Keep in mind that I actually support stuff like this, ultimately wishing
I think the problem is that people are scared that the 'wealthy' will get even more ahead, and their own children left in the dust. Or they're scared of a scenario out of Star Trek - the Eugenics wars.
Personally, I want genetic modification to eliminate various obvious genetic disorders - breast cancer genes, diabetes, etc... However, we should not be changing genes until it's demonstrated that the gene we're fixing is actually a serious defect that is counter-survival. Assuming we approve a new fix once a year, it'd be centuries before we're ready to stretch beyond that.
Once we've fixed the easy things, only then should we really start worrying about improving 'top line' humans - increasing intelligence, etc... And that should be addressed in a serious, gradual fashion.
The reason is that the nucleus of a cell is relatively huge. Mitochondria are 'almost' independent living cells wholly contained within our cells, and each has it's own DNA. But they're small compared to the nucleus.
Roughly speaking, it'd be like the difference between removing the pit of a cherry vs trying to remove every seed out of a watermelon the size of a cherry.
Actually the real reason so few died is because there were dozens of medics standing by at the end of the race course anyways.
Combination of factors. I read that the way the bombs burst was they sent out a nearly horizontal spray of shrapnel - mostly taking out legs. Yes, fast medical triage is a huge factor as blood loss is the quickest killer in such scenarios, which is why I have so much military training on putting on tourniquets. But if it had been 4' higher it would have been hitting chests and necks far more, which translates into fewer wounded(a chest is a bigger obstacle than legs), but more deaths.:(
All computers that have classified information should not have any non/de-classified information on them. Any classified machine that has any non-classified information shall deem to have been breached and an inquiry started as improper access was achieved.
Huh, whah? Look, things like the Operating system and files therin are unclassified. Multiple unclassified documents can add up to classified. It's not just practical to try to keep all unclassified off of classified systems. Some organizations do almost all of their work, classified or not, on classified systems because it's easier/safer than swapping between. The real danger is when you're trying to transfer data between the two systems, and going high(unclass->class) is far safer than the opposite.
It's 'easy' for somebody to put classified information on a unclass machine, but it's also 'not hard' to not do it.
I would think one first degree murder would be sufficient, or just all three. These mega-cases otherwise cost tens of millions and take years.
Personally, my rule for the DP is '3 or more murdered, or deliberate torture in addition to murder'. So both the Aurora shooter and Boston Bomber qualify, but given the nature of the incidents the marginal cost for proving 3 murders as opposed to 1 is relatively tiny. Where it would really be harder would be for a serial killer where the incidents are truly separate, perhaps spaced over years.
But then again, if I'm to be perfectly honest, once you have a 'full up' conviction on one murder, I'm going to have to admit that my standards for the other 2 murders to qualify drop down to more civil court standards. 'Preponderance of the evidence' as opposed to 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. IE they catch a serial killer, find 1 body in the basement being dismembered, and digging up the basement and backyard turns up 20 more skeletons with the same sort of tool marks as on the body in the basement. That *might* not be enough to convict him of 20 more murders, but I would consider it enough(closer look aside) to say that yeah, he's probably killed a lot more people than the 1 in the basement, and sentence him to death.
I'm surprised the Aurora shooter isn't being remanded somewhere else so he can get a 'fair trial'.
The death penalty is anything but cheap, if you factor in the huge fixed costs of actually having one, not to mention endless chains of appeals. Ditto, supermax.
You bring up a good point here. Most of the studies I've seen that say the death penalty is more expensive than LiP assume 'average prisoner cost'. Outside of Texas at least, DP cases tend to be limited to the 'worst of the worst', meaning that they aren't going to have 'average prisoner cost'. Whether in Death Row or Supermax, they're going to be more costly to maintain.
Then there's end of life expenses. What happens when the prisoner hits 65 and needs some operation costing hundreds of thousands and/or continuous drugs costing thousands a year(like my mom, and she's not that old yet).
Finally, while I support having a death penalty, I also want it to be rare. My 'standard' is that death penalty trials should be around 1% of murder trials. Rare enough that a prosecutor might be lead on ONE of them a career. That allows you to make an argument that financial cost isn't the point, or that there are special circumstances. Call it the "Joker Clause" if you will. It's when you have an individual that's so dangerous that killing him is the safer alternative. If you're not doing that many, you can afford to streamline the process and only go for the DP when there's plenty of evidence.
The issue wasn't about the items, but about the treaty or punishment or whatever not being followed.
