"lithium-ion batteries .. degrade after just 1,000 cycles"
If you charge your car battery twice a week and complete a full cycle then we are still talking about like 9 years to reach 1000 cycles.
If you charge your phone every day, and do a full cycle, then we are close to 2.7 years. But you will probably not do a full cycle.
So, I guess lithium-ion batteries are not really that bad.
Don't forget calendar life. Lithium batteries degrade over time even if you do not cycle them. The life of the commonly used chemistries is only around 3 years.
But a lifetime of 3y doesn't jive with why my 7 year old vehicle is mostly fully functional. Even with 10% over-provisioning (amazingly expensive 7y ago), that's only a 15% reduction in 7 years.
The statement "The life of the commonly used chemistries is only around 3 years" is completely misleading and probably inaccurate.
I don't know about the 3 years number, but generally speaking battery lives are estimates/averages based on statistics. If you have a battery that was well cared for it will outperform the average. Also sometimes it's just dumb luck. One aberration isn't nearly enough data to throw out the entire premise
Phone batteries are lithium polymer pouch cells, the least durable type commonly used. Car cells with lithium ion NMC cylindrical cells are much better, and LIFEPO4 in turn is several times more durable than that.
You would be wise to insist on an EV with LIFEPO4 batteries in the sense that calendar lifetimes are more likely to be on par with traditional engines.
A 2013 Nissan Leaf should get 60-75 miles of range (depending on how much of thebattery you use, as well as climate, and other driving conditions). If it got ~80 miles new, it would still get 60 miles now. That might be enough for someone to make a short commute, though unless they have relatively fast charging at home, a 20+ mile commute 5 days a week might be tough to pull off. But most errands would fall well within the existing / remaining range.
50 mile round trip at 3 miles per kWh would be under 20kWh, or 1.6kW for 12 hours, about the same as a plug in heater on max, easily doable in a normal socket let alone a dedicated charge circuit.
Going to work, groceries and so on, the regular stuff.
If the city was walkable, you would not need such a thing as neighborhood car, you could just use a bike, but apparently as a society at many places we have decided that the cars are the best mode of transportation ever.
There's also some research[1] suggesting that dynamic cycling extends lithium-ion battery life, compared to the fixed charge/discharge cycles typically done in a lab setting.
In this study, we systematically compared dynamic discharge profiles representative of electric vehicle driving to the well-accepted constant current profiles. Surprisingly, we found that dynamic discharge enhances lifetime substantially compared with constant current discharge.
Specifically, for the same average current and voltage window, varying the dynamic discharge profile led to an increase of up to 38% in equivalent full cycles at end of life.
But it could be very interesting for commercial or industrial use: commercial vehicles that are constantly driven and charged, power reserve batteries, tools...
And I guess that you could make devices with smaller batteries and fast charge, with less fear of wearing them early.
Note that LiFePO/LFP batteries used in cars and large installations are rated for 5,000+ cycles. They really are on another level compared to Li-Co phone batteries that top out at 1,000.
We even lived to see lithium ion batteries redefine what battery powered devices can even do!
I remember my parents first Dell laptop with a whopping 2 hour battery life, if you weren’t doing anything processor intensive, otherwise it was basically a UPS.
For grid-level solar energy, we will need batteries that cycle at least 200 times per year. A system that requires replacing batteries every 5 years can't really be described as "renewable energy".
As long as "replace" includes "take the old batteries and turn them into raw materials for making new batteries" it definitely can.
Typical issues with old batteries are things like dendrite growth. There's nothing wrong with the materials that went into making the battery, they've just reshaped themselves into an unfortunate spiky structure.
Norway as a state may be rich. but the state is also very afraid of spending too much money within the country as not to drive up inflation, salaries etc. In Norway the school children do not even get free/hot lunches (compared to e.g. Sweden).
Having lived in Norway forsome years, at least to me the locals told me that it is more due to tradition of ”matpakke” and not so much of not being able to do it. Even in the work place it is common to bring your own sandwitches in stead of having ”proper” lunch. And also, it would be a huge undertaking even if people wanted it as no school building is equipped with suitable kitchen.
They don’t have poor the way other countries do. And that’s down to culture. I don’t think people appreciate just how homogenous Scandinavia is. (Although this is changing, especially in Sweden)
I also don’t think most people realize how small these countries are. Sweden is as big as Michigan, and Norway is as big as South Carolina.
Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland combined have about half the population of California. And California has about 1/10th of the US population.
> They don’t have poor the way other countries do. And that’s down to culture. I don’t think people appreciate just how homogenous Scandinavia is.
The good old dog whistle.
It's down to politics. Nordic countries had estate systems (codified social classes) until the late 19th to early 20th century, with high class separation still until the enormous socialist reforms in the mid 20th century.
Finland in particular was a true "shithole country" until after massive reforms (that were partially mandated by the Soviet Union) after WW2. Finland had a massive famine in 1866-1868 where around 10% of the population perished. The government refused to distribute food out of fears it would make the working class lazy, and continued food exports while the people were literally starving. There was a semi-serfdom system until after the 1918 civil war.
> Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland combined have about half the population of California. And California has about 1/10th of the US population.
So they managed it even without the economics of scale.
> So they managed it even without the economics of scale.
You're also more likely to see extreme outcomes with small sample sizes. For example, if we were looking at a list of countries ordered by GDP per capital, statistically we should expect to see more smaller countries in the top and bottom of the list. It doesn't necessarily mean it's due to underlying causes like policy.
School lunches are considered one of the best return on investment if you want to lift next generations out of poverty. It's really very little money, but greatly improves attendance and participation (poor kids go to school because the get lunch, and are much more attentive because they are not hungry).
