NoLinkToMe

> No excuse is good enough to justify that.

There was no excuse at all in my post, not sure what you're replying to.

It was only pointed out that despite failures in train systems, it's still safer than driving a car.

> One such rule might be, for instance, that following an electronic interlocking failure causing axle counter sections to be reset, meaning track vacancy cannot be proven, track sections must be swept by trains that may only run on sight at ~40km/h max.

All the rules you spoke of by the way were already in-place, but overruled. The protocol wasn't followed. The driver was supposed to go at 40, it's the protocol, but the rail operator instructed to continue at normal speed. When the train driver asked 'at normal speed?' the operator confirmed. The normal speed on that track is 200km/h by the way.

Per capita is pretty useless, you'd want to go per kilometer, which as I stated is still way safer for the train.

> the point is to not die while taking my daily commute

Exactly, which is why you need to take trains, not cars.

Everything else you said completely misconstrues the point, nobody is arguing for less train or car safety, or that this crash was fine. That's ridiculous.

Doing anything is a risk. The salient thing is relative risk. Even with record levels of train accidents it’s still the safest way to travel.

The bodycount sits around 100 this year for trains and 1775 last year for cars.

Even correcting for distance travelled it’s still way more safe.

But the activists are not the point. Animal rights activists are a minority, things change because the majority or a significant share of people backs them.

In this case this large group that backs banning horse drawn carriages is very likely eating industrially produced meat. That’s the inconsistency, 95% of Americans eat meat and a substantial share cause far greater inhumanity on animals through their diets which are completely optional (as in, they could vote with their mouth and stop it), than these horse drawn carriages which they want to ban.

Essentially this is simply what solar panels have done for ages, feed back electricity to the grid, sure it's not through a power outlet but essentially it connects to the grid in a similar way.

What's new is cheap and ubiquitous micro-inverters. Before it wasn't worth putting a $800 inverter on a small 2-panel 600 or 800 installation. Now with micro inverters being so cheap, this tech becomes viable. And with loads so limited (less than a microwave) the regulation is equally light to allow this convenient plug-in solution.

I mean a Toyota Yaris (first facelift) from 2016 for example sits around a ton (1070), and it's completely comfortable to drive on the highway.

And it's not some niche car, it's one of the most sold compact cars on the planet. And the 2026 versions are actually slightly lighter at 1025 and are very comfortable.

Of course comfort is up to interpretation, and as cars get better, our window of expectation moves, the cars my dad used to drive for 8 hours in a row for our summer vacations in the 1970s are considered ridiculously loud and cramped by today's standards. Just like Kings of the past had no tropical fruit in winter, while even unknown shitty corps hand them out for free to their unpaid interns at this point, our standards move.

But even with today's standards I think a modern Yaris at 1 ton (+2%) is completely fine for highway driving.

No not per se, but most people tend to stop using the switches.

The Hue basically just adds a switch inside the bulb, which can be remote controlled. The lamp's switch is still there, and functions as normal (turning on or off electricity to the bulb).

So your light is on when the lamp's switch + the hue's switch is on. It's off when either one is off.

So if your light is on, you can indeed walk to a lamp and turn the switch off to turn off the light. Or you can turn off the Hue bulb via your phone (or Philips Hue switches you can put anywhere in the house, they're basically bluetooth switches that run on a <$1 replaceable battery that lasts 2 years.

If you turn off your Hue light via your app, you can turn it back on later via the app, but not the light switch (as that's already on, but the bulb isn't).

And if you turn off your lamp via its switch, you can turn it back on later via the same switch, but not the app, as the bulb is already on but not getting power as the lamp's switch is off.

Especially with multiple people living in the house with different behaviors, that becomes annoying. So usually people choose to stop using the lamp switch and only use the Hue. You can of course hook-up the bulb to a Hue switch, so you can turn it on and off with both the switch and the app.

I'd want to add a bit of nuance to that, as bright lights hurt my eyes and induce headaches (sometimes migraines).

For that reason I really like overhead lights as: 1. You can easily fit a larger number of overhead lights (e.g. 6 overhead lights vs 2 eye-level task lights) 2. For equivalent lighting in a room say x lumens, each overhead light must be x/6, whereas the 2 eye-level lights would be x/3 lumens, much brighter. 3. Because the lights are overhead, they're not in my vision, yet light up the objects in my room.

