The fundamental problem this argument has is that computers are in the world. Probably not to the degree required and certainly not up to AGI. But, self driving cars and Boston dynamics exist. The gap between "in the world" and not isn't some insurmountable barrier. It's an engineering problem that's been solved to varying degrees by engineers and hobbyists.

People deciding to stop working is a good thing. It means they have market power and potential employers need to take that into account.

I've written maps that I've regretted later. "map(+1, list)" isn't too bad. But as you chain things and/or put more in the lambda, it gets less comprehensible. Then, some cross cutting requirement comes in and you either need two map reduces or to just refactor to a loop.

Scripts are a subset of program focusing. The primary characteristic being they rely on another program to interpret the source at run time. Scripts also tend to be a problematic subset since libraries written in scripting languages tend to have poorly defined interfaces.

There are still 2 basic sources of benefit. First, power stations generally use turbines which are much more efficient than internal combustion engines. Even after accounting for inefficiencies electric often comes out better. The other benefit is that it decouples the vehicle from the energy source.

Third, it moves the pollution out of the city center.

I don't see how hiding your pollution is helpful, in fact it may do the opposite as it allows people to delude themselves into thinking they are living a 'green' life. I already see this sentiment a lot, of people believing living in a city makes them 'greener' because they can't see the pollution their daily life creates everywhere else to supply them.

You can clean the emissions, using carbon capture etc, much easier in a power plant, even a coal one.

moving pollution far away means people don't have to breath dirty air which leads to all the obvious health problems which cost society

An internal combustion motor is radically less efficient than power lines when comparing input to input.

Transmission loses 1-2%, batteries lose maybe 5%. Compare that to 30% losses for an ICE, above generator losses.

30% is the efficiency of the energy in fuel being turned into work.

You need to consider the efficiency of the power generation, power lines, battery and then the electric motor. Any other comparison is misleading.

Correct that his is thermal efficiency, and I apologize for not breaking into out earlier.

An ICE is ~20% efficient.

A combined cycle gas turbine is ~60% efficient, transmission systems ~98%, LiIon ~99%, motors around 85-90%. The first is thermal, the rest are electrical. Well-to-wheel this is about 50%.

My point was just that you really do get a large efficiency improvement (50 - 20 = 30) by electrifying cars. Climate argument aside, energy is simply being wasted.

And gasoline has efficiency of exploring, pumping, refining and transferring it (tankers, pipelines, trucks to the gas station)

That should be "China content with getting the pollution out of the tier 1 city". Those old diesel buses were probably moved to some tier 2 or 3 city to replace an even older fleet.

Isn't that exactly what they should do?

> The other benefit is that it decouples the vehicle from the energy source

until, you run out of the juice (electricity)

I'll give it points for the arrow keys. There just really isn't much in the way of good positions for arrow keys on a split layout. That said I don't like what it's doing with the thumbs. Thumbs want to move radially more than in and out.

I have my Ergodox set up so I hold down a thumb key and it activates a layer so my right hand has arrow keys and pgup/pgdown/home/end right there on the home row.

I can't live without it now.

My keyboard is set up in a similar manner but it adds a point of complexity. Ctrl-Shift-Arrow is harder to use since the Fn key is trying to take up a thumb.

I still prefer that complexity to having to move my entire hand from the home row to use the arrow keys. I'm very used to it now.

Touch typing is one of those things it's easy to underestimate the importance of. I've been using computers heavily since the late 80's. But, I've only learned to touch type in the past couple of years. I'm going to be kicking myself over that for years to come. Programming isn't particularly better with touch typing. However, it's done wonders for my ability to communicate with others. It's really a must have skill.

Would say the best reason to try something weird is if the normal approach just isn't working. I never managed to touch type on a normal keyboard. Now that I'm using a split layout, I've learned to touch type. That makes it worth the weirdness for me.

Manufactured or pre-made split keyboards aren't cheap. However if you're making your own the costs aren't all that different. So it's easier to ignore the cost and effort if you're making a split keyboard. Also by definition, you're talking about someone willing to go down the less beaten paths.

I would love for split keyboard to become more mainstream. They're far superior to the traditional key layout. But if the sample set is customs, it's probably selection bias.

You can make a mechanical keyboards significantly quieter. Most of the noise isn't actually from the switches themselves but rather from the impact of the keys bottoming out into hard plastic. So a set or 2 of o-rings on the keys will really cut down on the noise.

When I get around to constructing my next custom. I'm going to use non-clicky switches with a thick acrylic plate and of course a set of o-rings. In theory, it should be very office acceptable.