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Driverless vehicles could follow specific routes and get power from wires -- they could have almost no battery capacity. Minimizing the meet for batteries could be environmentally great. Basically trams without the rails.

There are already trams that run on wheels. Same overhead wires, but a converted bus underneath like this one from Holland. I believe that there are even ones that can cross from road to rail.

However in Singapore I still see a Chinese taxi driver hanging out the window shouting "what you do, lah" at the bus. Seriously though, this could work in Singapore because they have such little traffic because the number of vehicle registrations they give out are so low. So it's a perfect proof of concept that can't be applied anywhere else... like most of what happens in Singapore.

Also, driverless busses are nothing new, they've been operating on dedicated busways like Adelaide's O-Bahn for decades.

This is what American food looks like: https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-m...

Here is another example: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

Another: https://static1.squarespace.co...

Here is what American Food looks like in a big city: https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/...

Here is what the regional cuisine looks like in the part of America that I live in: (this is the most popular restaurant in my neighborhood, though not the most expensive) https://s3-media1.fl.yelpcdn.c...

Here is what American food looks like in a "red state": https://ncstatecommuters.files...

Why did you hide a link to wikimedia behind a google redirect?

https://commons.wikimedia.org/... is the file.

Oh it's enough to matter, for sure--that's why there's a giant minimum-wage debate. We didn't raise the minimum wage for over a decade, so it became smaller (due to inflation). Now we've pinned it to CPI inflation. I want to create a Universal Dividend pinned to productivity using income as a proxy: everyone (adult, planned to eventually be 16+) gets a share of a fixed portion of the income (15%, planned to eventually reach 10%), which grows faster than CPI inflation.

The narrative has always been that real median family income has stagnated, though. You hear about "middle-income stagnation", and you get people saying that the middle-class hasn't seen a real wage income increase since 1979, and other economists saying they've seen 41% growth in wage purchasing power. The fact of the matter is the ones claiming some kind of growth are more-correct than the ones claiming total stagnation.

I have cell phone service with unlimited voice and text, plus 2GB of LTE data and unlimited throttled data per month. It costs $15/month. It's on t-mobile's network. In 1990, even minimum-wage households had landline phones at $30/month here. Most of the minimum-wagers are living ... pretty brutally; they have minimal new amenities compared to 20 years ago, yet they do have some. Again: we adjust minimum-wage based on inflation, not based on productivity growth--which is something else my new plan changes.

So, the working-class does see wealth from productivity growth; the rich don't get all the newly-generated income; and the minimum wage is designed to provide nothing in terms of a share of productivity growth--that's not a rich-people-taking-everything trick, but a fact of the government having established it for a purpose of minimum living (Republicans will tell you it's not a living wage; they're wrong) instead of a fair wage.

By the by: be careful reading about "wealth". The wealth of an economy is measured by its productivity; people like to measure wealth by accumulation of assets, then claim the rich have gotten massively-richer because they have things. I like to compare the income flow instead, notably with population considerations, e.g. by looking at CEO cash compensation versus the number of employees (payrolls are paid from revenues; stocks are just inflation of the currency of a company's stock, dumping newly-created shares into the executive's hands while slightly-reducing the number of dollars everyone else holding the stock can get). Oddly enough, highly-paid executives tend to have larger companies with more employees, and receive fewer dollars compensation per employee--just with enormous multipliers. The CEO of Ford, for example, receives about $22.50 per employee per year.

To put this into perspective: an executive making 35x the minimum wage would get $647,500/year; an executive making $1M/year generally has 8,000-10,000 employees. An executive making $647,500/year today would have around 5,000 employees and receive $129.50/year per each, or 6.475 cents per employee per hour. Small business owners with few employees generally make thousands per employee.

Kind of puts a damper on those salary cap arguments, huh? People focus too much on the rich, and not enough on the poor.

You're not wrong about some of the mechanisms used and han nature that amplified the problem.

What exactly do you think caused it to suddenly happen at that moment? People have been "greedy" for millions of years. That didn't suddenly change. And guess what - it won't change in the future either. Here's a hint at what triggered it:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

> this is the important part, trading mortgages as securities

Mortgage-backed securities have been around for many decades. They were quite popular in the 1970s. They were used in the events of 2006-2008, but they weren't new, so their existence wasn't the cause.