I still have 5 eye-level lamps in my living room, but they supplement the overhead lights which always give a base amount of light, and allow the lamps to be less bright. Every time I turn off the overhead lights I see too little, and if I turn up my lamps to see better, it is too bright for the comfort of my eyes.

It's akin to driving: I like having a sun above me, when it's low in the sky before dusk and shining in my eyes, it sucks, even though objects are less bright and visible than midday, simply because of the positioning of the light vis-a-vis my eyes.

A regular household plug should be more than enough unless you want to use your home as a quick pit-stop between two long rides. (e.g. drive 150km from work to home, then drive 300km to your holiday home for the weekend an hour later).

Typical EVs nowadays get about 6 km per kWh, the average driver in the US drives about 54 km. A US home typically has 15A plugs, or 20A in the kitchen/garage. That's 1.8 - 2.4 kW. Even at 80% safe continuous charge, you'll be averaging 1.5 kW at minimum. So that's just 6 hours of daily charging at minimum.

If you have a garage and plug in when you get home, your car typically sits there from 8PM to 8AM for 12 hours. That's already double the time necessary to charge 100% of your driving at home, at the minimum charging speeds equivalent to a microwave or washing machine. And you'll typically have much more time with the car plugged in on weekends and home-work days.

A 5k upgrade to the electrical box might be a good idea, but it's definitely not necessary for most normal EV users.

As for ROI, a Corolla might get 20 km per liter, in Connecticut that's 6c per km. An EV even at the 29c per kWh is just 4.8c per km which is 20% cheaper. If you have some solar panels you can cut that figure by another 65%.

Not to mention the lower maintenance costs for EVs and the rebates various local governments give.

> The reality is, however, that consumers don't want EVs for a myriad of reasons and prefer hybrids.

I think this is completely true for the period 2010 - 2030.

But from 2030 onwards, it seems 4 things are structurally different in many markets: 1. energy per kilometer, improved about 30% (from about 5 km per kWh to about 6.5) 2. kwh of useable battery, increased by about 80% 3. chargers per person, increased by about 20x 4. Charge speed increased by 5x from about 50 kW to 250 kW

All these figures are approximate averages for normal EVs, the very low / very high end are different.

So we have more battery, which we use less of to drive, which we can charge faster, and at way more places.

The reality is that an average European for example drives about 30km per day. Take the base model Tesla 3, it has 575 km of range and can charge 285 km in 15 minutes. The base model. So for the average driver that's a ~15 minute charge, every 10 days. For the average person an EV makes more and more sense.

That's today, for a base model car, which is suffering from cheap and quality competition out of China that will be even better.

Cars that will be released in 3 years from now (>2030) are even more favorable. I honestly think the 'myriad of reasons to prefer a hybrid' is soon going to be an exception, not the rule, for newly purchased cars (of course the 2nd hand market is a different, delayed story). And compromising your car design won't let you compete with manufacturers that don't compromise and go fully EV.

If you consider the squeeze that regulators worldwide are going to be putting on gas the next decades, I think going full-EV on new models makes sense. Sure you can keep selling some ICE cars but developing entirely new ICE models, and mixing an EV into them?

Yeah very creepy, I'm afraid it'll be normalised in a few years, together with the cameras in our glasses.

I always knew this was coming eventually, with storage and compute getting so cheap, eventually every record can and then will be saved for security / convenience reasons. Every word uttered, every emotion shown on your face, every URL visited, every view you laid your eyes on.

I will miss the days that things could happen and be forgotten.

No doubt this stuff is all very useful, but I'd rather we skip this line of technology.

‘… but contrary to what a regular person may think (that this level of data gathering is unusual), privacy experts know that it’s not, it is standard practice’

This is correct, it's monetisation, not commissioning.

Facebook isn't paying to produce. It's paying for driving views and clicks on ads, regardless of how.

It's like if I hire a taxi driver to come to my house and drive me to the airport, and the taxi driver happens to run over a person in the process. It would be ridiculous to write 'he hired a driver to run over a person with a car'.

However, this also doesn't fully capture the reality of what is happening.

