Keep in mind, there are announcements for new battery tech a few times a year. I have yet to see one actually released for public use since Li-Fe. For grid level storage, flow batteries do exist, but they are too heavy/large for vehicles. Nickel-Iron is another old tech that might be useful, but it's expensive and heavy.

To compare to computer tech, remember how we had new storage systems a few times a year for the past few decades? How many of them actually made it out of the lab?

I'm sure we'll get some new tech eventually, but there's no way to know what the time frame will be.

Easy to solve!! Just do all filling of vehicles in a zero-oxygen environment!!

Bonus, it helps solve over-population!

30% State of Charge is preferable to de-risk it as much as reasonable during transport.

I just went though a 1st Responder / FireFighter info course given by Tesla. Say what you will about their cars and the company; their remote training for rescue personnel is top notch, full of info, is free, and is given by an engineer who seriously knows what he's talking about. One of the demo's (not live, sadly) is the how State of Charge affects the battery when the case integrity is violated in Lithium ion batteries.
In short: 30% charge is completely boring. Smack the battery with a sledgehammer and you get a flattened battery and a whiff of smoke. That's it. Do the same test at 50%, and things get much more dramatic. Do it at 100% and you get a show. I'm sure this is on YouTube somewhere, but the difference even between 30 and 50% was surprising.

Love their website. Low-budget, anyone? The company is "Copy.Paste marketing". Yeah, I'd say they are.

What I really question about their product, or at the very least their designer: ya notice the firearm in the picture? Missing something: sights. Whomever put the website together didn't even realize the image they used wasn't of a properly assembled firearm.

They clearly didn't set up an ambidextrous safety on the weapon. Fuck you to the lefties, or weak-hand rightly, even when 1911-style pistols have had that for 40+ years.

The package also includes only 1 "Sentry magazine with rechargeable battery power source". 1 mag, and a specialty one at that. One of the very first "rules" of magazine-fed weapons is to have a spare magazine. Shit goes wrong with them. They don't mention magazine capacity anywhere, either.

This look very, very Mickey-mouse for a 2k USD weapon. For that much coin, there's a level of professionalism expected among firearms owners, advanced technology or not.

I was going to mod on this, but to explain the comment to the non-USA folks:

New Hampshire is a bit of an oddity in the USA, especially on the Eastern seaboard. The State Motto, literally written on every single vehicle license plate, is "Live Free or Die." Having relocated from another state, we thought that was a quaint saying, leftover from the Revolution.

It's not.

  NH does not require motorcycle helmets, vehicle insurance, seatbelts, has no income tax, sales tax, knife laws, or smoke detector laws. And we don't require a permit to carry a firearm either open or concealed (though, in practice, no one carries open). We are the only state in the USA that does not require car insurance (Ok, there's sort of a loophole in Virginia for this), you can ride in the bed of a pickup truck, etc... The State is very big on personal and town-level accountability. The view, in general, is that you let the people chose their own way, and there are consequences for the choices, too. It's not like a lot of states that nanny you. While Vermont is known for the libertarian streak, NH is a little more balanced, though some of that personality of our neighbor comes in.

Let you think it's the Wild West: It's also not. In our view, by the state staying out of most things and letting the people do as they see fit on a personal and town level, there is more sense of community than other places we've lived. About the tax structure: no sales/income tax, but the property taxes are "high" compared to the surrounding states. They're still not as as high as other states (New Jersey, New York, California).

Nope, Not BS:

http://dev-fal.balloontime.com...
"Due to global helium supply issues, some of our products contain a mixture of helium and air with not less than 80 percent helium and float standard latex balloons for 5-7 hours. Cartons are clearly marked."

This is party true, as they were putting ~20% air in the cylinders well before the helium shortage started. This is why (if you're in the 30s or 40s) you remember balloons at your birthday party when you were a kid still floating the next morning, whereas now they're on the floor by the end of the night. They've been doing this for well over a decade in consumer-grade, on-the-shelf cylinders. Commerical-grade balloon helium is a different game.

Where is the "+1 - Fucking Frightening" mod when you need it?

Disclaimer: IAAEM (I Am An Electron Microscopist). Or so it says on my business card.

The used market for SEM's and TEM's makes hobbyist ownership very possible. The instruments from the mid-90's were computer integrated, sure, running NT and later XP, but most of the manufacturers still had a 1970's mentality. Meaning: the instruments shipped with several dozen pounds of paper manuals, troubleshooting guides, full schematics, the boards were though-hole, etc.... These are very capable machines even nowadays, and if you're willing to put some time into one, most notably the vacuum systems, home ownership is really not outrageous. Almost all are 240v / 30A /1ph power, so no special phase conversion or odd voltages needed. They don't run dangerous gasses/oils; compressed nitrogen, cold water, and compressed air are about it, and you don't strictly need the nitrogen most of the time. Sure, some of the big TEM's need things like SF6 as a shielding gas, but those instruments are few and far between.

The cost is the crazy part. A SEM that's 500k USD new will go for 15k on eBay, still in working condition when the university/corporate entity sells it off. There just is no used market. When a local university sold their SEM off, it sold for 100 USD. That's not a typo. It went to a scrapyard as they figured it had some exotic metals in it that would be worth something. It was in working condition.

