Repetition does play a key-role, obviously, in enforcing lies
Even despite of agreeing with that statement, it doesn't describe the problem here. This article is about ignorance (vaccines provoking problems rather than solving them; a misconception which might have appeared for whatever reason) being reinforced with the repetition of reasonable explanations (sensible proofs about vaccines being good, which are misunderstood as lies by the target individuals who might be even plainly ignoring that new information).
So, the prayer approach which you are referring is applicable at other point (firstly convincing vaccine-deniers that vaccines are bad). What the article describes is more about a self-defence resource of fanatics: not listening/caring/adequately understanding anything going against their fanaticism. Fanatics don't want to actually confirm/dismiss their assumptions, to accept that they might have been wrong all the time, to be responsible for all the consequences of their errors, etc. For them, there is no difference between reasonable or unreasonable critics; everything either supports or attacks their blind beliefs.
As said above, HCCI isn't associated with a specific engine and can be faced in many different ways. Basically, it means that your (compression-based) combustion approach is almost ideal. Some years ago, I was precisely working on trying to reach HCCI-like conditions in conventional diesel engines by just tuning certain operating conditions.
This article refers to two different innovative issues: compression ignition for gasoline engines (what they might be trying to reach with a Wankel engine; as per some of the comments below because I didn't read the article) and HCCI (a more or less abstract target which might be achieved in many different ways).
difference is between an HCCI engine and a diesel engine
There isn't such a thing as a HCCI engine. HCCI describes a specific way in which the combustion occurs. It isn't even a well-delimited situation which can always be reached by performing certain actions. It just refers to a quite abstract final result: having a very homogeneous fuel-air mixture allowing the combustion to start everywhere almost at the same time. In conventional gasoline/diesel engines, the combustion is firstly started in specific parts and then spread through the whole chamber. As far as this fact is quite influential on the pollutants being generated, HCCI is expected to deliver notably lower emissions.
The properties of the fuels (e.g., how easily the f/a mixture might be ignited under certain conditions) explain the differences between both types of engines. So, there are very good reasons why compression-based ignition has been mostly focused on Diesel engines.
It is unclear what Mazda is planning to do to compensate the intrinsic limitations of gasoline on this front. Also HCCI is a pretty theoretical idea whose ambitious ultimate goal is to start the combustion almost simultaneously throughout the whole chamber. I don't think that close-to-100% HCCI has ever been reached even in Diesel.
No. It is extremely complicated (better: virtually impossible) UNDER THE INTENDED CONDITIONS (= transporting lots of people). This is precisely the biggest problem I see with these generic talking people seriously thinking that sci-fi-/CGI-video-/I-dont-know-but-here-comes-my-opinion-/just-put-more-money-there-based extrapolations of some basic ideas can solve anything: they don't get the context right (what IMHO is the worst form of ignorance: you don't know and aren't even aware about that fact).
The last test of Hyperloop gave a good proof of the expectations of these individuals: "we reached 200 mph = 200 mph speed is done". Any sensible person with almost a basic engineering (or understood-within-its-right-context physics) background should know that the conditions under which whatever result is reached (= context) matters a lot. Something like reaching 1 km/h means nothing without the exact conditions under which such an event happened; for example, you might need a power of 1 W or 1000000 W for reaching 1 km/h on account of the given conditions! The result "it is moving at 200 mph" means pretty much nothing from the point of view of knowing where you are exactly within that development.
In summary, the problem isn't regulations; at least, not as per the intention of that comment (i.e., unfair obstacles which ideally shouldn't be there). The problem is that these individuals aim to build what makes no sense from many different angles. Ironically, what they represent (lots of money and trendy ideas relying more on the imposition of a noisy group than on actual knowledge) is likely to find quite adaptable regulations. I am sure that the eventual construction of Hyperloop would be eminently restricted by just the most basic regulations, the ones meant to avoid the construction of death traps. I am also quite sure that all this will end (and/or be completely changed) way before reaching the that-permit-avoided-me-to-build-what-I-already-had point.
(I am not interested in getting involved in an abstract discussion about all this, but would certainly welcome any reliable source of information about the exact conditions of this test)
From the small real chunks in the video and the limited information in the linked article, I understand that: - We are talking about accelerating a small vehicle (as big as a small truck?) from zero to 300 km/h in 300 m and then keeping that speed for about 500 m. - It seems that it is a kind of a small train (better: the small locomotive of a train) over fancy rails travelling as any other train (or IC-powered, rail-based vehicle) would do. No idea about the exact effect of all this vacuum breakthrough technology, but it doesn't seem to matter too much here (= speed mostly constrained by the friction of the wheels against the rails).
After some research and by making lots of assumptions because of the limited amount of information in that article (again: I will be more than happy to update this post if anyone could provide reliable enough information about the exact conditions), it seems to have a reasonably good acceleration for what seems its weight by comparing it with equivalent road-based alternatives (i.e., fast cars or trucks). On the other hand, the friction wheel-rail is much lower than the one wheel-road (rolling resistance values); to not mention the fact that the contact surfaces of the typical wheels of road-based vehicles are much bigger than what seems to be shown in the video (i.e., the aforementioned factor would have to be still smaller?). Comparing this with the acceleration of a train locomotive might be more accurate, but I haven't been able to find any reliable reference to that alternative.
