The autoguide link made me laugh when I read this line: "Tesla, a company that’s exempt from the CARB mandate, "
It might be exempt, but even if Tesla was selling as many cars in California as GM, it wouldn't give a hoot about CARB mandates because it doesn't produce ANY gasoline vehicles. It's sole concern would be selling enough credits to the other companies.
and restrict how much Fiat can mark up the price of the electric version.
Citation please? I googled some, didn't see any such restriction. I think it's more that if Fiat marks it up too much they can't sell it. As is it sounds like it's a touch underpriced(at a minimum) seeing as how it flies off dealer lots.
I get that there are good intentions behind the regulation, but I don't think this is the way to do it. If California wants to get the ball rolling on green energy and reduce smog then they should invest more into hydrogen fill stations, push bivalent hydrogen cars, and build more trains.
You do realize that the two primary ways to produce hydrogen? 1. Natural gas cracking, in which case it's more energy efficient to burn the NG directly in the vehicle. 2. Electrolysis, in which case you're generally lucky to hit 50%, while batteries are closer to 90%, and you're still over 80% when you figure in power line losses
In addition: 3. Either you're burning the hydrogen in an internal combustion engine, which is incredibly inefficient, or you're using a fuel cell, which is incredibly expensive(and not more efficient at this point than LiIon batteries) 4. Especially with an IC engine you have a hard time getting enough hydrogen into a vehicle to give it gasoline range( >300 miles), since while hydrogen has the most energy by mass, it has one of the lower energies by density until you get into the higher pressures, at which point your pressure vessel masses almost as much as the batteries.
There is no systematic method to determine the accuracy of a criminal conviction; if there were, these errors would not occur in the first place.
The high rate of exoneration among death-sentenced defendants appears to be driven by the threat of execution
resentenced to life imprisonment, after which the likelihood of exoneration drops sharply
Sounds like you're more likely to 'make it out alive' if you're sentenced to death than life in prison....
Conclusion: The rate at which innocents are convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole is most logically higher than those who are convicted and sentenced to death. The rate for those who are sentenced to prison for lesser crimes than murder are likely even higher.
Why do they rely on some hard to obtain or complicated mixture when it seems like there are very cheap and not very uncomfortable ways to do such a thing?
Actual testimony from some DP supporters, including legislaters, is that it'd be too good of a death for them. They actually WANT it to be more painful. Then you have the anti-DP types who want the DP to be as messy/painful as possible so they're more likely to be able to win a ban on it.
Personally, I'm all for it, though it wasn't until recently that I found out about the bag option as opposed to building an air-tight room for them. Still think the room might be a good idea - larger volume of air to swap, but no need to restrain the prisoner once inside the room. The person 'throwing the switch' doesn't even have to see the prisoner.
That being said, who is eliminating the death penalty going to save money?
The cost of an actual execution is nothing. The costs for death penalty is focused on court costs, which is part of why if I'm charged when actually innocent I'd almost rather have a death penalty case - I think that the extra attention means that the truth is more likely to come out. Second is that holding a prisoner on death row tends to cost twice as much per year. So 20-30 years on death row equates to 40-60 years in the general population* AND you have drastically increased court costs, easily adding up to more than enough to keep the prisoner for life.
*Not always true/possible. Some LIP convicts will cost more as well due to special handling requirements** **Just because the average Life in prison sentence is cheaper than the average execution sentence, doesn't mean exceptions wouldn't exist. An 18 year old violent psychopath might be so dangerous he has to stay in solitary at all times anyways and be young enough to have lots of time in prison for costs to add up.
So... best to join the rest of the civilized countries in the world and abolish the death penalty.
I disagree, but I'd only keep the death penalty around as a 'Joker clause'. IE an individual that is, for whatever reason, so dangerous that he's more likely than not to cause more innocent death if he lives. My general standard for this is 'more than 3 killed or deliberate torture in addition to murder'.
That being said, my support for the DP amounts to a 'mad dog' clause. At which point it's about protecting society and doing the humane thing for the dog. No need to drag it out, no need for it to be painful.
Some flavor of nitrogen/helium/carbon monoxide asphixiation is probably the easiest way to go.
Not entirely. The problem you have with this is that the USA was still substantially more violent/murdering even before Europe eliminated the death penalty, guns, and all that.
