At the end of the day, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

Though politically incorrect - I'm optimistic about climate change and I feel we're going in the right direction.

We're having breakthroughs in nuclear fusion, and small nuclear reactors.

We're decarbonizing with cleaner sources of electricity and using electricity instead of fossil fuels.

The cost of carbon capture technology is decreasing with time.

AI is becoming more advanced to the point that it's not just able to design art - it's able to aid development. It's possible AI itself could soon accelerate engineering for all of the above.

I think we will have a future where we will have to at least briefly rely on genetic engineering to restore ecosystems. Plants naturally take carbon from the air, and use it to grow.

If a plant is engineered for example that could grow in a barren ecological wasteland - it could capture carbon and clean the air, while the roots could also help break down toxins in the earth.

We're discovering bacteria that can decompose some plastics. Maybe a genetic boost could let this bacteria destroy ocean plastic.

AI will eventually be strong enough to analyze genomes and figure out how to bow to patch up weaknesses.

Economies are a complex subject. In my opinion we're in a pre-recession period.

During the pandemic - companies jacked up the pricing of everything. For a while their profits grew.

Eventually things can become so expensive, people don't want to buy it anymore. Now all of a sudden these companies have extra product they can't sell it, and they have to drop the price to get rid of it.

This leads to lower profits and shrinkage/receding. This is starting to happen now with technology. AMD's Ryzen 7000 and Nvidia's RTX 40 were very expensive at launch.

As a result both products had very few sales and this was a punch in the gut to both companies and they had to slash their prices. Now AMD is cutting manufacturing as they know it won't be profitable.

Both companies will be forced to make cheaper products which people will actually buy.

Ultimately the recession is a good thing. The prices went crazy high for things from computer parts to cars to houses.

When the recession happens the prices will fall which means all of these will become more affordable.

This benefits people like you and me while it will hurt the people who tried to exploit by jacking up the prices.

Ultimately it's a big correction.

The way I see it - the rich and big corporations have a lot of power and influence. I grew up with gangster rap and independent West Coast rap. Today record labels are big corporations that dictate everything about music.

Technology dictated modern music. Albums could not be longer than a vinyl record, cassette tape, or CD. Ideally you'd have at least a few songs on one.

There's a reason why we have 3 hour concerts, but not 3 hour songs.

Find art is often something that serves the rich and wealthy.

It's also possible AI could make it easier for regular humans to express ourselves musically or artistically.

You might have a beautiful idea in your mind, but you don't know how to draw it. AI might help bring that vision into art you can share with the world.

Of course many people will disagree with my, but they have a right to. Everyone gets to form their own opinions, these are just mine.

Apparently Samsung has quite a history in India:

> Samsung has been manufacturing mobile phones in India since 2007, and is the only brand that is truly made in India. Samsung India has been populating Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) right from its inception.

> India will tally in 29% of Samsung's total global smartphone production --- a 9% rise from its current 20% contribution.

> Samsung's display arm begins OLED panel production at Noida plant

So with 15 years of experience making 20-30% of their smartphones in India, it doesn't seem too risky to finally try a flagship.

That doesn't compare to Apple experimenting with metal parts made by a car manufacturer, Tata/Jaguar.

Statistically the county with the most people should have the most slaves, rapists, murderers, and scammers.

Statistically they'll also have the most hard workers, honest people, doctors, engineers, and brilliant minds.

Population adjusted, North Korea, Eritrea and Burundi have the highest rates.

> If you care anything about fairness, equality, social safety net, environmental standards...

Whether or not we care is different from whether or not corporations care.

The bigger problem is thinking that corporations actually care about us and want to do good.

> The first few generations of Korean cars had the same stigma, at least for the cheapest stuff.

Kias/Hyundais small 4 cylinder engines for the US market were all recalled from 2010-2019 for catching fire: https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/local-news/up-in-flames/kias-and-hyundais-continue-to-burn-after-5-8-million-cars-and-suvs-recalled

For 2020+ models, only time will tell.

My Nokia Lumia 1020 was quite easy to repair.

If you pop out the sim card tray, there was a single screw.

This screw operated a novel mechanism which would pop out the screen when you turn it.

The screw was also designed to remain in the mechanism, so it couldn't fall out and get lost.

