American spies spy on foreigners. Including telephone taps and internet. Are you saying you didn't know that before we got to hear the codename PRISM? Heck I'm in the UK, and there's a USA spy base here. It's no secret. Back a couple of decades their program was called Echelon. And it was the instigating reason for my then company starting to use PGP.
Ah, so you're a statist, got it.;)
Rationality is the quality that these libertarian paranoiacs don't have.
And that's something that you don't really have enough information to assess from the contents of one one line post. You don't know if he's really irrational, just mad about the topic of the moment, etc...
I should know, I practically specialize in government paranoia, both for and against. The trick is to realize that 'the government' isn't a person, or if it is, it's a multiple personality schizophrenic. The left hand literally doesn't know what the right is doing. Thus, you have to assess each program, each policy, somewhat on it's own.
Programs are one thing, but when it comes to law - watch out. NEVER trust them if they say 'Oh, sure, it could theoretically be used to prosecute case X, but we'd never use it for that!'. Normally it takes about a year from hitting the books before they're using it to prosecute case X. See anti-terrorist laws for a recent example of that, what with 'domestic terrorist' labels being applied willy-nilly.
By the way, my computer power supply is only 84% efficient. That's a drop of 16% over 4 inches.
No, that's a 16% drop going through a small scale rectifier, wave chopper, multiple transformers, capacitors, and finally voltage regulators to produce multiple voltages in relatively very clean and tightly controlled levels: +/-12, +/-5, and 3.3.
Power systems get more efficient the larger they are. A neighborhood level transformer is going to be better than 98% efficient.
You're NOT going to lose 7% from your curb drop to your circuit breaker panel. Calculations: 240V service, 1/0 awg(100Amp service, I'm being nice), 200 feet of wire(I'm being generous here), fully utilized at 100A, you get 2.1% drop. I had a 60A service once, couldn't blow it even running the oven, stove, and water heater all at once. That's a mere 1.3% drop.
First, When posting off-topic, it's best to post anonymous to preserve your reputation. Thus why the AC posted that way.
Back on your topic. It's true that 'distribution' doesn't start at the plant and end at the wheels, though I'd say that for an EV it does tend to 'end at the wheels'. It's just that it gets very, very hairy once you start looking past the plant. Sure, you can analyze a specific source/plant/generation facility, but if you analyze a different one the numbers can be completely different. Even averages are hard to come by.
Are you looking at a solar plant or wind turbine? How much energy went into creating the system, how much do you expect to get out of it, what's that individual KwH's share? What about Natural Gas? How much energy went into drilling for the NG, collecting and purifying it, and shipping it to the plant? 60% efficiency for the plant itself. Coal? Most coal plants are located close to their mines for logistical reasons - it's more efficient to ship the electricity than to ship the coal. Still, mining and shipping of the coal needs to be accounted for. You're looking at 40-50% efficient for coal plants. Nuclear? Mining and enrichment(if necessary) of the Uranium needs to be added in. 30-40% efficient.
Still, you contend that hydrocarbons are 'cheap to ship'. Well, coal isn't that cheap to ship due to the shear amount of it necessary. Natural gas either needs to be piped(and NG pipelines are expensive to run long distances), or it needs to be compressed to a liquid. This costs $1.50-$2 per mcf. This is significant, considering the wellhead price of $3 per mcf. Shipping runs $.30 per mcf.
Liquid fuels such as diesel and gasoline, of course, need to be extracted from a well, shipped as crude to a refinery, refined(~70% efficient), then shipped to the final destination. I think that you'd find that it's quite hilariously expensive from that perspective, in line with power plant costs.
The vast majority of real studies have figured that even if you use a relatively dirty coal plant for power that EVs still come out ahead energy wise due to the shear efficiency.
The grid is better than 90% efficient, on average, the charger is better than 90%, as is the battery and motor. You go beyond that if you still want to compare it to IC vehicles you have to look at energy losses in pumping out of the well, transporting to the refinery, then to the distribution point, etc...
It would take a lot of efficiency within the hydrocarbon supply chain, and a lot of inefficiency in the electric one, to make up for the difference between a ~73% efficient plant-wheel EV w/regenerative brakes vs the 20% efficient engine and 80% efficient transmission, with no regeneration of a gasoline engine.
Tesla can be recharged to 50% in 20 minutes if you are using their supercharger.