> The mortgage crisis was caused by get rich quick scam artists, corporate greed, and Wall Street traders who all wanted something for next to nothing. Financial businesses have a duty to accurately assess risks

Again, people have always wanted "something for nothing". That didn't change (and won't change in the future). What changed was the government arranged for banks to be able to make money off bad mortgages. "Accurately assess risks" you say. You know what happens to a bank that DOESN'T assess risk accurately and loans out the bank's money to people who can't pay it back? The bank goes out of business when they've handed out all their money - unless bad business decisions are made artificially profitable by government. The government wanted risky loans to be made, because "it's unfair that some people can't get mortgages".

Perhaps it IS "unfair"*, but it's mathematical fact that when you loan money to a bunch of people who can't make the payments, you end up with a bunch of defaulted loans and a big mess.

As I mentioned, the problem was greatly amplified by the number of investors and speculators attracted by the rising prices - rising prices that were caused by the sudden increase of buyers in 2006, people who previously wouldn't be able to get a loan because lending to them is a bad risk.

"Greedy" people, people who want to get "stuff" easily, will come up with easy ways of producing stuff, such as the printing press, combine harvester, steam engine, etc. Only when an outside force artificially changes by economy can someone continue to get more stuff by doing things that are actually destructive. The natural way to get more stuff, more easily, is by producing more stuff more easily.

* "Unfair" in the same sense that it's unfair that my friend who jogs daily can run a marathon, while I can't run a marathon because I don't exercise. Unfair meaning different outcomes, caused by doing different things.

Yeah, I've I've liked all of the Dell keyboards I've ever used, and they're cheap and easy to replace if they get broken or sticky.

We never really agreed upon what was the best keyboard layout, I would think we'd have to determine that in order to rate how far laptops diverge.

I submit:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/...

That's what I look for when shopping for keyboards / laptops.

The Dell keyboards stray somewhat from that to make stuff fit, but not terribly far.

There is a graph here that will answer most of the questions. As you can see, the cycles started many hundreds of thousands of years ago.

How little you know.... http://www.heritage.org/index/...

You obviously haven't looked at that site beyond the colors you see when you land on the home page have you? If you drill down the specific figures you'll see that there are actually large differences between the US and Scandinavian countries; Scandinavian countries have higher tax, higher government spending, better fiscal health and lower "labor freedom".

That matches exactly what I've been saying, the fact the site averages all those out to the same arbitrary "overall score" is irrelevant.

You've obviously never tried to run a business before if you think the US is AT ALL laissez-faire.

Not in the US no, but given what large companies over there are able to get away with compared to most other western countries there's clearly a lack of oversight.

1. Cost of housing [inflationdata.com].

This doesn't tell you much. The cost of housing has always varied depending on what incomes look like in any given region. What matters, depending on how you look at it, is either the housing opportunity index or the housing affordability index.

So in terms of *buying*, using a certain methodology shows house affordability has been stable since the 90s (well after the policies I'm criticizing had been enacted). On the other hand rent has increased dramatically, especially for those in the lower 3rd of incomes. And no, wages haven't grown to fill that gap.

/facepalm That's not health care costs, that's health care spending.

Lol, there's no magic money tree, that money is coming from somewhere.

And if you bother to pay attention, you'll notice that it's increasing globally, practically in lock-step.

1980: Sweden: $942 / Switzerland: $1013 / USA: $1091
2008: Sweden: $3470 / Switzerland: $4627/ USA: $7538

That is not in "lock-step" by a long shot, US spending has increased considerably more than the 2 next nearest countries.

I found the Bernie fan!

Found the trickle down believer!

In reality, when you increase your income, you've increased somebody else's wealth. How? Well, people pay you for something they want or need, and when you create what they want or provide a service that they want or need, you are creating wealth from thin air (or from raw materials,) and then giving the wealth to them in exchange for money. When the rich become richer, they increase the wealth of those who gave them more money.

LOL, people like you have been saying that since the 80s yet the income of 90% of Americans has not risen in real terms since the 70s (and if you're interested in wealth the bottom 50% of families have not see their wealth rise 1989-2007).

Trickle-down economics has provably failed to make the majority of people better off. The only people who actually put money back into the economy via spending is the middle class, when the rich get a larger share of the bigger pie they just keep it to themselves.

Now, for the hard numbers: The fact is, capitalist economies encourage the creation of wealth

The Nordic model is pro free-market capitalism, so what's your point?