It is a nickname for the Boeing B-52, yes.
 
....if you were in public, it stands for Big Friendly Fellow.
 
....if you were not in public, it stands for Big Fat Fucker. :)

It's not just degradation, it's also advances in overall efficiency. I'm not sure where the break even would be for a large scale farm, but since there is a market, I figure they have done the math. So if they can replace a rack of panels with new units that are 10% more efficient, plus the 15-20% from wear, that might be worth it. Replacing them could be cheaper than expanding as well, as they can reuse the racks, wiring, inverters, etc.. There might have been subsidies in play as well, so if they also got tax incentives to upgrade, it might have pushed them to swap earlier than you might expect.

I think of it a bit like the off-lease server replacements businesses do. It likely ends up costing less overall to replace them, even if they work fine, than to spend on labor etc. repairing issues later. And they get newer, probably faster and more efficient gear with a warranty.

OPNsense.

Those who truly can't take it are a very low percentage. Those who choose not to are making a choice to take the risk. While we should care about them, that doesn't mean we should make the whole population suffer by destroying the economy. At this point, we have done what we can for the most vulnerable and if the unvaccinated are concerned still, they can take whatever precautions they like. The unable likely need to take precautions for loads of other diseases. Those making the choice have the info and can do the same.

Kids were never at significant risk for this disease, and have likely achieved herd immunity from exposure anyway, so they aren't relevant in this discussion. There is also news that at least some of the vaccines are expected to be available to children soon, so that becomes another option. Parents who think their children have some specific reason to be more concerned can do masks, distancing, etc..

I don't see how masks, as used by most people, can possibly be particularly helpful. Stuffed in pockets, touched constantly, etc.. Properly used N95s, sure, but how many people have the training, store them in a sterile way, and use them exactly one time before properly disposing of them, outside of a hospital? Even a small leak drops the effectiveness dramatically.

I see a lot of people say this sort of thing, but it doesn't add up. There is an absolute ton of land out there. And current homeowners can't do a thing about people building on it. What can be in short supply, is land IN CITIES. That isn't a huge deal, so long as you are willing to deal with utilities and such yourself. But not many people are. It turns out people like the convenience of the electrical grid and sewer lines. What actually happens, is developers want to build a huge complex right in the middle of a suburban neighborhood and are all shocked when the people that already live there have a problem with it. While some of that is related to property values, not all of it is. Where I live, there is a large development planned. The locals here were upset more about things like transportation issues than the buildings and people. We are in the corner of a valley and the area was built up without proper planning and road building. So traffic is insane already. Adding 2x the people in a small space is not going to help with that. There is also the issue of the power grid, water and sewer systems are not set up for that amount of use in a small area, and there was no visible plan to deal with those issues, the plan seems to be to dump the problem on the neighboring cities. I'm sure there is some NIMBYism there, but there are also some valid concerns.

As for price and supply and demand... Well, all those units were priced at about the existing going rate. And why wouldn't they be? Why would the developer take less than they could get? I have yet to see a new development result in prices going DOWN. I can see the argument that perhaps it should, but I've never seen it actually happen. Perhaps it would take a lot more units to do it, but then why would the builders do it? They have to know what would happen, or at least suspect. And that's leaving out the recent huge spike in prices for materials like lumber.

While I agree that good teachers can do those things, there aren't that many of them in my experience. I am happy to admit most will TRY, and succeed at least to some degree. But the rules above them often prevent even that. Those rules tend to prevent most of the better teachers from sticking around as well. At least according to family members that are/were teachers, including in math.

What happens in practice, is that everyone is held to the speed of the slowest student on any particular topic. If you happen to be good at that topic, it is insanely boring and demotivating. Until high school calculus, I was often at least a month ahead in the math book. Just doing all the problems and leaving the work pages folded in the book. There were a few teachers later that had a problem with me doing that for some reason. I ended up just zoning out most of the time in their classes. So long as I sort of looked busy.

Give more help to those that need it, 100% agree. But those who don't should be encouraged, not held back. They will likely need more help at some point in the future. At the very least, let them learn on their own if they are capable. If you can achieve that without accelerated class tracks, great. I don't care what you call them or how it's done. So long as it is done. I think it makes more sense past a certain point to have "honors" type classes that run an accelerated schedule for those students that are really quick at that subject, but I'm open to discussion on it. It's not about a "slow" class, it's about getting those who can manage it moving faster. And if there is a slower track, the idea should be to get students moved up to the normal track. It should almost never be a permanent thing. It would likely help if students didn't hear about how hard math is all the time. Much of that comes from other students though, so I'm not sure what can really be done there.

The first priority is to boot all this "equity" and "woke" garbage out of math classes entirely. It has no place there. Put it in with the religion and philosophy classes if you must have it. That said, if students are being put in a track based on race, that is a problem of the teachers and other staff. That is a ridiculous idea and math teachers should know better. If there are teachers doing that, they should be fired, immediately.

"As mentioned in posts below, nickel iron batteries can handle many thousands of cycles, and have the advantage of not using heavy metals."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://rarediseases.org/rare-...

Nickel is "better" than lead, but it's no angel.