I submitted a comment to the EPA suggesting that the "Gallons / 100 Miles" number be more prominent relative to MPG. (Converting to metric is a lost cause, unfortunately.)
I also suggested that they add "Gallons SAVED per 100 miles" relative to an average car in its class. This statistic can be surprising: switching from a 33mpg Corolla to a 50mpg Prius saves one gallon per 100 miles, but switching from a 10mpg Hummer to a 14mpg Land Rover saves three gallons per 100 miles driven.
Spokesbeings for the Kinsey Institute announced that they were "stunned" to learn that for millenia human males were using an incorrect algorithm for orally reporting the size of their member, resulting in frequent exaggerations. A report of "5 bars" was in reality often closer to 2 bars.
A software fix is unlikely to be effective and a hardware fix is not a trivial matter. One possible work-around: tell your partner that "you're holding it wrong."
Write a program that can determine whether another arbitrary program will halt on a given set of inputs, or run forever. You can't do it. Its impossible.
Yep, Toyota is definitely having a Halting Problem.
Michael, you have it actually backwards. Electric cars gain energy by braking without friction. The rotating wheels of the car act as a generator, converting the car's kinetic energy into electricity with about 70% efficiency. That's why the friction brakes on my Tesla still squeak; because the regenerative deceleration is enough 98% of the time, and I rarely need to use the friction brakes.
Another nice feature of the Tesla is that the regen is triggered merely by lifting off the accelerator, so you can practically drive with one foot. It's also arguably safer, because deceleration starts immediately with no lag from moving your foot to the brake pedal.
It's "braking," people. Braking. Though in the case of electric cars, that usually means decelerating/regenerating. The friction brakes on my Tesla still squeak after 12,000 miles of driving.
Ok, one thing that always bothers me about these electric cars is the seeming ignorance surrounding the simple notion of how to provide climate comfort within the cabin.
HVAC takes a fairly small amount of energy relative to the car's overall usage. The electric drivetrain does produce a nontrivial amount of waste heat, which in theory could be used for cabin heating. Tesla chose not to do this, because it wasn't worth the added complexity. The Tesla at max acceleration uses 200kW, at highway cruising speed around 15kW, and the HVAC only about 2kW. And as for air conditioning, an ICE car doesn't have any obvious advantage over electric, that I can see. Most of the energy in the gasoline is lost as waste heat before it can be used to drive the AC compressor.
Common sense plays into this too. If you live in Minnesota in winter, don't drive in short sleeves. And if you live in Arizona, don't buy a black car.
Better to use more of it than to sacrifice in another area.
But then there's the Hollywood studios that spend years and hundreds of millions of $$$ and multi-teraflop render farms to produce mega-blockbusters that only engage 4,096 of your brain cells. YMMV.
Top Gear is full of it. I own a Tesla Roadster and regularly get 180-200 mile range with ordinary driving, and the car recharges empty to full in 3.5 hours on the fast charger.
In the electric car industry, that's simply too big a jump to make all at once. If your ultimate goal is to produce 200,000 $25k cars a year, and the current state of the art is 2,000 $100k cars a year (the Tesla Roadster), then it's only reasonable to expect to produce 20,000 $50k cars (the Tesla Model S) as a stepping-stone. The market is there, and those early adopters will facilitate the eventual availability of the $25k mass-market car you're talking about. If you do the math, the "rich" purchasers of the Model S will be kicking in about one billion dollars a year towards this goal, double the government loan amount. So think before you knock 'em.
When thinking about dinosaurs' long necks, it's helpful to consider the possibility that the atmosphere was much thicker back then. So fluids could be drawn much higher without introducing vacuum problems, and it also explains how such huge insects and proto-birds (e.g. pterodactyls) could have flown there. Interesting stuff.
The Sanmen Nuclear Power Plant will be built in three phases, with an investment of more than 40 billion yuan (5.88 billion U.S. dollars) injected in the first phase.
The first phase project will include two units each with a generating capacity of 1.25 million kw.
So it appears that the real cost is closer to 5.88 / (2 * 1.25) = $2.35 per watt. Still expensive, but not outlandish. I'm in the process of installing a 4kw grid of solar panels on my own roof for a cost (after subsidies/rebates) of $17k, so $4.25 / watt. For greener energy, I think the premium is worth it.
