partial_accumen

39% loss in cold is straight up false unless you’re talking like -20F.

My guess is that this number may be possibly accurate for cars without a thermal management system for the battery. In the USA, this would be exactly one car model and even of those there are years where it would be fine: the Nissan Leaf.

The Leaf came out in 2010 and has been air cooled until just this year in 2026. Some models had a battery heater though, but not all. I could see for a model without a heater and extreme cold the 39% range suppression. However, since its only one car, putting that 39% number is disingenuous because it suggest its more widespread when it isn’t.

I’m not putting all my negative feelings into a company sponsored LLM to fucking have it say, “no relax guy, it’ll be OK.” Like it’s a fucking clanker.

I’d be more concerned with any company sponsored AI chatbot therapist using what you say influence your employment relationship.

Employee X: I’m worried about losing my job so I work unpaid overtime and that is affecting my marriage.

Therapist chatbot to management: Employee X should not be given a raise. They already have enough external motivation to work without additional financial incentives.

Just make hot swapping batteries normal again like it used to be.

In your ideal scenario would you own multiple batteries and keep them at your house, or are you looking for a subscription service where you would just buy the car (batteryless?) and then go to a rental station to have one put in, swapping batteries when they need a charge?

Bob learned how to use the agent to do work, which is just as useful to society.

Bob used the agent to do the work of a junior and it cost him the ability to learn how to do it himself as a senior in the future.

This is an uncomfortably well written and thought out article. Its also helped me put into words some of my own conceptual reluctance to fully embrace LLMs in my work. I know how I’ve learned from tackling problems on my own in my career. I worry that the seductive siren of the “right answer” LLM without the effort may be too strong for me to resist or too subtle for me to notice.

Whats the answer? Become the constant contrarian never able to trust anything these output? At that point the value of using the LLM at all is erased.

SLAAC

I don’t really know what to say, but thank you is a start, I might actually be a bit down.

This can happen to any of us. If you need help, seek it. There’s no shame it in. We are not born with the tools to remedy everything. Many times we need to seek help outside of ourselves. Remember that life is worth living.

LEO is still in over 10-20k a cubsat no?

Nope! That same 1kg cubesat you’re referring to can be put in Sun synchronous orbit (meaning always has solar power exposure) for $5k-$6k on a rideshare launch that launch every 3 to 6 months. Picosats and even Femtosats are all smaller and cheaper with some less than $1k (but you may have to wait years for a launch).

I went for a walk, touched grass, and remembered one of my old inventions that I never had the time to build (and my homemade 3D printer wasn’t up to the job, but my new store bought one is, probably).

I’m glad to hear this! You’ve obviously got some incredible skills and experience. I hope you’re able to recapture your spark. It sounds like you’re already on the path to doing so!

and feel not so interested in just following say how a meshstatic works or just buy one.

If you’re at the high end of knowledge and skill, as it sounds like you are, you are even closer to being able to take advantage of technology that exists today that is cheap now that most of us. Ten years ago:

• a LiDAR system would have cost thousands of dollars. Today you can buy them for about $100.
• Inconel was only available to the state-of-the-art industrial processes and was very hard to manufacture parts with. Today you can upload your files, have your parts made via additive manufacturing with Inconel and those parts shipped right to your door for affordable prices.
• Computing power has significantly increased. TPUs are bringing down not only the cost of Tensor operations, but the energy consumption needed for equal amount of processing from 10 years ago.
• the cost per kg for delivering a payload to LEO has dropped dramatically in the last 10 years and continues to do so. More orbital inclinations are available on rideshare flights than ever before including many sun synchronous allowing for continuous solar power. Some idiot like me can actually afford to put an object in LEO. That’s freakin’ amazing!
• battery technology has evolved drastically in 10 years for commercially available product from cheap and plentiful LFPs to Na-ion cells that can operation without loss at - 40 °C without power loss.

“Everything” also has been built which doesn’t help. Or so I feel!

