Slashdot Mirror

according to https://xtronics.com/wiki/Ener... diesel fuel is about 11k watt-hours per liter. The driver of a tractor I happened to be fueling next to once told me it held 300 gallons, so a fillup on that comes out to about 4.5e10 joules (sayeth google's calculator), where 7.2 MWh is 2.6e10 joules. Now, I don't have figures on the range for either, but realize that the power you're talking about isn't anything unusual for big trucks.

Really - I'm an old fart - made my own cheat-sheet - just isn't that hard.

https://xtronics.com/wiki/Syst...

My biggest complaint was the replacement for ls /etc/init.d/ was too much to type.

It is sugar + PUFAs

They have also been protecting the vegetable oil industry - concentrated vegetable oils are not human food. Around 1960 they started selling veg oils to replace lard - it was also around that time that Americans started getting fat. We now know that eating PUFAs messes with the insulin system ( main source is LA linoleic acid ).

It will be 10 years or more before the public becomes aware - people warned about sugar in the 1960's were ignored. only 50 years later is it common knowledge.

https://wiki.xtronics.com/inde...

The usual mantra is that PUFAs are good for you as they reduce cholesterol levels - but if we look at all cause mortality - this falls apart. PUFAs reduce cholesterol by making people ever fatter.

I'm 61 - took me about an hour to change over to systemd syntax. I didn't ask for it - thought it was a bother, but in the end I see it fixed some things and it is working fine - the hate-flame-bait-carp was uncalled for.

I have come to realize that it is only the really old guys over 70 or so that no longer can learn new things or see other points of view. Growing old and losing metal agility must really suck. I put up a page with notes for these guys that can't adjust on their own:

https://wiki.xtronics.com/inde...

I am really glad the Debian did not fold to the pressure of the geriatric community to become set-in-their-ways.

I'm 61 - took me about an hour to figure out systemd - not that I asked for the change - but it wasn't a big deal. In the end I realized it fixed a few issues and all the hate-flame-bait crap was uncalled for.

I've come to realize it is must be only a minority of really old farts that complain about systemd - I get it - as people age they can't learn new things - can't see why the changes are happening - growing old sucks.

I suppose it is really the old guys over 70 just can't adapt to these changes - so I have some notes for them:

https://wiki.xtronics.com/inde...

I use MySQL on Debian - have zero problems with systemd -- could it be your chair?

It took me about a day to get used to systemd - I didn't ask for the change - but it seems to be somewhat helpful in the long run. Mostly invisible on the servers I run - just don't notice the difference. Worst feature of systemd? This command is too long to type when I'm sleepy:

# systemctl list-unit-files --type=service

Needs an alias.

For the old farts that can't adopt ( I'm 61 - so you must really be old ) - there is help:

https://wiki.xtronics.com/inde...

OK - open source has a really good OCR engine - tesseract.

But that is only one part - you need software that can recognize layout - differentiate pictures from text etc.

There are two approaches - put a text layer under a bitmap (searchable image) - or make a real document with fonts and pictures where needed (clear-scan) . (Hopefully a ODT file ).

Even in Windows clear-scan is iffy - diagrams with text confuse the software. Clear-scan to ODT is what we want - but can't have yet..

Notes and links on this: https://wiki.xtronics.com/inde...

I'm not an electrical engineer, but I'm trying to understand. Googling for a GPU that uses 200 amps didn't find anything. I see stuff in the 40-60 range on the high end. Please bear with me. I'm just going to throw out some numbers.

If we talk about AC, and we've got some transformer, and it goes from 240V/X amps to 1.2V/200A, we've got 240 watts power being dissipated. At 200A, wouldn't you need something like 000 gauge (10.40mm) to carry that amperage? I imagine you'd melt the GPU. You've got yourself a nice induction heater.

As I'm not an electrical engineer, I don't really understand the DC-DC converter comment. I'm going to treat it as a resistor, since that's about all I know how to do. (I really would appreciate further elucidation.)

If you step down directly from 12V/200A to 1.2V/200A resistively (I'm assuming a 12V PSU rail, although a 12V/200A PSU is ~$500 by quick google), you're dropping 10.8V across the resistor carrying 200A, which means it needs to dissipate 2160 watts. Holy smokes! Again, I think you've melted your GPU.

I'm really at a loss as to how this works without some seriously huge conductors. 200A is 200A so far as I can tell--and 200 amps requires a big-ass conductor. Please explain how GPUs are drawing 200A, because I'd really like to know what I'm missing.

