Hacker News: piquadrat

New comment by piquadrat in "Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?"

piquadrat — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 15:10:04 +0000

Your Polestar 2 battery is based on battery technology that is 5+ years old. Right now you can buy a BYD car in China that charges at up to 1500kW - close to 10x the peak charging rate of a Polestar 2.

New comment by piquadrat in "BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time"

piquadrat — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 15:09:25 +0000

Isn't what you are describing known as Zonal Architecture (as opposed to Domain Architecture) and supposed to be the hot new way of architecting automotive platforms? Tesla was pioneering it. The Volkswagen Group spent billions to get their hands on Rivian's zonal architecture platform.

https://insideevs.com/features/724945/zonal-architecture-sof...

Unitree Robotics demostration during the Chinese New Year Gala is incredible [video]

piquadrat — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 09:33:12 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R40IDdAkRZM

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47059065

Points: 8

# Comments: 2

New comment by piquadrat in "Self-hosting my photos with Immich"

piquadrat — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 09:43:08 +0000

That's something that should be possible with the upcoming Workflow feature. Some details can be found in the November Recap blog post.

https://immich.app/blog/2025-november-recap

New comment by piquadrat in "Generative AI Image Editing Showdown"

piquadrat — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 07:27:00 +0000

They announced that Nano Banana will be integrated in Google Photos a couple weeks ago.

https://blog.google/technology/ai/nano-banana-google-product...

New comment by piquadrat in "How many EV charging stations does the US need to replace gas stations?"

piquadrat — Mon, 27 May 2024 16:55:14 +0000

My source is an article from the ADAC, a German automobile association.

https://www.adac.de/rund-ums-fahrzeug/elektromobilitaet/lade...

They say 100-300W for the onboard electronics, and 15-25% total loss when using a wall socket (other losers contribute as well, e.g. cables that weren't originally meant to run at peak current for hours on time).

New comment by piquadrat in "How many EV charging stations does the US need to replace gas stations?"

piquadrat — Mon, 27 May 2024 15:10:35 +0000

One drawback of charging on an 120v (or 230v) outlet is efficiency. While charging, the energy consumption of an electric car can easily reach 300-400 watts. When you're only charging with 1800-2400 watts, that's a sizeable amount of energy that never reaches the battery.

With a dedicated level 2 charger, you can charge with 10+ kW, making the percentage that is lost in the electronics of the vehicle much smaller.

New comment by piquadrat in "BYD Overtakes Tesla as Most Popular EV Maker"

piquadrat — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 17:59:55 +0000

> Model 3/Model Y has been the most sold new car in California and a few other areas, selling more than the usual toyotas and hondas.

Model Y is going to be the most sold car model of 2023, not just in California, but in the whole world.

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/28/tesla-model-y-going-to-...

New comment by piquadrat in "Germany Will Force 80% of Gas Stations to Install EV Chargers"

piquadrat — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 10:17:07 +0000

Only about 7000 of those are HPCs (150kW+)[1]. This proposed law mandates at least 150kw per charge point, so it would more than triple the amount of HPC charge points.

In general, it makes a lot of sense to differentiate between slow chargers (usually AC, 11-22kW, installed at home, at work, in parking lots), DC fast chargers (50-100kw, often installed at grocery stores and similar) and HPCs (150kw+, often installed along highway corridors, enabling longer trips). They all serve different purposes.

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/technology/germany-added-35-more-ele...

New comment by piquadrat in "Google Maps is expanding its eco-friendly navigation feature to Europe"

piquadrat — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 15:47:46 +0000

I wish Google Maps had an option to avoid small roads that are not made for transit traffic. I live next to such a road, and the amount of cars using it has grown considerably over the last few years, many with license plates from neighboring regions. Taking this narrow road saves them maybe two minutes compared with an adjacent, much wider road.

New comment by piquadrat in "Switzerland’s underground freight project gets start date"

piquadrat — Sun, 26 Jun 2022 04:38:33 +0000

The problem is more that the Swiss Plateau (where most of these tunnels would be built) is very densely populated. There's just not enough room for a whole new road network to be built on the surface.

Swiss airspace re-opens after ‘technical malfunction’

piquadrat — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 07:53:58 +0000

Article URL: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/swiss-airspace-reopens-after-air-traffic-control-problems/47675112

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31750246

Points: 6

# Comments: 0

New comment by piquadrat in "Shimano Forces Hammerhead to Remove All Di2 Related Functionality From Karoo"

piquadrat — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 06:46:40 +0000

Well, he for sure pissed Garmin off with his review of the Garmin RCT715[0] (the bike camera/radar/light thingy). At least in my case, his review stopped me from upgrading from an RTL515.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dyr-KJy-xKo

New comment by piquadrat in "No, you can’t save £30 per year by switching off your “standby” devices"

piquadrat — Wed, 27 Apr 2022 13:47:11 +0000

Yes, I unplugged it.

New comment by piquadrat in "No, you can’t save £30 per year by switching off your “standby” devices"

piquadrat — Wed, 27 Apr 2022 12:21:45 +0000

Just yesterday I noticed that a device installed by the cable TV company in my house (a WISI VX 2030 amplifier, according to the sticker) was warm to the touch. Measuring its power consumption, it uses a constant 15 watt, so about 130kwh/year.

I don't use cable.

New comment by piquadrat in "Xerox scanners/photocopiers randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)"

piquadrat — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 08:51:06 +0000

I have a networked all-in-one HP printer that can scan to a network share on my NAS. On the NAS, I set up a watcher script that runs OCRMyPDF [1] on any incoming PDFs. That gives me a super easy workflow, just feed documents into the scanner and a minute or two later, I have a fully OCRd PDF in my network share.

[1]: https://github.com/jbarlow83/OCRmyPDF

New comment by piquadrat in "3D Printing – High Security Key"

piquadrat — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 10:01:05 +0000

he has proven time and time again that anything with a keyway can be picked quickly and discretely by anyone with a little knowledge (and the sometimes the right tools)

While it is fascinating to watch LPL make short work of almost every lock, I think it is safe to say that his lock picking ability is on a whole other level compared to even a competent burglar. If LPL spends more than 30 seconds with a lock, it's probably going to be fine.

New comment by piquadrat in "The James Webb Space Telescope has passed the final mission analysis review"

piquadrat — Wed, 07 Jul 2021 18:30:32 +0000

Arianespace fat-fingering an Ariane 5 into the wrong orbit recently didn't exactly help with my anxiety...

https://spacenews.com/bad-coordinates-led-ariane-5-astray-la...

(OTOH, I'm positive that particular issue won't reoccur)

New comment by piquadrat in "GameStop appoints chief technology officer and two additional executive hires"

piquadrat — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 18:48:19 +0000

They say otherwise on their blog[1]:

"Clearinghouses are SEC-registered organizations that act as the central depository for securities. They keep a record of the stocks owned through a brokerage. Clearing brokerages, like Robinhood Securities, are members of clearinghouses."

"The amount required by clearinghouses to cover the settlement period of some securities rose tremendously this week. How much? To put it in perspective, this week alone, our clearinghouse-mandated deposit requirements related to equities increased ten-fold."

https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2021/1/29/what-happened-this...

New comment by piquadrat in "GameStop appoints chief technology officer and two additional executive hires"

piquadrat — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:08:46 +0000

The fact that Robinhood had to emergency-raise $3billion to be able to put up the collateral with their clearing houses should be enough indication that a lot of retail traders were engaged in these highly volatile stocks.

See e.g. https://fortune.com/2021/02/02/robinhood-gamestop-restricted...