This is an instance where I sincerely hope it was the work of an LLM, for the alternative is even more fearful: someone who knows just enough cryptography to be familiar with using primitives and is able to write code that compiles, but doesn’t actually understand one iota of the theory behind modes and constructions.
The thought of this person being somewhere out there, inexorably writing awful code but unlike an LLM has the free will to keep going. It gives me chills.
So far as I’m aware, CAN makes a lot of sense when it’s no longer just two devices talking to each other, but a bunch of devices talking amongst themselves. Using UART for the same scenario would result in a lot more signalling wires, whereas CAN only requires a single, twisted pair of data lines that are shared by all devices.
Automobiles followed a similar progression, since CAN was a product of Bosch. Initially meant to simplify the connections between engine sensors, it later proved useful all around a car, from the switches that control power windows to the adjustment of power mirrors. Most importantly, it signals between all of those decices using just two thin wires.
For ebikes, the mandatory data path is between the user display and the motor, so UART worked fine. But other peripherals like brake, speed, and gear sensors, those had their own wires, all having to go to a central controller somewhere. So might as well use CAN to simplify the wiring and maybe add new functionality:
Imagine the display has a button to enable the headlights, and that sends a CAN signal to the controller to close the relay for the headlights. But maybe you have an auxiliary headlight that reads the same signal and turns on as well. And maybe the taillight also turns on, plus a wireless relay so that the lights in your pedals also turn on.
CAN is acceptable to wire two things together, but it really shows when building a cohesive network of peripherals. Unlike modern computer data networks, all devices on a CAN bus receive the same messages and so they can all react to the same “broadcast”. I have personally sniffed the CAN bus on an automobile to implement some nifty integration with a dashcam. Maybe we might have CAN be how a GPS bike computer continues measuring speed using the wheel sensors, even when in a tunnel.
That said, I’d be remiss if I ignored a major downside of CAN: because it’s not drop-dead easy to examine like UART, some manufacturers will implement strange, proprietary message types using CAN. This makes it harder for users to intercept or modify those signals, since there isn’t any documentation. Reverse engineering is sometimes needed to deduce the meaning of certain CAN messages. Ideally, industry standardization around CAN and ebike sensors would mean they’re all compatible with each other. Or at least, I hope that happens.
Still, I’m of the opinion that CAN is light-years preferable than every manufacturer reinventing their own data bus. The electronics community has been poking and proding CAN for decades, so using CAN means less reverse engineering overall.
They almost buried the lede:
From an OEM perspective, the appeal is pretty clear. A universal mounting standard and unified CANBUS communication system can reduce tooling costs, simplify inventory, and shorten development timelines. Ananda says future M7000 derivatives will remain backward compatible, allowing brands to adapt quickly as market demands shift without starting from scratch with entirely new frame designs.
There is a real problem with the ebike market today, when compared to the bicycle market, which is the wholesale lack of standardized parts. Sure, the the bicycle in the 19th Century also didn’t have standardized parts, but the difference is now very apparent: for acoustic bikes, there are just six standards for bottom brackets, but are almost as many mid-drive ebike motor mounting patterns as there are manufacturers, of which there are many. This is just one example, and one can find incompatible ebike brake sensor, CAN vs UART data buses, headlight voltages, HUDs, and more.
Without standardized parts, there cannot be widespread availability of parts. Without parts, there cannot be bike shops that can sustainably maintain people’s ebikes, nor can riders attempt to extend the life of their ebikes on the road. Without modular replaceable parts, more e-waste and bicycle waste will be produced. Without standardization, vendor lock-in is the natural result, yielding unnecessarily higher prices for consumers.
We need commoditization of basic ebike components, and there are no sufficently-large players that can throw their heft around for force the change. Compare to, say, Shimano, who can basically create a new racing bike standard out of thin air, and the industry will comply.
