The US government banning anything based on suspected use of forced labor is laughable. Pretty blatantly anti-China, and very hypocritical when a lot of US states use glorified slave labor. It is quicker to name the large US companies that don’t use prison labor than the ones that do.

I don’t think Israel’s government cares.

Classic playbook for him and his successive governments: constantly trading human lives for political power and votes.

“TikTok does what every social media company does but this time it’s Chinese so it’s bad” is what this headline should really say.

This is never a popular thing in any country when it’s attempted.

Looks like even Chinese citizens aren’t immune to “Murica best freedom” propaganda.

You have guessed right. The US government had a massive hand in the creation of modern social media, such as a significant amount of funding for Facebook during its startup phase. The intelligence agencies are mad that they can’t pull data from TikTok or influence its algorithms, on top of the American social media companies wanting to kill off their foreign competition as much as possible.

This bill has nothing to do with data privacy because if Congress cared about that they would’ve banned other platforms too. It’s about control and unfair competition.

The “data privacy” argument is bullshit and the people pushing for this law know it. That’s what is being sold to people but it is not why this TikTok ban got passed. It got passed because American social media companies are pissed that TikTok is outcompeting them for the attention of young people, and because the US government has a heavy hand in what algorithms are allowed to push on Facebook and Google and others. A good portion of Facebook’s initial funding came from government sources.

“Data privacy” is just an excuse. Lobbying from the intelligence agencies and social media companies is why it’s really being enacted.

The history speaks for itself. China is less of a threat to other countries in the world than the USA is. Your idea that they’re some international boogeyman that’s going to take over the entire world and doom humanity is just you repeating “China bad and scary” State Department propaganda.

Even with China’s human rights record being what it is, they don’t export war across the entire world.

This comment was brought to you by the US State Department.

Tell me, how many countries’ governments has China knocked over in the last century as compared to the US CIA?

How many countries did the US drop bombs on in the last decade, and how many did China?

It’s not even close. In terms of physical violence the US is the world’s #1 exporter.

There’s never been a day where I regretted deleting my Reddit account and removing that site from my life. It’s only gotten worse since I left.

Ah, shoot, forgot about that.

If it’s a traditional lead-acid battery and is also the original factory one, just replace it. Lithium batteries are great as they save a bunch of weight, but they’re expensive and don’t handle the cold as well.

As to how feasible a suspension adapter plate is: that kind of stuff, and whether certain parts will swap between years, is super model-specific. Unfortunately I can’t help you there and my suggestion would be to find Husqvarna enthusiast forums and/or browse through the OEM parts diagrams. My limited experience with non-OEM motorcycle suspension and modifications has told me this: suspension is wildly, massively complicated to design and engineer. You can spend a whole career on it. I looked into revalving a Fox shock for my BMW and ran smack into either buying an $80 software license to run all the figures for me (a complex specific Excel spreadsheet really) or reading textbook-sized papers full of extensive math. So be careful and don’t tread new territory unless you absolutely have to, because suspension is very easy to mess up and often hard to get right.

As to sitting for a year: the environment it sat in matters. Was it outside, inside, moist, dry? That will determine how much stuff you need to check over and possibly replace, but no matter what your primary concerns will be two things.

1. The shelf life of gasoline is 6-8 weeks unstabilized and E10 (standard ethanol-mixed pump gasoline) sucks water straight out of the air. Sometimes you can get away with longer in a fuel injection system that’s well-sealed, but never a full year unless the gas got treated with something like Sta-Bil before it sat. You will either need to remove, or dilute, that old gasoline. If the tank was full I’d recommend pulling that gas out and putting it into something else, like a big car or truck fuel tank, where its few gallons can be diluted with a lot more fresh gasoline and it won’t hurt. If there’s less than a gallon in it you may simply be able to fill it back up to the brim with fresh gas and some octane booster. If your Husky is anything like that one I worked on, the tank won’t be a nightmare to remove and that’ll make the fuel a lot easier to just turn the tank over and dump it out into a funnel. Your service manual should cover the tank removal procedure in detail. I wouldn’t worry about the tidbit of fuel in the lines, but if you’re unlucky your injector may be clogged. Try the fresh gas first though. If it won’t run with fresh gas then I or a decent Youtube tutorial can walk you through cleaning out a fuel injector (which I actually did on the Husky I worked on, which had sat for 2 years with the same gas in its tank).

