Yesterday I found a pair of Lupo Air 130s and spent the better part of an hour in the shop with them on my feet. I can't find much information about these boots, so I thought I would share some information here.
TL;DR - The walk-mode "zero resistance" ankle freedom on the Lupo Air is the best I've seen in a SHIFT-compatible boot. However, for me, I'm not sure the tradeoffs are worth it compared to more traditional downhill inspired boots (HAWX Ultra XTD, Zero G Tour), which only weigh ~100g (8%) more. I'll update when I make a decision.
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What am I looking for?
I'm in the market for a SHIFT and tech-splitboard compatible boot for foot powered cardio ascents. Most of my use will be in Lake Tahoe California, where we have pretty heavy snow and variable conditions. It would be amazing if the boot was comfortable enough for a few days of resort riding, so I could use it as a 50/50 travel boot, but it's not a must.
I have 300+ days of snowboarding over 20 years, ~50 days of skiing mostly in the last 7 years, and ~5 full days of XC. I love boarding in fresh snow, but snowboarding-prohibited mountains, family-days, kids, and ice (sierra cement) have brought me increased appreciation for alpine skiing... A few years back I carried my 5 y/o son, wearing his skis, down a blue groomer too steep for him, on my snowboard.. and after that I promptly bought skis, and my board has been on a shelf since.
I need SHIFT compatibility, because alpine quality lateral tow-release is a must for me. A casual ski fall is closer to ligament injury than my worst snowboarding fall. I actually find snowboarding falls fun... skiing falls, not so much. Being 45 y/o, I already know 6 friends who have had surgery for ski-related injuries even using high-quality alpine release bindings. Plus, 20+ years of snowboarding has made me a "try it and see what happens" kind of rider, so I ski relatively low DIN for my weight, and I'd rather pre-release and tumble than have a ski tear a joint lose. I'm watching the Fritschi Tecton innovation, but the SHIFT toe release seems more forgiving and reliable, and that's for me.
What did I think of the Lupo Air?
The most remarkable thing about the Lupo Air isn't just having great range of motion in a boot that still has stiff downhill support, it's how freely the ankle moves in "walk mode". (latch up and top-ratchet loose) This isn't like downhill derived boots, where there is still notable resistance through the range of motion as one forces the cuff to move and bend. With the Lupo Air rear-cuff unlocked and the top ratchet loose, there is nearly zero resistance in either direction. It's like wearing a hard low-cut shoe. In fact, I would tightly lace-up the liner for more "basketball shoe" style ankle support.
I see people asking about the walk-latch being a one-way stop. The rear cuff has zero forward motion whether locked or unlocked, so the latch only has to impede rearward motion. Of course this means to get any forward motion, one has to open the top-ratchet, leaving that front partial cuff open -- as is typical of many touring boots.
I like that the soles are replaceable, because the rest of the boot will last much longer than the rubber. While I don't think of the Lupo Air as 50/50, there are a few potentially 50/50 capable boots with non-replaceable rubber soles that boggle the mind. If one actually uses them in a resort, cement and metal grates are going to chew up that rubber pretty quickly.
I also identified some tradeoffs compared to more traditional downhill inspired touring boots.
(1) When leaning forward, I could feel a pretty distinct pressure point at the bottom-outside of that top-ratchet wrap-thing that serves as the forward cuff. It wasn't painful, but it was certainly noticeable. For some reason I felt this much more on my right foot. That forward-cuff does have an alternate mount angle, so maybe that would alleviate it somewhat. However. my takeaway was to disbelieve one Dalbello markarter who suggested he would "use these boots for everything". I'm pretty skeptical of these as 50/50 boots, as I think resort skiing with a forward stance on that forward-cuff for too long would become quite irritating. That said, it wasn't painful or biting, so I doubt it would bother me for backcountry use or for neutral stance riding.
(2) I couldn't make the bottom buckle tight enough to make the Lupo Air feel "tight and snugged" like I can with pretty much any other boot, and this was in a size 27.5 boot my toes were gently touching the front of. (there is no way I could size down.) This is partially a liner/fit issue, as the stock (unmolded) liner is very thin and low volume. However, it's also caused because having only one foot buckle means there is no way to use two buckles to "ratchet" each other tighter. With the Lupo Air, I would make the bottom ratchet as short as I could with the buckle in the open position (not working too hard, as this might need to be done with gloves on and in the snow), then close the buckle, and that's all the tightness I could get. For the cuff ratchet this was more than sufficient, but for the bottom buckle, not so much. If I was on the Lupo Air design team, I would have made the bottom-buckle cinch-clasp longer, to provide more tightening distance from open to closed. Cooking the liner into higher volume (or using a higher volume liner or double socks) would probably fix this.
