May need an adapter. Pay attention to the VMP (maximum voltage output of the solar panel) on its specs to make sure it's not higher than that listed in the article.
Thursday, October 28, 2021
Wednesday, October 27, 2021
That's a Great Question! (Ep. 192) - Freakonomics
"That's a great question" has passed into the language, but was originally used by politicians to subtly redirect the interview back to their talking points without answering the question.
Tuesday, October 26, 2021
WIND TURBINE WALL
A domestic-scale wind turbine that looks like a kinetic sculpture.
"Wind turbines incorporated into the walls of buildings could prove a creative solution for harnessing wind power in cities."
"an average American home with one side covered by a turbine wall could meet its yearly energy needs"
Monday, October 25, 2021
Popping hydraulic jacks - anti-stiction fluid
Stiction is the static friction that needs to be overcome to enable relative motion of stationary objects in contact. The term is a portmanteau of the words static and friction, perhaps also influenced by the verb stick...at the micrometer scale when surfaces come into close proximity, electrostatic and/or Van der Waals and hydrogen bonding forces become significant. [Wiki]
PERFECT CAMERA - DJi RONIN 4D
This guy's pretty excited about it!
Triple game-changer:
1) Vertical gimbal arm with [drone] distance sensors2) Full camera control on low-latency remote monitor up to 20,000 feet away
3) lidar-based auto focus visualizes what it's focusing on
And it's only $7200
Sunday, October 24, 2021
Dolphin Flock knife
Incredible craftsmanship. I couldn't understand what he was up to the entire time until the last shot.
I think it's a laser that cuts the dolphin shape at the beginning. My fiancée and I went to a metalworking shop for one of our early dates and made knife blades like this.
Saturday, October 23, 2021
Get rid of black tank smells in your RV
Mandatory watching for every new RV owner.
Start at 3:19 blah blah blah
Add 1/2 cup Borax (24:47 don't have to treat every tank in cold weather until it starts to stink), use lots of water, and flush tank thoroughly after draining. Slosh 1/3 tank of solution around while driving. Also, need to have a clear elbow to confirm you flush until clear.
8:30 to flush: fill tank 1/3 then empty, repeat 3 times, use black tank flush
9:22 add 1/2 cup Dawn Ultra if gauges fail, or every 5th tank.
9:44 if boondocking, capture gray water in a sink basin and pour it down toilet. (Also extends stay)
Friday, October 22, 2021
Thursday, October 21, 2021
Some seasoned investing advice about holding stocks.
Kevin Bambrough:
In the early days of my trading I decided to try to develop a 'system' or 'style' that would work for me. After reading piles of investment books covering all sorts of disciplines I eventually refined a technique.
So I started by trying to decide first of all if a sector was in a sustainable bull or bear and (no matter what) never trade against the overall trend. Long only in bull sectors. Short only in bears.
Next I try to read all I can on the companies and sector - as well as other economic factors that influence it - so I'm reasonably on top of things fundamentally and trying to trade long on the best of the best. Then using technical analysis I try to work my way into investments profitably.
Early days I would do a lot of shorter term trades because I lacked experience and the conviction to really stay with things. But, I managed to do well enough to make a career of it.
I often would say that my goal was to be right just a little better than 50% of the time. But also lose $1 when I'm wrong versus making $4 when I'm right. I 'grew up' trading full-time in a sort of day trading shop where people paid for their desks with commissions or had to pay a fee. There was a lot of pressure to trade, and to pay commissions and thereby lower commission costs. (Lower fees with volume). I stuck to my system and I watched countless people come and go, often wrecking their life savings.
Biggest problem is most people hate admitting they're wrong and taking losses.* They let them grow beyond plan. Also many, will hold a loss 10-20% against them. But then quickly take a 10-20% profit. It's all easier said than done but learning to develop realistic expectations is key. If you don't understand risk to reward you're screwed. Very difficult to judge if it's a 50/50 bet that you'll make 4 and only lose 1. But if you can't do it on a small scale no point doing it on a larger scale. Or with more volume of trades.
The good thing is that if you really dedicate yourself to learning, and start slow, and track yourself. Especially tracking your ability to stick to the plan, then you can make it and it will be very rewarding.
But just know if you lack the discipline to sell when you said you would... you're destined to get smoked badly. I've seen many a trader that has a great run. And bull markets are great at convicting people they are geniuses. But, there's often nasty corrections of 50%.
Many 30% decreases along the way. Geniuses with margin get destroyed. Margin selling is shocking to see. Stocks just relentlessly getting pounded by people that are forced to liquidate. Plus bad market corrections change the economy and inflation quickly destroy themes.