This video is done extremely professionally: https://youtu.be/AVPp3LW4ir4

In reality you could pop the screen and connectors off with your fingernails.

It had the most proper camera of all smartphones:

• Xenon HID flash
• DNG RAW images
• 31-38 megapixels depending on aspect ratio
• Manual adjustments for focus, exposure, and more
• Giant 1/1.5" (8.8x6.6mm) sensor with mechanical shutter
• Carl Zeiss lenses
• Zero AI for enhancing photos

We could print absolutely stunning 8x10 (203x254mm) photos from that, and it included a voucher for a free 20x30 (508x732mm) poster.

Unfortunately I've not been able to get new lithium batteries for those, otherwise I'd still use it for photography.

Yes, I had written it all and tried to keep it simple.

It's also noteworthy that fire was used for heat for many thousands of years.

Boiling water with fire was used for heat before electricity even existed. So boilers could work in apartment buildings in places like New York or Chicago with fanless radiators.

When electricity came out, adding a fan made heaters more comfortable at it evens out the temperature in a room.

Heat pumps are a fairly recent idea, and are by far the most energy efficient way to heat a house along with geothermal. Both these technologies are able to basically absorb heat from outside.

Even if it's zero degrees outside, there's still some heat because it's not -40 or colder.

Oil and propane are used for rural houses and have to be delivered by truck. More urban houses can have natural gas that's piped.

Hydrogen is a clean gas that could theoretically be used instead of natural gas, but probably won't be.

Burning things was traditionally much cheaper than electricity. So for big houses in areas with cold winters it made sense before.

Today if you burn natural gas, hydrogen, propane, oil, or wood at a power plant to make electricity. If this electricity powers a heat pump it will produce more heat than burning it at home.

As a result heat pumps work better than hydrogen at your home.

Heat pumps have trouble in super cold weather though, but they're improving as a new technology.

Early heat pumps struggled below 40 degrees Fahrenheit (roughly 5C).

Then they got them to work down to 32 degrees Fahrenheit (zero C).

Now some can work below -10 Fahrenheit (-23C).

> forced air

It has as a fan and blows heat.

If you have a fireplace or radiator, it just gets hot and doesn't actually blow it.

> a furnace

Burns something for heat. This can be natural gas which is piped to the the house, or:

> liquid propane vs heating oil

Propane is an explosive gas. It burns up in a couple seconds.

Oil is not explosive, it burns very slowly and releases more heat, but often produces more smoke.

Oil is safer and easier to haul. Theoretically it might freeze and become buttery in very cold conditions.

> "central"

One unit for multiple rooms. You have ducts (big pipes) that can blow hot air through multiple rooms.

> geothermal

If you place a big container of water in the freezer, it might take days to freeze. The outside can freeze while the inside is warm.

If you have a big mountain, it heats up slightly in the day, and cools down slowly at night. But because it's so different the temperature stays pretty constant. Sometimes it's even constant throughout the year.

If you did a hole that's deep enough, it just keeps getting warmer underground. There's so much dirt that it weighs a lot and won't freeze easily. Eventually if you go super deep your get hot lava.

With geothermal you dig a hole or trench that's deep and run a water pipe through it. When you put cold water in the pipe, the heat deep in the ground will heat it up so you get warm/hot water on the other end.

> boilers

A fire or electric heat that boils water. These are used for big buildings.

Instead of running ducts with hot air.

They run pipes with steam or boiling water.

> Radiator

The hot water from a boiler flows through it and makes it hot. There's no fan, and sometimes they don't even use electricity.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Household_radiator.jpg

It just gets hot, and as a result sometimes one side of the room is hot and the other is cold.

If a fan is added it can be a hydronic system and it evens out the temperature better. With a hydronic system, you can also pump cold water and use it as an A/C.

> heat pump

An air conditioner has two ends. One blows hot air, one blows cold air.

Normally you want the cold air to blow inside, and the hot air to blow outside.

It turns out if you run an air conditioner backwards, it will blow cold air outside, and hot air inside. This makes it surprisingly effective as a heater.

An A/C actually produces more heat than cold.

Let's say it's 10 degrees outside. If you cool the outside part of the A/C to zero degrees.

