Football season has started here again and here Andy Griffeth back in 1953 tried to figure out what it was all about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNxLxTZHKM8
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Yes, batteries will also work, but they cost roughly twice as much. The conclusion in the guy’s masters thesis.
Rindert
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Batteries are instant, and most other forms of energy have a spin up time. Most likely his paper isn’t right.
if you are looking at purely frequency regulation, his paper is probably correct. IF you are looking at grid management as a whole. It is less likely because ultimately you don’t need to load follow which is a guessing game as to what future demand will be because it takes time for new generation to come online. Do you need a hot spare gigawatt power plant if you have a 8 gigawatt hour battery system? it buy 8 hours to start up a gigawatt power plant. If you have 100mw/hrs of batteries, you can tighten the margins of extra capacity available in case of a surge in demand. So instead of say 5%, you can cut that right down to 1%. any surge gets picked up by the battery until extra generation can come online.
The point is you are eliminating the guesswork which saves money, and you don’t have to have extra generation online which saves money even if you never use the batteries. However, it does hurt the power generation company’s bottomline.
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Hi All
I just changed the engine oil on the wife’s 2022 Toyota Highlander Hybrid.
Sheee . . . one year now she has had this 40 mpg fuel sipper. She’s put 30,000 miles on it in the last 12 months. (Why will not this be 70 y.o. nurse just retire, eh?)
Anyhow I have been bumping up the in-the-US specified 0W-16 oil to a premium 0W-20.
No problems, no issues at all created.
Now I’ve just watched this video:
Modern Suburu lovers especially need to watch and listen to this guy well.
And those with cylinder deactivation systems need to search out defeat options.
Same with the majority of the run-stop systems.
Will I ever bump up to a 5W-20 oil on her car??? Maybe. Maybe not. It actually runs the engine only partial time; so the average engine temperature is low-low. NOT a modern expected constant oil thinning high temperature. And even with Toyota’s dual direct and port injection systems I am seeing, smelling accumulative gasoline fuel dilution of the engine oil. Crazy, foolish to go with long oil change intervals on this system!
For sure DIY your own oil changes to get back control, and decisions.
And this is what I believe sincerely DIY using wood-for-your-power is all about. Seizing back some control and responsibly for your Life.
Steve Unruh
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whelp. I never thought something like this would be sorta woodgas related… yet here we are.
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Tom, that gave me a good chuckle. I didn’t know about rear mounted transmissions 
To be able to wrap your head around some forign expressions isn’t always easy. My favorite Finn is an expert though.
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Hilarious J.O.
To understand the usage of ass by Americans you have to know our history.
The extensive use in the 19th century of mules as work animals. Mules: the hybrid between a horse and a donkey. They were called asses.
So more than half the time we are not referring to the poop-hole, or the body parts surrounding the poop-hole; but a stubborn, cantankerous critter that was better than a horse IF you could get it to work.
Everyday usages gets emphasis sprinkled into a cultures language.
“I gave it my all!” becomes, “I gave it the whole nine yards!” The length found best for late 1930’s, 1940’s fighter aircraft 50 caliber machine guns cartrige belts.
S.U.
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A video for Goran’s history collection. You may have already seen this.
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Interesting pictures, but most seem unrelated to the narration. High power-to-weight ratio at 2200 pounds and 140 hp continuous, 200 hp peak? I wonder if there’s AI in the background. The efficiency numbers are impressive, but it only compresses air. By the time you convert the compressed air to another useful form, you may well have given back a lot of that efficiency. Good for generators for spacecraft though (edit: with a nuclear heat source, not really an ICE).
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Hi Tom, interesting video, but seems some ai generated?
As i know it the Ljungström free piston engine was more of a curiosity, not really much development in Sweden, more in other countries.
But some boring facts and coincidenses: STAL (Swedish Turbine Ab Ljungström) had one of it’s biggest factories, maybe headquarter?, in small city Finspång, only 21 miles from where i grew up (later STAL-Laval, today owned by Siemens) a man having a summer cabin neighbor to my dad, worked on Stal-Laval most of his life, and he have talked about them free piston engines, they had some experimental stuff saved, that they had been fiddling with and running from time to time.
