Computers shouldn't be disposable items. 4 years is perfectly reasonable for many uses, and no more than should be expected from a $700 device. I'm not using my phone for more demanding tasks than my 2003 Palm TX could handle just fine.
Something similar happened in the 1970s in the Netherlands. Before that, women were not required to have/look for a job. When the law changed, labor participation of women rose steeply, average household income rose as well (2 incomes instead of just one), which led to a steep rise in housing cost. The end result is that buying a house is no longer affordable for singles and single-income families.
There's nothing to degrade on the thrusters themselves, but the valves that feed them are mechanical items and potentially subject to cold welding and other means of getting stuck. There have been thruster failures in deep-space missions.
You mean, back when shit was built to last against the expressed wishes of the beancounters-in-charge who only wanted the probe to last long enough for the 4 planetary encounters.
Detroit showed us that "built in the United States by Americans" is not an indicator of quality.
Only the American manufacturers have stopped making them, due to uniquely American legislation that makes SUVs cheaper than station wagons by exempting them from various (safety) regulations. Pretty much all others still build stationwagons, from compact ones like the Renault Clio SW to giants like the Volvo V90.
this is the fifth story in as many weeks with no more substance than "bitcoin hits $x!". Comments from the fist story can be copied verbatim to all the others, there's nothing new to be said on the subject. Can we please find a more interesting subject to talk about? If I wanted to know the day price for Bitcoin, I'd use a stock ticker.
A 85 kWh battery pack for the model S weighs 540 kg. A 1 MWh battery pack of the same construction would weigh 6352 kg. The electric motors weigh in the region of 90 kg each (going by the weight difference between the Models S 90 and S90D).
A Volvo D16 engine weighs 2700 kg and needs a transmission (several hundred kg), a retarder (ditto) and 500-1000 kg of diesel fuel.
So the extra weight of the Tesla is in the region of 3 tons (metric), not 20 tons.
If you produce to much (and you always do that as most plants can only adjusted in steps of several dozen MWs)
Not quite. The torque required to spin a generator at 50 Hz varies with demand. So you can do load-following by varying the steam input to the turbine that drives the generator. You might be making excess steam, but you don't have to make excess electric power.
Just did a search for my country (.nl) and found no large-scale storage systems. We might be exporting excess energy to the rest of Europe, though.
So far the early adopters seem to be trying to make a fast buck on the ever increasing value of the system - which grows because new people enter it. Is this real growth or a ponzi scheme?
Last year, about 270 new cryptocurrencies were launched, i.e., more than the number of national currencies in existence. I'm leaning towards 'ponzi scheme'.
We're surrounded by water on 2 sides plus two of the major rivers of Europe. Agree on the 'no hurricanes', but we have the Dutch + English coasts acting as a funnel into the English Channel, so we get storm surges much higher than one would expect of a 12 Beaufort wind.
It has been my observation that 2 year-old phones are often unusably slow when trying to run the latest OS (which you need for the security updates), or they're abandoned altogether. Maybe this is more prevalent in the Android world, but has made me wary of spending a lot of money on a phone.
It should be dirt cheap because its value will drop to 0 in a few years. I don't mind paying $1000 for a device I can use for 10 years. Expecting me to buy another in 2, on the other hand, is taking the piss. When the phone maker and everyone who writes software for it treat the device as disposable, it better have a disposable price tag.
The key word here is "sometimes". I schedule the critical meetings for the 1-2 days in the week that I'm at the office. The remainder of the job can be done at home, with the occasional phone call/chat/whatever to deal with stuff that can't wait.
Then the dialog should at least indicate that. As it stands now it is more likely to generate the reaction, "well duh, of course I want to see my passwords. That's why I clicked the button marked 'show passwords', damn it."
In the old PW manager, when you click the 'Show Passwords' button, Firefox opens the thoroughly useless dialog "Are you sure you want to show your passwords?"
Confirmations should be reserved for irreversible actions only, and should offer a way to stop the dialog from appearing.
I get that subsidiaries can be split off and end up with some of the assets of the parent company. But it seems odd the personal archives of the 2 founders would be among those assets. The parent company is the one with the history.
What? Minuteman silos, like most ICBMs are vertical and not pointed in any direction in particular. The missiles are launched straight up, and the pitch maneuver after launch determines the direction they're headed in.
No, Toyota Landcruiser (70/200), Land Rover Discovery, Jeep Grand Cherokee can tow 3.5 tons. Carry capacity is 1 ton or less. In Europe, nobody uses large SUVs or pickups. Instead, they use vans (with up to 3.5 ton GVW). The next step up is a lorry in the class of the Canter, i.e. 3-5 ton load capacity and empty weight in the region of 3 tons. Both are more convenient than an SUV with a large trailer.
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Computers shouldn't be disposable items. 4 years is perfectly reasonable for many uses, and no more than should be expected from a $700 device.
I'm not using my phone for more demanding tasks than my 2003 Palm TX could handle just fine.
