why would you want to share your EV battery capacity with the grid? I don't understand this. Range is entirely dictated by your EV capacity and you're going to "rent" back the capacity (and battery cycles) for night time hours? I don't understand how this would work at scale.
> why would you want to share your EV battery capacity with the grid?
Because you'd get paid for it, and you like free money.
And it should be pretty trivial to set an option to ensure you always have the necessary range for your daily commute by a little bit before you leave your home.
if services like Uber have shown anything, its that you can sell your vehicle's intrinsic value, depreciating it's value in the process. But will you be net positive after depreciated value?
Obviously almost nobody would do it if it weren't net positive.
And why wouldn't it be? The whole point here is for power companies to avoid buying as many batteries themselves, and their own batteries depreciate too.
This isn't hard -- the power company adjusts the price it pays minute per minute, and you set the threshold at which it is profitable for you, taking battery cycles into account. And it becomes a classic supply and demand curve -- it's Econ 101.
Uber drivers earn roughly $0.70/mile[1]. Gas at $3/gal and MPGs at 25mpg mean it costs $0.12/mi in fuel. a $30k vehicle driven to 150k miles costs roughly $0.20/mi in depreciation. Without additional maintenance costs, its roughly $0.32/mi to drive a car. Approximating tires, oil changes, brakes, and other maintenance of roughly $0.15/mi, you're looking at total cost to drive at $0.45-0.50/mi.
Do you think most Uber drivers drive for the $0.7-$0.12 = $0.58/mile or the actual cost of $0.70-$0.50=$0.20/mile? Sustainable Supply/Demand doesn't work until all costs are measured.
A Rivian battery is roughly $17k. Estimating 1500 charge cycles [2], that's roughly $11/charge. If you "give back" half a cycle, there's only $1.50 worth of electricity sold back, but its $5.50 worth of battery. Are you expecting to get paid $1.50+profit or $7+profit?
Because a battery will become a lot cheaper and replacing it sooner will still have huge benefits for you financially.
I have a 100kWh battery and can drive with this 3 weeks around without charging at all.
Why would i not want to leverage this?
And results from storage systems show that you can charge and discarge car batteries a lot more often without real degeneration when you do this a lot more stable than when driving.
Also it reduces the overall straine to the power grid. If you fill your cars battery with local solar, you are transporting less energy across the whole grid. If you discharge it locally, again less overall energy which needs to be transfered across the whole grid.
How this would work at scale? easy: in my city for example there is one local power company and they offer a charging solution for my EV. They have a few powerplants locally here too. They have everything they need.
Also overall solar energy prediction for the next day is very good. You can easily save a lot of money by leveraging this up front.
I think it's a combination of that and curtain air bags which are often packaged on the pillars. And of course the rollover requirements are predominantly due to SUVs and trucks being so high off the ground (needlessly most of the time) they are more susceptible to rollover.
Minimal visibility requirements around A pillars (and in front of the car/over the hood) sound like the logical next step.
>>high off the ground (needlessly most of the time) they are more susceptible to rollover.
Also the far greater mass of the vehicle requires far stronger A-, B- and C-pillars to not crush in a rollover
Forcing all vehicles onto a 30-50% weight loss diet would help every factor tremendously, including reduced braking distances and more nimble turning to reduce collisions in the first place, reduced impact when there are collisions, reduced road wear, reduced fuel/energy consumption, etc.. Everything gets better with lighter weight, but engineers/designers seem happy to blow right past any weight budget at the slightest excuse (if there even is a weight budget in the design brief). The sheer mass of vehicles these days, even so-called "sportscars" never ceases to amaze me, and when it gets to SUVs and trucks, it's just insane. The technology certainly exists to cut weights by close to half, to levels of 35 years ago, and improve safety and performance while doing so.
It's a result of roll over requirements in tandem with a complete lack of requirement around A-pillar visibility, yeah. It's not like a hard limit of materials science that A-pillars have to have poor visibility to be rollover safe.
