Gentoo made a lot of sense WAY back in a pre-docker world, where you had to run the whole world on the host OS. Being able to compile it all meant you could link it all together with whatever weird combination of optional libraries you wanted. Things like getting sendmail to auth over LDAP, that nobody packaged in the base distro, become possible. And with Gentoo's tooling, you could build a coherent distro to your own unique demands.
Now though? It's way easier to have a herd of unicorn docker containers running that each handle one weird thing in isolation.
The herd of docker containers would in practice share almost nothing apart from the kernel and waste a lot of RAM. Didn't matter when RAM was cheap, but nowadays...
A lot of the "labor" costs are just regulatory/permitting in disguise. An expedited approval regime with standards such that, permits-wise, installing solar panels was as easy as installing an EV charger would save a ton of money.
This is significantly more over-built than what you are describing, but there is a company building along this idea[0]. Trailer you can drag to location, unfurl the solar panels which then charge the batteries. Being marketed for disasters and military.
I've seen some promising results from solar fences. Because the panels are getting so cheap you can offset the efficiency loss by buying more. Plus, because they are vertical and double sided they get more sunlight earlier and later in the day.
That actually sounds like a viable regulatory hack. Technically an "EV" with "V2G capability", but actually it's a truck full of batteries with solar panels hanging off it.
Eh, it's not unique, it's just that the American ones seem to be so much more empowered, excessive, and capable of generating news and social media headlines.
The UK variant seems to have more traditional failure modes of "excessive charges for maintenance of communal areas": https://parliamentnews.co.uk/tales-of-intimidation-excessive... , but people are still capable of having the occasional fistfight or protracted legal dispute about the wrong kind of hedge in a more informal, adhoc way.
Following the great american "mobile home" tradition. Slap a couple wheels under any object and it is magically removed from countless regulatory rules.
2-wheel dollies with motorized stair climbers are a thing too. Not super common, but aren't cost prohibitive for a use case like this where they'd see daily use.
How often, though, are these not really "cost saving" measures so much as "nobody gets a free ride" measures?
Some schools spend a lot of staff effort managing bad behavior, to everyone's harm, that could be greatly reduced by just making sure every kid had breakfast and lunch. Feeding the kids is "communism", so it's bad, but needing to spend more on non-teaching staff to manage behavior, and getting less instruction out of teaching staff because they spend half their time dealing with behavior issues is worse.
Just got a Tesla. I was worried about travel through western Iowa, it seemed fairly worst case looking at the map of my route, because I’m not on the interstate and the Tesla superchargers aren’t near my route. To my surprise, it was a non-issue. Modern EVs have enough range and there are indeed just enough chargers.
That is my objection. There are just enough chargers. However only if you plan around chargers. There is a gas station in nearly every small town. You can safely say any town that can't support a gas station cannot support anything else (no stores, bars, restaurants) and only rarely be wrong. Most small towns don't have a charger at all, and if they do it is often level 2 which means stay overnight to get useful range. (I don't understand these - the ones I've seen are not near anyplace you might stay overnight)
I think there's a common misconception by non-EV drivers that every charge you have to wait until the battery is full - you don't. You just have to charge enough to get to your next stop.
If you're in a small town with a level 2 charger at a city park, you just charge enough to get back to civilization. Then hit the fast charger when you're back to the main highway.
Yeah, it takes a little planning to hit charging stops - but it's not actually much planning. And the built-in navigation takes care of most of it for you anyway. I was genuinely surprised on my first trip (again, through not-EV-friendly territory) how much of a non-issue it was in practice, and how much I didn't feel like I was waiting on chargers (even relatively slow "fast chargers"). I just took my time using the restroom, grabbed a fresh drink, checked my notifications on my phone, and it was time to head out again.
I own and drive an EV. I know what they are really like and you are trying to wand wave away things as not a big deal that are a big deal.
You seem to have a misconception about how far it is from a small town to a anywhere else. Your 1 hour at a level 2 charger will get you about 15 minutes down the road - where will find the closest public charger in the previous town that you just left. There are a lot of small towns there are over an hour drive to the nearest highway that has level 3 chargers. Even on the highway the level 3 chargers are often an hour apart. So figure 8 hours at the public charger in the small town to hit the nearest level 3 charger.
> it takes a little planning to hit charging stops - but it's not actually much planning
You know how much planning I do when I take the gas car: almost always 0. I know that I'm never more than 15 minutes from a gas station so I just plan on stopping at the next gas when the gauge start to get close to empty and I'm always fine. There is one trip I sometimes make where the gas states are 30 minutes apart (through desert that is almost uninhabited) , and I'm careful to ensure I have fuel before driving that section.
My EV is a GM where I can't use the car's nav system without paying a subscription which I don't. It works fine for most trips, but I wouldn't not recommenced it for road trips or when going small towns.
> Your 1 hour at a level 2 charger will get you about 15 minutes down the road
A level 2 charger adds about 40 miles to a Model 3 or Model Y in an hour of charging. I don't know what you drive that is so much less efficient. 8 hours on a level 2 would fill the battery, not just get you to the next charger.