In summary, it seems a difficult-be-compared-against-anything-else sample of well-known technology (= vehicle on rails) under extremely limited conditions (a straight stretch of 300+500 m!) and by providing almost no relevant information. Also I guess that reaching much higher speeds under these exact conditions wouldn't be too difficult: if much bigger locomotives with many wagons can travel faster than 400 km/h during long (not completely straight!) stretches, these engines should be able to deliver notably higher speeds under notably better conditions (= no wagons/weight + straight and extremely short stretch).
Logically, this new "milestone" (= new CGI-intensive video) has no effect on my medium-/long-term predictions for Hyperloop, as written in a post here some weeks ago (reminder: Slashdot posts cannot be edited/removed and I welcome anyone to quote me on my predictions in that post at any point). Short summary: I don't expect Hyperloop to ever become a reality as it is being advertised; in the best scenario (= losses-driven project eminently supported by have-to-be-done-no-matter-what ideas), it might become an expensive and mostly useless toy.
My safe is quite old and crappy and, to open it, you need to input the right combination formed by 4 numbers of 2 digits (around 100 million different possibilities) and use a key.
Important warning for anyone feeling like cracking my safe: it doesn't contain anything of value. As clearly stated in my profile description, I am (kind of) poor and have no interest in becoming rich, in the sense of acquiring a relevant amount of assets, material goods, enjoying expensive whatever, etc. Why does a (kind of) poor person have a safe, you might wonder? For the same reason why a surprisingly relevant number of events happen in the world: pure coincidence.
FURTHER CLARIFICATION FOR PEOPLE WITH PARTICULARLY LIMITED UNDERSTANDING SKILLS: my reference to the #ffe0bd hex code colour was meant to be understood as white (caucausian or whatever the most adequate denomination is now). I made-up the word "keepgender" as a descriptive-enough way to indicate the opposite of transgender; I think that cisgender is the current politically-correct term.
I am such an insensitive idiot! Sorry for having made fun of your brave struggle against the horrible programming-language creators, always trying to perpetuate unfair stereotypes.
As a keepgender person with skin of some colour (#ffe0bd-ish), I feel the pain of my brothers and sisters forced to type symbols which, in certain contexts and for some people, might eventually have a somehow pejorative meaning for the community in which they are implicitly included on account of their generic features or life choices. I will join your noble efforts and stop using these tools of oppression right away: no more pointers in my C code until the language specs will be updated and more tolerant symbols included!
Compliance with my self-imposed policy of tagging all my not-too-evident-for-everyone posts: LOL.
EURO6 lorry engines, which are in practice free from emissions other than CO2. As a pedestrian, you only notice the exhaust by the heat.
You being aware about emissions is irrelevant. Some of these particles are so small that cannot even be measured or trapped (they pass through the filters). And the smallest ones might even be the most dangerous ones. You shouldn't be aware about emissions from relatively modern vehicles, but it doesn't matter: they are there anyway and are harmful.
Additionally and as already said, "EURO6 lorry" doesn't mean as much as you think it does. Labelling something as EURO6 isn't the result of an undoubted process objectively and absolutely defining a given engine, but pretty much the contrary. Additionally, a standard doesn't have an absolute meaning for all the possible engines, just for a specific type of them, being run under certain conditions. No idea what the advertisement, politics, etc. tell, but I can assure you that "free from emissions" is far from true now and ever. The kind of fuels being used, the pressure/temperature and operative conditions, etc. provoke certain outputs which are dangerous. Completely eliminating these outputs is virtually impossible.
EURO6 passenger vehicle engines, which emit pretty annoying smoke most of the time, and nasty black clouds every time they accelerate.
Again, this shouldn't be the case but it doesn't matter anyway. The important thing is reducing dangerous compounds, not reducing what you can see. There are different targets for different conditions and the differentiation truck/car is present almost everywhere; they do have different values, but also different operative conditions. I am currently not too much into all this but, years ago, the targets were already very difficult to be met and the upcoming ones (= Euro 5/6) almost impossible. So, by looking just at the expected values and by assuming that all the engines meet them, they are likely to be really low for both cars and trucks (you have to apply different rules because their conditions are different). But it doesn't mean that they don't contaminate; they certainly do and will continue doing so as pretty much every other machine (directly or indirectly). In fact, there are some machines which contaminate much more than cars/trucks and don't think that they have to meet so tough targets; for example, planes or ships. This whole reality is extremely complex and fully fixing it is plainly impossible.
This chat has already become too long and we are basically repeating the same ideas, so I hope that you don't mind if I stop it here.
You missed my point too. In the given moment under the given regulation (= country) certain thresholds are applicable (a different story is engine makers working ahead of time and trying to meet the targets of the upcoming years). For example, let's assume that you are building an engine to be used in vehicles X, in country Y and on year Z. That engine HAS to met whatever regulation and emission targets are applicable. Meeting means passing whatever standardised tests are applicable under the given conditions (measuring emissions is very expensive and difficult; in fact, I was precisely working on emission modelling, a sub-field which doesn't precisely deliver too accurate conclusions, but that is used systematically as a way to minimise the huge costs associated with actually measuring emissions). If you build an engine and you pass the tests that the corresponding authority considers good enough, your engine is assume to meet whatever targets. If you don't pass the tests, you would have to continue working on that engine. After passing the tests for a given engine, the engine maker will stop caring about any of this (= they did they work = they can sell that engine).
