brianorca

That’s why most boat power systems use LiFePo4 (aka LFP) batteries instead of LiCoO2 like you phone battery. LFP is immune to thermal runaway, and can’t burn even if it did overheat.

Boats with electric motors don’t need a dedicated generator, as the motor can act as a generator when you put it in neutral. (If properly configured.)

Sailboats can operate at lower power levels, because their displacement hull is efficient at low speeds. (Where a planeing hull needs higher speeds to get more efficient.) When I had solar electric sail boat, I could motor at 2 knots with no wind using only 500w of solar without touching the battery. I usually ran it at 3.5 knots if there was no wind, which gave me lots of range on battery for a full day on the water.

They also have the sail as a primary power source when there’s enough wind, so you don’t always need the electric motor. Sometimes, if the wind is strong enough, you can use the water turning the propeller to generate electricity to charge the battery. Or if the wind is light, you can use the motor to add more speed than sail alone, using less battery than using electric alone.

They have one other advantage: unit price. But Lithium is rapidly catching up, and is already better if you calculate price per lifetime charge cycle.

Spoilers in Connect are not readable when I click them. (White on white) Unless I first select the post so the background in grey.

It’s a third party kernel module, which Microsoft would love to be able to block, but legally can’t. It’s technically possible to write a virus scanner that runs in user space instead of the kernel, but it’s easier to make sure everything gets scanned if it’s in the kernel.

I’m saying it’s happened before. AOL. Palm. Yahoo. Blackberry. A company with an effective monopoly gets complacent and fails to serve their users. They get replaced.

But that’s also a path for them to no longer be a monopoly, if the right competitor makes the right moves.

You can do that kind of imposed structure if it’s an internal tool used by employees. But if the public is using it, it has better be able to parse whatever the consumer is saying. Somebody will say “I want a burger and a coke, but hold the mustard. And add some fries. No make it two of each.” And it won’t fit your predefined syntax.

It’s more than voice recognition, since it must also parse a wide variety of sentence structure into a discreet order, as well as answer questions.

They don’t want you if you’re not watching ads or paying money. They don’t want to give you bandwidth for free.

50 meters would assume a flat surface of the water, not the gentle slope of a beach.