My view on the reasons for the 2nd Iraq war. 1. Bush wanting to finish what his father started. 2. Saddam was *constantly* violating the terms of the cease fire. Violating no-fly zones, hiding things, moving troops where he wasn't supposed to, etc... I deployed to Kuwait during that period, we were dropping bombs constantly to enforce the rules. 3. An honest desire to 'clean up' the mess of the past; not create another NK situation. The idea(that didn't pan out nearly as well as hoped) was to lance the problem so we don't need military bases sitting around the area 50 years later. 4. Possible WMDs. And yes, I count WMD as 'Nuclear, biological, Chemical'. Or if you insist on the newer termology: "Chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear". On the world stage, countries don't typically worry about other countries having conventional explosives - have all the 500-2000 pound bombs, mortar and artillery shells, and everything else you want. They worry about WMD. A conventional bomb built into a pressure cooker shouldn't be considered a WMD because it dilutes the term.
Isn't he up for the death penalty? While I don't object to the prosecution pushing every charge they think they have a chance to make stick in this case, you're typically not allowed to plead guilty to something with the DP.
Unless they're willing to let him plea down to only life in prison w/o parole.
I have to disagree on the 'kill more people' part. If the bomb had been placed slightly differently, say on a table, it would have killed far more people; we got EXTREMELY lucky that it killed as few as it did.
On average, bombings not targeted at a specific individual(IE excluding things like letter bombs) kill more people per incident than shootings do.
Of course, if you're looking to kill the most people, historically arson is your best bet.
The problem is that government rules aren't really set up to handle major leaks like this. The whole sanitization process assumes that the information is still on government controlled computers handled by people with some level of clearance, even though they don't have 'need to know'. So you tell them to shut up about it, and it normally works because a random piece of classified material isn't normally worth all that much.
There are supposed to be processes in place to, when possible, 'neither confirm nor deny; then ignore', but the problem here is that the source is credible and the NSA failed to discredit him(rightly or wrongly). So now it's confirmed. One of the rules for classifying information is that it can't be public; available on free news sites counts as 'public', but the way the rules are written, only the classification authority(or people over it) can declare the information no longer classified due to compromise. In this case the CA would be the NSA; which is currently running around like a chicken without a head trying to get Snowden without really dealing with the actual leak.
You already have a limited amount of explosive power and you're trying to take out/damage a structure. If you're not a really skilled bomb maker capable of making a shaped charge, every inch you're away from that building is going to reduce the amount of energy actually dircted against the structure by a substantial amount.
'Around the time of impact' is something that works for soft targets and/or really big bombs.
Explosives are(mostly) rated by how fast they burn/oxidize. 'slow' burning explosives tend to push stuff, while 'fast' burning ones tend to shatter them.
As a result, they've divided explosives up into two categories: Low explosives - subsonic deflageration; needs to be contained to truly 'explode' High explosives - supersonic detonation - needs no container.
Gun powder is interesting in that it's more of a mechanical mixture and can very between a low level high explosive all the way down to low end low explosives, depending on the mix. Chemical proportions, how long it's been mixed, grain size, grain formation method, and more all play factors.
The container doesn't have to be all that strong either - the fuselage itself might be enough.
Don't forget 'detonating it on impact'. One might think impact triggers are easy, but it's been my training that triggers, impact or not, are the trickiest part of bomb making.
Yes, most countries have 'significant infrastructure' along navigable waterways. Yes, you could build a quite large bomb into most boats.
However it's not considered as much of a risk because you're still looking at well under 1% of infrastructure is actually close to such a waterway, and while I could construct less ideal circumstances for setting off a bomb, I'd have to think about it to build something less ideal.
The thing to remember is that explosive power drops roughly with the square of the range. While there's lots of infrastructure 'along' waterways, it's not normally ON the waterway, so you can only get so close. Compounding this you generally have a wall or shore, so your boat is sitting lower than the infrastructure, up against a wall that's designed to be able to hold back tons of rushing water from the same direction your explosion will come from, while there's wide open space behind and around you. So 'most' of the explosion will end up deflected away from your target, limiting effectiveness.
An RC plane can be used to attack almost anywhere, and can bypass such defenses as sea/river walls and various obstructions used to prevent vehicles from driving too close to sensitive buildings.
If you're going to bring down a building, from most standpoints it's best to bring down an important one; some random fish processing factory doesn't have the value a government building would.
You lock out a lot of users/platforms denting bottom line.
