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I've read it many times. Still don't see it.

A 20% pay cut is severe, but only over the minimum wage difference. Someone pulling 5 mil is still unable to spend it quicker than it comes in. It just isn't piling on as quickly as it was at 6mil.

I can EASILY see someone spending 6M a year on stuff. The collector car market is particularly expensive as this one (admittedly extreme) example indicates.

Reminder: This is fashion too.

And you are thinking the Apple Watch cannot meet the standard of "fashion"?

A bonus reminder: This watch costs $230,000. It is named "Space Pirate"

You still think the Apple Watch is too expensive? Considering the utility it doesn't seem like much at all in comparison to the watches most people wear.

You can get a fully automated drone for hundreds of dollars, not millions. Not big enough to put a person in, but still fully automated. Google and Amazon are looking to deploy huge fleets of fully automated drone delivery aircraft costing a few thousand each.

We already know that autonomous vehicle technology isn't prohibitively expensive. Nvidia already has their system on the market for carmakers to integrate. It adds thousands, not millions. And depending on how things pan out, you might recoup all of that initial outlay in insurance savings pretty quickly.

Fuck.

Just when things were starting to look up.

http://www.gizmag.com/alzheime...

... or, you know, you could just print the damn thing in metal. It's not like it's going to take that much longer for 3D printers to be capable of printing in metal.

Oh, look: http://www.gizmag.com/3d-print...

The Lenovo Yoga appears to be an alternative at a similar price range. Honestly the air does appear to be not unreasonable but personally I don't want laptops too small to fit an HD into, not to mention replace. I came across this when I was curious about the current prices of apple vs alternatives (since my last laptop purchase was 2013): http://www.gizmag.com/macbook-...

We already intercept missiles with bullets. A bullet is only a little over an order of magnitude smaller in diameter than at least this anti-ship missile?, and it should be noted that those missiles can change trajectory. Most bullets cannot, although this one can.

Botched adding the url for the first point. It should include this url: http://www.gizmag.com/korea-dodamm-super-aegis-autonomos-robot-gun-turret/17198/

Such as performance, see Tesla's insane button or this review of the Zero motorcycle

Perhaps your wife could wear some sort of device (bracelet, etc) that itself would be capable of detecting that she was having a seizure, that could be setup to trigger whatever notifications were desired. Here are a few things I found alone these lines:

http://www.epdetect.com/
http://www.healthline.com/heal...
http://www.gizmag.com/embrace-...

Reusable orbital entry vehicles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
http://www.gizmag.com/otv-3-x-...

Yeah, they're doing it.

What is a drone to the Army? Something bigger?

Everything from smaller than a hand grenade, all the way up to ones bigger than a Cessna.

The small ones are intended to be used tactically in the field, the large ones are more for collecting strategic data.

The useful life of the B-52 bombers got extended to 2044.

link about shipping pollution

link about 16 ships creating pollution

There was one model of car in Europe that was completely drive-by-wire. Of course, when the computer on that glitched, it caused wrecks, and there was nothing the driver could do, as steering was physically disconnected from the wheel, same with brakes.

Try is - Infiniti Q50 - a friend had one as loaner for his FX30d and I got to take it for a spin. Fantastic car to drive, and insanely quick acceleration. The other nice thing was that when you hit a bump you got just enough feedback to tell you that you've hit a bump. You get the responsive steering without any annoying juddering (the roads where I am are horrific, and it feels like my run-flats are flat).

Not sure what car you're alluding to, or even if you're just making it up - which I guess you are - as I can find no mention of wrecks caused by a fly-by-wire car. Please, correct me if I'm wrong.

This wont work...
Here's the key piece of their mechanism:
http://images.gizmag.com/galle...

It's 25 meters beneath the north sea... in the midst of a spiderweb of steel...
That joint is most likely to fail during a storm.
When it does fail, you'd now have a floating buoy dangling a giant steel beam beneath it, riding storm waves...
and crashing into the rest of the network.

Storm conditions will prevent you from doing anything about it until the damage is done.

I stand corrected. The last time I heard they were being liquidated. But apparently they've come back fron the dead with a (somewhat) more practical car. The Explosion is around a quarter the price of the Apollo. So probably still not in the price range the poster was looking for.

The world's 15 largest ships do emit more sulfur than all the world's automobiles. http://www.gizmag.com/shipping...

However for carbon dioxide they only emit a third as much as all the world's cars.

Which "these things" are not autonomous? Do you think amazon's vision for drone delivery is to have a guy joysticking each drone? Even hobby drones are leaving behind RPV.

Link.

Further, the Slashdot PDP-11 doesn't have an editing capability.

Amazing.