Looking up the site's claims, it's '50% in 20 minutes', I'm taking that as +50%, not TO 50%. IE if you start at 20%, you'll be 70% when you're done. If you're really close to 0% you might get a touch more, if you're close to 50% you might get a bit less. Given that Tesla sets their battery's '100%' to more like 80% of true capacity for longevity purposes, you shouldn't run into the problem where the last 5% takes as long as the first 50%.
Stopping for 20-30 minutes every 100-150 miles is not practical.
Well, it's a good thing that the range is 265 for a model S. You might be able to Ironman driving, but I like to sit down and have a good meal every so often. That's without getting into a number of different possibilities: 1. The proposed on-road charging, which should enable you to finish a drive with most of the charge you left with, even if it doesn't enable charging the battery at all. 2. Even more increased battery capacity - we saw an article about lithium-sulfur batteries not long ago. Even if it only 'doubles' the range - that's 530 miles of range, or 8 hours of driving at 65 mph. You want lunch, right? If you utilize a high speed charger for an hour during that, you should be able to hit 14-16 hours of driving easy. 3. Generator trailer: I LOVE this concept. When people are on long trips is generally when they want to haul the most stuff. Make a small trailer incorporating a 5 gallon tank and a 15-20 kw generator in addition to some extra storage. The Tesla model S should use ~21kw@65, but if you're supplying 75% of the energy, you should be able to travel 1k miles before exhausting the battery, and just let it keep running for a bit if you're camping to charge the batteries back up. A 20kw version shouldn't cost more than $13k. See #4 for the idea of simply renting the trailer when you need it. If it runs the full size price, you're still looking at 65 weeks of renting it to make it cheaper to buy. 4. Week long rental costing 10% of the cost of a car? What kind of cheap-ass cars are you looking at? I see $45-65/day, $315-455, $3-4.5k doesn't generally get you a car I'd trust on a highway. Heck, Enterprise, checking a non-airport location, gives me a rental price for a full size at $200 for a week. You can get a 'intermediate SUV' for $320.
Still a lot of lab work to be done, of course, but going from the article I remember: 1. It probably won't work all that well at -50, but that's what heaters are for. I don't remember Fargo getting that cold, but given that I'm in Fairbanks now... 1a. There's nothing interfering but purism to say that you can't install a hydrocarbon based heater into your electric car, especially in extremely cold climates. They make 90%+ efficient ones, though even a 70-80% efficient one will produce gobs of heat for not much fuel. 2. 120F in LA - Probably work fine 3. 3k discharge cycles- that's what they're working on. 4. Safe in rupture - the battery has been reported to be solid(as opposed to modern liquid types), and sulfur is pretty low on the list of toxic substances. Lithium isn't bad either. 5. Hasn't been mentioned. Why are you leaving a car in long term parking for 3 months? Just take a cab! Otherwise, well, they can always retrofit the parking with plug systems like what Fairbanks International has in it's parking lots. Oh, and I know a fair number of gasoline cars that wouldn't start without assistance if left for 3 months. 5a. Heck, they sell solar powered battery chargers for a reason. Scale it up a touch and you're not likely to come back to a fully charged battery if you left it at half charge, but if it can keep it at half charge...
And the 'future revenue stream'? Seriously? They kill the rhino to get the horn in the first place...
And you missed the rest of his point. Heck, for all we know the poachers often shoot the rhino in the dark before they knew it's had it's horn removed.
The theory behind reducing profit levels still holds true - would you do X for $10k? What if it's a 50% chance of being 0? Still worth it?
Personally, I'd allow the responsible ranching of Rhinos combined with sustainable horn harvest; drop the price by an OOM and poaching would be nowhere near as profitable while ranched Rhinos would help pull the species back from endangerment.
receive a stipend for their time, and the government should hire the archaeologist.
The moment you do this though I think that you'd find that the government doesn't think all those 'priceless archeological historical items' aren't priceless after all...
Still, it'd be a net positive. You wouldn't have people quietly disposing of said artifacts, sort of like how there are constant rumors about developers equally quietly disposing of any endangered species that might be found in the development area that would bring said development to a screeching halt.
Given how recently PRISM broke, I can see EVERYBODY but statists being upset about it.
you might consider who's propaganda has been working on you.
Wow... Libertarians don't have the money for heavy propaganda. Republicans and Democrats do, and while Democrats/liberals 'tend' to trust government more, outrage over massive violations is something that all reasonable people share.
