Supercapacitors @ 1K/th lithium's price from hemp bast waste fibers

#1

I guess this is going to qualify as a brick-bat: although this news is old, why is it not constantly referenced and driven home to the audience as a ridiculously slam-dunk win-win-win-win to demand and expect ASAP globally every time the topic of batteries and/or nano-carbon/graphene is brought up? Then again, Leo can’t even remember the term “gallium nitride” for today’s chargers (he keeps calling it “gallium arsenic”), and it may not be patentable enough to attract private profiteering interests of the type who take out ads on his shows and therefore he doesn’t want to divert attention away from the purview of such enterprises, conditioning the audience to expect solutions only through that pipeline, whether he even realizes that consciously or not (he doesn’t have to intend it for it to be happening).

I think there’s room for TWiT to accept sponsors and chuckle at them condescendingly as merely today’s best solutions and totally unsustainable without pissing them off enough to leave. The responsible perspective is toward sustainability, and as I see it TWiT’s responsible to stake out that position as part of its editorial identity. Easy for me to say, but is it really so hard for them to? I don’t mean to single TWiT out too much versus other media outlets, it’s just that because of its focus TWiT seems like of all the ones who should be harping on it to a relatively broad tech-oriented audience, they’re who.

Not only is it a fraction of the price, it’s from waste product, and supply isn’t constrained to finite geology, plus hemp cultivation is practically a favor to both planet and people.

For those who haven’t kept up: hemp has less THC than poppy seeds have opium, yet its cultivation was legalized in the US only within the past decade.

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#2

Something else I’d never heard of before, like the Freedombox you mentioned on the Amnesty International thread. It occurs to me that the one TWiT show that might have spotlighted these technologies was The New Screen Savers. I loved the outside-the-box/outside-the-pipeline nature of that show, and this and the Freedombox would have made wonderful segments.

#3

I think this and FreedomBox would make great TWiT segments, and Moglen a Triangulation guest, now! (Screen Savers was before I found TWiT.) Matterfact, I’ll submit Moglen to the Triangulation guest suggestion thread.

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#4

They would make good segments, but TNSS would have had the creators in studio along with the technology for an in-depth discussion, demonstration, etc. (Imagine a mini Triangulation episode with show-and-tell.) As opposed to a group of observers discussing it without the input of the creator.

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#5

I just spent an hour looking at the freedombox web site, and I have to say I would avoid it like the plague. It seems to me the developers have no sense of security fundamentals… their docs say “known issue, all users are admin” or words to that effect. NO THANKS! Maybe some time in the future when they figure out how security actually works would I consider it.

On the other hand, there is no magic here. It’s just free software bundled to be more user friendly. One could easily install and configure their own subset of this software on a Raspberry Pi or equivalent if they wanted. Although the odds of a random user getting it secure aren’t much better than what they already achieved. sigh

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#6

As for the super conducting hemp. We have legalized marijuana here in Canada, so if it were an actual viable thing, then I suspect someone would jump on it. It was “brought forward” more than 5 years ago and yet nothing has developed. This leads one to believe it was announced prematurely and is not actually as viable as they expected. Probably was all hype and the people involved have been admonished and moved on to other projects. Aka “cold fusion” or any number of other similar “discoveries.”

#7

Yours is the same tired rationale against this kind of thing: anything charged money for is subject to the same fundamental constraints, yet suddenly when users are as empowered as they can be, that empowerment is seen as a liability imperiling the sanity of anyone who wouldn’t consider it a threat to the product’s viability. :roll_eyes: Ironically, Apple attracts much the same argumentation from DIY PC enthusiasts.

See solar technology. Since when does reporting on something ahead of immediate commercial viability disqualify its newsworthiness?

#8

I didn’t suggest there was any problem with it being free. I stated it was poorly constructed, and nothing more. Please kindly, keep your “tired rationale” to yourself and stop trying to put words in my mouth.

#9

Poorly constructed relative to what, is the point: the fact something can be done DIY doesn’t make free projects’ doing some of it for you worse even than commercial products simply for the fact that an average user couldn’t do much better. Do I worry that FreedomBox’s security is inadequate? Of course. But little worse than I do, say, Apple’s, given that FreedomBox is open source. And to me the opportunities of liberty afforded by FreedomBox’s control make it more attractive than it might have otherwise been, though that’s not to say it erases concerns over privacy/security because of it.

#10

I said it has poor security and its security model is poorly considered/constructed. Please go read what I wrote until such time as you understand what the words mean. Stop trying to pick a fight where there is none.

#11

I found your comments unnecessarily dismissive; pointing that out doesn’t mean I’m attacking you personally, and if it’s not what you meant, replying is your opportunity to better explain yourself, not lecture your critic that they in your view have misconstrued your intended meaning behind your statements.

#12

I find your opinions overly wordy and offering no value to the conversation. I’m done conversing with you.

#13

I encourage you to use the Ignore feature of Discourse, if that’s the case; although, far be it from me to attempt to protect you from doing what you deem to be wasting your time.

Whether you intended it as such or not, your arguments, as stated, amount to little else than standard-issue FUD against FOSS. Should you care to distinguish yourself from such dreck, you will countenance your rhetorical opponents, regardless of your opinion of them, in articulating a more coherent critique. Should you choose to do so, I would also recommend to do it in the appropriate thread.

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