A large systematic review from 2023 was unable to conclude what positive consequences school lunches would have in Norway, as there is too little research from comparable countries.
> In general, the results from the Nordic literature were inconsistent, and several of the studies were of low quality. The majority of studies from the Nordic countries indicated that a free school meal (breakfast or lunch) had a positive effect on some dietary outcomes. Furthermore, the results suggest that a free school meal may help reduce social disparities in diet.
> A total of three Nordic studies examined the relationship between free school meals and weight, with one study showing increased weight, another showing increased waist circumference, and one showing no change as a result of a free school meal. Two Nordic studies investigated the effect of a free school meal on academic performance, but neither found a clear positive effect.
> None of the Nordic studies found a link between free school meals and absenteeism (two studies), well-being (two studies), or the school environment (two studies).
> Regarding sustainability, only one study from Denmark examined the impact on food waste. The results showed that a warm school meal led to more food waste compared to a packed lunch brought from home.
> Two studies examining the long-term effects of free school meals, implemented in the Nordic countries between the 1920s and 1940s, found that the school meal led to longer schooling and increased income.
The seller[1] mentions that: 'In the event that the USB interface were to become obsolete or the RP2040 were to become non-functional, it should still be possible to recover the FRAM data using a SOP-8 test clip. The FRAM IC is marked “RS64”.'
According to Flightradar24, https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1742136715253313938, the Japanese coast guard aircraft was not equipped with a ADS-B transponder. Probably because it's not a requirement for military aircraft. That can explain why the ATC and/or JAL was not aware of the exact location of the plane.
Curious, what's the rule for USCG and transponders?
USCG is part of DHS and considered a military branch (despite not being in DoD alongside the other military branches and having a primarily law-enforcement mission).
Civilian transponders would give away the position of the craft to smugglers and others trying to evade the coast guard. I would expect they would have the ability to switch off their transponders at minimum for missions.
I'm most curious about why the JAL plane couldn't see it. An airliner has a pretty bright headlight, and the CG plane should have had lighting on it as well that would distinguish it from the runway lighting.
Clearly, as usual, accidents like this require a number of things to all go wrong at the same time.
The passenger entertainment system typically displays some information related to flight location, speed, altitude, ETA and so on. Where does that info come from ? If it does come from the "Aircraft Control Domain, or ACD" then these two systems are probably not "completely isolated" as claimed in the article?
> Where does that info come from ? If it does come from the "Aircraft Control Domain, or ACD" then these two systems are probably not "completely isolated" as claimed in the article?
You are indeed right, there is a connection to the BUS that shares some information. You can also write back some of the information(flight number, flight leg etc.) back to it. However, rest of the things are read-only. So, no way to do weird things like modifying the altitude or ground speed etc.
Basically, the main computer is completely isolated from the infotainment system, except for the BUS emitting these minor information.
You can however, probably get near the main computer if you can get the jump seat ...
You're making it sound like isolation requires exotic components, but a GPIO pin on a raspberry pi is basically one way only unless you explicitly write code to read data from it.
Thanks for this comment. It seems that ARINC 429 has been replaced by ARINC 644 in most new aircraft.
From reading the Wikipedia article, they are indeed logically one-way (although the underlying protocol involves two-way communication). It has no security at all.
However, it seems that communication between any avionics systems and anything user-accessible goes through a Network Extension Device (NED). These are required to either be physically (not only logically) unidirectional _or_ have built-in security.
So it might be physically impermeable or it might be a buggy 10-year old firewall. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence given the subject of the article.
I don’t know why you are getting downvoted. You are absolutely right. There is no need for any kind of connection to the system that flies the plane, even a read-only one. The entertainment network should be completely isolated and if one of the entertainment apps requires the aircraft’s location, they could use a separate GPS receiver and antenna.
A regular phone can also give you this information, just be seated at the window (I guess) for best reception of GPS data. The GPS test app is nice for this.
Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM) limits is 1,000 knots (510 m/s) and/or at an altitude higher than 18,000 m (59,000 feet).
Commercial airliners usually have a service ceiling at about 40000 feet and a speed below the speed of sound (343 m/s). Even with a very strong jet stream of 100 m/s it's below the limit.
The Concorde had a service ceiling of 60000 feet and maximum speed of 605 m/s.
You can use Open Street Maps to monitor the flight without the internet connection.
I often use it to watch how the plane speeds up for take off and slows down for landing.
Sometimes you have to keep the phone closer to the window. Luckily you get the list of currently connected GPS sats so you can debug whether hiccups are software/hardware related or poor GPS coverage.
It's lot of fun observing how early planes start going down in altitude before landing or trying to guess river and city names from up top.
I have used Google's My Tracks (now defunct but apk still works) app, and Various GPS Speedometer apps at window seat to get the air speed and such for fun.
Yep. Its broadcast by ADS-B transponders. Suffice to say hobbyists with ADS-B transponders and people using FlightAware and its competitors' APIs don't all have write access to flight computers...
Generally, tap water in the US doesn't have a pleasant taste, often accompanied by a strong chlorine odor. It's therefore understandable why many people opt for bottled water. Improving filtration or treatment methods seems like the best solution to cut down on the number of bottles.
This is community/water district specific and so is not so easily generalized. I've lived in Kansas City and Denver and neither have this issue. But in my brother's city yes it's an issue.
It is incredibly location and house dependent. My childhood friends' houses were a mixed bag of good and bad. Every house I've lived in has had acceptable tap water. The houses I've stayed in on coastal vacations have had bad tap water, and my college dorm had awful tap water.
I'm glad all of the houses I've lived in have had good tap.
It's often used as an argument to prop up service models though: use our service because it's more secure than not. In theory it makes sense. In practice, security through obscurity I think doesn't get enough justice.
