Jokes on them: I watch videos on my tablet. There’s no way that’s spying on me, right? Right?

I believe paying taxes is a fair tradeoff for living in a society. My concerns are that those taxes be applied fairly, even if that impacts me, and that they be used to improve society for its people, even if it costs me more.

I know people who are elderly or have lower income, I have kids in college, I have been between jobs in parts of my career, I’ve had major medical emergencies in my family …. And I have the empathy to want no one to go through that without assistance. I know the only way for people to “pick themselves up by their bootstraps” (I know, I know), is that when they fall off the tightrope they are caught before hitting the ground. I know the only way to break the cycle of poverty and crime is for kids to start with the same opportunities as their peers. I know that technology and science can be directed and accelerated by targeted investments. And yes, even if it costs me more. My successes are a product of my society and it is fair for them to feed back into society

GPS is knowledge of the city. Most cities publish detailed street map data that is immediately imported into gps maps. The car relies on the gps not just for navigating, but even deciding things like what lane. And of course gps’s have much more complete traffic data than your human taxi driver ever did.

While I don’t want to fanboi too much …… as long as nobody is able to do self driving, any approach has potential. Teslas approach has the huge advantage of starting with millions of potential vehicles and they will soon be able to crank out a quarter million robotaxis every year, whereas Waymo is not ready to scale up. They’re going all in with a potential approach and if it succeeds are in position to disrupt the industry.

It might not succeed, but no other company has succeeded yet either. The difference is they went all in, and they were willing to try something different than Internet wisdom

(Actually, as a big fan of what Tesla used to represent, this worries me about their future: Cybertruck flopped, robotaxi may not succeed for years, semi is a very conservative market they may not be able to break into or will be slow take up , and Optimus doesn’t yet have a market. They’re making some extremely risky moves at the same time their profit margins are under a lot of pressure. )

This is not news. It was always the plan to start using model y’s with drivers. Consider the timing - they are supposed to start offering the services now or soon, but are not yet building robotaxi.

Even in more urban areas …. My ex asked for help getting internet service in her new condo, and I found out the entire town has fiber, except her condo development. They have an exclusive contract with ComCast and she can’t do anything about it

That article has a pretty extreme example: guy on 21 acres atop a steep ridge who doesn’t have phone service or running water or probably any infrastructure. There’s going to be people you can’t reach with fiber and this may be one of them. We can argue about that when the other 99% has fast internet service

As a European those power draws listed sound absolutely absurd to me

Let me clarify - those are standard sized circuits, not actual draw. However the service has to be sized to handle it, and over-provisioning to account for it.a customer might install a stove that draws the full load and might use all the burners at once, and you have to account for typical usage patterns.

For sure it’s a well earned stereotype that Americans use more electricity than many other places. We tend to have bigger houses, more and bigger appliances. We not only don’t have that base charge per size of service but too some extent are charged less to use more: essentially we subsidize people electric resistive heat, who can pay a lower usage rate. We also don’t usually have time of use metering, although some do: my rate is the same whether I charge my car at night or at peak time. And of course our current leadership is intent on rolling back the efficiency standards we have.

Taking your heat pump dryer example, those are finally available here but tend to cost a lot more than a traditional dryer: savings on efficiency will never make back the extra purchase cost More importantly they’ve only been available in small sizes, not typical for houses, especially with families

That may be the entire difference, we don’t have that base cost. Our monthly bill is mainly the actual useage, itemized into generating cost, transfer cost, fees and taxes. There is usually an administrative fee but that’s fixed cost.

1. Sometimes breakers don’t trip, so there’s a small risk of fire
2. Restarting the whole house may have large initial loads as everything starts at once: more chance of it happening again or potentially damaging some appliances
3. Risk of heat damage to wiring with repeated trips, risk of broken connections from more frequent expansion from heat/cool cycles
4. Inconvenience, especially in the old days when you’d have to go through to set clocks. If while asleep you might not be awoken in time. If you weren’t home, maybe food gone bad
5. Occasional home health appliances are critical to keep going

Realistically it comes down to how conservative you are with over-provisioning. You might also expect it to handle the load for 50 years of growing usage. In the US we have the expectation of rarely to never tripping the main and when that happens it’s more likely an electrician call

There’s a standard

• https://ask-the-electrician.com/residential-electrical-load-calculation.html

Then you’d round up to the nearest service level. Realistically, I believe most recent-ish houses are 200a service now with larger ones or hot climates tending to 300a+

In my experience people get by with a 3x25A (17 kW available, matches approximately a 70A service in the US)

Wow, how do you do that?