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

The energy density of gasoline is higher. Additionally, though it's gasoline vapor that burns, any process producing a large volume of gas in a confined space can be considered explosive. The electric shock potential and dealing with lithium specifically seem to be more relevant concerns.

It isn't thickness that I worry about - many of the film heat sink-compounds degrade over time with high temperature.

The details are at:

http://wiki.xtronics.com/index.php/Computer_Component_Standard#Thermal_Pads_Vs_Thermal_Grease_-_a_critical_failure_point_issue.21

What I want to know is how well they work 3 years down the road

As it is often the case with breaking news in battery related articles, I didn't find any numbers about the efficiency of this system in TFA. I would like to see a amazing break through in electricity storage but we have a long way to go still to match gasoline, so expect transportation prices to raise a lot as oil is slowly running out.

Energy density:
gasoline: 46.4 MJ/kg
Lead Acid Battery: 0.14 MJ/kg

http://wiki.xtronics.com/index.php/Energy_density
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

Since accelerating the mass of the batteries raises the cost even further, batteries are even less efficient for urban transportation when you accelerate and decelerate a lot. We would need to bring back trolleys or another way not to have to transport the energy source for our cars to have something efficient.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus

No kidding compressed air is crap for automobiles.When something manages to have worse volumetric energy density than lead acid batteries, plus nearly as bad gravimetric energy density even when you aren't factoring the weight of the container vessel, you know you have a loser there.

Compressed air for vehicle energy storage is a bad idea. Conversion to and from compressed air is inefficient, the tanks take up too much space, and worst of all it's too heavy. Look at the Energy Density. To store the equivalent energy of 1kg of gasoline you need over 350kg of compressed air.

There is this thing called energy density. http://wiki.xtronics.com/index.php/Energy_density

Also - suppose you store a large amount of power in a flywheel - if it ever fails it will be released in ways that make even Hydrogen look safe.

For anyone interested, the figures in the paper show clearly the structuring of water in layers near the surface. Moreover they directly measure that the viscosity jumps up considerably for distances less than 2 nm. The viscosity goes from the bulk water value (9E-4 Pa*s) when far from the surface, and increases to as high as 50 Pa*s (500 Poise or 50,000 cP) in the last 0.5 nm. To give you an rough idea of what this means, note that 50,000 cP is similar to the (bulk) viscosity of things like honey or ketchup (for a random table of values, see here or here).

Of course this higher-viscosity persists only over a very short-range, but understanding these "nano-mechanical" properties is crucial for the design and construction of future nano-scale devices.

And you can look at this one. If you have a knee-jerk reaction to pass off any evidence that is contrary to your own beliefs, calling anyone that disagrees with your view an industry shill, then nothing I say is going to make a difference. I think it's sad that environmentalism has become a religion, instead of a science.

I believe that environmentalism is a good thing, we shouldn't pollute and destroy the environment. However, what most environmentalists today suggest is in essence communism, they are completely anti-capitalist.

Then there is this article, or this one...

Now this has nothing to do with left wing/right wing anything, it's about hard science. Something that you believe in that is not supported by facts is essentially a religion.

rpm, apt-get, wajig

There's a more complete table of apt vs. rpm commands in Krafft's "The Debian System" (No Starch Press).

By the way, Kfrafft, like most Debian folks, would tell you that the other distributions have caught up as far as package management software goes, but still lack Debian's meticulous adherence to Policy.

  http://xtronics.com/reference/energy_density.htm

The government is testing us with the "hydrogen Economy" to see if they have sufficiently destroyed the education system to start putting in place the infrastructure of totalitarianism - looks like they met their objective.

Always replace the words "hydrogen Economy" with "Snake oil Economy" to get a better read on these articles.

  http://xtronics.com/reference/energy_density.htm

The government is testing us with the "hydrogen Economy" to see if they have sufficiently destroyed the education system to start putting in place the infrastructure of totalitarianism - looks like they met their objective.

Always replace the words "hydrogen Economy" with "Snake oil Economy" to get a better read on these articles.

And how efficient is an internal combustion engine? Uh huh.

Compare the right things, or you get nonsense.

Good point, they claim almost 40% for the battery - ICE are about the same.

More at:http://xtronics.com/reference/energy_density.ht m

$346US/oz, as of 8:35am EDT, May 23, 2006.

Assuming a slurry of these spheres would be a wildly optimistic 50% glass, 25% hydrogen, 25% palladium by weight, that means the energy equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline (~36,800 Watt*hrs) would require that around 1 kilogram of hydrogen. 1 kilogram of palladium is 35.2 oz, or $12,179.

