nordsieck

> But chemical batteries cost a lot more and don't have lifespans of hundreds or thousands of years in seasonal storage scenarios.

Practically speaking, you're probably not going to get 1000s of years out of any storage method. There's just too much stuff that breaks down.

Heck - a lot of historic dams are in the low hundreds of years old and are experiencing serious problems.

IMO, the shorter lifespan of batteries isn't that big of a downside as long as the "bad" batteries can be mined for raw materials eventually.

> The correct way to write as a left handed person is to turn the page ninety degrees.

That is such a genius solution!

> What suggests that people are becoming less capable?

From the root level comment in this thread:

> Student test scores have worsened more than in other Scandinavian countries, and critics of the government say there are too many boondoggle tunnels and bridges to nowhere.

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> More importantly, what suggests that people are becoming less capable in an irreversible way? If people are less capable, but it is reversible, then wealth can fix it.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that this trend is irreversible.

But big trends like this can be difficult to turn around - if it were easy, the trend wouldn't have happened in the first place (or, at least, it wouldn't have been detectable).

> If people are less capable, but it is reversible, then wealth can fix it. As you said, you can use wealth to get other people to become more capable.

You can't just say "wealth will do x". That's really a semantic shortcut for saying "people will do x". But presumably people are already trying to improve the countries test scores. And people are already trying (at least to a certain extent) to spend government funds wisely. I'm not really sure how wealth will change what's currently occurring.

> What's the problem? Only poor people care about test scores as they imagine high test scores is how one can pull themselves out of being poor. When you are rich you can also do pointless things just for the fun of it like build bridges to nowhere. None of these are problems unless you try and look at it through a poor man's lens.

That may be a reasonable take at the level of an individual. But it's nonsense at the level of a country.

Wealth is the ability to get other people to do things. But if everyone is becoming less capable, then that's not a problem that wealth can fix.

Outsourcing may be a temporary solution to his problem, but I don't see it working well long term.

> It is not so much that used diamonds are worth less (although they might decline in value without provenance to prove they are natural or if they are chipped) but the huge markup on retail jewellery.

Precisely.

And on top of that some jewelry stores are worried that customers would consider a below wholesale offer to be insulting, so they often refuse to buy piece back at all.

> Perhaps other EV drivers can chime in but, if anything, I think I use my friction brakes less at highway speeds where, in general, you're not really supposed to do a lot of braking. I'd say, overall and regardless of speed, my friction brakes are really used only to bring the car to a complete stop or for emergency braking to avoid a potential accident.

Some people are very responsible with money - they have an emergency fund, contribute to their retirement fund, and don't carry a credit card balance.

Other people (who have a choice) spend to 0 every month, don't save, and have maxed out credit cards.

In the same way, some people drive very safely; they keep a responsible distance between them and the driver in front of them, and don't tend to speed much. I think this style of driving would naturally lead to what you say - less use of friction breaks in general, and especially at highway speeds.

And other people are constantly speeding, and tailgate the person in front of them when their path is blocked. For the people who drive this way, the greater acceleration of EVs just lets them drive that much more recklessly. Which ends up necessitating even more usage of friction brakes.

From what I've heard there's a countervailing effect for EVs, though - they end up generating more particulate pollution from tire wear because of greater vehicle weight and greater torque.

The number that I've seen bandied about is ~20% greater tire wear.

> How many frivilous assault allegations against male drivers are there? I've never heard of this happening personally.

It comes up from time to time if you watch Uber driver videos. There's a reason why many drivers have a camera that records the interior of the car: alcohol + entitlement can manifest in many ways.

Most commonly, passengers cancel the ride and expect to be driven to their destination anyways. But worse stuff happens from time to time.

> Hopefully hotels don't yet have an industry-wide "do not host" list without any appeal process...?

There are lots of small operators, so I doubt that there's some industry wide list.

But there are only a few large operators. I'd be shocked if some of them didn't share info.

For a while, I was optimistic that Apple would at least continue to release the SE every 3-ish years. I'm guessing they wanted to finally kill the fingerprint reader and other SE-specific features[1]. And maybe even the SE with its reduced price didn't sell that well.

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1. Yes, I understand that these features were present in other phones, but the SE was the last phone actively sold by Apple that had them

> I don't understand the purpose of consumers owning individual solar panels in a large array. How is that better than a single entity owning the whole array, and what function does the consumer provide?

I don't now if it's better, but it is different.

The benefit to the utility in this case is much lower capex - it's basically like the restaurant franchise model, but for power.

But like you imply, there's a tradeoff that can be made between capex and opex - in this case, the utility could own everything and consumers could pay for electricity on an ongoing basis. IMO, this model is superior due to reduced principal-agent problems.

> Don't want to deal with the logistics of lots of SKUs? Don't sell them. Trying to upsell people is a money move. Selling a SKU where the 80+gb OS is like 40% of the disk is a good SKU to cut.

This isn't a profitable move from Apple's perspective - they try to keep the base unit at about the same price across generations. That's what happened when they moved from 8 GB of ram to 16 GB.