It's very different, CF tunnel is a reverse proxy to your service, Tailscale SSH manages authentication to machines inside your VPN. I can't see any resemblance, personally.
First of all, for CF, it manages the authentication part of ssh with SSO support (personally I used github)
Secondly, it has clients (on iOS it is called Cloudflare One) which can act as a VPN service as well. You can access any IP addresses (if you setup the vpc correctly [0]) directly accessible to cloudflared daemons.
My understanding is that only Tailscale is end-to-end-encrypted, though both ensure that all traffic is encrypted on the wire. I don’t claim this as fact because, unlike the Cloudflare docs, Tailscale’s claim (yell) that there is no way for them to decrypt.
I’d be pleased to be proven wrong (and jgrahamc is def ITT) as I use a bunch of CF services already and it would be great to have one less PaaS in my life.
Natural gas and biogas, are they both CH4? I heard they could be way worse than CO2 and leak might be inevitable to distribute them around the country and pumped into cars from time to time? Are there scientific evaluation on the impact?
It's the same stuff. I'm not sure how much of it leaks, but you have to either flare it or use it for something or it leaks anyway. Using it for cars and trucks is basically flaring it but using that energy for propulsion.
The taxes are not based on that, though. They're strictly interested in tailpipe emissions (not even lifecycle emissions), and don't recognise biogas at all.
I'm planning on switching to a BEV eventually, but right now it's not financially possible. Most of the time I commute on my bicycle anyway.
A factor could be the limited range on a single charge, which might not meet the daily travel needs unless there's convenient access to a charging station at home or work.
Additionally, the charging process in Europe involves carrying your own cables, which adds an extra layer of inconvenience—unlike in some places like China where charging stations provide the cables. - To open the trunk twice daily to get and put the heavy cables could deter regular charging, particularly for those using their PHEV for commuting.
Sourcing the raw material of bank notes from Nepal? Seems a bit off from an environmental standpoint by hauling materials halfway across the globe from Himalaya.
How about plastic notes? They are durable, recyclable, and because they are money, not likely to end up in our oceans as wastes.
It’s not halfway across the globe. Not even quarter way. Meanwhile, the US one dollar note is made with flax imported from Belgium (also not halfway across the globe, but farther away).
No, they are not flying non-stop from Himalaya as you assume.
I did a rough calculation using [0][1]. Not including the land part, just the sea route, it is 5396 nm [0], roughly 9993 km and that is indeed halfway the globe.
By the way, from Antwerp, Belgium to Boston, MA is 3607 nm, roughly 6680 km, much shorter actually.
Not a native speaker, but this got me thinking: how would you interpret "halfway" in this sentence:
>It’s not halfway across the globe
Equator is 40k km long, so it makes sense getting "halfway" there would be 20k km. But the "half" is of something, and it doesn't sound right that "at the end of the globe" would be the same place you started with. Especially since being "on the other end of the world" means roughly, well, opposite side of the globe.
So I think OP is justified in defining "across the globe" as the "opposite side of the world", and then "halfway across the globe" is "quarter the length of equator away". But maybe I'm overthinking it.
As a native speaker: I think “across” (while understandable from context) is the wrong preposition because to me that would imply a diametric traversal, not circumspect, eg, halfway across would land you in the core of the earth. Half way around is what I would say to describe superficial travel of half the earth’s circumference, landing at the opposite side of the world.
This is a very fair point! Another way they could be given credit is that the radius of the earth (another way to view "halfway across the globe") is 6371km so again the quoted distance would be more than this half.
Thanks for explaining! Yeah.. I was thinking of the maximum direct surface distance when saying "across the globe"... That would be 20k km... and the sea route turns to be about 10K km long from Kolkata to Osaka...
Why not locally sourced? I mean it's very possible flax isn't native to the Americas but it seems wasteful to source something from abroad.
And while 100+ years ago it made sense from a logistics point of view - use hard to find materials to fight counterfeiting - I don't believe that's a valid argument anymore.
This thread is grossly missing the point. OP is writing about a foreign aid program directed at Nepali people.
Nepal is a rocky country, having a large patch of lands unsuitable for farming. People in the rulal area are literally one of the poorest population in the world.
Paper bush ("Mitsumata") grows well in such a rocky soil. This program is essentially an attempt to set up Japan as a longterm buyer of the material, so that the local people can make constant money.
> Why not locally sourced?
Because if Japan sourced the material locally, it just ceased to be a foreign assistance program.
i don't know if it's intended as a foreign aid program, but if it is, it's a foreign aid program whose budget amounts to a single google engineer's salary, so i'd think japan could do better
Lots of Japanese people travel to Nepal to volunteer in schools and clinics and stuff; when living in Japan I knew several different people who'd done that sort of thing. It's like U.S. doctors and contractors doing projects in Central America. Japan is very into building soft power in SEA through development assistance.