While no DRM would please the users, it would mightily displease the content owners, which Netflix is contracting with to legally provide their video streams. The vast majority of them *ABSOLUTELY DEMAND* DRM, as in not having it means Netflix can't legally offer their content.
Less content = less value = no customers anyways.
It's a bit of a crappy spot for Netflix to be in. Annoy the customers with DRM, or have no real content?
When I last came back from a deployment, the max standard was 2 'sets' of 'off-label' season dvd's, not of the same series. IE you're not smuggling in multiple copies to sell. Note: It was 2 boxes, a single movie DVD counted the same as a box containing Seasons 1-7(?) of X-Files.
Of course, considering we were US military they were more concerned with finding any illicit drugs, weapons, explosives, etc...
Isn't this old news? I seem to remember reading stories about the potential of this over 5 years ago - but they were talking about doing a couple hundred tests on a drop of blood.
Well, this is perhaps a bit more specific, which would be a good thing, but it seems to be a major step back.
Though if they can get it good enough to tell bacterial strains with a single drop without having to do DNA analysis, it might help with treating such diseases with phages(viruses that infect/kill bacteria), allowing us to conserve broad-spectrum antibiotics.
But my lawnmower, if left all alone for most of the year, will be tough to start again.
Well yeah. There's a reason I mentioned fuel stabilizer. I have a 5 gallon can that I always add some to when I get gas. Makes firing up all the small engines so much easier. When winter rolls around I add even more, as I have a big economy sized container of it (1L?) for a reason.
I've never really had a problem, and if I do, more fuel stabilizer, then letting it sit for half an hour before priming it again, works like a charm.
If you empty it out, you refill with fresh gasoline. I haven't ever really had a problem. Sure, it might take an extra 5 minutes in the spring to fire the mower up, but that's still less time than trying to get it started in the winter. *Shudder*. I have an engine block heater for my truck for a reason, I don't want to be pull starting anything at -30.
It could be not so easy to get to some gas stations. On Saturday they are full, and you may need to back out if the vehicle in front of you is a large truck.
I had no such problems on a week long drive from North Dakota to Alaska. My truck alone is likely longer than an EV + tiny trailer, and remember one of the trailers had active steering. Worst case, if you can't back up that well, you wait until the truck in front is done and then pull out.
First, their own skills in towing deteriorate.
Again: I learned in one day, with a much bigger, nastier trailer. Oh, and 'brake too hard'? Being able to take more than full power braking is part of the design. Heck, some trailers have their own brakes. This little midget wouldn't though.
Really, you're posting a lot of 'what ifs' that are already answered. It reminds me of a couple different topics.
Second, the trailer itself may be inoperative after so much idle time. It contains an engine, a battery perhaps, and a gas tank, and some fuel system..
Never pictured people actually buying them, remember? I pictured them renting them from U-haul. If you have enough use to actually buy one you're better off with an actual hybrid.
all that can easily fail after you leave the thing in the garage, unattended, for a year. Would it be safe to depend on such a system that is used so infrequently?
Not quite a year, but in my case: motorcycle, lawnmower, standby generator, edger, chainsaw, etc... are all not used 6-9 months out of the year. For the ones with batteries, you hook it up to a trickle charger occasionally, and for all of them you either empty out the gas or dump fuel stabilizer in there. As for the rest of it, not really necessary in my experience.
The main problem here is that today's EVs do not do (for many people) what machines are supposed to do, and that is to make our life easier.
For select people, they do make things easier. There are reasons why I don't own one yet. And yes, today's EVs need a lot of improvement. Hopefully they get that improvement, like having superchargers(or better yet their more open successors) scattered around like gas stations. Well, not like gas stations, I'm picturing some around every restaurant and other business that somebody might want to stop by for an hour on a long trip.
What if there is only one supercharger that you can stop by, and that one gets damaged by some lightning, sent down personally by Zeus? We have no such problem with gas cars because gas stations are everywhere.
I don't know, what do you do if the road is washed out in a storm? If the lightning instead hits the only gas station within 100 miles(I've traveled through areas like this) and fries their pumping system? Not enough charger stations is purely an infrastructure build-up problem. It's nothing insurmountable. Heck, if the situation is bad enough just stop for the day and plug into a lower power charger.
Molds cost a fortune and make the exact same part every time.
Depends on how you define 'fortune' and how the mold actually works. I'm not picturing one of the really high pressure ones. As for 'exact copy' have somebody dressing them up after they come out, plus have a dozen different molds.
