BoostandEthanol

I find myself, including this thread, reading comments like snacking on junk instead of even opening the actual article. Dodging the long form content that might not be so easy to digest for the familiar site and short form comments isn’t a habit I’m proud of

Ditto this. Getting better thanks to therapy but at my worst podcasts were a welcome endless noise to stop me from spiralling. As I heal the balance is leaning back to music and occasionally my unaided imagination, but it’s still uncomfortable to be alone.

The core of the human experience is to react to emotions. There’s nothing without emotions. Even if you feel like you can numb yourself to look at everything objectively, those “objective” “rational” thoughts are still based on feelings and inklings about what you trust and which facts you believe through chains of sources and anecdotes. There’s no such thing as operating without emotion.

Goes both ways. I had a phase of trying this and found I had to invest as much or more effort figuring out how to document stuff for the eyes of an outside observer as I did on the actual task. Guess maybe the answer in my case is to not make it accessible, but does that defeat the purpose?

I’d been feeling this until quite literally yesterday, where I sort of just forced myself to not touch an AI and grappled with the problem for hours. Got myself all mixed up with trig and angles until I got a headache and decided to back off a lot of the complexity. I doubt I got everything right, I’m sure I could’ve had a solution with near identical outputs using an AI in a fraction of the time.

But I feel better for not taking the efficient way. Having to be the one to make a decision at every step of the way, choosing the constraints and where I cut my losses on accuracy, I think has taught me more about the subject than even reading literature would’ve directly stated.

Can say the effort you put in setting that up was worth it. Fantastic work in both making the generator and sharing it!

Been using YouTube recommendation blockers for a while. Personally I’ve never gone, “oh man I could go for some binge watching!” as much as something piques my interest and I get drawn down video after video of nothing. So removing any sort of advert for a video means it never even crosses my mind to turn off the blocker.

“Some of the instruments fall below the human hearing range, only the vibrations can be felt,” feels unreal to me for some reason. I can’t imagine a vibration rattling through me without hearing something at that power.

The CAFE standards were introduced in 1975[1]. I’m on my phone so investigating links properly is awkward, but it appears the footprint legislation was brought into effect in 2008[2]. Or in other words, before Obama.

I had to go and double check because a fact I was certain of was the PT Cruiser was designed to be classified as a light truck in order to require a lower CAFE standard, far before the 2008 reform. I’m sure there are many examples of this. The system in general is gamed aggressively. I can give a recent example:

The Honda CR-V. Look at the front bumpers of a European and US spec car

European: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Honda_CR...

US: https://file.kelleybluebookimages.com/kbb/base/house/2012/20...

The difference in front bumpers is due to a front approach angle requirement in CAFE’s regulations (18 degrees, off the top of my head?) to get a light truck classification.

Footprint isn’t really the issue. It’s related, and certainly why cars are getting bigger than they once were, but to my understanding the bounds of footprint for each classification hasn’t changed since the legislation was brought in, while cars are ballooning regardless. I think part of it is just consumer preference for more car.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20081216085824/http://www.nhtsa....

Can agree that it’s good at finding books. I was trying to find a book (Titanic 2020) I vaguely remembered from a couple plot points and the fact a ship called Titanic was invoked. ChatGPT figured it out pretty much instantly, after floundering through book sites and Google for a while.

Wonder if books are inherently easier because their content is purely written language? Whereas movies and art tend to have less point by point descriptions of what they are.

Toyota meanwhile have made a point that all the front styling grilles in the Mk5 Supra can be opened up and used to house heat exchangers for tuners.

Nissan simply could’ve never acknowledged it. Instead made a point that the GT-R was untuneable, which to my knowledge, is the only time a car company has claimed such a thing.

It’s difficult to argue against that, and I think I agree. A part of me considers it the right way for the world, considering that driving is one of the most dangerous things we partake in regularly, that it should be demoted to just a hobby. But I have reservations about that too. I’m trying to stay (maybe out of delusion) hopeful that driving will still matter and be enjoyable.