For a variety of reasons, the number 2pi (6.2832...) works out much better as a fundamental constant than Pi, and it simplifies many mathematical formulas. The linked article suggests that 2pi be labeled a 'turn'; so in that sense, 90 degrees is a quarter-turn; etc. Surprisingly insightful.
So while the rest of you jump the gun, I'll be celebrating on June 28th.:)
My theory involves invisible pink elephants, undetectable elves, and other universes which do not interact even indirectly with ours. It unequivocally predicts that the sky is green and not blue.
You are completely correct here - your theory is science. Where you go wrong is assuming that it has any value. The outcome is empirically wrong, so the theory must be incorrect.
The incorrectness of the prediction is beside the point. Note that this "theory" would be just as useless if it predicts that the sky were blue.
The reason is that a useful theory predicts or accounts for a wide range of observations, relative to the theory's complexity. Since there already exists a much more elegant theory that perfectly accounts for the sky's blueness (the solar spectrum, combined with light-scattering properties of the atmosphere), while incidentally providing deep insight into the nature of light and electromagnetism, the pink-elephant theory becomes doubly useless.
Note that ID doesn't actually even predict anything: it just states "things are the way they are, because god diddit." That isn't science: it's a cop-out. If ID predicted the existence of a particular species living on the ocean floor, and next year we discover exactly that species, then that would be something to talk about. But it doesn't. So it isn't.
I never said it does mean that. I see evidence every day all around me that we aren't here by accident and that the whole environment (terrestrial and non-) is here for us instead of us being here because of it.
To quote the late, great Douglas Adams:
"... imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for."
Slashdot Mirror
What happened to the Shareware idea?
Why not release a Free app, with an embedded "Donate" button that triggers an in-app-purchase? Voila, Shareware.
"Maximum operating altitude: 10,000 feet". What?
Obviously, to go higher, you need SpacePort.
Yes, KPT Fraxplorer in the KPT5 suite of Photoshop plug-ins implements 1024-bit math to zoom in far deeper than double-precision allows.
I submitted a comment to the EPA suggesting that the "Gallons / 100 Miles" number be more prominent relative to MPG. (Converting to metric is a lost cause, unfortunately.)
I also suggested that they add "Gallons SAVED per 100 miles" relative to an average car in its class. This statistic can be surprising: switching from a 33mpg Corolla to a 50mpg Prius saves one gallon per 100 miles, but switching from a 10mpg Hummer to a 14mpg Land Rover saves three gallons per 100 miles driven.
So if there's a solar car with really poor efficiency, would it be rated "D Flueless"?
Spokesbeings for the Kinsey Institute announced that they were "stunned" to learn that for millenia human males were using an incorrect algorithm for orally reporting the size of their member, resulting in frequent exaggerations. A report of "5 bars" was in reality often closer to 2 bars.
A software fix is unlikely to be effective and a hardware fix is not a trivial matter. One possible work-around: tell your partner that "you're holding it wrong."
Write a program that can determine whether another arbitrary program will halt on a given set of inputs, or run forever. You can't do it. Its impossible.
Yep, Toyota is definitely having a Halting Problem.
Michael, you have it actually backwards. Electric cars gain energy by braking without friction. The rotating wheels of the car act as a generator, converting the car's kinetic energy into electricity with about 70% efficiency. That's why the friction brakes on my Tesla still squeak; because the regenerative deceleration is enough 98% of the time, and I rarely need to use the friction brakes.
Another nice feature of the Tesla is that the regen is triggered merely by lifting off the accelerator, so you can practically drive with one foot. It's also arguably safer, because deceleration starts immediately with no lag from moving your foot to the brake pedal.
It's "braking," people. Braking. Though in the case of electric cars, that usually means decelerating/regenerating. The friction brakes on my Tesla still squeak after 12,000 miles of driving.
Ok, one thing that always bothers me about these electric cars is the seeming ignorance surrounding the simple notion of how to provide climate comfort within the cabin.