Let's say I routinely get a taxi, and taxi drivers routinely hit people because I happen to have a policy where I only pay them a large sum if they get to the airport impossibly fast, and the fastest way is to drive dangerously. Suppose I notice that every time I get a taxi, someone is run over because of my payment incentives. Suppose I then write a statement that says I will not pay the taxi if they hit a person. Suppose it keeps happening anyway, and I keep paying anyway. And suppose I benefit directly from this financially, because getting to the airport faster saves me money in missed flights.

Suppose I then do this on a worldwide scale involving many millions of people and create a market around this of tens of billions of dollars, suppose it's having a significant effect on public health and safety worldwide?

I think it's fair to then use more explicit language to hold me to account. I am financing death and destruction after all, even if technically I'm 'just getting a cab'.

Japan beats Dutch train frequencies, hence it's not unbeatable.

And if you include metro rail there are plenty of more frequent rail systems including again Japan but also China, France, UK, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea.

Yes it's a long standing meme, mostly on reddit.

Wasn't my experience, frequencies are fine but I don't think it's unbeatable at all. The default simulation is 50x speed by the way, perhaps that gave you the impression.

Here was mine, I thought it was very good. My prompt was: reinvigorating the desire for work after a sabbatical.

AI below ---- Six weeks into my sabbatical I was genuinely thriving.

Week seven I started narrating my own grocery runs in the style of David Attenborough.

By week nine I had developed a parasocial relationship with the pigeons outside my window. I named them. I had favorites. Gerald was getting too big for his boots and I resented him for it.

My therapist suggested I "find structure." My mother suggested I "get a grip." My accountant sent a single email that just said the word "savings" with no other context.

The thing that actually pulled me back wasn't a TED talk or a journaling prompt.

It was a documentary about competitive Scrabble players — specifically the 1999 North American Scrabble Championship — where a retired postal worker named Marlon Hill drove fourteen hours to compete, placed forty-third, and described it afterward as the best day of his adult life.

Forty-third.

He was beaming.

Something about that broke the spell. The sabbatical had convinced me that returning to work required a perfect reason. Marlon just needed a reason.

Gerald the pigeon watched me update my LinkedIn profile from the windowsill.

He looked unimpressed.

Good enough.

#Sabbatical #CareerReentry #WorkLifeBalance #ProfessionalDevelopment #BackToWork #MentalHealthAtWork #CareerBreak #Burnout #GrowthMindset #cringebot3000

This post was generated with tongue firmly in cheek by LinkedIn CringeBot 3000. ---

Tried it, produced a frighteningly good piece of text.

> Does the radiant heat not increase the room temperature, thus affecting the indoor temp sensor? C

Yes but the temperature of the air in your home is only one part of it. The other part is the temperature of the radiant heat.

I always understood that the temperature is measured in the shade, and that the difference between shade/sun on a sunny day can be very significant. A temperature of 22 degrees in the sun would feel like standing in the shade at 30 degrees.

Similarly in your home it could very well be that the air is your house is heated up to 22 degrees by the outside air and radiant heat, but additionally if you're under the radiant sun sitting next to a window it can feel much hotter.

Of course if the temperature meter itself is exposed to the radiant heat, it'll likely measure that directly. But mine for example is mounted under a table in a utility corner and gets virtually no radiant heat. I could mount it next to the window to get exposure to the radiant heat of the sun, but then if I'm sitting further away from the windows in the room I get no radiant heat but the sensor does, and it'll think the room is a lot hotter than the experience I'm having.

You have no clue about the armies of people online who think hydroponic home farms will be a serious and significant source of food then.

I think you missed the part where I said I built the same system and enjoyed it and learned a lot from it.

I love the idea of hydro/aquaponics and built a system as a student more than a decade ago. It’s a fun project.

But as a form of agriculture it’s a spectacularly bad idea at home.

This setup is about 1 square meter of NYC space, that’s about $18k. Meanwhile agricultural land goes for about $2/m2, or 9000x less. Then you spend $700 in parts to set up the 1 square meter, even if you put the system on cheap rural Kentucky land. Then you pay $170 a year to power the system for again, 1 square meter.

Meanwhile the 1 square meter produces like less than $100 in annual produce.

Green house farms like in the Netherlands have perfected this growing method and it’s quite effective. Home food production is a joke by comparison just like home anything production of a commodity product.

So fun DIY projects but as a serious way to grow food it’s terrible, not economical or sustainable. I tore down my project the same year I built it, taught me a lot but made no sense to continue.

