That 95-99% efficiency is really good, and if accurate I would be glad to replace the suggested flywheel with a higher-energy-efficient battery, for quick acceleration. I would still want a fuel cell though, for long range, and less total weight (because of not carrying lots of oxidizer around inside the batteries).
Regarding "well to wheel" efficiency, thanks for the extra data to consider. Note that when ordinary coal-fired power plants generate the electricity for electric cars, we still have energy invested in digging and transporting coal. Charging batteries (or making fuel-cell fuel) from renewable resources is the best long-term way to go.
Color me slightly embarrassed. After posting the first of the two very-similar messages, it disappeared, and I thought maybe I hadn't actually posted it, but I most certainly had done a full-page-refresh. I didn't notice that the page had more than 250 comments, and that comment was one of the later ones, and therefore not part of the default display. So I ended up writing the message all over again...
Apparently the other guy didn't read all of what I wrote. I DID end up talking about using a flywheel in conjunction with a fuel cell. The fuel cell would provide steady low-level power (20 HP or less); the flywheel would accommodate rapid acceleration (and store energy from regenerative braking). There is no need for the flywheel to be so big/dangerous as one which is built to provide for significant-distance driving. And the main reason for using a flywheel instead of a battery is that 95% energy-conversion efficiency of motor-generators.
Yes, the danger of a broken flywheel has always been a concern. The recommended solution was to put it inside a shell that can "take it" --which is much easier to do if the flywheel is made of carbon fiber instead of steel. Also, the shell can be somewhat evacuated, to reduce air-resistance losses.
I specified "motor/generator" --that's how you spin up the flywheel, and that's how you get energy out of it (95% efficiency both ways). Are you deliberately ignoring things I wrote? Do you think there is a problem running wires along gimbal-frames and through holes in gimbal-axes?
You are sounding like a zealot. I did do significant research quite a few years ago, and back then the energy efficiency for charging/discharging electric batteries was only about 2/3, not the 3/4 I estimated in the prior post. I was aware that there have been improvements over the years, but there are still efficiency losses due to electrical resistance inside batteries. Why else do laptop batteries overheat!? If today's battery efficiency is about 90% instead of the 75% I estimated, GOOD. But you still have to "whack it down twice" because you have to charge the battery to make it usable, and you have to discharge the battery to actually use it, and there are internal resistance losses both ways. SO: 50% power-plant efficiency, and 90% twice for the batteries, and 95% for the electric drive motor get us to about 38% (add some for regenerative braking).
Next, you ignored the fact that there are a lot of Diesel cars on the road, that run at greater efficiency than gasoline engines, even if the production-car efficiency is less than the ideal. But that's why the cost of Diesel fuel is no longer less than the cost of ordinary gasoline, like it was before all those cars hit the road (and with turbocharging, they are as quick to accelerate as most ordinary cars). The cost of Diesel fuel, relative to gasoline, has prevented wider adoption. You can expect Diesel-car owners to be among the last to switch to electrics, if the efficiency isn't improved. Not to mention one other factor: as more people do switch to electrics, the demand for gasoline will drop, and its cost will also drop (has famously dropped months ago because of an increase in supply, but the Law of Supply and Demand isn't done with it yet). Cheap gas will keep those cars on the road longer.
Next, you are not making sense, talking about "Fuel cell storage efficiency", because fuel cells don't do storage; fuel is stored separately from the cells (and I specified that with sunlight production, the efficiency of fuel generation can be ignored). Since internally they work basically like batteries, if batteries can work with 10% internal electric-resistance losses, fuel cells should be able to do the same. It is just a matter of design. That's why I estimated 75% for fuel cells, just like I did for batteries. I am aware that hydrogen fuel tanks are bulky, but electric-car batteries are bulky, too, and weigh more, because of the oxidizer they store along with the fuel.
Finally you need to do some research about flywheels. They are NOT necessarily heavy, because the energy they can store goes up as the square of the rotation speed; if Flywheel A rotates twice as fast as B, then A stores 4 times the energy of B. Modern use of carbon fiber can allow the construction of flywheels that spin many times faster than heavy steel, so weigh considerably less while storing more energy. This was known back in 1970! Not to mention, you ignored what I wrote about only using flywheel energy-storage for rapid car-acceleration, no need for even a 50-mile range.
Thanks, but you are sounding somewhat like a zealot. I first researched the data quite a few years ago, but hadn't known what recent improvements have done for electric battery charging/discharging. I DO know that electrical resistance inside batteries can be a source of significant energy loss; in the old days efficiency was only about 2/3, not the 3/4 I estimated in the prior post --and that is why I asked for better numbers! What I didn't know was how much those resistance losses have been overcome, and if the overall efficiency is more like 90% than 75%, that's cool. Next, you ignored the fact that a lot of cars have Diesel engines, which are more efficient than gasoline engines, even if the production-car efficiency numbers are less than the ideal numbers. NEXT, I "whacked it down twice" because you have to charge the battery, and then you have to discharge the battery to use it. Both ways have internal-electrical-resistance energy losses!