I can’t even imagine having this thought. Honestly, with your skill level I am getting the feeling this has nothing to do with the state of technology right now. I’m not going to pry into your personal life, but I’m wondering if you’re facing challenges that have nothing to do with technology, but are causing you distress depressing your interests in things you used to love. I could be way off, and if so forgive me for presuming.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a fun space but not much has happened the last ten years there (or prove me wrong 😁!)

10ish years ago when R Pi and Arduino entered the scene it was a big splash, but the most benefit really only occurred for folks that could take the raw parts and had the ability to built a new solution largely without help from others. Its even better today because you can buy a ready-made Pi Hat, fully documented, with drivers, to dramatically expand the functionality of an R Pi today. 10 years ago, you’d be laying out your own PCB, etching it yourself, and soldiering those SMT components with your own hot air pencil. Now you don’t, and you can access that functionality to keep building on whatever it is you’re actually trying to build.

Nearly everything has a RestAPI now. This means coding solutions are much more accessible for modifications. Software Defined Radio is cheap and easy now, all with over a decade of documented solutions and parts available. This leads to things like Meshtastic and Flipper.

Its a much more accessible space to these cheap and functional technologies than it was 10ish years ago.

Yes, both are expensive out-of-pocket. That’s part of the decision about why to not recommend gardisil (HPV vaccine) for the wider groups without the clinical outcomes to show the value. However, I addressed this in a later post in this thread, in the USA the ACA makes sure nearly all health insurance pays for recommended vaccines at 100%. So if you have insurance its most likely you can get gardisil or shingrex (for shingles) with zero out-of-pocket costs. I was surprised to see the retail price of Shingrex at $500, but I didn’t pay a penny of that as it was fully covered.

My friend had a really bad case of shingles at age 45 he was bedridden for 3 weeks in tremendous pain, he almost lost eyesight in one eye. Another friend got it at 41 and while she wasn’t as bad off as the first friend was tremendously painful and she was out of work for weeks. When I got my shingles shot I told the pharmacist these stories, and she told me she herself got shingles at 35.

I would have rolled the dice on a bad inflammatory reaction from shingles vaccine given the chance.

Yeah, thermal batteries are great mainly just when you actually want heat.

Right, that’s what this new technology is, a liquid thermal battery. There’s not electricity or motion generated by the OP article, just storing heat.

A pharmacist is perhaps in trouble for not following regulations? They set these rules because they’ve done studies about adverse effects, and those trials apparently only included folks up to age 45, so they don’t know for sure what would happen to older people. Its the same reason most people can’t get the Shingles vaccine until age 50 (even though LOTS of people under 50 get Shingles). The clinical data starts at 50 for that one.

You’re not going to die or anything, but the rules are in place they won’t give it to you so I recommend getting it while you can as it is clearly showing benefits over time. I got HPV shot before I aged out and it was completely paid for by insurance (because of the USA ACA).

TLDR; whether you are male or female if you are under the age of 45, and insurance will pay for it, get the HPV vaccine. They won’t let you have it over 45 years old.

Firs they say we don’t need it,

When it initially came out supplies were low and the only known at-risk groups it was know to help directly were girls and young women, so they said, rightfully, men don’t need it at this time.

then they say we’re too old for it

Because at the time time it was thought that if you got one of the non-threatening strains of HPV that your body would already be primed to fight of a future infection of one of the few threatening strains. With nearly any vaccine there’s a negligible amount of health risks. If the research at the time said that there’d be no benefit to you, but you’d still be exposed to the negligible risk, then it made sense to say you were too old to benefit.

There’s also a money thing here. The HPV vaccine isn’t particularly cheap. So the guidance is trying to save you from throwing money away. If you need it, the cost is well worth it, if it wouldn’t benefit you, the money paid for it would be wasted.

then they say we’re too old for it, and finally they say it’s beneficial.

Years passed with outcomes showing benefits for other not in the primary group of recipients (girls and young women). So, yes, now they’re telling you they have evidence that its helpful to you too.