Of course over-provisioning is a thing but that’s crazy. Maybe you have much smaller appliances or assume much lower usage, but 70a basically assumes 2 major appliances at a time, using close to max load, and with nothing else turned on.

Typical 240v major appliances

• level 2 EV charger: 50a
• stove: 50a
• central ac: 40a
• dryer: 40a
• heat pump: 50a+
• water heater: 50a

Of course you won’t use them all at once and they won’t usually be drawing their full rated load but I would not want to deal with being limited to one at a time so I can also turn on the lights or use the microwave

That can theoretically draw 280a, before you even count things like lights and small appliances. If you added up all possible circuits, you may be hitting 1000a theoretical in a modern house. I’m comfortable that My 200a service will handle any combination I might use, but 70a definitely not

By contrast I once lived in an apartment with 60a service. It did not have most of these large appliances but I frequently tripped the main with combinations like stove + window ac + microwave + lights

I believe dryer outlets are typically 30a@240v. That’s a nice step up than a standard outlet and simple math shows 4x the power of 15a@120v

If you have one in your garage, then you already have an outlet that can do faster charging than a standard outlet.

Just like you technically don’t need a 50a level 2 charger, you may not have to settle for a standard outlet. I bought a heavy duty extension cable with adapters for several different outlet types.

For me the smart charger was a key feature, and I never understood why that is never talked about. I have 200a service which was plenty for one fully powered charging service, but with the likelihood of electrification in upcoming years I was hesitant to have two. It was pretty clear I needed to prioritize smart charging so I’d have that possibility.

I can also configure it to only charge my allowed vehicles, should that ever become an issue

So far my family only has the one EV, so we only need the one charger. But I like that if we needed a second charger it could be on the same circuit and they could dynamically share the power to maximize charging

The way I explained it to my brother:

• technically just plug in to an existing outlet will work. Even if you didn’t keep up every day, you would get tot the weekend and make it up then
• but your garage already has a dryer outlet. Adapters are cheap and it will charge 4-5 times as fast
• but 50a level 2 charger is the same size as a stove outlet. Maybe a little longer wire run, and the “outlet” is more expensive, but it’s well worth the cost for the freedom, the flexibility, the convenience … and may even add to your house value

Agreed, and that headline is needlessly inflammatory . Looking at my EV mileage , I could almost certainly get away with just plugging into a standard outlet. However the level 2 charger means that even if I screw it up, I can be mostly charged in a couple of hours. It’s been really effective at helping me get over what range anxiety I had. It’s really helped keep car usage as a somewhat impulse thing, rather than a process: I’m ready to go anywhere anytime.

It also means I can charge multiple EVs, if I wanted to.

Up until that point hp had a stellar engineering reputation. They could have milked that for many more years, but it takes real talent to destroy that so quickly and completely

Counterintuitively, ms phones good reviews were also a good reason for ms to kill it. By the time ms got moving with phones, they were way behind and the market was already consolidating. They had a lot of inertia to overcome. They dumped tons of money into phones, exercised the famous ms marketing arm twisted, pulled out all of their usual tricks … and no one bought them. They ended up with phones that people liked, that got excellent reviews … and no one bought them. Even worse, phones were being sold on the strength of their app stores, and despite sinking tons more money persuading developers to port apps to windows phones, they could never get the critical mass of a sustaining ecosystem. It was pretty clear that even ms would not be able to overcome the consolidation of the market into only two

The first episode was definitely questionable but once the season got the family out of the way, the fan service out of the way, and focussed on Wednesday, it was much better.

It was definitely a good idea to focus on the one character independent of the family, to avoid conflicts with the original show

Yes, very cringey slang for going without protection. Originally from pregnancy or STDs, but now also from boredom. In my case, without the protection of a mask or leaving my wallet and phone at home. I even drove and parked in a local public garage, so would be traceable in several different ways