We're mostly still strapping scaled up drone engines to pods... on the drawing board These things will fly, there's no doubt about that. The real question: how do these things compare to the next best thing, helicopters? Are they quieter? Cheaper to operate? Safer? Faster? There's a few interesting designs like the Bell one that appear to be able to transition from vertical lift produced by the fans to horizontal flight supported by lifting surfaces. But if they do not perform significantly better or run cheaper than helicopters, there's not much reason to believe they'll transform transportation any more than helicopters already have.
Uber says it'll get a millennial from San Francisco to San Jose in 15 minutes flat
Not sure what country you're from, but basic SRS here runs about €10.000 for people not covered by universal health care (like temporary visitors who come here and pay for the surgery themselves), and most opt only for some superficial additional plastic surgery, say another €3.000. Hormones really aren't that dear; the common ones here are Systen and Progynova, at most €150 / year or so. A few people I know don't react well to those and they get an alternative for which they pay out of pocket, about €300 a year. There might be others which are more expensive but those are by far the most common.
I don't know anyone though who has fallen victim to "skeevy therapists"; access to fully licensed and qualified ones is available to anyone who needs it, and there 's extensive psych screening before even getting access to hormone treatments (which are prescription only). I do know that in the past there's been a few people self-medicating, but now that it's treated as a regular disorder, this is rather rare.
the common teen gender confusion which is almost always resolved as simple homosexuality by the age of 18
While there are plenty of such cases mistakenly labeled as gender dysphoria (which is why one should be extremely careful with diagnosis given the nature of the treatment), there are real cases as well that have nothing to do with "confusion"
poor diagnosis with these conditions, because it means no expectation of recover and no end to funded treatment.
They should have picked a better condition to capitalize on. Sex reassignment surgery isn't that expensive actually, and most post-ops only require permanent hormone treatment which is dirt cheap.
an animated special based on the characters from the first campaign
Sounds like HarmonQuest, a (partly) animated live D&D series by Dan Harmon (the Community guy). That project was a bit hit-and-miss, some of the guest roleplayers were brilliant (they invited a different one for each episode) while others didn't work out so well. Still, worth watching if you're into that sort of thing. I hadn't heard of Critical Role, I'll have to go watch that now...
They rewrote the DSM to reflect insights into the actual causes of gender dysphoria, and the understanding that in many cases gender reassignment surgery is actually the treatment with the highest chance of success. Sadly that success rate is not all that high yet... due in part to the way society at large treats transgenders. And that includes the SJWs. No transgender I know holds much truck with the modern day nonsense propagated by these "allies", and think it's actually hurting acceptance of trans people.
Her statement is somewhat intelligent. However it has nothing to do with her own intelligence; it's hardly a new insight, just a second hand opinion that happens to fit her narrative.
The article states: "The system can convert 15% of the solar energy it receives into hydrogen". Not 15% of the solar energy it converted into electricity which it does not do, it uses "direct solar water-splitting", whatever that means. There's no intermediate step with an efficiency of 15%, that figure is for received solar power to hydrogen, for an equivalent of around 210WP. Just think: if the actual output was 15% of 210WP, then 20 of these panels would be nowhere near enough to power and heat a home.
That makes no sense. The panel doesn't produce 210W of electricity to use for hydrogen conversion (the rest going dissipating as heat?), it's 210W worth of direct hydrogen conversion. 210W is 15% of all the sunlight hitting it, as the article states. Slightly less efficient than a PV panel, which usually have a similar listed peak power of 200-300W at a somewhat smaller panel size.
WP already includes the efficiency figure, it's the maximum power put out by the panel under ideal conditions. At peak production, 210 W will go into hydrogen production.
The average Northern European home can't fit 20 of these panels on its roof. Unlike PV solar panels, these things have an added benefit: the hydrogen can be stored for later use without the need for expensive batteries... but you will likely need to compress the hydrogen which requires a fair bit of energy. Do they foresee these panels being used in residential installations, or are they more suited for solar farms?
Regardless, it's an interesting development. Good advances in hydrogen storage and transport have been made, and there's already a few hydrogen cars on our roads, but the production of green hydrogen (i.e. not produced from natural gas) has been expensive and troublesome thus far. Though the secrecy surrounding this project is generally a red flag for inflated expectations.
