I think most trades would be better served by a van rather than a pickup truck. Ingress and egress is much easier. It is also easier to load and drive due to lower center of gravity. Expensive tools are out of the elements and generally safer (and so less risk of tools and material making their way onto the highway). Plus, better drag coefficient and so better efficiency. Finally, a roof rack allows for those items you mentioned like sheetrock and plywood, ladders and pipes. The biggest problem I see is most of these men have an ego that would never allow them to buy and drive a van.

All but one of the contractors I’ve had working on my house over the last few years used vans: holds more and your stuff doesn’t get rained on or stolen.

The one exception was the HVAC guy who had an old 90s-size pickup, which he liked due to the better mileage. He needed to fit bulky stuff, not massively heavy things.

The independent plumber I use when something goes wrong with the pipes drives a GMC Savana van. He's really good; close to retirement age and very methodical and thorough and his prices are reasonable. The electrician I use also drives some sort of van. I've had a few other contractors out for different projects around the house and I'm starting to notice a correlation: the ones in the giant lifted pickup trucks are unreliable and overpriced; the ones who drive vans are the best.

Vans are pretty common in Europe. Trucks are quite rare.

My electrical contractor relative just bought a Metris over a Maverick because of storage space and interior shelving. This is extremely common. People who work outdoors usually prefer pickups because they have larger equipment and materials, and more varied terrain

I would have preferred a full size work van but I couldn't justify paying 4-5 times more than I did for my truck.

A small truck would not work for me though. And 3/4 plywood on a roof rack is just begging for an injury when I'm an hour or more from the hospital.

Not to mention that a van's interior can serve as a mobile workshop, store a lot of smallish parts in an organized fashion, or both.

Yup, my dad worked as an electrician with an ISP for some years, and he had a van. Think it was a Ford Transit that was fitted with drawers and cabinets for tools and parts. It was literally a workshop on wheels. All the tools and parts you could imaginable need.

TBH, I see a _lot_ of vans near job sites. It is often the GC using the big truck and a lot of the trades bring vans.

What about when towing is required of heavy machinery?

Something like a Ram ProMaster van is rated for 6-7000 lbs towing capacity, which may not sound like much compared to pickups that primarily compete on the basis of that particular specification, but it's still definitely enough to be useful.

If it is really heavy - they have a dedicated hauler truck.

If something medium - a van could tow.

On European highways it is common to see van like Mercedes sprinter full of goods and also towing a car carriage with something huge like WV Passat.

Many photographers suffer from gear acquisition syndrome, GAS, and I wonder how much time was actually saved by the purchase. Did they ever share the math they came up with?

Those who have installed smart motion sensors to turn lights on and off, why not install light switches with sensors built in? Like the kind one finds in office and school environments? I have one in a room and it works well. Never have to worry about batteries or privacy or security implications with the rest of my network.

Because those usually cost about an arm and a leg more than buying separately, and also don't allow for the kind of things you can automate (read "script") in homeassistant

You are being downvoted but I see you are merely quoting the article and the individual who stated that Swedish unions benefitted both employees and employers. My guess is those downvoting and commenting did not in fact read that paragraph.

My threadripper pro workstation (Lenovo p620) uses RDIMMs. So at least one manufacturer still has them in production.

256gb of ram coming up! Wonder how this will affect nvidia with machine learning practitioners having so much unified ram for the gpu to work with.

N100 seems to support up to 32gb of memory. Here’s a motherboard spec that shows it:

https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/N100DC-ITX/#Specification

Multiple redditors also confirmed 32GB memory working with N100: https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/13npvng/what_is_the_...

There is a reply at the end stating it works with 48GB DIMMs too.

Then Intel should correct their own documentation. If not in fact, they're intentionally limiting their products in spirit.

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/231803/...

I really like the company name! It's like hexadecimal notation with IDE!

It's high time the datacenter takes a more holistic approach. For years I have been thinking that it's silly to stick a bunch of tiny fans in individual servers when one large impeller pulling air from an inclosed rack would be more efficient. Imagine large fans with ducts that come down to each rack or row of racks. Current in == current out; so a large diameter fan (5 feet) coupling down to small hose (10 inch) means the air moving through the small end will be really moving fast through those components!

Definitely agree with that list! The new Lessons in Chemistry is also really solid! Severance was also noteworthy although a bit slow going. Shrinking was really good. Physical, and the one about Bezo’s ex-wife becoming her own person and running her foundation was pretty funny… overall I think Apple is doing their best to target a certain demographic and I for one appreciate it. They have spent more on writing than other services, it would seem.