Furthermore, the data more or less debunks the notion that income inequality is getting worse

Interesting that you're only linking to videos talking about statistically improv

Under some strict Moslem sects, it's illegal for a woman to expose anything more than her eyes through the slit at the top of her burka. Now imagine if a Moslem country's court issues a worldwide injunction against all video or still images of women not wearing burkas. Female news anchors on every US TV network from Fox to MSNBC would be affected.

images.google.com would be affected. Newspapers couldn't publish photos of "Women's March Against Trump". Female political candidates wouldn't be allowed to post photos with "facial frontal nudity", and no video/photo coverage of political Candidates https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

I thought that when the robot that was looking to the end of one of the "Star Shafts" (back in 2002), a chamber like this was hypothesized because the robot came to the "door" at the end of the shaft.

They did finally send in another probe to drill a hole in the door, revealing a tiny compartment with either a back wall or another door. There has been no further attempts permitted since.

Not that it matters -- those shafts come from the Queens Chamber, and don't intersect at all with the newly discovered chamber, as can be seen in this diagram. The newly discovered chamber(s) are immediately above the Grand Gallery.

Yaz

> The helmsman sent all control (not just throttle) the the other station.

And neither he nor the anyone else looking at the situation didn't realized all control had been sent away, because the UI didn't gray out of the inactive controls or anything. Two people looked at it and couldn't tell it had been inactivated. Guess which controls are disabled here:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

> The second helmsman throttled down only one engine.

When he too couldn't tell that a) he had control of steering or that b) the engined weren't ganged. Again, try to figure out which controls are ganged and which aren't:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_IOWi...

It's not hard to make it obvious.

It is sort of right. Wikipedia itself wasn't banned, but several articles from Wikipedia were, mostly about drugs and suicide.

Here is an example: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...

Legally, sure. However I can access those pages from Russia, without using a VPN or a proxy. When I try any of those addresses, I get redirected to https protocol, and, as they say, ISPs technically cannot block a single page from a website if https is used.

It is sort of right. Wikipedia itself wasn't banned, but several articles from Wikipedia were, mostly about drugs and suicide.

Here is an example: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...

'Fraid not, because Shazad Latif (born Shazad Khaliq Iqbal) is half-Pakistani. HUGE threat to white-manliness.

Why? Aren't Pakistani white Indo-Europeans?

For the last 10 years all phone companies have been doing is trying to make a "better iPhone" (as in the 2007 original).

I'm actually pretty disappointed in what passes for improvements on current-gen Android smartphones: Curved glass (because fuck perfect display geometry, I guess), rounded display edges (CRT nostalgia?), no headphone jack, on-screen navigation buttons (because some designer decided physical buttons are ugly), and all screen sizes below 5.2" are reserved for bargain-bin prepaid crap phones.

My top-loader washing machine doesn't look much different from the ones sold back in the 70s. I probably wouldn't have bought it if it had all sorts of superfluous features and embellishments, from 4 decades of "innovation". My current laptop doesn't look significantly different from the nearly 11-year-old laptop it replaced. Perhaps one day the smartphone industry will stop trying to shoot for the moon with "innovative" new designs, and just stick to improving performance, camera quality, and battery life.

Clinton in the 90's was able to compromise with a GOP congress, why coudln't Obama?

Here is a picture of President Clinton:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

And here is a picture of President Obama:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

If you look very closely, you will see the reason why the GOP congress would work with President Clinton but not President Obama. Take your time. It'll jump out at you.

Clinton in the 90's was able to compromise with a GOP congress, why coudln't Obama?

Here is a picture of President Clinton:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

And here is a picture of President Obama:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

If you look very closely, you will see the reason why the GOP congress would work with President Clinton but not President Obama. Take your time. It'll jump out at you.

Here's my program, Mr. Cook.

perhaps you should just download it
here

They had an electron beam than scanned across a shadow mask to the phosphors underneath.

The limit was the bandwidth of the analog signal, resulting in a measure called lines of resolution.

Well, the shadow mask kind of imposed a pixelization of a sort, so it was not simply a limitation of the analog signal bandwidth.

Shadow mask <-- close up of one.

Amazon's trucks are much more hi-tech too:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

You're assuming that people will have no choice but to get expensive high-tech electric vehicles.

However, even under an ICE ban, people will still be able to use simpler tried-and-true transportation like this, or even this, which also has the advantage of dovetailing with the new policies of the current presidential administration.

You're assuming that people will have no choice but to get expensive high-tech electric vehicles.