There were some 'experiments' back in the day with asking the condemned to blink certain codes after their head was removed. Results were inconclusive.
I still think that most executed prisoners have an easier death, pain wise, than normal people, who generally die of a painful heart attack, long cancer, illness, etc...
My vote's for nitrogen asphixiation. 1. No need for injections. Just give them some anti-anxiety medication to swallow. 2. No need for drugs obtained from secret sources in order to protect supply lines. Any welding supply store should do. Heck, they can purchase a machine to produce the necesssary nitrogen, or even carbon monoxide. I'd suggest a couple canisters just to 'keep it simple'. 3. Still doesn't mess up the body. 4. All evidence is that it's a fast, painless, and peaceful death.
No, I covered that. Aluminum is brittle: it flexes until it bends and quickly breaks, and it handles cycling by weakening until it breaks.
I think we're considering different scales of difference here. Depending on how you alloy and shape it you can play around with it's characteristics quite a bit, which I view as different but you don't. You even mention a lot of it yourself. For some reason you don't consider them different while I do.
As for the lectures on Aluminum, I'm not sure why you're writing them. I know the general properties of Aluminum. By the way, a mostly steel airplane would suck - while it could theoretically last forever it'd be too heavy to be useful.
Steel is entirely different, and can carry carbide or titanium or chromium or molybdenum, and so steel and its alloys have their own properties which can be more or less pronounced.
And you can mix Aluminum with copper, magnesium, manganese, silicon, zinc, and scandium to do some of the same.
I'm still not sure why you responded to my post about carbon fiber with a rant about Aluminum.
Claiming that aluminum is not brittle because it's used on airplanes is silly.
It would be, but this statement is attacking a strawman, since none of us claimed it. For that matter, I suggest rereading my post for any mention of Aluminum. You won't find any. I addressed Carbon Fiber. SuperBannana covered Aluminum, but your post agrees with him - summarized as various materials can be engineered to perform various roles, empasizing or minimizing various characteristics within limits.
As for Aluminum flexing too, I agree, I see it frequently. The difference is one of magnitude. Aluminum wings will fail at far lower stress levels and certainly less bend than CF wings. You also have the problem that Aluminum is known to fatigue far quicker even with less flex than steel, much less CF.
Steel is mostly good because it's cheap and has one of the more forgiving failure modes when overstressed.
The aluminum used on airplanes isn't different; it's a grade of aluminum suitable for planes, with some of aluminum's weaknesses more pronounced and some less.
Contradicting yourself here. Airplane aluminum IS different than what you'll find in something like a Soda Can. The alloy will be different, as well as treatment and forming techniques.
Right, that's the first thing I thought of. This is an incredibly stupid way to stop a high speed vehicle. They're going to have to replace those things every run.
Not that big of an issue for a 'car' that's essentially a rocket engine designed to break the land speed record.
Hopefully they have a backup chute in case these silly brakes fail.
Actually, that's being deployed before the brakes. The article mentions air brakes and parachutes. Presumably the stop sequence will be air brakes first, then parachute, then wheel brakes that they're searching for a suitable solution for now, which per the article only start when it's slowed to 160mph.
Have you seen the video of the stress test for the carbon fiber wings? They might be very brittle - they shatter amazingly when they finally break, but they're also very flexible, taking an amazing(for me at least) amount of force and distance of flex before finally snapping.
In this case though they're looking at resistance to heat/friction, so the types of damage resistance necessary is different.
Holy crap! I want to be a cop that gets paid $100k a year when including benefits!!!
Average cop salary is roughly $50k/year. For most salary positions you apply a 1.5-2.5 multiplier on the salary to get how much the employee actually costs, which includes benefits and employer expenses such as pension, education, health care, liability insurance, taxes, the cost of providing their work space, etc...
That's what AvitarX was talking about. Salary: $50k Medical/Workers Comp: $10k WAG Liability(you shot WHO?): $10k Vehicle: $10k ($42k/5 years for car, rest fuel) Training: $2k Station space: $4k Taxes(unemployment, FICA): $5k Retirement/Pension: $5k etc...
