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Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

charmindustrial.com

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Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#131

Post by bluGill »

a_c wrote: post #102
colechristensen wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just needed one farm kid who became an engineer. They talked about taking seven weeks to figure out a conveyor, put me in the middle of Kansas and I could have told you how to solve that problem in seven minutes, give me a truck she a credit card and i can buy you the parts in an hour. Bay Area engineering tends to be very sheltered, large groups of people with zero experience invading a domain. Sometimes it cre…

On self driving car, I think we are solving all the problems caused by cars like air pollution and congestion with "better" car. First we have electric car, then we (will) have electric self driving car. Public transport seems boring enough that no one talks about. Is there anything foundamentally wrong with buses and trains (and bike too) compared with cars? While we moved pass the faster horse era, we are now searc…

I talk about public transit. I hate driving even though I do a lot of it (well not now that I work from home)

Transit can be great, but most of it is so bad nobody sane would use it. Why would you risk waiting for a bus that only comes twice an hour when your car is sitting in your driveway waiting for you? Why would you take a bus when you can walk almost as fast?

Both of those are very real problems that most transit has, and most people just ignore it.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#132

Post by pinot »

seunosewa wrote: post #77
TheRealPomax wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that help clear the excess biomass produced by farming? The primary problem this solves isn't "carbon capture". It's great that it does, and it's what distinguishes it from other solutions in the same primary business: to help deal with the problem of harvest "waste". You can buy oil and pump it back in the ground, but now you still need to solve the farming problem.

Corn and wheat post-harvest biomass is usually tilled into the ground to improve organic matter in the soil and return nutrients to the soil, or fed to cows and other ruminants by grazing or by cutting.

The point is to take carbon out of the cycle. Not mining petroleum would of course have the same effect but good luck getting people to do that.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#133

Post by Raidion »

colechristensen wrote: post #86
hinkley wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We talk about this at least once a week here, usually in the scope of software, but it’s a problem that exists in other domains (though VCs and us are constantly pushing for more businesses to run like software, which is nuts considering how not in order we know our own house to be). Ageism and cultishness are how you end up with simple oversights that anyone who has been around the block a few times would either pre…

They just needed one farm kid who became an engineer. They talked about taking seven weeks to figure out a conveyor, put me in the middle of Kansas and I could have told you how to solve that problem in seven minutes, give me a truck she a credit card and i can buy you the parts in an hour. Bay Area engineering tends to be very sheltered, large groups of people with zero experience invading a domain. Sometimes it cre…

I think solving an "easy" problem is a good step on the way to a hard one, as long as the tool is set up to allow you to get out of a local maximum. Clearly there are locations where self driving is a smaller problem space than others, and I don't think it's bad to solve for those locations first.

I don't think it would be a fail if self driving cars were able to only operate in sunny locations with good roads. The caveat is that the outcome shouldn't just be a "magic" ML model that can't be modified to handle rain or potholes, it should be a set of tooling that allows you to make ML models that solve a variety of problems.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#134

Post by bluGill »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #81
hinkley wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We talk about this at least once a week here, usually in the scope of software, but it’s a problem that exists in other domains (though VCs and us are constantly pushing for more businesses to run like software, which is nuts considering how not in order we know our own house to be). Ageism and cultishness are how you end up with simple oversights that anyone who has been around the block a few times would either pre…

This is mostly a cultural problem. Some professions will readily say "imma keep my mouth shut because this is not my area of expertise" whereas every software engineer is a subject matter on everything up to and including open ended and subjective questions that humans have been trying to conclusively answer all of history. (The various types of mechanical engineers are nearly as bad.) One could argue that the cultur…

If you are in software you have to be an expert in some other domain. Sure there are a few os and compiler writers who can sit in pure software land (even they need to know some about hardware). Pretty much everything else is for some other domain and so you need to know it.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#135

Post by colechristensen »

a_c wrote: post #102
colechristensen wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just needed one farm kid who became an engineer. They talked about taking seven weeks to figure out a conveyor, put me in the middle of Kansas and I could have told you how to solve that problem in seven minutes, give me a truck she a credit card and i can buy you the parts in an hour. Bay Area engineering tends to be very sheltered, large groups of people with zero experience invading a domain. Sometimes it cre…