However, even under an ICE ban, people will still be able to use simpler tried-and-true transportation like this, or even this, which also has the advantage of dovetailing with the new policies of the current presidential administration.

The RWB list has a few problems in that it isn't about speech or free press as much as it is about how what RWB thinks about the country overall.

A few examples:

- They give negative marks to the US because the military bombed a building that had some journalists in it. Two died, but the rest survived, and the military gave them medical aid once they realized what had happened. If this was a free speech issue, they probably would have made sure to kill all of them.
- The current year makes statements about Trump (none of those statements I agree with, BTW) about how he hates the press. Unless Trump is himself censoring the press, this is not even relevant.
- The current year also makes statements about Trump denying media coverage of certain whitehouse events. While I would say yes, this is bad, the RWB doesn't seem to care at all about how other countries impose similar restrictions on not only their governments, but legal procedures as well.

Furthermore, the RWB list only speaks about press issues. It does not at all take into account how Australia and Germany, which both scored higher than the US, censor the fuck out of video games. Germany also can and does censor websites, including one time when they censored Wikipedia, not to mention the EU as a whole likes to censor Google. Australia straight up bans some websites outright, and is currently implementing an illegal site blacklist and a pornography blacklist, the former of which can't be bypassed.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

The RWB press freedom index is thus meaningless if you're talking about free speech, and is probably not very meaningful when talking about press freedom.

living as nomads in a mobile home

You don't mean mobile home; you mean RV .

What the fuck is Renault Zoe?

***Facepalm***

Renault is the company that makes the Zoe.
It's even listed as "Renault Zoe" on the very link you gave.

] and you will note that nearly every car on that list is between 20-25kwh / 100miles. What an amazing technological advantage the 24kWh/100miles Tesla has.

That's an interesting change in topic, from range to energy consumption per 100 miles. Since we're comparing ton NEDC, not EPA 5-cycle, then the Model 3 SR becomes around 260 miles, because the NEDC is a slow mockery of a drivecycle that generally yields 15-20% higher ranges than the 5-cycle. Meaning that the SR uses about 19kWh/100 miles.

And note that it's being compared to vehicles that are generally much smaller than it.

The first public 350kWh charger is not a Tesla charger and is already in operation.

1) There's a tiny number of high power CCS charging stations out there, and
2) They get that power not with current, but with super-high voltages, which are great for fictional vehicles with super-high voltage battery packs (but meaningless for all real-world EVs).

You don't seem to understand this second part, so let me explain. The small number of high power CCS chargers out there don't achieve that through high currents; they achieve it through the much easier means of high voltages. But an EV can't take a voltage higher than its pack voltage. There are no 1000V commercial EVs out there, so these "350kW" chargers are nothing more than a PR exercise; as soon as you connect your EV to them, it immediately has to ramp down its voltage - and thus power - to what your pack actually supports. So when you're low on power (aka, when you can take charge currents the most - you have to ramp down at higher SoC), it cuts down to around 300V or so, meaning that these rare "350kW" chargers function only as 105kW chargers. Versus Tesla's massive network of V2 chargers, which are 145kW shared / 120kW per vehicle.

(A higher voltage pack just under 100% SoC may be ~450V or so. Which in theory would mean that the charger could provide 157,5kW... except at that point the vehicle can only take a couple kilowatts, so again, it's meaningless)

Tesla could easily pull the same stunt (having higher max voltages), since it's easy to do, but it's also pointless to do except as a PR exercise - so they don't.

Oh wow, a "plan" to have "400" by "2020". Color me oh-so-impressed! I'm fainting from how impressed I am with those numbers ;) Meanwhile, Tesla has 6550 supercharger stalls... today. Each delivering more power than a "350kW" CCS charger does to any extant EV. buildout continues. And the network's growth has been transitioning from linear to exponential. Furthermore, if you want to talk about future chargers...

Yeah indeed. Showing off what your R&D is being spent on is meaningless.

It's the difference between a mockup of a GUI with only basic functionality implemented for a demo, and an actual deliverable product.

Even when you actually intend to sell the thing, what's shown at a motor show often morphs significantly and - as mentioned - usually not in a way customers like. For example, here's what the Volt was when it was presented at NAIAS; here's what they actually delivered.

Auto Shows are a terrible way to be informed about what companies actually will be delivering.

you should know there is a clear difference between the cars that won't see the light of day and the

What the fuck is Renault Zoe?