Let's see: Collector cars: As time goes on they'll be seen less and less. Even today most of the really antique ones(Model T's, Stanley Steamers, and such) are normally trailered on the long distance routes. Won't be able to afford: As time goes on, how long until it's they can't afford to NOT have an automatic car in order to enjoy the insurance cut? Paranoid belief: They'd eventually get tickets for this, or get to enjoy higher insurance premiums due to the higher accident risk Enjoy driving/in control: Enjoy your higher insurance costs, and I figure this would drop off as the newer generation finds driving themselves annoying(they'd rather be on their tablet or something), since they didn't grow up driving. I figure they'd be more likely to do their own driving on a track.
In the end, at some point the number of human-driven cars would drop to 'irrelevant'.
The way I read it, is its not an enforcement fee for a car that doesn't need enforcement. Its a $1000 tax on (I think) all cars to support local police municipal revenues so they can continue to pursue criminals where there isn't a net payoff at the end... like nearly all of them.
You should also remember that police don't just chase criminals - they're often first responders in cases of accident or emergency. Though that might be required less as more and more cars automatically signal emergencies and self-driving cars cause accident rates to plummet(not all the way to zero, but close).
Though if the average cop writes $300k of tickets a year, I have to wonder if they're actually profitable as is. A normal employee making ~$50k actually costs roughly $100k when you factor in other expenses, and that's without figuring in that police require more training than average, a vehicle office costs a lot more than a standard office(which many police have as well), the benefits packages are more extensive due to the risk/threat, etc...
Then you have to figure in the judges, clerks, accountants, and other parties that all put labor into processing the fines. It's not a high margin activity in most cases.
I'm going to go with they're going to have to find funding elsewhere as you say. I actually support this - hearing on the radio how much they screw with low level criminals to make them pay for various things disturbs me.
4,000 or so people in the US die every year because they're accidentally shot by children, ranging from toddlers to pre-teens.
Do you happen to have a citation on this? Most studies like this tend to do things like include 19 year olds as 'children' and include deliberate shootings by gang members.
Don't forget that you'd currently have to weed out any shootings by children who happened to get ahold of an officer's gun, normally a parent's. Thus far ALL law and military are completely exempt from any proposed rules requiring smart guns.
Probably not, given that there are only about 230 justifiable homicides a year,
Most justifiable shootings don't result in a fatality.
My kid shooting yours would require him obtaining the key & combination for my safe.
I don't think that a.22 is going to satisfy the courts, it being too light of a round for common self-defense or other tasks, but it's an actual problem. I personally don't have any problem with smart gun tech as long as it's optional.
But it's a HUGE expense for not much gain - the vast majority of shootings are either by a user that would be authorized, or by a criminal having had possession of the firearm for long enough to bypass or reprogram any such system.
It might actually be more efficient that way since it costs money AND time to charge (slows commuters down too). If you don't charge you won't need a lot of the infrastructure and staff for handling, reconciling and enforcing payment. Perhaps someone can work out the costs of "charging" and the amount of net income it brings to the city.
Indeed. In addition, in cases like subway systems, the marginal cost per rider is tiny. Have it be a bit like the trams in airports - free, quick, and easy to use. It becomes a reason for people to live there. The 'free' part encourages people to use it, which means that businesses close to stops should love it.
Those are both true, it just seems that (in my admittedly unsystematic sample) underground sites also tend to rot pretty quickly
Indeed. Ever heard about what happens when the 'time capsule' isn't sealed quite right? This car wasn't in the greatest shape, and it's one of the better attempts.
Going underground massively increases expenses and potential troubles.
A very secure method of storage would be to place the waste in appropriate sealed containers that are designed to not corrode from the contents and provide sufficient shielding to be safe, then place them in a secure holding facility/warehouse. If the warehouse starts leaking and it's not worth fixing, move the contents to another warehouse.
That way the containers are easy to reach and move as necessary, are unlikely to be crushed, and the shelter is relatively cheap and easy to replace.
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The autoguide link made me laugh when I read this line: "Tesla, a company that’s exempt from the CARB mandate, "
It might be exempt, but even if Tesla was selling as many cars in California as GM, it wouldn't give a hoot about CARB mandates because it doesn't produce ANY gasoline vehicles. It's sole concern would be selling enough credits to the other companies.
and restrict how much Fiat can mark up the price of the electric version.
