Absolutely, it is essential to always run the numbers. I was once offered a sizable rebate if I accepted a non-0% car loan, but no rebate if I paid cash or had my own financing. Since their loan had no early-repayment penalty – and I demanded this in writing – I accepted their loan and paid it off upon the first statement.

My suspicion is that that sort of offer was to boost the commissions earned by the loan brokers, rather than to move cars. Or maybe both. Who knows.

0% interest offers show up fairly frequently in the USA, often as general-purpose credit cards, or for car or furniture payments, in addition to the many buy-now-pay-later services that allow financing almost anything. However, the motives for offering 0% are slightly different for each of these products.

But answering the question directly, a 0% offer is beneficial if you were already going to make the purchase and would finance it. Cheap credit makes it easy to overspend, since the payments will be “tomorrow’s problem”. For people who can afford to pay for something in full, it might still be beneficial to finance with 0% just to conserve cash on hand. But the tradeoff is having to service the debt with regular payments; missing one payment can cause the debt to resume at an exorbitant rate. It takes a decent amount of financial discipline to make a 0% offer work in your favor.

Going back to why 0% offers even exist, I’ll use furniture and cars as they’re the historic examples. Furniture is expensive, whether it’s a sectional sofa or a queen-size bed with frame and storage. There’s also a sizable markup for furniture, and competition between furniture stores is strong. Thus, to help entice people to buy furniture, sellers will offer 0%, outsourced to a loan company, with the loan subsidized by some of the profit margins.

For cars, the equation is slightly different. Sure, cars are an order of magnitude more expensive, but that also means the opportunity cost for dealers to offer 0% is correspondingly larger. Instead, 0% financing for cars is almost always subsidized by the manufacturer, not the dealers. This is a financial and business strategy that allows a car company to create more sales in a given quarter, if perhaps they need to meet certain year-end targets but are reluctant to reduce their list prices.

0% car loans induce more sales fairly quickly, but will draw on the company coffers in the years to come, because the loan company still wants their cut to be paid by someone. Consumers will usually benefit from these offers, as it’s rare for people to buy a new car outright.

It’s my opinion that if a car company has to subsidize loans to move their product, that’s a tacit admission that their product is wrongly priced or the competition is better. I would take this into consideration, although it wouldn’t necessarily carry the day when considering a purchase. After all, car payment interest is not insignificant.

Agreed. When I was fresh out of university, my first job had me debugging embedded firmware for a device which had both a PowerPC processor as well as an ARM coprocessor. I remember many evenings staring at disassembled instructions in objdump, as well as getting good at endian conversions. This PPC processor was in big-endian and the ARM was little-endian, which is typical for those processor families. We did briefly consider synthesizing one of them to match the other’s endianness, but this was deemed to be even more confusing haha

It never ceases to amaze me how prolific PowerPC/PowerISA was (still is?) in the embedded space

A quick “rule” is to see how old the word/concept is. “plaintiff” would have existed almost as long as the English legal system came into being, or probably even older to the court of Assizes pre-12th century.

Whereas firefighter as a profession might have only become a word after the establishment of fire departments by insurance companies, which I think might have been a 19th century development.

This entire series by Cathode Ray Dude is a wonderful dive into the world of PC boot sequence, for the folks interested in a touch of embedded architecture. His delivery is also on-point, given the complexity and obscurity of the topics.

From this video alone (41:15):

The way this worked was: they installed Xen hypervisor on your PC, put Hyperspace in a VM and Windows in another. Now, you either know what a VM is – and I don’t need to explain why this is terrifying – or you don’t and I need to make you understand so you never independently invent this.

And (43:59):

This is just a bad idea, ok? Virtualization belongs in data centers. Putting some poor bastard’s whole OS in a VM is a prank. It’s some Truman Show shit. It’s disassembling the coach’s car and putting it back together inside the gym. It’s not remotely worth the trouble and it probably didn’t work.