***Facepalm***

Renault is the company that makes the Zoe.
It's even listed as "Renault Zoe" on the very link you gave.

] and you will note that nearly every car on that list is between 20-25kwh / 100miles. What an amazing technological advantage the 24kWh/100miles Tesla has.

That's an interesting change in topic, from range to energy consumption per 100 miles. Since we're comparing ton NEDC, not EPA 5-cycle, then the Model 3 SR becomes around 260 miles, because the NEDC is a slow mockery of a drivecycle that generally yields 15-20% higher ranges than the 5-cycle. Meaning that the SR uses about 19kWh/100 miles.

And note that it's being compared to vehicles that are generally much smaller than it.

The first public 350kWh charger is not a Tesla charger and is already in operation.

1) There's a tiny number of high power CCS charging stations out there, and
2) They get that power not with current, but with super-high voltages, which are great for fictional vehicles with super-high voltage battery packs (but meaningless for all real-world EVs).

You don't seem to understand this second part, so let me explain. The small number of high power CCS chargers out there don't achieve that through high currents; they achieve it through the much easier means of high voltages. But an EV can't take a voltage higher than its pack voltage. There are no 1000V commercial EVs out there, so these "350kW" chargers are nothing more than a PR exercise; as soon as you connect your EV to them, it immediately has to ramp down its voltage - and thus power - to what your pack actually supports. So when you're low on power (aka, when you can take charge currents the most - you have to ramp down at higher SoC), it cuts down to around 300V or so, meaning that these rare "350kW" chargers function only as 105kW chargers. Versus Tesla's massive network of V2 chargers, which are 145kW shared / 120kW per vehicle.

(A higher voltage pack just under 100% SoC may be ~450V or so. Which in theory would mean that the charger could provide 157,5kW... except at that point the vehicle can only take a couple kilowatts, so again, it's meaningless)

Tesla could easily pull the same stunt (having higher max voltages), since it's easy to do, but it's also pointless to do except as a PR exercise - so they don't.

Oh wow, a "plan" to have "400" by "2020". Color me oh-so-impressed! I'm fainting from how impressed I am with those numbers ;) Meanwhile, Tesla has 6550 supercharger stalls... today. Each delivering more power than a "350kW" CCS charger does to any extant EV. buildout continues. And the network's growth has been transitioning from linear to exponential. Furthermore, if you want to talk about future chargers...

Yeah indeed. Showing off what your R&D is being spent on is meaningless.

It's the difference between a mockup of a GUI with only basic functionality implemented for a demo, and an actual deliverable product.

Even when you actually intend to sell the thing, what's shown at a motor show often morphs significantly and - as mentioned - usually not in a way customers like. For example, here's what the Volt was when it was presented at NAIAS; here's what they actually delivered.

Auto Shows are a terrible way to be informed about what companies actually will be delivering.

you should know there is a clear difference between the cars that won't see the light of day and the

Essentially Pepe was seen as something of an ugly loser, who manages to win and get his revenge on society by screwing with people and getting far right politicians elected

I think you're reading far too deep into the meme. Pepe started out as a reaction image that people would use to emphasize when they were talking about (usually) unconventional things that they enjoyed. The most popular image was this one. It does relate to the scene from the comic Boy's Club, but it's not necessary to know the comic to get the image.

People appropriated and created other images of Pepe to overall refer to feelings of smugness and superiority. It was (and is) often contrasted with the Feels Guy, who is associated with sadness, helplessness, and disappointment.

Basically, /pol/ (and much of 4chan) have appropriated Pepe for whenever something happens in the news that's favorable to them. His image gets exaggerated further to emphasize the news and to contextualize it under an ideology. It doesn't have anything to do with him being an "ugly loser" (I'm not sure if you're using this as an attack against 4chan users or if you were mislead). Pepe could have been easily adopted as a meme of the far left and it would have nothing to do with how the movement sees themselves as people

$1000 notes. The Grover Cleveland ones.

Yeah, I see their "edge-to-edge" better now when I look at the renders/pictures. Not what I think of with that wording. I guess it's better than saying "we removed the home button."

My 3GS comment was more about the look of the phone, not the materials behind it:

https://cnet2.cbsistatic.com/i...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w....

I see what you're saying about the materials, where the back is glass and the metal wraps around the phone like the iPhone 4. I just happen to think the overly rounded, chrome-polished edges make it look like a giant 3GS.

