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Cake day: January 10th, 2024

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  • I only recently learned that in the US not every state has annual inspection requirements. In fact it’s a minority of states, only 14, and it looks like the inspection requirements have been reduced in recent years, such as some states exempting new vehicles for a certain amount of time or only requiring inspections for commercial vehicles. Both states I’ve lived in had annual inspections and I just assumed it was a thing everywhere.



  • jqubed@lemmy.worldtoxkcd@lemmy.worldxkcd #3214: Electric Vehicles
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    12 days ago

    This was something I realized when we drive to my wife’s parents. It’s 2,000 km each way from our house in the US to where they are in rural Quebec, Canada and we usually drive it twice a year. The charging times sound long, but even with our petrol car most of our stops end up being between 15 to 30 minutes anyways between fueling the car, taking the dog to grass, taking turns going to the toilet so the dog isn’t alone in the car, getting food and giving me a chance to eat so I’m not trying to drive and eat at the same time.

    I think the real challenge of electric range anxiety is that it still takes planning, at least in some parts of the US. There are areas on our route where it might be 100 kilometers to the next fast charger, and there’s no guarantee that all of them will be working or compatible with a car’s fastest charging speeds. We don’t really have to think about where we’ll get gasoline; there’s pretty much always a station, often several, within the next few miles. Usually if we’re waiting to stop for fuel it’s because we’re looking for the best price, looking for a place that might have decent toilets, and/or might have an appealing food option along with the gasoline. That’s all manageable in electric but might need some advanced planning, and many American drivers aren’t used to doing that kind of route planning in advance anymore.

    How many cars in Europe can drive 1,000 km without stopping anyways? The only ones I can think of offhand are large American pickup trucks intended for towing large trailers long distances. I wouldn’t expect to see them in Europe.











  • For all the breathless enthusiasm from the author, I feel like he’s overselling a lot of the impacts:

    For Chief Technology Officers and IT procurement managers, the viability of Linux on Apple Silicon introduces a complex variable. Historically, engineering teams demanding Linux were relegated to Dell XPS or Lenovo ThinkPad units, which, while capable, often trail Apple in battery efficiency and thermal management. If the M3 becomes a first-class citizen in the Linux ecosystem, organizations may face increased pressure to support Apple hardware for backend engineers and DevOps professionals who require native Linux environments rather than virtualization.

    Corporate purchases typically purchase new products either direct from the manufacturer or from the authorized resale channel. The M3 was introduced over two years ago and the only products I see Apple still selling with the M3 architecture are the Mac Studio (M3 Ultra) and iPad Air (M3). So any IT manager looking to procure a MacBook for an employee would need to find new old stock still in resale channel inventory or purchase a second-hand device, all for something that the article admits is still in an alpha stage of usefulness.

    The progress the Asahi project is making on Apple Silicon is fantastic and important, but I think it will primarily benefit private individuals, not businesses. Perhaps in the future as the developers become more adept at reverse engineering hardware and if Apple makes fewer changes between generations then Linux could start supporting active Apple products, but it’s not there yet.

    With Apple putting M-series chips in iPads and Linux gaining support for those chips, I’ll be very curious to see if we start seeing more Linux tablet support for iPads.