I just had an experience with a auto soap dispenser, sink, towels and dryer set in the same place in a public restroom, didn’t have to walk to a shared dryer
Plus if electric cars become the norm, the streets will be quiet for the first time since the industrial revolution
Ebikes have transformed where I live. It’s mountainous so the only cyclists you’d see were skinny lycra-clad guys on 5 grand bikes.
Now virtually everyone has a bike, from kids to octogenarians, and the only difference between the lycra-clad cyclists and the shorts n t-shirt cyclists is the fact the ones on the ebikes are all smiling 😊
totally this, such a simple idea but it’s transformative in so many ways
When I was a kid, I had to reference several manuals and carefully assemble a double handful of parts in specific order to connect two computers to eachother. I’d have to fiddle with protocols and speeds and obscure features and traits to make the stars align. Transferring 200mb would be an overnight task. If I wanted to show pictures from my vacation on a big screen, I would have to have them printed on cellulose and insert them in tiny frames to project on a thick screen with a huge machine.
Yesterday, I went to a friend, pointed my phone at a
magic symbolqr code and sent a full movie to their PC in a few minutes. Then I pushed a button to make the photographs on my phone appear on their TV.I have a magic little box sitting in my garage that allows me to dream up a weird little device, create it on a computer, convert it to a big pile of computer code automatically, hit “go” on the magic box, and come back in 4 hours to a hunk of plastic in the exact shape I dreamt up only a few hours before. A shape and functionality that had never before existed on the face of the earth.
Ya, 3d printing feels pretty futuristic.
my job is basically design and manufacture, the dependencies of 3d printers make my job wouldnt exist 10 years ago.
Technology that is so ubiquitous that younger gen’s don’t know how to troubleshoot them at all.
I grew up with many examples from mag tape media to 802.11b that was basically only useful within a clear line of site to the router.
As a very curious person with very wide interests, it is so easy to access really hard-to-find information. In the past five years I’ve satisfied my curiosity more than adequately on hundreds of topics I’d wondered about all my life … from home. One plus side of Covid.
On the darker side, there were plenty of predictions (from science and fiction) in decades past that are becoming very real. Too many heads buried in sand.
Electric cars will certainly be quieter at low speed but they will still be noisy at higher speed due to tire noise dominating. Lower speed limits in cities would help here significantly.
Being addicted to the internet
Plus if electric cars become the norm, the streets will be quiet for the first time since the industrial revolution
The sound of hooves on cobblestone is incredibly loud and annoying!
What really baffles me is modern computers. The whole assortment from mainframe batteries, desktop PCs, laptops to smartphones, watches, wireless earbuds, microcontrollers, miniaturised sensors, etc. Even the cheapest modern microcontrollers have insanely complex and tiny patterning that really speaks volumes for the amount of process control and precision in semiconductor fabs. Truly, I would call the modern IC a miracle if I wouldn’t know better. It is physics, materials science and chemistry at their best.
Playing with my own AI models is interesting.
My Steam Deck!
Jesus Christ, it is SO GOOD!
Aeropex - bone-conducting earphones
Coolify2 - Personal neck AC/heating with peltier technology
GrapheneOS - Able to use a smartphone to its full potential, without the tracking/bloat/handholding of other default OS choices.
I really like how those first two are basic science, but somebody was actually able to innovate them into doing something useful.
I wish more technology was like this, and not whatever the crypto/metaverse/NFT/AI people are doing (mostly mistaking fluff for innovation)
Like the progression of LEDs over the past 40 years, an outstanding increase in brightness and colours.
Also, listening to
Kool Keith - Earth People
The speed of light means that light that left our sun arrives on my roof’s solar panels 8 minutes later. I unplugged my EV from my home charger, and drove to get a burrito. I drove on energy that left the sun 10 minutes before I used it to go get lunch.
Also, my electric bill arrived yesterday and it was the same amount due for the past 3 months: Total bill $0 “No payment due at this time”.
Given the heat lately, air conditioning. Sure, AC has been around for a long time but it’s becoming ubiquitous (at least in the us). Mine is controllable over Alexa, outputs data graphs, makes intelligent decisions to save money, etc.
Now that we daily experience the results of global warming, we all hide our heads in the
sandACArc Search. I’ve learned more this past year.
Relating to electric cars, Aptera – when they hit the streets everything changes.
when they hit the streets
I doubt that will be any time soon unless there’s multiple massive breakthroughs. Unless you drive 5 miles a day and park in pure sun there’s just not enough power to keep the batteries charged.
Honestly though I’d really like to see electric golf carts take over as city vehicles. They’re small, fairly light weight, go fast enough for a city, and if you really want you can fit some solar cells on the roof.
I second aptera
It looks so cool, I hope it actually launches. They’ve already gone bankrupt once before. I was holding off on a new car for a while to hope to get one, but it doesn’t look like they’re coming out soon, so I got a bolt, which has been great.
Oh, nice, I hear good things about the bolt.
I think that last aptera bankruptcy happened about a decade ago under different leadership, before they had all the manufacturing partners, business plan of today and definitely before this round of pre-orders/investment.
As far as I understand, that was basically a couple guys building an awesome car that they didn’t have the business infrastructure for. It seemed easier to source parts until they had to do it.
Ramping production is still slated for ~'24, which has been delayed before I believe from last year, which isn’t great.
They’ve had mostly finished prototypes driving around for a while now and direct investment/partnerships, so I don’t see them going bust too soon.
They have a lot of pretty regular updates with production status and media updates on their website and YouTube channel to check out.
I’m hopeful. I want the thousand miler.
Solar powered, self-reparable cars are where the future is.
The building across from me has a second story rollup door. I like to pretend its for flying cars. Edit:
Holy shit was the architect called Mr Lego?
Really it’s probably because it’s cheaper then a freight elevator to just forklift stuff up, but I like to pretend.
