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Comment Re:Maryland you say? (Score 1) 34

A direct line between County Cork and Loudon VA does not go through the east coast of Maryland on a spherical earth, that was the only point I addressed. Even if you wanted to maximize how much is laid in the ocean as opposed to land, there are still shorter distances that would land you on at least in Delaware. While I am sure there are logistical reasons to do it where they are doing, that is irrelevant to my point.

Comment Have to ask for more to not store anything now (Score 1) 48

As an app developer who has not looked into this beyond this article summary and who prefers to collect as little data as possible, it seems like if Apple doesn't end up providing an explicit option to opt out of serving customers in states where they are going to require you to store data on customers, ironically now I could do that myself manually, but in doing so I would have to ask the user's permission to let the app see their location (or try to infer it from their IP if that were good enough for Apple) just to prove they were in a place OTHER than one of these states with the insane laws before allowing them to use the app, and then I could throw away their location and not have to store anything (and if possible, just not let people from those storage-required states use it at all.)

To the user this would look more potentially invasive, as I'd have to ask for location permission at least once for everyone even in states without the stupid laws, which is both sad and funny.

Comment Re:Credible pegs = stability Re:Designed by idiots (Score 1) 134

My point was not about arbitrage, though that's another issue to worry about and imo you are understating it significantly.

The bigger deal is if you bought some of this crypto on blockchain X, and you want to pay someone who bought theirs on blockchain Y, you won't be able to send it to them without an intermediary service, forcing centralization which defeats the purpose of having a coin in the first place.

Comment Designed by idiots (Score 1) 134

You can't have a single cryptocurrency be on more than one blockchain and be one single set of accounts / aka one "coin". If it's really on seven different blockchains, then this is actually seven different cryptocurrencies that will have seven different prices at any given time, that could be vastly different on different blockchains, not even taking multiple exchanges into account.

If they really did it this way, this crypto was designed by people who don't understand what crypto is or how it actually works. And if they are going to claim these seven different coins are actually one single one, you'll never know which price is the real one for what you have until they start publishing all seven prices.

Sounds like more of what I'd expect from this administration. I would have hoped that with all the huge crypto companies propping up this dictatorship though, they could have spared at least one or two experts who would say this is wrong.

Comment Re: Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score 2) 183

Thatâ(TM)s not the only reason; the other two big ones are:

1. There is far greater parity between Windows and Linux in terms of stability and security over the past 15 years or so.
2. Linux has never had the software range MS
has had, and the best Linux software is also on MS plus a lot more.

Comment Just squeezing the last drops from the customers (Score 2) 81

I am a owner of a FutureHome Smarthub 2 (soon to be sold), and my home transitioned to Home Assistant a few days ago. I have been following closely the situation for a few months now, including the reactions of the user community.

What is especially worrying is that the monthly fees are only nominally monthly - they are to be paid in advance for a full year. If they had been truly monthly I might have been tempted to test it for a month or two, but with this much money being asked up front I am not only worried about the actual value of the service (am I going to save that much on electricity?), I am worried that so few people will take up the offer that the company will be instantly wiped out.

Among the further genius decisions of new owners, this transition period was placed in July: the traditional Norwegian summer month, when half the country is in Spain or Greece, especially a lot of people with larger homes, children and available income (the key target customer group). A lot of them probably never noticed the change and will come home next week thinking the hub broke.

Now, while the TFA claims the MSRP of the FH Hub is $275, it is actually far cheaper - it is about $100, which means the annual fee is more expensive than the hub.

You need to understand that electricity in Norway is laughably cheap (no matter what Norwegians tell you). Today's average price I am paying is 7.81 USD per MWh, as an example. Electricity is so cheap that Norwegians use it directly for heating (even heat pumps are a dubious economic case). Some, including the guy who built my house, use direct electric heating to de-ice stairs (so that's what I am stuck with).

This means that the savings you can achieve with FutureHome are very limited. My largest successes in cost reduction were using a more careful planner for the entry stair de-icing resistance, which used to run anytime temperatures were low and now only runs when there are the right conditions of temperature and humidity. Electric cars (very common here) can also be scheduled to charge at nighttime, and the same goes for water boilers, with simple timers that can be bought for $5.

So the question FH users have been asking: what exactly am I getting for well over $100 a year? It is very unlikely that you would save that amount of money with the FH hub in Norway.

Comment Re:Hydrogen's main selling point... (Score 1) 181

Lots of inaccuracies here.

Firstly it takes far longer to fill a hydrogen car than a gas car due to the careful rate control needed to fill the tank. If you have appropriate cooling and heating systems to maximise density while filling while also preventing the handle from freezing in place it still takes you >6min to fill a car.

Filling time for hydrogen cars is 3 minutes per industry standard. Also, the handle would not freeze in place, because hydrogen heats up when expanding (reverse Joule-Thomson effect): if anything it would warm up. And that happens only for specific pressure ranges (mostly from very high to almost empty tank).

On top of that hydrogen refueling stations do not store hydrogen at bulk pressures required for vehicles since having a large 700bar tank is hugely expensive and dangerous, instead bulk hydrogen is stored at a lower pressure and compressed before being put into small temporary storage and loaded into your car.

It's more complicated than that. There are often multiple tanks at different pressure, and they will be used sequentially to maximise efficiency. First the one with lowest pressure, then top-up with the higher-pressure tank. Promptness of refilling the high-pressure top-up tank is only related to compressor capacity, and this is easily upgraded when customer base increases; hydrogen compressors are off-the-shelf technology.

Also: tanks are not especially dangerous, the tricky parts are usually valves and flanges. Tanks are fairly standardised and are safe ex works; flanges are installed on site and that's where there is potential for errors to creep in. That's why a standing recommendation is to use hydrogen pipes that are "as small as you can get away with" for high-pressure lines.

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