The overall semi-passive temperature control concept seems like something that deserves a lot more attention than it's gotten. I used to have a town home with no AC, but with a house fan that would blow air up through the attic... sounded like an airliner in the upstairs hallway when we turned it on. It was actually surprisingly effective, but to keep things comfortable in the summer we had to turn the house fan on at the right time in the evening, turn it off at the right time in the morning, open/close downstairs windows to draw in cool air, and then keeping the blinds closed on windows when the sun was on that side of the house.

It's the kind of thing that's annoying for humans to keep track of, but trivial to optimize with software. The hard part would be in having the actuated systems to control the vents, windows, blinds, and fans, and then software to integrate it all. Some of those things exist, but they're expensive so the ROI generally isn't there. A system like yours though basically fully automates the stuff I was doing with the house fan.

Have you ever crunched numbers on the savings? I would bet in terms of cost efficiency a simple system could pay for itself in a couple years, but in terms of energy efficiency I would think you're using at least an order of magnitude less energy than active cooling.

If they find water it will certainly put them at the forefront of moon science.

By the way, those articles seem fine. The first two are well established history at this point.

It's a tiny system on a chip. The screens are annoying as fuck though. When I'm driving around at 60 plus miles per hour I do not want to have to fumble on the screen to adjust temperature control or change the radio station.

As for the rest of the computers and software that's why you're able to drive a car.

People insist on having cars that can accelerate like mad but get good gas mileage overall. Even if you don't personally care about gas mileage we have to force you to have a fuel efficient car or everybody would drive gas guzzlers because they're so gosh darn cool and the price of gas would become prohibitive. Folks do not realize how big an effect all these fuel economy saving features have had. Also and you think this would be important for nerds who are prone to asthma but we need software to manage emissions reductions.

Just because it is sold cheap doesn't mean it isn't valuable. It may just be that people who value it don't know it exists, or it isn't available due to international shipping, or they won't start looking for years to come.

That's why I get scanned books onto the Internet Archive. Maybe nobody will care, but maybe someone will 10 or 100 years from now.

Competition is usually good. YouTube has been rapidly enshittifying, and there isn't really any alternative.

You can have both physical controls and a big screen. I like having a big screen for Android Auto, but wouldn't give up the buttons for other functions either.

Some of that stuff is good. Autopilot systems that actually work are great for long distance driving. You need some compute power for Android Auto/Carplay, and having a built in sat nav can be useful too. Remote management of air conditioning and charging are very nice to have.

Of course BMW's ads and other bullshit would be enough for me to return the car. My car has physical buttons for key functions too.

If they do find ice there, it's going to be huge. And an issue for the US, because everyone wants to go look there, but if the Chinese find it first it will be politically difficult to justify following their lead.

Unfortunately cooperation is too much to hope for, but it looks likely that China will get boots on the ground there before 2030 either way.

You're mixing up poorly designed screens with useful ones. Remember, the Japanese SUCK at software. I LOVE Japanese products, but hate anything they do involving computers, like cameras, cars, TVs, etc. Everything they do involving software seems 20 years behind. Their expensive flagship cameras that cost more than my last car still can't match conveniences we all took for granted on Android and iPhones 15 years ago. The same applies to their cars. The interfaces look like they're 10-20 years old....not even good interfaces, just ordinary

So...if you're buying a Japanese car, you just have to assume their brains are in 2006 mode...and still learning what's an intelligent vs stupid utilization of technology that Apple mastered long ago. The Tesla is just bad idea after bad idea with tons of stupid gimmicks (before you consider Musk is a POS and that WAS a Nazi salute) and the other American car companies are not run as well as American tech companies. I honestly never have ridden in a modern Chevy or Ford with a touchscreen because I don't know anyone who owns one.

A well designed touchscreen is an essential interface to your phone....maybe some obscure settings you set once and forget about, like speaker balance or equalizers.

A touchscreen should NEVER be used driving. Those should require physical buttons, by law, for everything you use, like windshield wipers or climate control. It should merely display your map, what's playing, and possibly a weather summary. Everything else is noise. From what I can tell most, car companies do that today and have moved away from touchscreen controls like the Teslas seem to love....but regardless, they're just behind...very conservative, not very innovative. It seems to broadly apply to Japan, generally. FIRST-RATE manufacturing and components...dogshit software.

they could stop putting massive computers inside of cars. I don't know which idiots thought these systems were a good idea but I think they are worst development since the Pinto introduced an integrated detonator switch into the bumper.

I like my presidents to not be pedophiles but you do you I guess.

Data centers are going to add about $500 to $600 a year to my energy bill. That is a lot of money to take out of my pocket so some billionaire can try and fire me and replace me with a bot.

The problem is if you're over 60 it's been working just fine because they have made it a point to leave you out of all the really nasty stuff they do to everybody else so that you will continue to vote to screw over everybody else.

Now that is scheduled to change in 2032 when social security benefits get cut by $500 a month minimum. With the basic idea that if the Democrats manage to save democracy then they have a mess the Republicans can use to get more concessions by threatening to kill people as per the usual and if the Democrats don't win in 2028 then that's it for democracy and the billionaires can do basically anything they want to any of us and they will.

Meanwhile I know for a fact that is a bunch of dipshit old people on this forum who think they are going to be just fine because they bought a little bit of rental property before prices went crazy and don't have a fucking clue what's coming.

Honestly it must be nice. It's that whole sweet summer child thing where you have no fucking idea. Or like the libertarian house cat thing. Fiercely convinced of their independence while being utterly dependent on a system they neither understand nor appreciate.

Whatever the case when the healthcare system collapses and the price of the drugs they need to not die of a heart attack goes from several hundred dollars a month to $10,000 a month they're going to find out how worthless that little sliver of rental property they have is.

Or maybe the Democrats will save them yet again. But it's getting harder and harder for the Democrats to save these motherfuckers from themselves. Frankly they can all fuck off and die as far as I'm concerned but they keep dragging me down with them

If the Saudis weren't buying basically everything that the rest of the billionaires didn't already own and if I hadn't just watched the 90% billionaire owned news media spend an entire election cycle sane washing Donald Trump while giving multiple weeks of coverage every time Joe Biden so much as coughed.

I mean I know that psychopaths are constantly beaming propaganda into my eye sockets to make me do stupid shit having one more group of psychopathic assholes doing that is hardly news.