Very disappointing, although not unexpected. The energy star program was a very useful. It is very easy for a manufacturer to save a couple of bucks on some voltage converter circuits and saddle the customer with hundreds of dollars of electricity bills. And it was very difficult for the average consumer to weight what the energy efficiency of their appliances is. Energy star kept everyone honest and provided an accurate and comparable metric as to electricity usage.
The responsible drug user is a myth created to sell more drugs. Most illegal drugs are both addictive and tolerance causing. It is certainly true of MDMA. That means you will not get the same effect, from the same amount next time. You will have to increase your dosage to get the same or similar experience.
So you either stop using the drug (if you are lucky) or go on a downward spiral of higher doses, more negative side effects and life deterioration.
Not entirely on topic but a relevant warning. Extasy is used nowadays as a rape drug. Be careful. I have had extasy three times in my life, none of them consensual -- every single time it was slipped into my drink. I described the symptoms to my psychiatrist and she said that it was extasy for sure. I am a middle aged man and not incredibly attractive. God knows what is happening to young sexy people.
So if you are having a drink somewhere and you suddenly unexpectedly get this really happy, warm and cozy feeling, as if everything is alright with the world, there is love everywhere and you just have to hug and kiss somebody, anybody .... well do not hug or kiss anybody. You may have just been drugged.
There is a very troubling lore about MDMA, in that it apparently it is not such a bad drug, etc. I don't know about this ... I do know that a lot of MDMA deaths happened at the extasy fueled raves that were popular in the 90s and the early 2000s. They say those deaths were from other causes ... I do not know if this is true, but I have a feeling that this mantra of "MDMA is not that bad it is all about love, etc. " has been taken up by would-be-rapists to convince themselves that what they are doing is not that bad. That MDMA is not really a rape drug like Rohypnol, so there is nothing wrong in slipping one into a person's drink.
Well they are wrong. It is a serious crime and it is attempted rape if intent is established.
I confronted one of the guys that slipped me MDMA. It is not difficult to guess who did it, they usually make sure they are close to you when you are having those "I need to hug and kiss someone, anyone" feelings. He essentially admitted it without saying it outright and started laughing. Thought it was a cute thing, like something out of a romantic comedy.
I wish I had proof to send all those f*ckers to jail but of course when you are happy on MDMA you do not think to save the evidence for the police. But next time I will. I have thought about this enough that next time I will recognize the symptoms and do what needs to be done regardless of how happy I am feeling.
If anyone cares, none of these events resulted in sexual assault, I am a very careful person and I do not easily give in to strange feelings.
Giving someone any kind of drug, even alcohol, against their consent is god freaking awful.
> at the extasy fueled raves that were popular in the 90s and the early 2000s. They say those deaths were from other causes
If you are at an illegal rave, maybe some hot squatted warehouse with no AC, you dance all night with no break, do ALOT and don't drink any water there is a good chance you collapse.
Re: deaths, a lot of what is sold as "MDMA" is not MDMA at all, but MDA, meth, all sorts of wacky and poorly understood 2C-* analogs or, increasingly and incredibly dangerously, fentanyl.
Also, ecstasy is typically taken communally, in which case it's not a very effective rape drug since it decreases sex drive and causes temporary erectile dysfunction in many men.
The erectile dysfunction it causes has no correlation with decreased sex drive. Just about everyone I know who’s taken the substance has reported their sex drive is through the roof.
Wrong you disgusting pervert. You do not know me you have no right or ability to do psycho analysis to me.
Even if what you say is true and if ecstasy only “lowers your standards” then, by definition if someone makes you take it without knowing it is still an attempted rape. So you are defending rape, you disgusting pervert.
This is very interesting and cannot happen fast enough, considering the current worldwide transformer shortage.
I have a question for people more familiar with these. What exactly happens at the isolation stage. They say it includes a high frequency transformer (HFT). But its input and out put is DC. And classic transformers operate on AC. So in order to get the transformer working, one would have to chop up the incoming dc power into a square wave or a sine wave. But what transistors can you use to do this, considering you are dealing both with very high power and very high frequencies?
