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Comment Re:Why not vertical instead ? (Score 1) 64

I don't understand why vertical-axis wind turbines are not more common

Because they are on the ground.

they take less horizontal space

That's outright false.

you can potentially stack shorter pieces as high as you want

Can you stack them high enough that they get into where the wind actually is? And if so, why not just put one windmill where the wind is?

(and use guy lines for stability)

So make them use more horizontal space?

I'm no expert so I guess they have good reason for this race to gigantism, but it seems a bit like the dinosaurs...

Obsolete and dead?

VAWTs make sense only on the tops of lonely hills.

Comment Re:Buried interesting point (Score 1) 24

No, because experience isn't a protected category. Age is, but only in certain cases mostly dealing with existing employees. Youth isn't protected at all:

https://www.eeoc.gov/age-discr...

"The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) forbids age discrimination against people who are age 40 or older. It does not protect workers under the age of 40, although some states have laws that protect younger workers from age discrimination. It is not illegal for an employer or other covered entity to favor an older worker over a younger one, even if both workers are age 40 or older."

Comment Re:Question (Score 1) 78

Either way, as far as Native American references go, I find the use by the Apache Foundation to be relatively benign.

On one hand, sure, it is that. On the other, it's still cultural appropriation, and the fact that it's using "apache" to refer to something which is "patchy" isn't positive either.

Comment Re:Must a turbine blade be INSIDE a cargo hold (Score 1) 64

A Skycrane, by contrast, has a maximum range of 370 km with no payload. Need to refuel? First you need to hover and detach your payload, then go over somewhere else to refuel, then re-hitch your payload and continue on.

Yes, but the airplane can't take things to their destinations. They have to deliver them to an airport, then the things need to be transported by truck.

Comment Re: Legal/illegal bikes (Score 1) 140

Class 1 and 2 e-bikes limit assist to 20 mph, not 15. You can ride them faster than that, but you have to provide the power. 20 mph is well above what most recreational cyclists can maintain on a flat course, so if these classes arenâ(TM)t fast enough to be safe, neither is a regular bike. The performance is well within what is possible for a fit cyclist for short times , so their performance envelope is suitable for sharing bike and mixed use infrastructure like rail trails.

Class 3 bikes can assist riders to 28 mph. This is elite rider territory. There is no regulatory requirement ti equip the bike to handle those speeds safely, eg hydraulic brakes with adequate size rotors. E-bikes in this class are far more likely to pose injury risks to others. I think it makes a lot of sense to treat them as mopeds, requiring a drivers license for example.

Comment Re: Legal/illegal bikes (Score 1) 140

Would treating them as mopeds be so bad?

What weâ(TM)re looking at is exactly what happened when gasoline cars started to become popular and created problems with deaths, injuries, and property damage. The answer to managing those problems and providing accountability was to make the vehicles display registration plates, require licensing of drivers, and enforcing minimum safety standards on cars. Iâ(TM)m not necessarily suggesting all these things should be done to e-bikes, but I donâ(TM)t see why they shouldnâ(TM)t be on the table.

I am a lifelong cyclist , over fifty years now, and in general I welcome e-bikes getting more people into light two wheel vehicles. But I see serious danger to both e-bike riders and the people around them. There are regulatory classes which limit the performance envelope of the vehicle, but class 3, allowing assist up to 28 mph, is far too powerful for a novice cyclist. Only the most athletic cyclists, like professional tour racers, can sustain speeds like that, but they have advanced bike handling skills and theyâ(TM)re doing it on bikes that weigh 1/5 of what complete novice novice e-bike riders are on. Plus the pros are on the best bikes money can buy. If you pay $1500 for an e-bike, youâ(TM)re getting about $1200 of battery and motor bolted onto $300 of bike.

Whatâ(TM)s worse, many e-bikes which have e-bike class stickers can be configured to ignore class performance restrictions, and you can have someone with no bike handling skills riding what in effect is an electric motorcycle with terrible brakes.

E-bike classification notwithstanding, thereâ(TM)s a continuum from electrified bicycles with performance roughly what is achievable by a casi recreational rider on one end, running all the way up to electric motorcycles. If there were only such a thing as a class 1 e-bike thereâ(TM)d be little need to build a regulatory system with registration and operator licensing. But you canâ(TM)t tell by glancing at a two wheel electric vehicle exactly where on the bike to motorcycle spectrum it falls; that depends on the motor specification and software settings. So as these things become more popular, I donâ(TM)t see any alternative to having a registration and inspection system for all of them, with regulatory categories and restrictions based on the weight and hardware performance limitations of the vehicle. Otherwise youâ(TM)ll have more of the worst case weâ(TM)re already seeing: preteen kids riding what are essentially electric motorcycles that weigh as much as they do because the parents think those things are âoebikesâ and therefore appropriate toys.

Comment Re:This isnt the win you think it is. (Score 1) 92

Building an EV burns about twice the carbon of making an ICE

So what?

Run the numbers: ramping up EV sales by 10%/year for a decade actually adds ~650 million tonnes of COe from manufacturing

This is bullshit. EVs reach CO2 parity well before 100,000 miles.

and maybe even questioning whether churning out this many new cars is sustainable at all

Yes, that's a valid thing to say. But EVs have lower lifetime emissions than ICEVs because an ICE is so pathetically inefficient. Yeah 40% is possible for some engines some of the time, but more of the time they are around 25%.

Comment Re:Just what I wanted to donate money for! NOT. (Score 1) 48

ChatGPT's explanation of its mistake was probably the most interesting part of the experiment, because it claimed to be trying to do the right thing--and yet the code failed miserably

That's the weird beauty of hallucination. It's hallucinating both the explanation and the code. It just turns out that there's no part of the explanation that we can't interpret with small changes in it, while there are parts of the code which must be just so to achieve the desired result.

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