It's a difficult low margin crop. Not easy to grow cheaply and it needs to be processed to extract the fibers.
It's been grown in that part of Europe for thousands of years and in the 19th century it was a major industry there. I don't think it's still a major crop in Belgium (too low margin) but the company in question is entrenched now.
Plastic doesn't seem like a good solution, considering that notes are moved, stretched, flexed a lot and endure a lot of friction. Seems like a needless source for more plastic particles shedding into the environment.
You might be surprised to learn that a lot of the world uses polymer banknotes which are siignificantly more durable and last a lot longer than traditional 'paper' based currencies. The are incredibly hard to tear/break and they do not wear out or stretch. We've been using these in Australia since 1996.
Having handled a fair amount of US currency I can say it _feels_ disgusting to handle after a certain amount of wear and often reminds me of a moist tissue. It also doesn't help that visually the notes all look very similar (as opposed to on polymer notes which have significantly different appearances and colours)
I'm aware it's being done already. But I'm not sure it would be a good starting point when designing a new set of notes. Euro banknotes are mostly made from cotton, and a lot of thought and effort is going into reducing the environmental footprint. The most circulated denominations last on average four years, the rest significantly longer I presume. How does that compare to polymer based banknotes?
In Canada they last 8-16 years… polymer notes are unequivocally better. Corruption and inertia is the only reason they are not everywhere. As to plastic pollution, banknotes are already a closed, circular loop and hence you get the miracle properties of plastic without the downside.
I think the concern was with the plastic money shedding micro plastics or threads as it slowly degrades over time, like we're finding other plastic does like our clothing. Not saying enough to take out of circulation, but does it shed any particles during its life?
Does it shed particles? In a world of absolutism yes they would.
I don’t know if there are actually any studies but fyi cotton notes will also have plastic features and a synthetic, uv cured varnish to try and get some extra life (although far less than polymer) so also ’shed’. Banknotes are regularly inspected and worn or damaged notes are pulled - they really are the perfect product for plastic.
By weight though, it's a lot less plastic being put out there. Is it worse than clothing? Maybe not, but I'd continue to be skeptical about it until some studies have been done.
But the solid piece of plastic isn’t shedding, it’s encased in ink and will be removed with set levels of ink wear. The synthetic varnishes, features etc are the same with paper so you’re putting out 4x the amount of ‘at risk’ shedding material due to the longer life of polymer.
Plastic = bad is a disaster for co2 emissions and ironically microplastics since the alternatives are heavier and don’t last as long. Meaning more transport, distribution etc and tires are one of the biggest sources of microplastics.
This doesn't show anyone concerned about polymer money shedding microplastics and it doesn't show any numbers about how much polymer money sheds microplastics.
Not a euphemism. They're made out of polymer. This is pretty direct.
you don't have to accept if you find polymer cups ridiculous
I don't and I don't know why anyone would be upset over that.
You said they aren't called polymer notes, I showed you they are called polymer notes by linking evidence. What else is there? Are you still saying they aren't called that or does it just upset you for some reason? You can hate it but it's still true.
Because there is zero evidence of what you're saying. How much plastic are people surrounded by and how much of that weight is bank notes? How much do they shed? Show some numbers or just use some common sense that this doesn't matter.
If you have 10 bank notes in your wallet, you have 162,285 times as much plastic in your house.
I think most people would have had used some basic common sense that even their trash bags are many times more plastic than the polymer bank notes they use.
Why did you possibly think that anyone should be focused on microplastics from bank notes?
At what point do you go from "just asking questions" to "maybe this is a bizarre thing to focus on" ?
I doubt that. Computing has a greenhouse effect similar to air traffic.
Edit: While true that's maybe not a good argument. Financial processing hardly is the biggest culprit. The worst impact / benefit ratio are probably video and ad distribution.
However, if you think how much Chinese (and similar) goods a $20 or 50€ note buys during its lifetime the impact of shipping the banknote material seems negligible.
Are you sure it is more environmental to keep all the computers, the network and other related infrastructure running (powered on, security updated, etc.) than it is to print and distribute banknotes every so many years and associated costs with that?
Because we already keep all the computers, the network and payment processing anyway.
Like 99% of physical payments are already involves computers anyway, even if it is done with a paper/plastic note.
So it's not "replace notes with computers" but "get rid of notes because computers are there anyway".
Anecdote: I don't have a card linked to Uber, so I pay with a cash or a C2C transfer.
