I would like them to try to go to Mars this coming January. I am sure with enough fuel one of Elons rockets can get it moving in the right direction, they can wing everything else as they go.

I just use my Google Home Max for timers, it’ll display three timers at once on the screen and I can get the status of any or all with voice at any point. Plus it’ll do all the usual assistant stuff of conversions, cooking temperatures, and has a big enough screen for me to read recipes or follow along with a recipe video. Bonus feature is that its a reasonable loud speaker as well so I do not need a separate radio in the kitchen.

Sure its not as pretty as the clock but its a whole lot more useful for cooking.

So Blade Runner, Alien, and Predator franchises are linked, but I also a believer that the Terminator franchise is linked into the same, shared universe. Obviously Terminator has many different endings depending at which film you look due to timey wimey shenanigans, but if you pick one of the ones that the war is averted (I pick T2 as the sequels are not my favorite), it kinda makes sense. In this universe Dutch is the special forces ace that is picked (probably unknowingly) to be the model for the T800.

We’ve had three EVs for a few years now and they been great, had four in total and replaced the first one a bit over a year ago as its lease expired, so no regrets.

Lengthy road trips aren’t a problem if you plan out your route in advance I get not everyone wants to do this so if this you then wait till there are more charging stations for your region. We plan stops based on charging stations that have a lot of high speed chargers (over 100kw) so we are never waiting more than 20 minutes and never waiting for a charger. It is faster to charge twice to around 80% on one of these than it is to charge to 100% once due to how much charging slows down as the battery nears completion. I would not even consider a car that does not have a 800v architecture due to the slower charging speeds if you plan on road trips.

We have done 1200 mile round trips, probably small fry for Americans but a lot for us, especially as we towing for all that. Its achievable with planning in most western countries. I want to stop at most every three hours as I want to use the loo, are people who are driving 6 more hours non stop peeing in a bottle or something?

Cost per mile is stupidly low as we charge at home when not on trips over 280 miles, 8p per kwh, with a monthly cost between the three cars of £40 for around 2000 miles a month (more in summer, about that in winter). Good luck doing 2000 miles on £40 for an ICE car. Charging when out is more expensive the faster you want to charge, ultra rapids work out about the same per mile as high economy petrol ICE, rapids or lower a bit cheaper but nothing significant. Its only going to be cheaper if you can charge at home and your energy provider has a suitable EV tariff as we do.

Absolutely zero chance I would buy an EV right now as depreciation is already horrendous and the rate of change for EVs is rapid unless you know the car will meet your log term needs and those will not change. We lease so that all the cost of the risk is with the leasing company and we know we want the improvements.

Edit: Plug in hybrids are fucking useless BTW, you are either doing a ton of miles and using the ICE all the time, or you are using the battery all the time and very rarely the ICE. It means carrying around both a full EV setup and a full ICE setup, so you have more than twice the complexity of either and more weight than an actual pure EV with the same battery that impacts both EV and ICE economy. Plus recent studies have shown that hybrids are far harder on the ICE part than a pure ICE, which is fucking awful for long term ownership.

They were only ever meant as a stop gap until battery prices dropped, which they have and its now possible to get EVs with over 400 miles of ACTUAL range not just promised range.

Which bit of it are you particularly interested in? The app connectivity? Basic dumb all in ones are available on Amazon are more than good enough for growing the simple stuff like peppers and lettuce. None of the all in ones are bullet proof in terms of reliability, they are pretty disposable and I would not count on them lasting years.

The more I think about the 2 seater taxi that they showed off at this event, the more I think that was originally one of the prototypes for the affordable car.

Didn’t it also used to be noticeably slower than apt installed apps? This was one of the reasons I got rid of it at the time, Ive heard it has better performance now but not tried it.

Elon normally throws a dead cat like this onto the table every time he plans on either increasing his compensation or he plans on selling a bunch of shares as in the past the dead cat has boosted the share price. Funding Trumps campaign cant be cheap. I’m glad that the market seems to be finally cottoning on to his grifting with this.

It will never rot so completely that’s its never not salvageable. Imagine some alternate universe that 343 actually hired people who knew what they were doing and they created a new Halo that was as well received and as talked about as much as the first Halo. That shit would fly off the shelves, sure it wont be pre ordered (nobody should ever pre order anyway) but it will sell and sell and sell once word gets out.

This is what the cling to as they try to make a successful game, despite having as much understanding as to what makes a great game as my dog does of planning a manned mission to mars. What happened was they confused the people pre ordering and buying the game off previous quality games for actual talent in game development, so they endlessly try repeating what they did previously and it just works less and less. Meanwhile utter tools add DLC of ever lower value, loot boxes and skins, to squeeze a bit more cash out of those not quite ready to give up on the series.

Hozelock adjustable long spray lance, absolutely unfit for purpose, disposable garbage that broke after 3 months.

Last refund was a nightmare as it was a purchase from Amazon and outside their 30 day window, so initially they did not want to accept the return and directed me to the manufacturer. Hozelock just refused to engage, and directed me back to Amazon, endless loop. After going round this loop I then complaining to Amazon for a solid 10 minutes and they eventually agreed to pay for pick up of the item then refund when it was picked up.

Replaced it with a more expensive Dramm lance that every part is user replaceable with available spare parts, and much less plastic components.

Super rich for me is being able to run a motor yacht that’s typically way over 100 feet with 4 or more crew on average of 100k each. Captain might be on anything up to 250k with a decent tonnage license and experience. High chance of a chase boat with its own separate crew.

The running costs of that boat would bankrupt even a decently wealthy millionaire in a year or two.