I'll maintain it's good to have a healthy distrust of government - it's trustworthy on average, sure, but every so often...
"libertarian paranoia", Really? Do you use 'libertarian' as a reflexive insult like many people use 'gay'?
I'm a libertarian; I'm ALL for having a kill switch for the very reasons you suggest. For one, unlike what Jane Q. Public thinks, there are portions of the USA/World where I would not venture for my phone. There are areas where I would not venture without police protection, and in much of the USA you're not going to get a cop over a phone; which I believe is a shame because there's very good odds that they'll bust other sorts of criminal activities. Many 'petty' thieves are quite proliferate. I remember one bust of like 3 of them where they were burglarizing, on average, ten homes a week.
Then the family implements tracking the phone/activates the kill switch.
The point would be that MOST cell phone thieves don't kill their victims, because, well, it's not worth it - you get OOMs more police attention that way, and it's a big enough thing that he has to get rid of the phone ASAP before they get a warrant for the phone and start tracking it hoping to catch him. At that point the phone is irrelevant except as a way to catch/convict the murderer.
Meanwhile, the reason to steal the phone is money. It might sound odd, but if phones are, on average, worthless to steal, it can kill the secondary market in 'probably stolen' phones since they tend to die so quick. The problem today is that the most valuable thing on the average person today is their phone. People generally wear watches anymore, much less expensive ones, they don't carry cash, etc...
Your post reminded me about how Rhinos are endangered due to the black market value of their horn, the sale of which was made completely illegal in order to protect them...
There's numerous people who argue that if you legalized the sale of non-lethally harvested horns* from ranched Rhinos, their endangered status would go away because the black market would essentially be no more.
*Rhino horn is essentially fused hair; it grows back!
Hit submit too quick; on review thought of more stuff.
So if you want to slow down the world's population growth, we need to get these 3rd world countries industrialized and modernized ASAP.
I never addressed slowing down the world's population growth. Heck, read my posts, it's assumed that it's going to slow down sooner or later, probably sooner at this point. But I agree, there are multitudes of reasons to want to industrialize the whole human race.
Back more on the op - I don't mean that nuclear power would be used forever, but given current development rates I'd be shooting for a rough mix of 40% nuclear, 20% wind, 20% solar, and 20% 'other' for electricity generation, with most vehicles being battery-electric. I have reasons behind that mix, which I won't go into further here. Given the various economics involved, legacy equipment and such, I figure that even if we broke ground today for new nuclear plants to achieve that mix, the plants we'd break ground for today would be reaching EOL by the time the mix is reached. Then we re-evaluate.
Perhaps, but not one shared by I. I'll admit to misstating and getting distracted a bit - my 'replacement only' was intended to still be in the context of 'developed world'.
Leaving power & population increases to the industrializing 3rd world countries. My point still remains - at some point we'll have everybody 'industrialized', population growth and power usage will be more or less flat.
do you realize how much that sounds like "we've screwed up twice, but trust us now, this time we'll get it right!" I have my doubts how well that will go over with the general public.
I don't think that many people realize that Fukushima and TMI were of the same plant generation; Fukushima actually started operations slightly earlier than TMI.
How many industries out there have 'only' 2-3 incidents across the whole world, over the course of 40 some odd years?
It's the plane paradox; people are afraid of flying when the drive to the airport is more dangerous on average, because the total results are more extreme.
Heck, with nuclear power you can't even point at huge death tolls. Just thinking about incidents that come to mind - West Texas, fertilizer production, 15 dead. Bhopal, India, chemical, 3,787 official, 16k estimate Coal kills ~170k/year from pollution alone, add a few thousand more in for miners. Plane crashes, train derailments, etc...
You seem to be saying nuclear power is safe because the risks were known, but nobody did anything about them. I say nuclear power is unsafe, for exactly the same reason.
It's more along the lines of "Stop pointing at accident performance for 1967 VW beetles when we want to build modern cars".
I want new nuclear plants so we can finally shut down the end of life plants, as well as the nasty by design coal systems.
1. You're assuming unlimited exponential growth. In the developed world, power use per person has actually been dropping slightly due to efficiency increases. Population growth has also slowed to pretty much replacement only, so the current increases are only from industrialization of previously undeveloped populations. We'll run out of them sometime as well. 2. You're assuming that the 200 year figures don't take changes in energy sources/growth into account. 3. They're only known reserves at a fairly low price point. Double the price per pound of Uranium and a lot more reserves suddenly appear. Double it again and we have the technology to distill it from seawater economically. It's still an insignificant cost for nuclear power production even at 4X the price. Oh yeah, at around double the price reprocessing and breeding look a lot more economical, so the efficiency at which we use it can increase almost an OOM.