(3) The Lupo Air 2-buckle system has no redundancy. The use of plastic ratchet straps doesn't bother me, as I've used them extensively in snowboarding, and I've driven equipment into the ground without ever having one fail. However, buckles and ratchets and rivets do fail, and with only two buckles, if one fails at speed, I think it would cause a crash and/or injury, and even if it didn't, it would be impossible to ski on. Compare that to 3/4 buckle+strap designs, where one can generally lose any one fastener without catastrophe.
Those are my observations and conclusions from an hour of shop time. Not the same as actually riding on them, but I can't find any rider reviews of this boot, so I thought I would share what I could.
Friday, January 24, 2020
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Tesla Cybertuck, load, and wind-resistance. A lesson in energy.
This week, Tesla unveiled their new Cybertruck, a long anticipated all electric pickup truck.
Some are calling this an F-150 competitor, thinking this is a workhorse truck. However, I think this car is more of a bad-ass vanity truck, competitive with the F-150 Raptor, for guys and gals who want to feel like they're driving an awesome machine but don't actually do that much work with it. Why?
Some are calling this an F-150 competitor, thinking this is a workhorse truck. However, I think this car is more of a bad-ass vanity truck, competitive with the F-150 Raptor, for guys and gals who want to feel like they're driving an awesome machine but don't actually do that much work with it. Why?
LOAD and WIND RESISTANCE.
Tesla claims a 500 mile range on the Cybertruck, but let me tell you two little stories.
I routinely make the 200 mile trip from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe, California -- In a Lincoln Navigator. We have a Tesla model S, but we never take it to Tahoe. Because the 75 mile uphill trip into the Sierra mountains, takes over 150 miles of range, putting the trip at the uncomfortable limit of range even for the highest capacity cars. Our friends with Teslas stop at the supercharger, every time.
Why? It turns out that Tesla's cars make their range as much by lowering consumption as by increasing capacity, and there just isn't any way to to make hauling a 5000 lb car uphill any more efficient. Load matters.
Why? It turns out that Tesla's cars make their range as much by lowering consumption as by increasing capacity, and there just isn't any way to to make hauling a 5000 lb car uphill any more efficient. Load matters.
However, that's only half the story.. A friend of mine tried to bring his Tesla S to Tahoe, with three bicycles on the roof. Wind resistance is another big part of efficiency, and we've heard all about how the Tesla S and X are designed to have minimum drag. Well, not so when you stick two bicycles on the roof. He could barely make it 100 miles on a charge, and couldn't even make it to the first supercharger. He had to stop at a 110v outlet, to add some extra juice, to get to the first supercharger. Then, realizing this wasn't going to work all the way to Tahoe, they somehow managed to squeeze three bicycles in the back of the model S with three adults inside. And after all these shenanigains, a second supercharger stop (for juice to make it up the sierra grade), and some traffic, it took them 10 hours to reach Tahoe. Not fun for anyone. My Navigator drive was 3.5 hours non-stop.
What do pickup truck owners do? They drive around with open beds, that have massive drag, often with stuff inside, sometimes hauling trailers. It's good Tesla juiced the Supertruck up with 500 miles of range, because when the bed is open creating drag, you're going to get alot less range. If you pull a trailer, I'd be shocked to see it get 200 miles, and if you're dragging it all up the Sierra Grade, good luck.
I love my Tesla. I love Electrics. However, it's really important to understand that every tool is not right for every job.
The Tesla Supertruck has polarizing styling, and is sure to have amazing performance. I think it may play well in the vanity semi-luxury style truck market, such as consumers buying F-150 Raptors and Jeep Rubicons to do their suburban and city driving in. However, if you want a working truck to carry big hauls, and pull big loads even medium distances, I don't think an electric pickup truck is your cup of tea - yet.
The Tesla Supertruck has polarizing styling, and is sure to have amazing performance. I think it may play well in the vanity semi-luxury style truck market, such as consumers buying F-150 Raptors and Jeep Rubicons to do their suburban and city driving in. However, if you want a working truck to carry big hauls, and pull big loads even medium distances, I don't think an electric pickup truck is your cup of tea - yet.
ideas for battling FPS cheaters
A constant plague on First Person Shooter games is cheaters. In particular, ESP cheats, which allow players to see enemies through walls, and aimhacks, which allow players to auto-aim or auto-headshot enemies.
These cheats make these games very unpleasant to play, because over time a significant fraction, possibly as many as 30% of online players, end up cheating.
I've spent lots of time thinking about how to combat cheaters, and it's a very tough problem. Some have talked about game-streaming as a possible solution, but the latency and latency variability of game-streaming is currently horrible.
Another possibility is some kind of protected execution, but this would require not only support from the operating system, but also potentially support from the GPU, to prevent nefarious hacks from being injected into the process and/or GPU shaders.
Here are two ideas which could be deployed today, to fight FPS cheaters...