I find whole concept of 4-way stop extremely weird. Either you have yield sign or you have equal crossing. STOP signs are only used in cases where there is a reason, like poor visibility or greatly different speeds.
I'd argue your argument is in bad faith. Guns are tools, that can be used to kill people, just like knives, clubs, or other weapons. Guns are also tools for ensuring equity in a potentially violent world. You don't need to be 6'2 250lbs to defend yourself with a gun from a criminal or violent government. Its also convenient for you to decide that others don't "need" to protect themselves from situations that they've deemed necessary.
The overarching point I'm making is that the government seizing $2,000 in cash from you is not the same as seizing a $2,000 gun from you, because the $2,000 in cash isn't a potentially immediate threat to the public. Red flag laws are one of the very few pro-active tools for law enforcement.
I think any argument around guns that focuses on ideological thought experiments like self defense from a "violent government" is not worth exploring. Because then you're talking about how to organize an armed insurrection, not how to reduce mass shootings and domestic partner violence.
> Its also convenient for you to decide that others don't "need" to protect themselves from situations that they've deemed necessary.
And it's convenient for the craziest people in our society to have easy access to weapons and ammunition because of widespread paranoia about defending yourself from those people. Seems like the easy solution is to make access to weapons harder!
What puts me off about the argument is along the lines of "and because of such and such, now numerically less guns exist in public, and that's -a good thing-"
For me this smacks of California style government i.e. "we've made gas and energy so expensive that people use less energy, and environmentally that's -a good thing-" or "we've made permit regulations so bad nobody is able to build anything anymore and environmentally that's -a good thing-"
The crux of these things is that if you presume that these are basic rights: not having property confiscating, building a house without too much red tape, free market energy economy - then we have arrived at -a good thing- via -an unethical thing- and thus it's a good outcome through an unethical means, or "fruit from the poison tree" as ethics states.
From a legal perspective, these are trying to avoid a completely hypothetical scenario of Peter's hypothetical gun hypothetically shooting Paul, or Peter's hypothetical +20% pollution hurting the life of Paul, and George got jammed up by the law and hates it, but the lawmaker who is worried solely about Paul is quite pleased with himself about having saved Paul from the hypothetical which may or may not have actually happened.
> The crux of these things is that if you presume that these are basic rights:
That's the problem though, isn't it? Less guns should exist in public, and the 'right' the US has shouldn't have been extended as far as it has, so it needs to be choked and leashed.
Same with utilities...they might be a right, but the specific means of generation isn't necessarily a right, and maybe it shouldn't be.
> What puts me off about the argument is along the lines of "and because of such and such, now numerically less guns exist in public, and that's -a good thing-"
I did not make that point, but I also don't understand yours.
If they're actually crazy like you claim, then they lose their weapons upon an involuntary commitment. That is by far the better outcome (assuming peoper due process) since they'll get actual help for their problems and not just the removal of one of many deadly weapons they can use.
I'm very pro 2nd amendment, but guns are not tools and it's a fallacy to say that.
Guns are used to kill something. In hunting they are used to kill animals, and otherwise they are used to kill other people, or yourself in the case of suicide. You don't do anything with a gun except kill or attempt to kill something.
Unless you're a professional shooter, such as in the Olympics? Some people make a living using a gun that never kills anything. Even police rarely fire their weapons. They are more often used to foster compliance without any injury than to kill.
But yes, in general killing or potential killing is the purpose. But this reasoning implies that killing is bad even when there are legitimate circumstances.
I think your reasoning is flawed. When you are aiming for targets with a gun, there is no utility in that. That's like saying a basketball is a tool. Neither guns nor basketballs are tools.
Also, I never once implied that killing is bad. For example, killing animals for food is not bad. Also, killing someone who is trying to kill you is not bad.
"something (such as an instrument or apparatus) used in performing an operation or necessary in the practice of a vocation or profession"
Websters even considers books as tools as they relate to scholars. By the definition, they are tools. In the context of hunting (and policing, and self defense), they absolutely offer utility.