My prior comment on hydrogen mobility:

Hydrogen for mass- or space-constrained mobility (eg bikes, automobile, aircraft) faces all the known problems with storing it inside inconvenient shapes and contending with the losses from liquification. Real Engineering has a video on this aspect (Nebula and YouTube) when compared to simply using battery-electric storage.

With that out of the way, I’m skeptical as to the benefits touted on the HydroRide website. Specifically, the one about storage:

Hydrogen storage offers extended longevity, surpassing 10 years, ensuring reliability and sustainability over time.

This might be true in static conditions, but hydrogen automobiles have to vent some of the hydrogen while parked, simply to deal with the buildup of hydrogen gas, since even with excellent insulation, the liquid hydrogen will eventually get warm and evaporate into gaseous hydrogen, building up pressure. The fact is that automobiles must withstand broad environmental factors, especially temperature. And we expect bicycles to do the same: how the hydrogen tank would behave in warm climates is unclear.

There’s also not that much hydrogen in the tank. The website appears to indicate 20 grams. At 33.6 kWh/kg, the total energy in the tank would be 672 Wh, putting it at par with electric bikes of similar range and speed. Any hydrogen losses would be balanced against battery capacity loss over time.

Overall, as the article states, the target audience of rental operators might still be inclined to go with battery electric bikes rather than hydrogen. Requiring a supply of pure water in addition to electricity at charging locations – compared to just electricity for battery charging – is an extra logistical consideration. The “charge” time of 5 hours for 20 grams of hydrogen is also a potential issue.

I am not an expert bike mechanic by any means. With that said, I can’t quite visualize how re-truing the whole wheel will address a rotor rubbing issue.

The rotor mounts onto the hub at one of the most durable parts of the assembly, adjacent to the bearings. Generally speaking, the act of truing a wheel is to manipulate the rim so its axis of rotation matches the axis of the hub, where the spokes pull the rim into submission. This process shouldn’t affect the rotor, since that would suggest the hub itself is not spinning true; that could indicate an outright defective hub.

Are you able to confirm that the disc rotors are true? If the shop built and delivered the wheel with the rotor attached, presumably they checked both rim and rotor for trueness. But if you installed the rotor yourself, you might need to true the rotor.

If the rotor is true and the whole wheel is true, then that just leaves the brake pads and calipers, which could be misaligned. Although I’m not sure how this would look.

There was a ton of hairbrained theories floating around, but nobody had any definitive explanation.

Well I was new to the company and fresh out of college, so I was tasked with figuring this one out.

This checks out lol

Knowing very little about USB audio processing, but having cut my teeth in college on 8-bit 8051 processors, I knew what kind of functions tended to be slow.

I often wonder if this deep level understanding of embedded software/firmware design is still the norm in university instruction. My suspicion has been that focus moved to making use of ever-increasing SoC performance and capabilities, in the pursuit of making it Just Work™ but also proving Wirth’s Law in the process via badly optimized code.

This was an excellent read, btw.

To say this is a complex story is an understatement, and the article does a fairly reasonable job at unpacking the details. That said, I’m disappointed they did not include a PDF to the filed claim, since even a cursory analysis of the claims relies heavily on the details therein.

For reference, in California and other states, lawsuits against the state itself, or the counties, cities, agencies, special districts, or anything else that came into existence by the law, must have first filed a claim with the entity being sued. The California Tort Claims Act requires this procedure in order to relieve the state’s inherent sovereign immunity and also permit the courts – which are also an arm of the state – to have jurisdiction.

Focusing on the relevant facts to the claim, the claimant (the former Pedal Ahead manager) states:

• Pedal Ahead is a non-profit, distinct from Pedal Ahead Plus, a for-profit company
• Pedal Ahead was contracted by San Diego Assoc of Govts (SANDAG) and CA Air Resources Board (CARB) to operate an ebike program
• The claimant was hired in 2022 to work on this ebike program
• The claimant did not receive paychecks after April 2023

Accordingly, the claimant brings back-pay claims against SANDAG (for $40k) and CARB (for $58k), based on the premise that he was working on behalf of those two state entities. Presumably, the claim argues that he was unlawfully terminated for whistleblowing, but the article doesn’t specifically say this and we don’t have the PDF of the claim itself.