Not sure why "Banzai7 Institute" is plagiarizing that image -- and changing the section labels: "Smart Money" to "Wall Street and 0.01 percenters"

Original source article of the image

Bubble cycle-- Momentum, delusion, despair, hope, recovery By Neil Behrmann
* http://marketpredict.com/articles/mp-bubblecycle.htm

It is available on wikimedia
* https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stages_of_a_bubble.png

Would you support replacing the Confederate monuments with ones that celebrate the winning side and the end of slavery? If not, why not?

We should not tear down the Confederate monuments, for the same reason we don't burn books. We can learn from our mistakes, destroying evidence of our history can mean being doomed to repeat it.

A Confederate monument doesn't have to be a "celebration" of the how things used to be. Germany keeps their reminders of past wars, I've seen them. Perhaps instead of tearing them down we put a sign in front of them that reads, "Never again."
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

Note you're taking a very US-centric view here. Not all hurricanes are Atlantic hurricanes, and not all Atlantic hurricanes hit the US. And your memory of US hurricanes must be spotty, since you don't seem to recall Hurricane Sandy.

Let me fill in the some of blanks you've left.

2007: Dean and Felix were both extremely deadly Category 5 Atlantic Hurricanes that hit Mexico instead of the US.

2008: Gustav was a Category 4 storm in the Carribbean but dropped to Cat 2 by the time it hit Louisiana.

2009: Gustav is a powerful storm on the high end of category 4, but hits wind shear when it enters the Gulf of Mexico which weaken it to a category 1. Hurricane Paloma, the third strongest Atlantic hurricane on record, develops off Nicuragua and hits the Cayman Islands and Cuba; it weakens by the time it hits the US but it does drop 14 inches of rain.

2010: a grand total of 12 full-fledged Atlantic hurricanes form, the second highest number on record. As usually happens in bumper-crop years most of the hurricanes were relatively weak, but Earl, Ivan and Julia reached category 4. Both Ivan and Julia turned away from the US, and Earl succumbed to wind shear before striking the US.

2011: another extremely active year with 19 named tropical storms, most of them modest in intensity. Irene, was a category 3, but like most hurricanes that make landfall north of Cape Hatteras it had slowed to Category 1. Katia was a category 4 but moved up the Eastern Seaboard well offshore; Katia was similar Irene.

2012: the third super-active Atlantic hurricane season in a row, with twenty named storms, including Hurricane Sandy , aka "Superstorm Sandy". You do remember that one?

2013: An actual quiet year, with only two hurricanes which did not affect the US.

2014: Another below average year with only one hurricane.

2015: Thrid straight below average year -- again for Atlantic hurricanes. The most powerful was the Category 4 Joaquin, which hammered Bermuda and threatened the Eastern Seabord of the US. It turned north instead. It's also important to note that 2015 wa the year of Hurricane Patricia, which formed on the Pacific side of Mexico. Patricia was the second strongest storm ever recorded with peaked sustained winds of two hundred and fifteen miles per hour.

2016: An active hurricane year with fifteen storms, seven hurricanes, four of them major, including the Category 5 Matthew, the Category 4 Nicole, and the Category 3 Gaston and Otto.

Now to summarize:
(1) The Atlantic Basin is not the *world*. Often quiet Atlantic years are not quiet at all elsewhere.

(2) The US is not the entire Atlantic Basin.

(3) It takes more than atmospheric energy for a powerful hurricane to hit the US. Think of energy being like gravity, and the hurricane being like a pachinko ball. Most of the time, hurricanes don't fall into one of our slots. Most hurricanes that do hit the US weaken, not for want of energy but because of wind shear; Cape Verde hurricanes ride the tradewinds across the Atlantic but then nearly always weaken substantially if they turn north to the US.

Note you're taking a very US-centric view here. Not all hurricanes are Atlantic hurricanes, and not all Atlantic hurricanes hit the US. And your memory of US hurricanes must be spotty, since you don't seem to recall Hurricane Sandy.

Let me fill in the some of blanks you've left.

2007: Dean and Felix were both extremely deadly Category 5 Atlantic Hurricanes that hit Mexico instead of the US.

2008: Gustav was a Category 4 storm in the Carribbean but dropped to Cat 2 by the time it hit Louisiana.

