• 3 Posts
  • 17 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • Especially in Europe there is a big question of winter energy demand not meeting supply from solar. That causes issues that wind doesn’t fully solve.

    So I get that hydrogen could be an option to balance the grid over yearly time periods. Although I think batteries still look better.

    But so much of hydrogen just seems like a scam

    It added that all necessary equipment could soon be housed on a platform directly on an offshore wind turbine

    Like why would you even do that? I don’t get it. It must go from kinetic energy to electrical then to the hydrogen plant surely. Why wouldn’t you send that electricity back to shore?



  • Humans can drive with just vision.

    Tesla is doing it the hard way. Their model involves cars just having vision and driving the same as humans do. Humans can do it, why can’t computers? Seeing as they have more cameras than 2. In theory they should be better than human drivers. Once it is solved they could instantly drive anywhere humans can.

    Waymo has taken an easier route and they have used a lot of detailed mapping with also an assortment of additional sensors. Waymo doing it the easy way has only recently achieved this. Turns out it’s really hard. Harder than everyone including the experts expected probably.

    But with advances in computing and things like LLM’s Tesla is catching up. Who knows how long that will take though? I always thought waymo was doing the right thing so I’m biased.

    Edit: this fucking website I swear. I answered the question and got downvoted for it. What more you people want from me?








  • I hate cars as much as the next rational man. But I’m ironically really into the self driving car hype.

    I think of transport like a pyramid.

    Walking is at the top followed by micro mobility and cycling. Then at the bottom is trains, with metros/ trams above and buses above that.

    The issue comes from two things. The last mile problem. You need to get to the railway station and sometimes it’s too far for a walk or a bike, or you need a bike at both ends. The “obvious” solution to that is to drive to the station. But then it just becomes easier to drive the whole way (especially if you need transport at the next station).

    So people start driving and then there is less demand for public transport and more cars mean less people want to cycle.

    I think self driving cars will be game changing. They solve the last mile problem which means metro and railway usage could very easily increase. Much, much higher usage of ride hailing means more people in each vehicles (might even replace buses with mini buses), those vehicles don’t need to park in say a cycle lane or even downtown. This frees up land and opportunity for more walking and cycling. Also people will be more comfortable cycling closer to a self driving car.

    I really hope this causes a cultural shift and that shift is well utilised. But it could do absolutely nothing if those car brains foam at the mouth and complain about a new cycle path and bike storage no matter the positives.