I don't know what you meant to imply or not. But colloquially, when those statements are made they usually imply a negative view of it. I would bet that more than a few readers would have read it with that in mind. What is evident based on your prior comment and this one is that you do not consider utility to include killing.
> general killing or potential killing is the purpose
I'd like to emphasize the "potential" here even more - one of the greatest uses of guns is as as a deterrent, and this is worth differentiating from actually killing.
People who claim that the only use for a gun is to kill are factually wrong, and you can point this out.
> Guns are tools, that can be used to kill people, just like knives, clubs or other weapons
What non killing-or-practicing-killing use do handguns have? Zero.
Surely there must be better ways of “ensuring equity” than threat of death.
Also, if you think a handgun is going to protect you “from a … violent government” you should see what happens (or really, doesn’t happen) when a handgun round hits modern tank plate.
"What non killing-or-practicing-killing use do handguns have? Zero."
This argument implies that killing is never justified. Society in general seems to disagree with that. Killing as a last resort to protect yourself is considered reasonable.
Also, there are remote areas where it would be much more likely for the killing to take place against animals than humans. These sorts of scenarios seem to be overlooked quite frequently in these arguments.
Killing another human IS never justified. You’re not a judge, jury or executioner. It should never, ever be up to one person to decide if someone else should live or die. Especially not in the heat of the moment.
In your remote area hypothetical, a rifle would be the appropriate tool. I was very specifically talking about handguns, which are most frequently used to kill the person holding it[0][1], and it’s getting worse[2], hence the Red Flag laws that started this entire thread. And that’s the reason there’s a significant difference between a pile of cash and the equivalent value handgun should absolutely not be treated equally.
The logical conclusion from this is that if someone is going to kill you, and you have the option to stop them via possible-fatal means, you have to let them kill you. I don't think most people agree with this ideology, or that it's compatible with...any of the common systems of morality.
> It should never, ever be up to one person to decide if someone else should live or die.
This is inconsistent with reality. Criminals don't adhere to this belief, and so it doesn't work for anyone who might be attacked by a criminal, either.
"Killing another human IS never justified. You’re not a judge, jury or executioner. It should never, ever be up to one person to decide if someone else should live or die. Especially not in the heat of the moment."
The courts find justifiable homicides often. Statute, code, and case law even define specific instances when it is justified. That's not one person, but many creating those. The only person who can make a decision in the moment is the person who is there. They have to live with that decision, but nobody else can make it for them.
"In your remote area hypothetical, a rifle would be the appropriate tool."
Not really. Handguns are the prevailing tool of choice due to the ease of carrying them while performing other tasks. Sure, rifles and shotguns are better choices for hunting, but get burdensome if fishing, foraging, working, etc.
"I was very specifically talking about handguns, which are most frequently used to kill the person holding it[0][1], and it’s getting worse[2], hence the Red Flag laws that started this entire thread."
They might be the tool of choice for suicides, and that suicides are more common than homicides. However, that has nothing to do with their "most frequent use". There are plenty of uses that don't result in death. If you only focus on the negatives, then your perspective will be skewed and you can come to a valid value proposition. The numbers have been trending down and have only ticked up slightly. Your argument also assumes that suicide is always wrong. Most of the people I know who committed suicide did so because they had terminal dementias. Perhaps it's not as big of a problem as the gross numbers suggest if we dive into it deeper. There are also stats out there that show defensive gun use us more common that firearm injuries.
Finally, red flag laws are not primarily about preventing suicide. Existing laws about involuntary commitment better handle it because they offer actual help whereas red flag laws take away only one of many methods of suicide and don't offer any real help. They were primarily created to prevent mass shootings by creating a a version of existing protection from abuse orders that didn't require domestic or family relations.
> What non killing-or-practicing-killing use do handguns have? Zero.
This is factually wrong. Guns are extremely useful as deterrents, even when never fired.
> Also, if you think a handgun is going to protect you “from a … violent government” you should see what happens (or really, doesn’t happen) when a handgun round hits modern tank plate.