IC engines involve extremely complex actions at each single second at the the physical/chemical levels, what makes virtually impossible to deliver reasonably accurate conclusions regarding the expected emissions. You can try to model them (acceptably good guesses) or measure them, but only under very specific conditions. Then, you can (reasonably accurately) guess what might be the overall emissions of that engine, but certainly not knowing it for sure. Just slightly varying the exact moment where the fuel is being injected might provoke tremendous differences in the generated emission levels! Same thing for pressure/temperature variations. Engines deliver notably different levels of each emission type at different speeds, accelerations, when having different types of problems, on account of the age of the engine (or associated elements, like filters), etc. In summary, within the IC-engine-emission world, "meeting targets" is only a conventional way of saying "it passed the legal tests which were considered good enough at that given moment".
FUN FACT: I was working on engine emissions in the UK, for a small (half-)British company, with a relevant proportion of British clients and coworkers. All of them were using "truck" rather than "lorry", an alternative which I don't even recall to have ever heard in that professional context. No idea why. Perhaps, it was because the US engine/automotive industry is much more relevant than the British one and most of the technical references are written in US English.
The whole point of having emissions targets is to not allow any engine to go over said targets. The values are different in different countries, for different types of emissions and vehicles. The (regulated) measuring processes might also differ and have a very important influence on the emissions being really generated (as proven by some cheating scandals). Any engine not meeting the targets cannot be sold, full stop. This has always been the case when a legislation has forced whatever minimum threshold to be met.
For your information, the standard being applied in Europe when I was working on this field was Euro 4 and every single engine (or other machines where other regulations were applicable) had to meet the given targets in order to be commercialised. In any other scenario, we would be talking about mere recommendations or ideal values, a completely different story which certainly doesn't concern the engine industry at all. Engine manufacturers, equivalently to any other company in the world, will exclusively spend money (reducing/measuring/caring about emissions is very expensive) for two reasons: either earning more money or not having any other option (= legislation forcing them to do so). Engine manufacturers never meet emissions targets voluntarily, not even for having their clients happy (the cost/benefit ratio would be too high).
This is a screwball bet, but (ignoring inflation), what you basically proposed is a bet in which your stake, betting against electric cars, is $5, and your payoff, paid by people betting in favor of electric cars, is $1,000,000. So the odds you just offered were 200000:1 in favor of electric cars.
No. The difference in the amounts isn't meant to be related to the probability of a given outcome to occur, but to the fact that I have to think about my retirement. LOL.
(Politicians talking about what will be happening in over 20 years? Very reliable source of something. LOL)
Do you want to go ahead with the bet or not? We might choose other country if you wish, although with smaller/greener countries the conditions might change a bit. Just escrow the $1 million somewhere and I will do the same with the $5, although I might need some months because I don't have that much money with me right now. LOL.
However, from your response, it's clear that you are not open minded.
?! Other than getting some idea about my sense of humour and my low interest in money, there is no other relevant information in that comment. I will help you understand your mistake by being a bit more honest with you: I will never take a study from a bank, financial-institution or similar even slightly seriously when dealing with anything not strictly related to banks or financial stuff.
Financial whatever is mostly meant to grow at the expense of others. They don't try to do things better, to learn, to share knowledge, but right the contrary: they want inequality to remain, to keep their (unfair) advantages, to share good-for-their-own-interests information, to try to persuade people to do what is good for them, etc. Trusting them would be like trusting what a person trying to sell you a bridge tells about the bridge market. Even if I wouldn’t have any other way to get that knowledge, I wouldn’t trust in any of this.
I am a mechanical engineer with a pretty good grasp about the technical aspects (able to easily differentiate between meaningless marketing and probable upcoming technology) and even in general (kind of a knowing-human-nature-pretty-well guy). I am also skilled in all what is required to create a proper study on this or on any other front (good background in maths, programming, data management, etc.). Why should I ignore all that and blindly accept the conclusions given to me by other people, even by forgetting about my aforementioned perception of the financial world? This wouldn’t be open-minded, but sheep-minded; even plainly stupid. If I ever want to make a proper analysis about the most likely evolution of whatever reality during the next years, I would trust my favourite source of knowledge for these tasks: myself:)
As an "open minded engineer" you should read these reports.
I hope that the quotes are only meant to highlight the fact of being using my exact words and you aren't implying that my statement isn't accurate. Thanks for the info, but I have no need of reading certain kind of reports from certain kind of sources about certain kind of issues. The fact of being reasonably sure about something (logically, not certain as far as this is about consumer behaviour, an intrinsically unpredictable reality) doesn't mean that I am really interested in that something.
I am already rich and have no need to take your money so I will not accept your bet.
You are one of the first rich persons I know who rejects (what s/he thinks that is easy) money! We are talking here about up to $5! You can seriously miss the opportunity of earning $5? How have you become rich with this attitude? Well, I guess that I will have to continue looking for ways to earn by first $1 million. LOL.
might find cause to divest from oil and fossil cars after reading these reports. It might save you some money.