Something similar happened in the 1970s in the Netherlands. Before that, women were not required to have/look for a job. When the law changed, labor participation of women rose steeply, average household income rose as well (2 incomes instead of just one), which led to a steep rise in housing cost. The end result is that buying a house is no longer affordable for singles and single-income families.
There's nothing to degrade on the thrusters themselves, but the valves that feed them are mechanical items and potentially subject to cold welding and other means of getting stuck. There have been thruster failures in deep-space missions.
You mean, back when shit was built to last against the expressed wishes of the beancounters-in-charge who only wanted the probe to last long enough for the 4 planetary encounters.
Detroit showed us that "built in the United States by Americans" is not an indicator of quality.
Only the American manufacturers have stopped making them, due to uniquely American legislation that makes SUVs cheaper than station wagons by exempting them from various (safety) regulations. Pretty much all others still build stationwagons, from compact ones like the Renault Clio SW to giants like the Volvo V90.
this is the fifth story in as many weeks with no more substance than "bitcoin hits $x!". Comments from the fist story can be copied verbatim to all the others, there's nothing new to be said on the subject. Can we please find a more interesting subject to talk about?
If I wanted to know the day price for Bitcoin, I'd use a stock ticker.
20-40 klbs seems a huge overestimate.
A 85 kWh battery pack for the model S weighs 540 kg. A 1 MWh battery pack of the same construction would weigh 6352 kg. The electric motors weigh in the region of 90 kg each (going by the weight difference between the Models S 90 and S90D).
A Volvo D16 engine weighs 2700 kg and needs a transmission (several hundred kg), a retarder (ditto) and 500-1000 kg of diesel fuel.
So the extra weight of the Tesla is in the region of 3 tons (metric), not 20 tons.
If you produce to much (and you always do that as most plants can only adjusted in steps of several dozen MWs)
Not quite. The torque required to spin a generator at 50 Hz varies with demand. So you can do load-following by varying the steam input to the turbine that drives the generator. You might be making excess steam, but you don't have to make excess electric power.
Just did a search for my country (.nl) and found no large-scale storage systems. We might be exporting excess energy to the rest of Europe, though.
That trend is just catching up with what professional writers have been saying for decades. Using the active voice makes for more readable prose.
So far the early adopters seem to be trying to make a fast buck on the ever increasing value of the system - which grows because new people enter it. Is this real growth or a ponzi scheme?
Last year, about 270 new cryptocurrencies were launched, i.e., more than the number of national currencies in existence. I'm leaning towards 'ponzi scheme'.
We're surrounded by water on 2 sides plus two of the major rivers of Europe. Agree on the 'no hurricanes', but we have the Dutch + English coasts acting as a funnel into the English Channel, so we get storm surges much higher than one would expect of a 12 Beaufort wind.
the old "drive all your competitors out of business" ploy. This time, powered by a global conglomerate.
It has been my observation that 2 year-old phones are often unusably slow when trying to run the latest OS (which you need for the security updates), or they're abandoned altogether. Maybe this is more prevalent in the Android world, but has made me wary of spending a lot of money on a phone.
It should be dirt cheap because its value will drop to 0 in a few years. I don't mind paying $1000 for a device I can use for 10 years. Expecting me to buy another in 2, on the other hand, is taking the piss. When the phone maker and everyone who writes software for it treat the device as disposable, it better have a disposable price tag.
In Soviet Russia, Siberia is sent to you!
The key word here is "sometimes". I schedule the critical meetings for the 1-2 days in the week that I'm at the office. The remainder of the job can be done at home, with the occasional phone call/chat/whatever to deal with stuff that can't wait.
That's almost as many keyboards as Jean Michel Jarre uses in his concerts.
Then the dialog should at least indicate that. As it stands now it is more likely to generate the reaction, "well duh, of course I want to see my passwords. That's why I clicked the button marked 'show passwords', damn it."
In the old PW manager, when you click the 'Show Passwords' button, Firefox opens the thoroughly useless dialog "Are you sure you want to show your passwords?"
Confirmations should be reserved for irreversible actions only, and should offer a way to stop the dialog from appearing.
I get that subsidiaries can be split off and end up with some of the assets of the parent company. But it seems odd the personal archives of the 2 founders would be among those assets. The parent company is the one with the history.
What? Minuteman silos, like most ICBMs are vertical and not pointed in any direction in particular. The missiles are launched straight up, and the pitch maneuver after launch determines the direction they're headed in.
No, Toyota Landcruiser (70/200), Land Rover Discovery, Jeep Grand Cherokee can tow 3.5 tons. Carry capacity is 1 ton or less.
In Europe, nobody uses large SUVs or pickups. Instead, they use vans (with up to 3.5 ton GVW). The next step up is a lorry in the class of the Canter, i.e. 3-5 ton load capacity and empty weight in the region of 3 tons. Both are more convenient than an SUV with a large trailer.
Yes, 10 mph/1 ton milk floats (i.e. only usable for use within cities) are totally the same thing as a 50 mph/5 ton general-purpose truck.
(rolleyes)
Those transparent keyboards that were last sold something like 15 years ago?
what? Schuko plugs tend to sit so tightly you're more likely to rip the socket out of the wall than have the plug fall out.