Citation please? I googled some, didn't see any such restriction. I think it's more that if Fiat marks it up too much they can't sell it. As is it sounds like it's a touch underpriced(at a minimum) seeing as how it flies off dealer lots.
I get that there are good intentions behind the regulation, but I don't think this is the way to do it. If California wants to get the ball rolling on green energy and reduce smog then they should invest more into hydrogen fill stations, push bivalent hydrogen cars, and build more trains.
You do realize that the two primary ways to produce hydrogen?
1. Natural gas cracking, in which case it's more energy efficient to burn the NG directly in the vehicle.
2. Electrolysis, in which case you're generally lucky to hit 50%, while batteries are closer to 90%, and you're still over 80% when you figure in power line losses
In addition:
3. Either you're burning the hydrogen in an internal combustion engine, which is incredibly inefficient, or you're using a fuel cell, which is incredibly expensive(and not more efficient at this point than LiIon batteries)
4. Especially with an IC engine you have a hard time getting enough hydrogen into a vehicle to give it gasoline range( >300 miles), since while hydrogen has the most energy by mass, it has one of the lower energies by density until you get into the higher pressures, at which point your pressure vessel masses almost as much as the batteries.
Except, you know, for the part where you're substantially less likely to be exonerated if you're only sentenced to life in prison.
I don't?
You have to understand that I consider life in prison about equivalent to death.
You know what scares me about that study?
There is no systematic method to determine the accuracy of a criminal conviction; if there were, these errors would not occur in the first place.
The high rate of exoneration among death-sentenced defendants appears to be driven by the threat of execution
resentenced to life imprisonment, after which the likelihood of exoneration drops sharply
Sounds like you're more likely to 'make it out alive' if you're sentenced to death than life in prison....
Conclusion: The rate at which innocents are convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole is most logically higher than those who are convicted and sentenced to death. The rate for those who are sentenced to prison for lesser crimes than murder are likely even higher.
Does not make me happy.
Why do they rely on some hard to obtain or complicated mixture when it seems like there are very cheap and not very uncomfortable ways to do such a thing?
Actual testimony from some DP supporters, including legislaters, is that it'd be too good of a death for them. They actually WANT it to be more painful. Then you have the anti-DP types who want the DP to be as messy/painful as possible so they're more likely to be able to win a ban on it.
Personally, I'm all for it, though it wasn't until recently that I found out about the bag option as opposed to building an air-tight room for them. Still think the room might be a good idea - larger volume of air to swap, but no need to restrain the prisoner once inside the room. The person 'throwing the switch' doesn't even have to see the prisoner.
That being said, who is eliminating the death penalty going to save money?
The cost of an actual execution is nothing. The costs for death penalty is focused on court costs, which is part of why if I'm charged when actually innocent I'd almost rather have a death penalty case - I think that the extra attention means that the truth is more likely to come out. Second is that holding a prisoner on death row tends to cost twice as much per year. So 20-30 years on death row equates to 40-60 years in the general population* AND you have drastically increased court costs, easily adding up to more than enough to keep the prisoner for life.
*Not always true/possible. Some LIP convicts will cost more as well due to special handling requirements**
**Just because the average Life in prison sentence is cheaper than the average execution sentence, doesn't mean exceptions wouldn't exist. An 18 year old violent psychopath might be so dangerous he has to stay in solitary at all times anyways and be young enough to have lots of time in prison for costs to add up.
So... best to join the rest of the civilized countries in the world and abolish the death penalty.
I disagree, but I'd only keep the death penalty around as a 'Joker clause'. IE an individual that is, for whatever reason, so dangerous that he's more likely than not to cause more innocent death if he lives. My general standard for this is 'more than 3 killed or deliberate torture in addition to murder'.
That being said, my support for the DP amounts to a 'mad dog' clause. At which point it's about protecting society and doing the humane thing for the dog. No need to drag it out, no need for it to be painful.
Some flavor of nitrogen/helium/carbon monoxide asphixiation is probably the easiest way to go.
Europe vs. US proves that theory is bollocks.
Not entirely. The problem you have with this is that the USA was still substantially more violent/murdering even before Europe eliminated the death penalty, guns, and all that.
Now, a better question is why are we still killing people when at least 4% of ppl killed are verifiable innocent?
Do you happen to have a citation on this?
There were some 'experiments' back in the day with asking the condemned to blink certain codes after their head was removed. Results were inconclusive.