When they started doing Energy Star ratings for LEDs, they tried really hard to avoid the CFL fiasco; see http://www.gizmag.com/energy-s... As a result, Energy Star rated LED bulbs are pretty reliable. I have about 60 (!) in my house, bought over the last 9 months. None of the Energy Star bulbs has failed yet. Two non-energy-star LED bulbs that were several years old (from vendors not around anymore?) did fail.

I'm now slowly converting the bulbs in the house I rent out to LEDs, with the tenant's cooperation. The only two bulbs she has liked so far are the Cree 40W TW http://www.creebulb.com/Produc... (for bathrooms only - it hums too much for living room) and the Phillips 40W A15 ( http://www.homedepot.com/p/Phi... ) for everywhere else. Her dimmers are old, and most LED bulbs flicker with them; I should get her newer dimmers. Haven't had that problem much at my house.

I'm quite happy with the LEDs so far, and am writing up my experiences at http://kegel.com/energy/lights... Your mileage may vary.

Best not to assume that LEDs are better:

http://www.gizmag.com/led-bulb...

Try here: new reactor design.

Supposedly they can already handle hand signals from cyclists. I'm pretty sure I read that there are other cues involved as well allowing it to predict turns by cyclists who don't signal.

http://www.gizmag.com/averagee...

Is it just me or does gizmag look too much like jizzmag for comfort?

Asbestos is just silicate rock. Structure makes a difference..

Graphene is just a sheet of carbon, but it's structure gives it novel properties - it wouldn't be a super-material if it didn't, just because it's all cool and awesome doesn't mean it's also inert and harmless.

Apparently he's learned his lesson, given that Spacex is building it's new spaceport in Texas.

SpaceX is mostly sending satellites to geosynchronous orbits. That means launching due east. East of Brownsville, TX, is the Gulf of Mexico. In California, anywhere east is land, much of it populated. In addition, the closer to the equator you launch the rocket from, the more of a boost you get from earth's rotation. This lets you put more payload into space or use a smaller rocket.

I don't think that Elon is abandoning California. I think the lesson Elon has learned is some basic rocket science.

Apparently he's learned his lesson, given that Spacex is building it's new spaceport in Texas.

You tell me - which do think is going to employ more people and contribute more to an economy? Corporate offices, or factories and space ports?

Previously a "smart refrigerator" was a concept and would release for $15,000 http://www.gizmag.com/go/1132/
Today, for $150 and a piece of double-sided tape you can augment ANY refrigerator to have a voice- or scan- activated internet-connected shopping list.
Even if the iPod comes down to $50, people still wont tape them to their fridge.

In other words, either technology is pervasive, cheap and secure enough. Or it is concept and niche.

The Kármán line, or Karman line, lies at an altitude of 100 kilometres (62 mi) above the Earth's sea level, and commonly represents the boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and outer space. This definition is accepted by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), which is an international standard setting and record-keeping body for aeronautics and astronautics. By saing "edge of space" and then "90,000ft" (27.4km) they are making a mockery of the "Edge of space". When has 27.4% towards a goal ever been "close" to a goal? They further exagerate using this artist's rendering. The curvature of the earth would be much less. Here is an actual photo taken at 90,000ft.

In the end 27.4kM is not close to 100km and therefore not close to the edge of space. Sorry but you can't re-define something that has been internationally agreed upon to make your aircraft look better.

Okay, technically, they're trash compactors, so that they don't have to go and empty them as often:

http://www.cityofboston.gov/pu...

That seems to make more sense to me than a 'solar powered bench' which looks to me to be two seats as the whole middle of it's taken up by a box. (which might be the point -- it'd be less comfortable for a homeless person to sleep on it)

I've seen other solar "urban furniture" that made more sense to me -- things like bus stops w/ solar panels in the roof (to power lighting, up-to-date bus info ... and sometimes advertising).

I've seen other 'solar phone charging stations' that make more sense to me than having it take up 1/4 of a bench:

http://inhabitat.com/nyc/solar...

http://www.gizmag.com/street-c...

http://bostinno.streetwise.co/...

That may have been true in their first release, but Fire devices have been able to incorporate Google Play for a while now. There as "Apps from unknown sources" option now. Though it still a little tricky to copy over the apx file.

http://www.gizmag.com/how-to-i...

Gasoline gives you 12,200 Wh/kg
University of California's currntly running a SC @ 39.3 Wh/kg So thats 310 times less, the gap keeps closeing.
  Worryed about the extra weight? Why not make your supercapacitor part of the load bearing structure of the car

essentially combines the labor-intensiveness of a cobblestone road with the specialized labor requirements of a hardwood floor

IF ONLY!

The plan is to have large concrete access channels underneath the hexes.
Big enough for a man (or a wild dog, or a bear, or a nest of snakes, or wasps...) to crawl through.