However that would also mean that the car can be recharged from 0% to 100% in 40 minutes - and that is not what happens in reality. Initial charging is faster, and as you say the last 5% may be not even desirable.
Like I said earlier, for longevity purposes Tesla actually has their system report it's full and stop charging at about 80% of the maximum charge it's battery pack could actually take. That avoids the 'last 5%' slow charge problem pretty much completely, as a LiIon battery pack will still be charging at a good rate until it's over 90%. Figures are approximate due to variability in chemistry, battery size, what's considered a 'fast charge', etc...
Wiki and other sources are quoting 'about an hour' for a full charge, with 50% being 20-30 minutes, but then Tesla's website mentions that they're upgrading(have upgraded?) their supercharger stations to make charging even faster, so the 30 minute references might be for the older stations. All figures are for the longer range 85kwh battery.
Once the manufacturer installs the hitch, they cannot control what kind of a boat, or a horse carrier, or a heavy trailer will be connected there. They'd need to come up with some nonstandard interface, that is guaranteed to only support the charging trailer.
Actually, they can. My light truck, for example, has a class II receiver(3.5k pounds), which is 2". On the open market I can only get class 1(2k pounds) or 2 ball mounts that fit my receiver. If I had had the tow package, I could have put a class III on(5k pounds). With a regular EV, you'd get one with a 1 1/4" opening, which you can only fit the smaller ball on, thus only the smaller trailers with that type of hitch.
If somebody goes through the effort to custom make a 1 1/4" bar with the larger ball in order to hook up a large boat to their EV, the damage is going to be warranty voiding obvious. Most of those things are designed to hook into a special hitch installed into the bed of a pickup or on an actual semi.
Meanwhile, there's all sorts of instructions in my truck on how much I can tow. There's stickers on trailers as well, all I have to do is play 'equal to or less than'. Places like U-Haul are well used to educating users, and have a selection of light tow trailers that even smaller cars can haul. I figure they'd be the ones renting out the generator trailers anyways.
There is yet another issue. Most people do not know how to drive with a trailer - not just in reverse, but even forward. I guess they could learn, but the clientele that buys EVs is fairly demanding.
I learned in the course of a day. I wouldn't rate myself as expert, but some of these models are designed to help prevent jackknifing when backing, and you shouldn't be doing much of that given that you're only going to be using it(theoretically) on the highways. I learned with a 3k pound loaded trailer without fancy steering.
I priced that rental online, and it was more than $500 for a week.
The price I found was $320 for a SUV from Enterprise, like I said. Your dates might have been bad, or the area expensive, etc... *shrug*, rental prices vary a lot. As for snow chains, well, I own a set, they aren't cheap, but well, I live in Alaska, paranoia is professional for winter up here.
$20k would get you a pretty good older used SUV as long as you're careful. But transaction, registration, inspection, and insurance costs would eat up any savings from buying if your use is irregular enough. I'll note that you didn't bu
Like I implied, odds are the government would quickly decide that those artifacts aren't really all that valuable to avoid just that issue. Like anything it's a balancing game.
That means... wide-open parks that cannot be reasonably policed.
There's a dude storing up horn in case it ever becomes legal to sell it from Rhinos he 'ranches' himself as is. He manages to keep them protected; remember that he, at least in his own mind, has a very good incentive to have an effective protection program up, not to mention that since all the Rhinos are missing their horns(on average), they're not as good of a target for poachers.
I'm not saying that it's as cheap as farming cattle, where raising a steer worth not even $200 is still economical, but when a horn you can harvest something like 10 times over the animal's life is worth $20k, you can go through a lot more effort and still have it be economical. Heck, even if you depress the price to a 'mere' $2k, and raise the price of raising them an OOM over a steer, they're still easily worth it.
The trick is to make sure people can verify it was responsibly harvested.
The people buying it, on average, don't care. The trick is to ensure that the government/customs agents can verify it's legally harvested stuff, but once the legal horn harvest herds are big enough, the trickle of illegal horns won't actually be that big of a deal since the price will be so depressed, it won't normally be worth a poacher's effort/risk. What's worth it right now at $200k per horn might not be worth it at $2k.
There's already a lot of fake rhino horn sold, one of my ideas was to have the government flood the market even more with convincing fakes. Using a 3D printer to make them would probably be a wash; I'm picturing something more like a mold and using bull horns as the base.
Slashdot Mirror
Keep in mind that I actually support stuff like this, ultimately wishing
I think the problem is that people are scared that the 'wealthy' will get even more ahead, and their own children left in the dust. Or they're scared of a scenario out of Star Trek - the Eugenics wars.
