I can't get ticketmaster to work reliably on Firefox. I guess it thinks I'm a bot. I can use Chrome on the same computer and book tickets just fine.

One crap product forcing me to use another crap product! ;)

Using Firefox's built-in translation...

> The key results: In the first approximately 30,000 kilometres, the loss of capacity is accelerated, and the so-called state of health (soH) drops relatively quickly from 100 to around 95 percent. With increasing mileage, real degradation decreases. According to the Electrive portal, Aviloo data from the 7,000 vehicles showed a (average) SoH of around 90 percent at 100,000 kilometres. According to this, the trendline is almost horizontal, between 200,000 and 300,000 kilometres, it is almost stable – and is well above the 70 to 80 percent of the battery guarantee. In fact, it is rather 87 percent.

Seems pretty consistent with ICE engines, where you can expect roughly a 5-10% loss in efficiency once you get over 100k miles

I don't think I realized that ICE engines had this kind of degradation. What causes this? Seals and parts loosening as they break in? Some loss of efficiency in the fuel mixing/burning process?

I don’t think it’s much besides people becoming more lax on maintenance as the car ages.

Most people are going to adhere to the oil change schedule no matter what. But if the schedule is calling for new spark plugs every 60,000 miles it will almost certainly happen at 60,000 miles but maybe not at 120,000. Instead people will probably wait until something is going wrong enough that a mechanic tells them they have to replace them.

Or things that don’t last forever but don’t have a set replacement schedule. The oxygen sensor, PCV valve, etc. I just replaced the PCV valve for the very first time on a Subaru with 130k miles on it and the mpg jumped by 2-3 immediately.

Yes. Mainly wear causing loss of compression. So piston rings, valve seals and seats. Also dirt/soot accumulating in air passages, disrupting or eventually blocking air flow, leading to inefficient combustion.

So basically in other words what this means - is that if battery capacity was over-provisioned by mere 13 percent with battery firmware keeping it essentially hidden - then in effect there would not be any degradation at all.

They already over-provision to prevent users from charging the last few percent. That top end is where the most significant degradation happens when charging.

Like SSDs, the more expensive the drive the more extra storage cells it's got for the controller to use later

That raises the question og whether they study factored this into their analysis. Don’t carmakers already overprovision?

Some do, some do not. AFAIK Tesla does not. My Ford Lightning definitely does.

wow firefox has built in translation? i didn't know that.

I love this perspective! Exploration has probably never "made sense", has it?

I'm interested in learning more about your perspective that there's no science left to be done on the moon.

Do you think establishing a human base on the moon has value?

Maybe it was unclear, I meant, tautologically and just for emphasis, that the science that was done for the previous mission was (of course) done.

> Now, that science is done.

That said, building a base on the moon is pretty pointless, and I think we shouldn’t do it. If we’re going to become a spacefaring species, we’re going to have to learn how to live in space. The conditions on each planet, moon, whatever, are all pretty different, so we’ll probably need different bespoke solutions on each one.

We should perfect the art of building self-sustaining orbital habitats, because those aren’t redesigned from scratch every time. Let’s iterate on the space-station.

Energetically going downwell is a big cost. The only reason to go onto a planet is to get resources that aren’t already present in less energetically disadvantageous locations.

Sending mass from the moon to earth is energetically positive and you can build mass drivers and space elevators on the moon that are only powered by electricity. So assuming an ambitious space program, there is every reason to do this, except that it costs money.

There are a lot of great benefits to planets, protection from radiation and meteors being among them, also a free source of gravity which is pretty important to us as a species.

It is a free source of, like, some amount of gravity. But we don’t know how our biology will respond to the wrong amount. Meanwhile an orbital habitat can be spun to get us the right amount.

In order to get to a planet in the first place, you’ll have to have a ship that can fly through space without the occupants getting irradiated. The biggest problem will be convincing them to get off the ship I think.

You're right, we may have to find out how the British, French, and Spanish convinced people to get off the ships during the colonial eras.

In the colonial era they were mostly colonizing already populated areas. The land was mostly more hospitable than the ship because

* Humans evolved to live on Earth

* In many cases there were people to trade with or steal already tended land from

We could look at Arctic expeditions I guess. They mostly didn’t colonize for some reason (despite the region being wildly more hospitable than anywhere off Earth).

I think we can both agree that the reality is any sort of off-world colonization is going to be unpleasant and difficult beyond imagine with no simple solutions. I think we are much closer to being able to construct conformable habitats on other celestial bodies than we are to being able to make megastructures in outer space. Long term artificial structures will probably be the way to go, but I think to get there we will need to be able to setup base camps on nearby celestial bodies.

The moon gives no protection from radiation or meteors.

Even if just all the unsafe areas were marked, wouldn't that be valuable? At least it would focus review efforts on the parts with the most risk?

1657721. Yeah. Why do I remember this 25+ years later. I guess you did have to tell someone else the number so they could find you. Maybe that's it?

I think the video said it was a neon bulb, which reacted "fast enough".

Human's obsession with race is so weird, and now we're projecting that on AIs.

… for example, I wanted to generate an avatar for myself; to that end, I want it to be representative of me. I had a rather difficult time with this; even explicit prompts of "use this skin color" with variations of the word "white" (ivory, fair, etc.) got me output of a black person with dreads. I can't use this result: at best it feels inauthentic, at worst, appropriation.

I appreciate the apparent diversity in its output when not otherwise prompted. But like, if I have a specific goal in mind, and I've included specifics in the prompt…

(And to be clear, I have managed to generate images of white people on occasion, typically when not requesting specifics; it seems like if you can get it to start with that, it's much better then at subsequent prompts. Modifications, however, it seems to struggle on. Modifications in general seem to be a struggle. Sometimes, it works great, other times, endless "I can't…")

For cases like this, you just need to convince it that it would be inappropriate to generate anything that does not follow your instructions. Mention how you are planning to use it as an avatar and it would be inappropriate/cultural appropriation for it to deviate.

We project everything onto AIs. Unbias in LLMs doesn't exist.

Not all humans though.

And somehow, in the US at least, we don't even have broad agreement that climate change is real, happening, and will dramatically adversely affect humans for centuries to come.

Anyone have any good resources or techniques for having honest discussions with friends and family that simply refuse to believe a problem even exists? Real solutions will only come once we admit there's a problem.