Aim-Captcha challenge - If a player registers above a certain percentage of headshots and/or hits, when shooting generally towards targets (ignoring random shots into nowhere), after the game is over, give them some kind of captcha-inspired aim-challenge, which is somehow not bottable.. Perhaps by sending a 360VR video, where they have to dispatch targets with reasonable precision. If they don't hit some reasonable precision target, then they're put into a queue for recent game replays to be evaluated for aim-hacking.
This is inspired by how https://play.typeracer.com (an online typing speed test) fights OCR cheaters. On that site, if you score above 100wpm, they give you another typing test which is a fully paragraph of captcha text, asking you to type that fast. This tries to assure a human is reading and doing the typing, isntead of an OCR bot. (I know it seems hard to believe someone would cheat an online typing test with OCR, but if there is a game online, people will cheat)
ESP "ghosts" - Basically, the game could inject a bunch of noisy fake players, fully occluded by walls, that only ESP hackers would see. Effectively, this would make them chase ghosts. At worst, this would make their ESP unreliable, because they would never know what markers were real enemies, and what markers were fake enemies. At best, an algorithm might be able to determine when players are consistently chasing after fake occluded enemies, and automatically ban them.
Of course it's important that the fake enemies not confuse non-cheating players. So these fake enemies should not make sounds. The only sign of their existance should be the draw commands to the GPU to render a character, and in this respect they should be indistinguishable from real players. It's also important not to give them easily detectable patterns. For example, they shouldn't be in the same exact spots. They shouldn't be exactly stationary.
Perhaps a decent method would be to mark indoor locations that are invisible or nearly invisible from ranges of 10-1000m, and record real player behavior in these locations. In later games, that player behavior could be "replayed" as an ESP ghost.
In order for this technology to work, the game must have some kind of partial visibility from the server. Otherwise the "sudden appearance" of an ESP ghost would be a telltale sign it's not a real player. This could be simply range-based partial visibility, or it could be something more complex.
These cheats make these games very unpleasant to play, because over time a significant fraction, possibly as many as 30% of online players, end up cheating.
I've spent lots of time thinking about how to combat cheaters, and it's a very tough problem. Some have talked about game-streaming as a possible solution, but the latency and latency variability of game-streaming is currently horrible.
Another possibility is some kind of protected execution, but this would require not only support from the operating system, but also potentially support from the GPU, to prevent nefarious hacks from being injected into the process and/or GPU shaders.
Here are two ideas which could be deployed today, to fight FPS cheaters...
- Aim-Captcha challenge - have the game challenge players with very good aim, with some kind of server-rendered video "aim test". if they can't score a decent level on it, then put the recent games into an aimhack review queue.
- ESP "ghosts" - Have the game server inject a fairly decent number of "fake", but (mostly) fully occluded players. So ESP hackers are chasing ghosts.
Aim-Captcha challenge - If a player registers above a certain percentage of headshots and/or hits, when shooting generally towards targets (ignoring random shots into nowhere), after the game is over, give them some kind of captcha-inspired aim-challenge, which is somehow not bottable.. Perhaps by sending a 360VR video, where they have to dispatch targets with reasonable precision. If they don't hit some reasonable precision target, then they're put into a queue for recent game replays to be evaluated for aim-hacking.
This is inspired by how https://play.typeracer.com (an online typing speed test) fights OCR cheaters. On that site, if you score above 100wpm, they give you another typing test which is a fully paragraph of captcha text, asking you to type that fast. This tries to assure a human is reading and doing the typing, isntead of an OCR bot. (I know it seems hard to believe someone would cheat an online typing test with OCR, but if there is a game online, people will cheat)
ESP "ghosts" - Basically, the game could inject a bunch of noisy fake players, fully occluded by walls, that only ESP hackers would see. Effectively, this would make them chase ghosts. At worst, this would make their ESP unreliable, because they would never know what markers were real enemies, and what markers were fake enemies. At best, an algorithm might be able to determine when players are consistently chasing after fake occluded enemies, and automatically ban them.
Of course it's important that the fake enemies not confuse non-cheating players. So these fake enemies should not make sounds. The only sign of their existance should be the draw commands to the GPU to render a character, and in this respect they should be indistinguishable from real players. It's also important not to give them easily detectable patterns. For example, they shouldn't be in the same exact spots. They shouldn't be exactly stationary.
Perhaps a decent method would be to mark indoor locations that are invisible or nearly invisible from ranges of 10-1000m, and record real player behavior in these locations. In later games, that player behavior could be "replayed" as an ESP ghost.
In order for this technology to work, the game must have some kind of partial visibility from the server. Otherwise the "sudden appearance" of an ESP ghost would be a telltale sign it's not a real player. This could be simply range-based partial visibility, or it could be something more complex.
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