I don't invest in anything other than in myself and I mostly run on food:)
My point was: you should either not include special records in the main database or include all of them without any kind of flag. In any of these scenarios, you should have a specific non-public database to be queried only under very specific conditions. Including any kind of clear distinction among entries implies lots of risks and even defeating the whole purpose of the protection.
Imagine that you have three people A, B and C, where C is a marked person (for whatever reason; you might even have complex marking system accounting for any possible status like secret service, military, royal family, etc.). You can store all the information of these 3 persons everywhere as if they were normal citizens. You will also have a last-moment check in certain situations which will only return OK/not (= the given department wouldn't even know the reason for the go ahead/denial). All the information about A, B and C might be publish anywhere without any problem. These three persons will also go through exactly the same steps while performing virtually any action; from the point of view of most of systems, they will be normal citizens. But, in situations like a system determining whether a citizen can run for public office, one last check (= remotely querying to the database including all the information about special status, restrictions and incompatibilities) would avoid C to go though.
Do you get my idea? The whole point is to divide the information and to set as many access restrictions for classified bits as possible. Just one flag (even an unlabelled integer telling the status of that person) in a common database might be problematic from the security point of view and would certainly imply a breach of the classified-information status, even despite storing all the relevant information in a very secure database.
Good to know. I am an open-minded engineer, completely detached from the current US (car market) reality but with very clear ideas regarding the differences between people talking (about nice things) vs. actually doing (when it implies any effort). Are you up for the bet then? Or are you afraid of losing $1 million? In 50 years, you might be rich and it wouldn't be a problem. In the worst scenario, you might always ask your friends the banks for some help, because they will certainly be there for you and for taking responsibility for all their long-term predictions. LOL.
This statement isn't true and will never be. Diesel engines will always generate dangerous-for-health emissions, exactly the same than gasoline engines. We (= the human kind) have been working on over-optimising all the actions happening at each level of the IC engines for over 100 years. Each second of each single stroke of any modern engine is fully controlled to deliver not just the best performance, but also to generate as less emissions as possible. We can keep slightly improving over and over, but emissions will never be "solved".
IC-engine emissions are either completely-unavoidable (CO2) or practically-unavoidable under the current fuels/pressure/temperature conditions (all the dangerous-for-the-health species) outputs. As explained in other comments, engine manufacturers are the ones being more concerned about reducing emissions (emissions above the target = engine cannot be sold) and users don't need to do anything.
All this thing of being inside the system with new identities (new names, ids, driver licenses, etc., I understand) seems fine; it is even ideal, as far as the underlying idea is precisely to make everything look as normal as possible. But having a mark, any mark, in all the references to that person seems problematic. I think that it would be much better to store their information as normal citizens at all the levels (this would also minimise the number of departments/people knowing about so delicate stuff); and to only bring their peculiar status into picture when strictly required (e.g., database with information about protected individuals which is only checked under very specific circumstances).
they predict new sales primarily electric within 10 years
Let's do one thing. If by July 2027 most of new cars being sold in the US are electric, I would pay you $5; if not but by July 2037, $4; and so on until July 2067. If most of new cars being sold in the US by the 1st July 2067 aren't electric, you would pay me $1 million for having wasted 50 years of my life waiting for nothing. LOL.
Seriously, your (and these others') expectations are very unrealistic, but I cannot put my money where my mouth is because of being (kind of) poor:)
Theoretically, yes. Practically, they are linked to all our combustion-based society and, for example, the generation of the electricity they need might be even dirtier. But they are undoubtedly the future and the next logical step for IC engines (at least, for small sizes and loads). The problem is people liking nice results, but not being willing to accept what they imply: many people don't like the limited ranges, the lower speeds, the multiple associated problems, etc. For example, If people would be seriously concerned about the environment and would be willing to, let's say, buy cars not going faster than 100 kph, the pollution from IC-engines might stop being a relevant problem.
Fossil fuel and internal combustion engines will be replaced within the next 10 years
It would be nice, but I am afraid that it will not happen so soon. Just by focusing on the richest countries, having most of cars (not talking about trucks, ships, planes, manufacturing facilities, etc.) electric within the next 50 years would be impressively good news for me.
Baloney. They can meet the emissions targets today and the technology is being sold as I type this in large numbers.
As said, I was working precisely on reducing pollutants on IC engines and, back then (some years ago, this is true; but we are talking about something that will not change in many years), they weren't just having serious problems to meet the targets, but were also spending lots of money on trying to do so.
There are vehicles available TODAY [wikipedia.org] that can meet the emissions targets.
This sentence proves that you are not getting the point. There aren't just some vehicles meeting the targets today, ALL the engines being commercialised have to meet the targets in the given country. Meeting the emission targets is a basic requisite for any engine (or machine or facility) to be commercialised since quite a few years ago.
I don't want to offend you, but there is no point in continuing with this conversation. You expect me to accept some generic (quite wrong) ideas when I do have actual knowledge on all this (you might be working on the auto industry, but certainly not as an engineer on engine-emission reduction). I do understand that you might think the same of me ("why should I believe what this guy says?") and this is precisely the reason why I don't see the point of continuing:)
Slashdot Mirror
Repetition does play a key-role, obviously, in enforcing lies
Even despite of agreeing with that statement, it doesn't describe the problem here. This article is about ignorance (vaccines provoking problems rather than solving them; a misconception which might have appeared for whatever reason) being reinforced with the repetition of reasonable explanations (sensible proofs about vaccines being good, which are misunderstood as lies by the target individuals who might be even plainly ignoring that new information).
