To be very clear: the case study I provided is on an exceptionally steep hill. Very few people need to climb something this steep, ever. The 350 W you get from a currently-legal ebike plus a lazy casual amount from the legs (I’m seeing varying numbers, but every number I’m seeing suggests that even a slow walk on foot uses significantly more than 100 W). And on a non-cargo bike, the sorts of normal hills many people climb every day on their daily commute can easily be climbed at a good pace at 350 W. Heck, at 300 W, even.

It’s not about investment, it’s about ensuring the power numbers stay low enough to reduce the potential for abuse. It’s got nothing to do with purity, and nor did anything I say provide even the vaguest implication that “purity” has anything to do with it. If it was about purity, I wouldn’t be starting from the standpoint of assuming 70% of the power is coming from the motor, or using 100 W as my presumptive minimum even when climbing. I wouldn’t have provided the evidence with data for why even for people who don’t want to put in a lot of effort don’t actually need that much power, and explained how the fact that my rides do contain more power are precisely because they’re an outlier.

Most people are not going to be at your level of fitness or investment in cycling (in both the physical and mental sense) and just want to get places without needing a shower afterwards. I can see why you want to keep a purer form of something you have an interest in

Sorry but, what part of everything I wrote makes any of this relevant?

NSW finally changed their laws to a more sensible 500w

Personally whatever the regulation is, I’d prefer it be nationally consistent. That goes for more than just this. NSW and Vic being the only places where cyclists can’t use the footpath is absurd, and they need to get with the time. Queensland allowing cars to park in a bike lane is absurd and we (and any other states that might allow it) need to get our shit together. NSW’s even more backwards restriction on escooters and PMDs also needs updating (though at least this one appears to be in the works).

I actually have my own bugbear with EN15194, and it’s the speed. I think the 20 mph (32 km/h) limit used in the US is more reasonable than 25 km/h. It’s very, very easy to get up to 30 km/h on the flat with an analogue bike, and it’s incredibly safe. I see no reason ebike users shouldn’t be allowed to do that.

Interestingly, I checked the laws in all three east coast states and all have another category separate from the main one we’re discussing. It seems mostly identical, but Vic and NSW call one “power-assisted pedal cycles”, and it has a limit of 200 W. NSW mentions that this type must have an adjustable seat and weigh no more than 50 kg, requirements that have no equivalent in the main type of ebike. The main type, called “electrically power-assisted cycles” by all three states I checked, mentions a 6 km/h “walk mode” speed limit for throttles, and Vic & Qld have a 250 W limit but no other stipulations. NSW has a 500 W limit, but also says that its power must be “progressively reduced as the bicycle’s speed increases beyond 6km/h”. Which, if enforced at point of import or sale, actually could perhaps be a good compromise; a way to get the increased power output for heavier vehicles without giving an unnecessarily high amount of power to lighter ones.

250w limit in EN15194 is overly low

I just don’t agree. Remembering that that limit is continuous output, and brief spikes above that are permitted, and that a throttle-operated vehicle is illegal, so some power from the legs is always to be expected. I’ve got a power meter on my analogue bike, so I can tell you how much power my legs are putting out at any given time. A very light, easy cycle, my legs are probably doing about 100 W; that would be 350 W if you put the same easy effort with the battery of an ebike.

The most power I have ever put out for 2 minutes is 303 W. Bring it down to 1 minute and I’ve done 400 W. But that was during a power test on an indoor trainer. Even climbing up an incredibly steep climb, I can manage with about 500 W for about 30 s. Now, what exactly EN15194 means by continuous output is left vague, talking only about how the motor is thermally limited. It seems reasonable that 30 s might be an acceptable amount of time to exceed the 250 W continuous limit by 150 W…or for a cyclist to put out more than that miniscule 100 W.

Just for reference, here’s a 25 second section of my most recent ride on an extremely steep section:

At 39:30 it’s exactly 350 W, and at 39:50 it’s 351 W. That’s 20 seconds above the limit I set, where the cyclist would only be putting out 100 W. And a cyclist could definitely do this section with less power than I use. I have a psychological thing where I hate going slow up hill (even if I’m fine cruising casually on the flat, and I actually go way, way slower than most downhill), so I put in more effort than most would.

The counterpoint to my reasoning is that I’m a fairly light dude, riding a carbon bike. A heavier person with a loaded cargo ebike would necessarily need more power than me. The riposte I’d give to that is that this is a route that roadies use for the sake of training. There are multiple alternatives that are less steep. And there’s still the option to just go slower, or put out more power from your legs. Still, all that aside, I would be ok with allowing up to 500 W for cargo bikes. A bike not towing children or lugging large amounts of cargo absolutely doesn’t need more power, but people should be able to take their kids to a weekend sport club, carrying their kids’ sporting gear, in a bike instead of requiring a family car. And they should be able to do that regardless of where they need to go. So 500 W, sure. There’s zero case for anything above that though.