If you're a resource investor and plan to try to play this entire bull, just be careful and not too greedy. This particular resource bull is gonna be super volatile.
The commodity inflation and supply chain issues generated from attempting to double the power grid, and the transition to electric cars is going to lead to mini recessions along the way. High power prices and general inflation will change consumer spending.
One thing I've always done is force myself to take a bit of profit after a great run and then buy something in a different market sector. I think raising a bit of cash from winning resource sectors and accumulating gold and silver will work out well and also help me sleep at night.
Source:
* Why it may pay to sell, even at a loss
By Mark Eidem
"When should I sell?" This is the most common question I am asked in trading workshops and individual client meetings. It's also one of the most important. Failure to clearly define your rules for selling a position can lead to your holding onto large losses or letting large profits slip away. Why? It's simple: Emotions get in the way.
In this article, we'll take a look at some common behavioral tendencies that keep investors from selling. Then, we'll explore how to develop your own personal sell discipline.
4 Big Reasons for holding out:
1. Greed & Fear
"We have met the enemy and he is us," a famous saying observes. Investors who have selling issues know this all too well. They may enter a trade with a clear notion of when they will exit, but then abandon those plans because of one of these behavioral lapses:
1a). Hope: "I hope it goes back up!" Liz Ann Sonders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, has observed many times that "buy and hold" has now been replaced with "buy and hope." According to Sonders, "hope is not an investment strategy."
1 b). Know: "But I know it will go back up!" The more research we have done on a company, the more confident we are in our decision to buy its stock and to continue to hold it, even at a loss. And the more familiar we are with the company, the more likely we are to follow this pattern of behavior. While there is an investing style to buy companies whose products we know and like, the reality is that nobody "knows" anything about the future price of a stock nor the future course of the markets in general.
1 c). Can't: "It can't go any lower." The only lower limit to a stock's potential price is zero. If it is not trading at zero yet, it can in fact go lower.
2. Status quo bias
Choosing not to decide is still a decision. When you think about taking a loss, it may be less painful to cling to the hope that a rebound in price erases the loss, versus the certain realization of taking that loss. I have often heard the line, "It is only a paper loss until I sell." Funny, yet I cannot recall an investor ever saying, "It is only a paper profit until I sell."
3. The endowment effect
This is the behavioral tendency to overvalue something we already own. When it comes to selling a stock we own, it is mentally difficult for us to sell for less when we have seen the stock trade at a higher price. We tend to feel that we are entitled to that price now. Here are two examples in the following chart: [see in link below]
4. Loss aversion
Another principle of behavioral finance theory is our natural aversion to realizing losses. It has been said that a 10 percent loss hurts at least twice as much as a 10 percent gain feels good. When we add status quo bias and the endowment effect, it is easy to see where loss aversion gets its power over our decisions.
Profits versus wins — the overwhelming desire to be "right."
You don't have to be a "type A" personality to make this common error in investing; most people are conditioned to be "right." To get your driver's license, pass an exam, ace an interview — you must get the answers right. However, this mentality can overwhelm and compromise your trading results.
Many individual investors I have worked with over time demonstrate through their actions that they would rather realize a winning trade, even if it isn't all that profitable. They focus on their win/loss ratio, or how often they are correct in a buy decision that gains in price. Yet far more important to trading success is the ratio of average dollars won per winning trade versus average dollars lost per losing trade.
Many professional traders have win/loss ratios well below 50 percent, yet they are very profitable because their primary focus is upon keeping the inevitable losses very small relative to the size of their gains.
If there is a golden rule of trading, it is these six words: Cut your losses short, let your profits run.
To honor this rule, almost all trades should end in a big win, a small win or a small loss. There should be very few, if any, big losses.
Final thoughts: preserving your trading capital:
Above all else, a trader's key focus should be on preserving their trading capital. Occasionally, there is a surprise news story that causes the price of a stock to drop significantly. When the unexpected happens, you may want to sell first and ask questions later.
Before entering any trade, you should have an answer for two key questions:
1. To preserve my profits, where should I consider selling at least part of my position if the price goes up?
2. To preserve my capital, where will I sell my position if the price drops?
When asking yourself these questions, keep in mind that "your first loss is your best loss."
Source:
https://www.cnbc.com/advertorial/2019/11/12/why-it-may-pay-to-sell-even-at-a-loss.html
Monday, October 18, 2021
Aptera commutes just on solar, gets 1K mile-range when full
Sunday, October 17, 2021
Wednesday, October 13, 2021
Catching Criminals Using Their Relative's DNA
Finding the Golden State Rapist by a long process of DNA searching of SNiPs, then narrowing in amongst the thousand descendants of the common ancestor to find their suspect. Raises the question - is the ability to catch serious criminals worth the loss of privacy that entails?