So, the prayer approach which you are referring is applicable at other point (firstly convincing vaccine-deniers that vaccines are bad). What the article describes is more about a self-defence resource of fanatics: not listening/caring/adequately understanding anything going against their fanaticism. Fanatics don't want to actually confirm/dismiss their assumptions, to accept that they might have been wrong all the time, to be responsible for all the consequences of their errors, etc. For them, there is no difference between reasonable or unreasonable critics; everything either supports or attacks their blind beliefs.
As said above, HCCI isn't associated with a specific engine and can be faced in many different ways. Basically, it means that your (compression-based) combustion approach is almost ideal. Some years ago, I was precisely working on trying to reach HCCI-like conditions in conventional diesel engines by just tuning certain operating conditions.
This article refers to two different innovative issues: compression ignition for gasoline engines (what they might be trying to reach with a Wankel engine; as per some of the comments below because I didn't read the article) and HCCI (a more or less abstract target which might be achieved in many different ways).
difference is between an HCCI engine and a diesel engine
There isn't such a thing as a HCCI engine. HCCI describes a specific way in which the combustion occurs. It isn't even a well-delimited situation which can always be reached by performing certain actions. It just refers to a quite abstract final result: having a very homogeneous fuel-air mixture allowing the combustion to start everywhere almost at the same time. In conventional gasoline/diesel engines, the combustion is firstly started in specific parts and then spread through the whole chamber. As far as this fact is quite influential on the pollutants being generated, HCCI is expected to deliver notably lower emissions.
The properties of the fuels (e.g., how easily the f/a mixture might be ignited under certain conditions) explain the differences between both types of engines. So, there are very good reasons why compression-based ignition has been mostly focused on Diesel engines.
It is unclear what Mazda is planning to do to compensate the intrinsic limitations of gasoline on this front. Also HCCI is a pretty theoretical idea whose ambitious ultimate goal is to start the combustion almost simultaneously throughout the whole chamber. I don't think that close-to-100% HCCI has ever been reached even in Diesel.
No. It is extremely complicated (better: virtually impossible) UNDER THE INTENDED CONDITIONS (= transporting lots of people). This is precisely the biggest problem I see with these generic talking people seriously thinking that sci-fi-/CGI-video-/I-dont-know-but-here-comes-my-opinion-/just-put-more-money-there-based extrapolations of some basic ideas can solve anything: they don't get the context right (what IMHO is the worst form of ignorance: you don't know and aren't even aware about that fact).
The last test of Hyperloop gave a good proof of the expectations of these individuals: "we reached 200 mph = 200 mph speed is done". Any sensible person with almost a basic engineering (or understood-within-its-right-context physics) background should know that the conditions under which whatever result is reached (= context) matters a lot. Something like reaching 1 km/h means nothing without the exact conditions under which such an event happened; for example, you might need a power of 1 W or 1000000 W for reaching 1 km/h on account of the given conditions! The result "it is moving at 200 mph" means pretty much nothing from the point of view of knowing where you are exactly within that development.
In summary, the problem isn't regulations; at least, not as per the intention of that comment (i.e., unfair obstacles which ideally shouldn't be there). The problem is that these individuals aim to build what makes no sense from many different angles. Ironically, what they represent (lots of money and trendy ideas relying more on the imposition of a noisy group than on actual knowledge) is likely to find quite adaptable regulations. I am sure that the eventual construction of Hyperloop would be eminently restricted by just the most basic regulations, the ones meant to avoid the construction of death traps. I am also quite sure that all this will end (and/or be completely changed) way before reaching the that-permit-avoided-me-to-build-what-I-already-had point.
(I am not interested in getting involved in an abstract discussion about all this, but would certainly welcome any reliable source of information about the exact conditions of this test)
From the small real chunks in the video and the limited information in the linked article, I understand that:
- We are talking about accelerating a small vehicle (as big as a small truck?) from zero to 300 km/h in 300 m and then keeping that speed for about 500 m.
- It seems that it is a kind of a small train (better: the small locomotive of a train) over fancy rails travelling as any other train (or IC-powered, rail-based vehicle) would do. No idea about the exact effect of all this vacuum breakthrough technology, but it doesn't seem to matter too much here (= speed mostly constrained by the friction of the wheels against the rails).
After some research and by making lots of assumptions because of the limited amount of information in that article (again: I will be more than happy to update this post if anyone could provide reliable enough information about the exact conditions), it seems to have a reasonably good acceleration for what seems its weight by comparing it with equivalent road-based alternatives (i.e., fast cars or trucks). On the other hand, the friction wheel-rail is much lower than the one wheel-road (rolling resistance values); to not mention the fact that the contact surfaces of the typical wheels of road-based vehicles are much bigger than what seems to be shown in the video (i.e., the aforementioned factor would have to be still smaller?). Comparing this with the acceleration of a train locomotive might be more accurate, but I haven't been able to find any reliable reference to that alternative.
