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Comment Adapt to the Local Market (Score 1) 170

Agreed - there's a stat that Brits drive an average of 20 miles per day

The UK is great for EVs: distances are short and while roads are busy EVs don't idle and use much less power when stopped in traffic. Also the climate is very mild so there is much less need to heat the batteries and car interior in winter and less use for AC in the summer.

However, not everywhere is like the UK. Where I live in Canada we regularly get -20 to -30C highs in winter and some years we drop down below -40C. This really impacts the range of an EV since now the batteries have to be heated to function as does the car's interior so humans can function. The population density is also much lower so we tend to drive further.

The solution is simple though - just sell EVs in the UK vs Canada with appropriate sized batteries for the typical use in each region. Just because you can give an EV a 1,000km range does not mean that you have to. Installing a lower battery capacity is almost certainly much easier than switching the side of the car that the steering wheel is on!

Comment Human vs Car Needs (Score 1) 170

As an EV owner I have just 1 question for 600 mile range (almost 1000KM): why? My current EV does 500KM (+/- 300 mile) on a single charge in summer.

Simple, many of us drive a lot more than 500km in one day and while I doubt many people do that without stopping where we stop for a break and to e.g. have a picnic, is not somewhere that comes with a charger. This means that either now you have to have two breaks, one for the humans and one for the car or you have to forgo a picnic and just stop in a town with a charger which now means you are planning your travel around the needs of the car and not the needs of the family.

If you could drive 1,000km without stopping we can stop wherever we want for breaks and just plug the car in to charge overnight at the hotel. It's either that or they need a charging station that can recharge as quickly as a petrol station can fill an ICE's tank which seems unlikely given the thickness of cables needed to deliver that much electrical power plus fast charging is not great for batteries either.

Comment Re:Statistics (Score 2) 98

No, by restricting your consideration to only people who lived to be 122 you have applied a selection criterion to select your sample that you are then using to test the hypothesis that smokers do not live as long. Hence, you have selected a sample size of one. You then use this sample size to see if these really old people are smokers - that's the test because the hypothesis we are testing is whether smokers live shorter lives not how likely are you to live to be 122.

Comment Be Careful (Score 1) 106

This is just yet another example of why we (USA) really do need a public, non-profit, health insurance system.

Yes, but do you really want one right now? Look at the guy who would be setting ut up. You'll probably get a health service that provides free bleach treatments but not vaccines.

Comment Real Liquid Glass (Score 1) 26

The design language is inspired by visionOS and, as the name implies, features a lot of transparency.

Real liquid glass is generally hot, viscous and often quite opaque until it becomes cooler and less liquid. That's what its name implies. If they wanted something fluid and transparent alcohol would have been a much better choice....but I suspect they drank all of that before coming up with the name.

Comment Risks vs. Any Benefit at all? (Score 2) 82

We actually have some data that suggest a problem with trading when there are lower volumes and professional brokers are on holiday. The old adage "Sell in May and Go Away" is backed by data showing an historical underperformance of the stock market during summer when there are lower trading volumes and professionals are on holiday. The exact reason for this is admittedly not clearly known but it is thought to be related to the lower volumes and reduced expertise of investors.

Then there are the effects that you can see people complaining about on the crypto exchanges where, when there is low volume, a smaller number of people can manipulate things leading to volatility. Finally the emergency halt controls are just that - intended for emergencies. If you set things up so that they are regularly being triggered then, just like any system that is regularly triggering it's emergency safety nets, you are not operating in a safe manner because safety nets are not infallible.

So those are the risks but I have yet to hear ANY advantage to 24-hour stock trading. What do we gain by allowing it? In the absence of any benefit and the presence of clear risks why do it? What can you do with 24-hour trading that is not possible with business-hour trading?

Comment Re:Time to Think (Score 1) 82

If someone wants to make a trade, they should be able. They're not kids.

"I should be able to trade whenever I want to" is not a good reason to put the stability of stock markets at risk given the damage that can cause to the economy. This is not about protecting those directly involved but amount preventing the impact on others, not involved. Besides, if they do not have the patience to wait until the following morning when the markets open again that's a pretty good indication that they are kids, or at least acting like one.

Comment Time to Think (Score 4, Insightful) 82

I agree it sounds like a bad idea. The stock markets already have tools they deploy during crises that pause trading to give people time to stop and think rather than just react. Having trading stop at the end of the day and other markets around the globe take over gives everyone an automatic long pause to regroup and plan for whatever crisis the markets may be looking at.

Without this I suspect we will see bigger drops and bigger peaks as there will be less time for cooler heads to prevail.

Comment Re:EMP (Score 1) 121

Couldn't they pass all the bikes through a box that delivers a high-energy eletromagnetic pulse, or microwaves for a split second or something to destroy any electronics inside

This would have to be pretty powerful to penetrate a metal frame and not only can you harden electronics against this but you can probably avoid them all together. Effectively all they need is a motor, a power source and a switch and any EM pulse powerful enough to destroy them will probably melt the frame.

Comment Benefits to us All (Score 2) 121

True it is not at anywhere close to the level of F1's engineering but, like F1's engineering, I think it is good to encourage teams like this to innovate. A lot of F1's innovative features, like electronic gear selection, has made it into the cars we buy today and some of the tech developed to improve suspensions with a new kind of damper has made it into earthquake protection for buildings.

Having a system which encourages companies to invest engineering in making something like a bike better is not a bad thing, and can not only benefit everyday bikes but may also have applications entirely outside of the cycling world.

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