Environment

Kottke gets linked here again because of this wonderful site. Go read the article, I'll wait.

What I had not previously considered is that the mega corporations can build in a lack of competetion by buying all the competetion. The Buy it for Life crowd loves these old brands with good reason. I expect that the trick will be to find any of these items before 2000. The best place might be thrift stores. I have my backpack made by the shoe company Simple that I'm sure is at least from 1996. It needed repair, and I fixed it punk rock style. It gets regular use and is the first bag I grab when my satchel does not have enough capacity.

I'll poke around and see if I can find a how to find vintage gear site. I'll update this post if I do.

I forget exactly how I came to learn of this site and I was inspired. eWaste is a growing concern and the current AI fuckery is driving up the cost of components. Arguably, we need more servers/services and are throwing out older generation tech because it's too slow or won't run the latest and greatest operating system, apps, or games. Worse yet, some people throw out old tech because it's no longer "useful". I see a lot of waste in perfectly servicable equipment in corners of office spaces doing nothing at all. What if we borrowed from this venture and put not only older laptops, but other devices like old Android TV boxes (as long as they have wired ethernet) to use as personal web servers, mail servers or other small low-resource services.

The only set backs I see is electricity costs and "waste" heat, as a bunch of older equipment might draw more power than a single better equipped server. Still, we can solar power these low draw devices, or hack a standard power supply to power a few laptops and use the generated heat to warm places with the right ducting. It may not be as efficient, but it will keep "perfectly usable" equipment out of landfills. Perhaps non-working hardware can be donated to hacker spaces so that the individual components can be used to manufacture something else. Or maybe… a small business harvesting connectors and components can be built that can help other pieces of equipment from going to disuse.

This story from The New York times comes to us via Kottke.

I was able to read it, and you may not because of a paywall. The page is beautiful in design and interactivity. The basic premise is that policy has driven carmakers from producing vehicles for the lower 40% of americans, though the same metric applies to us in Canada. I'm not seeing a new vehcile anywhere near affordability for me, and even used is our of my budget and I make a fair amount of money for my area. The article is worth reading/experiencing if you can.

In Kottke's comments, I see people holding onto their aging vehicles and really digging the lack of screens on their dashboards. I have one of my two dream vehicles, a Honda Element. This SUV was more expensive than it's counterpart the CR-V and aimed at my generation of adevnture seekers. I would not have been able to afford it even in the year it was made. I expect that this could cost upwards of $60,000 if made today.

I reflected on if the high cost of vehicles would encourage more people to use public transportation. With little reflection, I realize that cost-cutting public transport over decades resulted in lower service and higher costs for riders. The city where I live has reduced hours and routes for the city bus compared to my youth.

Maybe ride sharing is the answer. For myself, I endeavour to keep the Element on the road as long as possible. I need the versatility and space. I would like to convert it to Electric if possible. The technology exists and I am skilled and foolinsh enough to make the attempt.

Blog.to is reporting that trees are being removed from a local park and I can see both sides. I can see the need to prevent flooding and the construction is reported to help with that, though cuting down trees is universally a poor idea. The Independent review is a great idea and may bring about a different way to resolve the flooding problem and keep most, if not all the trees from being cut down.

A post by the BBC about older technology for staying warm. The Elizabethan period had some ideas for staying warm in winter without current conveniences. I won't spoil the article, go on and read it for yourself.

I have a few links that I'm going to share today.

First a post written by Ars Technica titled Bose open-sources its SoundTouch home theater smart speakers ahead of end-of-life and found via slashdot. This is great, really great. I dislike Bose. I love that Bose is doing this and I really want all manufacturers to open source their older hardware. I understand that sometimes this isn't possible. Open-sourcing a phone that has iterative upgrades doesn't make sense in the hardware-as-a-service / you-don't-own-anything-anymore model that we find ourselves in. It seems to me that corporations are more concerned with profits over a sustained environment.

I found via Hacker news about the EU banning destruction of unsold merchandise speaks of a different kind of nonsense. Why is this even a thing? I had known of tech companies destroying unsold product (see the ET Atari cartridge fiasco) and product that was nearly perfectly functional but returned or replaced under warranty as shipping it back becuase descrution was cheaper than shipping and repairing but I was completely caught unaware by unsold and new merchandise being destroyed. I can only assume that this is because sales targets were not reached and a tax write-off is preferrable to actualy selling products in a secondary market. It could also be that they decided after production that artifical scarcity is valuable in word of mouth virality for the next season of products. Finance is a funny thing.

I saw an article earlier this week published by Penn State and brought my way via RSS and Hacker news.

The story details a trial of using light poles to host electric chargers. This is being framed as a win-win for both the municipality as well as the EV driver whom may not have access to a secure or dedicated garage like apartment dwellers or visitors to charge and shop while they wait in retail areas. Stay tuned for my thoughts on that. I'm going to write out my thoughts about the housing crisis at a later date. I largely agree with their argument. This would be a boon for everyone involved. As someone who doe not yet drive an EV, I am eagerly watching the space, especially the conversion space as I would love to repalce the combustion engine in my Element with an electric drive train. I know it's possible as Jerry and Zac did it with their jeep. Conversions are possible. They aren't cheap.

Anyway. Where I live we get snow a chunk of the year. Electric chargers on poles in our downtown would need to be mounted high enough to not get buried in the snow banks in the winter. I also wonder how the charge cables would be secured against bored people who have poor impulse control (like myself) from messing with them. Look no further than the air hose at every gas station. As far as I can tell, air hoses are less delicate than electric charge cables.