On self driving car, I think we are solving all the problems caused by cars like air pollution and congestion with "better" car. First we have electric car, then we (will) have electric self driving car. Public transport seems boring enough that no one talks about. Is there anything foundamentally wrong with buses and trains (and bike too) compared with cars? While we moved pass the faster horse era, we are now searc…

>Is there anything foundamentally wrong with buses and trains

It's slower, a round trip I could make in 30 minutes in a car would take careful scheduling and two hours on a bus. Sometimes it's cold outside and I'd have to walk half a mile to and from a bus stop. The local transit authority is experimenting with reducing the number of light rail cars so they'll be better covered by transit police in cars because violence is a problem. Once on BART I'm convinced somebody shit in a paper bag and left it in the middle of the car. Caltrain in rush hour would be a violation of the Geneva Convention if you made prisoners stand in such a cramped and unstable train for an hour at a time. I keep hearing about people getting stabbed by the local bus stop, 45 minutes after a friend visiting me came through the last time. A couple of months ago a dude died in the hospital after getting stabbed on a bus three blocks away from my apartment in a dispute over who got a cigarette left on the floor of the bus.

I calculated total cost of ownership of my car and it was considerably less than taking public transit unless I used public transit a lot, and any savings would be completely blown away by using Uber for just a couple of trips a month.

There are situations where public transit is a good thing, but it's generally a dirty, crime-infested, unpleasant experience in America only good for people who are really excited about not having a car. I'm opposed to any measures that force public transit on people by making car ownership more difficult until after they make public transit a safe, convenient, comfortable experience.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#136

Post by bluGill »

whalesalad wrote: post #58

10 tons of biomass per day seems like a really impressive number.

For a farmer that works out to a bit less than 10 minutes of harvest. There are big it depends in the above, a high yielding wet corn crop might be a couple minutes, a poor yielding dry crop can be several hours. That is just the grain, most of the plant goes out the back of the combine. A quick search shows forage forage harvestors can do 400 tons per hour, I just took the first number a search found without checking details.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#137

Post by hinkley »

nebula8804 wrote: post #126
hinkley wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We talk about this at least once a week here, usually in the scope of software, but it’s a problem that exists in other domains (though VCs and us are constantly pushing for more businesses to run like software, which is nuts considering how not in order we know our own house to be). Ageism and cultishness are how you end up with simple oversights that anyone who has been around the block a few times would either pre…

You have literally described how Tesla(and the other Musk companies) have made both an excellent and terrible product at the same time. A big chunk of the Musk skeptic community consist of experienced professionals from all the industries that Elon is involved in. They are constantly bashing his companies for not paying attention to what has already been accomplished. Musk has had many failures due to ignoring the pr…

A similar story happened with digital cameras. A few of the film companies practically went out of business before the electronics got sorted out and what differentiated the good from the bad cameras circled back to the mechanical parts, which the incumbents had locked down ages ago. The pure digital play companies faded and some were acquired, and one day Nikon or Canon had the best DSLR system.

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#138

Post by colechristensen »

lostlogin wrote: post #128
bob29 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you would pump in CO2 (and any missing nutrients), not Oxygen. Algae culture requires CO2 and produces Oxygen. It also requires light. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algaculture#Growing_algae

If you like plants in your fish tank, pumping in CO2 has an amazing effect on them. Far more growth than pumping in air. There is some nice hardware for achieving it.

Are they actually CO2 concentrators or some variation of buying dry ice or compressed gas and injecting it?

Re: Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares

#140

Post by spc476 »

a_c wrote: post #102
colechristensen wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just needed one farm kid who became an engineer. They talked about taking seven weeks to figure out a conveyor, put me in the middle of Kansas and I could have told you how to solve that problem in seven minutes, give me a truck she a credit card and i can buy you the parts in an hour. Bay Area engineering tends to be very sheltered, large groups of people with zero experience invading a domain. Sometimes it cre…

On self driving car, I think we are solving all the problems caused by cars like air pollution and congestion with "better" car. First we have electric car, then we (will) have electric self driving car. Public transport seems boring enough that no one talks about. Is there anything foundamentally wrong with buses and trains (and bike too) compared with cars? While we moved pass the faster horse era, we are now searc…

In my area (southeast Florida), trains: not enough rail. Both trains and buses: not often enough. Buses: not enough routes, too many transfers (from experience, what would take 20 minutes by car took 1.5 hours by bus). Bikes: even though we have bike lanes, we get drivers from everywhere (tourist destination) and I wouldn't want to risk my life.
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