US cars can hold anywhere from 10 to 30 gallons of gas, or the equivalent of $121,790 to $365,376 worth of palladium to get the same energy density.

A quarter of a million dollars worth of palladium.

In every single car on the road.

RAM- you need enough RAM so you don't hit swap. For today's games, thats 1 GB. After that, the number 1 thing you can do to improve system performance is to get low latency RAM. Your CPU will be waiting for RAM, minimize the time that it is.

Well, ok, it's not trash-junk, but it's not up to the hype either. There was a review on TechRepublic a while ago that I'm pretty sure made it to slashdot (if not, then digg). Basically it showd that Low Latency RAM in itself made little to no difference and more RAM was always the way to go.

That said, Low Latency ram is not entirely a waste of money. Low Latency ram has a better shot at overclocking (like turning DDR 400 into DDR 450 by relaxing the timings and pumping the clock rate.) It's also more likely to be higher quality and thus less likely to go bad on you. As an asside, if you're interested in RAM in general, I've found this site very informative/userful.

But I would minimize the value of Low Latency in and of itself.

I got the figures cited from:
http://xtronics.com/reference/energy_density.htm

You'd have to write him to find out what assumptions he's making about the pressure. From what I gather from back-of-the-envelope calculations, that's about 10bar pressure air, at which point you'd be up to 510 watt/hours per liter for 300bar, but still far from competitive.

On a side note, that also demonstrates why gasoline and diesel are so widely used as fuels.

Methanol is a good choice for fuelling cars too, since it generates more power than gasoline...

Bzzzzt! Methanol contains only about half as much energy per liter as gasoline. Here's a summary table of several fuels. Maintaining the same driving range requires a tank that's twice as big. Obtaining the same power output from a fuel-injected ICE will require injecting twice as much each cycle. It is potentially useful in a fuel-cell to power an electric car, which can overall be more efficient at extracting energy than an ICE, but it will have to be twice as efficient in order to deliver the same MPG. Assuming comparable ICE power plants, methanol has to be priced at half the price of gasoline to deliver the same miles-per-dollar.

Gasoline and diesel _are_ high energy density fuels, from both energy/volume and energy/weight perspective. That is what makes them good fuels.

Xcelite also makes the best needlenose pliers and tweezers I've ever used.

Xcelite tweezers are nothing compared to VOMM.

VOMM is a German company that makes ONLY tweezers. They seem to start at about $15 a piece.

Here's an example.

I've used Whia, Xcelite, Erem and some others that I forget. IMO, VOMM is the best.

Also, on the illuminated mangnifier, try before you buy. We have one at work that I believe wasn't cheap, but its not very useful.

I recommend shelling out the money for a real stereomicroscope with a boom stand.

If you really don't have the money for that, I reccommend an Optivisor.
Those lighted magnifiers and big and clunky and always seem to be in the way of your hands.

If you're really broke or think someone is going to steal them, buy a set of cheap eye loupes.

No, H2 has an unbelieveably low volumetric enrgy density - 1kg H2 - 11,200 l gas at STP, IIRC. Lets say your tank can take 100 atmospheres ~= 1400 psig. That's still 112 l/kg . Gasoline, by contrast is 1.26 l/kg Googling, I find 150bar H2 = 405 Wh/l , whie diesel = 10942 Wh/l. Even if you liquify the H2, you only get 2600Wh/l. While diesel gets 13762 Wh/kg and gas 12,200 Wh/kg, H2 gives 39000 Wh/kg (uncontained). All of the weight advantage and then some is lost when the extra weight of the containment is added. Also, H2 leaks like crazy no matter what you put it in. The best storage may be hydrides - lithium can absorb a surprising amount of hydrogen.

The other problem is that H2 is not an energy source, but merely an energy storage method, and a very inefficient one at that. H2 is produced on an industrial scale by cracking hydrocarbons, generally from fossil fuels.

That's because diesel has more energy per gallon than gasoline. It also produces more carbon-dioxide per gallon.

While diesel does have a slighly higher engery density it's not enough to explain the 30% higher efficency of diesel engines. Diesel engines are just more efficent than gasoline engines.

Yes, it's sad to see a symbolic engineering marvel like the EV1 go, but all this does is shift the pollution elsewhere. Not to mention not being very practical at all.

See here for energy densities of various materials.

Could there be a reason that gasoline is the energy storage mechanism of choice for vehicles?

