it's for looks and for features you'll never use like popcorn mode.

Electronics, for most people. Most people won't get more use out of a new $1500 phone than a last-gen model from the same manufacturer for $500. Do you really want a $200 smart coffee maker, or a $20 dumb coffee maker with a $10 plug-in timer?

Software. Obligatory FOSS plug. I don't blame people for sticking to what's familiar, but if you have the time and energy to spare tinkering, most software out there has a good free or open-source equivalent these days. At least for personal use. In my use case, LibreOffice beats Microsoft Word, Photopea beats Photoshop, and Google Sheets beats Excel.

I always like to say everyone should have a zombie survival plan. Is there any possibility of zombies? No. But there's a lot of overlap between prepping for the exciting, fictional disaster and boring, real-world natural disasters.

• Having a fireaxe in your trunk might not let you chop off zombie heads, but it'll sure be useful for clearing road debris after a hurricane.
• Having a bug-out-bag with important documents and bottled water is also great for wildfire preparedness, even if that bag also has a spiky leather jacket in it.

I encourage people to have a civil war plan. Do I expect we'll have one? Not really, it wouldn't be a two-sided conflict. But we can expect to see domestic terrorism (see also: insurrection) and potentially police riots (the police enacting organized violence as they did in 2020). If you're ready for a civil war, you're ready for the more mundane breakdowns we're more likely to see.

• Knowing first aid and how to treat a gunshot wound might not find use on a battlefield, but it could easily save someone's life in a mass shooting or isolated hate crime.
• Having ad-hoc or peer-to-peer communications is useful during riots and power outages.
• If you can move ordinance discreetly across state lines, you'll probably find the skillset applies to moving red state refugees as well.
• Building a network of people you trust to band together when SHTF? Brother, you just invented a mutual aid network.

So yeah, if you feel anxious about the possibility of a civil war (or zombies), channel that energy into prepping for it, and you'll find that even if your predictions were wrong, your effort will not go to waste.

Solid point. A laptop battery is around 60Wh, and charging that in 1 minute would pull 3.6kW from the outlet, or roughly double what a US residential outlet can deliver.

Supercaps stay pretty cool under high current charging/discharging, but your laptop would have to be the size of a mini fridge.

The research paper itself was only talking about using the tech for wearable electronics, which tend to be tiny. The article probably made the cars-and-phones connection for SEO. Good tech, bad journalism.

A fork of Lemmy will have all of Lemmy’s problems but now you’re responsible for them instead.

Most of this web dev stuff is out of my area of expertise, but this? I felt this in my soul.

So let me get this straight. VW's US sales (EVs in particular) have failed to meet expectations because people don't like their overdependence on buggy, outsourced software.

...and VW's response is to outsource even more software while incorporating a technology base known for being unreliable.

Hydrogen works pretty well for aviation, though there are three main challenges they're still working on: size, materals, and fuel source.

Hydrogen is nice and lightweight, but the tanks and plumbing take up a lot of space, which cuts into cargo volume, basically limiting the range if you want to take passengers with you.

The second issue is that fuel cells currently require quite a lot of platinum, and the PEM electrolysis also requires a lot of PGMs and rare metals like Iridium. The material scientists are working on this, and I figure if they can take the cobalt out of batteries, they can take the platinum out of fuel cells.

The question that comes up the most when talking about hydrogen is where the hydrogen itself comes from. Right now, it's mostly made by steam methane reformation or similar fossil fuel processing, which is nearly as bad for the environment as burning the fossil fuel directly. But there are promising advances in renewable electrolysis (such as taking advantage of peak solar for "free" electricity) which are closing the gap between SMR and renewable H2. It'll never be as cheap as jet fuel, but it's at least economically feasible.

It doesn't change anything you said about copyright law, but current-gen AI is absolutely not "a virtual brain" that creates "art in the same rough and inexact way that we humans do it." What you are describing is called Artificial General Intelligence, and it simply does not exist yet.

Today's large language models (like ChatGPT) and diffusion models (like Stable Diffusion) are statistics machines. They copy down a huge amount of example material, process it, and use it to calculate the most statistically probable next word (or pixel), with a little noise thrown in so they don't make the same thing twice. This is why ChatGPT is so bad at math and Stable Diffusion is so bad at counting fingers -- they are not making any rational decisions about what they spit out. They're not striving to make the correct answer. They're just producing the most statistically average output given the input.