Your talk about "fuel cell storage efficiency" is meaningless. A fuel cell works very much like a battery, converting chemical energy to electrical energy. So if a battery can be 90% efficient, a fuel cell should be able to have that efficiency, too. There is no "storage" inside a fuel cell; the fuel is stored in a separate tank. I do know that hydrogen fuel-storage tanks are bulky, but electric-car batteries are bulky too, and weigh more (because of also storing the oxidizer). You do know that overall automobile weight is a factor relating to how big/powerful its drive system has to be?
Flywheels are NOT necessarily super-heavy, especially when they don't have to store energy for a long travel range. Kinetic energy stored goes up with the square of the rotation speed. So if flywheel A spins twice as fast as B, and both weigh the same, A will be storing 4 times the energy. Modern use of carbon fiber can allow construction of flywheels that spin many times faster than ordinary heavy steel flywheels, for greater energy storage with less weight. This was known back in 1970. Do some research! (Not to mention, you appeared to ignore what I wrote about only using a flywheel for rapid acceleration, no 50-mile range needed).
I wasn't sure, but thought the question had to be asked. There are about as many cars as people in the USA, and if all the cars were electric, getting charged at night....
Can the electric grid handle charging that many cars every night? Not to mention that there can exist a better way, in terms of overall efficiency. If someone has better numbers than the ones I present here, let's see them!
It is known that hydrocarbon powered cars typically turn chemical energy into mechanical motion at about 35% efficiency (45% for Diesels). It is known that large power plants generate electricity from fuel at about 50% efficiency. The process of charging a battery is about 75% efficient, turning electrical energy into chemical energy. The reverse is also true, for battery discharge (75%), and the electric motors of an electric car are about 95% efficient. We multiply these numbers to get the overall efficiency of conversion of original fuel energy into mechanical motion for the car: about 27%. Even allowing for regenerative braking energy-recovery, it looks like ordinary cars win the efficiency thing here. We need better than that!
Consider replacing the electric commuter-car battery with a flywheel. We have the tech to do this for ranges of 50 miles or so. Since the flywheel is a motor-generator, it operates at about 95% efficiency, storing and producing energy. The car still has a separate electric drive motor, also 95%. The numbers are multiplied as before:.5*.95*.95*.95= about 43% overall efficiency, and regenerative braking increases that number.
There is another factor to consider. To cruise the road at highway speed, a car only needs about 15 horsepower to fight wind resistance. All the rest of the horsepower in a car is needed for related to fast acceleration. A flywheel system can easily provide the power for fast acceleration; it could be accompanied by a small engine that generates 15-20 HP for cruising, and charging the flywheel (plus add regenerative braking). Also, a fuel tank gives the car lots of range (the flywheel doesn't have to be so big, to store energy for even a 5-mile range). Total system weight could be significantly less than today's hydrocarbon engines, and total system energy efficiency will probably be around 40% (an engine designed to run at a particular constant speed, for generating say 20 HP, is more efficient than one that revs at different rates).
And here is one more major factor: chemical reactions usually involve two things that we can call here "fuel" and "oxidizer". This is as true for a battery as it is true for a gasoline engine. The difference is that in the battery, both the fuel and the oxidizer are permanently stored; the total weight of chemicals always has to be carried around. The fuel-burning engine is associated with only carrying the fuel around; the reaction products (mostly CO2 and H2O) are dumped and their weight is never carried around. Now you know why electric-car batteries weigh so much!
We should be thinking about replacing batteries with "fuel cells", because, like hydrocarbon engines, only fuel (most agree hydrogen is best) needs to be carried around, and the waste (H2O) can be dumped. Methods of generating hydrogen are improving --can do it straight from sunlight; no need burn hydrocarbon fuel in a large power plant! That changes the efficiency situation drastically! The hydrogen fuel becomes almost free after the infrastructure is paid for (must be maintained, though); the energy efficiency of generating the hydrogen can be ignored. So we have maybe 75% efficiency for running a hydrogen fuel cell to produce 20 HP, plus three sets of 95% efficiency for the flywheel and the car's electric drive motor(s): about 64% total efficiency, increased a by by regenerative braking.
Thanks to the both of you; I had not known. Getting into the specs of Internet protocols is not my normal "thing". For me this protocol notion was simply a daydream, not something I was in any position to pursue, and here seemed to be a good place to describe it.
