No purpose, no goal. My entire life has been driven by: goto college, meet someone, get married, buy a house, have a kid, pay for college, save for retirement. Ok, done?

Or too early. Part of the flood of bad driving since pandemic is everyone seems to cut corners now. Whether crossing lanes or the into opposing traffic on a curve, having trouble with a simple turn, or changing lanes while turning

Maybe, but if you insist on an oversized vehicle and don’t have the skill to keep it in lane, then maybe a little inconvenience is ok

They’re less ugly than a jersey barrier and do less damage to cars that can’t stay in their lane while still protecting cyclists.

But yeah, visibility is key. I wonder if they are still visible in ten years. That’s my only objection to things like raised crossings: once the paint wears off or in snow they become a lot less visible and no longer as effective. I hate that both as a driver and a cyclist

Still time to inflate more. This season is still building up to the biggest and baddest. At the start of this season we hear names like Mythos and Glasswing but they don’t mean anything. Now we’ve learned they’re a new and faster way to discover vulnerabilities in software. The foreshadowing is building. We have the date, we know the upcoming catastrophe. In July, they will make public thousands of new software vulnerabilities. The internet will panic, software companies will spend billions on ai service to handle the damage. Anthropic will have a record IPO, followed by other AI companies. It’ll be YUGE. Stay tuned for the cliff hanger

I think Tennessee took a small step in the right direction: datacenters must pay for electrical system improvements they need. In theory no impact to the existing customers. However o believe they forgot the part about adhering to energy and pollution regulations (in case red states have any). They shouldn’t be allowed to set up coal burners for example.

Just like anything else, datacenters don’t have to be a bad thing. The bad part is our economic system letting them externalize the costs onto everyone else

Not all datacenters focus on ai. Even before ai, the US had many, many datacenters

Exactly! I actually started with sci fy, alien motherships releasing clouds of fighter as my inspiration. Then quickly headed to those weird blimp concepts.

Not only can modern technology solve the problems but suicide drones can be folded to pack more in and you don’t have to worry about them coming back, unlike manned fighters. Treat them more like ammunition, smart and slow ammunition

Very informative, thanks!

But I wasnt thinking carrier like a ship, but a flying carrier, a mother ship . A drone that can loiter all day above a battlefield, then release dozens of cheap drones when needed could make a real impact. At the same time you could put money into the drone that gets there, recons, loiters, and returns, while using the advantages of cheap short range suicide drones as your expendable “ammunition”.

Why not both? A cheap disposable drone will never have much range, loitering, reconnaissance, so needs help getting to the battlefield (unless it’s your own town as in Ukraine). But even an expensive long range drone can only go so far. Think of the logistics hub as the military base only a couple hundred miles from Target, wherever there is an ocean. The loitering drone be battlefield over site and response, then cheap suicide drones as the ammunition

Apple Watch 11

I mostly use it for convenience, so I don’t need to pull my phone out

• Apple Pay
• Weather
• Music controls
• timers. Lots of timers
• Reminders/notifications/texts
• random search questions
• occasionally phone calls

In theory I track

• exercise
• sleep

Feature I’m most interested in

• any health sensor

I upgraded from an Apple Watch 3 because I could no longer update in place, only reset and reinstall.

I’ll upgrade again when a compelling health sensor is added. Probably blood pressure

Yeah, let’s keep sanctioning them until that nasty Fidel Castro who nationalized all those businesses and drive former business owners out to Florida , dies. Well keep supporting our immigrant former business owners as long as Fidel lives! We will not show any mercy to Fidel, for harming the profits of our now citizens

Just in case, /s

Maybe, but many things are increasingly efficient. Maybe energy need for most things is plateauing and flat id goud enough. You’ll just need fusion for datacenters

I wonder if a drone “carrier” would be a reasonable idea. It would certainly make a good movie.

Think of a big expensive reusable drone like a Reaper, able to fly in from hundreds of miles away, then loiter all day just out of range. When it sees a target, instead of launching an expensive missile, launch drones to targets. This lets you carry more and cheaper weapons, while also taking advantage of high quality reconnaissance and all day loitering

I’ve never understood the gas station thing. Unless you’re along a highway, why would people stop? Charging does have different characteristics than refueling, so we shouldn’t expect the same behavior to be convenient. As hone charging and destination charging get more widespread, you never need to go to a local gas station again. Some of them may be worried about extinction, and they should be

Yeah, charging in apartments, HOAs, street parking is much less developed but it is making progress finally. Part of it is up to states to jumpstart, through building codes and incentives

I wouldn’t be able to … reliably maintain charge right now as a college student

While i’ve never seen actual data, the colleges I’ve visited were among the first “landlords” to add EV chargers. As a student, getting a campus parking pass is harder than finding charging once you do

Last year at family weekend for my youngest, I was annoyed at having to stay at a distant hotel, when those along campus had chargers

Ok, searching for the perfect hairy dude in a bikini in snow picture as a humorous reply, means I now have a browser history no one can ever see …… and I didnt find one that was funny

What do you think of the Slate truck? While I’m not interested in a truck, the simplification and lack of gadgets appeal to me enough that I may consider it anyway

Surprisingly it is. The trip planner on my car tries to keep you on the steep part of the charging curve and has never planned more than 20 minutes.

It’s actually kind of annoying since you want to do something while waiting but it’s not long enough

• one long stop I walked a couple times around Walmart but didn’t have time to shop
• another long stop the time was up before we found the food court so I had to stay longer
• I witnessed true southern hospitality where i tried to walk a couple blocks while waiting at a longer stop, but some business opened their gate to let me cut through

Yeah but it’s also easy to understand. Even knowing it’s overblown, I had some amount of range anxiety until I took a long road trip and found out how easy it was. It’s also a familiarity thing: people won’t lose the anxiety until they experience the reality

Haha, yeah very different situations ……

I had to pick my kid up from college and the itinerary takes about 60% of my battery round trip

• I try to remember to click the charge limit on my app from 80% to 100% the night before. Charging at home is wonderful, and this gives me cushion to take detours
• I try to charge at work since it’s free but there’s always a queue so I can’t always
• if my battery runs low (it did once, when I spent the weekend there playing tourist), there’s superchargers in that town and a few miles down both possible highways, plus multiple places on those highways.
• I’ve never seen a non-working Tesla supercharger, and I’ve never had to look for any other brand since they are so convenient and everywhere

Having to plan your trips around charging is annoying, there isn’t really much progress there.

Do people do this? Sure I was anxious when I first got my EV, but the reality is very different. I try to remember to click the charge limit on my app from the usual 80% to 100% the night before but that’s all the planning I ever do.

Do other cars not have this integrated into trip planning? When I use the GPS to set a route, it just automatically adds waypoints for charging when necessary. I never need to think about it. Maybe I haven’t gone rural enough yet, I don’t know

And trip planning has never called for more than 20 minutes at a supercharger, trying to keep me on the steep part of the charging curve.

Where’s the beef?