In summary, it seems a difficult-be-compared-against-anything-else sample of well-known technology (= vehicle on rails) under extremely limited conditions (a straight stretch of 300+500 m!) and by providing almost no relevant information. Also I guess that reaching much higher speeds under these exact conditions wouldn't be too difficult: if much bigger locomotives with many wagons can travel faster than 400 km/h during long (not completely straight!) stretches, these engines should be able to deliver notably higher speeds under notably better conditions (= no wagons/weight + straight and extremely short stretch).
Logically, this new "milestone" (= new CGI-intensive video) has no effect on my medium-/long-term predictions for Hyperloop, as written in a post here some weeks ago (reminder: Slashdot posts cannot be edited/removed and I welcome anyone to quote me on my predictions in that post at any point). Short summary: I don't expect Hyperloop to ever become a reality as it is being advertised; in the best scenario (= losses-driven project eminently supported by have-to-be-done-no-matter-what ideas), it might become an expensive and mostly useless toy.
My safe is quite old and crappy and, to open it, you need to input the right combination formed by 4 numbers of 2 digits (around 100 million different possibilities) and use a key.
Important warning for anyone feeling like cracking my safe: it doesn't contain anything of value. As clearly stated in my profile description, I am (kind of) poor and have no interest in becoming rich, in the sense of acquiring a relevant amount of assets, material goods, enjoying expensive whatever, etc. Why does a (kind of) poor person have a safe, you might wonder? For the same reason why a surprisingly relevant number of events happen in the world: pure coincidence.
FURTHER CLARIFICATION FOR PEOPLE WITH PARTICULARLY LIMITED UNDERSTANDING SKILLS: my reference to the #ffe0bd hex code colour was meant to be understood as white (caucausian or whatever the most adequate denomination is now). I made-up the word "keepgender" as a descriptive-enough way to indicate the opposite of transgender; I think that cisgender is the current politically-correct term.
I am such an insensitive idiot! Sorry for having made fun of your brave struggle against the horrible programming-language creators, always trying to perpetuate unfair stereotypes.
As a keepgender person with skin of some colour (#ffe0bd-ish), I feel the pain of my brothers and sisters forced to type symbols which, in certain contexts and for some people, might eventually have a somehow pejorative meaning for the community in which they are implicitly included on account of their generic features or life choices. I will join your noble efforts and stop using these tools of oppression right away: no more pointers in my C code until the language specs will be updated and more tolerant symbols included!
Compliance with my self-imposed policy of tagging all my not-too-evident-for-everyone posts: LOL.
LOL to the n power. Unfortunately, I have no mod points left.
EURO6 lorry engines, which are in practice free from emissions other than CO2. As a pedestrian, you only notice the exhaust by the heat.
You being aware about emissions is irrelevant. Some of these particles are so small that cannot even be measured or trapped (they pass through the filters). And the smallest ones might even be the most dangerous ones. You shouldn't be aware about emissions from relatively modern vehicles, but it doesn't matter: they are there anyway and are harmful.
Additionally and as already said, "EURO6 lorry" doesn't mean as much as you think it does. Labelling something as EURO6 isn't the result of an undoubted process objectively and absolutely defining a given engine, but pretty much the contrary. Additionally, a standard doesn't have an absolute meaning for all the possible engines, just for a specific type of them, being run under certain conditions. No idea what the advertisement, politics, etc. tell, but I can assure you that "free from emissions" is far from true now and ever. The kind of fuels being used, the pressure/temperature and operative conditions, etc. provoke certain outputs which are dangerous. Completely eliminating these outputs is virtually impossible.
EURO6 passenger vehicle engines, which emit pretty annoying smoke most of the time, and nasty black clouds every time they accelerate.
Again, this shouldn't be the case but it doesn't matter anyway. The important thing is reducing dangerous compounds, not reducing what you can see. There are different targets for different conditions and the differentiation truck/car is present almost everywhere; they do have different values, but also different operative conditions. I am currently not too much into all this but, years ago, the targets were already very difficult to be met and the upcoming ones (= Euro 5/6) almost impossible. So, by looking just at the expected values and by assuming that all the engines meet them, they are likely to be really low for both cars and trucks (you have to apply different rules because their conditions are different). But it doesn't mean that they don't contaminate; they certainly do and will continue doing so as pretty much every other machine (directly or indirectly). In fact, there are some machines which contaminate much more than cars/trucks and don't think that they have to meet so tough targets; for example, planes or ships. This whole reality is extremely complex and fully fixing it is plainly impossible.
This chat has already become too long and we are basically repeating the same ideas, so I hope that you don't mind if I stop it here.
You missed my point too. In the given moment under the given regulation (= country) certain thresholds are applicable (a different story is engine makers working ahead of time and trying to meet the targets of the upcoming years). For example, let's assume that you are building an engine to be used in vehicles X, in country Y and on year Z. That engine HAS to met whatever regulation and emission targets are applicable. Meeting means passing whatever standardised tests are applicable under the given conditions (measuring emissions is very expensive and difficult; in fact, I was precisely working on emission modelling, a sub-field which doesn't precisely deliver too accurate conclusions, but that is used systematically as a way to minimise the huge costs associated with actually measuring emissions). If you build an engine and you pass the tests that the corresponding authority considers good enough, your engine is assume to meet whatever targets. If you don't pass the tests, you would have to continue working on that engine. After passing the tests for a given engine, the engine maker will stop caring about any of this (= they did they work = they can sell that engine).