Personally, I want genetic modification to eliminate various obvious genetic disorders - breast cancer genes, diabetes, etc... However, we should not be changing genes until it's demonstrated that the gene we're fixing is actually a serious defect that is counter-survival. Assuming we approve a new fix once a year, it'd be centuries before we're ready to stretch beyond that.
Once we've fixed the easy things, only then should we really start worrying about improving 'top line' humans - increasing intelligence, etc... And that should be addressed in a serious, gradual fashion.
The reason is that the nucleus of a cell is relatively huge. Mitochondria are 'almost' independent living cells wholly contained within our cells, and each has it's own DNA. But they're small compared to the nucleus.
Roughly speaking, it'd be like the difference between removing the pit of a cherry vs trying to remove every seed out of a watermelon the size of a cherry.
Actually the real reason so few died is because there were dozens of medics standing by at the end of the race course anyways.
Combination of factors. I read that the way the bombs burst was they sent out a nearly horizontal spray of shrapnel - mostly taking out legs. Yes, fast medical triage is a huge factor as blood loss is the quickest killer in such scenarios, which is why I have so much military training on putting on tourniquets. But if it had been 4' higher it would have been hitting chests and necks far more, which translates into fewer wounded(a chest is a bigger obstacle than legs), but more deaths. :(
All computers that have classified information should not have any non/de-classified information on them. Any classified machine that has any non-classified information shall deem to have been breached and an inquiry started as improper access was achieved.
Huh, whah? Look, things like the Operating system and files therin are unclassified. Multiple unclassified documents can add up to classified. It's not just practical to try to keep all unclassified off of classified systems. Some organizations do almost all of their work, classified or not, on classified systems because it's easier/safer than swapping between. The real danger is when you're trying to transfer data between the two systems, and going high(unclass->class) is far safer than the opposite.
It's 'easy' for somebody to put classified information on a unclass machine, but it's also 'not hard' to not do it.
I would think one first degree murder would be sufficient, or just all three. These mega-cases otherwise cost tens of millions and take years.
Personally, my rule for the DP is '3 or more murdered, or deliberate torture in addition to murder'. So both the Aurora shooter and Boston Bomber qualify, but given the nature of the incidents the marginal cost for proving 3 murders as opposed to 1 is relatively tiny. Where it would really be harder would be for a serial killer where the incidents are truly separate, perhaps spaced over years.
But then again, if I'm to be perfectly honest, once you have a 'full up' conviction on one murder, I'm going to have to admit that my standards for the other 2 murders to qualify drop down to more civil court standards. 'Preponderance of the evidence' as opposed to 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. IE they catch a serial killer, find 1 body in the basement being dismembered, and digging up the basement and backyard turns up 20 more skeletons with the same sort of tool marks as on the body in the basement. That *might* not be enough to convict him of 20 more murders, but I would consider it enough(closer look aside) to say that yeah, he's probably killed a lot more people than the 1 in the basement, and sentence him to death.
I'm surprised the Aurora shooter isn't being remanded somewhere else so he can get a 'fair trial'.
The death penalty is anything but cheap, if you factor in the huge fixed costs of actually having one, not to mention endless chains of appeals. Ditto, supermax.
You bring up a good point here. Most of the studies I've seen that say the death penalty is more expensive than LiP assume 'average prisoner cost'. Outside of Texas at least, DP cases tend to be limited to the 'worst of the worst', meaning that they aren't going to have 'average prisoner cost'. Whether in Death Row or Supermax, they're going to be more costly to maintain.
Then there's end of life expenses. What happens when the prisoner hits 65 and needs some operation costing hundreds of thousands and/or continuous drugs costing thousands a year(like my mom, and she's not that old yet).
Finally, while I support having a death penalty, I also want it to be rare. My 'standard' is that death penalty trials should be around 1% of murder trials. Rare enough that a prosecutor might be lead on ONE of them a career. That allows you to make an argument that financial cost isn't the point, or that there are special circumstances. Call it the "Joker Clause" if you will. It's when you have an individual that's so dangerous that killing him is the safer alternative. If you're not doing that many, you can afford to streamline the process and only go for the DP when there's plenty of evidence.
The issue wasn't about the items, but about the treaty or punishment or whatever not being followed.
My view on the reasons for the 2nd Iraq war.