The 10 degrees air actually warms it up from zero to ten degrees.

Because of this, a heat pump can actually grab little bits of heat from outside and it's one of the most energy efficient ways to heat a house.

> mini splits

An A/C has a hot side, and a cold side.

With a mini split you leave the hot side outside, and the cold side inside.

These are connected with pipes instead of ducts.

Pipes end up being more efficient than ducts.

With a central system you have one system for the whole house, or 2-3 zones in a house.

With a mini-split you can have one system for each room.

These systems can each have their own outdoor box, or they can share a big outdoor box.

Mini-splits are especially easy to run backwards and use as a heat pump.

By heating/cooling just the rooms you need you can save a lot of power vs heating/cooling your whole house.

> baseboard

A heater on the bottom of a wall: https://images.thdstatic.com/productImages/a8027bb7-12b0-4200-93c8-260d3ff7c00f/svn/whites-cadet-baseboard-heaters-ebhn1500w-4f_600.jpg

> window units

Mounted in a window. Typically these are air conditioners, but some can do heat as well.

Since they're in a window they can blow the hot air outside the window, and the cold air inside.

They don't need any ducts, pipes, etc.

Private mercenaries are different than official government.

One thing that is not mentioned here is that often it's not a direct connection.

My family were refugees from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

The USSR tried to claim that Afghanistan belonged to them, so the US didn't want to go directly into Afghanistan.

As a result the US went to small rural villages in Pakistan just across the border in Pakistan. They gave these villagers excellent weapons and lots of money and told them "take these to Afghanistan so they can fight the Russians". This was called Operation Cyclone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone

These people took some of it, and kept some of it. When the war with Afghanistan finally bankrupted the USSR, these people who kept the money and weapons then supported the Taliban and they used the American weapons to take over the country.

America has generally been reductant to admit that the Taliban has effective weapons so we often have to look at foreign media to get around US propaganda.

For example in British media, they show that the Taliban used American anti-aircraft missile systems to take down American aircraft: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-taliban-missile-strike-chinook

Meanwhile the American government wants to insist that leftover equipment is fully disabled. And that the Taliban are too stupid to use it.

If the Taliban know how to operate American missile systems, they could probably rebuild a few Humvees.

One of the biggest problems I see with Americans is they like to connect evil with stupidity.

There's no reason you can't have an evil genius. If Hitler was stupid, the Holocaust wouldn't have happened.

In 2015-2016 countless people said Trump was too stupid and it's impossible for him to become president.These people were too naive.

Underestimating evil entities is a very serious issue.

Nonetheless, the US likely gives Ukraine lots of stuff indirectly through neighboring countries.

If the US had a significant presence in Ukraine - that could cause a direct conflict with Russia.

If Russia kills a US soldier in Ukraine, that can now cause a messy situation.

On a conventional tree (not palms/monocots) a new ring grow every year which is a well known fact. This is called the cambium layer.

What's lesser known is that the older rings die and the inside of the tree is just dead wood incapable of resprouting.

If a tree is cut down, it can resprout from the roots (suckers) or the cambium layer (water sprouts).

A tree is incapable of resprouting from the center of the stump. Most likely the center rotted away or cracked and a new tree sprouted from seed there.

The center of trees is the first part to rot and often your can have a big living tree that's hollow inside.

I would wager that's patent expiry and not a technical hurdle.

Microsoft bought Nokia for cellular patents then spun the brand off.

Google bought Motorola for cellular patents then sold the brand to Lenovo.

Qualcomm and Broadcom are the other big cellular innovators.

Apple negotiated a percentage royalty with Qualcomm.

When the iPhone was $300, the royalties were cheap.

When the iPhone became $1,000+, the royalties tripled and Apple didn't want to pay up.

If Apple buys another cellular company, it would be detrimental to their brand image as they want to present as innovators creating their own phone. No flipping a Siemens, Ericsson, Nokia, or Motorola device as their own.

Even though they rely heavily of Foxconn, Samsung, Qualcomm, Arm, and TSMC for almost everything.

And even with software, iOS is derived from BSD.

Wired data transfers are becoming increasingly niche.