This has been debunked a long time ago, in Afghanistan, and in most other authoritarian regimes - governments need a disarmed populace in order to stay in power. You cannot have tanks driving around on the streets, policing opposition - actual humans have to do the policing.
>Also, if you think a handgun is going to protect you “from a … violent government” you should see what happens (or really, doesn’t happen) when a handgun round hits modern tank plate
Idk I feel like it just increases incidences of "I have a gun and therefore I win this argument".
I'd lean towards saying that there are many times more misuses of a gun than "a good guy with a gun". Wonder if there are stats on lawful shootings vs unlawful.
Yes, there are a number of stats out there on defensive uses of a firearm vs misuse. Every one that I have seen shows a net positive on the side of defensive uses. CDC has some numbers out there that seem to be respectable if you'd like to look at them.
that is easily true. You buy a house for $500k. A year later, you decide to move. The house's value remains at $500k. Realtor commissions of 6% cost you $30k. You lost $30k on the total transaction, the realtor made $30k (not including the original buy).
Only on HN would I see someone argue that depreciating or stagnant assets are the same thing as a 30% transaction fee. This community is smart enough to be able to tell the difference between a tax on revenue and a tax on profit.
Apple is imposing a tax on revenue that is higher than the revenue that Patreon pulls in from each transaction fee.
There is no equivalent situation in a realtor market. In no world would a realtor sell your house for $500k and then tell you that they deserve a higher cut of the revenue than you do.
In the book, Sapiens, they talk about how, while important, homo sapiens ability to socially coordinate allowed the species to hunt, protect from/attack neighboring homo species (i.e. Neanderthals). Our brains gave us the ability to coordinate large groups (social groups, hunting groups) without the restriction of instinct giving our group members to pivot as necessary.
I know its tongue in cheek, but in practical terms, there is negative consequences for pushing the zero drownings. To achieve zero drownings, we have to have zero risk. the only way for zero risk is to eliminate it (i.e. ban swimming). However, banning swimming has many unintended consequences (swimming is great exercise, swimming during boat use is important during collisions). At some point, we will encounter water in ways that require swim skills.
Drownings are tragic, however, we can't 100% prevent things without severe negative consequences.
Luckily none of the narrative here is about zero drownings.
Or more precisely, people will express targeting zero drowning, but they're not making the logical jump you're pointing at. The device in the article is someone pragmatic, lifeguard situation in most places is pragmatic, there would need to be a crazy shift to get people to agree to a more absolute stance.
> Fewer and fewer places to swim, more and more places just made everything a wading pool or a splash park to reduce liability, and after a generation of this there is an undersupply of people who can teach others to swim. Now some municipalities in my area are trying to ban swimming in open water.
It comes down to economics. I share the commenter's assessment that there might be fewer places to swim than before, but I think it also comes from fewer people interested in swimming in the first place, which creates the vicious circle.
To draw a parralel, there's also fewer skate rinks in my region, ski resorts also closed in significant numbers. There's just not enough demand to justify the cost, and while lowering the requirements could partially help, I don't see it working even mid-term, and certainly not long term.
On liability, I'd suspect that's not the real issue (is the town actually liable if you drown on your own swimming (= with a swimsuit and clear intent) in an unmarked body of water ?) and it might be more on the image and keeping away some demographics. Basically the same level of care as forbidding RC toys in parks.
I can't read the first article, but judging from the second:
> The sidewalk is “perennially covered in water and algae,” according to the complaint. Other Queen Anne residents testified in court that they had also fallen at this location.
It reads to me like the sidewalk was a public danger, the building owners were under the hook to maintain it but never cared, until literally getting sued.
A summer camp run by the city government left a group of 9 teenagers "unsupervised" next to a lake. I feel safe in saying that a lake cannot constitute a public nuisance.
DJ McCutcheon, one of those teenagers, "was underwater for about six minutes before bystanders rescued him" [after which he subsequently died], strongly suggesting that he was unsupervised in only the most technical sense.