Tuesday, October 12, 2021
Dying farting Gas Wells
Visiting only those gas wells on public lands, at 7:32 they say that 60% of them were emitting methane gas leaks substantial enough to catch fire.
Friday, October 8, 2021
Thursday, October 7, 2021
Pave Plastic Trash Into New Roads
Making road paving bricks from recycled plastic.
7:03 her entire operation so far has used merely 1/6th of the daily plastic waste generated in her country.
Sunday, October 3, 2021
Tesla FULL self driving improvements - explained and illustrated.
These presentations are getting better and better. The problems they solve to achieve full self driving, and the complexity of them, is mind boggling. You probably don't have 25 minutes to watch it, so here are a few key points to click on.
If you want to skip to the interesting part, look at the improvements in representing the virtual space around the car at 15:23. (The improvement comes from (13:53) asking the neural net to query nearby pixels from other cameras, in order to confirm what's expected to be there if the predicted object.) Night and day, as he says.
"Jank refers to sluggishness in a user interface, usually caused by executing long tasks on the main thread, blocking rendering, or expending too much processor power on background processes." Executing these millions of calculations in real time is a huge underlying driver of these programming improvements.
He brings it all together at 24:10, illustrating the various levels of processing going on simultaneously to make the car aware of where it is.
Barrel stores solar energy on my roof
I love the energy and persistence of these "makers." After all this effort, 3-D printing parts and building a storage tank on his roof, he was able to store the equivalent of an AA battery worth of power on his roof. (15:11)
But, as he says at 16:39, "better understanding involves learning and doing."
All the water splashing off his waterwheel is wasted energy - he would've been better to use a Francis turbine: "The Francis turbine is also called a radial flow turbine, since water flows from the outer circumference towards the centre of runner. Inward flow water turbines have a better mechanical arrangement...as the water swirls inward, it accelerates, and transfers energy to the turbine." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_turbine
Or a Pelton wheel - "The Pelton wheel extracts energy from the impulse of moving water, as opposed to water's dead weight like the traditional overshot water wheel." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelton_wheel
Friday, October 1, 2021
Politics invoking change vs politics as entertainment
This week's "Hidden Brain" podcast is a revealing look at why people spend so much time on politics. As a lifetime apolitical person, this helped me understand where time spent on personal politics is better spent.
"Americans who engage in politics as a form of self-expression rather than as a mechanism for real change."
5:25 "people are really pursuing a hobby. They're in it for the thrill of debate - scoring points - and you call these people hobbyists."
38:38 many Americans engage in politics in the same way that sports fans engage with that teams as a form of entertainment and self-expression.
07:05 "As a form of engagement where you are trying to move public policy or electoral politics in a direction you care about...you have your one vote and you're convincing another person to vote the way you want them to...that really doesn't describe the behavior of what most people are doing when they're doing politics"
10:26 "In hobbyism, emotion is the goal. It makes you feel connected to something without doing anything yourself. It makes me feel I am part of this emotional high or I am part of this sad point, this low point even though I'm not doing anything. I'm just following it. But the emotion is the connection and of course, we have a whole media apparatus and social media apparatus to make us feel those emotions, but in real politics anger - righteous anger - is an emotion or something you leverage into action. If there's no second step there you might feel like you're feeling political and partisan thoughts, but you're not channeling them effectively into anything else."
24:44 Basically, he and his wife did decades of favors for people in their community and were really nice people - they built a lot of trust and with that trust came the opportunity to influence people's votes.
26:50 "on the White House website, you could collect digital signatures and if you got enough signatures the White House would respond to you.
... we started looking at what kind of petitions are being signed, how many people were signing them and we discovered...that most of them were about really small and mostly frivolous things...issues like a problem of puppy mills or regulating of premium cigars - the stuff that you know is important but doesn't affect the... general welfare of somebody struggling to get by. And so political scientists for a long time have noticed a shift in politics away from bread and butter issues...towards what they are calling "post materialist issues." Issues that are are not about economic welfare or education but this other stuff."
31:50 "So the media by your account are both the beneficiary and the driver of political hobbyism"
42:21 "My suggestion was: imagine political parties doing things like providing emergency child care and emergency elder care... maybe contracting with one of the companies that do this and by doing that they're saying hey, we have some big policy goals here...we really care about getting family leave passed in this country and its going to take us a little while to do that. But in the meantime, what we're going to do is we're going to show you as concretely as possible that we care about you and we care about these needs."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)