Current-gen AI isn't just viewing art, it's storing a digital copy of it on a hard drive. It doesn't create, it interpolates. In order to imitate a person't style, it must make a copy of that person's work; describing the style in words is insufficient. If human artists (and by extension, art teachers) lose their jobs, AI training sets stagnate, and everything they produce becomes repetitive and derivative.

None of this matters to copyright law, but it matters to how we as a society respond. We do not want art itself to become a lost art.

I'd believe it because I remember the same being true for TikTok.

I don't have the links on me right now, but I remember clearly that when tiktok was new, engineers trying to figure out what data it collected found that the app could recognize when it was being observed, and would "rewite" itself to evade detection.

They noted that they'd never seen this outside of sophisticated malware, and doubted that a social media company had the resources to write such a program.

You know, it's always bothered me that we put so much stock in debates.

The ability to verbally humiliate your opponents is not a good indicator of the ability to recognize good policy.

Exactly. Hertz vocally blames higher repair costs and long repair times for the Teslas that make up the bulk of their EV fleet. Other EV manufacturers don't share those problems.

we don’t have the grid capacity

For those not in the industry, "grid capacity" here doesn't refer to power generation, but power distribution. With renewables, generation is comparatively easy (storage notwithstanding). But getting the power where it needs to go is not. Right now, thanks to a grain-oriented steel squeeze, the lead time on transformers is longer than the commissioning time for an entire solar farm. Switchgear is also hard to get your hands on, especially with SF6 being phased out.

The good news is that these long lead times are caused by demand. Right now, utilities are racing to expand and reinforce the grid in preparation for the next 30 year's worth of EV demand, renewable storage/transmission, and distributed generation. Utilities are risk-averse by nature, and do not move without conviction, so it's rare and noteworthy to see this kind of industrial momentum.

Source: I design MV distribution equipment in the US.

Supremacist worldviews are intolerant and do not deserve tolerance. The question at hand is whether or not OP's assertions of gender-based divinity are tantamount to supremacist ideology, such as when a cult leader claims their followers (or perhaps descendants of an ancient lineage) are inherently superior.

Also, OP might just be a troll. Remember attack helicopters? Same vibes here.

Good luck, and I do not envy your responsibility in moderating this thread.

There are three forms of protest. Some are meant to evangelize. Some are meant to enact direct consequences. And some are meant to demonstrate the commitment of supporters.

The history books love to spotlight evangelism, but an effective protest movement needs all three. One is the carrot (MLK), one is the stick (Malcolm X), and one is an ultimatum -- an implicit show of force displaying how many people will wield that stick if the audience doesn't pay attention to the carrot (March on Washington).

While I question the effectiveness of making a traffic jam for people heading to Burning Man, the next time you see a climate protest, I want to encourage you to ask yourself what kind of protest it is, and who is its intended audience.

My husband (transmasc) found this an immediately responded, "Someone needs to tell Kristen about HRT right now."

I'm an engineer who works in an industrial environment, and I regularly have to repair or reprogram hazardous equipment. Here are a few takeaways I got from the descriptions of the Tesla incident:

• Lockout/tagout was not being respected. If you don't have a lock, yank the fuse and stick it in your pocket. But whatever you do, when working on a machine, you must maintain exclusive control so nobody activates it while you're inside the approach boundary.
• Why was the engineer in the approach boundary for a "software update?" I feel like I'm missing some important context there.
• Where were the hazard indicators? A hazardous device needs sound or light indicators, so nobody forgets they left it plugged in.
• Where was the machine guarding? If it can kill you, entering the hazardous area should shut the machine off with or without LOTO. I'm partial to interlocked gates, but cordons and light curtains are popular for a reason.
• If the machine guarding was disabled, where were the observers? The last time I activated a machine with the light curtains overriden, I had three other engineers on standby, one at the E-Stop, one with a rescue hook, and one just to watch.

But we know what it really is all about - selling more cars.

It isn't even about selling more cars at this point, it's about selling securities. Their market cap dwarfs their total sales. Their P/E ratio is 67.67x, meaning they could sell cars for 67 years and still not make as much money as their stocks are worth today.

The real product is the rising stock price. The factories are just a front.

Mass transit is the only way that is sustainable

EVs cut lifecycle emissions to about 45%. [UCS][ANL][MIT][IEA]

Public transit cuts lifecycle emissions to... about 45%. [IEA][AFDC][USDOT]

Neither is a magic bullet. Both get their asses kicked by bicyles. Both get better with increased passengers per vehicle. Both can be fueled with renewable energy for additional reduction. Both can be manufactured with renewable energy for additional reduction. Both take surprisingly equivalent amounts of steel, aluminum, and glass.