It really is a small world?
Edit: i remember he told me some about exactly what Kent points out: enormous losses in efficiency when compressed air is used for powering a turbine/air motor.
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It is definitely AI along with some bs. There are some companies still working on them. Toyota’s R&D, and Aquarius Engines Technology along with a few others. They don’t create rotational power so they are being looked at using a genhead based on a linear motor. They are using essentially an air compression chamber on them for the recoil, and I am sure they have issues with the seals and blow by.
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Expert forums, the internet, “artificial intelligence”, … all this technology of “knowledge” can be dangerous and misleading, but it can also be very useful, in this mass of data, select and use those that are useful for your projects, … there is a proverb for when someone has given a long speech, … “in through one ear, out through the other” … 
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It is pretty much like any communication throughout history. It is just faster at it. I think ‘garbage in, garbage out’ is pretty appropriate with it. Where AI really excels is not the crap we see on youtube but specific purposes where they can fine tune the dataset and have the selective questions and sometimes it pops out answers no one would have ever thought of and actually work.
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Yes it is. Mostly thermal, if it gets bigger (powerplant size) it can beat a ICE. For personal use not.
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My e-mail carrier is Yahoo. In the last 6-8 months since they went to enhanced AI, I fight with the spell-checker and text-checker not just recommending: but whole words changing and inserting upon me sending. I can’t go back and edit fix!
The same problem for me on the DOW too. At least there I can review what did post up and go back and force a change to actually want I wanted.
Here is a video not just about engine oils; but pointing out that AI is allowing the Liars to Lie and deceive much quicker, and more effectively:
Yeah. Long video. But view through it and learn yes a bit about engine oils, and whole lot about marketing Liars now self proclaiming themselves as “Influencers”.
“Figures (numbers) don’t lie. But Liars figure (scheme).” “Made you look!” Made you stop what you were doing; could have been doing . . . to put view pennies become dollars into their accounts.
I am not laughing.
Steve Unruh
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youtube and facebook are cracking down on AI generated content. Even with normal youtube channels misinformation exists, which then gets sucked into the AI algorithm and spit back out as information. And always bias exists whether political, monetary, etc. there are very few opinions that aren’t bias, which is what science should be doing but even I get skeptical of some research as confirmation bias exists, and science only studies what they have money for. Which leaves room for say home remedies, that may work, but have never been studied because there wasn’t enough money in it.
for yahoo.
To turn off AI in Yahoo Mail, go to Settings > AI features and disable the Message summaries toggle on the desktop, or tap your profile icon > Settings > Summaries and turn off the toggle in the mobile app. You can also disable Dynamic message by going to Settings > Viewing email on the desktop.
On the web
- Click the More options icon (three lines) and select Settings.
- Click AI features on the left.
- Use the Message summaries toggle to turn AI summaries on or off.
- To turn off Dynamic message, go to Settings > Viewing email and toggle Dynamic message off, then click Save.
On the mobile app
-
Tap your profile icon.
-
Tap Settings.
-
Scroll down and tap Summaries.
-
Toggle the AI-powered summary preferences on or off.
-
Restart the app if prompted.
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Thanks for the step by step guide SeanO’
I discovered I could make a better feed-back statement to Yahoo . . .
I set back to an older system completely. I then had to clear out 3600 for-your-informational E-mail the last two systems had been screening out from me. Now back to lean and effective.
Hey guys. Still a lot of inside dark hours to fill in.
So a new to me presentation video:
Long. But do watch through carefully. It really lays out a time-line of human striving and innovation.
How to do more with existing. Until then later; by necessity forced to shift to a different matrix mix.
That is the 20th Century woodgas story too.
This modern petroleum oil explanation can be viewed as very pessimistic. (Current political California driving away the Big Oil names; with their refineries and capabilities as a forced culture suicide.)
