smiley1437 (u/smiley1437)

smiley1437 commented on The first sodium-ion battery EV is a winter range monster insideevs.com/news/786509... · Posted by u/andrewjneumann

Flere-Imsaho · a day ago

No mention of degradation as a result of recharge cycles. So many of my electronic devices have had to be disposed of because the battery would no longer hold a charge. This is also a big factor in EVs and their loss of value over time.

smiley1437 · a day ago

CATL claims 10,000 cycles for the Naxtra:

https://battery-news.de/en/2026/01/26/catl-presents-sodium-i...

smiley1437 commented on The first sodium-ion battery EV is a winter range monster insideevs.com/news/786509... · Posted by u/andrewjneumann

smiley1437 · a day ago

Out the gate, sodium ion advantages are so significant that unless there is some surprise show-stopper it will likely become the dominant energy storage medium.

Crustal abundance up to 1000x that of lithium - pretty much every nation has effectively unlimited supply, it's no longer a barrier or a geographically limited resource like lithium.

No significant damage going down to 0V, can even be stored at 0V - much safer than lithium which gets excitable once out of its prefered voltage range.

Cold weather performance down to -30C - northern latitude users don't have as much range anxiety in the winter.

Basically, the only problem I see is that companies that have made significant long-term investments in lithium could take a big hit. Countries that banked on their lithium reserves as a key future resource for will have to adjust their strategy.

Lithium batteries will likely still have a place in the high performance realm but but for the majority of run-of-the-mill applications - everything from customer electronics to EVs to offgrid storage - it's hard to see how sodium-ion wouldn't quickly replace it.

smiley1437 commented on An anecdote about backward compatibility blog.plover.com/2026/01/2... · Posted by u/speckx

smiley1437 · 9 days ago

Strangely, this made me think about the recurrent laryngeal nerve in giraffes.

The nerve takes a 15-foot detour down the long neck and loops under the aorta near the heart before it travels back up because evolution needed to stay backwards compatible with previous iterations of protogiraffes as environmental selection pressure lengthened the neck.

smiley1437 commented on Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain repebble.com/blog/meet-pe... · Posted by u/freshrap6

skeledrew · 2 months ago

Because you need to use your other hand to press that button, instead of the adjacent finger.

smiley1437 · 2 months ago

> Because you need to use your other hand to press that button, instead of the adjacent finger.

Funnily enough, I've used my nose to tap my watch when my hands are full

Yes, I've gotten some strange looks

smiley1437 commented on The Junior Hiring Crisis people-work.io/blog/junio... · Posted by u/mooreds

hex4def6 · 2 months ago

> We used to have a training ground for junior engineers, but now AI is increasingly automating away that work. Both studies I referenced above cited the same thing - AI is getting good at automating junior work while only augmenting senior work. So the evidence doesn’t show that AI is going to replace everyone; it’s just removing the apprenticeship ladder.

Was having a discussion the other day with someone, and we came to the same conclusion. You used to be able to make yourself useful by doing the easy / annoying tasks that had to be done, but more senior people didn't want to waste time dealing with. In exchange you got on-the-job experience, until you were able to handle more complex tasks and grow your skill set. AI means that those 'easy' tasks can be automated away, so there's less immediate value in hiring a new grad.

I feel the effects of this are going to take a while to be felt (5 years?); mid-level -> senior-level transitions will leave a hole behind that can't be filled internally. It's almost like the aftermath of a war killing off 18-30 year olds leaving a demographic hole, or the effect of covid on education for certain age ranges.

smiley1437 · 2 months ago

> mid-level -> senior-level transitions will leave a hole behind that can't be filled internally.

Tech companies are betting that in 5 years, AI should be good enough to replace mid-levels.

Rinse and repeat with seniors 5 years after that.

Hard to say if that bet will pay off, or what the endgame would be; just the CEO commanding an company of AIs?

smiley1437 commented on FreeMDU: Open-source Miele appliance diagnostic tools github.com/medusalix/Free... · Posted by u/Medusalix

supportengineer · 3 months ago

Speed Queen is the ONLY washer dryer brand I would consider. I currently have a Kenmore set from 2001. Works great.

smiley1437 · 3 months ago

Alliance Laundry which makes Speed Queen recently IPOed:

https://ir.alliancelaundry.com/news-events/press-releases/de...

Once a company goes public they tend to focus more on earnings per quarter, causing decision making to be more short-term.

Not great when, as a consumer, you hope to get a product that will last 20+ years.

smiley1437 commented on I was right about dishwasher pods and now I can prove it [video] youtube.com/watch?v=DAX2_... · Posted by u/hnaccount_rng

ZeroGravitas · 3 months ago

I watched the video, but may have missed this, but shouldn't the testing have shown that the powder was substantially better?

Or did they not test the "putting some powder into the prewash" thing and so it was just "powder released all at once" vs "tablet released all at once".

Even there I'd expect some mild improvement from the powder mixing more easily than a plastic wrapped tablet (though maybe if the content inside is liquid this factor is reversed?).

Does this mean the big corps do have some chemical advantage that cancels out the crappy delivery mechanism?

Or does it mean that a mechanical spray prewash step isn't meaningfully improved by chemicals in most circumstances?

I was more alarmed by the wrappers being plastic. I had assumed they were some clever biodegradable thing but they're not.

smiley1437 · 3 months ago

The pods cost about 6x as much per load as powder.

So, even if they had equal cleaning performance, economically the powder would come ahead.

As it turns out, the 1/6th-as-expensive powder does an even better job than the pods, making the powder an even more obvious choice

(Unless you really value the handling convenience of using a pod and were willing to accept poorer results at a higher expense)

smiley1437 commented on GLP-1 therapeutics: Their emerging role in alcohol and substance use disorders academic.oup.com/jes/arti... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

georgeburdell · 3 months ago

I'm going to put on my Boomer pull-yourselves-up-by-the-bootstraps hat, but are you concerned about the loss of grit resulting from changing your behaviors without the drug?

smiley1437 · 3 months ago

Not the GP, but do you think Serena Williams - world number 1 womens tennis player for 319 weeks, who trained for 5 hours per day at her peak - has insufficient grit?

Because she went on GLP-1 to lose weight.

smiley1437 commented on GLP-1 therapeutics: Their emerging role in alcohol and substance use disorders academic.oup.com/jes/arti... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

hbosch · 3 months ago

Much has been said about the GLP drugs and their interactions with all kinds of addictive disorders. Alcohol, drugs, even gambling... Anecdotally, I "struggled" at times with gaming (not joking). I would find myself skipping meetings at times or ducking away to play online sometimes. It never became a real issue but I knew I did it and it was embarrassing.

Once I started on tirzepatide, and then with retatrutide, the "urge" to swap over to my PC between meetings and load up a game is pretty much zeroed out.

Is this an "addiction" or a form of "abuse" similar to alcohol or other drugs? I would have said no some time ago, but now I'm not sure. I definitely feel like, looking back, I was more or less "addicted" to video games. I don't want to romanticize it as some sort of "escape", it just is what it was.

This was an unintended side effect (benefit?) of the drug for sure, in addition to acute weight loss of course.

Unlike many others, even after titrating down and coming off the GLP's, I have not felt the urge to binge food, video games, or anything else. I maintain a healthy, active lifestyle and have kept my weight exactly where I prefer it. My relationship with my body and my time has massively improved. I feel like I am at risk of sounding like a complete shill, obviously, but in my mind these drugs can be something that absolutely has the potential to turn life around for many, many people.

smiley1437 · 3 months ago

How do you just start on retatrutide? Did you sign up for a Phase 3 trial?