In the last two years if I ask the driver if they prefer cash or C2C they consistently prefer C2C - because it's way less hassle for them and also they often claim they are short on change.
And in the another anecdote I still carry cash on me but I use it only for a taxi rides and a one local smallware shop, so they wouldn't need to pay the processing fee for the 50c things.
I disagree with the notion that Chinese EV makers, including BYD, have always aimed to dominate EV exports. Their focus has primarily been on satisfying domestic demand rather than targeting overseas markets like Tesla or VW.
Given that they've only 1 year something ago emerged from COVID-related restrictions, a shift to an export-focused strategy would require substantial time and effort in research, planning, and marketing to become competitive internationally. While BYD, as one of the earliest players in the EV market and with existing facilities in Mexico and the U.S., may be a step ahead, I believe they're just at the initial stages of exploring overseas opportunities. The EV market competition is likely to intensify in the coming years, but it's still early days for Chinese EV makers in the global arena.
Excess capacity argument is more and more dog whistle for PRC exports that eats away at historically western/incumbant market share. It's just exports. Right now PRC exports ~15% of domestic production. Germany, Japan, South Korea exports >50%, I think US ~20% due to RoW not caring much for SUVs. But light vehicles like Tesla has >50% of Tesla export markets. PRC has a lot of absolute excess capacity, but not really relative to total production vs other exporters. The aggregate export of non PRC players is probably equivalent to another 15-20% of PRC production, a big chunk of which is the PRC market itself. It's still early days, no reason PRC not to aim for 50% exports (15m cars), and if there's tariffs in west, ban domestic western cars and chip away at RoW share. EV also ties into energy charging/infra exports, indigenous semi, RoRo ships etc. There's a lot of strategic synergies.
10% of China’s capacity being exported is more than N% of any of those countries listed, absolute numbers do matter in this case. At much smaller Germany’s 50% there will be really huge push back from other countries, I don’t see it unless Chinese companies build factories abroad, which is what China essentially forced the western players to do in China anyways.
The USA exports $50b of cars but imports $150b of cars, you can’t call it a net exporter.
It matters to other auto producers countries to protect their industries, which is just a handful of countries. Hence the rhetoric from these countries that PRC auto having excess capacity is a problem, when it's just competition. As if PRC producers not entitled to grabbing as much share as they can. IMO PRC fine with building plants abroad, and is doing so. Also fine with PRC level of import tariffs, since they have no issue competing on price. But that's also what makes it none starter in said countries, since PRC producers are positioned to out compete domestic brands if allowed in comparable PRC JV or tariff arrangements. So I think ultimately foreign brands are out in PRC, and PRC brands out in foreign car producing countries, and the fight is over shares from RoW non producers. Which is just as well, because the big picture is exporting PRC charging standards, loading cars with PRC chips and all the knock on affects, stuff that makes unfettered PRC cars in nonfriendly PRC markets even less feasible.
I didn't say US net exporters, I said some US auto companies in segments RoW demands makes significant % of revenue from export market. Which will likely be same for PRC - most producers / models will stay domestic. The few that ventures abroad for export share has no reason not to aim high. In that context 10% is not excess capacity, it's just the beginning.
Not sure why you were downvoted, but that's great. The JV structure no longer benefits china, However, China should still expect blowback from having their economy protected for so long.
Not sure if I understood correctly, but does this mean that instead of going up vertically, with this engine, the "rocket" should fly near horizontally and stay in the atmosphere at the right altitude until it reached the highest possible speed given the air resistance, and then lift up by the 2nd stage rocket engines?
Rockets already mostly do this - they start pitching over at a fairly low altitude (10-30km), or sometimes immediately on launch, and thrust near horizontally. But yeah, theoretically an air-breathing rocket would fly lower for longer, or for some designs even dive down for part of the trajectory.
Rockets take off vertically, then pitch over not for aerodynamics but because reaching orbital velocity requires going sideways VERY fast. They don't pitch over at very low altitudes (with rare exceptions) because the air resistance from high-speed movement is simply too great.
Among the exceptions was the Nike Hercules missile interceptor. As its target was ballistic missiles on a hypersonic ballistic trajectory, the Nike Sprint had to go very fast, in the lower atmosphere, going from 0 to Mach 10 in 15 seconds, sustaining 100 Gs and reaching a skin temperature of over 6,000°F, glowing white, within seconds of launch:
Sounding rockets, used in early rocketry and atmospheric / astronomic research would in fact launch near vertically. Their goal wasn't to go orbital, but merely to get above (most) of the Earth's atmosphere.