You mean, based on kids going on strike because their schools are forcing them to? A bunch of schools in Belgium have turned these protests into an extracurricular activity, with mandatory attendance. I kid you not (in Dutch)
Something similar happened in the Netherlands when schools allowed children to attend. One of the school's principals was interviewed, and stated that it's good to encourage children to demonstrate and voice their opinion in this manner. Then, in an unbelievably rare case of a journalist actually asking a good follow-up question, he was asked if he would be just as happy with the kids skipping school in order to demonstrate against the effects of mass migration. (He wouldn't be ok with that, of course...)
He also said a lot of other things. "You will fail because chaos" - "I don't get..." "CHAOS! Oh and also hubris"
Certainly one of the more insufferable characters in movie history (and not at all like the guy in the book)
And in this case, of course they should. Whether they should proceed to build an ill-conceived (and rather lame) theme park with extinct animals is another matter.
Contactless is a hell of a lot faster. In some places, this matters a lot: it has seriously shortened the lines in office cafeterias, and in places like the London Underground where you can travel with a contactless debit card, adding a PIN terminal to the turnstiles would have resulted in nightmare congestion.
It's still astonishing how few people participated
Because most people don’t give a crap about privacy, or think that encryption is for criminals only. “I have nothing to hide”. And those people are often not against a little censorship either, of course only terrorism and kiddie porn at first, then regular porn, then populist agitators (or the opposition, as the case may be). Then degenerate culture. And so on. That’s not just how it works in Russia, much of Europe is the same.
Or perhaps the truth is that Russia really is meddling in the elections, or at least in public opinion. It's a time honoured tactic of many dictators aspiring to a larger role on the world stage (Erdogan employs similar tactics, for instance)
Also you will have the opportunity to keep and trade your stocks on a secure central service* instead of keeping the entire unwieldy blockchain on your home machine.
*) Some random guy's NAS, which is sure to be "stolen" or "hacked" at some point.
Ages ago I set up some call center software for a telco, and I got to have a peek around their operation. They had a separate little call center for so called “sour clients”: people giving the company too much crap or repeatedly being abusive to the staff got flagged and routed to this department. The reps there only had to loosely follow the scripts and were allowed to give the customers a little lip too. It didn’t seem to hurt their business any, worked great to get rid of troublesome customers without having to compromise first rate service to customers who deserve it. And it helped with retention of staff too: call center staff didn’t tend to stick around for long as a rule, but rotating then through the sour client department helped them cope. Nothing but upsides to that model, which they still use AFAIK.
Thankfully people in most countries are free to waste their time on whatever ignorance and narcissism they choose. You could kill their business model though, by placing strict limitations on the collection and use of personal data, and strictly enforcing those rules. Keep in mind that you'll kill the business model of many other online services at the same time.
Look as good as Tesla is, leave the fanboyism to where it's deserved on their fantastic cars
This is about their cars. While Tesla was still rolling out those 75kW chargers, they were already equipping their cars with hardware capable of charging at 250kW. And while I am happy we're seeing a rollout of fast CCS chargers across Europe, the fact is that very few cars can make full use of those chargers. Not today, and not tomorrow either with a simple software update. The car I ordered charges at single phase 7.4kW AC or max 75kW DC, because apparently those were common chargers when the car was designed, and that's all it will ever do. No provision was made for future faster charging on CCS even though the plans for such chargers were already in place. A missed opportunity (though it probably shaved a bit off the price of the car as well)
Meanwhile, existing Tesla hardware is already capable of utilising the higher charge rate after a simple software update. That’s pretty impressive. I don’t think any of the other car manufacturers had the foresight to prepare for the 350kW chargers or even the 175kW ones. Sounds like they are playing catch-up to Tesla, not the other way around.
And once people actually jump ship to a completely different and new platform, FB will just buy that. With promises to not harvest data or share it with other divisions, and the founders quitting in disgust (and a couple billion richer) when FB breaks that promise.
Actually over here, the predominance of female nurses and teachers is increasingly seen as a social problem (especially regarding teachers), and we recently had some discussion on effecting affirmative action in those professions in order to get more men to sign up.