This is… an uphill battle, IMO. Not the whistleblowing part, but the part where he wants money from those two entities. The state action doctrine distinguishes between things done by – or instructed by – state employees and representatives, versus things done by private entities and their employees. In a lot of ways, this mirrors the distinction between hiring W-2 employees versus 1099 contractors.

If he were directly on the CARB or SANDAG payroll, this would be a slam dunk. But he ostensibly only had employment with the non profit. This means the scope any state action claim will depend heavily on the text of the contracts with CARB/SANDAG. Generally, the narrower and more specific the contract, the less it would be the state’s responsibility to pay up. That said, the contract can’t be hiring the nonprofit to do something which CARB or SANDAG normally couldn’t do on its own.

As with most things in civil law, it’s a careful balance to apportion liability onto the entity which is best positioned to avoid the problem. Would making CARB/SANDAG pay $100k – and thus letting Pedal Ahead off the hook for $100k – address the problem of constructively firing someone who noticed malfeasance? That’s left as an exercise to the reader.

What often happens in civil litigation is the “shotgun” approach: aim the lawsuit at as many people and entities as possible, especially ones with deep pocket, hoping some will settle. So it’s possible the claimant will later file suit against all of Pedal Ahead, its owner personally, every individual mentioned personally, plus SANDAG and CARB.

California allows for joint and several liability of money claims, so if a court/jury finds that CARB or SANDAG were even 1% partially responsible, then 100% of the winnings can be extracted from their deep pockets. This is especially relevant if the entity with the most responsibility – possibly Pedal Ahead – is broke or is about to go bankrupt. Joint and several liability prioritizes claimants getting compensated, even though the most responsible party escapes via bankruptcy. Again, civil law is a balance.

What’s truly staggering is the degree of corruption alleged, which is only ancillary to the tort claim, but it suggests that there are villains everywhere. No one comes out looking good here, whether its SANDAG and its other scandal, the owner of the nonprofit and his other ventures, the ebike program itself (why have a hard goal of 100 miles per week?), the former San Diego County Supervisor who helped award the contracts and then resigned after a sexual assault scandal, and the state entities for not properly auditing Pedal Ahead and still paying out the contracts.

All the meanwhile, $30 million of the $31 million dedicated for ebikes remains unused, likely to the disappointment of lots of San Diegans who are eager to take up ebikes or participate in a pilot program. That’s the real travesty amongst all this.

I’m not aware of any other tire on land that would vary based on being driven or not. Sure, a driven wheel has torque applied to it, but I haven’t seen an automobile with an equivalent arrangement. Nor are rail wheels for that matter.

Also, all wheels are braked on a standard bicycle, which would subject them all to the same torque, which should exceed acceleration torque when adjusted properly.

The funny thing is that a few months ago, I bought a wand metal detector at a ham radio swap meet for $20, as a gag. Now you’re telling me that it was actually a prudent investment toward my woodworking projects??

Win!

This might be true, although I do it mostly so I can remove the earplugs and rest them around my neck if someone needs to talk to me.

The best PPE are the ones which have the fewest barriers toward using. Even the minor annoyance of having to set down untethered earplugs is best avoided, if it acts as a subconscious disincentive towards using PPE. Good safety policy adapts and accommodates this aspect of human behavior.

In a home workshop, there is no OSHA, so I’m fully responsible for my own safety protocols.

The electric gremlins and the electronic gremlins have a nasty habit of striking once and then crawling back to their lair to strike another day lol. It makes debugging problems much harder if the problem “went away” on its own.

But in any case, your description of a wet outlet box could be consistent with an intermittent fault. If your outlet was oriented sideways with the neutral (larger pin) facing down, it would only take maybe 1/4 inch of water trapped inside the box to short the neutral screw to the grounded case.

It’s also worth noting that GFCI receptacles don’t last forever. The nicer ones trip themselves off for the last time when they fail their own internal self-test, never to power back on again. The cheaper ones might become oversensitive with age, tripping for really tiny, harmless current diversions. But 8 or 9 out of ten times – I’m spit-balling – recurring trips are due to a real issue in the circuit, rather than GFCI.