2. Your tires, if the bike has been sitting on them the whole year without being inflated or moved, may have flat spots. You can really only determine this via the eye test, and the ride test if it’s not visible. This isn’t really a “balance” issue so much as it is the carcass of the tire getting stuck in a bent state. If you can see that one part of the radius of the tire doesn’t look perfectly round like the rest, that’s a flat spot. Unfortunately the only cure for an obvious flat spot is to replace the tire. If you can’t see obvious flat spots, you’ll only know when you reinflate the tires and ride. It’ll feel like an imbalanced wheel, like you’re constantly hitting small bumps in a rhythm that increases the faster you go. Again, only cure is new tires.

Those are the biggest issues.

Is there any more specific stuff you’d like to know?

Those older simple machines are wonderful. The green BMW was my first fuel-injected bike and after the parts bills to fix its dead fuel system, I still prefer carburetors. EFI is convenient but when it breaks it takes specialty tools and knowledge and lots of money to fix. First part I ever bought for that bike, used, was close to $300 on eBay. It was the plate that the fuel pump, fuel filter, and fuel light float mount to, and it has a fuel-tight wiring connection going through it. The ground wire powering both the pump and float switch had broken contact somewhere in there. No way to fix it and make it fuel-safe again. Then there was buying and installing a new fuel filter and pump, replacing in-tank and external fuel lines, installing pressure-safe disconnect fittings, cleaning the fuel injectors… It eventually became worth it. That bike and its big brother are the most comfortable and practical motorcycles I’ve ever owned. Just took a lot to get there.

I’m about to resurrect a 1986 Yamaha XT350 for my partner and that’ll be a much easier and less expensive process than my fancy BMW’s.

It’s a neat idea, but you know what the most practical “hybrid” on two wheels already is? A hybrid between human pedal power and an electric motor: the E-bike. Honestly if they weren’t so expensive they’d completely wreck the 50cc scooter market. Very similar use cases, lighter, about the same speeds, more nimble, easier to park, and better exercise. In a place with decent bicycle infrastructure they’re absolutely ideal.

I have only worked on 1 Husqvarna to date – a 2015 501FE.

Depends on how mechanically-experienced you are in general. If you’ve ever worked on a car or another motorcycle you’ll be in decent shape. If not, there’s a ton of small things to know, especially with a motorcycle so new and electronically fancy. Lots of procedures and even some tools are model-specific.

In general there are a few things I’d say: buy torque wrenches and learn how to use them or you will be breaking a lot of fasteners. Get a service manual for your motorcycle if one exists, and refer to it frequently; they often have a section for beginner mechanics that explains many things you need to know. They also contain accurate reference information you can read faster than I can reply.

Here’s the bad news: good suspension is not cheap and there’s no way around it. Especially custom or lowered suspension. Often it’s cheaper to have a seatbuilder lower or change your seat via a rebuild than it is to buy a custom shock. You have to change both ends of the bike to match if you lower one end. How tall are you? What’s your inseam relative to the seat height? I see a lot of beginners saying they want to lower their motorcycle because it makes them feel more comfortable at lower speed, because they can’t get their entire feet flat on the ground – frankly if you can get the front third of both feet down on the ground while sitting that is enough to balance. If you’re shorter with a shorter inseam than the test rider the machine was designed for, that’s understandable and custom suspension or seatwork may be in your future.

Motorcycles and battery tech really don’t go together well because batteries are inescapably heavy when scaled up to the power and range demands of a proper motorcycle. Most street bikes have at least 120 miles of range and that’s more than the first mass-market electric cars had. Hybrid would be even worse than pure electric for weight. Hence why almost nobody’s making them.

If you paid someone enough to make it, of course you could buy one. But you’d spend mansion money. A two-wheeled hybrid would have to be engineered from scratch. I can’t think of a single motorcycle made and sold in the last couple decades that hasn’t been designed specifically around its internal combustion engine. They’re not meant for easy powertrain swaps and nowadays they’re built tightly together. Balance is also incredibly important on a motorcycle and even just a few pounds in the right places can massively change how it rides.

Small motorcycles are already stupid efficient, too, so that’s another reason why a hybrid isn’t a common idea. The fuel-injected Honda Grom can achieve over 100MPG on regular gas and fuel-injected scooters can get even more. What would be gained in fuel efficiency would be lost to the weight of the whole hybrid setup.

Anyone can attempt a home project with enough time, money, and ingenuity though.

I could perhaps see something like a Ural sidecar rig having a hybrid drivetrain thrown into it since weight and balance isn’t much of a concern. You could easily throw 200 pounds of batteries into the sidecar without causing any problems, and put a motor next to them to drive the axle from next to the outrigger wheel. Ural makes 2WD models so on those there’s already a driveshaft out there. But that’s a 3-wheeled contraption that already weighs plenty.