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Comment Re:Infrastructure or the lack thereof (Score 1) 688

I expect it'll happen eventually as the markets adjust and more EV's are on the road. Right now it's not a big issue but once significant numbers of your potential renters have EV's it'll make sense to retrofit existing structures. Just like any other service there is a pivot point where it starts making economic sense for landowners to upgrade their properties. After all at some point electric, gas, cable, and indoor plumbing were all new services trying to enter the market.

Comment Re:Cost... and charging... (Score 1) 688

There are other factors than just the cost of the product being sold. I frequent a small gas station which barely has parking space to service 4 vehicles at a time. There really isn't much area they could expand into which would let them service enough vehicles through out the day to stay in business without charging a very high multiple of the cost of the product. Recharging stations would also likely have to start devoting space to waiting rooms or something to keep customers entertained.

I don't think those are insurmountable problems though. If most of the public was using EV's I expect we would have a lot less charging stations than gas stations. People driving locally will be charging at home most of the time. If enough people start buying EV's the people that own rental properties will start making sure they have a place to charge them. Hell I'd be surprised if parking structures didn't rapidly install chargers and rent those spaces at a premium.

In the end the only people that would likely need charging stations would be those that are passing through on long drives and locals who had an unusual day and had to drive more than usual. My family probably makes 3 to 5 stops at gas stations a month right now, excluding vacation driving. With EV's I would expect us to need a charging station maybe once a month, if at all depending on how much extra range the EV has.

Comment Re:The best BBQ I ever went to (Score 1) 149

What you had was roasted as you said, not BBQ'd. BBQ is low temperature cooking using combustion for the extra flavor and color. The reason you want a low temperature over a long time is so that most or all of the connective tissue has time to melt without the meat being over cooked and so dried out. With good enough prep you can get nearly the same result with roasting by tightly wrapping the meat so it doesn't dry out but then you really end up with steamed meat, and you miss out on the smoke flavoring.

All that said pig and ox roasts still make for delicious eating. It just isn't the same thing as BBQ. Although I suppose it should be noted that in different parts of the country BBQ has come to mean a lot of different things to different people. Some insist that it has to be beef, or pork and not the other. Some places it has to have a vinegar sauce, some insist that sauce makes it not BBQ. In some regions the entire hog has to be smoked as a whole, you can't cut it up or use only prime parts like ribs. And in some parts of the country any time you cook food on a grill, and I shudder to say this, they call it a BBQ.

Comment Re:Low-tech for a reason (Score 1) 149

There are actually already a lot of BBQ products out there much like this one. And the issue is the cost and output capacity. That and there is a good bit of high importance effort that goes into good BBQ outside of the smoker. You want consistency in the cuts of meat, but you'll never get perfection so you have to learn to work with it. The meat needs to be trimmed properly. Seasoning needs to be mixed and applied, whether it's a marinade, dry rub, mop sauce, or table sauce. You've gotta keep the meat as cool as possible without freezing it, before actually starting the smoke. It's kind of funny to me that they are going to all this effort when the actual smoking of the meat is the easiest part of the process. People have been making Ugly Drum Smokers for a long time now on the cheap. And even Charbroil makes water barrel smokers that can turn out amazingly tasty food for $40. I use a Pit Barrel Cooker myself now because it's just too easy and convenient to justify anything more complex.

It's kind of like that company that made a big money computerized sniper scope system when actually shooting the target is one of the easier parts of sniping. The hard part is everything up to and after that point.

Comment Re:Bolt will be cheaper than the average car (Score 1) 249

I get the feeling that it's the lumped together numbers for Cars, Trucks, and Vans that screws it all up. A few years ago when I was looking at minivans they seemed to start around $30k. Trucks, especially anything large enough to work out of is going to cost about the same or more. Comparing the cost of these economy class electrics with the prices for vans and trucks is just silly. What they should be compared to is cars with similiar capacity or features.

Comment Re:Amazing and dreadful, simultaneously (Score 1) 381

I really depends on what kind of contracting you are doing. If you are a an independant contractor I think there is a lot more room for decent pay and such than if you are working for a contractor company. I was on a contract once where I worked for a contractor who was being paid $156K a year for the slot I was filling for $60K. I didn't know the real numbers for the job until I was already signed up. and honestly at the time I was exstatic to be making so much money. But once I saw that contract going up in value by 3% or more per year and everyone was only get about 1% increases on their share of it, I realized what a scam being that type of contractor was. I realize that there are additional costs associated with employing a person, and those costs can often be close to their actual salary. But in my situation I knew that the contractors costs should be incredibly low by comparison because we worked on site and only used equipment provided by the customer. They essentially were only responsible for handling the payroll taxes, managing the health insurance options, and cutting my paycheck. For that they were taking the lions share. If I could have been an independant contractor and bid on that position I could have accepted 20% less for the slot and gotten nearly twice the pay.

Comment Re:Salaries should be limited (Score 2) 381

I'm too lazy to look up the laws for you but I believe s/he just means they don't have a different pay modifier for overtime. The Fed works that way, once you hit a certain salary level instead of getting time and a half or whatever you instead get an arbitrary hourly rate that isn't quite as much of a boost. And once your salary reaches the point that you make that much money an hour anyways then you just earn your normal rate of pay for those extra hours. The current overtime rate I believe is around $37 an hour.

Comment Re:The Q is: Where is the Break-Even Point ? (Score 1) 371

Some else have mentioned glass as not being worth recycling and prompted me to read up on the issue.

It appears that there is some monetary value in recycling glass. The problem is that it isn't a high value like for metals. The article I read mentioned $1,400 for a ton of Aluminum scrap, but the same weight of Cullet, which is crushed glass, was only worth $25 a ton at best and $0 at worst. Cullet from clear glass is worth the most at about $25, brown $15, and green mostly worthless. The trouble is that Cullet isn't able to magically transport its self to a buyer, so a recycler is stuck with the prospect of trying to ship a ton of product that is at best worth $25. So if you don't have a buyer close by you could easily spend more money transporting the Cullet than you could ever hope to be paid for it.

So the answer is, sometimes. If you have a buyer for your Cullet nearby and you can sell it to them cheaper than they can buy sand then it's profitable.

Comment Re:The real question is... (Score 1) 152

Which is exactly what I said. Instead of creating a new symbol to represent a different concept an old symbol is being co-opted. Those abstract algebras are edge cases, and if there is no indication that someone wants to speak in those terms the rest of us presume that the normal rules for arithmetic apply. And in many, possibly most cases, people aren't even aware that such non-standard uses are even possible.

Comment Re:Bruce Schneier the paranoid cryptographer (Score 1) 157

The group thing only raises the challenge a little. Now an enemy nation needs to recruit a group of people that work together instead of a lone individual. But that might also not be necessary depending on how tightly people work together. I seem to remember that Manning actually downloaded and burned the files he stole while working in an open area with other individuals interacting with him.

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