I still think that most executed prisoners have an easier death, pain wise, than normal people, who generally die of a painful heart attack, long cancer, illness, etc...
My vote's for nitrogen asphixiation.
1. No need for injections. Just give them some anti-anxiety medication to swallow.
2. No need for drugs obtained from secret sources in order to protect supply lines. Any welding supply store should do. Heck, they can purchase a machine to produce the necesssary nitrogen, or even carbon monoxide. I'd suggest a couple canisters just to 'keep it simple'.
3. Still doesn't mess up the body.
4. All evidence is that it's a fast, painless, and peaceful death.
No, I covered that. Aluminum is brittle: it flexes until it bends and quickly breaks, and it handles cycling by weakening until it breaks.
I think we're considering different scales of difference here. Depending on how you alloy and shape it you can play around with it's characteristics quite a bit, which I view as different but you don't. You even mention a lot of it yourself. For some reason you don't consider them different while I do.
As for the lectures on Aluminum, I'm not sure why you're writing them. I know the general properties of Aluminum. By the way, a mostly steel airplane would suck - while it could theoretically last forever it'd be too heavy to be useful.
Steel is entirely different, and can carry carbide or titanium or chromium or molybdenum, and so steel and its alloys have their own properties which can be more or less pronounced.
And you can mix Aluminum with copper, magnesium, manganese, silicon, zinc, and scandium to do some of the same.
I'm still not sure why you responded to my post about carbon fiber with a rant about Aluminum.
Claiming that aluminum is not brittle because it's used on airplanes is silly.
It would be, but this statement is attacking a strawman, since none of us claimed it. For that matter, I suggest rereading my post for any mention of Aluminum. You won't find any. I addressed Carbon Fiber. SuperBannana covered Aluminum, but your post agrees with him - summarized as various materials can be engineered to perform various roles, empasizing or minimizing various characteristics within limits.
As for Aluminum flexing too, I agree, I see it frequently. The difference is one of magnitude. Aluminum wings will fail at far lower stress levels and certainly less bend than CF wings. You also have the problem that Aluminum is known to fatigue far quicker even with less flex than steel, much less CF.
Steel is mostly good because it's cheap and has one of the more forgiving failure modes when overstressed.
The aluminum used on airplanes isn't different; it's a grade of aluminum suitable for planes, with some of aluminum's weaknesses more pronounced and some less.
Contradicting yourself here. Airplane aluminum IS different than what you'll find in something like a Soda Can. The alloy will be different, as well as treatment and forming techniques.
Right, that's the first thing I thought of. This is an incredibly stupid way to stop a high speed vehicle. They're going to have to replace those things every run.
Not that big of an issue for a 'car' that's essentially a rocket engine designed to break the land speed record.
Hopefully they have a backup chute in case these silly brakes fail.
Actually, that's being deployed before the brakes. The article mentions air brakes and parachutes. Presumably the stop sequence will be air brakes first, then parachute, then wheel brakes that they're searching for a suitable solution for now, which per the article only start when it's slowed to 160mph.
Have you seen the video of the stress test for the carbon fiber wings? They might be very brittle - they shatter amazingly when they finally break, but they're also very flexible, taking an amazing(for me at least) amount of force and distance of flex before finally snapping.
In this case though they're looking at resistance to heat/friction, so the types of damage resistance necessary is different.
It's right in the article - the brakes are for below 160mph, before that it'll be air brakes and parachutes.
The SR-71 Blackbird has one of the highest take off and landing speeds going. Around 200 KEAS, or 230mph.
Passenger jets are 120-150 mph.
Unless you're flying high performance military aircraft 'under 200mph' is a good bet.
Holy crap! I want to be a cop that gets paid $100k a year when including benefits!!!
Average cop salary is roughly $50k/year. For most salary positions you apply a 1.5-2.5 multiplier on the salary to get how much the employee actually costs, which includes benefits and employer expenses such as pension, education, health care, liability insurance, taxes, the cost of providing their work space, etc...
That's what AvitarX was talking about.
Salary: $50k
Medical/Workers Comp: $10k WAG
Liability(you shot WHO?): $10k
Vehicle: $10k ($42k/5 years for car, rest fuel)
Training: $2k
Station space: $4k
Taxes(unemployment, FICA): $5k
Retirement/Pension: $5k
etc...
