• 30 Posts
  • 273 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 24th, 2023

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  • The problem is that always the economically cleanest approach is to add fees, which are political suicide.

    Like, if you add a “disposal fee” to electronics, that creates incentive to build electronics that last long. But Ford chased Wynne out of Ontario Government using their e-waste fees.

    The alternative is stupid bulky bureaucracy and regulation. Which voters say they hate, but their actions speak louder.

    Carrots are politically better than sticks, but how do you offer a carrot for not doing something? Fee-and-dividend is supposed to do that, but now we’re at “axe the tax” under a fee-and-dividend model.

    So maybe bureaucracy and regulation is the way to go.

    Ban glue in portable electronics assembly? I’ll never forgive Apple for inventing that nonsense.

    Require that any device that is E-Waste have a big ugly “this is e-waste” label on its exterior that end users are totally allowed to remove, but replacing the “this is e-waste” panel with something clean-looking must be at least as easy as replacing the battery.


  • in the end I went with CanSpace as registrar, and I’m using CloudFlare to actually run the nameservers.

    The transfer was kind of a PITA because since the domain transferred from Google to Squarespace to Canspace to then being hosted on CF’s nameservers (but still on Canspace) the DNSSEC meant that CF couldn’t actually get it connected until like 48 hours later. Was quite worried that I’d screwed up somewhere.


  • in the end I went with CanSpace as registrar, and I’m using CloudFlare to actually run the nameservers.

    The transfer was kind of a PITA because since the domain transferred from Google to Squarespace to Canspace to then being hosted on CF’s nameservers (but still on Canspace) the DNSSEC meant that CF couldn’t actually get it connected until like 48 hours later. Was quite worried that I’d screwed up somewhere.



















  • I’m aware but I haven’t heard people’s experiences with them. I ask because I’m shopping for water heating right now and debating the expense of getting 240 run to the water heater for a heat pump.

    Electric tankless sounds impossible (yes, I know they exist, I just mean they don’t sound like something that should be able to), since the amount of BTUs required to run a gas tankless at peak is absolutely nuts – tankless gas water-heaters run on 3/4" pipe instead of the normal 1/2" since they need to have so much burst heat. That doesn’t sound possible for electric.




  • I agree they’re a trade-off, but they’re a necessary middle-step in the process of getting off of carbon fuels while the battery industry develops enough to fully convert the rest of the auto industry.

    I’d rather see every passenger-vehicle made after 2020 be a PHEV than a handful of guys driving around in Teslas and Lightnings with bloated batteries while 95% of new cars on the road are still gas-burners.


  • Want to save the electric car dream? Subsidies aren’t enough. Large EVs are far more expensive than conventional large vehicles, and road-tanks like the F150 represent a threat to the kind of small vehicles that we should be supporting. Subcompacts, e-bikes, and new things filling the space in-between (eg enclosed electric motorbike-class vehicles like the Arcimoto) are an important part of the post-fossil-fuel future, but they’re not safe to take on to a road full of gigantic motor bricks. I drive a Prius Prime and the darn thing’s roof is lower than the hood of some jacked-up pickups.

    I’m not saying that pickups and similar vehicles should be illegal, but we need stronger disincentives for people buying such things. Like rate vehicles based on various objective criteria - bumper-compatibility, mass, front cross-section, front visibility, visual obstruction to other drivers, etc. and then classify the more dangerous ones as “high risk vehicles”, and give those ones stricter licensing requirements (like a class D) and stricter penalties for infractions. Need a pickup for your job? Then you’re a professional, and you can deal with professional vehicle licensing requirements.

    I mean, if you need one to pull a boat? Well, you can afford some extra fees (or fines for infractions), and to go through a stricter licensing process.

    Also, PHEVs are a seriously underrated option. I think we leapfrogged something important with this jump to full BEVs. I love my Prius Prime - I live in Hamilton, which is built as an old-fashioned streetcar-suburb, and daily commute rarely hits the gas-engine.