SECProto

> It's also not clear how quickly heat can be extracted from the bricks.

This is a commonly defined material property [1]. You would simply size your bricks to suit the situation - given same volume, more surface area means faster heat flow.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_conductivity

> The system clearly doesn't exist, or we'd see pictures and video of it.

> While this tech sounds nice for industrial processes, it's not anywhere near as practical for domestic heating, where geothermal heat pumps will be more efficient.

A family member had a heat storage system that used electricity to heat bricks about a decade ago. Worked great for home heating with time-of-day rates (especially with some solar to offset the peak rate daytime). And the purchase cost was very low, unlike any sort of ground source heat pump.

> Was anyone else expecting a story about actually going off the grid, you know, permanently?

Yep, I clicked on it looking for an article about pitfalls experienced by someone (or several someones) building off-grid housing. Oh well

> All of the metal at a scrap yard I know of amounts to less than half that weight, for reference.

That's not a great reference point when you're trying to visualize to pumped storage, as water is 1t/m3 while steel is up around 7 or 8. Also, 500t of steel at a scrapyard seems very small - 70m3?

A better reference might be a back yard pool, which might be in the 30-40t range - so like lifting 15 back yard pools the height of your house to power a tiny AC.

> In practice, it shouldn’t really matter if you have one or the other for the resulting city.

Oh but it absolutely does. If you live next to a park and your teenage kid want to put an ice cream shop in your garage to operate on summer afternoons, zoning laws prevent it. Anti nuisance laws would not. If you want to run a single-seat hair salon in your neighbourhood, so that the old folks who can't drive could still get their hair cut locally, zoning laws prohibit it.

Obviously if you want to open a commercial shipping and receiving warehouse in your garage, both regimes would prevent it.

> This is one of those statements which are true only if you live in California.

I definitely don't live in California.

> A 5-6 year old EV battery is unusable in winter at low-ish temperatures.

A brand new EV gets less range in winter. A used EV gets less range in winter. A used EV in winter gets less range still.

But that doesn't make it unusable, it just changes the use case. A 300km range (when new) EV might reliably get 50% range in winter, and 70% range when 6 years old, combining for 35% of new range when used and in winter - plenty of buffer for an average driver's commute, but wouldn't want to use it for a winter road trip.

> you lose range when parked

Same applies whether it's a new EV or a used. If I were driving an EV in the winter (gets to -20C here regularly), I'd definitely be looking to park somewhere I could plug in - which are pretty common. As is, I drive an ICE, and I have to turn my car on for a few minutes to warm the engine before I start driving (or else the windshield becomes an unusable fogged-up mess before the end of the block)

> you can be in real trouble if you’re stranded in a snowstorm.

Yes, monitoring weather is important regardless of your vehicle choice. The only time I've been stuck in a snowstorm was when knowingly going for a weekend camping trip when a blizzard was forecast. (the solution was bring extra food in case we got stuck)

> These issues are manageable with a new car of course!

Or used. It's all about anticipating a situation.

The price comments are all talking about the Tata Tiago. The link you sent is about the price of the Tata Nexon, which isn't relevant.

> The problem is that EV cars have a finite lifespan on the most expensive component of the car... the battery

Then they get less range, they don't die completely..

> It doesn't cost 9 lakhs. It costs 19 lakhs

The source[1] I found immediately showed a range from 8.5 to 11.8 lakh. If you're going to criticize someone for not providing facts and sources, you should do the same yourself.

[1] lot of ads warning https://auto.hindustantimes.com/auto/electric-vehicles/tata-...

Looks like you can take this new study, and use it to expand that section (and remove the unsourced generalization about research being low quality)

(edit: did so myself)

> At rush hour the traffic is about 50% commercial.

Note that the removal of the other 50% of traffic would easily shift the road from a traffic jam (Level of Service E or F) to a free-flowing road (LOS C). Even if only a fraction of the overall traffic is removed, traffic would easily get down to LOS D.

This is exactly why encouraging other modes of transportation (cycling, walking, bus, train, etc) actually causes big improvements for all road users.

It's interesting to watch. I was in Paris 10 years ago and it felt very car-centric/bike-hostile. Hopefully I'll get back in the next 5 and see how much it has changed.

> I am stunned by the "Navy has operated 5,000 years of reactors".

When they've been building them for 70 years and have over 200 nuclear powered vessels, it shouldn't be that surprising. For comparison, Ontario Power Generation has operated 787 years of nuclear reactors (343 combined at Pickering, 120 at Darlington, 324 at Bruce), each of which is at least 3.5 times larger than the biggest navy nuclear reactor. France has dramatically more than that.

