partial_accumen

We have used water before lithium, and it isn’t bad at all.

Not so great in a flat dry desert though. Pump storage is great when there is lots of water and a naturally occurring elevation, but there's lots of places on Earth that don't have that, but do have energy to store.

This is big! Grid scale Sodium Ion battery technology is (on paper) the best candidate for cheap large scale electricity storage. The fact that this company is working on 9 pilot deployments mean that this will likely produce the real world results that the paper exercises promise.

There are SO MANY advantages of Sodium Ion battery tech for grid storage over everything else we've used so far (nearly all Lithium based).

Sodium Ion batteries:

• don't have as intense thermal management needs Lithium chemistries
• don't have the massive negative environmental impact for their source materials (because its a part of regular old table/sea salt)
• doesn't have the massive swings in capacity when operated in extreme hot or cold temperatures. Sodium Ion doesn't care.

The only downsides to Sodium Ion is that the batteries are physically larger for the same amount of energy stored (which isn't a problem for stationary storage), and the charging/discharging curves are not as linear as other chemistries (which again, isn't an issue because these are purpose built applications where the curves can easily be managed by battery management systems).

Oh, and Moonlighting!

Did the car try to stop and fail to do so in time due to the speeding, or did the car not try despite expected collision detection behavior?

From the article, it looks like the car didn't even try to stop because the driver was overridden by the acceleration because the driver had their foot pressed on the pedal (which isn't normal during autopilot use).

I feel like calling it AutoPilot is already risking liability,

From an aviation point of view, Autopilot is pretty accurate to the original aviation reference. The original aviation autopilot released in 1912 for aircraft would simply hold an aircraft at specified heading and altitude without human input where it would operate the aircraft's control surfaces to keep it on its directed path. However, if you were at an altitude that would let you fly into a mountain, autopilot would do exactly that. So the current Tesla Autopilot is pretty close to that level of functionality with the added feature of maintaining a set speed too. Note, modern aviation autopilot is much more functional in that it can even land and takeoff airplanes for specific models

Full Self Driving is just audacious. There’s a reason other companies with similar technology have gone with things like driving assistance. This has probably had lawyers at Tesla sweating bullets for years.

I agree. I think Musk always intended FSD to live up to the name, and perhaps named it that aspirationally, which is all well and good, but most consumers don't share that mindset and if you call it that right now, they assume it has that functionality when they buy it today which it doesn't. I agree with you that it was a legal liability waiting to happen.

Don't take my post as a defense of Tesla even if there is blame on both sides here. However, I lay the huge majority of it on Tesla marketing.

I had to find two other articles to figure out if the system being used here was Tesla's free included AutoPilot, or the more advanced paid (one time fee/subscription) version called Full Self Drive (FSD). The answer for this case was: Autopilot.

There are many important distinctions between the two systems. However Tesla frequently conflates the two together when speaking about autonomous technology for their cars, so I blame Tesla. What was required here to avoid these deaths actually has very little to do with autonomous technology as most know it, and instead talking about Collision Avoidance Systems. Only in 2024 was the first talk about requiring Collision Avoidance Systems in new vehicles in the USA. source The cars that include it now (Tesla and some other models from other brands) do so on their own without a legal mandate.

Tesla claims that the Collision Avoidance Systems would have been overridden anyway because the driver was holding on the accelerator (which is not normal under Autopilot or FSD conditions). Even if that's true, Tesla has positioned its cars as being highly autonomous, and often times doesn't call out that that skilled autonomy only comes in the Full Self Drive paid upgrade or subscription.

So I DO blame Tesla, even if the driver contributed to the accident.

I see a couple missing from your list off the top of my head from the 80s:

• Hardcastle and McCormick
• Simon and Simon

The workarounds are interesting: link

Both workarounds would appear to do stuff that retriggers HAL detection. So something about the config must get broken, and only HAL redetection is needed to bring the VMs back to life. Now I'm really curious what the underlying bug/problem is.

Like any other hobby, though, you can do it on the cheap (simpler kits and basic tools) or dive into the deep end. I know you said this isn’t your hobby, but Bandai makes Entry Grade kits that are pretty inexpensive and simple to put together, no tools required even.

To grow your community, this should be in a sticky at the top. Maybe link a couple kits and some trusted sites to buy from. The stuff you guys do here is very attention grabbing, but feels a bit inaccessible to those that just stumble upon it from seeing new posts.

Ah yes, the Lego caltrop.

First, it looks like this may be a dressed up advertisement for their newly released book:

My book on Enshittification is coming out in a couple of months, and the early reviews are already coming in, and they are gratifyingly glowing.

That fact alone doesn't discount their argument, but it should be considered.

Second, I disagree with this premise of the author:

Because this isn't an individual problem, it's a systemic one.

I disagree, its both.

As the author rightly identifies, there are somethings that are only addressable systemically such as healthcare of mass transport. However a whole other host of items the author references are absolutely individual problems. Example from the author:

When all your friends are going to a festival, are you really going to opt out because the event requires you to use the Ticketmaster app (because Ticketmaster has a monopoly over event ticketing)?

Yes, I opt-out of nearly every Ticketmaster event. It is an individual problem with an individual solution.

If so, you're not gonna have a lot of friends, which is a pretty shitty way to live.

My friends largely also opt out. Perhaps we self select for like-mindedness.

This means that they don't have to worry about losing your business or labor to a competitor, because they don't compete.

They can still lose my business if I opt out of the entire industry, such as corporate social media. No amount of competitors changes my mind on that. This could also be done on streaming services, choosing to read instead etc.

This isn't just a systemic problem as the author suggests.

Kinda surprised me, actually. Red Bull has been pretty poor performer recently in spite of Verstappen's amazing talent. RB doesn't have Newey anymore for aero, and won't have the Honda power plant for 2026, but all the rule changes for 2026 mean RB can't ride on existing completed legacy work that folks aren't there anymore to recreate in 2026 rule conformity.

If Max wanted to make a jump he'd have a whole bunch of good reasons to do so. Toto has as good power plant, a very competitive car, a huge chequebook, and a still stinging lesson to listen to their star driver when changes are needed.

How many people have said "Just imagine how good Max would be doing right now if he were in a good car!"

He would have done well with the silver arrows, I think.