Old equipment with motors, such as a fridge, are good candidates for leaking small currents to ground. But it’s usually maybe 2 mA or something small. You’d need other appliances that are also leaking small amounts to reach the 6 mA to trip the GFCI.

All in all, since you observed tripping with no appliances plugged in, and I assume all the wiring is readily visible and you’ve already inspected it for any physical damage, that leaves the outdoor receptacle as the most probable cause.

You might consider looking at how the outdoor outlet box would drain water if it did accumulate inside. Most of those boxes are meant to be water tight, but that also means if water enters, it has no way to exit.

I’m left wondering why the tread direction of a tire would differ if it’s on the front vs rear wheel of a bicycle. They’re still rotating the same direction, right?

I’m nowhere even remotely comparable to a proper furniture maker, but I can tell you some pitfalls to avoid.

Don’t cut wood without eyes, ears, and face protection. The dust, noise, or fumes will get you one day or another, if without protection. I prefer earmuffs over earplugs, but if earplugs then use the ones which tether both ends together. For a face mask, I like low-profile half-masks like this one: https://www.kleintools.com/catalog/respirators/p100-half-mask-respirator-sm

Resist the urge to dive into woodworking by starting with reclaimed wood. For example, pallets are a cheap/free source of material, but it’s a hodge-podge of different varieties, all riddled with nail holes, dents, and brown stains from rusty fasteners.

That’s not to say it can’t be done, but it certainly aggravates the process if you’re just starting. I once came across a section of 2x4 recovered from a pallet, thinking that it would cut just like the pine I was used to. Instead, it wrecked two drill bits and burned a circular saw blade as well as itself. I later mailed a sample of it to the USDA Wood Identification Public Service, who informed me that it was Acer (Hard Maple). Up until then, I didn’t even know that maple came in both varieties.

It seems hard maple is tougher than nails drill bits. I’m still learning.

From your detailed description, it sounds as though one of the downstream outlets outside the house has a fault between neutral and ground. Follow the white wire which was reading 101.8, and that should get you closer to where the fault is. It might be anything such as: the receptacle got wet, a nail went through the NM-B cable, or something of that nature.

Separately, the white wire that reads 0.7 is fairly normal for a wire segment that should be dead. So no cause for alarm there.

Now to explain how I reached these conclusions. Firstly, a GFCI operates by detecting any difference in current between the live and neutral wire, downstream of the GFCI. If this difference exceeds ~6 mA, then the GFCI will trip.

Secondly, North American grounding systems will bond the ground rod and the neutral wire at only one point, at the service entrance where the main disconnect switch is located. Nowhere else should ground and neutral be bonded except here. In the IEC nomenclature, this is called a TN-C grounding system.

Thirdly, if a circuit has daisy-chained outlets, then any current drawn by upstream outlets will induce a small voltage onto the neutral wire, detectable at downstream outlets, compared to the ground wire and ground rod.

Let me explain a bit clearer: suppose a circuit has outlets A, B, and C, where C is the farthest from the breaker box. Plugging in a space heater into outlet A will cause current to flow to the space heater and back to the breaker. Because current is flowing on both the live and neutral wires, and because house wiring has a small, non-zero resistance, Ohm’s law dictates that there must be a voltage difference across the wire, however small. That is, if the breaker box would measure the live wire at 120.0v and the neutral wire at 0.0v, then the voltage at outlet A might measure 119.4v and 0.6v, respectively, when the space heater is powered.

Because outlets A, B, and C are in parallel, we would also see this hypothetical 0.6v at outlets B and C as well, measuring between neutral and ground. This is normally not a problem… except if outlet B is a GFCI and outlet C has a neutral-to-ground fault.

In this new scenario, the voltage induced on the neutral by outlet A will cause current to flow through outlet C’s neutral-to-ground fault. After all, that 0.6v would prefer to flow to the ground wire, which remained at 0.0v (since the ground wire didn’t have current until now).

