Yeah, obviously this was a press release geared for the idiot masses - they give volume in cups of coffee, donuts, and hard-shelled candy, but even gallons are only mentioned as parenthetical aside.
I'm pretty sure most windmills have locking mechanisms to prevent them from spinning in excessively high winds, when the stresses would risk damaging them. Not quite sure how those torques compare to the that of an off-center blade though.
However, if you could lift a single rotor straight up, then you can probably suspend the second rotor at an angle almost as easily, so that the third rotor is left hanging straight down
Okay, found a video of a wind turbine being assembled in Norway with an 83m (272ft) tower - looks like they put the generating nacelle on top of the tower, and then lift the fully assembled three-blade assembly into place as a single piece. Makes sense I guess - it is nicely balanced that way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
So what? A little altitude is nothing some explosives at the base of the windmill wouldn't fix. Or a one-time lowering of the turbine to the ground in a more controlled fashion if you want to avoid damaging still-viable components with the impact. You already have a strong enough tower right there, just need a thousand feet of cable and a winch-truck on the ground that's heavier than, and strong enough to support the weight of, the combined turbine and blades assembly.
Agreed. Pretty much every wind farm I've seen has nothing else around it for hundreds of feet, so just put some explosives at the base of the tower and down it comes. Then chop it up and send it off for recycling - seems very unlikely that you couldn't turn a profit that way. Gets a little more expensive if you need to avoid hitting other windmills, but odds are that all the windmills in a given farm are going to be decommissioned at about the same time.
That'd be tricky though - the big advantage of lasers is that they're largely point-and-hit. Any deposit-leaving weapon is going to be back to trying to hit the target with a chunk of matter moving a million times slower - if you can do that, then why use the laser at all?
Probably not so great, as the demand for lubricants and chemical feedstock won't be worth even pennies on the dollar compared to the historical demand for energy.
The Vive works just fine with glasses, and the room scale "holodeck" experience can be quite compelling. I play with the sets at my local university from time to time (a buddy of mine runs a technology outreach program)
Have yet to see enough compelling content to justify the $2k+ outlay for the VR gear and a computer powerful enough to drive it myself, but I'm eagerly watching falling prices and improving technology and content , waiting for the right moment to buy in.
Actually though, from what I can find, the Occulus works fine with glasses as well, though you're limited to glasses with maximum dimensions of 142mm wide by 50mm high. Still, if you dished out for a headset it shouldn't be that big a deal to spend $10 online to get a pair of glasses that will work with the headset.
Was it really more dangerous than a motor-scooter though? Because that seemed to be it's what it was positioned to compete against. A scooter with weather protection and quad-wheel stability seems like a big step up to me.
Probably risky - if the burning outer layer deposits soot on the mirror, then the laser will heat it rather than being reflected. Doesn't take much heating to disrupt a reflective layer.
My first smartphone was an early iPhone - it was very nice for what it was, I certainly loved the build quality. I appreciate the polish Apple brings to their products, but the compromises are too great - I am not the target market. To the point that I recently turned down a free iPhone despite being in the market for a new phone. Plus modern iPhones are far too large.
>a lot cheaper than iPhones. That doesn't seem to be true any more,
You are quite right that price of top end of Android phones has climbed to compete with iPhones - and why not? The software is capable and allows HTC, Samsung, etc. to compete in the same market as iPhone, which they couldn't realistically do otherwise. Might not have the polish, but as you point out Apple's hardware choices leave much to be desired.
Meanwhile, Android *also* thrives at the bottom of the market - you can get a new, adequate, contract-free (though provider-locked) Android smartphone for $10-$50 almost anywhere, and prepay as little as $8/month for a couple hours of talk time and some data and texts. If you don't actually have a lot of use for the thing it makes for a wonderful deal.
Maybe not so much in the city, but rural settings offer much different driving consideration. Heck, even in the city a self-driving car if probably going to balk at driving off the end of the driveway and into the back yard to drop off a load of landscaping supplies.
It's also going to be a slow process. Give it at least 20 years between competent self-driving cars being available, and for the feature to be included in the lowest-priced economy cars. Then another 15-25 years for the bulk of the pre-self-driving cars to be retired from the road. Might be 50 years after the first competent self-driving car before such a bill would even have a chance of being passed. And it's not looking great for anyone developing one in the next 5-10 years.
They're talking about wealth - not income. And thanks to the low class mobility in the U.S., the number one way to become rich is to be born to rich parents.