Power transistors can be had that can switch up to maybe 3000V at the most. But maybe 1200-1500V is more common.
You can stack power transistors to switch higher voltages on the primary side. On the secondary side you just need an H-bridge. Which can be made up of transistors in parallel.
We've had high power high voltage transistors for about 40 years now. A lot of this isn't technical but rather economic. As the price falls the applications where they are cheaper increases. It's notable for instance Toyota started work on their hybrid drive in the mid nineties when inverters for 10-100 HP motors became cheap enough.
No, I'm not joking. For these kinds of voltages, you need to use highly homogenous doped silicon, and the only way to produce it is to irradiate silicon with neutrons. It transmutes some of the silicon atoms into phosphorus: https://nrl.mit.edu/facilities/ntds/
I assume that if people are going to the trouble to literally irradiate the material in order to get what they need, they can't get the results by just mixing in phosphorus. Could somebody who actually understands this tell me why that is?
Because there is no other way to produce homogenous enough thick wafers of doped silicon. Other methods rely on diffusion from the surface, which is not enough for this case.
And doping during crystal growth doesn't produce homogenous enough silicon.
The diagrams on the page are nothing more than the typical switch mode power supply [1] layout, the only difference being handling grid power levels and conversion back to AC at the output (most switch mode PSU's output DC).
There are techniques for "stack"ing transistors so that the individual swtiching devices see potentials that are within spec and much lower than the voltage switched by the overall circuit.
Clean is hard to find, processing lanthanide concentrates creates radioactive waste.
As the world transitions towards cleaner and more sustainable energy sources, the demand for rare earth minerals has surged. From wind turbines and solar photovoltaic (PV) cells to electric vehicles (EV) and battery storage, rare earth minerals are essential components in powering the technologies that will drive the renewable energy transition.
The elements critical to the energy transition include the 17 rare earth elements, the 15 lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium. While many rare earth metals are actually common, they are called “rare” because they are seldom found in sufficient amounts to be extracted easily or economically.
Lynas to produce rare earths concentrates in Kalgoorlie from August
The company is building the facility in response to continuing environmental concerns in Malaysia about radioactive wastes produced by its local rare earth metals production plant.
The WSJ article says that most of the minority non-musk investors of xAI are also non-Musk investors of Twitter. So they are self dealing as well. It is just one giant orgy of self dealing. Apologies about the mental image.
It is very strange to see a grayed out comment on top of a thread that has about 160 non-grayed out comments. I thought that highest rated comments go to the top and grayed out comments are rated below zero.
Regarding your points. First the thing about used evs not selling has more to do with the rapid pace of innovation of evs rather than lack of demand. In the 90s it was very difficult to sell a used PC because PCs improved so quickly. That did not mean that PCs were not doing well, in fact PC sales were growing exponentially. And evs do improve fast.
Your second point is silly. Basically you are saying that EVs are doomed because EVs are already selling too much. Thats like the old joke that nobody goes to this restaurant anymore because it is too crowded.
Your third point is about rising electricity costs. That sucks for sure, but electricity costs tend to rise together with gasoline costs. It will be very difficult for those two to diverge so that a gas car all of a sudden becomes more economical. The fact that one can make electricity out of oil and oil products tends to mean that electricity costs will not rise very much in comparison to gasoline costs in a short period of time.
> Your second point is silly. Basically you are saying that EVs are doomed because EVs are already selling too much. Thats like the old joke that nobody goes to this restaurant anymore because it is too crowded.
I found it thought provoking rather than silly. Anecdotally, I've noticed EVs have gone from a type of car frequently seen on road trips to more of a city vehicle. This confines their location and purchasers.
> The fact that one can make electricity out of oil.
