arc

Biodiesels are still better than diesel and the stuff can be manufactured from seaweed, algae, any biomass really. It doesn't have to be a monoculture. It doesn't even have to be 100% biodiesel either - start blending it in. I agree electric motors and electrification are the ultimate outcome but the rail industry has a lot of lines and a lot of locomotives and and you want progression over time with options for battery, power lines or diesel, potentially all 3 on the same line in different parts. It might take decades to transition. It's certainly not hydrogen, that's for sure.

It can be made from water and renewables at about 3-4x the energy cost of charging a battery. In train terms, that means you could be charging 3 battery trains instead of 1 hydrogen train. Or you could have 3 battery tenders and have more logistical flexibility in how they are deployed.

And this is exactly the case here. This train is being trialed by an oil subsidiary. They'll greenwash it, proclaiming "nothing comes out of our train but water!", neglecting the fact the hydrogen was made from fossil fuels.

This train is being trialed by an oil subsidiary so I think there is more than a little greenwashing going on here. The vast majority of hydrogen is "blue", i.e. it's manufactured from fossil fuels, so there is no environmental benefit to this. Even if it were "green", i.e. made from water and renewable energy, the same power used to make the hydrogen, store it, transport it, turn it back to power could charge 3 or 4 battery powered trains or tenders - a tender could mean a smaller locomotive hooks up to however many battery tenders it needs for its route or switches them out in the yard.

Hydrogen probably has some niche uses but there are some things that proponents like to gloss over.

1. It's not green since most of it is produced from fossil fuels. It's also disgustingly expensive even compared to fossil fuels. I'd note that the company Orlen Koltrans which is funding this train is a subsidiary of an oil company PKN Orlen so yeah.
2. Even if it were green (e.g. water electrolysis from renewables) it takes something like 3-4x the energy to produce, store, transport, and convert back to energy as just charging a battery.
3. Regardless of how it's made hydrogen also contributes to global warming - if any hydrogen leaks or escapes during fueling or venting, it promotes the methane production in the atmosphere.
4. It can and does go kaboom. e.g. this hydrogen powered bus has seen better days.

All said and done, I think it's crazy to even bother with the tech unless its so niche it cannot be done some other way. Japanese automakers & oil companies looking to do a bit of greenwashing have been the major proponents of hydrogen and that should say something. Also the fact that hydrogen has been a miserable failure in areas where it has been piloted.

In the case of trains it seems more sensible to manufacture biodiesel or synthetic fuels than this. It's certainly safer to transport and store. Perhaps existing trains can be converted relatively easily. Or electrify the train line or stretches of it. Batteries would be an option too - a train might simply hook up to a fresh battery tender and off it goes. Or some kind of hybrid solution that can source power from overhead lines and/or diesel and/or battery. Or even put solar on carriages to reduce fuel consumption during daylight operations. All these things seem more viable than hydrogen.

Not just bloatware but some Samsung phones also have malware that installs garbage without consent and has a no obvious way to turn off unless you know the app is called appcloud and go disable it.

Apple doesn't allow "questionable" apps like emulators, bit torrent clients on its store and of course you can't sideload them either.

This is why I wouldn't trust a thing that comes out of his mouth. He lies, he says really stupid shit and then he gives people an ultimatum to turn his stupid shit into reality or get fired. Safety, security and reality be damned. If you've ever wondered why people end up dying in fiery crashes because of "autopilot", or "full self drive", this is why.

So whilst you’re not wrong that these cars currently hold the lowest ratings of cars tested with the new post-2020 procedure, I’m sure a lot of older cars would fare far worse.

The NCAP test advances over time so of course an older car would rate worse. NCAP updates its testing regime to incorporate safety functionality as it becomes mainstream, e.g. automatic emergency braking.

But these cars were tested against their peers in 2021, not older cars. This is not city car vs SUV but city car vs city car. The Dacia Spring, Jogger, Sandero and Renaul Zoe were the worst cars in the City / Supermini category. In the same year, that Dacia / Renault were scraping 0, 1 or 2 stars, Fiat 500e and Hyundai i20 were scoring 4 stars. I'd add that all the city cars tested in 2022 were also 4 or 5 star rating. It's actually funny in a way that the revamped Zoe scored worse than the original model for impact protection because they actually removed safety equipment.

So basically it's about Renault cheaping out on safety, nothing else. It's not acceptable. Maybe the driver / occupant are fine with the extra risk of injury or death in a collision. Doesn't mean the pedestrian / cyclist they hit was so on board with the idea.

Hardly seems surprising that Renault / Dacia is the least worst since it is a European car company that doesn't sell in the US. I should point out though that Dacia holds the record for the absolute worst NCAP safety ratings at this time and some Renault cars aren't far behind. So swings and roundabouts.

Bricking is a possibility but for phones that can be unlocked, it should be a matter of following the instructions on Lineageos - unlock the bootloader, flash the recovery partition, flash lineageos + Google apps.

The biggest pain in the ass for me was trying to get the adb & fastboot tools to talk to the device in the first place. For example OnePlus requires drivers for its devices but Windows doesn't install them automatically so you have to go find them. Except the adb driver works but the fastboot one didn't. Then after a bunch of searching it turns out OnePlus forgot to sign the fastboot driver so Windows refused to install it and I had to boot Windows in a convoluted way to disable signature verification to get the driver installed.

After all that, the rest was relatively straightforward but it still took several hours of effort. IMO Lineageos is a pretty ugly dist but if you install Google Apps it's not missing anything and it extends the phone's life beyond what the manufacturer could be bothered to support.

One of my kids asks maybe once in six months to watch something on Disney+ so I subscribe and instantly cancel (don't get me started about auto renew). I swear in that six months there are maybe a handful of new shows and movies that are worth watching and the rest is the same old junk as before. It probably doesn't help that Disney is making some really terrible content lately.

Netflix isn't quite so bad but I can see why people would want to take a break from it. While I think they have a slightly better hit ratio than Disney they've also put out some expensive stinkers too.