So I do appreciate when a manufacturer comes out with an ostensible standards-based lineup, promising backwards compatibility. But I’m also skeptical: in computer design, some of the longest-lasting standards are: the IBM PC (1980s IBM design adopted by clone manufacturers), PCI (1990s, from a consortium of PC makers), and color-coded ports for mouse/keyboard/VGA (2000s Intel-led consortium). What we see is that the most durable standards (de facto or otherwise) are multilateral in nature: it takes multiple players to agree to standardize. Not necessarily with each other manufacturer, but consistency within the same company would help.
If we get to the stage where there are “format wars” over the specs for a mid-drive ebike motor, then that would be genuine progress, because a format war means we can identify actual factions that are producing those standards. HD DVD fans were certainly disappointed to lose the war to Blu Ray, but it never deprived them of their ability to watch what they already bought. Fortunately, bicycles are durable goods and can last for a lot longer than a stamped optical disk.
The full-blown solution would be to have your own recursive DNS server on your local network, and to block or redirect any other DNS server to your own, and possibly blocking all know DoH servers.
This would solve the DNS leakage issue, since your recursive server would learn the authoritative NS for your domain, and so would contact that NS directly when processing any queries for any of your subdomains. This cuts out the possibility of any espionage by your ISP/Google/Quad9’s DNS servers, because they’re now uninvolved. That said, your ISP could still spy in the raw traffic to the authoritative NS, but from your experiment, they don’t seem to be doing that.
Is a recursive DNS server at home a tad extreme? I used to think so, but we now have people running Pi-hole and similar software, which can run in recursive mode (being built atop Unbound, the DNS server software).
/<minor nitpick>
“It was DNS” typically means that name resolution failed or did not propagate per its specification. Whereas I’m of the opinion that if DNS is working as expected, then it’s hard to pin the blame on DNS. For example, forgetting to renew a domain is not a DNS problem. And setting a bad TTL or a bad record is not a DNS problem (but may be a problem with your DNS software). And so too do I think that DNS leakage is not a DNS problem, because the protocol itself is functioning as documented.
It’s just that the operators of the upstream servers see dollar-signs by selling their user’s data. Not DNS, but rather a capitalism problem, IMO.
/</minor nitpick>
I’m internally laughing at the thought of calling an insurance agent to get a policy quote for an ebike, an object which: 1) does not have a VIN or even a standardized serial number structure, 2) has no precedence in the retail insurance market, meaning no “form” policies are available from any of the large insurance carriers, and 3) would require an entire new type of insurance policy to be approved by the New Jersey Division of Insurance. And unless that Division is somehow faster than the equivalent here in California, that would be a months-long process before any insurance policy could be issued for an e bike, of the sort that covers whatever NJ requires motor vehicles to have.
My point is, this is patently absurd and I would expect someone to make the legitimate argument that it’s impossible to comply with because no insurer in New Jersey will underwrite the necessary insurance policy.
As a related comparison in a very different field, in response to the gun violence epidemic, some municipalities in California enacted laws to mandate liability insurance for gun owners. Setting aside the legal challenges against these laws premised by US Const 2nd Amendment, one aspect which has not been substantially challenged is the availability of insurance. This is because such mandates can be met in two ways: a standalone gun liability policy, or as a rider to one’s homeowner or renter insurance policy. So from day 1, the law could be met through the rider process, since insurance riders extend coverage that the main policy already provides (ie liability coverage for third-party injuries at one’s home).
Whereas this NJ bill purports to require a motor-vehicle insurance policy but basically all “form” insurance policies use their own definition of motor vehicle – you can’t insure a motorboat using an automobile policy, after all. Unless NJ has some wonky insurance compared to California, I suspect that all NJ automobile policies cannot, by their own text, insure an ebike, without edits from the underwriting department of each insurer and from the state division.
There’s a good argument that when a law requires an impossibility, that law itself is invalid, rather than being allowed to function as an indirect ban on the topic being restricted. But this would only serve to rack up billable hours for lawyers to argue in court.
Bad bills should not be enacted in the first place, and this is definitely a bad bill, even without the insurance policy madness that would likely result.
I’m sure whoever coined the term acoustic bike was also making a joke. But the thing with neologisms is that if it’s easy to understand without referencing a dictionary, and it catches on, then that’s as good as any other word.
