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Lexus Creates a Hoverboard
walterbyrd writes: Lexus has built a functional prototype of a hoverboard that hovers several centimeters off the ground. The "Slide" is for demonstration purposes only and works through magnetic levitation created by superconductors, a spokesperson says. USA Today reports: "As cool as that sounds, there are some major limitations. Since it operates magnetically, it only can hover over a steel surface. And it also only works as long as the liquid nitrogen holds out."
Not very impressive.
Maglev with superconductors and liquid nitrogen is not very impressive?
Sorry, I disagree.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
no power, still doesn't work over water. lame.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Temba ... his arms wide ... ... the steeliness of the floaty-surface inadequately achieves the hoverageness of the levitationality because of ... why?
Anybody can snark, enlighten us.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
October 21st is getting closer.
You bojo! It doesn't work on water, unless you've got power!
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
The problem with hovercrafts is that they tend to get full of eels.
Circumcision is child abuse.
What's on the tele then?
Bruce Perens.
You are a few decades off. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Circumcision is child abuse.
Ok, it's a hoverboard - in the narrow sense of it being a board and it hovers.
One would expect it to to still hover with 80kg of person standing on it. Does it do that? A cursory look shows me no pictures of this.
Oh give it a rest. Do you think the first rockets carried satellites into space? Do you think the first airplane flew across the country? New tech doesn't start out as the end-all-be-all, it starts out as a baby step and people with higher aspirations improve upon it until it's something you never thought possible. Your attitude of "It's useless because it doesn't do what I imagined" is just ridiculous.
Yes, it's a thing that hovers, but implicit in the term "hoverboard" specifically is a functionality like a skateBOARD or a surfBOARD, ie someone can ride it. None of the videos I've seen shows it supporting any weight but itself (nor even actually moving), which is hardly more impressive than a levitating magnet in a lab.
Seriously, has the media lost even the slightest trace of criticality to their reporting? We just cheerfully repeat whatever some marketing wonk has told us as fact?
-Styopa
Oh give it a rest. Do you think the first rockets carried satellites into space? Do you think the first airplane flew across the country? New tech doesn't start out as the end-all-be-all, it starts out as a baby step and people with higher aspirations improve upon it until it's something you never thought possible. Your attitude of "It's useless because it doesn't do what I imagined" is just ridiculous.
It's not useless because "it doesn't do what I imagined", it's useless because it's been done a thousand times by different groups of people since the 90s. The idea and application is not even remotely new. And worse, it's subject to the same limitations that all the other projects are -- they need something metal to hover over.
I would say as well -- just because it hovers, doesn't mean it has any sort of load-bearing capacity at all. And that's the whole endgame of getting something like this to hover in the first place.