Why not concentrate on GM's current hybrid timeline, or on vehicles that are actually useful and that normal people might buy, like GM's 2007 GMT-900 platform (Tahoe/Suburban/Yukon/Yukon XL/Escalade) which will have a strong hybrid option, with a standard 5.7L Vortec V8, but with Displacement on Demand, disabling 2 or 4 cylinders as conditions permit, and featuring two 30kW electric motors housed in the standard Hydramatic transmission case that doesn't require major resigns and retooling entire truck production lines for use, but still yielding up to a 40% mileage improvement, instead of making ugly little cars on which it is apparently mandatory to have the rear wheelwells covered like hearses?

Scam - See: http://xtronics.com/reference/energy_density.htm

That bit of the article is completely wrong. H2 has a gravimetric energy density 3 times that of gasoline. The problem is that even in liquid form, it's still only 1/10th as dense (mass/volume) as gasoline, so it has a net volumetric energy density of about a third of gasoline. Source: http://xtronics.com/reference/energy_density.htm

The twin technological Holy Grails of H2 energy economy: H2 storage density on par with gasoline and high-efficiency production from water. And for people to stop thinking "Hindenberg!" anytime someone mentions H2.

Aging is a concern with most lithium-ion batteries and many manufacturers remain silent about this issue. Some capacity deterioration is noticeable after one year, whether the battery is in use or not. The battery frequently fails after two or three years. It should be noted that other chemistries also have age-related degenerative effects. This is especially true for nickel-metal-hydride if exposed to high ambient temperatures.

Source: http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone-5.htm

Properly cared for, the above GM LS6 engine and transmission might be expected to live for 200,000 miles with little more than oil changes, clutch replacements, and common tuneups. Given that the average American drives around 30,000 miles per year, that gives it an expected lifetime of almost seven years. Li-Ion packs would have to be replaced every two years at the most based on current battery technology. Li-Ion is fantastically expensive compared to run-of-the-mill lead-acid batteries or even NiCad or NiMH batteries. There's a reason GM went with lead-acid for the EV1, namely cheaper batteries and (supposedly) longer lifetimes.

I think it's safe to say that your ar

Like the fact that you burn more oil to create an equivianent amount of ethanol from corn.

The story you cite does not show this.

An acre of U.S. corn yields about 7,110 pounds of corn for processing into 328 gallons of ethanol. But planting, growing and harvesting that much corn requires about 140 gallons of fossil fuels and costs $347 per acre, according to Pimentel's analysis. Thus, even before corn is converted to ethanol, the feedstock costs $1.05 per gallon of ethanol.

Your (and the article's) point may be valid, but 328 gallons is still more than 140 gallons. (the difference in energy density doesn't quite make up the difference (9.7 kwh/l for gasoline, 6.1 kwh/l for ethanol)

I'm not an expert on this issue, but I found more information here, and a study with results showing that ethanol production does indeed produce more energy than we put into it can be found here.

-jim

You cannot write to ROM. ROM is Read Only Memory. It is manufactured with fixed contents, much like CD-ROMs. You're confusing ROM, PROM, EPROM etc.

Read this for more info!

</pedantic>

unless of course you put the old chip back in before you take it to the dealer. If you are interested in EFI ECU hacking there is some good information and links at: http://xtronics.com/memory/efi_ecu_faq.htm

Amen! I'd like to kick the ass of whoever thought of the nonstandard power supply pinout on Dell and other big cheapass OEMs. Especially when it looks just like a real ATX connector.

Anyway, to continue this offtopic post, here's what I did last time I needed to replace a motherboard in a big-name OEM computer -- a Compaq. Unplug the power supply from everything. Use the ATX power pinout as a reference and find pin 14. It's usually the green wire, but don't trust the colors. Stick one end of a straightened paperclip into pin 14, and stick the other end into any of the ground pins. Now plug in the power supply, make sure the switch on the back is turned on if it has one, and use a multimeter to see if it's standard ATX or some proprietary crap. Surprisingly, my friend's Compaq had a power supply and mobo with a standard ATX pinout. If you find yourself with a nonstandard power supply, either rewire it or get a new one. And don't ever expect tech support from the OEM again.

why not recharge the batteries via-induction while your in the pits?

They were (supposedly) using standard lead-acid car batteries. If you try to fast-charge them, they start to boil.

Ockham's Razor implies that this is just a regular scam-job, the car was run until the batteries were nearing the dipping point. (voltage doesn't drop linearely with the discharge of the battery, a top charged car battery with no load shows ~13V while a battery that is getting close to empty is ~10V)

Then they faked a blown bearing.