Cobblestone roads?
These are concrete crawlspaces filled with easily harvestable copper and covered with electronics with built-in heating elements.

You know how roads tend not to spontaneously catch fire then burn for miles underground and you can't put them out with water cause they are electrified?
Well if this ever makes it off the parking lot you will.

Google has overcome a lot of that already. http://www.gizmag.com/google-s... Their car can recognize road construction, cones, and even bicycle hand signals. For accidents police only have to put out a few cones or flares and the car will route around. The more interesting scenarios are things like fallen tree blocking the roadway or someone stopping the car at gunpoint to rob you. These cars will quickly handle every situation possible except for the extremely unlikely events.

I came to post something along the same lines as well, it's a shame to have to scroll so far down for a decent answer to the actual question. I'm not sure if this is the same technology, but I've seen something like this demonstrated: http://www.gizmag.com/ibrain-stephen-hawking-communicate-brainwaves/23182/

What I saw (a few years back) looked like a Sharper Image gadget that wrapped around the base of the neck that intercepted speech on the way from the brain, and without the person having to say a thing, could play the words aloud over a speaker. I can't find that exact thing for the life of me, but this technology may be related: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21750369

In the case that she is unable to stimulate whatever nerves allow these systems to work, I would look into any sort of interaction she can do which is not tiring, as any movement that could suffice simply to correlate 0 or 1 could allow her to interact with an electronic interface, similar to Stephen Hawking's screen but possibly simplified further, even if it's simply "next letter" or "this letter" she would be able to start words from an alphabetical listing, and like auto-complete on a smartphone it may not take too long to narrow down the word she wants to use.

This must be devastating for your whole family, but her retention of higher brain function is a tremendous boon and with time she may be able to interact with you somewhat normally once again. I hope for the best for you.

I don't know, if they're the first to devise a working setup to achieve that, haven't they discovered how to do it?

According to http://www.gizmag.com/experime... the Breit-Wheeler theory hasn't actually been proven yet and remains a theory. The scientists in question believe they have found a way of proving the theory and doing it in a manner that requires only a fraction of the amount of energy than believed previously. Ie. they've set out to doing two things: proving a theory or disproving it, and trying out a new, more energy-efficient method of creating these Breit-Wheeler particles. I suggest just reading the article on Gizmag, it's short and kept easy-to-read.

Actually, the parent's post is not funny at all, considering that graphene based solar technology has reached over 15% efficiency in recent efforts, and I would bet environmentally friendly solutions will continue to double in efficiency over a given time period. After all, we're chasing the benchmarks established by plants.

As far as roads go, here's an opportunity to leverage a massive area of square footage that is guaranteed to be clear of plants or other obstructions, that would benefit from power and data networking, and if leveraged correctly, can be improved to save many lives.

Why anyone would choose to use this as an opportunity for ridicule is beyond me. Certainly the technology isn't ready yet, but I can see a clear pathway from idea to eventual perfection, given our penchant for achieving economics with scale. The resulting solution might not look anything like the original concept, but the idea of turning our roadways into an intelligent grid, featuring solar power generation, optics, data, and even thermal regulation is brilliant.

> Carbon shows signs of potentially being rather nastier in its fancy forms

That's like saying "Some types of technology can harm your health".

Carbon is a very versatile element, it can take many forms. Some will be good, some will be bad, some will have no impact.

e.g. There are signs of it being extremely beneficial in buckyball form: http://www.gizmag.com/diet-buc...

Two years ago, Obayashi corp announced its intention to have a space elevator up by 2050. Part of that design involves solar panels transmitting energy back down to terra firma.

If you want style you buy the S class. The B class is supposed to be an affordable econobox.

"The price in Germany will be 416,500 euros (US$ 535,869)" - Gizmag

The only car they showed which looks remotely decent was the prototype of a half-million dollar AMG supercar. No wonder they're worried.

I suspect that's how every over-priced, over-budget research project is considered at the start.

No, there's always some Pollyanna type who thinks it can't possibly be done for less out there.

Then reality intrudes, and unforeseen circumstances (like bureaucratic meddling) cause the actual costs to increase.

Well, of course, you can always make the problem worse (three orders of magnitude is the next step up this particular ladder). But if you were trying to say that the cheaper approach isn't actually cheaper, then you picked a mighty peculiar way of trying.

Also, I actually have experience with a project that did something for less than a government funded project by at least three orders of magnitude. Lockheed Martin was paid $150 million to launch the HALE-D, an airship allegedly capable of reaching 60k feet, but which actually only reached 32k feet before it came down prematurely.

My non-profit group, JP Aerospace took a much simpler though far less capable airship to 95k feet - which is for now better than the current world record for airships at a cost well, more than three orders of magnitude less.

This demonstrates the typical differences between a government project and a private one. The government one doesn't have to work. The government project adds features and such willy nilly. And there's less control of costs.