OTOH if you mean prosecuting people who the government suspects might drive recklessly in the future (Minority Report style?)... it's to imagine how that wouldn't be seen as a loss of freedom.
It happens though. See laws about 'in actual control' with respect for DUI. They've prosecuted people for things like sleeping in the back seat when they have the car keys in their pocket. New Mexico recently overturned that, reasoning that it actually encourages drunks to drive home, as there's less chance of being caught compared to sitting in a parking lot for ~8 hours until they sober up. It's still law of the land in at least 12 states though, so yeah.
Note: "actual physical control" was originally intended to allow law enforcement to penalize people who actually did drive, but the police did not catch them driving - such as they had been in an accident, passed out on the side of the highway, or made it to their destination.
The difference is that young drivers get better, while elderly drivers keep declining. Personally, I'm still hoping for self-driving vehicles.
One of the things I've heard about is that when states increase the minimum driving age they experience a decline in accidents for roughly the duration they increase the age by - go from 14 to 16? Two year decline in accidents caused by youth. But then the ones who would have been driving at 14 start hitting 16, and the accident rate for 16 year olds increases to almost the 14 year old level.
Better way to decrease accidents? More training to get a license, period.
I this the constitutionality of this law is upheld this guy is fucked but overturned he would be protected.
That's the thing; it's not a law, it's a program. A private program set up by and for the NSA. If the program is upheld as constitutional and part of the NSA's duties, then he's screwed. Honestly, with our treatment of whistleblowers, he's probably screwed even if it's found unconstitutional.
I told somebody else where I believe that if you think it's important enough, you should blow the whistle, but when it comes to this stuff you should do it while being aware that there WILL be serious negative consequences to your life.
The true cost of Nuclear power is more than any other method.
Talk about easy mode! "Any other method" logically includes coal. Andcoalsucks. To put it in perspective, about twice as much electricity is produced each year from coal(44.9%) as from nuclear power(20.3%) in the USA.
What, you want healthcare costs included along with the fatalities? Okay, surething. How does $500B/year sound, for the USA ALONE?
I'd say I hate to break it to you, but that would be dishonest. I LOVE breaking this to you: The world could suffer a Chernobyl level event EVERY year and it would STILL come out cheaper than coal.
And while we are at it, lets add in all of the cost for nuclear power plant accidents both public and private funds and divide that by the the number of operating plants. Let's see, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, smaller costly but less publicized accidents.
Let's see: Chernobyl: $235B, TMI: $975M, Fukushima: too early to tell. Let's go with roughly between Chernobyl and TMI: $118B. It's probably quite high, but eh. Total: $354B, or about 3/5ths the damage coal does to the USA alone each year.
As I've said before, Chernobyl's design wouldn't have been allowed anywhere, the cost would have been far less if it had been built with a containment dome. 437 reactors, leaving the share per nuclear plant at $810M per your stupid standard.
Let's put it into better context: End of 2012 nuclear power had produced 69,760 billion kwh. Chernobyl, TMI, and Fukushima amount to.5 cents of cost per kwh. Yes, half a cent.
1. Chernobyl was of a plant design that wouldn't have ever been approved pretty much anywhere else. It didn't even have a containment dome. 2. Lifetime medical costs divided by operating nuclear plants? Probably about a million bucks each, when viewed on a per kwh basis under a hundredth of a cent per kwh.
keyword: 'Almost'. The technology would be so huge as to be very, very expensive to lock up in that fashion, given the potential for huge profits from open release. In addition, at this point there's a real possibility of a political backlash that would force the technology out anyways, such as China simply repudiating the patent.
The problem with this: 1. It's potentially so huge that they wouldn't be able to afford it 2. The patent only lasts so long, then it's open for everyone.
Slashdot Mirror
American spies spy on foreigners. Including telephone taps and internet. Are you saying you didn't know that before we got to hear the codename PRISM? Heck I'm in the UK, and there's a USA spy base here. It's no secret. Back a couple of decades their program was called Echelon. And it was the instigating reason for my then company starting to use PGP.