Rich is being able to run a modern 50 foot plus motor yacht for coastal cruising without a crew. Or a recent 50 foot sailboat with all the trimmings like an oyster.

But those are just my definitions.

I think idiots like bezos with his pathetic cosplay of a sailing boat that can’t even sail with more than one mast unfurled really don’t help the perception of sailing with the super rich.

We need more boats like the black pearl that can actually sail and be off grid on renewables for proper ocean crossing. Shame that most super rich just fly to their boat rather than actually crossing the oceans on them.

The dream

Super easy to retro fit to be able to pull it out the water when its a light wind too, great for anybody wanting to reduce using their main engine as a battery charger.

Solar is great on sail boats but often the sails block the sun when they are out so its difficult to get full utilisation. Something like a hydro generator works perfectly with a good sized solar install for a sail boat to cover at anchor and under sail.

So I was talking about hydro generators that go in the water rather than a wind turbine that rely on direct wind. I prefer the former as it doesn’t muck up the aero on the boat (sails can rob it of power with their dirty air) nor does it get in the way of the deck space that is often limited on a smaller boat. You could use both but I am not fan of wind turbines except at anchor.

With a normal sail boat its common to have more wind that you can safely handle with the boat, you can use the drag of a hydro generator, which goes in the water only when you need it, to help slow the boat down rather than reefing or reefing as much (intentionally making the sails smaller). As wind is the only thing generating motion for the sail boat, its free energy that you otherwise would not be using.

Motor boats rely on the motor to move them, so any drag means the motor has to work harder, imagine dragging a drogue (water parachute used as an anchor), its the same thing, its no longer free energy and you are actually spending more energy moving the same distance as the hydro generator doesn’t generate as much energy as it costs to use. Its the same problem for a wind turbine, as that increases aero rather than water drag for the motor boat, requiring more effort from the motor for the same speed & distance.

Motor yachts would be better switching their engine over energy generation as a generator for recharging the EV batteries. Indeed there are some bigger motor yachts that do exactly this as a backup to their solar and dock derived power.

Such high winds impacts motor yachts as well, especially high sided ones. Most of the boats I’ve sailed are without bow thrusters require lines to manveur in even moderate winds in tight marinas. Bow thrusters makes it push button in moderate wind.

Super rich all have crewed boats, so its mostly to do with living space per foot of boat length or them as they just pay their way around the skill issue. Those who do like to occasionally pilot or race their own boat tend to have sailing boats as they are much more rewarding to sail.

The bits that are different between a motor and sail yacht is really just the sails, that part is actually pretty simple to learn (mastering is something else). In mast/boom mains, electric furling head sails, hydraulic or electric winches, all make operating the sails push button.

The navigation and marina skills are the same, if you have bow thrusters. As everything else is at a slower pace, sail boats are easier to get to grips with when under way and new to sailing.

I completely get that not everybody wants to tack their way upwind, but its the pleasure in actually sailing in silence rather than a noisy and smelly motor that is the reward here. That, and the cost saving. I can do two weeks sailing covering hundreds of nautical miles for £50 in fuel for a 40 foot sail boat and that’s with having to run the motor as a generator to charge the batteries (charter boats suck for house electrics and solar), vs. £500 ish for a motor yacht.

Big part of this would be that its a foiling boat and that massively reduces drag from the water. Keeping weight and drag down are the secret to improving efficiency for EVs be they boats or cars. Any decent marina its easy to get multiple 22kw shore supply as well, it can be expensive and metered but you aren’t going to be waiting that long to recharge your boat.

Electric makes the most sense on sail boats as they already have a green source of energy, and thanks to hydro they can convert some of that motion generated by the wind into charge for the batteries. Couple with solar and you start to look at a decent amount of energy generation.

Sail boats also tend to have far less powerful ICE than your average motor yacht, so you need less powerful EV motors to achieve the same speed, and in the right conditions you only really need the motor getting in and out of the harbor so your battery bank is smaller and lighter. Plus you could make the batteries do double duty as the house batteries as well.

The trick will be to get the super rich out of their shitty super yachts that burn a couple of thousand dollars of fuel per hour, they could already have sail boats but choose not to for the increased living space that they can get out of the same length of boat due to being able to build much higher due to no masts.

The problem is that they did not build battery factories quick enough, they sat on their hands waiting for massive hand outs to pay for the factories rather than investing. All while profiting off existing investment in ICE that is high return at this point in its life cycle. So they ended up making more profitable per unit halo models like the F150 that they do not need to sell in high volumes to get a return on.

Batteries are about half the raw cost of an EV, if you paying somebody else to make it for you its going to be more expensive as they will want to make a profit and you are stuck being able to buy ever how many they want to sell you. In practice they have ended up funding a competitor to develop battery tech as well.

Lowering battery cost is the secret to cheap prices, you cannot truly compete until you make your own batteries in high volumes.

I’m only ever logging on because there’s a problem, so i login infrequently, like may be every few months.

So i want want to see the os version as I have some downgraded on purpose, and that’s helpful to see. I also want to see uptime, disk space, ip address, ram, and kernel version. These all help me understand basic issues if the box is rebooting or needs a reboot or it out of disk space very quickly.

Obviously, there are a million and one other ways to get this information, I could even stick them in my .zshrc to auto start on login as I’ve done with fastfetch, but why on earth would I do that when fastfetch works, takes less than a second to run on sign in, and looks pretty?

It’s not like I am not launching a connection to them 100s of times a day.

Ya know that never occurred to me that would work, going to have to try it