How I Gave Up Alternating Current • Hacker News Board

Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current

#21

Post by colinbartlett » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 3:35 PM UTC

seren wrote: post #12

ForHackernews wrote: post #3

Is this a parody?

This is from the founder of Soylent[0], so likely not. While some ideas are delusional, it is refreshing to see someone taking nothing for granted. I also suspect the timing of the post is there only to generate discussion at the time of Soylent 2.0 release. So it is basically a link bait trying to push people hot buttons. It works superbly. Moreover, beyond Soylent, Rob's next startup is probably somewhere in there.…

Okay that explains a lot, thank you.

The article mentioned Soylent 2.0 several times so I searched and found hours-old news articles about it, and become very skeptical that this whole thing wasn't just a big ad for Soylent 2.0.

Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current

#22

Post by danielweber » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 3:38 PM UTC

AnkhMorporkian wrote: post #15

A better headline would be "How I push all my carbon footprint to other people to make myself feel good."

And by putting it in a place where he can't see it, he has no idea how much environmental damage he's doing.

Restaurants don't give a shit about reducing their carbon footprint. And those Chinese clothing manufacturers probably aren't even constrained by local laws about what they dump into the air and soil in making all his new clothes.

Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current

#23

Post by Glide » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 3:38 PM UTC

afandian wrote: post #17

joshdance wrote: post #10

I gave up the article at the "I never cook" line.

It's a shame. You missed out on "I have not done laundry in years".

And that's where I stopped.

I can appreciate people who can run low powered devices. But new clothes? Just run a washer and hang your clothes if you're in a dry climate. Then you wouldn't even need to buy new clothes because you don't have a machine that slowly turns clothes into lint.

Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current

#24

Post by mcdougle » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 3:38 PM UTC

jhildings wrote: post #16

>First, I never cook. I am all for self reliance but repeating the same labor over and over for the sake of existence is the realm of robots. Well then he does cooking wrong, he could also try to improve himself but in the craft in itself but also add more creativity to it

He's also the creator/founder of Soylent, and even if he were a good cook, he'd likely continue to live off of his creation if only to say "look, I do this!" which will probably get more people to buy his product.

Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current

#25

Post by luso_brazilian » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 3:39 PM UTC

The author seems to be conflating two different things in his choice of lifestyle under the same umbrella, one being energy conservation and the other a form of secular asceticism with the purpose of saving time and reducing life complexity.

Some of his more controversial choices (based on the comments in this article) reflect more the later than the former.

It is possible both to prepare (delicious) meals using barely no electricity (and even without burning any fuel), to do the laundry by hand using nothing but water and soap and to dry it at the clothesline. The drawback is that those are very time consuming tasks.

The choice to eat only Soylent and to buy cheap clothes for single use seem to be motivated more by the desire to save time than by the idea of conserving energy.

Both are worthy goals, to save time and energy but IMO it is very important to know how to strike a balance between efficiency and enjoyment. Otherwise we become the very robots we are trying not to be.

Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current

#26

Post by fezz » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 3:41 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #14

> I have not done laundry in years. I get my clothing custom made in China for prices you would not believe and have new ones regularly shipped to me. Shipping is a problem. I wish container ships had nuclear engines but it’s still much more efficient and convenient than retail. Thanks to synthetic fabrics it takes less water to make my clothes than it would to wash them I'd like someone to run some more numbers on t…

And in the big picture, the clothes have to get washed again so he's simply shifting the energy consumption onto the next users.

Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current

#27

Post by ChuckMcM » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 3:41 PM UTC

luso_brazilian wrote: post #25

The author seems to be conflating two different things in his choice of lifestyle under the same umbrella, one being energy conservation and the other a form of secular asceticism with the purpose of saving time and reducing life complexity. Some of his more controversial choices (based on the comments in this article) reflect more the later than the former. It is possible both to prepare (delicious) meals using bare…

I was thinking the same things. When camping we use a simple water agitator to wash clothes, and we can bake bread in the noon day sun and a solar oven. But it does take time, but if that is how you choose to spend it (as we do while camping) then its great.

Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current

#28

Post by danielweber » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 3:41 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #14

> I have not done laundry in years. I get my clothing custom made in China for prices you would not believe and have new ones regularly shipped to me. Shipping is a problem. I wish container ships had nuclear engines but it’s still much more efficient and convenient than retail. Thanks to synthetic fabrics it takes less water to make my clothes than it would to wash them I'd like someone to run some more numbers on t…

It's crazy. If you were really committed to not using AC, you could still put some bleach + detergent + cold water in a basin with your clothes to manually agitate, and then air dry.

Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current

#29

Post by icebraining » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 3:42 PM UTC

alextgordon wrote: post #20

Reminds me of Shabbat lamps. Since observant Jews are forbidden from using electricity ("starting fires") on Saturdays, what they do is turn on the lamp on Friday and just keep it on the entire time. That way they're not using any electricity.

Lamps? There are full ovens with a Shabbat mode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbath_mode#Oven

"the standard six- or twelve-hour automatic shutoff is overridden"

Re: How I Gave Up Alternating Current

#30

Post by wklauss » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 3:43 PM UTC

I have long wanted to fully switch to DC in my life and would love to see common appliances designed for a DC world. It's a shame that the opportunity to discuss this is lost in this post because of the pedantic tone of the author.

Phrases like "I think it was a bit presumptuous for the architect to assume I wanted a kitchen with my apartment and make me pay for it" or "I don’t want to live with red hot heating elements and razor sharp knives. That sounds like a torture chamber" are ridiculous, even if you really try hard to see them as an attempt of making a joke. The continuous references about how many books he has and reads also threw me off.

The best part, so far, is the first Discus comment at the bottom.