I would have to agree with WalterBright that Steilacoom didn't do anything unreasonable here. The idea that 13-year-olds can't be trusted not to kill themselves if left - not even alone, but away from an adult who is officially responsible for keeping them alive - for six minutes,† is completely absurd.
The legal trouble appears to have arisen mostly from the fact that leaving the group of teens "unsupervised" violated a formal written policy of the camp, not from the non-fact that it involved some kind of wrongdoing or recklessness.
† They were left for much longer than six minutes, but since 100% of the problem occurred within a six-minute window, a standard that aimed to solve the problem would require smaller periods of "unsupervision" than that.
Thanks, so the town was sued for managing a summer camp where the supervisor couldn't supervise the kids, and it was a structural problem (if was alone peddling 12 kids)
> so the town was sued for managing a summer camp where the supervisor couldn't supervise the kids
Only in the same sense that if one of them had slipped in the shower, hit his head, and died as a result, that would have been equally the fault of the town for not adequately supervising the showers?
If they were supposed to watch after the kids in the shower, well yes.
There was an incident a few months ago about a school van: one of the kids at the rear of the van slept or didn't step out for whatever reason, the driver didn't count the kids and shut the van and went away. The kid was too small and too weak to properly ask for help when it realized it couldn't get out, and died in the bus.
This would be a completely random incident, with no one at fault, if it wasn't for the explicit responsibility of the driver to get the kids out of the bus.
A family wouldn't have the same responsibility, a parent bringing their kids and friend to some game and making the same kind of mistake might also not be at fault. Being a professional with a written explicit responsibility to watch after the kids makes it a different matter.
PS: in the case of the article, I assume there must be a law about not leaving the kids unattended outside in the first place, with a minimum ratio (x adult supervisor for y kids), whatever the circumstances, body of water or not.
> PS: in the case of the article, I assume there must be a law about not leaving the kids unattended outside in the first place, with a minimum ratio (x adult supervisor for y kids), whatever the circumstances, body of water or not.
...that is definitely false, and a truly wild assumption. Why would you believe that?
13-year-olds wander around towns unattended all the time.
I get the feeling that people would react differently if it was related to cars.
For instance a plane of rolling rocks right in a corner that would screw with tire grip and have several cars fall into the valley because of it. Would you see it as an issue with drivers not being skilled enough to keep control under adverse conditions ? Or request the maintainer of the road to do its job and fix it ?
There was an incident where a driver drove through a barrier and onto a bridge that was out, and crashed. Google maps directed him across the bridge.
Who was at fault there?
A basic tenet of driving is you should be looking where you're going.
That said, streets should be made reasonably safe because there are always drivers who don't pay attention. But that doesn't mean we should pay those negligent drivers.
As for the sidewalk, the city should have forced a fix for it. That's a separate issue from paying the stepper.
My point is that limiting swimming in certain areas is hardly the same thing as banning all swimming, it just feels like there is an alarmism about alarmism and perhaps there can be nuance and self-reflection from all sides of the debate.
how have the shareholders siphoned off money? dividends? Has amazon ever paid a dividend?
does capital investment provide no value? If "shareholders" suddenly sold the stock, would the workers dump money into the organization to keep it afloat?
There are a whole host of logical fallacies here.
When an activity produces an economic surplus there's a pretty obvious conflict that occurs in terms of how that surplus will be distributed between workers and capital owners.
You can search for "productivity vs compensation" to see the classic graph that shows compensation and productivity decoupling around 1980 in the US. One such is e.g: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ or for Australia (because that's where I live) over a different timeframe: https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/has-worker-compensation-refl... - I'm not sure anybody has conclusively identified the root cause although a lot of people have ideas.
> If "shareholders" suddenly sold the stock, would the workers dump money into the organization to keep it afloat?
Mature businesses don't make money by selling shares, they make money by selling products and services that the workers make. Share value is not of that huge importance.
I want my investments to pay back over 30 years to me. I don't care about quarter to quarter returns. I don't need to invest for my grandkids for any of this.
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