Or viewed an illustration that we can always evolve onwards. Forwards.
A couple of nasty personal encounters having to deal with over these holidays telling me it is much more the individuals persons outlook. Not maths. Or on the ground realities.
View; and really think this video through the lens of the last two centuries of human energy and materials use histories. Whales; virgin forests; all made of made of woods & leathers, metals, and glass & ceramics.
Regards
Steve Unruh
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That was a good video with a really good overview of the industry.
California tends to take 3 steps forward and two steps back.
There is a delicate balance as modern society depends on oil and the cheap products. Then you have the environmental impacts, and the geopolitical impacts of importing the oil as well as the trade. It is a finite resource so what alternatives are there? for both as a free market control, and when the last drops get too expensive, how long will it take society to change ie how much lead time is required without disrupting the entire economy? If the last drop was pumped today, we would be screwed.
Is it smart to use fossil fuel based products to run to the store or drive to work or burn it to boil water to generate electric knowing it is a limited resource? Probably not. Is it economically feasible and practical for everyone to switch today? no. Can some make it work and drive the market? yes. If some people can, and can sustain the market, then it actually offers some a form of market competition to keep oil prices from rising.
Oh I think I have over 50k of those in one account… lol Google’s AI assembled that answer which gets onto our hot local political discussions about datacenters.
Both topics lead to this video, on the demise of critical thinking skills which is happening for all age groups.
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Good video SeanO’
Ha! Ha! Sitting and watching through all 59 minute could be said a measure of if a person is still capable of serious critical thinking. Has half a working brain left.
Seriously. I had some family needs interruptions that dragged me away at 39 minutes. And had to come back now 14 hours later, to finish.
A shame actually, because I went to bed with all of the doom&gloom early portions rattling around in my head.
ALL - start by watching at 40 minutes out to 59 minutes for the going-forward, hopeful, what-you-can-persoanlly-do optimism first. Then go back and fill-in the earlier minutes. How I read most all books now.
I do read a lot of books on histories and technical/social developments.
Two books in the last six months have given me much difficulty in completely reading:
.Apologies. It is still early morning dark here; and the reading lamp has glared-out the one book cover.
It is “Imperial Cruise” by James Brady. Author of previous; Flyboys and Flags of Our Fathers.
This Imperial Cruise book is his questing on why his father had to go fight in the far Pacific WWII.
Hard for me to finish because of what we, the noble Americans; did in the Philippines colonial “pacifying” starting in 1898 and for the next 56 months. Confirmed in published news accounts; letters home; written orders, and later Congressional investigations. Photographs.
The other book, “A Crack at the Edge of the World” is about the geography; the leading up to; and post learned knowledge consequences of the 1906 Earthquake centered around San Francisco.
I handily finished a book before this one; a great written human stories and characters book about the later, larger, 1964 Alaskan Earthquake. Written in plain text modern English. 50 years after, reflections.
Simon Winchester’s book however is written in flowery, overly wordy, high-fault’n, seldom used, University English Majors, advanced, 3%'er wording. I can actually understand his wording, but question why he would take a fascinating topic and use his book as a “Look at me! See how educated, smart I am.” Too much Peer-preening.
The AI developers, just the same to me. So in-love, happy, with their creations and never asking themselves about the full range of consequences. Half of the in US original nuclear bomb developers before the dropping; were horrified and signed a letter protesting that their creation would actually be used.
Genies can never be put back into bottles. Nor viruses.
Just learn to harness, and limit the worst of their excesses. Then learn to live in a world with them; and continue rolling on forwards. Nuclear bombs. COVID.
I WILL finish these two books as my own proof-test that my will-power is still is my best strength.
Steve Unruh
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Mr Steve, your video is not for our country 
. Anyone the same experience?
Sean, at about 8 min the same as overheren. We have three bright kids but only the girl want to study. The middle one wants to use his hands. Nothing wrong with that and he has holden hands. But the youngest thinks the same as in the video around 8 min. All about easy money, and a lot, thinking you can beat the system. To bad, and he is the brightest……
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