IC engines involve extremely complex actions at each single second at the the physical/chemical levels, what makes virtually impossible to deliver reasonably accurate conclusions regarding the expected emissions. You can try to model them (acceptably good guesses) or measure them, but only under very specific conditions. Then, you can (reasonably accurately) guess what might be the overall emissions of that engine, but certainly not knowing it for sure. Just slightly varying the exact moment where the fuel is being injected might provoke tremendous differences in the generated emission levels! Same thing for pressure/temperature variations. Engines deliver notably different levels of each emission type at different speeds, accelerations, when having different types of problems, on account of the age of the engine (or associated elements, like filters), etc. In summary, within the IC-engine-emission world, "meeting targets" is only a conventional way of saying "it passed the legal tests which were considered good enough at that given moment".
FUN FACT: I was working on engine emissions in the UK, for a small (half-)British company, with a relevant proportion of British clients and coworkers. All of them were using "truck" rather than "lorry", an alternative which I don't even recall to have ever heard in that professional context. No idea why. Perhaps, it was because the US engine/automotive industry is much more relevant than the British one and most of the technical references are written in US English.
The whole point of having emissions targets is to not allow any engine to go over said targets. The values are different in different countries, for different types of emissions and vehicles. The (regulated) measuring processes might also differ and have a very important influence on the emissions being really generated (as proven by some cheating scandals). Any engine not meeting the targets cannot be sold, full stop. This has always been the case when a legislation has forced whatever minimum threshold to be met.
For your information, the standard being applied in Europe when I was working on this field was Euro 4 and every single engine (or other machines where other regulations were applicable) had to meet the given targets in order to be commercialised. In any other scenario, we would be talking about mere recommendations or ideal values, a completely different story which certainly doesn't concern the engine industry at all. Engine manufacturers, equivalently to any other company in the world, will exclusively spend money (reducing/measuring/caring about emissions is very expensive) for two reasons: either earning more money or not having any other option (= legislation forcing them to do so). Engine manufacturers never meet emissions targets voluntarily, not even for having their clients happy (the cost/benefit ratio would be too high).
This is a screwball bet, but (ignoring inflation), what you basically proposed is a bet in which your stake, betting against electric cars, is $5, and your payoff, paid by people betting in favor of electric cars, is $1,000,000. So the odds you just offered were 200000:1 in favor of electric cars.
No. The difference in the amounts isn't meant to be related to the probability of a given outcome to occur, but to the fact that I have to think about my retirement. LOL.
(Politicians talking about what will be happening in over 20 years? Very reliable source of something. LOL)
Do you want to go ahead with the bet or not? We might choose other country if you wish, although with smaller/greener countries the conditions might change a bit. Just escrow the $1 million somewhere and I will do the same with the $5, although I might need some months because I don't have that much money with me right now. LOL.
However, from your response, it's clear that you are not open minded.
?! Other than getting some idea about my sense of humour and my low interest in money, there is no other relevant information in that comment. I will help you understand your mistake by being a bit more honest with you: I will never take a study from a bank, financial-institution or similar even slightly seriously when dealing with anything not strictly related to banks or financial stuff.
:)
Financial whatever is mostly meant to grow at the expense of others. They don't try to do things better, to learn, to share knowledge, but right the contrary: they want inequality to remain, to keep their (unfair) advantages, to share good-for-their-own-interests information, to try to persuade people to do what is good for them, etc. Trusting them would be like trusting what a person trying to sell you a bridge tells about the bridge market. Even if I wouldn’t have any other way to get that knowledge, I wouldn’t trust in any of this.
I am a mechanical engineer with a pretty good grasp about the technical aspects (able to easily differentiate between meaningless marketing and probable upcoming technology) and even in general (kind of a knowing-human-nature-pretty-well guy). I am also skilled in all what is required to create a proper study on this or on any other front (good background in maths, programming, data management, etc.). Why should I ignore all that and blindly accept the conclusions given to me by other people, even by forgetting about my aforementioned perception of the financial world? This wouldn’t be open-minded, but sheep-minded; even plainly stupid. If I ever want to make a proper analysis about the most likely evolution of whatever reality during the next years, I would trust my favourite source of knowledge for these tasks: myself
As an "open minded engineer" you should read these reports.
I hope that the quotes are only meant to highlight the fact of being using my exact words and you aren't implying that my statement isn't accurate. Thanks for the info, but I have no need of reading certain kind of reports from certain kind of sources about certain kind of issues. The fact of being reasonably sure about something (logically, not certain as far as this is about consumer behaviour, an intrinsically unpredictable reality) doesn't mean that I am really interested in that something.
I am already rich and have no need to take your money so I will not accept your bet.
You are one of the first rich persons I know who rejects (what s/he thinks that is easy) money! We are talking here about up to $5! You can seriously miss the opportunity of earning $5? How have you become rich with this attitude? Well, I guess that I will have to continue looking for ways to earn by first $1 million. LOL.
might find cause to divest from oil and fossil cars after reading these reports. It might save you some money.