Public transit offers unique advantages from an urbanist perspective and the liveability of cities, but that's objectively different from sustainability.

Yeah, this matches my experience.

A supercapacitor buffer will cost around twice as much and deliver around 1/10th the watt-hours of a similarly-sized lead acid battery. And lead acid isn't exactly great to begin with.

Capacitors are useful, but only in applications where the total amount of energy stored is more-or-less unimportant.

Toyota's been promising that solid state batteries are just around the corner for about 13 years now. They keep bumping the goalposts back every few years.

Beegenerates. 😆 Beelinquents. Cowbees? (I'm joking here, but that's actually kinda not bad.)

I'll bee here all week.

China's system is technically communism in the same way the Bud Light is technically beer.

Short version: yes.

Long version: No lithium, no cobalt, usually no nickel, usually no manganese, and no graphite. I'm not sure what electrolytes will prove best, but multiple metal-oxide cathodes are viable (in addition to prussian-blue analogues), and the anode is just hard carbon (basically charcoal). The raw components are plentiful on every continent. Depending on chemistry, some of the steps are potentially toxic if mishandled (chromium oxide), but no one to my knowledge has raised any major red flags.

I found at least one of the posts, and you're right, that's not really what impressed them. It just stuck with me because I'm a hardware girl.

Disagree. Every state will characterize the violence it receives differently than the violence it enacts. Even a well-intended egalitarian state can never equivocate acts of violence against its officers with those done by its officers, because if the state fails to produce an immune response against one attack, it will soon find itself overwhelmed by more. The state has to treat vigilante justice and especially attacks against its officers as illegitimate on principle, or else it will cease to be.

States claim a monopoly on legitimate violence, and I'd even say that's what makes a state a state. If a given geographic region has a hundred different entities that can enact violence without each others' permission, you don't have a state, you have a hundred states.

You cannot ask officers of the state to equivocate violence by and against the state. That's not their job. That judgement is our job.

(You can also argue that the state shouldn't exist, but that's a different and far more interesting discussion than the one the article poses.)

"No frills" might be a bit gentle.

Judging by other companies with similar outcomes, these are likely products made to meet the minimum legal definition of "vehicle," and usually nonfunctional or minimally functional. The companies that built the "vehicles" often sell them to themselves (or rideshare subsidiaries), cashed in the Chinese tax credit, and immediately discard them. For an example of this in action, see the SEC filings and investigative articles around Kandi's fake sales figures. Also see Out of Spec's Kandi K27 review for what I mean when I say "nonfunctional."

The silver lining is that since the discarded EVs are basically made of tin foil with tiny batteries, it's not as bad of a waste of natural resources as you might expect.

It is true that LLMs and DPMs do not create, they interpolate -- that's why training data and curation of that data is so critical to begin with. Nevertheless, it is correct to say they are being used for "creative activities" as cheap and (in my opinion) unsustainable substitutes for human minds.

Nebula link, for those looking.

In addition, while some companies try to blame workwrs for recordable incidents, safety is always ultimately management's responsibility. Safety controls or procedures missing? That's management's fault. Workers disabling safety controls out of malice or hubris? Managment is at fault for hiring them. Workers so overworked and tired they don't notice mistakes while operating lethal equipment? Management. Workers having to choose between having a job and doing it safely? Management. Lack of safety culture? Management.

With power comes responsibility, and in modern corporations, management has all the power.

In no particular order:

Organized Christianity needs original sin.

If people believed could achieve righteousness on their own, they wouldn't need a church. To keep people perpetually indebted, organized Christianity needs people to feel not just that they did something wrong, but that they are something wrong. Enter the self-appointed apostle Paul (don't get me started on that guy), telling you that every natural desire you have is evidence of your sinful nature. This is why the most widespread denominations heavily regulate sexuality and identity.

Patriarchy needs masculine superiority to be immutable.

Patriarchy doesn't say men deserve authority because they do better, but because they are better. A man is assumed to have a set of masculine virtues suited for authority, and so to claim that authority, a patriarch just needs to show up and remind people he’s a man. But what if a man could lack one of those masculine virtues (such as aggression)? And what if a person who looks male isn’t, or vice-versa? The more things a man could be, the harder a patriarch has to work to prove they're the "right kind" of man by flaunting their masculinity (see also: truck balls). And for women who gain privileges by sucking up to the right patriarchs, every stripe on the rainbow flag is yet another thing they have to prove they’re not. So punching down on “deviants” isn’t just a way to reassert one’s position in the hierarchy, it’s also revenge against those “deviants” for stealing or diluting the patriarch’s claim to his birthright.