I think being allowed to bring them is important because they’re much more likely to explode when in use, but it’s still possible when not in use. If they were forced to be put in checked baggage, that could be very bad. But if it’s on hand and readily accessible, it can quickly be placed into an emergency fireproof bag (which I assume these flights will now be carrying).

So, step one: minimise the chance bad thing happens in the first place; and step two: be ready to react if bad thing does happen.

I agree with you re. inflight charging. Not to mention USB C to USB C cables being increasingly common means the old USB A charging ports are less and less useful.

For those out of the loop, there have been a spate of deaths caused by people riding illegal, unregistered electric motorbikes recently, including children. These are vehicles being sold as “ebikes”, and many in the media are still calling them that, but they are not ebikes. By definition, an ebike must be pedal-assist only (with allowance for up to 6 km/h with a button or throttle, to assist starting or walking the bike), and to be a legal ebike in Australia it must have a motor which cuts out at 25 km/h. You can pedal above that speed, but cannot receive motor assistance.

The problem exists in part because of a regulation change by the Morrison Government. Prior to the change, all ebikes being imported into the country had to meet the EN-15194 standard. Morrison removed that requirement, allowing the import of vehicles that are illegal to ride on roads and bikeways. That created a glut of illegal vehicles on the street, being bought for kids by parents who don’t know better or don’t care. That import regulation is apparently being put back in place.

My take is that everyone does it for their own posts, it’s not actually that much effort. And it’s an amount of effort that’s worth it, to make the threadiverse a more welcoming and accessible place. If even one post I transcribe is seen by one blind or vision-impaired user, I’ll consider the work worth it.

The fediverse broadly is already far better for accessibility than sites like Reddit and Twitter, with users in general far more likely to be aware of things they can do to promote access for users with special needs. But we can still do better, especially our threadiverse corner of the fediverse. Considering one of the reasons for outrage over Reddit dumping their API was the impact on users of blind-focused third-party apps, that’s particularly disappointing.

That’s a pretty good point. For these standard template memes I usually go to Know Your Meme and copy/paste the relevant section of their description. In this case it looks like they said “also landing on it”, which I think is supposed to get across the same idea, but it does seem easy to read that without getting the intended idea.

My ideal hope is that by modelling good behaviour, I can encourage more OPs to provide transcriptions themselves in the body or the alt-text field.

If OPs take my transcriptions and edit it into the body, that’s pretty good too. Especially if more people take up the work so transcriptions get posted on posts that I don’t do myself.

The algorithm is far too fickle for me to have even considered my comment getting upvoted to the top. Good if it happens I guess, but not in my consideration.

Yeah, it’s much, much better if OPs provide their own transcription. It’s much easier to see that way. Mastodon and Pixelfed both basically yell at you if you don’t do it, and it’s a shame that Lemmy isn’t the same.

For small transcriptions, there’s an “alt text” field in the post itself, and for longer ones, they can be placed into the body of the post.

I’m sorry, but “he described the people with no mouths as having no mouths” is a bullshit reason. Just…don’t make accusations like that. It’s a shitty thing to do.

If you want to ask a polite question, that’s one thing, but going on and on through a thread trying to persuade someone else of a completely baseless and unfair accusation is really low behaviour.

And if you had been right, what then? What would you have gained? Weigh the consequences of your actions. When the potential upside is almost-nil, and the probability you’re right is a complete toss-up, it’s not worth it.

You’re right, it’s just me 😊

I actually tend to do these less verbose than what I’ve seen is common with others. I concentrate first on getting across the specific message of the post, and second on describing details that help get across the mood.

The wide shot is an important detail, because it explains why we didn’t see the other subjects in the first frame. The lack of visible mouth felt important to me because it contrasts with the smile in the first frame, the lack of smile (or indeed any mouth) gives it a weirder feeling.

Your initial comment seemed like a fairly innocent question and I was happy to answer it, but seeing the thread continue, it’s looking more like a baseless accusation. And that’s dickhead behaviour. Don’t do that. To me, or to others. It’s extremely rude, and honestly provides nothing of value. It’s especially galling to be accused when I’m spending my effort trying to make this a more inclusive space.

Nope, just me! 😊

Back on Reddit, I was a co-mod of a sub with the guy who founded the “transcribers of Reddit”, and that helped instill in me an appreciation for the value of accessibility.

It’s not too hard to do and I’d encourage anyone to give it a go. There’s no need for perfection, and you get a better sense of it as you get used to doing it.

Mastodon and Pixelfed both yell at users to provide alt text for their own posts, but unfortunately Lemmy’s devs don’t seem to have quite the same care for accessibility.

Interestingly, the earliest example of this meme listed on Know Your Meme is “junior react developer”, “senior react developer”. So this meme seems to have come full circle.