I don't invest in anything other than in myself and I mostly run on food :)
My point was: you should either not include special records in the main database or include all of them without any kind of flag. In any of these scenarios, you should have a specific non-public database to be queried only under very specific conditions. Including any kind of clear distinction among entries implies lots of risks and even defeating the whole purpose of the protection.
Imagine that you have three people A, B and C, where C is a marked person (for whatever reason; you might even have complex marking system accounting for any possible status like secret service, military, royal family, etc.). You can store all the information of these 3 persons everywhere as if they were normal citizens. You will also have a last-moment check in certain situations which will only return OK/not (= the given department wouldn't even know the reason for the go ahead/denial). All the information about A, B and C might be publish anywhere without any problem. These three persons will also go through exactly the same steps while performing virtually any action; from the point of view of most of systems, they will be normal citizens. But, in situations like a system determining whether a citizen can run for public office, one last check (= remotely querying to the database including all the information about special status, restrictions and incompatibilities) would avoid C to go though.
Do you get my idea? The whole point is to divide the information and to set as many access restrictions for classified bits as possible. Just one flag (even an unlabelled integer telling the status of that person) in a common database might be problematic from the security point of view and would certainly imply a breach of the classified-information status, even despite storing all the relevant information in a very secure database.
conservative banks
Good to know. I am an open-minded engineer, completely detached from the current US (car market) reality but with very clear ideas regarding the differences between people talking (about nice things) vs. actually doing (when it implies any effort). Are you up for the bet then? Or are you afraid of losing $1 million? In 50 years, you might be rich and it wouldn't be a problem. In the worst scenario, you might always ask your friends the banks for some help, because they will certainly be there for you and for taking responsibility for all their long-term predictions. LOL.
Diesel lorries are practically free of emissions
This statement isn't true and will never be. Diesel engines will always generate dangerous-for-health emissions, exactly the same than gasoline engines. We (= the human kind) have been working on over-optimising all the actions happening at each level of the IC engines for over 100 years. Each second of each single stroke of any modern engine is fully controlled to deliver not just the best performance, but also to generate as less emissions as possible. We can keep slightly improving over and over, but emissions will never be "solved".
IC-engine emissions are either completely-unavoidable (CO2) or practically-unavoidable under the current fuels/pressure/temperature conditions (all the dangerous-for-the-health species) outputs. As explained in other comments, engine manufacturers are the ones being more concerned about reducing emissions (emissions above the target = engine cannot be sold) and users don't need to do anything.
database that marked them as non-public
All this thing of being inside the system with new identities (new names, ids, driver licenses, etc., I understand) seems fine; it is even ideal, as far as the underlying idea is precisely to make everything look as normal as possible. But having a mark, any mark, in all the references to that person seems problematic. I think that it would be much better to store their information as normal citizens at all the levels (this would also minimise the number of departments/people knowing about so delicate stuff); and to only bring their peculiar status into picture when strictly required (e.g., database with information about protected individuals which is only checked under very specific circumstances).
they predict new sales primarily electric within 10 years
Let's do one thing. If by July 2027 most of new cars being sold in the US are electric, I would pay you $5; if not but by July 2037, $4; and so on until July 2067. If most of new cars being sold in the US by the 1st July 2067 aren't electric, you would pay me $1 million for having wasted 50 years of my life waiting for nothing. LOL.
:)
Seriously, your (and these others') expectations are very unrealistic, but I cannot put my money where my mouth is because of being (kind of) poor
Electric motors have none of these problems.
Theoretically, yes. Practically, they are linked to all our combustion-based society and, for example, the generation of the electricity they need might be even dirtier. But they are undoubtedly the future and the next logical step for IC engines (at least, for small sizes and loads). The problem is people liking nice results, but not being willing to accept what they imply: many people don't like the limited ranges, the lower speeds, the multiple associated problems, etc. For example, If people would be seriously concerned about the environment and would be willing to, let's say, buy cars not going faster than 100 kph, the pollution from IC-engines might stop being a relevant problem.
Fossil fuel and internal combustion engines will be replaced within the next 10 years
It would be nice, but I am afraid that it will not happen so soon. Just by focusing on the richest countries, having most of cars (not talking about trucks, ships, planes, manufacturing facilities, etc.) electric within the next 50 years would be impressively good news for me.
Baloney. They can meet the emissions targets today and the technology is being sold as I type this in large numbers.
As said, I was working precisely on reducing pollutants on IC engines and, back then (some years ago, this is true; but we are talking about something that will not change in many years), they weren't just having serious problems to meet the targets, but were also spending lots of money on trying to do so.
There are vehicles available TODAY [wikipedia.org] that can meet the emissions targets.
This sentence proves that you are not getting the point. There aren't just some vehicles meeting the targets today, ALL the engines being commercialised have to meet the targets in the given country. Meeting the emission targets is a basic requisite for any engine (or machine or facility) to be commercialised since quite a few years ago.
:)
I don't want to offend you, but there is no point in continuing with this conversation. You expect me to accept some generic (quite wrong) ideas when I do have actual knowledge on all this (you might be working on the auto industry, but certainly not as an engineer on engine-emission reduction). I do understand that you might think the same of me ("why should I believe what this guy says?") and this is precisely the reason why I don't see the point of continuing