We live in a capitalist society - have to give the capitalists time to dump their inventory without losing money. Why should they be punished when they did nothing wrong?
I mean, other than choosing to sell products known to kill coral. But nothing BAD, like depriving shareholders of profits or providing insufficient political contributions.
Really, it should be fairly simple - collision avoidance at low speeds, under ultra-conservative assumptions, should be one thing any autonomous car can do well - the capability is increasingly built in to normal cars as driver-assist features. Slamming on the brakes in your driveway is also a perfectly acceptable solution to any uncertainty, unlike on the highway. If that means letting the driver assists override the AI, then so be it.
Yeah, you make some good points. I guess I'm thinking more of training on the order of - this is how you breathe while underwater (extended snorkel practice?), and be a good little piece of cargo, because more lives than yours depend on you keeping your cool so the nice people putting their lives on the line can rescue you. If they actually decide to make the attempt, it's got to be better than nothing, right?
I mean it seems like a situation where if things go sideways, nothing that kid is going to do on their own will help the situation, except keeping their cool and not moving until they get explicit instructions.
There's plenty of stuff that will calm you right down while remaining lucid.
Fair point on the dive reflex potentially causing bad sides effect though, I hadn't even thought of that. Bad karma to be experimenting on kids with such things unless the alternatives are pretty dire, and it sounds like the worst-case scenario right now is that they have to live in a cave for a few months until the water level drops.
I've been in a lot more caves than that - though never underwater for longer than I could hold my breath. But this is Slashdot - since when has actual knowledge of the subject at hand interfered with wild speculation?
I speculate precisely so that someone more knowledgeable can shoot me down. Or failing that, to argue with someone whose ignorance exceeds my own;-).
What if you just drug them first? The application of chemical calm is pretty well developed, and it doesn't seem like it should be a whole lot more difficult dragging a trussed up kid through the water than the rest of the rescue gear.
Hmm... could you possibly put them in tight, streamlined, snag-resistant "cocoons" that prevent put them moving, drug them into a state of artificial calm, and simply tow them out as inert cargo?
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Yes, because hiring inexperience pilots to fly their $100-400 million aircraft sounds like an extremely good investment to me...
Not really - the titanium contamination ruins the flavor :-D
Yeah, obviously this was a press release geared for the idiot masses - they give volume in cups of coffee, donuts, and hard-shelled candy, but even gallons are only mentioned as parenthetical aside.
I'm pretty sure most windmills have locking mechanisms to prevent them from spinning in excessively high winds, when the stresses would risk damaging them. Not quite sure how those torques compare to the that of an off-center blade though.
However, if you could lift a single rotor straight up, then you can probably suspend the second rotor at an angle almost as easily, so that the third rotor is left hanging straight down
Okay, found a video of a wind turbine being assembled in Norway with an 83m (272ft) tower - looks like they put the generating nacelle on top of the tower, and then lift the fully assembled three-blade assembly into place as a single piece. Makes sense I guess - it is nicely balanced that way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
So what? A little altitude is nothing some explosives at the base of the windmill wouldn't fix. Or a one-time lowering of the turbine to the ground in a more controlled fashion if you want to avoid damaging still-viable components with the impact. You already have a strong enough tower right there, just need a thousand feet of cable and a winch-truck on the ground that's heavier than, and strong enough to support the weight of, the combined turbine and blades assembly.
Agreed. Pretty much every wind farm I've seen has nothing else around it for hundreds of feet, so just put some explosives at the base of the tower and down it comes. Then chop it up and send it off for recycling - seems very unlikely that you couldn't turn a profit that way. Gets a little more expensive if you need to avoid hitting other windmills, but odds are that all the windmills in a given farm are going to be decommissioned at about the same time.
That'd be tricky though - the big advantage of lasers is that they're largely point-and-hit. Any deposit-leaving weapon is going to be back to trying to hit the target with a chunk of matter moving a million times slower - if you can do that, then why use the laser at all?
Probably not so great, as the demand for lubricants and chemical feedstock won't be worth even pennies on the dollar compared to the historical demand for energy.
The Vive works just fine with glasses, and the room scale "holodeck" experience can be quite compelling. I play with the sets at my local university from time to time (a buddy of mine runs a technology outreach program)
Have yet to see enough compelling content to justify the $2k+ outlay for the VR gear and a computer powerful enough to drive it myself, but I'm eagerly watching falling prices and improving technology and content , waiting for the right moment to buy in.