Thank you both for sharing.

Could you also add your thoughts on whether you think a B1 level is a sensible requirement for permanent residence in any country?

Because that's what the post seems to boil down to, but you haven't opined on it (other than refusing to learn B1, which implies the answer somewhat).

B1 by the way is considered doable for a consistent parttime learner in 9 months, and 1-2 years for someone doing weekend studying. That's an average.

For a studious family with higher educational background making 200k a year (this is significantly above average in Germany), you've got both the IQ and the capital for tutoring to do better than average.

Seems like a sensible, useful, necessary and practical bar to set for permanent residence, to me.

There's some people that say having no airconditioning, no dishwasher, no elevator, no computer, no smartphone isn't as bad as it sounds.

And they're completely right, for them. And completely wrong, for others.

I'll never claim that it's not enough for you. And I agree also that 80% of anyone's trips can be done on just about any EV, even an old Zoe. The statistics are very clear on that, 80% of trips are short.

But you won't sell to the majority with that limitation. Just like 80% of the time my house has just 2 people in it (me and my gf), but if there was a local law that on homes in my street I could not have more than 2 people in the house (like visiting friends and family), I wouldn't have bought it. Because I don't buy it for '80% of the time', I buy it for 100% of the time.

The same goes for cars. People buy 5 seater cars even though the average car has 1.5 persons in it, for this very reason. Only 1% to 2% of cars have 2 seats, even though this is more than necessary for the average occupation in a car.

Exactly this, he should've just fixed this, or not written an article about it.

After the 'sensorium effect' (he should've used ancient greek for a +10 bonus to archaic intellectual points), he describes the 'knowledge-doing gap'. i.e. the AI reasons it needs to build X, logs this for 110 turns in a row, but doesn't do it. It doesn't actually specify why not, and whether it is again a limitation of his MCP implementation. If the AI articulates it must do it like the author says, but decides not to, either it doesn't think it must do it, or it does think it must but somehow can't technically execute its own decisions, it can't be anything else.

In fact in the context of 'advising the UK government', this 'knowledge-doing gap' I assume is a technical limitation, is entirely moot. For the cost of 0.00001% of the UK's government you could just hire a human being to execute that which the AI articulates. I'm curious what the results would be if he just did a manual execution of the AI's articulated actions would be.

The fact he doesn't go in to this but just keeps repeating examples of this makes it a pointless article.

Quite annoying to have to read a paragraph of text next to a moving image. I right-clicked every GIF and turned off 'loop'.

Beyond that reading an AI piece just feels like a waste of time. The text goes on and on without making a point, or getting to an actual learning. It just delineates the AI's limitations, doesn't go into whether these can be fixed, are innate, or what conclusions you can draw from it, over and over with example after example but no point.

Mostly it seems to keep repeating that the AI has the correct analysis but just doesn't execute. The AI knows to build X and logs this in each of its turns, yet doesn't build it. It's like there's some API connection missing between analysis and execution, and turns this into a 10 page article.

The article ends with some weird question to the AI asking if it enjoys the games, and you get some quasi-scifi mumbo jumbo answer back that looks very profound to say my mom, but is just silly to post if you know what the LLM is doing: predicting the next word. Honestly this is a poor article and I wish it wasn't posted.

I thought it was quite the opposite, too easy. Your ship recharges health. Also you can claim and island and heal there. It's so easy to the point it's actually boring, I got 10 kills before I quit, never got close to dying. Hell you can even claim an island, sit there in healing-mode, while shooting down enemy ships that don't heal...

A difficulty slider is a good idea though.

These aren't comparable situations.

For one it's a peace-time situation where strong-arming interventions are met with consequences, in this case China can stop supply of critical products to punish the Dutch. In a wartime situation such supply would've been stopped anyway, so there is nothing further to lose and everything to gain from an intervention, but such an intervention is only possible if the factory is on your soil.

Second, Nexperia is a legitimate Dutch company with Dutch expertise. The Chinese bought it. The Dutch don't need Chinese expertise to operate the local factory they built and sold to the Chinese.

Third, China is a global hegemon, South Korea isn't by comparison, and South Korea is a neighbour of China, the Netherlands isn't. China could pressure a battery factory in South Korea during a military conflict by military force, but in Western Europe that's a different story.