These factors all play out with ITER. There's no blowback if ITER doesn't work or it is fundamentally broken due to misdesign. It's all a learning experience that was totally worth the tens of billions of dollars we put into it. LOL.

Similarly, it wasn't enough to make ITER a focused, break even prototype. We have to add the fig leaf of fusion research so that gobs of useless functionality could be indiscriminately tossed in to the project. The vast project that does everything is a huge failure mode of publicly funded research.

And of course, they have to use stuff that is beyond state of the art even though it wouldn't be used in any commercial fusion power plants. It has built in irrelevance to anything of value we might try over the next few decades. This is how you can take copious funding (yes, I know fusion power research is not as well funded as the fusion research community would like) and turn it into shit.

(Link heavy...) I think you got the wrong end of the stick, there.

Some studies have been done that show a minimum 30% penetration is possible for *any* region (and this one stopped their modeling at 30%, so its likely higher)...
http://www.renewableenergyworl...

An earlier study from Europe (no link at moment) put the figure around 40%.

Another US study comes in around 45%...
http://arstechnica.com/science...

UK study comes in at >90%...
http://www.gizmag.com/uk-natio...

German study comes in at 100%...
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...
More on this...
http://www.renewablesinternati...

Some of these show cost savings from adding renewables, another one showed costs rising about 10-15%.

Iowa already got over 25% of power from renewables in 2013; not sure about the mix but I don't recall hydro being a big player there. The state has set a 40% target for 2015!

As for diverse power generation, that is a good rule of thumb, however the non-renewable generators cannot continue to operate in the long-term and nuclear in particular is even worse than variable renewables as the latter has a large correlation with demand curves. Anyone scanning the field for the past few years, however, is getting the idea that a diversity of storage will be at least as important. And there are a LOT of different options. The state of the art in this field has moved completely beyond the 1990s consensus that your post is predicated on.

Hydropower operating permits are up: http://grist.org/news/america-...

In Germany, they have closed a deal with Norway which has vast hydropower resources.

Batteries are considered the least economic storage solution, but I suggest you google "flow batteries". Here are some examples other storage types:

Zynth batteries
http://www.eosenergystorage.co...

Battery EV storage pilot in US
http://www.latimes.com/busines...

Ice bears (cold storage for hot nights)
http://www.renewgridmag.com/e1...

Undersea pumped hydro (you read that right)
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/...

Power-to-gas
http://www.nasdaq.com/press-re...

Molten salt
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energ...

The thing I don't get with these camera displays is the fact that they don't seem to have wipers on the camera, with cleaning solution.
Snow/Salt/Mud/Dirt really collect and make visibility bad. If you are offroading then one puddle and your feature is useless.

... uh, we could just install wiperless glass AKA ultrasonic wipers.

I think will find is the very bottom it will be the last to go. The guy standing over the grill of the burgle have a job.

Nope. Guess again.

NotDrWho,

We are definitely not working in our basement, though we did start in mine 3+ years ago. Gizmag visited our current facility recently. You can check out their tour here:

http://www.gizmag.com/tour-ale...

We definitely pay salaries too. In fact, we're set up with a Professional Employers Organization, Insperity. We offer healthcare to 22 employees, along with the other standard benefits.

We're not (all) kids either. My slashdot account is getting close to 18 years old even. ;) Our staff, advisors, and board of directors includes people with their signature on Mars for components they designed, the former Director of Engineering of Seagate (wrap your mind around the complexity of that for a minute), a major former HP exec responsible for $18 billion/year, the former Director of Finance of Digital Globe (Google Maps), and the chair of the Debian Technical Committee.

Also, our patent attorney has won billion dollar (with a "B") patent cases. He's no slouch. :) Plus we work with EFF, Harvard Cyberlaw, Public Knowledge, and other groups to push back against patents in 3D printing and patents in general.

I've spoken about it at length with our US Congressman Jared Polis (he invited me to a patent workshop too) and two of his potential rivals in November. I spoke briefly about it with US Senator Michael Bennet when he visited. So we're working on it at the political layer too.

Just sayin'...

-Jeff Moe, Aleph Objects, Inc. CEO

The technology already exists and is being used in Mercedes Benz and a few other types of cars. Experienced this first hand driving a rental down the Autobahn a few weeks ago, after about an hour of driving my car told me to get some coffee... it was right, I was getting tired.

Ye of little vision. The ICE will go the way of the buggy whip as a more compact and longer lasting source of electricity comes on line. There is more than one on the way including this already road tested one. http://youtu.be/RqLpqR0SPnQ link found on http://www.gizmag.com/900-hp-s...

Zothecula writes

RTFA

The only one I know of is Sony's Mobius, which was conceived specifically with academia in mind.