Ah, so you're a statist, got it. ;)
Rationality is the quality that these libertarian paranoiacs don't have.
And that's something that you don't really have enough information to assess from the contents of one one line post. You don't know if he's really irrational, just mad about the topic of the moment, etc...
I should know, I practically specialize in government paranoia, both for and against. The trick is to realize that 'the government' isn't a person, or if it is, it's a multiple personality schizophrenic. The left hand literally doesn't know what the right is doing. Thus, you have to assess each program, each policy, somewhat on it's own.
Programs are one thing, but when it comes to law - watch out. NEVER trust them if they say 'Oh, sure, it could theoretically be used to prosecute case X, but we'd never use it for that!'. Normally it takes about a year from hitting the books before they're using it to prosecute case X. See anti-terrorist laws for a recent example of that, what with 'domestic terrorist' labels being applied willy-nilly.
By the way, my computer power supply is only 84% efficient. That's a drop of 16% over 4 inches.
No, that's a 16% drop going through a small scale rectifier, wave chopper, multiple transformers, capacitors, and finally voltage regulators to produce multiple voltages in relatively very clean and tightly controlled levels: +/-12, +/-5, and 3.3.
Power systems get more efficient the larger they are. A neighborhood level transformer is going to be better than 98% efficient.
You're NOT going to lose 7% from your curb drop to your circuit breaker panel.
Calculations: 240V service, 1/0 awg(100Amp service, I'm being nice), 200 feet of wire(I'm being generous here), fully utilized at 100A, you get 2.1% drop. I had a 60A service once, couldn't blow it even running the oven, stove, and water heater all at once. That's a mere 1.3% drop.
nor transmit power in the desert without heavy heavy loss.
Why not? We already do it for dams. Matter of fact, losses can be kept down to 3.5% per 1k km. That's for the ENTIRE RUN, including conversion costs.
At 14 cents per kwh(of which average transmission loss is already factored in), that would be half a cent per kwh.
First, When posting off-topic, it's best to post anonymous to preserve your reputation. Thus why the AC posted that way.
Back on your topic. It's true that 'distribution' doesn't start at the plant and end at the wheels, though I'd say that for an EV it does tend to 'end at the wheels'. It's just that it gets very, very hairy once you start looking past the plant. Sure, you can analyze a specific source/plant/generation facility, but if you analyze a different one the numbers can be completely different. Even averages are hard to come by.
Are you looking at a solar plant or wind turbine? How much energy went into creating the system, how much do you expect to get out of it, what's that individual KwH's share?
What about Natural Gas? How much energy went into drilling for the NG, collecting and purifying it, and shipping it to the plant? 60% efficiency for the plant itself.
Coal? Most coal plants are located close to their mines for logistical reasons - it's more efficient to ship the electricity than to ship the coal. Still, mining and shipping of the coal needs to be accounted for. You're looking at 40-50% efficient for coal plants.
Nuclear? Mining and enrichment(if necessary) of the Uranium needs to be added in. 30-40% efficient.
Still, you contend that hydrocarbons are 'cheap to ship'. Well, coal isn't that cheap to ship due to the shear amount of it necessary. Natural gas either needs to be piped(and NG pipelines are expensive to run long distances), or it needs to be compressed to a liquid. This costs $1.50-$2 per mcf. This is significant, considering the wellhead price of $3 per mcf. Shipping runs $.30 per mcf.
Liquid fuels such as diesel and gasoline, of course, need to be extracted from a well, shipped as crude to a refinery, refined(~70% efficient), then shipped to the final destination. I think that you'd find that it's quite hilariously expensive from that perspective, in line with power plant costs.
The vast majority of real studies have figured that even if you use a relatively dirty coal plant for power that EVs still come out ahead energy wise due to the shear efficiency.
The grid is better than 90% efficient, on average, the charger is better than 90%, as is the battery and motor. You go beyond that if you still want to compare it to IC vehicles you have to look at energy losses in pumping out of the well, transporting to the refinery, then to the distribution point, etc...
It would take a lot of efficiency within the hydrocarbon supply chain, and a lot of inefficiency in the electric one, to make up for the difference between a ~73% efficient plant-wheel EV w/regenerative brakes vs the 20% efficient engine and 80% efficient transmission, with no regeneration of a gasoline engine.
Tesla can be recharged to 50% in 20 minutes if you are using their supercharger.