> I know that I'm never more than 15 minutes from a gas station
You're being dramatic the other direction here - plenty of routes have you more than 15 minutes from a gas station, including the one I described in my prior post.
I'm sure there are places where it actually is a little tricky. Maybe more so depending on vehicles (Tesla does seem to be the best experience, by a lot). That doesn't change the fact that good EVs are just not a big deal to travel with anymore.
The last level 2 charger I used added 15 miles of range over about an hour. I drove a
Chevy Blazer, which undoubtedly gives different ranges for some amount of power. Not all level 2 chargers charge at the same rate. As a result YMMV.
That is a bludgeon masquerading as a solution. People are terrible at planning ahead. Even those who are good at it sometimes plan wrong. There are sometimes energencies which people have to deal with against their plans.
Eventually chargers will be everywhere, but not today. When gas was new in 1900 cars had the same problems.
The people living in small town rural areas never need to buy an EV. They are such a tiny sliver of the population that they can have their gas cars forever and the climate won't notice.
The fears and anxieties of that small shaving of people is simply a misguided talking point about EV viability.
I like unifi despite the appliance feel. I recommend using the kit that works fire you, but avoiding the temptation to stick everything in a single pane of glass. Use the wifi, don't also cram your routing and switching and firewalling into the same vendor relationship.
It's like being apple-everything. Freedom until you bump into the walls of your cell.
Unifi APs are a sweet spot of price/performance, and I have no difficulty recommending them. Ruckus hardware is better at five times the price.
UISP gear has worked very very well for me for ptp and ptmp. But that's a completely different line.
Perhaps the kids that could be soccer superstars stick with basketball until they figure out they aren't tall enough for the NBA, but are too old or just never developed enough interest in soccer to become a pro at that. But if they didn't have that NBA dream growing up, they may well have become a soccer superstar?
This is probably less true than you'd think. Freak athletes are great athletes no matter the sport.
There's kind of a soft cap on NFL player height at about 6'5" or 6'6" - hardly anybody is taller than that. But the NBA is majority guys 6'6" or taller. That split isn't because all those kids got sorted into the right sport when they were kids. It's because if you're enough of an athlete to go pro and tall enough to make a living off basketball, that's a lot easier life with a longer career than playing football.
Womens basketball viewership across college, pro and semi pro levels is significantly more popular than equivalent womens soccer levels. Non-USWNT games are surprisingly hard to locate and stream.
The other trouble is that every handyman thinks they have a great handle on everything but have at least one blind spot where they do really, really stupid stuff.
More often it's just that the situation changes with time.
Like someone will work with existing shared neutral aluminum circuit spaghetti because that seemed right when the scope was narrow. Maybe they're just throwing an outlet on the opposite side of the wall for someone's CPAP machine. Maybe they're actively avoiding putting it on the bedroom circuit because of which window the A/C goes in. Then the scope grows, circumstances change and the specialized solution is no longer optimal.
Then the next owner shows up and has to troubleshoot something and between hindsight and the smug know-it-alls on /r/everytrade (seriously, the internet is great at driving off people with wisdom and experience) they pronounce the prior guy to have been an idiot.
A large number of people can't afford contractor rates, so the alternative to the handyman is doing the work themselves. Who is more likely to screw it up, the person who does it once a month but not every day, or the person who does it once in their whole life?
The problem is the "handyperson" may "know" (but not actually) and do what they think they know. When I encounter the same task, I don't know I stop and try to learn the right way first. So there's a good chance the homeowner is actually on a better path.
A lot of the handypeople you hire, kinda by nature of being under-the-radar, also end up intentionally cutting corners where "it doesn't matter" because savings are a priority for their customers, and it can go too far. I, on the other hand, at least know I'm not trying to cheap out on my own work just because my last customers were broke and I'm conditioned to working in that mode.
> The problem is the "handyperson" may "know" (but not actually) and do what they think they know. When I encounter the same task, I don't know I stop and try to learn the right way first. So there's a good chance the homeowner is actually on a better path.
Maybe that's true for diligent technical people, but they're not the majority. The average person is going to watch a YouTube video, run out of free time and wing it.
> A lot of the handypeople you hire, kinda by nature of being under-the-radar, also end up intentionally cutting corners where "it doesn't matter" because savings are a priority for their customers, and it can go too far.
This is just humans again. Plenty of people willing to skimp out on something, even when it's for themselves, when it means saving time or money. Especially the people short on time or money.
> I, on the other hand, at least know I'm not trying to cheap out on my own work just because my last customers were broke and I'm conditioned to working in that mode.
This is the argument for doing it yourself when you have the time and wherewithal to do it yourself. It's not an argument for pressuring people to do it themselves when they don't have the time and wherewithal by making the only other lawful alternative be the one they can't afford.
Now though? It's way easier to have a herd of unicorn docker containers running that each handle one weird thing in isolation.
reply