1. Bush wanting to finish what his father started.
2. Saddam was *constantly* violating the terms of the cease fire. Violating no-fly zones, hiding things, moving troops where he wasn't supposed to, etc... I deployed to Kuwait during that period, we were dropping bombs constantly to enforce the rules.
3. An honest desire to 'clean up' the mess of the past; not create another NK situation. The idea(that didn't pan out nearly as well as hoped) was to lance the problem so we don't need military bases sitting around the area 50 years later.
4. Possible WMDs. And yes, I count WMD as 'Nuclear, biological, Chemical'. Or if you insist on the newer termology: "Chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear". On the world stage, countries don't typically worry about other countries having conventional explosives - have all the 500-2000 pound bombs, mortar and artillery shells, and everything else you want. They worry about WMD. A conventional bomb built into a pressure cooker shouldn't be considered a WMD because it dilutes the term.
Isn't he up for the death penalty? While I don't object to the prosecution pushing every charge they think they have a chance to make stick in this case, you're typically not allowed to plead guilty to something with the DP.
Unless they're willing to let him plea down to only life in prison w/o parole.
I have to disagree on the 'kill more people' part. If the bomb had been placed slightly differently, say on a table, it would have killed far more people; we got EXTREMELY lucky that it killed as few as it did.
On average, bombings not targeted at a specific individual(IE excluding things like letter bombs) kill more people per incident than shootings do.
Of course, if you're looking to kill the most people, historically arson is your best bet.
The problem is that government rules aren't really set up to handle major leaks like this. The whole sanitization process assumes that the information is still on government controlled computers handled by people with some level of clearance, even though they don't have 'need to know'. So you tell them to shut up about it, and it normally works because a random piece of classified material isn't normally worth all that much.
There are supposed to be processes in place to, when possible, 'neither confirm nor deny; then ignore', but the problem here is that the source is credible and the NSA failed to discredit him(rightly or wrongly). So now it's confirmed. One of the rules for classifying information is that it can't be public; available on free news sites counts as 'public', but the way the rules are written, only the classification authority(or people over it) can declare the information no longer classified due to compromise. In this case the CA would be the NSA; which is currently running around like a chicken without a head trying to get Snowden without really dealing with the actual leak.
You already have a limited amount of explosive power and you're trying to take out/damage a structure. If you're not a really skilled bomb maker capable of making a shaped charge, every inch you're away from that building is going to reduce the amount of energy actually dircted against the structure by a substantial amount.
'Around the time of impact' is something that works for soft targets and/or really big bombs.
Okay, time for a quick explosives lesson.
Explosives are(mostly) rated by how fast they burn/oxidize. 'slow' burning explosives tend to push stuff, while 'fast' burning ones tend to shatter them.
As a result, they've divided explosives up into two categories:
Low explosives - subsonic deflageration; needs to be contained to truly 'explode'
High explosives - supersonic detonation - needs no container.
Gun powder is interesting in that it's more of a mechanical mixture and can very between a low level high explosive all the way down to low end low explosives, depending on the mix. Chemical proportions, how long it's been mixed, grain size, grain formation method, and more all play factors.
The container doesn't have to be all that strong either - the fuselage itself might be enough.
Don't forget 'detonating it on impact'. One might think impact triggers are easy, but it's been my training that triggers, impact or not, are the trickiest part of bomb making.
Yes, most countries have 'significant infrastructure' along navigable waterways. Yes, you could build a quite large bomb into most boats.
However it's not considered as much of a risk because you're still looking at well under 1% of infrastructure is actually close to such a waterway, and while I could construct less ideal circumstances for setting off a bomb, I'd have to think about it to build something less ideal.
The thing to remember is that explosive power drops roughly with the square of the range. While there's lots of infrastructure 'along' waterways, it's not normally ON the waterway, so you can only get so close. Compounding this you generally have a wall or shore, so your boat is sitting lower than the infrastructure, up against a wall that's designed to be able to hold back tons of rushing water from the same direction your explosion will come from, while there's wide open space behind and around you. So 'most' of the explosion will end up deflected away from your target, limiting effectiveness.
An RC plane can be used to attack almost anywhere, and can bypass such defenses as sea/river walls and various obstructions used to prevent vehicles from driving too close to sensitive buildings.
If you're going to bring down a building, from most standpoints it's best to bring down an important one; some random fish processing factory doesn't have the value a government building would.
You lock out a lot of users/platforms denting bottom line.
While no DRM would please the users, it would mightily displease the content owners, which Netflix is contracting with to legally provide their video streams. The vast majority of them *ABSOLUTELY DEMAND* DRM, as in not having it means Netflix can't legally offer their content.
