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Comment Re: happy (Score 1) 49

Having an aluminium plant working only in the summer is not going to be profitable.

I don't think it's meant to be profitable. It's meant to store power. That can be part of a system that's overall profitable because you sell the power.

Yes, understood, but still not profitable as an overall system. Your estimates all seem off by a couple orders of magnitude (think if we listened to you, aluminum or electricity price could increase by a factor of 10, 100 or 1000).

Having batteries with only 1 charge cycle per year would be even worse.

If the discharge is over a matter of months and the battery in question is cheap, then not really. It depends on what battery you meant there. If you meant a heat battery, that's generally pretty cheap. Consider for example that a lot of houses have a battery that stores about 15 kWh in their house that cost around $500. They just use a tank of hot water for power storage. An insulated tank on around the same scale as a municipal water tower tank can keep water hot even in winter conditions literally for years, so a season is not a problem and it's not very expensive. It works better for heat storage than electricity storage of course, although you can use such a system to produce electrical power as well. In any case, heating is one of the big applications for power in Winter anyway.

You don't seem to realize a $500 water heater will reach room temperature in only 2-4 days. And I think it's more like 10 kWh for a 60 gallons water heater.
Keeping it hot for years would require very expensive insulation.

Considering that many of those places are the places we vitally need fresh water to grow our crops

That's the thing. We don't "need" to grow that much crops in California. We CHOOSE to empty the Colorado and Rio Grande for agriculture. There could be other ways (producing food in other regions) instead.

Belgium and California are already net food exporters.

and also taking into consideration the transport issues you mentioned, the world actually does have a fresh water shortage.

The world doesn't. Still plenty of unused fresh water in places like Russia and Canada flowing into the ocean.

Comment Re: happy (Score 1) 49

Having an aluminium plant working only in the summer is not going to be profitable. Having batteries with only 1 charge cycle per year would be even worse.
Unless Belgium itself has water shortages, desalinating seawater in Belgium is not a good idea. You are not going to move that water to Saudi Arabia it would be more expensive than desalinating over there. The world doesn't have a fresh water shortage. We only have local shortages in some places and it turns out it's often cheaper to desalinate seawater in those places compared to importing water from remote areas with surpluses (think Russia and Canada).

Comment Re:4 modules (Score 1) 41

I know that, but they all add to the cost. That's great for all 4 people who wants a built-in proprietary USB-C SSD, but I personally prefer a cheaper laptop with 6 fixed ports rather than 4 modular ones. Each of these module is expensive, and the bare laptop already is (the possibility to get your own RAM and SSD is nice to keep costs down though).
Who is seriously going to take out the USB-C module and lose the ability to charge the laptop anyways?

I don't need to carry dongles with my T14 either because I have 6 useful ports already on it.
Am I using all 6 ports at the same time when on the go? Of course not. But I am sometimes using my 2 USB-A, I am sometimes using Ethernet, and sometimes using HDMI. Not sure I ever used the second USB-C port but I guess it's the future proof one.

I never missed a wireless mouse dongle garage, DP. I must have used micro SD a couple times, and I used a dongle for that I admit, but never on the go (the dongle stays in my drawer, and has been compatible with many different laptops from different brands).

If I had a framework laptop with only 4 ports, I would need to carry some extra modules or dongles. Most likely I would be carrying a $30 multifunction USB-C hub. But I glad I don't have to.

Comment Re:Let's eat Grandma, shoots, and leaves. (Score 1) 168

Well of course the energy (usually in kWh) is an important measure, cost, volume and weight all matter as well. You can have a 1MWh NMC or LFP battery but it's not going to fit and would be too expensive for your EV.
So the fact that they can make a real car with 1000 km range and 7-minute charging would be impressive, if it were true. The first problem is the chinese standard. 1000 km on the chinese standard means something like 850 km WLTP or 600 km EPA, which in the end is more like 500 km in the real world.

Comment 4 modules (Score 1) 41

While I get that it's cool to be able to chose if you want USB-C or HDMI with swappable modules, I don't think it's a good idea. For the same price and volume usage they could have included much more ports if they were not modules. For example my Lenovo T14 has 2x USB-C, Ethernet, HDMI and 2x USB-A, for a total of 6 ports (not counting 3.5mm audio which the framework also have). And I consider they are all useful.
Having 4 modules is more like 3 anyways, because you need to pick at least one USB-C for charging. So that leaves you 3 modular options. Most users would be better with 5 fixed ports, and 1 module instead of 4 modules.
The Ethernet as a module means it's internally a USB to Ethernet adapter. Having a fixed (non removable) PCIe Ethernet would be cheaper and maybe more reliable (less connections).
And it's not as if those modules were standards across manufacturers. So if I am going to carry extra dongles in my suitcase, i'd rather have something like an external $30 USB-C hub with a couple ports on it (say HDMI, USB-A, USB-C is quite common) rather than a $30 module with a single port. From what I see those modules may be used on any laptop with a USB-C port, however, their mechanical envelope likely means it's blocking the next 1-2 ports because they are very wide. A regular USB-C hub is much more convenient because it comes with a small flexible cable that doesn't block other ports when it's connected.

Just give me a regular laptop with good connectivity, an easy to open case for repair (visible screws), and upgradable RAM/SSD/wifi, and easy to replace battery. That would already be a good start.

Comment Re:Wait so you expect me to believe (Score 5, Insightful) 68

Firefox on Android is great. It has all important features:

1. Allow ad blockers
2. Password/history sync with desktop browser
3. Not specific to one vendor, run on almost everything (Android, Windows, Linux, etc.)
4. Not some flavor of the month browser (typically chromium fork) that won't exist anymore in 6 months
5. Respects my privacy

Plus it's open source and not run by an evil corporation.

Comment Easier than Apollo (Score 4, Interesting) 85

From what I understand their flyby is much easier (requires to power to come back) compared to orbiting around the moon like previous Apollo missions.
Unless their calculation is wrong and they miss the moon, they don't need any power to come back to the earth's orbit, they are pushed back using the moon's gravitational force.
It's a much greater technological accomplishment to be able to orbit around the moon and make a few turn, and then choose to turn on propulsion when you are ready to go back to the earth, even if you remain closer to the earth (because you are closer to the moon).

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