blendo

I expect that hundreds of years ago there was also much gnashing of teeth about people overusing the new technology of literacy.

   GRAHAM> … It’s all because Ed Lee died

To believe that Ed Lee is some kind of political white knight instead of merely a Willie Brown/Gavin Newsom/London Breed/Kamala Harris machine politician seems historically naive, if not blindly ignorant.

Similar to Garry Tan in that.

A bit off topic, but do Apple Airpod Pro provide benefits to those with mild hearing loss?

I find Transparency mode with Conversation Awareness helps me hear words more clearly among groups of people, even though my hearing is fine.

“A pint’s a pound the world around”

Just to note, the USB 3.1 specification allows up to 240 Watts of 48 Volt, 5 Amp power.

Easily enough power for a monitor/TV, or for a small desktop computer.

https://audioxpress.com/news/usb-specification-revision-defi...

And Anker now makes the honkin’ big hubs you need for that: https://www.anker.com/products/a2342-240w-gan-charger

“US copyright law says the rights to characters can be held for 95 years.”

95 years ago was also about when the cinema and recording industries began.

Since then, I’ll argue, all recorded entertainment and theatrical performances have become “fixed” into our culture similar to how Plato, the Bible, and Shakespeare became cultural touchstones due to literacy and the printing press.

And now, as they enter the public domain, Mickey and others are becoming, for better or worse, an inescapable part of our common heritage.

When I was 62 I went to a 4 day week with a 20% pay cut.

What made it easier was backfilling the pay cut by beginning my 401k withdrawls, which you can do starting age 59 1/2.

Every Thursday evening I felt like I was on vacation!

Yes. I’ve also driven a rented Renault Twizy in San Francisco 15 years ago.

I found 25 mph to be dangerously slow when other vehicles are moving 30-40mph, like on Oak, Fell, upper Market, etc.

Not to mention its punishingly harsh ride.

We seem to define “cars” as vehicles that can:

1: Carry a 1,000 lb payload (4 people plus luggage) 2: At a highway speed of 75-80 mph 3: For a non-stop duration of at least 2 hours 4: With enough armor and safety features to probably keep you alive during a crash at 50-60 mph.

In that sense, a Honda Civic, a Tesla Model 3, and a 4 door pickup truck are all quite similar.

I think it’s a shame there’s no market for a 45 mph, 400 lb payload vehicle. They’d probably only need a curb weight of 1000-1200 lbs, and if electric, only a cheaper 15-20 kWh battery.

I’ve always thought Microsoft should embed it into Excel as a coequal language to VBA.

Finance programmers would go nuts!

I worked with a programmer who decided, one day, that all his joins were from now on going to be “natural joins”, and code like this started appearing:

select job_name, comp_name from jobs natural join companies;

This is a foot gun just waiting for someone to unsuspectingly add a new column to “jobs” with the same name as one already in “companies”, thereby silently breaking the query logic.

Sadly, the boss declined to rein in such shenanigans, and I left soon after.

But I’ve heard that birds, when flying, are mostly looking at the ground. Perhaps sound is a better way to alert them?

And the electric ones make short work of our many hills.

Yes, our 2021 Mazda lets you opt out in two ways.

1. Every time you start the car, you can navigate into the system menus to deactivate data collection and transmission.

2. Call customer support, give them your VIN, and follow up in a week or two. That’s what we did.

Alternatively, I suppose you could just pull the SIM card or its fuse.

I didn’t think Tesla used binocular (stereoscope) cameras.

These comments seem to confirm: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/does-tesla-have-bino...

By default, our Mazda CX-30’s “Telematics Control Unit” transmits vehicle history up to MazdaUSA every time you turn the engine off.

However, you can disable this by following a procedure explained in the owner’s manual (basically, you call Mazda and give them your VIN.)

I’ve also seen similar “opt-out” procedures listed in a Toyota GR86 owner’s manual.

I’d prefer to just pull the car’s SIM card to be absolutely sure :-)

Add heart rate, blood pressure, and blood oxygen level. Have the Apple Watch call 911 if things go pear-shaped.

Profit.

At my last job I took a 20% cut in pay to get a 4 day workweek. Every Thursday evening became “Yay! Three day weekend!”

Not unless they’re using magical 1000-3000 Wh/kg batteries. I expect practical transports will use electric motors with hybrid power. And as far as I know, the ONLY electric airplane currently for sale is the two-passenger Pipistrel Alpha Electro.

Can I suggest that smaller homes (700-1200 SF) are the “low hanging fruit” to reduce single family home construction costs?

Perhaps incentivize by basing property taxes on home size?

The worst developer I knew never wrote things down: requirements, comments, test plans, and bug reports were only communicated verbally. Even worse, their boss had the same mental block about putting anything in writing.

Oh, and to echo another comment here, they just LOVED cyclomatic complexity.

I try and imagine the state before the Sacramento, Feather, American, and San Joaquin rivers were dammed, and before 95% of the salmon runs were destroyed.

With judicious planning, we could probably restore much of the original (aboriginal) ecosystems by 2200 or so, but I don’t see how we could do that with more than a few million people.

Kids, get on it :-)

As a wild guess: 2 hrs (500 nm at 250 kts)

500 kW (2x250 kW motors)

So 500 kW for 2 hours, or 1 MWh. Perhaps battery density is 250 Wh/kg, so around 4000 kg for batteries alone.

Perhaps serial hybrid would makes more sense?

“It undermines one of the sport’s most valuable qualities, namely that the outcome, the title, the victory, ...”

This seems less about the integrity of running, and more about the integrity of winning.

A study with newer data discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26686969

Fig. 8 shows the 2019 energy density is around 725-750 Wh/liter, which is similar to 2013.

At the risk of conflating Wh/l and Wh/kg, the 85 kWh Tesla Model S from 2013 weighed about 4600 lbs, while the 100 kWh 2021 model weighs a proportionate (yet still porky) 4900 lbs.

I do understand the modern 80 kWh Model 3 weighs a relatively svelte 4100 lbs. When should we expect a 3500 lb version?

Two additional reasons I’ll submit:

1 The American Medical Association has long opposed it, and that org still maintains a halo of virtue

2 Democrats want it, so many Republicans reflexively oppose it

With the new US stimulus bill, COBRA is free through September, _IF_ you leave involuntarily: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/11/the-government-will-fully-co...

Also, under the same bill, ACA Silver plans are capped at 8.5% of income.

Personally, we’ve been happy with Kaiser, so I’ll ask for more details.

Was it that Kaiser wouldn’t refer you? Or did you want a second opinion?

“I think what happens to most people who work at Facebook—and definitely has been my story—is that there’s no boundary between Facebook and me,” he says. “It’s extremely personal.”