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lorax's comments

lorax | 1 year ago | on: The 'Return to Office' Lies

When I was doing this, I went in a bit later and dropped the kids off and my spouse went in a bit earlier and picked them up. They were neither the first ones in nor the last ones out. My commute was worst case 20 minutes, that also helped. It worked fine (except when spouse was traveling), but WFH Is much easier.

lorax | 1 year ago | on: EU data shows PHEVs emit 350% more CO2 than tested values

DC Fast charging prices are usually quite high (45-50 c/kwh and may well be near the cost of gas, but not all PHEV's support that. Level 2 charging is usually much cheaper (20-30 c/kwh) though slower. So if you can charge at one of those (such as at work) it also works out to be cheaper than gas.

lorax | 1 year ago | on: EU data shows PHEVs emit 350% more CO2 than tested values

I have a PHEV and charge overnight from a wall outlet. I wake up in the morning fully charged. Probably 99% of my trips are electric, but only 80% of my miles. The occasional long road trip really adds up. It is also hard (in the US) to charge on a trip. My car can't charge from a DC fast charger (it doesn't have the right connector), only from the level 2 AC chargers. From a L2 charger it only charges at 3.3 KW (most chargers support between 6.6-10 KW) which results in ~10 miles of range per hour. So if I take a half hour lunch break while driving, that's only 5 miles added.

If you can charge at home or work it's a great deal, but if you can't I can see how it would be hard to charge it enough to make it worthwhile.

lorax | 2 years ago | on: History Is Written by the Losers (2016)

In 100 years most paper will be gone, thrown out, without any attempt to archive it. In 100 years most digital will be gone for the same reason. The exceptions in both cases is where something is “fortuitously forgotten”, a box left in an attic after a move, or a web page that remains in a fossilized state.

Preserving both paper and digital records requires the active effort of convincing people (some of whom haven't been born yet) that the records should be saved. That's the hard part.

Disaster recovery for millions of paper records is hard. So hard that even the US Government, which has been archiving paper records since its inception, sometimes fails. The majority of the 1890 census records were lost to a fire as well as a chunk of military service records (to a different fire). Disaster recovery for millions of digital records is much easier, make a copy on a different disk and give it to someone to hold. Repeat once a decade.

lorax | 2 years ago | on: Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?

Ok, so that I didn't know. Here's from the Oster website: "When this feature is selected, the toaster will automatically defrost your food and then toast it in one easy step." So the temperature is lower for a little bit to thaw the food then higher to toast it.

lorax | 2 years ago | on: Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?

The bagel button makes only one side of the slot get hot (or at least makes one side hotter than the other). Your toaster probably has a bagel icon on the top showing you which way to put the bagel in (cut side towards the center in every toaster I have seen).

Source: I'm not married to toaster moguls but I do peer into operating toasters to see which wires turn red. Feel free to replicate my research and post your observations.

lorax | 2 years ago | on: Five richest men double their money as poorest get poorer

Oxfam carefully picked the dates they used to make the gain as large as possible. They used November 2023 compared to March 2020. What happened in March of 2020? The stock market dropped from 3380 (Feb 10) to 2304 (March 16). For the end date, if they had used Oct 30 instead of November, the S&P was at 4358. The Using the numbers I just gave, the gain would only be 29%, not 114%. That's a huge difference. (As you probably suspect, I also carefully picked the dates I used to minimize the gain.)

lorax | 2 years ago | on: ‘The best blueberry’: how a tiny North American fruit took over Australia (2022)

Given that the Ike hasn't been minted in 45 years, I think it is safe to say it is not that. The Sacky and Tony are exactly the same width, 26.5 mm. The Canadian dollar is also 26.5 mm (as are the Prezzies and the Innos, and why are we Infantilizing coins anyway). The Australian dollar is a touch smaller, 25 mm. So I think the answer to your question is "all of them", 1.5 mm is likely larger than the variation between blueberries.

Converting that to Library of Congresses or National Library of Austrailias is left as an exercise to the reader.

lorax | 2 years ago | on: Ask HN: What do you put in a “in case of death” file?

I don't think I would create a file like this. It is a lot of sensitive information that I wouldn't want on my computer, and, how would I be sure it was found if when needed?

I would take all of the the things you listed (and what others have listed) and put them in a safe or fire-resistant box then give a sealed envelope to whoever is going to be the executor of your estate with information about how to find and access the box.

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