Looking up the site's claims, it's '50% in 20 minutes', I'm taking that as +50%, not TO 50%. IE if you start at 20%, you'll be 70% when you're done. If you're really close to 0% you might get a touch more, if you're close to 50% you might get a bit less. Given that Tesla sets their battery's '100%' to more like 80% of true capacity for longevity purposes, you shouldn't run into the problem where the last 5% takes as long as the first 50%.
Stopping for 20-30 minutes every 100-150 miles is not practical.
Well, it's a good thing that the range is 265 for a model S. You might be able to Ironman driving, but I like to sit down and have a good meal every so often. That's without getting into a number of different possibilities:
1. The proposed on-road charging, which should enable you to finish a drive with most of the charge you left with, even if it doesn't enable charging the battery at all.
2. Even more increased battery capacity - we saw an article about lithium-sulfur batteries not long ago. Even if it only 'doubles' the range - that's 530 miles of range, or 8 hours of driving at 65 mph. You want lunch, right? If you utilize a high speed charger for an hour during that, you should be able to hit 14-16 hours of driving easy.
3. Generator trailer: I LOVE this concept. When people are on long trips is generally when they want to haul the most stuff. Make a small trailer incorporating a 5 gallon tank and a 15-20 kw generator in addition to some extra storage. The Tesla model S should use ~21kw@65, but if you're supplying 75% of the energy, you should be able to travel 1k miles before exhausting the battery, and just let it keep running for a bit if you're camping to charge the batteries back up. A 20kw version shouldn't cost more than $13k. See #4 for the idea of simply renting the trailer when you need it. If it runs the full size price, you're still looking at 65 weeks of renting it to make it cheaper to buy.
4. Week long rental costing 10% of the cost of a car? What kind of cheap-ass cars are you looking at? I see $45-65/day, $315-455, $3-4.5k doesn't generally get you a car I'd trust on a highway. Heck, Enterprise, checking a non-airport location, gives me a rental price for a full size at $200 for a week. You can get a 'intermediate SUV' for $320.
Still a lot of lab work to be done, of course, but going from the article I remember:
1. It probably won't work all that well at -50, but that's what heaters are for. I don't remember Fargo getting that cold, but given that I'm in Fairbanks now...
1a. There's nothing interfering but purism to say that you can't install a hydrocarbon based heater into your electric car, especially in extremely cold climates. They make 90%+ efficient ones, though even a 70-80% efficient one will produce gobs of heat for not much fuel.
2. 120F in LA - Probably work fine
3. 3k discharge cycles- that's what they're working on.
4. Safe in rupture - the battery has been reported to be solid(as opposed to modern liquid types), and sulfur is pretty low on the list of toxic substances. Lithium isn't bad either.
5. Hasn't been mentioned. Why are you leaving a car in long term parking for 3 months? Just take a cab! Otherwise, well, they can always retrofit the parking with plug systems like what Fairbanks International has in it's parking lots. Oh, and I know a fair number of gasoline cars that wouldn't start without assistance if left for 3 months.
5a. Heck, they sell solar powered battery chargers for a reason. Scale it up a touch and you're not likely to come back to a fully charged battery if you left it at half charge, but if it can keep it at half charge...
And the 'future revenue stream'? Seriously? They kill the rhino to get the horn in the first place...
And you missed the rest of his point. Heck, for all we know the poachers often shoot the rhino in the dark before they knew it's had it's horn removed.
The theory behind reducing profit levels still holds true - would you do X for $10k? What if it's a 50% chance of being 0? Still worth it?
Personally, I'd allow the responsible ranching of Rhinos combined with sustainable horn harvest; drop the price by an OOM and poaching would be nowhere near as profitable while ranched Rhinos would help pull the species back from endangerment.
receive a stipend for their time, and the government should hire the archaeologist.
The moment you do this though I think that you'd find that the government doesn't think all those 'priceless archeological historical items' aren't priceless after all...
Still, it'd be a net positive. You wouldn't have people quietly disposing of said artifacts, sort of like how there are constant rumors about developers equally quietly disposing of any endangered species that might be found in the development area that would bring said development to a screeching halt.
What you posted was libertarian paranoia,
Given how recently PRISM broke, I can see EVERYBODY but statists being upset about it.
you might consider who's propaganda has been working on you.
Wow... Libertarians don't have the money for heavy propaganda. Republicans and Democrats do, and while Democrats/liberals 'tend' to trust government more, outrage over massive violations is something that all reasonable people share.