There's some speculation that Apple might move to Thunderbolt on future high end iPhones. There is a possibility that 20 gigabit - 40 gigabit connectivity could be Apple exclusive for a while.

Neither Qi nor MagSafe is about data transfers.

WiFi already handles data transfers and is constantly getting faster. My WiFi 6 mesh outperforms my CAT5 wiring in my house.

It's left me in a conundrum of running CAT7-8 in my walls, or just expecting WiFi 7-8 to be fast enough.

60 Ghz WiFi already exists for high speed data transfers over short distances in a true wireless manner. It wouldn't be hard to add this to a phone.

The main need for such high bandwidth is usually for large devices like monitors which aren't typically connected to phones.

> I welcome anyone to justify buying the Asus ROG Strix 4090 (and likely 4080) versus the others.

##RGB

Map/List of countries that gained independence from Great Britain along with the years:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/List_of_countries_gained_independance_from_the_UK_Flag_version_3.svg

The big areas absent areas are:

• South/Central America where they speak Spanish and Portuguese as they were colonized by them
• North Asia / Former USSR territories
• Greenland - colonized by Denmark

That has 288 watt - hour capacity.

OP needs something in the 2,000-3,000 range.

> how does building a battery pack out of individual cells scare you? You drive next to one every day. Tesla uses 18650 batteries in early models and now has switched to 32650 and larger batteries but that's literally what they used and stitched together lol.

Early on a number of Tesla cars caught fire until they corrected it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicle_fire_incidents

When the Boeing 787 dreamliner was made, they had batteries on the planes catching fire:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Boeing_787_Dreamliner_grounding

Companies like Tesla or Boeing rely on a team of engineers and advanced robots to make batteries. Even then they still had issues with fire early on.

If you will be welding 286 batteries - if you get one of them backwards or have a bad weld - it can cause overheating and lead to fire.

Running a 300 watt appliance depends on whether or not it's native DC. If you have to use an inverter to convert voltage, easily add 20% on top of that. If you want some safety margin, add another 20-25% to factor in battery degradation with time.

300 watts x 8 hour = 2.4 kw hours x 1.2 for inverter losses = 2.88 kw/hr x 1.25 degradation margin = 3.6 kw/hr.

3.6 kw/hr / (3.2 volts x 4) = 281.25 amp/hours at 12.8 volts.

3 deep cycles marine batteries is 303 amp/hours, easy to charge and wire, and costs $240:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/180350522

The main caveat is at 45.4 lbs each it will weight 136 lbs.

4 LifePo4 big boy batteries is $367 (random retailer for reference):
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804647596547.html

A 300 watt load / 12 volts = 25 amps. If we over-spec to 350 watts / 10 volts low battery = 35 amps. Add $15 for a BMS:
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2255800625909430.html

35 amps = 9 AWG wire.

A nickel strip is good for 5-7 amps. Stack 3 or so max if you have a high powered spot welder and you're at 21 amps.

Teslas work at 300-400+ volts, not 12 - that's how they do it.

18650s are possible if you target 5-7 amps.

400 watts (overspec if you ever want to charge your phone or something) / (5 to 7) = 57-80 volts = 72 volts = 24S battery with 18650s.

2.88 minimum or 3.6 kw/hr ideal / 72 volts = 40-50 amp/hour battery = 22-28 cells in parallel.

With 1,800 mah LifePo4 you're looking at 528 - 672 18650 cells.

With lithium-ion you'd be looking at 20S x 12-14 cells in parallel = 240, 260, or 280 18690 3,500 mah cells - consistent with your math of 268.

And at 72 volts, you could use anything below 22 awg wire.

A car aux power port typically has a 10-15 amp fuse and is good for 120-180 watts. 20 amps tops could push it to 240 watts. 300+ watts is beyond what that's rated for.

Have you just considered buying a deep cycle marine batteries?

A size 24DC marine battery from Walmart is $80 and 12V 109 AH.

Two of them is 218 amp hours and $160.

Add $20 for a charger, $8 for a 12V outlet, and a little bit of wire and for $200 you got your target.

I considered building a KW/hr lithium battery once and realized it'd cost many hundreds and require specialized chargers, battery balancers, and protection boards.

Lithium batteries are spot welded, not soldered. Soldering them can overheat them and make them explode.