It’s just a playful retronym, at the end of the day, but is perfect when distinguishing from ebikes.
Much like the varieties of guitars, I’m of the opinion that acoustic and electric bikes can easily coexist[1], within reason. That’s why I have one of both. As for how I determine which one to use, I have the following system:
Use the acoustic bike for trips that are wholly within city limits. Use the acoustic bike for trips where yhe bike needs to be brought onboard a bus or train. Use the acoustic bike if there are (or will be) wet roads. Use the electric bike for all other trips. Exception: use the electric bike if time is of the essence.
Using this criteria, I end up spending roughly equal time on both bikes, although obviously the ebike sees a lot more kilometers due to higher speed. This lets me continue to hit my daily activity goals, unchanged from before I got the ebike. It also means I don’t have to haul a heavier ebike onto public transport. And while hydroplaning on any bicycle is exceedingly unlikely, the fact is that wet roads have reduced traction and so speed+torque would get me into more trouble if I rode the ebike. Finally, my life is not scheduled to the minute, so if I’m going to be late for a dentist appointment on the acoustic bike, I can make up time by selecting the ebike instead.
[1]: coexistence means that I expect that even in an advanced future where ebikes are trivially affordable, it will still be reasonable to ride an acoustic bike. For comparison, horse carriages simply did not coexist with automobiles after the 1920s.
But as a matter of public policy, just because two modes can coexist does not mean their differences can be ignored. Acoustic and electric bikes are both fine on pavement, but the latter can cause larger dust clouds on dirt roads. Recreational trails with weird curves are fine for strolling around, but are definitely not a high-volume commuter corridor to alleviate urban traffic woes. If a municipality wants to encourage commuting by ebike, they should not assume that a trail that’s miles out-of-the-way, with blind corners everywhere, can somehow be used as-is. No surprise, but bike commuters like direct paths, and ebike commuters want paths where their ebikes will prove useful. So if building from scratch, a city could build an arrow-straight, off-street ebike path with steady 6-10% grades, because ebikes can overcome that. Can the same be used by acoustic bikes? Yes, but not by most people. That’s the nuance: different bikes may need different facilities. At the same time, all bikes share common needs: safety from automobiles, air/repair stations, wayside water fountains, bathrooms.
I’m of the opinion that editors writing headlines generally commit the most frequent journalistic malpractice. But in this case, it’s hard to blame the editor when the article itself is extremely scant on details. Here, the article does not actually link or cite the study in question, but merely quotes one of the study’s principals, writing:
According to Professor Uwe Tegtbur, the effect on your heart and blood vessels is almost identical. You’re burning calories, your heart is pumping, and your fitness improves. The notion that “you do nothing on an electric bike” can go straight into the trash.
I mean, at least they included the name of the person they’re indirectly quoting. But this leads to two possibilities: the article author has misquoted the professor by negligently ignoring the nuances of science, or the professor has negligently misstated the results of his study. I tend to assume that journalists get it wrong, since science is hard.
And from 5 minutes on Google, I found this (much better) article about an ebike study that Professor Tegtbur worked on; not sure if it’s the same study, but the conclusions do seem similar:
Through an interview in the German news magazine “Spiegel”, the research project “Pedelec and Health” gained nationwide attention last week. However, the results of the study have already been available for several months. They were first published in October 2022 in the journal “BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine”. Here is a brief summary of everything you need to know about this study.
Excellent! Actual context and citations to a well-known publication and to a scientific journal. I wonder if I can find the DOI for the study in that journal.
Yes, yes I can. And here it is: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjsem-2021-001275 . Here is the salient conclusion:
Conclusion: E-bikes are associated with a lower probability of reaching WHO targets for MVPA due to reduced duration and a reduced cardiovascular effort during riding. However, e-bikes might facilitate active transportation, particularly in older individuals or those with pre-existing conditions.
There’s a lot of nuance here: they conclude that ebikes reduce physical exertion, since the motor does some of the work that otherwise would be done to move an acoustic bicycle. So people switching from an acoustic to electric bike might miss their physical activity targets. But on the flip side, ebikes enable people who can’t do an acoustic bike trip to instead do it using an ebike, which adds physical exertion, getting closer to their physical activity target.
