Thanks for the write up! I sort of figured an IGH/belt-drive would involve this sort of complexity. It's an aluminum frame with quick release axles, which complicates things even further. At that rate, it seems to me like a new bike would be the better option.

A local bike shop took a look at the bike, and was surprised to hear about the problem. They said they've never seen anything quite like it, even considering the motor. Their best guess was that the chain-line isn't great, and that could be causing the chain snapping issue in lower gears. The cassette wear can probably be chalked up to it being a $20 cassette.

I think right now, my plan is to try a larger offset on the chain-ring to improve the chain-line. If that doesn't improve things, I'm looking into maybe installing a 5-speed cassette with a thicker chain. This option looks promising, but I'm not 100% sure it will work with my bike: https://www.cycmotor.com/product-page/heavy-duty-drivetrain

It's nothing terribly exotic. The only real mechanical difference against a typical road bike is that the main chain-ring can spin independently of the pedals on a ratchet mechanism, which allows the little motor in front of the bottom bracket to spin the chain-ring without spinning the pedals. Everything excluding the cranks is just an off-the-shelf drive-train, and you can pedal it normally.

I noticed this in my research, but it looks like these drive-trains might be specific to Shimano e-bike motors. I'm more looking for something I can retrofit generically. Do you know of any Shimano e-bike capable cassettes/derailleurs that aren't motor-specific?

I've being using offline location tracking using a different app for some time now. This looked like a pretty elegant alternative, so I decided to give it a shot!

The app looks great, and very well thought through. The automation features really appeal to me (disabling tracking at home, automatically changing profiles, etc.)

One thing I wish it had was the ability to associate vehicles with trips (potentially, automatically, based on Bluetooth connections or other triggers). I like to track the category for each of my trips (car, bike, train, walk), as well as the specific vehicle (when applicable).

I haven't tested too much yet, but it looks like you already have pretty robust trip tracking. It would be awesome if I could create a list of vehicles with types, and select a vehicle when starting a trip, or have it automatically set when connecting to a Bluetooth device.

In any case, this app looks great, and I appreciate the effort you're putting into an open source project like this.

The implication is that if you see them before they see you, you'll make sure to avoid them.

I installed 24.04 fresh on a new machine, and I'd say it's more stable than 22.04, but has a lot more "weirdness".

Positives:

• On 22.04, it seemed like frozen programs had a habit of crashing the entire desktop environment. That doesn't seem to happen on 24.04.
• Like you mentioned, it seems to use new versions of many dependencies, so I've run into less issues installing certain programs.

Negatives:

• For whatever reason, I can no longer use Shift or Ctrl to move or copy a file. Instead of dragging a file while holding shift, I have to cut and paste it to move it. This sounds minor, but it's deceptively annoying, and affects all programs.
• A bunch of the keyboard shortcuts (particularly in the tiling window manager) were changed. For example, there's now two different shortcuts to expand or shrink windows.
• The dock will just randomly stop working (i.e. it doesn't appear when you hover against the edge of the screen). The only way I've found to fix it is to reset the dock preferences.
• Default apps will randomly reset.
• COSMIC seems to be more prone to keeping the display turned on while on the lock screen, even when configured to sleep. This isn't a huge deal, but it's a bit annoying with an OLED.

TL;DR: it's speed cameras

Most radar guns work a bit like a flashlight. They just blast radio waves in the direction they're pointed, and some of those waves hit things and bounce off. The frequency of the reflection can be used to calculate the speed of the object (i.e. vehicle) relative to the observer, sort of like how you can tell if a train horn is headings towards you or away from you based on the pitch.

Photo radar is a fair bit more advanced, and can pick out individual vehicles. With traditional radar, and human operator has to visually identify a speeding vehicle, and the radar gun is just meant to be a confirmation of the officer's observations. Photo radar makes it possible to automate the process to reduce cost, even with multiple vehicles.

I hate to be that guy, but this is true. Before you pull out your pitchforks, read this explanation.

I take a bicycle to essentially all of my local errands, so I thought it would be cool to write an app that calculates how much CO2 emissions you've saved based on the number of errands you've run by bike (by distance). I wanted to consider everything, like food intake, emissions associated with manufacturing, etc. To be clear, the exact emissions varies wildly depending on what numbers you plug in, but it almost always comes out in favor of a passenger car. This only considers CO2 emissions, and ignores noise pollution, microplastics, and other potential environmental issues.

Long story short, if the following things are true, you'll probably release less CO2 by taking a car:

• You drive a reasonably efficient car (30 mpg+)
• You drive your cars for a long time (150,000+ miles)
• You get most of your food from the grocery store (not local, like a farmers market)
• You are not vegan

These assumptions do make quite a few concessions, but I think it's fair to say the majority of Americans fit these criteria.

In order of CO2 emissions per mile using the same assumptions as above (lowest to highest):

• E-bike
• E-scooter
• Bus (divided across all passengers)
• Gas passenger car
• Electric passenger car (again, considering manufacturing, ~150k miles of ownership)
• Bicycle
• Truck
• Walking

This is not me suggesting cars are better for the environment overall, but it's an uncomfortable fact that humans are wildly inefficient at converting chemical energy into kinetic energy. Just think about the fact that when you burn 1000 extra calories per day, a significant portion of those calories had to be driven hundreds of miles on a diesel truck after spending months/years being grown on a farm.

Here's the factors I considered. Let me know if you can think of anything I missed and I'll re-run the numbers:

• Calories above baseline for driving/cycling, and the associated food production
• Emissions associated with use (tailpipe emissions, cyclist exhaling)
• Emissions associated with manufacturing
• Emissions associated with maintenance

Here's some things I did not consider:

• Emissions associated with building/maintaining infrastructure
• Emissions associated with car dependency sprawl (i.e. everything is farther apart to accommodate cars)
• Proximity of air pollution (cycling has practically zero air pollution locally, which is good for cities)
• Tire microplastics, disposing of vehicle parts, etc.
• The benefits for the environment, healthcare, and public resources associated with reduced obesity from cycling
• The increased tendency to shop locally with improved micro-mobility from walkable/bikeable cities

I guess the moral of the story is that being vegetarian is significantly more impactful than cycling to work (I say as a non-vegetarian cyclist).