The amount of current through the fault could be sizable, and almost certainly above 6 mA. This current flows through outlet B’s neutral but not its live wire. Accordingly, the outlet B GFCI detects the difference and trips off.

This situation is only possible precisely when: a) there is current on the neutral wire somewhere, and b) there is a neutral-to-ground fault. The fault may be new, or perhaps you haven’t used this circuit in a while.

In any case, the course of action is to identify which of the downstream 14 gauge cables leads to the fault. Since you measured 101.8 v through one cable’s neutral, that is probably the direction of the fault, since the fault means you’re measuring from live to ground, which should be somewhere in the ballpark of 120v.

The usual course of action to diagnose GFCI issues is to slowly reattach downsteam circuits until the GFCI starts tripping again. That gets you closer to the true issue that’s causing the GFCI to trip.

Good luck and stay safe!

At this point, the bill has already passed the Senate and the Assembly, so it’ll soon head to the governor’s desk, as is the norm around June of even-numbered years.

If you are a California constituent who cares about bicycle and ebike legislation, I would encourage you to sign up for Calbike’s email updates on impending legislation of great significance to bicycling in this state. This bill is fairly minor, but who’s to say something more momentous won’t come next year?

Likewise, if your region has its own bicycle advocacy group (eg San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates, BikeSD), get updates from them too.

Today’s ebikes have only been legalized since 2016, so what is advocated for now will set the tone for decades to come.

I’ve been tracking this bill since it was first proposed, and the author never got back to me on exactly what is within the scope of the bill. The relevant part of the bill reads:

(e) A person shall not sell a product or device that can modify the speed capability of an electric bicycle such that it no longer meets the definition of an electric bicycle under subdivision (a) of Section 312.5.

For example, would a generic serial programmer device fall within the definition of such a “product or device”? How about software that is used with that device to modify the top speed of a specific ebike model? Common sense would say “no” to the first, and “maybe?” to the second.

But we can look to the author’s own comments before the Assembly Transportation Committee:

According to the author, “AB 1774 will ban the sale of electric bicycle (e-bike) speed modification devices (i.e. tuning kits) in California. These devices modify e-bikes far beyond the legal definition of an e-bike in State Vehicle Code.

But the committee staff already see the obvious flaw:

While this bill would prohibit the sale of devices that allow an e-bike to go beyond the speed permitted by law, many e-bikes can be modified to bypass the speed limiter by reprogramming the bicycle. The limiter can be tricked by changing the tire size on the panel on the bicycle. Other e-bikes, like the Super 73, allow you to change the speed of the bicycle using an app that comes with the e-bike.

I would hazard a guess that ebikes manufacturers might start to do the same trick that e-motorbikes do, which is a wire that – if severed by the owner – would disable the speed governor.

As is somewhat typical now in the Legislature, these bills written against ebikes tend to come from SoCal, ostensibly because ebikes are an exceedingly popular alternative to driving on congested roads. What bothers me is that these representatives are not taking in the whole reality, which the committee staff report kindly summarized:

• Ebikes are outselling electric automobiles in the USA, by double digit percentages
• Ebike injuries are up, although the LA Times reported it as the low three digits in a 2023 article
• The best way to increase safety for all cyclists is through sheer numbers: more cyclists

Given that reality, legislative effort apparently isn’t following evidence but rather towards clumsy distractions that emulate a “tough on ebike” stance, as bizarre as that sounds.

If this is the only receptacle in the house that is causing some unease, then it’s simple and cheap enough to replace the receptacle. Around me, the cheapest UL-listed duplex receptacle at the home improvement store is less than $3. For the “commercial-grade” receptacle with my preferred backwire terminations, about $6. For TR-rating, $8 out the door.

Someone that’s handy (and careful) with electricity should be able to swap it out in 20 minutes, and then you won’t have to worry. Of course, as with all home improvement, don’t do it yourself unless you’re reasonably confident. And opening the outlet box might reveal new issues. But there’s only one way to find out for sure.