TL;DR: the initial article is bunk, but the underlying study did reach a correlation about ebikes and physical exertion, for a studied population in Germany
I keep a copy of my automobile insurance policy near my bedside for this purpose. The success rate is 100%, since I’ll awake in the morning still holding the policy halfway through.
It’s incredibly important to track the weights I lift
This is the enlightened way. Fitness is a physical and mental endeavor, requiring the methodical approach of science alongside the cerebral conditioning to strive for continual improvement.
today I reached my 69th session
Nice!
I grew up in a suburban neighborhood that was built to only encourage driving and discouraged everything else, so my parents also took me most places during my teenage years. The cul-de-sacs made it particularly hard to walk to anything interesting, even though such destinations were actually fairly close by, as the crow flies.
What I would suggest is that if there aren’t many interesting destinations to start with, perhaps the walk itself can be of interest. Unless the walk to the mall is along a surface freeway with no soundwall – an actual occurrence in my hometown – you might start with an out-and-back trek to the mall, observing whatever architecture, people, or activities are visible and audible, and then return home. Think of it like people-watching, but less awkward because you’re just passing by, not stopping to stare.
As another commenter wrote, getting comfortable with something is a matter of doing it, first in a controlled manner and then gradually broadening your horizons.
But if this still isn’t a workable plan, then perhaps plan a day out to the 1-hour-away park, taking some time to explore what’s just outside that park. It’s not cheating to use a car to get to a more walkable area. But the walk should be the adventure.
I wish you the best of luck!
P.S. One other thought: could you go walking with someone else besides your parents? They may already have their own walking paths that you may also find workable, places that you can then explore on your own.
Is there anything near your home that you can walk to, to start? A park, a convenience store, or even just a friend’s house? I would start with those destinations, and then work your way to farther journeys. My presumption is that there are at least sidewalks and crosswalks near you, as some parts of the USA are genuinely built in the most pedestrian-hostile way. Also, I am assuming that there isn’t some sort of hazard that would prevent you from being safe in public, apart from the political climate.
Those farther journeys need not be on foot, but you could take a bus, a bike, or anything else that’s available to you.
I want to remark on Kawasaki publishing what appears to be actual vision, about what their larger plan for this would be:
So many glitzy prototypes are announced where it’s a neat aesthetic but come with huge question marks for how it would be used. Usually that sort of marketing comes with a tagline like “imagine a world where…” but what they really mean is for the viewer to imagine a use-case because they themselves could not.
Now, that’s not to say this grand plan of theirs is grounded in reality, but coming from an established company in Japan – a country with very mountainous terrain – I can see what they’re aiming at. Even without worldwide appeal, the domestic Japanese market could make use of this chevaline – another comment used this word, and I love it – and it would indeed make for an interesting visitor experience.
That said, I can’t ignore the obvious comparison to Boston Dynamics’s various dog-shaped military platforms. But I view this more like a supped-up ATV than as an AI predator robot. But I will note that a different arm of Kawasaki conglomerate does do military contract work.
Overall, very cool but probably won’t displace wheeled vehicles where roads are already available. Would like to see a production run.
We seem to be entering the oddball territory of: throttle-only like a Class 2 ebike but no pedals like an e-scooter. Conceptually, this actually matches how lots of people are using micromobility today: hit the throttle, reach the speed governor, avoid death by inattentive motorists, and sail to their destination, with the only physical exertion being to balancing of the device.
I have no beef with that. The reason I say it’s an oddball is because of the legal situation. In California, the thing in the article thumbnail is a “motorized scooter” under CVC 21235, just like normal Lime scooters would be. The problem is that the laws here have grossly neutered scooters, when compared to bikes and ebikes.