Let's see:
Collector cars: As time goes on they'll be seen less and less. Even today most of the really antique ones(Model T's, Stanley Steamers, and such) are normally trailered on the long distance routes.
Won't be able to afford: As time goes on, how long until it's they can't afford to NOT have an automatic car in order to enjoy the insurance cut?
Paranoid belief: They'd eventually get tickets for this, or get to enjoy higher insurance premiums due to the higher accident risk
Enjoy driving/in control: Enjoy your higher insurance costs, and I figure this would drop off as the newer generation finds driving themselves annoying(they'd rather be on their tablet or something), since they didn't grow up driving. I figure they'd be more likely to do their own driving on a track.
In the end, at some point the number of human-driven cars would drop to 'irrelevant'.
The way I read it, is its not an enforcement fee for a car that doesn't need enforcement. Its a $1000 tax on (I think) all cars to support local police municipal revenues so they can continue to pursue criminals where there isn't a net payoff at the end... like nearly all of them.
You should also remember that police don't just chase criminals - they're often first responders in cases of accident or emergency. Though that might be required less as more and more cars automatically signal emergencies and self-driving cars cause accident rates to plummet(not all the way to zero, but close).
Though if the average cop writes $300k of tickets a year, I have to wonder if they're actually profitable as is. A normal employee making ~$50k actually costs roughly $100k when you factor in other expenses, and that's without figuring in that police require more training than average, a vehicle office costs a lot more than a standard office(which many police have as well), the benefits packages are more extensive due to the risk/threat, etc...
Then you have to figure in the judges, clerks, accountants, and other parties that all put labor into processing the fines. It's not a high margin activity in most cases.
I'm going to go with they're going to have to find funding elsewhere as you say. I actually support this - hearing on the radio how much they screw with low level criminals to make them pay for various things disturbs me.
4,000 or so people in the US die every year because they're accidentally shot by children, ranging from toddlers to pre-teens.
Do you happen to have a citation on this? Most studies like this tend to do things like include 19 year olds as 'children' and include deliberate shootings by gang members.
Don't forget that you'd currently have to weed out any shootings by children who happened to get ahold of an officer's gun, normally a parent's. Thus far ALL law and military are completely exempt from any proposed rules requiring smart guns.
Probably not, given that there are only about 230 justifiable homicides a year,
Most justifiable shootings don't result in a fatality.
My kid shooting yours would require him obtaining the key & combination for my safe.
However, the argument for others goes that if stores begin selling smart guns, then legislators will draft laws requiring the technology."
You're too late subby, at least in the case of New Jersey it's already law.
And they've already been sued over NOT enforcing it.
I don't think that a .22 is going to satisfy the courts, it being too light of a round for common self-defense or other tasks, but it's an actual problem. I personally don't have any problem with smart gun tech as long as it's optional.
But it's a HUGE expense for not much gain - the vast majority of shootings are either by a user that would be authorized, or by a criminal having had possession of the firearm for long enough to bypass or reprogram any such system.
It might actually be more efficient that way since it costs money AND time to charge (slows commuters down too). If you don't charge you won't need a lot of the infrastructure and staff for handling, reconciling and enforcing payment. Perhaps someone can work out the costs of "charging" and the amount of net income it brings to the city.
Indeed. In addition, in cases like subway systems, the marginal cost per rider is tiny. Have it be a bit like the trams in airports - free, quick, and easy to use. It becomes a reason for people to live there. The 'free' part encourages people to use it, which means that businesses close to stops should love it.
Those are both true, it just seems that (in my admittedly unsystematic sample) underground sites also tend to rot pretty quickly
Indeed. Ever heard about what happens when the 'time capsule' isn't sealed quite right?
This car wasn't in the greatest shape, and it's one of the better attempts.
Going underground massively increases expenses and potential troubles.
A very secure method of storage would be to place the waste in appropriate sealed containers that are designed to not corrode from the contents and provide sufficient shielding to be safe, then place them in a secure holding facility/warehouse. If the warehouse starts leaking and it's not worth fixing, move the contents to another warehouse.
That way the containers are easy to reach and move as necessary, are unlikely to be crushed, and the shelter is relatively cheap and easy to replace.