> That said, if the water is simply being evaporated for cooling, then it's still part of the natural water cycle - holistically, no significant loss, right?

On a global scale maybe, but on a local scale this can be devastating. Just because the water will rain back down somewhere eventually does not help the people who need the water here and now. Water that evaporates is functionally gone forever.

> then dumping the water down the drain to flow out to wherever it'd be significantly worse

That depends entirely on where the water goes once it's released. If it goes back to where it would normally have gone, such as a river, that's not bad at all.

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>Already, the battery are too depleted to be used for what they were intended

By definition, yes, though it's ultimately up to the battery/car owner to decide if the battery is no longer suitable for their needs.

> what happens when they can't even shore up the power grid by a significant amount

Then they get recycled. It'll take at least another 15+ years to reach that point, meanwhile they are doing their new job to an acceptable level of performance. Again, recycling was never off the table and was always the ultimate fate, but the point is to get the most use out of them (and the manufacturing energy embodied in them) before recycling. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

> If they were perfectly usable--they'd still be in the cabs.

The performance criteria for what is "usable" as vehicle batteries is not the same as the criteria for "usable" as grid storage batteries. There is a large gap between those two that a lot of value can be extracted from.
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There's plenty of thought given to recycling; Lithium battery recycling is a steadily growing industrial sector.

But you know what's better than recycling? Not throwing out something that's still perfectly usable.

Not sure if you're old enough to remember, but the original slogan was "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle." The words were in that order for a reason. This would be the "Reuse" part, by the way.
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> if cells can be replaced that easily, why isn't it being done for Cybercabs?

Well I think the most likely reason is Cybercabs don't exist yet. Not that facts or details mean much to you I suppose...

Or did you mean robo taxis? Well, we don't actually know *how* the used batteries are being repurposed. It's entirely possible they are harvesting the sub-assemblies, capacity-matching and repackaging them with new BMS controls. Or they might be using the entire EV pack as-is. The Jaguar I-Pace packs are 90kwh each and consist of 36 subassemblies each 42v/60Ah nominal. IMO it would make a lot of sense to independently test modules, regroup them based on health, and build higher voltage packs suitable for grid storage use.

We also don't know if Waymo ever services their vehicles with pack refurbishing or not.

The fleet is also kinda old; Some of those cars are pushing 10 years of taxi service and 200K+ miles of abusive charging. They suspiciously do not say how many miles the vehicles have, how degraded the battery packs are, or what the capacity threshold is for them. It's possible they are writing off the vehicles early for the sake of upgrading; they get a tax break for depreciation, new equipment with the newest tech, and some good PR.
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> Well they failed then. They certainly don't have a corner on the market!

Never said they did. I just said it's their strategy.. which it very clearly is.

> While Deere is the most egregious at DRMing everything, all the major brands do it to one degree or another.

Yes, because that's the strategy. Buy into a product ecosystem, lock them in, fleece them for as much as possible. It's a very popular strategy because it works.
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> a) The motivation under capitalism is maximizing profits, not revenue.

Profits and revenue are functionally the same for the purpose of most discussions, however yes it's a valid and often employed tactic to charge the same price while providing less value, which increases profits at the same level of revenue.

> Consider the scenario where you capture all of your customers' surplus...

From John Deere's perspective, the optimal strategy is to corner the market on farm equipment that are strictly necessary for society as we know it to continue to exist, locking out all competition from all related revenue streams. From supplying the machines, to supplying the parts, to making sure they get a cut of any money to be made servicing the machines. They are not trying to minimize the profits of others, that's just the natural consequence of elbowing everyone else out of the market.

> Enlightened self-interest drives you to keep your customers and suppliers profitable.

This logic breaks down when demand is highly inelastic. If your customers need what you are selling, then there is less incentive to keep them profitable and really only the incentive to allow them to continue to exist. Oh, can't afford my fees? Well too bad, go into debt or die. Turns out most people will choose debt before death.
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> Capitalism is all about the free market.

This is a lie that Capitalists tell to make Capitalism sound less evil.

Capitalism is about making money. It's right there in the name. The idea is that a free market would enable those who are best at making money to make the most money, but you know what's even more effective at making money than investing in a better product for a better price? Investing in kneecapping your competition and creating a captured market where people are functionally *forced* to buy your product because there's no alternative.

Monopolies and regulatory capture are the natural conclusion of a capitalist system, unless the "free market" is enforced by actively preventing these things through force of law... oh, oops! Guess that's not a free market any more either! Turns out a free market economy is a fucking fairy tale!

> are not a capitalist. You are at best a plutocrat.