Less content = less value = no customers anyways.
It's a bit of a crappy spot for Netflix to be in. Annoy the customers with DRM, or have no real content?
When I last came back from a deployment, the max standard was 2 'sets' of 'off-label' season dvd's, not of the same series. IE you're not smuggling in multiple copies to sell. Note: It was 2 boxes, a single movie DVD counted the same as a box containing Seasons 1-7(?) of X-Files.
Of course, considering we were US military they were more concerned with finding any illicit drugs, weapons, explosives, etc...
Isn't this old news? I seem to remember reading stories about the potential of this over 5 years ago - but they were talking about doing a couple hundred tests on a drop of blood.
Well, this is perhaps a bit more specific, which would be a good thing, but it seems to be a major step back.
Though if they can get it good enough to tell bacterial strains with a single drop without having to do DNA analysis, it might help with treating such diseases with phages(viruses that infect/kill bacteria), allowing us to conserve broad-spectrum antibiotics.
Your data is old. They now cost more to buy, cost less to run*, and have fewer toxic materials in them then a contemporary gasoline car.
*The more cost to run was ~2 battery generations ago. They've really increased the lifespan of the batteries while reducing their cost.
But my lawnmower, if left all alone for most of the year, will be tough to start again.
Well yeah. There's a reason I mentioned fuel stabilizer. I have a 5 gallon can that I always add some to when I get gas. Makes firing up all the small engines so much easier. When winter rolls around I add even more, as I have a big economy sized container of it (1L?) for a reason.
I've never really had a problem, and if I do, more fuel stabilizer, then letting it sit for half an hour before priming it again, works like a charm.
If you empty it out, you refill with fresh gasoline. I haven't ever really had a problem. Sure, it might take an extra 5 minutes in the spring to fire the mower up, but that's still less time than trying to get it started in the winter. *Shudder*. I have an engine block heater for my truck for a reason, I don't want to be pull starting anything at -30.
It could be not so easy to get to some gas stations. On Saturday they are full, and you may need to back out if the vehicle in front of you is a large truck.
I had no such problems on a week long drive from North Dakota to Alaska. My truck alone is likely longer than an EV + tiny trailer, and remember one of the trailers had active steering. Worst case, if you can't back up that well, you wait until the truck in front is done and then pull out.
First, their own skills in towing deteriorate.
Again: I learned in one day, with a much bigger, nastier trailer. Oh, and 'brake too hard'? Being able to take more than full power braking is part of the design. Heck, some trailers have their own brakes. This little midget wouldn't though.
Really, you're posting a lot of 'what ifs' that are already answered. It reminds me of a couple different topics.
Second, the trailer itself may be inoperative after so much idle time. It contains an engine, a battery perhaps, and a gas tank, and some fuel system..
Never pictured people actually buying them, remember? I pictured them renting them from U-haul. If you have enough use to actually buy one you're better off with an actual hybrid.
all that can easily fail after you leave the thing in the garage, unattended, for a year. Would it be safe to depend on such a system that is used so infrequently?
Not quite a year, but in my case: motorcycle, lawnmower, standby generator, edger, chainsaw, etc... are all not used 6-9 months out of the year. For the ones with batteries, you hook it up to a trickle charger occasionally, and for all of them you either empty out the gas or dump fuel stabilizer in there. As for the rest of it, not really necessary in my experience.
The main problem here is that today's EVs do not do (for many people) what machines are supposed to do, and that is to make our life easier.
For select people, they do make things easier. There are reasons why I don't own one yet. And yes, today's EVs need a lot of improvement. Hopefully they get that improvement, like having superchargers(or better yet their more open successors) scattered around like gas stations. Well, not like gas stations, I'm picturing some around every restaurant and other business that somebody might want to stop by for an hour on a long trip.
What if there is only one supercharger that you can stop by, and that one gets damaged by some lightning, sent down personally by Zeus? We have no such problem with gas cars because gas stations are everywhere.
I don't know, what do you do if the road is washed out in a storm? If the lightning instead hits the only gas station within 100 miles(I've traveled through areas like this) and fries their pumping system? Not enough charger stations is purely an infrastructure build-up problem. It's nothing insurmountable. Heck, if the situation is bad enough just stop for the day and plug into a lower power charger.
Molds cost a fortune and make the exact same part every time.
Depends on how you define 'fortune' and how the mold actually works. I'm not picturing one of the really high pressure ones. As for 'exact copy' have somebody dressing them up after they come out, plus have a dozen different molds.
