Microcontrollers are used to reduce weight. Instead of a thick bundle of wires going to the door locks and power windows and power mirrors and door open switch and any lights that happen to be there - you have a couple of data and power wires going into the microcontroller unit that controls all the door stuff.
This goes for everything electronic, and there is a *lot* of this stuff in modern cars. Tail lights, rear climate and entertainment controls, radar parking aids, tire pressure monitors, heated seats, cabin lights, cabin temperature sensors, microphones, etc... Overall weight savings are in the dozens of pounds.
This is all done to drop weight to make CAFE standards. You could standardize on a different microcontroller, but these things are purpose-built and a full environmental TA soak can take years. You don't want one of these things to fail and have to tear doors apart to replace them in a recall.
I have a friend who recently sold their house and the agent staged it by having them take out about 80% of the furniture (and into storage) to make the house look even bigger. What remained wasn't really practical for actual living, but I guess it offered enough for the imagination. I had never seen the house look so bare.
That seems a bit extreme, but pulling furniture out is pretty common. When we sold our last house we took out maybe 40% of the furniture, which wasn't really a lot as we didn't have much. An extra chair in the living room, a table in the kitchen, the sideboard in the dining room. A hard purge on the toys the kids didn't play with any more Just enough to open up the rooms a bit. 80% sounds like a living room with a couch and a TV, and nothing else.
It does make a difference. We had a house tour of a couple with kids, and there were toys everywhere. Even though it was a good sized house, the piles of stuff scattered around made it feel cramped. We didn't pick that house, but not for that reason. The house we did pick was an even worse mess, but a better deal.
The real property is completely empty, and the luxury furniture is a product of virtual staging.
I... don't care? I'm going to look at the house in person anyways. If they aren't staging it in real life, it isn't going to look great. It's nice seeing how it might look on a video, but that's not how anyone is going to make their final decision.
My job was always to get 'er done, cheaply as possible with every quality and standard met, and now I see that coming with just renewables and storage...cheaper
It depends on how far "net zero" you want to go. There are still a lot of people who live in places where the sun doesn't shine much for a good chunk of the year. It also gets dangerously cold. Heating a home uses an enormous amount of electricity. If you still plan on supplementing with natural gas, it's less of a problem. If you want to go all-electric, you are going to have to figure out how to generate a lot of power when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't come out much so people don't freeze to death.
Was a study done showing putting out cones and road flares is effective at alerting motorists that there is a disabled truck?
I honestly don't know if there was or not. However, if there wasn't (and a fair number of regulations aren't based on studies, nor are particularly well thought-out) why would a study need to be done to modify an existing regulation?
Before her presidential run, Kamala Harris had a section on her page covering a few scandals she had as attorney general involving covering up a DNA lab's screwups. A week after announcing her run for president, it was scrubbed off her page. The change was buried three pages back in her history, as hundreds of edits had been made in the intervening days.
To this day, no mention of it is on her personal page, nor on her page as attorney general.
What if engineers on a strong basic income designed 3D printable things that had recyclability built-in from the start, instead of working for capitalist profit-seeking bosses maximizing cost, not engineering, efficiency?
This model brings you the glorious Trabant, practically unchanged over it's 25 year lifespan.
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...
My friend's family had one in Romania. When going up a hill, he passengers would have to get out, as it didn't have enough horsepower to climb anything but a shallow grade. Production numbers were low, and the waitlist stretched for years, as the workers got paid the same if they made 10,000 cars or 50,000 cars per year. They never made any improvements or fixed any bugs because, again, they got paid the same no matter what they produced.
They were easy to work on as they had no features or powered anything, and a strong person could pull the motor out with their bare hands. It was terrible in every other respect. Cramped, uncomfortable, unreliable, underpowered, and handled poorly.
With that theory ignores is the third group who is actively trying to take control of the organization to twist it to their personal benefit.
That's what the second group is. The first group is trying to do work. The second group is trying to amass power for personal benefit.
There's a corollary argument he would later make that as an organization grows, the second group will outnumber the first group. It's not a polemic against government. It's a warning against any organization getting too large.
I think it fits here:
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
Taken from: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jerrypournelle.com...
"Lashed out" = Filed a lawsuit with the European court
"Attacked" = Issued a press release detailing their court case.
Coming soon:
"Murdered" = Made a compelling argument in open court
"Nuked from orbit" = Motion for continuance
"Slaughtered" = Won a court motion
"Destroyed" = Favorable court ruling
"Strangled" = Disagreed with loosing a motion
I'm convinced my high school French language classes were skewed away from learning useful skills and biased in favor of writing skills because it made it easier to test.
Aren't writing skills useful? In my experience, writing, reading and speaking ability are usually tied together.
Houston has the most stable housing prices of any city in the US. Houston does not have any zoning restrictions. If housing prices go up, developers tear down strip malls and build apartments. If commercial prices go up, they tear down low density housing or commercial property and build high-density commercial property. That is a functioning market.
People like to rag on Houston as not a nice place to live, but you can, at least, afford to live there.
Promising costs nothing, it's the delivering that kills you.
