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.
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.
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.
This sort-of happened in the USA, in a small way, during the fallout of the 2016 Wells Fargo scandal. Public sentiment of the big-name, national retail banks was awful and credit unions capitalized on the moment with advertisements contrasting profit-centric national banks with local, cooperatively-owned credit unions.
I once came across a comment somewhere online that suggested -- sadly without hard evidence -- that the scandal may have been a win-win, since the sort of customers willing to uproot themselves from Wells Fargo tended to have smaller balances while still incurring the bookkeeping costs. And that credit unions were able to scale up to take in new customers while saving on advertising dollars.
It's a plausible idea, that a new equilibrium would be found in the banking market. Logically extending the idea further, though, would lay bare how much additional integration credit unions would have to do with each other to achieve a truly seamless customer experience. Of course, with more young people mostly sticking to online and mobile banking, this might come in the form of backroom operational improvements, rather than a revamped brick-and-mortar experience.
I am deeply skeptical at the 450 mile range figure, after searching for more detailed specs. This Cycleworld article says that the manufacturer officially described the battery as "700V, 50 Ah" yielding 35 kWh.
450 miles is 742 km. So the efficiency needed for that range would have to be 48 Wh/km (aka 702 MPGe). But that's problematic, because that sort of efficiency is in the (higher end; ie less-efficient) territory of ebikes, which are lighter and have lower top speeds. In an odd coincidence, my Bikonit MD750 Class 3 ebike achieves 48 Wh/km when cruising at 45 kph (28 mph) and weighs 44 kg, with dual batteries summing to 1.5 kWh.
So how will this electric motorbike equipped with a substantial-larger and heavier 35 kWh battery pack be able to achieve the same efficiency? Even accounting for the different testing regime -- US EPA cycle vs China CLTC -- there are significant questions here.
The Cycleworld article expresses similar doubts, suggesting a 333 mile range might be more reasonable. I agree, although even 65 Wh/km may be generous if this motorbike can't shave weight in other places beyond the battery pack.
The other answers have touched upon the relative efficiencies between a phone charger and a desktop computer's PSU. But I want to also mention that the comparison may be apples-to-oranges if we're considering modern smartphones that are capable of USB Power Delivery (USB PD).
Without any version of USB PD -- or its competitors like Quick Charge -- the original USB specification only guaranteed 5 V and up to 500 mA. That's 2.5 W, which was enough for USB keyboards and mice, but is pretty awful to charge a phone with. But even an early 2000s motherboard would provide this amount, required by the spec.
The USB Battery Charging (USB BC) spec brought the limit up to 1500 mA, but that's still only 7.5 W. And even in 2024, there are still (exceedingly) cheap battery banks that don't even support USB BC rates. Motherboards are also a mixed bag, unless they specifically say what they support.
So if you're comparing, for example, the included phone charger with a Samsung S20 (last smartphone era that shipped a charger with the phone) is capable of 25 W charging, and so is the phone. Unless you bought the S20 Ultra, which has the same charger but the phone can support 45 W charging.
Charging the S20 Ultra on a 2004-era computer will definitely be slower than the stock charger. But charging with a 2024-era phone charger would be faster than the included charger. And then your latest-gen laptop might support 60 W charging, but because the phone maxes out at 45 W, it makes no difference.
You might think that faster and faster charging should always be less and less efficient, but it's more complex since all charging beyond ~15 Watts will use higher voltages on the USB cable. This is allowable because even the thinnest wire insulation in a USB cable can still tolerate 9 volts or even 20 volts just fine. Higher voltage reduces current, which reduces resistive losses.
The gist is: charging is a patchwork of compatibility, so blanket statements on efficiency are few and far between.
I've previously spoken with PSU engineers for enterprise power supplies -- specifically for 48-54v PoE equipment -- who described to me that today's switch mode power supplies (SMPS) tend to get more efficient with increasing load. The exception would be when the efficiency gains from higher loading start to become offset by the heating losses from higher input currents.
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.
However, I think hydrogen could be very useful for train locomotives -- which historically had "tenders" that stored the fuel behind the prime mover -- since weight is less of a problem on traction railways. As well as any stationary applications, such as utility-scale hydrogen to time-shift electricity supply, where there may be scales-of-efficiencies to realize. Today's utility-scale battery farms are not exactly gaining any scales-of-efficiency to speak of, because they're just adding more battery cells to the grid.
A singular, massive hydrogen storage tank would be a sphere, benefitting from a favorable volume to surface area ratio, among other possibilities. And such a sphere would make better use of land by growing in height, whereas multi-storey battery farms would be fire hazards. But these are just cursory conjectures.
A sturdy, used, road-oriented bicycle. $200 won't get anything too fancy, but cycling is a low-impact activity that -- given the right places to bike -- is meditative, improves cardio, facilitates independent exploration, and also happens to double as transportation.
I specifically say "road oriented" because I don't want to necessarily endorse all road bikes, like the ones with carbon fibre or "Tour de France" pedigree. Likewise, mountain bikes with full-suspension sap energy away from the steady cadence ideal for a good workout, in addition to generally costing more or delivering less-than-stellar performance at low price points.
Would a folding ebike fit the bill? Something small enough that you could lug it indoors if need be, but also with large enough (20-inch?) tires to not bottom-out on potholes? You'd get the benefit of being seated during the ride, many have removable batteries, and if the bus's bike rack is full, you can fold it and carry on.
As a rule, I don't ride e-scooters, as they're fairly nerfed by California law, in addition to the troubled state of bike lanes near me. So I would steer you -- pun intended -- toward an ebike. Around me, I see a lot of people on Lectric ebikes, so I assume they're at least decently competent. Of course, British Columbia is a fair bit different than Northern California.
[2,600 men and women, with an average age of 64 years old] were surveyed about their physical activity over their lifetime. As part of the study, researchers took X-ray images to evaluate signs of arthritis in their knee joints.
The study can not prove cause and effect, given it was an observational study that assessed osteoarthritis at one point in time.
Credit where it's due, the editor has written a headline which actually comports with the merits of the study, not overstating the benefits of cycling on elderly knee arthritis. And the author takes care to do the same. The article also discusses the risks specific to elderly cyclists, and identifies the aspects of cycling which are low-impact.
That's certainly plausible. The typical requirement to keep auxiliary/infotainment systems separate from safety systems in automobiles doesn't really make much sense here, so reusing the cameras might work. Still, though, it's not like the air resistance of some extra mirrors would be a huge problem.