Re charging, the Gogoro “swap and go” battery charging network looks really cool. You can swap the battery over in seconds. No need for a charger at home.

https://www.gogoro.com/

“Capital is moving into American land for a variety of reasons,”

Something something Georgism.

Nice!

For social there's Mastadon. Plenty of EU servers.

> nobody goes in the southern ocean! (Why would they?...)

For the fish — plenty of trawlers in the Southern Ocean.

There's currently a guy, Jari Saario, rowing across from South America to South Africa. Lots of icebergs indeed. https://www.instagram.com/jari_saario/

USB-C is better than A in that it works in two orientations instead of one, but the correct answer for connectors should be any orientation — the best connectors are cylindrical connectors: barrel plugs, RCA, BNC, banana, phono, TRS, TRRS, etc. Just make them round.

Man, there’s nothing more satisfying than the feel of a quarter-inch TRS plug slotting in to a high quality jack. Truly one of the great plug designs.

And one of the oldest. It dates back to the 1870s. Older even than the Edison Screw.

LEMO push-pull connectors and their ilk are mighty satisfying.

Well, more like 1.5 orientations because we STILL have devices that only work with the cable in one of two valid orientations.

Would it be practical to have a round port as a universal connector? USB C uses a lot of pins, how would that work? Like an audio plug with a lot of rings?

I think it would be practical with glass fibre. Two wires/rings for power, and fibre for data. Something like a Mini-TOSLINK, but even smaller. Ideally the plug would be barely thicker than the cable.

Glass fibre is pretty fragile though, it would probably break in the first hour for most people if used like a normal USB Cable.

Just use polymer fibre for consumer gear. Cheaper and more robust.

Can that still transfer data at full speed with reasonable cable length while bent?

> Elon Musk is a smart salesman but that's about it. He has little deep knowledge in a lot of what he does.

No, I think it's the opposite — he's extremely knowledgeable about engineering and science [1], but quite hopeless at social things. If he was ignorant of technical stuff then SpaceX and Tesla would not have succeeded, and conversely if he was a good salesman he would have foreseen how badly his political actions would hurt Twitter and Tesla.

It's quite foolish to think someone is stupid or ignorant just because you don't agree with their politics.

1. see these quotes: https://x.com/yatharthmaan/status/2001313180644266478

He's been on public twitter calls before and his engineering knowledge is pathetic. I'm sorry but he's not knowledgeable about engineering or science, he's marketable about those things. People conflate the two often, but one will fall apart like a jenga tower the moment you push it even a little.

And a bunch of out of context quotes from folks that are either buddies with him or don't know shit is not convincing.

Never really understood buying pre-recorded cassettes. It was better to buy the vinyl and make your own tapes.

Yeah, if the cost of the pre-recorded cassette were comparable to a blank tape, okay, fine. (But they weren't.)

If you think of 'tech' as computers and the internet, then yeah, it's hard to be optimistic. It's no longer the shiny new thing and has become boring. But it's an overly limited view of tech.

I think one of the reasons people are drawn to Elon Musk (despite his political views) is that he's an optimist, with big goals and vision. Self-driving cars, reusable rockets and cheap space travel, cities on Mars, etc. Even if only some of it becomes real it will be amazing. So no, not a pessimist.