HVAC takes a fairly small amount of energy relative to the car's overall usage. The electric drivetrain does produce a nontrivial amount of waste heat, which in theory could be used for cabin heating. Tesla chose not to do this, because it wasn't worth the added complexity. The Tesla at max acceleration uses 200kW, at highway cruising speed around 15kW, and the HVAC only about 2kW. And as for air conditioning, an ICE car doesn't have any obvious advantage over electric, that I can see. Most of the energy in the gasoline is lost as waste heat before it can be used to drive the AC compressor.
Common sense plays into this too. If you live in Minnesota in winter, don't drive in short sleeves. And if you live in Arizona, don't buy a black car.
Better to use more of it than to sacrifice in another area.
But then there's the Hollywood studios that spend years and hundreds of millions of $$$ and multi-teraflop render farms to produce mega-blockbusters that only engage 4,096 of your brain cells. YMMV.
Most accidents happen within, I think it was five or ten miles of a person's home.
That's why, when I drive from home, I try to get outside that five or ten mile radius as quickly as possible!
Top Gear is full of it. I own a Tesla Roadster and regularly get 180-200 mile range with ordinary driving, and the car recharges empty to full in 3.5 hours on the fast charger.
should have been a 25K car cost cap.
In the electric car industry, that's simply too big a jump to make all at once. If your ultimate goal is to produce 200,000 $25k cars a year, and the current state of the art is 2,000 $100k cars a year (the Tesla Roadster), then it's only reasonable to expect to produce 20,000 $50k cars (the Tesla Model S) as a stepping-stone. The market is there, and those early adopters will facilitate the eventual availability of the $25k mass-market car you're talking about. If you do the math, the "rich" purchasers of the Model S will be kicking in about one billion dollars a year towards this goal, double the government loan amount. So think before you knock 'em.
When thinking about dinosaurs' long necks, it's helpful to consider the possibility that the atmosphere was much thicker back then. So fluids could be drawn much higher without introducing vacuum problems, and it also explains how such huge insects and proto-birds (e.g. pterodactyls) could have flown there. Interesting stuff.
Hu's on first?
From a related article:
So it appears that the real cost is closer to 5.88 / (2 * 1.25) = $2.35 per watt. Still expensive, but not outlandish. I'm in the process of installing a 4kw grid of solar panels on my own roof for a cost (after subsidies/rebates) of $17k, so $4.25 / watt. For greener energy, I think the premium is worth it.
Not sure whether they experience pain, but they sure feel crabby.
If ever 'idleispants' were an appropriate tag, this is it.
The irony in all this is that Pi is Wrong!
:)
For a variety of reasons, the number 2pi (6.2832...) works out much better as a fundamental constant than Pi, and it simplifies many mathematical formulas. The linked article suggests that 2pi be labeled a 'turn'; so in that sense, 90 degrees is a quarter-turn; etc. Surprisingly insightful.
So while the rest of you jump the gun, I'll be celebrating on June 28th.
He doesn't want to go on the cart.
The Apple cart?
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
...which can be caused by at least two variants of the Herpes virus.
If you have them both, would that be called Herpes Duplex?
My theory involves invisible pink elephants, undetectable elves, and other universes which do not interact even indirectly with ours. It unequivocally predicts that the sky is green and not blue.
You are completely correct here - your theory is science. Where you go wrong is assuming that it has any value. The outcome is empirically wrong, so the theory must be incorrect.
The incorrectness of the prediction is beside the point. Note that this "theory" would be just as useless if it predicts that the sky were blue.
The reason is that a useful theory predicts or accounts for a wide range of observations, relative to the theory's complexity. Since there already exists a much more elegant theory that perfectly accounts for the sky's blueness (the solar spectrum, combined with light-scattering properties of the atmosphere), while incidentally providing deep insight into the nature of light and electromagnetism, the pink-elephant theory becomes doubly useless.
Note that ID doesn't actually even predict anything: it just states "things are the way they are, because god diddit." That isn't science: it's a cop-out. If ID predicted the existence of a particular species living on the ocean floor, and next year we discover exactly that species, then that would be something to talk about. But it doesn't. So it isn't.
I never said it does mean that. I see evidence every day all around me that we aren't here by accident and that the whole environment (terrestrial and non-) is here for us instead of us being here because of it.
To quote the late, great Douglas Adams:
"... imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for."