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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 17th, 2023

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  • Even with the lithium mining, an EV will reach “pollution parity” with a comparable sized ICE vehicle anywhere from 6 months to 5 years on the road, largely depending on what is powering the electrical grid (coal fired electricity being the 5 year), with the average being 1-2 years. That means that an EV from 2023 on average has caused less total pollution than an ICE vehicle of the same age.

    On top of that, there has been significant progress made in recycling these batteries so that less lithium needs to be mined, as well as using other metals such as sodium, both sodium ion and sodium iron batteries are commercially available.


  • Software updates can be deployed regionally either based on carrier or by product SKU. If there are different SKUs for North American vs EU phones, which is almost universally the case because of differing regional requirements such as radio technology, target price points and so on. That means that phone model ‘X (NA)’ could have a different update schedule than ‘X (EU)’.

    Why? money, of course. There is a small cost to supporting a SKU for updates, even if it’s the same software that’s already being deployed to another SKU. That increases if the two SKUs have different processors (Samsung does this). On top of that, longer update schedules means people aren’t replacing their phones as often, which means theoretically less sales - though I find that claim dubious as many people replace their phones long before they lose software support.

    So yes, while it’s possible that a company might honour a 7 year update schedule outside of EU, it would be by their choice to do so.





  • possibly an attrition tactic? If they completely destroy the bridge, then Russia might just abandon it and transport stuff there via plane/boat instead. Damaging it just enough that it’s cheaper to fix than to set up a new supply chain, over and over, could be more costly in the long run, and regularly divert construction resources. Not to mention the impact that constantly disabling the bridge could have on Russian civilians in the area - i.e. “how is Ukraine always damaging this bridge?”

    Could also be psychological - having the bridge there and hitting it over and over and over sends a pretty clear message.



  • Think of it this way: You need to get out of a bad living situation, and you have $1000 that you can allocate to travel. If there’s public transit to an airport, you can easily take a flight to anywhere in the country, or even to another country, well within that budget. If you can get on a bus, you can make it at least a few states away. If you can get on a train, likely to any state on it’s network.

    If none of those are available, you have to buy a car or take taxis. Buying a car means buying gas and insurance, plus having a license, and the cost of registration. That $1000 might get you about as far as a full tank of gas will last, the license plate is traceable, and you have a much higher chance of getting hurt in an accident.

    Now consider that situation, and you are a pregnant woman in Mississippi, which has some of the most restrictive laws banning abortion. You live in an abusive household and want to leave, as well as end the pregnancy. With access to a bus and plane, you can get to anywhere in the US to have your abortion, likely with money to spare. If you only have a car and one tank of gas, you’re not going to make it to any state that would allow that abortion.












  • Probably analogous to command economy? Basically all industry is centrally planned, so it’s not company A decides it wants to make some widget and company b decides they want to use company A’s widget in their new product that they’ve independently decided to make. The government says we need <product> which needs <widget>, thus company A shall make <widget> and company B will use <widget> to make <product>.

    This is by no means an accurate representation of the whole system or an opinion on either, but just to give a simple idea of the difference.