I think tuning needs a readjustment in perception. We’ve removed one way to tune, power, and I guess it’s more difficult to get excited about suspension geometry or alignment or handling balance vs a big shiny Garrett turbo, but the fact is we’re still talking about boxes with four wheels at the bottom. Tuning is, and always has been, about how to make a car use those tyres to their full effect.

The GT-R, as impressive as it was, also had its detractors for being a computer on wheels. Car lovers have always disliked techy cars and longed for simpler driving experiences. I know people who still insist carbs are better. I don’t see why the Plaid couldn’t have made Porsche miserable in all the same ways the GT-R did.

It’s hilarious that Nissan ever claimed it was impossible to tune considering all the things done to it in those eighteen years.

That’s if you view cars as boxes that go from A to B judged exclusively by their spec sheet. But if you viewed them as such, why would you have a Plaid instead of a basic long range S?

Maybe if the driver cares about performance, but is only capable of using their right foot. The only enthusiasm is being pushed into the seat at the peak of the traction of the tyres, for all of a moment before the speed limit restricts them again. All without any other theatre. I can see the appeal of being able to have that performance without drawing attention to yourself, but then you specifically clarify your statement by excluding tracks or technical (fun) roads.

…Strangely, I thought I liked the Plaid until writing this. I’m enthusiastic for what Tesla has done to the EV market, and the Model S appears to generally be a good car (all my experience is in the Model 3 my Dad has. I’d assume the experience is similar) but I can’t help but feel like they’ve made something so utterly uninteresting as their top of the line halo model. What could’ve been the GT-R of this era seems to have barely grazed the automotive community.

Through the first half of 2024 I tried learning to drive, and my instructor drilled this mindset into me through how he spoke and reacted to errors. It’s taken me a long time to untangle that attitude out of my head, where I can think clearly, judging myself on my own standards for acceptable errors, and not the hypothetical standards of voices that don’t care about me. Being unable to do anything without doubting or questioning myself was soul destroying.

People like him are horrid traps for optimisers. They’re pointing out errors, and being so desperate to improve you’re encouraged to keep listening and value them greater instead of tuning their overeagerness out.

There’s an irony that actually getting hung up on minor comments and suggestions is in itself poor optimisation since the error becomes a distraction instead of a learning point.

OpenFOAM I think is the go to for open source CFD, although I’ve never tried it myself. There’s also XFOIL which, since you’re talking about a flying wing, might be enough for your use case.

Even for a finicky flying wing, I think if you keep an eye on the way the pitching moment shifts with pitch, I don’t see why picking an airfoil shape for the frame and hand calcs couldn’t get you to a design that flies reasonably.

Am I missing something here or does the very first example break this article’s own point?

“It was nice of John and Mary to come and visit us the other day,” is 8 words before the verb come.

“For John and Mary to come and visit us the other day was nice,” is only five, focused solely on the subject with no additional information (how the author felt about their visit)

Yet personally the second one reads easier for me, so I guess that reinforces the point to me specifically? Although I agree it’s unusual.

They wouldn’t be the first. The Audi A2 launched without a bonnet you could open. Oil changes were done using a hatch in the grille.

There’s something incredibly entertaining to me about even this well researched article struggling to find a reason for why wider tyres have more grip.

As I understand it, this is because tyres are still somewhat of a mystery, and anyone outside of a laboratory really doesn’t know shit. The best explanation I can think of is due to tyre load sensitivity. The friction coefficient of rubber decreases with normal force (E.g, a heavily loaded tyre has a lower friction coefficient), which is a pretty well accepted fact, this is one of the methods engineers will use to tune the handling of cars. This means a wider tyre has a lower force per unit area of the contact patch, which means it’ll have a higher friction coefficient.

Now that sounds plausible to me, but that’s just my best guess explanation.