I'll maintain it's good to have a healthy distrust of government - it's trustworthy on average, sure, but every so often...
"libertarian paranoia", Really? Do you use 'libertarian' as a reflexive insult like many people use 'gay'?
I'm a libertarian; I'm ALL for having a kill switch for the very reasons you suggest. For one, unlike what Jane Q. Public thinks, there are portions of the USA/World where I would not venture for my phone. There are areas where I would not venture without police protection, and in much of the USA you're not going to get a cop over a phone; which I believe is a shame because there's very good odds that they'll bust other sorts of criminal activities. Many 'petty' thieves are quite proliferate. I remember one bust of like 3 of them where they were burglarizing, on average, ten homes a week.
Then the family implements tracking the phone/activates the kill switch.
The point would be that MOST cell phone thieves don't kill their victims, because, well, it's not worth it - you get OOMs more police attention that way, and it's a big enough thing that he has to get rid of the phone ASAP before they get a warrant for the phone and start tracking it hoping to catch him. At that point the phone is irrelevant except as a way to catch/convict the murderer.
Meanwhile, the reason to steal the phone is money. It might sound odd, but if phones are, on average, worthless to steal, it can kill the secondary market in 'probably stolen' phones since they tend to die so quick. The problem today is that the most valuable thing on the average person today is their phone. People generally wear watches anymore, much less expensive ones, they don't carry cash, etc...
Your post reminded me about how Rhinos are endangered due to the black market value of their horn, the sale of which was made completely illegal in order to protect them...
There's numerous people who argue that if you legalized the sale of non-lethally harvested horns* from ranched Rhinos, their endangered status would go away because the black market would essentially be no more.
*Rhino horn is essentially fused hair; it grows back!
Hit submit too quick; on review thought of more stuff.
So if you want to slow down the world's population growth, we need to get these 3rd world countries industrialized and modernized ASAP.
I never addressed slowing down the world's population growth. Heck, read my posts, it's assumed that it's going to slow down sooner or later, probably sooner at this point. But I agree, there are multitudes of reasons to want to industrialize the whole human race.
Back more on the op - I don't mean that nuclear power would be used forever, but given current development rates I'd be shooting for a rough mix of 40% nuclear, 20% wind, 20% solar, and 20% 'other' for electricity generation, with most vehicles being battery-electric. I have reasons behind that mix, which I won't go into further here. Given the various economics involved, legacy equipment and such, I figure that even if we broke ground today for new nuclear plants to achieve that mix, the plants we'd break ground for today would be reaching EOL by the time the mix is reached. Then we re-evaluate.
This is a common misconception.
Perhaps, but not one shared by I. I'll admit to misstating and getting distracted a bit - my 'replacement only' was intended to still be in the context of 'developed world'.
Leaving power & population increases to the industrializing 3rd world countries. My point still remains - at some point we'll have everybody 'industrialized', population growth and power usage will be more or less flat.
do you realize how much that sounds like "we've screwed up twice, but trust us now, this time we'll get it right!" I have my doubts how well that will go over with the general public.
I don't think that many people realize that Fukushima and TMI were of the same plant generation; Fukushima actually started operations slightly earlier than TMI.
How many industries out there have 'only' 2-3 incidents across the whole world, over the course of 40 some odd years?
It's the plane paradox; people are afraid of flying when the drive to the airport is more dangerous on average, because the total results are more extreme.
Heck, with nuclear power you can't even point at huge death tolls. Just thinking about incidents that come to mind -
West Texas, fertilizer production, 15 dead.
Bhopal, India, chemical, 3,787 official, 16k estimate
Coal kills ~170k/year from pollution alone, add a few thousand more in for miners.
Plane crashes, train derailments, etc...
You seem to be saying nuclear power is safe because the risks were known, but nobody did anything about them. I say nuclear power is unsafe, for exactly the same reason.
It's more along the lines of "Stop pointing at accident performance for 1967 VW beetles when we want to build modern cars".
I want new nuclear plants so we can finally shut down the end of life plants, as well as the nasty by design coal systems.
1. You're assuming unlimited exponential growth. In the developed world, power use per person has actually been dropping slightly due to efficiency increases. Population growth has also slowed to pretty much replacement only, so the current increases are only from industrialization of previously undeveloped populations. We'll run out of them sometime as well.