If you do that, there's little benefit from car electrification. Also electricity is cheap usually when the car is not charging and vice versa. People arrive home, start cooking, washing clothes and plug in their car. The sun is already set and the local grid's unprepared cable sections cause voltage drops. The energy dilivered by the pv panels at noon is worth less than 10 percent of the nominal price. That is what holding EV usage back right now.
> If you do that, there's little benefit from car electrification
Untrue, if you generate power from oil at a big power plant, transmit it down to a house and charge a battery then use the battery to power an electric motor it will still be considerably more efficient than using a car-sized combustion engine (not even counting the energy required to transport the gasoline/diesel to the gas station).
> The sun is already set and the local grid's unprepared cable sections cause voltage drops
It seems inevitable that car-makers and utilities will need to agree on some kind of smart metering for charging cars at non-peak points. Energy costs at 12am->6am are actually cheaper than during the day even in areas with a lot of PVs (baseline power load can't be easily shut on/off). I heard there are some standards about this.
> It is very strange to see a grayed out comment on top of a thread that has about 160 non-grayed out comments. I thought that highest rated comments go to the top and grayed out comments are rated below zero.
I don't mind, I have internet points to spare. I think it's more important we have a proper discussion in this place.
> Regarding your points. First the thing about used evs not selling has more to do with the rapid pace of innovation of evs rather than lack of demand. In the 90s it was very difficult to sell a used PC because PCs improved so quickly. That did not mean that PCs were not doing well, in fact PC sales were growing exponentially. And evs do improve fast.
I disagree. I spoke to several dealerships and they simply cannot sell even a few year old EVs, despite them being able to sell 'new' EVs of that manufacturing date. From what I can tell it's that if you've got the money to spend £30k on an EV, why would you take a risk and buy a used one for £20k? There will be limited warranty and no 'classic' mechanic will touch it. If it's out of manufacturer warranty and you develop a battery fault, the battery and fitment can be comparable to the cost you paid for the entire vehicle. This is extremely unlikely to change soon.
> Your second point is silly. Basically you are saying that EVs are doomed because EVs are already selling too much. Thats like the old joke that nobody goes to this restaurant anymore because it is too crowded.
I'm not making that point at all. Whatever the market force is, there appears to be a saturation on the near horizon for percentage of sales. It's not an opinion, it's what the numbers suggest.
> Your third point is about rising electricity costs. That sucks for sure, but electricity costs tend to rise together with gasoline costs. It will be very difficult for those two to diverge so that a gas car all of a sudden becomes more economical. The fact that one can make electricity out of oil and oil products tends to mean that electricity costs will not rise very much in comparison to gasoline costs in a short period of time.
Without taxes, combustion engines are more economical (we're not discussing efficiency). Fuel duty and VAT in the UK represents over 50% of the overall cost of fuel [1]. Some portion of that tax is then used to subsidise green energy projects such as wind turbines and solar panels, further reducing the cost of electricity.
What internet points do you have to spare? What are these points that let your posts be on the top even though everyone is voting you down. I always had doubts that HN is taking some sort of bribe to force disliked and false posts into people's attention, I did not know they made it so obvious.
So where do you pay to get your HN posts to the top? Let me know, I have some ludicrous opinions I would like to promote too!
I will not respond to the rest of your post, your arguments have deteriorated from being simply false to being incomprehensible.
> What internet points do you have to spare? What are these points that let your posts be on the top even though everyone is voting you down. I always had doubts that HN is taking some sort of bribe to force disliked and false posts into people's attention, I did not know they made it so obvious.
Just to be clear, "I have internet points to spare" refers specifically to the loss caused by downvoting. The point is that I don't care to be downvoted, I don't say things to be popular, I am far more interested in the fruits the discussions lead to.
> I will not respond to the rest of your post, your arguments have deteriorated from being simply false to being incomprehensible.
Sure, make up a conspiracy about why my comment is nearer to the top and disregard my actual points by claiming they are all false anyway. It's great to have these kinds of well structured discussions here on HN.