Despite having larger wheels and a lower center of gravity, this Lime variant would still have the same 15 MPH (25 kph) speed limit. This is a hard limit, meaning that even if a scooter could whizz down a hill faster than this, it is prohibited. Bicycles and ebikes have a different criteria, which is that the motor cannot provide assistance above a certain speed, and so downhill bombing is legal on a bike but not on this almost, nearly-a-bike e-scooter. Weird.
Furthermore, e-scooters in California cannot make left turns. This is both absurd for this Lime scooter variant, and does not match what people actually do IRL. To be abundantly clear, this law requires e-scooter riders to dismount and cross the street on foot. Meanwhile, bikes and ebikes, motorcycles, and automobiles make left turns from the center of the road like normal traffic. And rollerbladers and skateboarders cross the street as pedestrians but can remain on their wheels. It’s only e-scooters that have this weird restriction.
What I’m getting at is that Lime has, rather sensibly, introduced a variant that matches what people want from micromobility. But in the rawest example of red tape, this would be legally neutered if brought to California, leading to the only practical options: 1) it just isn’t ever brought here, because its advantages cannot be legally utilized, or 2) Lime does it anyway and “hopes” that riders obey the (asinine) laws.
In a just world, we would pursue option 3: repeal or recast the e-scooter restrictions. Public policy is about making thoughtful tradeoffs, where something like personal, low-emission, readily-available, economically-viable transport should be encouraged, but needs to be regulated to prevent ER visits due to a mismatch of rider capability and motor power. I would rehash the 15 MPH limit to permit downhill running, and would abolish the left-turn prohibition (left turns still need to be executed safely).
Furthermore, I would recast Class 2 ebikes to include pedalless variants (which are currently considered the same as motorcycles) if the device is less than 20 kg. This would address the collision risk (less mass reduces third-party injuries) when operating at the now-higher 20 MPH (32 kph), also conveniently deals with clutter on sidewalks (because it should be easy to move rental scooters, which IMO should park in car spaces), and limits battery size in a way that us compatible with short-distance operations in urban spaces.
In this regime, a rental pedalless Class 2 in the city is a cross-city, one-seat mode of transport, whereas rental e-scooter remain useful for shuffling around a neighborhood or down a few blocks. For more range or more carrying ability, see the existing ebike categories.
TL;DR: California should make e-scooters law match reality, and create a weight-limited pedalless Class 2 ebike category
I loaded True Nas onto the internal SSD and swapped out the HDD drive that came with it for a 10tb drive.
Do I understand that you currently have a SATA SSD and a 10TB SATA HDD plugged into this machine?
If so, it seems like a SATA power splitter that divides the power to the SSD would suffice, in spite of the computer store’s admonition. The reason for splitting power from the SSD is because an SSD draws much less power than spinning rust.
Can it still go wrong? Yes, but that’s the inherent risk when pushing beyond the design criteria of what this machine was originally built for. That said, “going wrong” typically means “won’t turn on”, not “halt and catch fire”.
As another data point, in the Thunder mobile app for Lemmy, there is no link in the post, just the thumbnail.
If a car has to tell you that it’s luxury, that’s how you know it’s definitely not.
Fiat lux!
“how I found about Harry Potter’s sex with Gwen from Spiderman…and broke aes256 in the process”
Breaking open the S(ex) box lol
Also, in the spirit of the season, that would 100% be a presentation at CCC; 39c3 just concluded, after all.
I don’t disagree about bikes seemingly getting more complicated. But I’d counter that my 2023 ebike would immediately benefit if all the existing sensors were CAN: from the mid-drive motor+controller, I have the left and right brake sensors running to the front, plus the display, and the headlight power circuit. Branching off the display are the controls for the turning on the bike.
To the rear, I have the derailleur sensor, the speed sensor, and the taillight circuit. I’ve been meaning to also expose the brake light circuit, so that would be yet another set of wires.
If I had CAN bus today, I’d shrink the wiring down to just: two CAN wires and two power wires to the front, and two CAN wires and two power wires to the rear. All sensors on the front attach to the display. All sensors at the rear are wired as a chain, with the tail/brake lights being at the very end.
The ease of cable routing alone would be worth it. And perhaps those wires could then be armored, for improved resiliency.