Actually though, from what I can find, the Occulus works fine with glasses as well, though you're limited to glasses with maximum dimensions of 142mm wide by 50mm high. Still, if you dished out for a headset it shouldn't be that big a deal to spend $10 online to get a pair of glasses that will work with the headset.
Was it really more dangerous than a motor-scooter though? Because that seemed to be it's what it was positioned to compete against. A scooter with weather protection and quad-wheel stability seems like a big step up to me.
Probably risky - if the burning outer layer deposits soot on the mirror, then the laser will heat it rather than being reflected. Doesn't take much heating to disrupt a reflective layer.
My first smartphone was an early iPhone - it was very nice for what it was, I certainly loved the build quality. I appreciate the polish Apple brings to their products, but the compromises are too great - I am not the target market. To the point that I recently turned down a free iPhone despite being in the market for a new phone. Plus modern iPhones are far too large.
>a lot cheaper than iPhones. That doesn't seem to be true any more,
You are quite right that price of top end of Android phones has climbed to compete with iPhones - and why not? The software is capable and allows HTC, Samsung, etc. to compete in the same market as iPhone, which they couldn't realistically do otherwise. Might not have the polish, but as you point out Apple's hardware choices leave much to be desired.
Meanwhile, Android *also* thrives at the bottom of the market - you can get a new, adequate, contract-free (though provider-locked) Android smartphone for $10-$50 almost anywhere, and prepay as little as $8/month for a couple hours of talk time and some data and texts. If you don't actually have a lot of use for the thing it makes for a wonderful deal.
Maybe not so much in the city, but rural settings offer much different driving consideration. Heck, even in the city a self-driving car if probably going to balk at driving off the end of the driveway and into the back yard to drop off a load of landscaping supplies.
It's also going to be a slow process. Give it at least 20 years between competent self-driving cars being available, and for the feature to be included in the lowest-priced economy cars. Then another 15-25 years for the bulk of the pre-self-driving cars to be retired from the road. Might be 50 years after the first competent self-driving car before such a bill would even have a chance of being passed. And it's not looking great for anyone developing one in the next 5-10 years.
No you can't. You can rent-to-own an iPhone at a substantial markup by including the rental price in your monthly phone service bill.
They're talking about wealth - not income. And thanks to the low class mobility in the U.S., the number one way to become rich is to be born to rich parents.
We live in a capitalist society - have to give the capitalists time to dump their inventory without losing money. Why should they be punished when they did nothing wrong?
I mean, other than choosing to sell products known to kill coral. But nothing BAD, like depriving shareholders of profits or providing insufficient political contributions.
They're plenty autonomous to get people killed by trusting them too much. Driving 20 feet at low speed should be well within its capability.
Really, it should be fairly simple - collision avoidance at low speeds, under ultra-conservative assumptions, should be one thing any autonomous car can do well - the capability is increasingly built in to normal cars as driver-assist features. Slamming on the brakes in your driveway is also a perfectly acceptable solution to any uncertainty, unlike on the highway. If that means letting the driver assists override the AI, then so be it.
Yeah, you make some good points. I guess I'm thinking more of training on the order of - this is how you breathe while underwater (extended snorkel practice?), and be a good little piece of cargo, because more lives than yours depend on you keeping your cool so the nice people putting their lives on the line can rescue you. If they actually decide to make the attempt, it's got to be better than nothing, right?
I mean it seems like a situation where if things go sideways, nothing that kid is going to do on their own will help the situation, except keeping their cool and not moving until they get explicit instructions.
Also why I suggest having a voice in their ear.
There's plenty of stuff that will calm you right down while remaining lucid.
Fair point on the dive reflex potentially causing bad sides effect though, I hadn't even thought of that. Bad karma to be experimenting on kids with such things unless the alternatives are pretty dire, and it sounds like the worst-case scenario right now is that they have to live in a cave for a few months until the water level drops.
Nose plugs would seem to solve that, wouldn't they?
I've been in a lot more caves than that - though never underwater for longer than I could hold my breath. But this is Slashdot - since when has actual knowledge of the subject at hand interfered with wild speculation?
I speculate precisely so that someone more knowledgeable can shoot me down. Or failing that, to argue with someone whose ignorance exceeds my own ;-).
What if you just drug them first? The application of chemical calm is pretty well developed, and it doesn't seem like it should be a whole lot more difficult dragging a trussed up kid through the water than the rest of the rescue gear.
Hmm... could you possibly put them in tight, streamlined, snag-resistant "cocoons" that prevent put them moving, drug them into a state of artificial calm, and simply tow them out as inert cargo?