Early US sounding rockets were the WAC Corporal (max altitude ~235,000 ft / 72 km) and Aerobee (260 mi / 418 km), each with about 60 kg payload capacity. Neither was an orbit-capable launcher.
I was wondering how a missile interceptor was even possible in the 50s given the insane precision required to hit a bullet with a bullet at those speeds, but it actually uses a nuclear warhead.
Spartan used a 500 kT thermonuclear warhead, I believe. It was a special warhead designed to minimize immediate beta emission in the debris cloud (which would create ionization that would interfere with radar). To that end, the tamper in the H bomb's secondary was not uranium, but solid gold.
> Rockets take off vertically, then pitch over not for aerodynamics but because reaching orbital velocity requires going sideways VERY fast. They don't pitch over at very low altitudes (with rare exceptions) because the air resistance from high-speed movement is simply too great.
I know. I don't know why you think that contradicts what I said.
Because the comment you'd responded to asked "does this mean that instead of going up vertically, with this engine, the 'rocket' should fly near horizontally and stay in the atmosphere at the right altitude?"
Your response suggested that rockets do this (though your altitude comment negates some of that). They in fact don't, and get above most of the atmosphere before their horizontal-to-the-ground vector becomes significant. A key clue is that fairing separation (shedding excess weight, but constrained by the aerodynamic advantages and protections of the fairing itself) tends to occur before major pitch-over.
Note that pitch-over is not the same as the azimuth "roll program" which most launches execute immediately after clearing the launch tower itself, which is for purposes of aligning navigation, in part for the later pitch-over maneuver. Roll is not pitch-over. Everyday Astronaut has a good explainer (~22m long):
The problem with air-breathing engines is that they work best where the atmosphere, and aerodynamic effects, are still relatively thick, as compared to the elevations at which pitch-over occurs. Commercial flights and even very-high-altitude surveillance craft (U-2, SR-71) still operate where aerodynamics and high-speed skin heating (a factor for they hypersonic SR-71, but not the subsonic U-2). Max altitude for the SR-71 was about 25 km (82,000 ft).
> fairing separation (shedding excess weight, but constrained by the aerodynamic advantages and protections of the fairing itself) tends to occur before major pitch-over.
Not for the launches I've watched, e.g. SpaceX pitches through 45 degrees at ~61km of altitude, whereas fairing separation doesn't happen until 82km altitude (by which time it's of course pitched down significantly further). Is that unusual?
> That's getting to be close to what's useful for space launch, but whilst the altitude is useful, the velocity remains low relative to orbital velocities.
True, but also potentially positive; if (big if) you can figure out the other issues, then the faster you go the higher you can continue to take in enough air to be useful.
FWIW, I tried to find an altitude-velocity diagram of a typical rocket launch without luck. Lots of diagrams, none with specific altitude & velocity components.
61 km altitude is FL200, a/k/a 200,000 feet altitude. That's above the operating altitude of any air-breathing so far as I'm aware.
As I'd noted earlier, the SR-71 (in regular operation) was limited to FL85, and the all-time altitude record was FL123, still 77,000 feet below your SpaceX Falcon pitch-over. The SR-71 saw significant thermal heating given its speed. The only aircraft that have gone higher are the rocket-powered X-15, with an all-time record of 347,400 ft (105,900m) in 1963, and Spaceship One, at 367,490 ft. (112,010 m), in 2004. Both the latter were themselves air-launched, though largely to gain initial altitude given the power and speed achieved under rocket power.
I'm unable to read the Twitter thread itself, so if there's any specific technical capability mentioned, I'm missing it. I'd be very surprised if the designs would exceed FL100, let alone FL200.
The user interface of the current ChatGPT strikingly reminds me of the classic teleprinter interface. It's fascinating to think that, with a bit of ingenuity, one could potentially retrofit a 1960s teleprinter to interface with the ChatGPT API.
This thought leads me to ponder whether there are ongoing projects aimed at evolving this user interface into something more dynamic and interactive with LLMs. Specifically, I'm curious about initiatives that not only automatically better visualize results beyond Markdown but also "generates" innovative UI components and layouts. These would ideally support richer user interactions, such as touch, clicks, scrolling, and zooming for the input requests. Enhancing the interface in such a manner could revolutionize the way we interact with AI, making it more intuitive and engaging.
For verisimilitude there should be the big pixellated signboard up on a pedestal in the middle of the room, with the giant messages crawling across, and the clackety-clack that the film soundtrack played when the messages crawled.
Messages like "I'm sorry, Dave. I can't recall the ICBMs. Maybe you would like to play today's Wordle?"
I have been using Cloudflare's cloudflared tunnels. It was great for tunneling ssh traffic behind firewalls. And it starts free.
[0] https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/connections...