2. You're assuming that the 200 year figures don't take changes in energy sources/growth into account.
3. They're only known reserves at a fairly low price point. Double the price per pound of Uranium and a lot more reserves suddenly appear. Double it again and we have the technology to distill it from seawater economically. It's still an insignificant cost for nuclear power production even at 4X the price. Oh yeah, at around double the price reprocessing and breeding look a lot more economical, so the efficiency at which we use it can increase almost an OOM.
OTOH if you mean prosecuting people who the government suspects might drive recklessly in the future (Minority Report style?)... it's to imagine how that wouldn't be seen as a loss of freedom.
It happens though. See laws about 'in actual control' with respect for DUI. They've prosecuted people for things like sleeping in the back seat when they have the car keys in their pocket. New Mexico recently overturned that, reasoning that it actually encourages drunks to drive home, as there's less chance of being caught compared to sitting in a parking lot for ~8 hours until they sober up. It's still law of the land in at least 12 states though, so yeah.
Note: "actual physical control" was originally intended to allow law enforcement to penalize people who actually did drive, but the police did not catch them driving - such as they had been in an accident, passed out on the side of the highway, or made it to their destination.
The difference is that young drivers get better, while elderly drivers keep declining. Personally, I'm still hoping for self-driving vehicles.
One of the things I've heard about is that when states increase the minimum driving age they experience a decline in accidents for roughly the duration they increase the age by - go from 14 to 16? Two year decline in accidents caused by youth. But then the ones who would have been driving at 14 start hitting 16, and the accident rate for 16 year olds increases to almost the 14 year old level.
Better way to decrease accidents? More training to get a license, period.
I this the constitutionality of this law is upheld this guy is fucked but overturned he would be protected.
That's the thing; it's not a law, it's a program. A private program set up by and for the NSA. If the program is upheld as constitutional and part of the NSA's duties, then he's screwed. Honestly, with our treatment of whistleblowers, he's probably screwed even if it's found unconstitutional.
I told somebody else where I believe that if you think it's important enough, you should blow the whistle, but when it comes to this stuff you should do it while being aware that there WILL be serious negative consequences to your life.
The true cost of Nuclear power is more than any other method.
Talk about easy mode! "Any other method" logically includes coal. And coal sucks. To put it in perspective, about twice as much electricity is produced each year from coal(44.9%) as from nuclear power(20.3%) in the USA.
What, you want healthcare costs included along with the fatalities? Okay, sure thing. How does $500B/year sound, for the USA ALONE?
I'd say I hate to break it to you, but that would be dishonest. I LOVE breaking this to you: The world could suffer a Chernobyl level event EVERY year and it would STILL come out cheaper than coal.
And while we are at it, lets add in all of the cost for nuclear power plant accidents both public and private funds and divide that by the the number of operating plants. Let's see, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, smaller costly but less publicized accidents.
Let's see: Chernobyl: $235B, TMI: $975M, Fukushima: too early to tell. Let's go with roughly between Chernobyl and TMI: $118B. It's probably quite high, but eh. Total: $354B, or about 3/5ths the damage coal does to the USA alone each year.
As I've said before, Chernobyl's design wouldn't have been allowed anywhere, the cost would have been far less if it had been built with a containment dome. 437 reactors, leaving the share per nuclear plant at $810M per your stupid standard.
Let's put it into better context: End of 2012 nuclear power had produced 69,760 billion kwh. Chernobyl, TMI, and Fukushima amount to .5 cents of cost per kwh. Yes, half a cent.
1. Chernobyl was of a plant design that wouldn't have ever been approved pretty much anywhere else. It didn't even have a containment dome.
2. Lifetime medical costs divided by operating nuclear plants? Probably about a million bucks each, when viewed on a per kwh basis under a hundredth of a cent per kwh.
With the Tesla S, I have to recharge every 300 km
Why 300km? The 85kwh battery rates out to 426 km, and empty to full is ~43 minutes. So it's not 300km@40min, it's 1/3rd more, 400km.
If the battery in the OP works out, well, that's 1600km of range, easily able to get you there without recharging at all.
keyword: 'Almost'. The technology would be so huge as to be very, very expensive to lock up in that fashion, given the potential for huge profits from open release. In addition, at this point there's a real possibility of a political backlash that would force the technology out anyways, such as China simply repudiating the patent.
The problem with this:
1. It's potentially so huge that they wouldn't be able to afford it
2. The patent only lasts so long, then it's open for everyone.