Kelsenellenelvial

My presumption is that the desalinated water might be cheaper than tap, but would still require further processing to be considered potable, which would raise the price on par or above conventionally sourced tap water. I imagine there’s a lot of costal areas though with ready access to saltwater and minimal access to freshwater where it’s worthwhile.

Lots of Canada’s laws are a little extreme to me, but they cover a lot that you said. Restricted firearms need an extra permit that requires personal references, and must be double locked(like a locked case in a locked safe, or trigger lock plus locked case) during storage and transportation, and we limit magazine sizes. Lots of our gun crime involves firearms purchased legally in the US that make their way here on the black market, so I’m in favour of the US tightening up their gun control.

Except that the gospel of Mark specifically states that it wasn’t fig season. Why did Jesus even look for the figs when he should have known they were out of season. Why then curse the tree when it was just doing what fig trees are supposed to do? Guess Jesus can be an ass when he’s hangry.

I’m sure there’s applications where that’s true, but then you’re essentially talking about having a gas furnace plus a heat pump, so you’re installation cost is close to the sum of both systems. Energy rates vary by region, but around here electricity is about 7 times the cost of gas, so a heat pump running at a coefficient of performance around 3 would still cost twice as much to run as a natural gas furnace, it would be cheaper to just turn off the heat pump altogether and only use that “supplementary” heat.

I suppose if electric heat is the primary option then sure. Around here though natural gas is pretty much ubiquitous and the cost per joule is a heck of a lot lower than electricity. About $6/GJ for natural gas, compared to about $42/GJ for electricity. Would need a pretty efficient heat pump to see the cost savings in my area.

Eclecticlight has some of the best articles I’ve seen in terms of how Apple’s “it just works” actually does or doesn’t work under the hood. MacRumors forums are one of the better places I’ve found to interact with the community for those niche issues/use cases that only come up for a handful of people. The Mac Geek Gab podcast is another place where enthusiasts can come together to share tips tricks and cool stuff found.

What’s the actual benefit there though? It costs about $0.001 to charge a cell phone, or about 10 charges per penny(if you’re somewhere that has pennies). UPS, and portable battery packs are already a thing, and the cost to charge them is a heck of a lot less than the cost of adding a dynamo to an exercise bike.

Honestly, even if the argument is some niche case like being able to power some emergency system in an off-grid setup or power outage, you’re probably much better off just putting up a small scale solar system. Another way to look at it: a food calorie costs about $0.05 on average, or $43/kWh, compared to $0.15/kWh for electricity through a utility. That’s a lot of food that needs to be stored to give a person the energy to run that bike.

This kind of thing just doesn’t make sense financially or environmentally. If the idea is to promote sustainability, this has the exact opposite effect of using resources to build something that’s never going to produce as much energy as it took to build in the first place. Even if a person is going to be using a stationary bike either way, the system needed to capture and store that energy isn’t going to ever going to capture as much energy as was spent to make it.

From an efficiency standpoint sure, but then a person has to be able to consistently put out the amount of power the compressor is designed for at the times the compressor needs to run. At least with a storage system the work doesn’t have to be done at the same time it needs to be used.

I’d be technically impractical, but I’ve always thought there should be a system for weighing of individual users feedback. I follow a lot of trade related communities and 100% see a lot of issues where bad, wrong, and sometimes just plain dangerous advice gets a flood of upvotes from the amateur community while the handful of downvotes from qualified individuals gets drowned out. I think OP’s idea of making upvotes easy and downvotes difficult exacerbates this kind of issue.

I can also see the issue where a mod team simply blesses the users that they agree with and it just reinforces the echo chamber effect that is already an issue in some communities.

I heard about a concept like those for a gym powered by their stationary bikes, but the math just doesn’t work. A pro rider can put out about 2000 W for a short sprint, but about 300 W for an extended time. That 300 W works out to about 5¢ worth of electricity per hour of working out, or about $20 if a person averages that for an hour per day for a year. That $20/year has to be able to cover the cost of the added generator system in the bike, whatever battery/inverter system that’s storing the energy, and/or the interlock system to put that power into one’s electrical service.

It’s great if you want to power the electronics of the stationary bike, maybe with a USB port to power one’s phone/music player. Trying to offset electrical costs with human/animal labour is not going to be net positive except in very niche situations.

Could be a larger demographic thing. Tech enthusiasts tend to have lots of devices(tablets, portable computers, etc.), so they tend to like the smaller form factor phones since they can always use their tablet/laptop when the small phone is limiting. Those people are also the ones you see in these kinds of online communities. For a lot of other people though, they’re getting the big phone and then not having a personal tablet/portable computer at all. Those aren’t the kind of people that hang out online and talk about tech stuff though.

Also agreed. However the manufacturers know how many of each device they sell and seem to think the smaller form factor devices aren’t very popular. I imagine there’s multiple reasons, like the smaller phones tend to also have lower battery life and lack other features due to size and they tend to appeal to people on tighter budgets that upgrade less often.