However that would also mean that the car can be recharged from 0% to 100% in 40 minutes - and that is not what happens in reality. Initial charging is faster, and as you say the last 5% may be not even desirable.
Like I said earlier, for longevity purposes Tesla actually has their system report it's full and stop charging at about 80% of the maximum charge it's battery pack could actually take. That avoids the 'last 5%' slow charge problem pretty much completely, as a LiIon battery pack will still be charging at a good rate until it's over 90%. Figures are approximate due to variability in chemistry, battery size, what's considered a 'fast charge', etc...
Wiki and other sources are quoting 'about an hour' for a full charge, with 50% being 20-30 minutes, but then Tesla's website mentions that they're upgrading(have upgraded?) their supercharger stations to make charging even faster, so the 30 minute references might be for the older stations. All figures are for the longer range 85kwh battery.
However EVs cannot pull a trailer.
They can't? I mean, google has all sorts of hits...
Once the manufacturer installs the hitch, they cannot control what kind of a boat, or a horse carrier, or a heavy trailer will be connected there. They'd need to come up with some nonstandard interface, that is guaranteed to only support the charging trailer.
Actually, they can. My light truck, for example, has a class II receiver(3.5k pounds), which is 2". On the open market I can only get class 1(2k pounds) or 2 ball mounts that fit my receiver. If I had had the tow package, I could have put a class III on(5k pounds). With a regular EV, you'd get one with a 1 1/4" opening, which you can only fit the smaller ball on, thus only the smaller trailers with that type of hitch.
If somebody goes through the effort to custom make a 1 1/4" bar with the larger ball in order to hook up a large boat to their EV, the damage is going to be warranty voiding obvious. Most of those things are designed to hook into a special hitch installed into the bed of a pickup or on an actual semi.
Meanwhile, there's all sorts of instructions in my truck on how much I can tow. There's stickers on trailers as well, all I have to do is play 'equal to or less than'. Places like U-Haul are well used to educating users, and have a selection of light tow trailers that even smaller cars can haul. I figure they'd be the ones renting out the generator trailers anyways.
There is yet another issue. Most people do not know how to drive with a trailer - not just in reverse, but even forward. I guess they could learn, but the clientele that buys EVs is fairly demanding.
I learned in the course of a day. I wouldn't rate myself as expert, but some of these models are designed to help prevent jackknifing when backing, and you shouldn't be doing much of that given that you're only going to be using it(theoretically) on the highways. I learned with a 3k pound loaded trailer without fancy steering.
I priced that rental online, and it was more than $500 for a week.
The price I found was $320 for a SUV from Enterprise, like I said. Your dates might have been bad, or the area expensive, etc... *shrug*, rental prices vary a lot. As for snow chains, well, I own a set, they aren't cheap, but well, I live in Alaska, paranoia is professional for winter up here.
$20k would get you a pretty good older used SUV as long as you're careful. But transaction, registration, inspection, and insurance costs would eat up any savings from buying if your use is irregular enough. I'll note that you didn't bu
Like I implied, odds are the government would quickly decide that those artifacts aren't really all that valuable to avoid just that issue. Like anything it's a balancing game.
That means... wide-open parks that cannot be reasonably policed.
There's a dude storing up horn in case it ever becomes legal to sell it from Rhinos he 'ranches' himself as is. He manages to keep them protected; remember that he, at least in his own mind, has a very good incentive to have an effective protection program up, not to mention that since all the Rhinos are missing their horns(on average), they're not as good of a target for poachers.
I'm not saying that it's as cheap as farming cattle, where raising a steer worth not even $200 is still economical, but when a horn you can harvest something like 10 times over the animal's life is worth $20k, you can go through a lot more effort and still have it be economical. Heck, even if you depress the price to a 'mere' $2k, and raise the price of raising them an OOM over a steer, they're still easily worth it.
The trick is to make sure people can verify it was responsibly harvested.
The people buying it, on average, don't care. The trick is to ensure that the government/customs agents can verify it's legally harvested stuff, but once the legal horn harvest herds are big enough, the trickle of illegal horns won't actually be that big of a deal since the price will be so depressed, it won't normally be worth a poacher's effort/risk. What's worth it right now at $200k per horn might not be worth it at $2k.
There's already a lot of fake rhino horn sold, one of my ideas was to have the government flood the market even more with convincing fakes. Using a 3D printer to make them would probably be a wash; I'm picturing something more like a mold and using bull horns as the base.