Kelsenellenelvial

Canadian here, I guess offer directions to the airport so they can get a flight to British Columbia?

Even better would be if more devices used the lithium ion cylindrical cells. Higher power and energy density, while also being a standardized form factor that can be switched out as needed.

This is entirely regional though. The further you are from the equator, the more seasonal variation there is in sunlight levels, and heating/cooling loads. Around here our solar production is minimized during the season when our energy needs are maximized. We also don’t have variable rate billing, though we only get partial credit for excess generation, so battery storage will never pay for itself until something changes.

My utility gives a 50% credit on excess generation. Thing there is the utility is still the one taking responsibility for having the capacity and scalability to respond to variation in demand and production. When I was getting quotes, adding storage would have doubled the cost of the system for a day or two worth of storage. Probably would cost double again to have a system that would keep up through the winter.

This is regional, some places don’t have reduced min wage for tipped employees. Servers make the same min wage as everybody else and earn tips on top of that.

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.

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.

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.

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.