Slashdot Mirror
Uber says it'll get a millennial from San Francisco to San Jose in 15 minutes flat
That's great. Who's the lucky millennial?
Not sure what country you're from, but basic SRS here runs about €10.000 for people not covered by universal health care (like temporary visitors who come here and pay for the surgery themselves), and most opt only for some superficial additional plastic surgery, say another €3.000. Hormones really aren't that dear; the common ones here are Systen and Progynova, at most €150 / year or so. A few people I know don't react well to those and they get an alternative for which they pay out of pocket, about €300 a year. There might be others which are more expensive but those are by far the most common.
I don't know anyone though who has fallen victim to "skeevy therapists"; access to fully licensed and qualified ones is available to anyone who needs it, and there 's extensive psych screening before even getting access to hormone treatments (which are prescription only). I do know that in the past there's been a few people self-medicating, but now that it's treated as a regular disorder, this is rather rare.
the common teen gender confusion which is almost always resolved as simple homosexuality by the age of 18
While there are plenty of such cases mistakenly labeled as gender dysphoria (which is why one should be extremely careful with diagnosis given the nature of the treatment), there are real cases as well that have nothing to do with "confusion"
poor diagnosis with these conditions, because it means no expectation of recover and no end to funded treatment.
They should have picked a better condition to capitalize on. Sex reassignment surgery isn't that expensive actually, and most post-ops only require permanent hormone treatment which is dirt cheap.
an animated special based on the characters from the first campaign
Sounds like HarmonQuest, a (partly) animated live D&D series by Dan Harmon (the Community guy). That project was a bit hit-and-miss, some of the guest roleplayers were brilliant (they invited a different one for each episode) while others didn't work out so well. Still, worth watching if you're into that sort of thing. I hadn't heard of Critical Role, I'll have to go watch that now...
They rewrote the DSM to reflect insights into the actual causes of gender dysphoria, and the understanding that in many cases gender reassignment surgery is actually the treatment with the highest chance of success. Sadly that success rate is not all that high yet... due in part to the way society at large treats transgenders. And that includes the SJWs. No transgender I know holds much truck with the modern day nonsense propagated by these "allies", and think it's actually hurting acceptance of trans people.
Her statement is somewhat intelligent. However it has nothing to do with her own intelligence; it's hardly a new insight, just a second hand opinion that happens to fit her narrative.
The article states: "The system can convert 15% of the solar energy it receives into hydrogen". Not 15% of the solar energy it converted into electricity which it does not do, it uses "direct solar water-splitting", whatever that means. There's no intermediate step with an efficiency of 15%, that figure is for received solar power to hydrogen, for an equivalent of around 210WP. Just think: if the actual output was 15% of 210WP, then 20 of these panels would be nowhere near enough to power and heat a home.
That makes no sense. The panel doesn't produce 210W of electricity to use for hydrogen conversion (the rest going dissipating as heat?), it's 210W worth of direct hydrogen conversion. 210W is 15% of all the sunlight hitting it, as the article states. Slightly less efficient than a PV panel, which usually have a similar listed peak power of 200-300W at a somewhat smaller panel size.
210 Watts peak * 15% efficiency
WP already includes the efficiency figure, it's the maximum power put out by the panel under ideal conditions. At peak production, 210 W will go into hydrogen production.
The average Northern European home can't fit 20 of these panels on its roof. Unlike PV solar panels, these things have an added benefit: the hydrogen can be stored for later use without the need for expensive batteries... but you will likely need to compress the hydrogen which requires a fair bit of energy. Do they foresee these panels being used in residential installations, or are they more suited for solar farms?
Regardless, it's an interesting development. Good advances in hydrogen storage and transport have been made, and there's already a few hydrogen cars on our roads, but the production of green hydrogen (i.e. not produced from natural gas) has been expensive and troublesome thus far. Though the secrecy surrounding this project is generally a red flag for inflated expectations.