Yes, SSDs would certainly help cut your power load down significantly! My system has 3 HDDs and it's a fairly small NAS compared to many - SSDs are prohibitively expensive once your storage needs get above a couple TBs.

What about the storage devices (the S in NAS)? My external HDD (just for reference) has an AC adaptor that outputs 12V at 1.5A, so that's another 18W. And most people who care enough about storage to have a NAS have multiple disks...

I'm not saying it isn't under 40W - as you note, if it's idling properly, it's pretty easy to have a NAS including disks under 10W idle. But the electricity cost is not negligible when you are running something 24/7. Even 10W24hr30day is 7.2kWh per month, and most places cant count on 8c/kWh electricity anymore.

> My RPi 4b runs on a 18W power supply, which would put it at 432Wh per day

Which would be 13 kWh per month. If we're comparing to monthly fees for cloud storage, it's important to look at the same time frame.

Their estimate of £10/month seems reasonable to me – that's basically 1 or 2 kWh of electricity per day (can't find current UK electricity rates). Is your NAS under 40W power draw?

> costs maybe pennies to run.

Pennies per hour, per day, or per month?

Canada might stand to gain on LNG? We have some import terminals but no export terminals[1]. We announced agreement on a project to export hydrogen to Germany [2]. But there are no means for us to export LNG to Europe in the short to medium term (and no one would want it anyway, in the medium to long term. LNG is expensive and emissions intensive, particularly with fugitive emissions [3]).

[1] https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/energy/energy-sources-distribution/n...

[2] https://www.canada.ca/en/natural-resources-canada/news/2022/...

[3] https://www.woodmac.com/news/opinion/do-fugitive-emissions-o...

One of the hosts of Undisclosed is Rabia Chaudry, who was a childhood friend of Adnan Syed. So really what you are asking here, is whether Ms Chaudry would still have created a podcast without the success of Serial - which is an unanswerable question (but I'd guess yes).

Right. In the two cities I have personal experience with, the tracks and/or sleepers are still there, just paved over. They are evident (and briefly verifiable) when potholes develop or roadwork excavations go into those areas.

Regardless of whether it's more suited to OSM or OHM, I just think it would be a neat feature to have on Open Railway Map.

While I appreciate the sentiment, the OSM wiki specifically says[1] "In locations where the railway has been replaced by new buildings and roads, the mapping of such features becomes out of scope for OpenStreetMap. Historical mapping can occur on Open Historical Map."

(Just checked - OHM doesn't seem to have any data whatsoever - present or historical. Maybe I don't know how to use the interface, but all I see is land/water borders)

[1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Demolished_Railway

level crossings are terrible for a number of reasons

Not everything! While it has rail lines, and abandoned rail lines, and surface light rail (streetcar/tram/trolley) lines, it is missing abandoned streetcar/trolley lines. (They existed in a lot of North American cities until the 40s-50s ish)

Despite that minor absence, the map you linked is clearly superior

Thanks for the clarification. The lowest GVWR among the f150s is about 6010 lbs which makes the IRS' apparently minimum weight make more sense.

> Curb weight is an irrelevant number, interesting only to calculate payload (which many ignore, albeit at their peril).

Not just their peril, also any road users or others nearby. If you've ever seen an overloaded pickup, they tend to drift around their lane as all the extra weight in the back reduces the steering authority on the front. Double so if it's pulling a badly loaded trailer that puts a lot of weight on the hitch

No, it's because I work in civil construction. "Tools" are brought to site on flatbed trailers or in panel vans. Foremen drive company branded pickups, they move smaller tools around site. Most crew drive their personal vehicles to site as described above, and the only gear they have is a safety vest, boots, and their lunch.

Note that a 6000lb minimum rules out the f150, the best selling vehicle in North America. Tax considerations can't be too top of mind.

I work construction. at least half of the people on the same jobs as me drive their personal trucks 80km to work, park them until the end of the day, and drive home. Not a single tool in them.

The other half drive sedans.

> a recreational activity

they specifically stated that they are a cyclist commuter - i.e. they are using their bike to get to/from work. This is at least as good a use of road space as most drivers.

edit: maybe OP misunderstood due to comment edits.

It sounds more like those are the only two airlines to provide a direct connection between the two airports. I recall flying between Hungary and Spain on Wizzair for a similar reason once

That's a great mapping tool! Yes, much of NYC would be the exception that proves the rule. However, if you turn on the R-1 to R-4 layers (which corresponds to single and two-family housing with off-street parking required for each unit), you see vast swathes of Queens highlighted in yellow, much of it within a very short walk to rail transit. Check how strict the requirements are for an R-4 Infill development (and then realize that that is much much easier than densification of any other NA city R zoning that I'm aware of)

We're working towards carbon neutral steel, but not there yet. Here's an article https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/th...