The heteros are upseteros.

Heterosexual people are very accustomed to society and commercialism catering to their sexuality. Objectification is rampant. People are so accustomed to sexualizing anything on two legs that the mere mention of homosexuality has them vividly visualizing the act. Even devout religious people. Especially devout religious people. And that can be unpleasant if you’re not into homosexuality, or trigger a self-loathing spiral if you are but don’t want to admit it. This is why so many homophobic people make exceptions for whichever kinds of queerness they like to see in their porn, and others make exceptions for every kind of queerness except the ones they like in porn.

Fascists need a scapegoat

Fascism is a form of authoritarian ethnocentric ultranationalism based in a social-darwinist backdrop that promises mythical palingenesis if the weak and treacherous are purged. Fascism has deep ties to religion and patriarchy, but it is uniquely reliant on having a scapegoat or “other” to cast as treacherous, powerful, and responsible for the nation’s failures – after all, if there’s no scapegoat, then there’s no reason to grant power to a fascist dictator. Critically, that scapegoat must not actually be powerful, or else purging them would be a self-defeating endeavor. While fascists regularly change their formula to avoid categorization, they almost invariably target sexual minorities thanks to their disenfranchisement by religion and patriarchy.

Self-determination is an act of rebellion.

I saved this for last so I could end on a less depressing note. If you believe mankind is inherently evil (see also: original sin), then you also believe that giving people the power of self-determination is dangerous. I believe that art is the battlefield upon which the wars for the identity of a nation are fought, and America in particular has a long history with this battle. In a 1787 letter to his nephew, Thomas Jefferson wrote that morality is a construct by and for society, and that individuals should ignore peer pressure and trust their instincts when choosing their moral and religious beliefs. Jefferson was a Unitarian, a denomination later sadly but predictably deemed heretical. In the mid/late 1800s, the American transcendentalists spat absolute fire like Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” (a guide to radical self-acceptance and being a bad boy sugar daddy), Thoreau’s “Walden” (a guide to rejecting capitalism and living in a cabin thanks to your sugar daddy) and “Civil Disobedience” (a guide to big dick energy which would later inspire Ghandi), and Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” (a guide to getting high in a field and realizing there’s nothing evil or gross about you). Many years later, this philosophy inspired works like Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” (a guide to punching me, specifically, right in the feels). The very concept that there’s nothing wrong with you and that only you get to decide who you are continues to be radical, dangerous, and completely unstoppable to this day.

In the USA, out of every economic sector, transportation creates the most GHG emissions [EPA1], and the majority of that is from passenger vehicles [EPA2]. Significant portions of the industrial sector's emissions come from refining automotive fuel [EPA3]. US total GHG emissions are down around 20% from their peak in 2005, but almost all of that has come from the electrical power sector [CBO1][CBO2]. Vehicular pollution has dramatic direct health impact on top of GHG emissions [HSPH].

Transport emissions are the long pole in the tent for the US. Solutions to that will be the focal point of US climate strategy for the next decade. Barring the demolition of the majority of US housing to re-establish walkability, our two best solutions are EVs and public transit.

EVs cut lifecycle emissions by about 55-60%. [UCS][ANL][MIT][ICCT][BNEF][CB][MIT][IEA]

Public transit cuts lifecycle emissions by... about 55-60%. [IEA][AFDC][USDOT]

Neither is a magic bullet. Both get their asses kicked by bicyles (and to a lesser degree, microcars). Both get better with increased passengers per vehicle. Both can be fueled with renewable energy for additional reduction. Both can be manufactured with renewable energy for additional reduction. Both take surprisingly equivalent amounts of raw resources and energy. EVs need batteries that are carbon-intensive under current practices, but rail needs large quantities of steel which is equally carbon-intensive under current practices.