2009: Gustav is a powerful storm on the high end of category 4, but hits wind shear when it enters the Gulf of Mexico which weaken it to a category 1. Hurricane Paloma, the third strongest Atlantic hurricane on record, develops off Nicuragua and hits the Cayman Islands and Cuba; it weakens by the time it hits the US but it does drop 14 inches of rain.

2010: a grand total of 12 full-fledged Atlantic hurricanes form, the second highest number on record. As usually happens in bumper-crop years most of the hurricanes were relatively weak, but Earl, Ivan and Julia reached category 4. Both Ivan and Julia turned away from the US, and Earl succumbed to wind shear before striking the US.

2011: another extremely active year with 19 named tropical storms, most of them modest in intensity. Irene, was a category 3, but like most hurricanes that make landfall north of Cape Hatteras it had slowed to Category 1. Katia was a category 4 but moved up the Eastern Seaboard well offshore; Katia was similar Irene.

2012: the third super-active Atlantic hurricane season in a row, with twenty named storms, including Hurricane Sandy , aka "Superstorm Sandy". You do remember that one?

2013: An actual quiet year, with only two hurricanes which did not affect the US.

2014: Another below average year with only one hurricane.

2015: Thrid straight below average year -- again for Atlantic hurricanes. The most powerful was the Category 4 Joaquin, which hammered Bermuda and threatened the Eastern Seabord of the US. It turned north instead. It's also important to note that 2015 wa the year of Hurricane Patricia, which formed on the Pacific side of Mexico. Patricia was the second strongest storm ever recorded with peaked sustained winds of two hundred and fifteen miles per hour.

2016: An active hurricane year with fifteen storms, seven hurricanes, four of them major, including the Category 5 Matthew, the Category 4 Nicole, and the Category 3 Gaston and Otto.

Now to summarize:
(1) The Atlantic Basin is not the *world*. Often quiet Atlantic years are not quiet at all elsewhere.

(2) The US is not the entire Atlantic Basin.

(3) It takes more than atmospheric energy for a powerful hurricane to hit the US. Think of energy being like gravity, and the hurricane being like a pachinko ball. Most of the time, hurricanes don't fall into one of our slots. Most hurricanes that do hit the US weaken, not for want of energy but because of wind shear; Cape Verde hurricanes ride the tradewinds across the Atlantic but then nearly always weaken substantially if they turn north to the US.

In 2012 India had about 160 million motorized vehicles of all times registered. This compares to about 260 million vehicles in the US.

There have been a bit over half a million electric vehicles sold here in the US. Assuming nearly all of those are still on the road, India is aiming for roughly 4x the adoption rate of the US.

This seems very doable, because Americans can afford to be picky about vehicles. We want a vehicle that is comfortable, big, fast, and has enough range to take us anywhere we want to go. But even here in major metropolitan cities e-bikes are extremely popular. In India pedicabs are used extensively for both passengers and cargo loads that would be handled by vans in the US.

The whole picture fits together nicely. You have an immense demand for light transportation hat almost doesn't exist in the US. You have serious pollution problems. You have a national effort to develop solar and nuclear electricity generation. Mass production of cheap, lightweight electric vehicle would translate into a huge improvement in standard of living for a lot of people.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

Here is your actual proof:
Ice core cample results
Here, too

It looks like the diagram on the cover doesn't specify the direction the record should turn.
I'm more concerned about what happens if the aliens play the record backwards. They might actually think that we're into that kind of stuff when they come to visit.
Instructions unclear, caused interstellar war.

To be fair, we could do it better today. If we were willing to make the decoding more complex, we could make it digital with error-correcting codes, allowing for much higher amounts of data storage at the same level of durability, or conversely much more durability at the same level of error storage.

Physical indentations with a precious metal coating is probably the best storage means available today. But a on-off linear representation rather than wasteful grooves would be a much better choice. Also, if we were willing to pay a higher production cost (and make for much more complicated playback), we could go 3d in the data representation.

I'm looking at the images and it's funny to see things go obsolete that the team probably never thought of as potentially becoming obsolete. For example, this image. Whoops! ;)

Okay, here is the next question: Why is it always about women? Why does Hollywood only use buff guys in leading roles? Why are the male sex symbols never short near-sighted bald guys with beer bellies?

Umm... (part 3)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

Okay, here is the next question: Why is it always about women? Why does Hollywood only use buff guys in leading roles? Why are the male sex symbols never short near-sighted bald guys with beer bellies?

Umm... (part 2)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

Who, that guy who condemned Nazis and white nationalists?