You mean, based on kids going on strike because their schools are forcing them to? A bunch of schools in Belgium have turned these protests into an extracurricular activity, with mandatory attendance. I kid you not (in Dutch)
Something similar happened in the Netherlands when schools allowed children to attend. One of the school's principals was interviewed, and stated that it's good to encourage children to demonstrate and voice their opinion in this manner. Then, in an unbelievably rare case of a journalist actually asking a good follow-up question, he was asked if he would be just as happy with the kids skipping school in order to demonstrate against the effects of mass migration. (He wouldn't be ok with that, of course...)
He also said a lot of other things.
"You will fail because chaos"
- "I don't get..."
"CHAOS! Oh and also hubris"
Certainly one of the more insufferable characters in movie history (and not at all like the guy in the book)
And in this case, of course they should. Whether they should proceed to build an ill-conceived (and rather lame) theme park with extinct animals is another matter.
Contactless is a hell of a lot faster. In some places, this matters a lot: it has seriously shortened the lines in office cafeterias, and in places like the London Underground where you can travel with a contactless debit card, adding a PIN terminal to the turnstiles would have resulted in nightmare congestion.
It's still astonishing how few people participated
Because most people don’t give a crap about privacy, or think that encryption is for criminals only. “I have nothing to hide”. And those people are often not against a little censorship either, of course only terrorism and kiddie porn at first, then regular porn, then populist agitators (or the opposition, as the case may be). Then degenerate culture. And so on. That’s not just how it works in Russia, much of Europe is the same.
Or perhaps the truth is that Russia really is meddling in the elections, or at least in public opinion. It's a time honoured tactic of many dictators aspiring to a larger role on the world stage (Erdogan employs similar tactics, for instance)
The bots' main task is not collecting the books, but collecting the late dues. Be afraid...
Also you will have the opportunity to keep and trade your stocks on a secure central service* instead of keeping the entire unwieldy blockchain on your home machine.
*) Some random guy's NAS, which is sure to be "stolen" or "hacked" at some point.
Ages ago I set up some call center software for a telco, and I got to have a peek around their operation. They had a separate little call center for so called “sour clients”: people giving the company too much crap or repeatedly being abusive to the staff got flagged and routed to this department. The reps there only had to loosely follow the scripts and were allowed to give the customers a little lip too. It didn’t seem to hurt their business any, worked great to get rid of troublesome customers without having to compromise first rate service to customers who deserve it. And it helped with retention of staff too: call center staff didn’t tend to stick around for long as a rule, but rotating then through the sour client department helped them cope. Nothing but upsides to that model, which they still use AFAIK.
Thankfully people in most countries are free to waste their time on whatever ignorance and narcissism they choose. You could kill their business model though, by placing strict limitations on the collection and use of personal data, and strictly enforcing those rules. Keep in mind that you'll kill the business model of many other online services at the same time.
Look as good as Tesla is, leave the fanboyism to where it's deserved on their fantastic cars
This is about their cars. While Tesla was still rolling out those 75kW chargers, they were already equipping their cars with hardware capable of charging at 250kW. And while I am happy we're seeing a rollout of fast CCS chargers across Europe, the fact is that very few cars can make full use of those chargers. Not today, and not tomorrow either with a simple software update. The car I ordered charges at single phase 7.4kW AC or max 75kW DC, because apparently those were common chargers when the car was designed, and that's all it will ever do. No provision was made for future faster charging on CCS even though the plans for such chargers were already in place. A missed opportunity (though it probably shaved a bit off the price of the car as well)
Meanwhile, existing Tesla hardware is already capable of utilising the higher charge rate after a simple software update. That’s pretty impressive. I don’t think any of the other car manufacturers had the foresight to prepare for the 350kW chargers or even the 175kW ones. Sounds like they are playing catch-up to Tesla, not the other way around.
Bingo
And once people actually jump ship to a completely different and new platform, FB will just buy that. With promises to not harvest data or share it with other divisions, and the founders quitting in disgust (and a couple billion richer) when FB breaks that promise.
Actually over here, the predominance of female nurses and teachers is increasingly seen as a social problem (especially regarding teachers), and we recently had some discussion on effecting affirmative action in those professions in order to get more men to sign up.
TFA seems to be about destroying or breaking up an asteroid. Yet they keep mentioning deflecting it, i.e. altering its trajectory so it’ll miss Earth.