There are a ton of factors I can barely touch on here, so here's a rapid-fire overview. Public transit offers unique advantages from an urbanist perspective and the liveability of cities [ST], but that's objectively different from sustainability. The US has such low average ridership/occupancy that our busses have more emissions per passenger mile than our cars [AFDC1][AFDC2], and that was before the pandemic -- it's even worse now [NCBI]. Low ridership can be partly attributed to the incompatibility of American suburbs with public transit -- which could be a major roadblock because 2/3rds of Americans own detatched homes [FRED], representing $52t [PRN] in middle-class wealth that they will likely defend with voting power. Climate solutions will need to maneuver around this voting bloc. I personally think individual EVs and intercity rail are complementary technologies -- the more cheap (short-ranged) EVs are out there, the more people will lean on public transit for long trips. Heavy rail gets way better efficiency per vehicle mile than light rail or commuter rail and I have no clue why [APTA][ORNL], but I'm not as impressed by light rail as I expected to be. Since public transit and personal transport leverage different raw resources and face different challenges to adoption, we will achieve the most rapid decarbonization if we do both at the same time.

TL;DR

This is a huge, huge question, and anything short of a dissertation would fail to answer it objectively. My best answer is that the most effective solutions to climate change are diverse, engaging multiple technologies in parallel. EVs are a piece of the puzzle, but not a one-size-fits-all solution.

The batteries for the cars in this article are made by Farasis Energy, which is an American company. Northvolt also has their sodium program, and Natron Energy is already making stationary backup batteries. China will not have a monopoly on this tech.

Gives me these kinda vibes.

2-3°C is the worst case if we stick to existing policy. If we flinch or back down on those policies, then the sky's the limit.

To answer the (probably rhetorical) question of what the hell the Biden administration is doing:

The good:

• The US is back in the Paris agreement.

• The IRA put $369b into renewables. While most people know about the individual tax credits for things like residential heat pumps, solar panels, and EVs, the bulk of this went into building the industry itself with ITC and PTC. For example, there are tax credits for everything from building solar inverters to hiring apprentices. There are also special allocations for underserved communities.

• The IIJA (formerly part of BBB, now in the BIL) put $1t into sustainability. Some highlights include $102b for passenger and freight rail, $91b for public transit, $38b for pedestrian/cyclist safety, and $7.5b for fleet EVs (school busses) and the charging for them. There are also allocations for underserved communities, particularly with local pollution cleanup.

• In late 2022, the EU commission president warned that the IRA and IIJA were not just effective, but so much more significant than any other nation's incentives that they were diverting investment from around the globe. They warned that the US could soon have a monopoly on green tech.

• Anecdotally, I work in the energy infrastructure industry, and I'm seeing utilities and cities reinforce their grids at a staggering pace, preparing for the engineering challenges of renewables. It feels like we're in the middle of something big, like people in charge are taking the problem seriously for the first time in my life and making concrete progress.

The bad:

• The Willow oil project. If fully utilized, this enormous drilling operation will increase US emissions by 4%. There is no reason for this move except a cynical vote grab.

• Lease Sale 259. These offshore drilling sites could increase US emissions by 0.7% to 8% depending who you ask. This is believed to be a deal made to secure sen. Mancin's vote on the IRA.

• LNG and oil exports to Asia and the EU. This one's hard for me to quantify.

• Mountain Valley Pipeline. This pipeline should increase emissions by 0.2%. MVP claims it will offset the carbon, but... nah, they won't.

The ugly:

• Biden is all carrot, no stick. He believes that sustainable tech will naturally outcompete fossil fuels if provided enough of a head start. But you and I know fossil capital demands profit from the infrastructure it's built, and there's no way they'll play fair once they start noticing they're losing. We need to be prepared to make enemies.

• Getting leverage to force China to decarbonize is going to be an issue. The IRA and CHIPS act are repatriating industries specifically to reduce China's geopolitical influence, but they're also creating tension with US allies. Instead of focusing purely on domestic production, Biden needs to be building a trade alliance based on climate compliance. But that won't score votes.

• The electoral outlook ain't great. Only 31% of American adults think we should be phasing out fossil fuels completely. Only 37% think climate change should be a top priority. Fully 14% think climate change is a hoax, and another 26% think it's mostly natural. Laws that treat climate change like the existential threat it is simply don't have public support. I'd say this sounds like an outreach problem, but I'm absolutely the wrong person to ask about public outreach.

She doesn't have the bona fides for the presidency, but I'd love to see Katie Porter show up to a presidential debate carrying that whiteboard.

Nebula link for those interested.

We simply don’t have the time left anymore for any one solution to be expanded to the point it can solve the problem on its own, if that was ever possible to begin with.

This is such an important point. We are too late in the game to have the luxury of choosing a single sector or a single solution to pursue before the others. We need to hit all sectors with a diverse barrage of solutions, and we need to do it yesterday.

To quote UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, "In short, our world needs climate action on all fronts -- everything, everywhere, all at once."

Playing hardball.