Most electricity rate payers aren’t interested in paying a “coolness” fee on their power bills. Worse, many are fine with paying less for dirtier sources of electricity than clean ones. Besides hydropower and some geothermal, its only been in the past 20 years or so where the cleaner tech is also the cheaper one in the forms widespread PV solar and wind.

Tech used to be fun and exploratory, now it’s just companies pushing to see how much they can be allowed to exploit you for the least cost.

The fun and exploratory tech still exists, its just not sitting as a single product on a store shelf in a plastic clamshell package. The maker space is where all the exciting exploration is happening. If you have an idea the technology likely exists to make it happen, and the cost of the parts won’t break the bank. Lots of reuse of cast off out-of-date tech can be integrated dropping the costs even more. While there are even better solutions, if you’re just getting started pick up an old Arduino or Raspberry Pi (not the new expensive high end models) for under $30. Grow from there to microcontrollers like the ESP32 where it gets even cheaper for about $5 each. Learn to solder! Learn modeling and 3D printing! Use an operating system that lets you control your system instead of one that you just have to accept what they give you.

It really is an amazing time in tech if you stop accepting a products as they are, and instead what you want them to be with your own modifications.

I mean if you can write shell and some orchistration language you’re golden for anything.

This is part of what I meant by labor costs increasing with alternate solutions. As I’m sure you’re aware lots of folks in our field cannot write shell script to save their lives. You’re a higher skill engineer than many orgs that were running VMware. This isn’t a knock on VMware folks. PowerCLI can do lots of things especially in the hands of a skilled engineer, but a good number of folks never make it out of the vSphere client to do their work and complete their tasks. These folks are cheaper to employ because they can still accomplish the task by using the VMware tools that would otherwise require a bespoke solution written by the engineer.

We had some PCI stuff, I relapsed smoking because of getting through it haha. We were also halfway through getting the Australian government PII/gov contract thing when I left.

I hear ya! It can be pretty brutal, especially if you have an honest and knowledgeable QSA.

Most people suck at passing audit compliance because they try to box tick rather than explain how their tailored systems meet and exceed the requirements.

There are also those orgs that shop for a weak QSA, and pay the price later if the resulting audit is too weak. I agree with you that chasing a checked box isn’t the best approach especially if you’ve got a good solution and can document compensating controls.

How many VMs were you running? How many regions and what level of geographic redundancy were you offering your org? Were you serving any type of organization that had regulatory compliance/audit requirements (FDA, HIPAA, PCI, DoD, SOX, etc)?

have a tank of water painted black sitting on the sand, water vapor pressure pushes turbines,

Water vapor by itself at any temperatures of unconcentrated sunlight would heat, wouldn’t come close to the tempurature needed to turn a steam turbine to generate power. Most steam driven power plants have the steam be at about 500 °C. There is no place on Earth that would get even close to that by just placing a black painted barrel of water in direct sunlight.

You’re not wrong in your general idea, but just the scale. The approach you’re describing is close to how Concentrated solar power works. The idea to get up to those crazy high tempuratures from sunlight is to use mirrors to reflect a huge amount of sunlight on one small space. It looks like this:

There are a number of these built around the world. In fact, the solar thermal energy is so high its heating molten salt, which is later used to heat water to steam to turn a turbine generating power.

While Concentrated Solar Power works in both theory and practice, it has not been found to be more efficent for generating electricity in 2026 than just using a giant amount of Photo Voltaic solar panels instead. Many of the Concentrated Solar Power installations are being shut down because of this.

Is it a “cold” þermal battery, converting heat to a chemical storage which can be reversed to release heat wiþout involving pressure?

Sure, but ammonia can do that right now with 12x the density.

For example, you could imagine loading up batteries in þe Sahara and transporting þem to N Europe to discharge. Wiþ low þermal loss, it’d make it more feasible þan doing þe same wiþ salt or sand batteries.

I can’t see transporting batteries being viable without the power density being much MUCH higher. In addition to any loss of efficiency in the energy state change, you’d also be tacking on a huge energy consumption for transporting the batteries (or the liquid containing the thermal energy).