He was under duress. He got an offer he couldn't refuse. "If you don't make that speech, we'll kill this dog"

yet feminist and blacks and other ignorant groups hate me as much as Hitler hated my people, just because they see my skin

Do you think perhaps that some other reason might be responsible, hmmm?

here

In music, the BACH motif is the motif, a succession of notes important or characteristic to a piece, B flat, A, C, B natural. In German musical nomenclature, in which the note B natural is written as H and the B flat as B, it forms Johann Sebastian Bach's family name.

That's what the article says, but I don't understand it. The only hand-written music on that Wikipedia web page shows B A C H written as four notes on a treble clef staff, not written as four letters. (This is on the right edge of the web page, half-way down.) So I don't know what they mean by saying that B natural is written as H, and B flat is written as B.

The explanation above is correct, but very unclearly worded.

In German nomenclature, the notes of the c major scale are read as:
C-D-E-F-G-A-H(-C)
There is a note called "B": The one a half tone under H.

So this is indeed read "B-A-C-H" in German
(where it would of course also be considered to be written as such...).

SCO was a version of AT&T System V Unix. So it really had nothing to do with Linux. Linux (and Minix) was a Unix-like OS written from the ground up. The entire SCO lawsuit was a fishing expedition to try to extract money from the open source project which was eroding their market share.

System V goes back to the 1980s. Other versions of Unix go back to the 1970s. I'm sure there's still install media and binaries for it floating around out there. The hard part would be finding hardware it can run on.

Do you think those handles are safe enough?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

is there some kind of monitoring system that can be installed, and portably carried that could detect such kind of devices in operation?

Well it depends on what we're looking for. If this was sound at frequencies outside the realm of human hearing we have two options:

1) Below 20 Hz
2) Above ~14 kHz (22 kHz for young children)


According to this table the sound level for continuous exposure ear damage would be ~85 dB SPL (at the ear). At those volume levels, option 1 would likely be 'felt' even if they could not be heard. I think that means we can reasonably surmise that it was option 2, high volume at high frequency.

When we're looking for high frequency signals, we have to remember our friend Nyquist. Therefore we need at least double the sampling rate in order to recover the signal.

In the 'pro' audio world, there are a number of portable recorders with a sample rate at 192 kHz. For example. This would give a theoretical recordable frequency as high as 96 kHz. The problem with actually using a hand held device like this is that despite the fact that the sample rate is high enough to capture the signal, the microphones commonly used in the 'pro' audio world are designed for use in the band of human hearing. Their sensitivity at or above 20 kHz is generally very poor with a precipitous drop-off at 20 kHz.

That means we would need to find special purpose microphones. A quick look around yielded some microphones designed for wildlife that might work.

All of the above hardware is based on the assumption that we are looking for signals 96 kHz. If it is even higher, we would need even more specialized equipment to record/detect it.

How did gasoline manage to become non-carcinogenic (and neurotoxic, and a whole range of other toxicity effects) in the past 15 years?

Little rubber collars on pump nozzles kept the gas in. Five years ago the rule mandating them was eliminated, because most cars have built-in fume traps. url:http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/10/politics/epa-gas-pump-handles/index.html> It was 70% back then, and I bet it's higher now.

Weather has ceased to exist in the US except in small towns? Or are you saying that US pumps connect themselves to your car on their own like a snake, as well as paying for you with EZ-pass?

Are there no awnings over the gas pumps in NY/NJ/PA (or wherever you are that E-ZPass is used)?

EV charging is now very common at hotels. And even if a place doesn't officially offer it, 9 times out of 10, if you call and ask, you get a "yes".

Interesting. I looked at one (https://www.plugshare.com/?location=63496#) and you've got to pay $20. That's a decent price for a tank of gas, but you should be morally outraged at the markup charged, since electricity is so cheap.

But don't you DARE use 80 cents an hour of electricity, or I'll cut you!

That's a serious math fail.

The average cost of electricity in the US is 14.2 cents/kWh. After a long trip, the tank is pretty depleted. In this case, 50 kWh (of a max 60kWh) seems a reasonable requirement to "tank up". That turns out to be $7.10.

Still not much, but (1) it adds up if the visitors are there for a few days, and (2) not everyone has lots of cash to spare.

you have to go plug in at one of the numerous superchargers on the way

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I've looked at the Tesla Supercharger map, and the closest one to me is 35 miles.

Ok, sure, but what for?