These are not mutually exclusive, and in fact the natural conclusion of capitalism is the creation of a plutocracy. To suggest otherwise is paradoxical; capitalism is about increasing wealth and plutocracy is about leveraging wealth.... to make even more money.

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If "The vibrations can be heard in the entire home" then it's still wrong. It maybe the wrong type somehow, but I'm thinking it's probably way oversized and so working too hard to push way too much water through the pipes. If the run is really 300ft (you must live in a huge house...) then maybe the pipe itself is undersized or so poorly insulated they need to keep the flow unreasonably high. in any case, sorry for your situation but it ain't right.

Standard controls for domestic recirc is a timer and return temp thermostat. Pump only runs during set times and only if the water in the return pipe near the water heater is below a set temp. so it'd be cycling on and off throughout the day.

If your house is really that large then I'd have recommended what I usually do for light commercial buildings and retrofits; a demand recirc system. This is really close to what you describe with the motion control sensors etc. in that the recirc only runs when there is anticipation of hot water demand, but typically there is a tiny pump near each point of use which uses the cold water supply as the recirc return until it senses the water is getting warm. This also eliminates the need for a third recirc line, which is great for retrofits. If at some point in the future you decide to try something again, it's a strategy worth considering.
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If your pump is loud, you need a new one. One that is properly sized. It should be somewhere between "are you sure it's even working?" quiet to barely audible if you're in the same room with no other source of noise.

Should probably also only be like 100 watts or so at most.
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Because the original only ever existed as a video game, the proportion of the parts are not compatible with off-the-shelf parts.

So the choice is make his own components to the proper proportions and get something faithful to the game version, or completely redesign the table layout to make standard parts work.

He got a resin printer for making smooth parts where required. What he really needs, from what I've seen in the video, are more powerful solenoids.
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> you're really splitting hairs, that's not what is meant. a serial port is very much the physical rs232 "connector" or an emulation of it.

Key word "or an emulation of it." From the software point of view, all it's doing is sending and receiving bits at some baud rate. The physical hardware interface no longer matters. That's kind of the whole point of these things. Beyond the hardware interface, modern keyboard and mouse speak exactly the same protocol as they have since the PS/2 days. In fact USB keyboards usually still have PS/2 port hardware in them, which is why you can use those USB-PS/2 adapters (which are entirely passive).

They don't "identify as" serial devices. The are serial devices. Always have been. It's not unthinkable that a poorly made device could be vulnerable to a firmware hack and not unthinkable that giving javascript access to serial ports could be a vector for such an attack. Not even hard to imagine a fancy keyboard with programmable RGB lights or OLED displays (that definitely have microcontrollers capable of executing arbitrary code) getting exploited.

> of course, which is why the browser asks the user for permission to acces all these devices!

That's a strange way to admit you don't know how security vulnerabilities work. "There's no way someone could get in uninvited; there's a lock on the door!"

> they can already do that.

Maybe? But adding a system where javascript can directly and explicitly interact with serial ports is definitely not going to make doing it any harder, is it?
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> this api is about ports that everyday hardware (like e.g. mice and keyboards) hasn't used for decades,

If by "decades" you mean to this very day. A serial port is not the physical connector. Your keyboard is almost certainly USB (no points for guessing what the "S" in "USB" stands for). It presents as a serial device at the hardware and OS level, like all USB devices do. If your OS puts it into a special category and doesn't explicitly label it as a serial device, that still doesn't mean it's not a serial device.

Now, whether or not any particular mouse or keyboard actually has a vulnerability where they have firmware available to be overwritten is an entirely different subject... but it's not unthinkable some devices may be exploited in such a way.

I can definitely see some shenanigans where a malicious website uses this as a vector to keylog. That's *already* well within the realm of plausible exploits, even without the WebSerial API. This is just another surface to attack.
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Nothing.

There is a 30 year old law that prohibits releasing audio from aircraft black boxes. They accidentally "released" the audio by publishing a spectrograph, which is effectively a violation of the law.

So now they're going through all their stuff making sure they aren't accidentally releasing data they are legally prohibited from releasing.

No conspiracy needed.
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> Remember this part? "Privacy? ...

I do. In fact I even quoted it in my message, which you clearly didn't read.

"They can already track you, so we might as well make it easier for them" is not the persuasive argument you think it is. Just so you know, historically, you can lick that boot until you can see your own reflection in it and it's still gonna stomp on you. Literally any resistance is better than the rolling over you are clearly so eager to do.
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That's strange. When I hear "Trump Mobile" I think of something completely different.

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