For some time I've been wondering if we should create some sort of "Internet Broadcast Protocol" (IBP). It could be based on the fact that there are usually a lot of network-node-computers in-between the source of a broadcast, and the recipients. The broadcaster would only output single streams of data to its nearest nodes, and each node would duplicate the data as many times as needed to pass on the data to some farther-away nodes, and so on, until each ISP duplicates the data for all its own customers that happen to be receiving the broadcast. The overall effect is a huge savings of bandwidth usage, because the broadcaster doesn't have to send out ten million separate streams for ten million recipients. There are only single streams between nodes, until the ISPs are reached.
Of course that wouldn't directly apply to Netflix, either, because it receives feedback from its subscribers, to pause streams. and different customers are going to pause streams at different moments in the overall flow. Perhaps an IBP can distinguish between a live feed and a recording, such that at the ISP-level of recipients, the ISP server would store the whole stream of recordings only, and it would respond to pause/resume requests. The ISP server retains the stored stream only as long as there are overlapping requests from its customers, for that recording/stream. A fair number of details for an IBP would still need to be worked out, such as ensuring one node doesn't receive the same stream from a multiplicity of other nodes, and places like Netflix get informed when an ISP is responding "in lieu of" Netflix, because some customer requested a stream that is currently being stored on an ISP server because other customers of both the ISP and Neflix are also receiving that stream. Netflix would need to know in order to properly deal with copyright royalties.
Either on Earth or Mars you need an evacuated tunnel for the train. That's because the plan on Earth is to remove 99.9% of atmospheric pressure, while in mars the pressure is only 99.4% less than that of Earth. So you still need to remove some of Mars' natural air pressure to let the hyperloop run as fast as they want it to run on Earth. Meanwhile there is a problem that might have a solution, in either case. That is the pressure build-up in front of the hyperloop vehicle. It defines a maximum speed --but note that because it is a pressure build-up, it should be possible for the vehicle to partly evacuate that pressure, and store it on-board ---and then dump it to the exterior of the tunnel when the vehicle docks at the passenger boarding/disembarking station. After enough vehicles in the tunnel have done that simple thing, pressure should no longer be a barrier to speed in the tunnel, either on Earth or Mars.
Just because all humans are animals, and some humans are also persons, that doesn't mean all humans are persons. Stories about Artificial Intelligence researchers trying to create persons prove that the English language allows personhood to be entirely independent of animal-ness. So we must make distinctions here for the sake of accuracy, if nothing else. Here is a little table (could be expanded enormously when thinking about the whole Universe): Entity . . . . . . . . . . | animal | person
typical human. . . . . . . | ..x..| . x
True A.I. (when perfected) | . . ..| . x
. . . . dolphin. . . . . . | ..x..| . ?
human hydatidiform mole ..| . . ..|
brain-dead human . . . . . | ..x..|
. . . . . . dog. . . . . . | ..x..|
human womb-occupant. . . . | ..x..|
(Note, while each cell in a hydatidiform mole is a human animal organism, the mole as a whole is as disorganized as a "bacterial mat"; it is not an animal.) The concepts are "human" and "person", are proved to be independent of each other when the language allows non-humans to be called persons (even if, so far, only in terms of religion or mythology or fiction) --and when we know of cases where humans most certainly are not persons. Like brain-dead adult humans on full life-support. The whole reason the legal system allows the "plug" to be pulled is because the person-aspect of the human is dead. Only a living human animal body remains, with no essence-of-personhood present. And with one example, others become possible, too. Like unborn human womb-occupants, whiare also totally animal, and even just before birth have measurably far less of personhood than adult dogs, to say nothing of the personhood of adult dolphins (which in turn is a magnitude still being debated; on what basis could womb-occupants qualify as persons if dogs can't possibly qualify?).
"The permanent confrontation with a verifiable truth will turn us into overly cautious, calculating, and suspicious people." Maybe this is the answer to the Fermi Paradox. It makes cultures too cautious to go explore the Universe. Christopher Columbus, for example did not lie when he told Isabella that the Earth was 18,000 miles in circumference; he simply had bad data. But the ancient Greeks had good data that could have been replicated in the time of Columbus. If it had been suspected that the distance to India, sailing west from Spain, was an extra 7000 miles, the mission would have been "no go".
If the code is written in JavaScript, and if "anywhere" involves a compiler, not just an interpreter, then the performance of the software should be nearly optimal anywhere. And, somewhere along the years, I got the impression that JavaScript compilers were becoming rather popular. I might be mistaken about that, but the notion should still be true, that if every platform included a JavaScript compiler, write-once/run-anywhere could work.
The word "terrorism!" can be mis-used, much like the word "treason!", if it is not formally defined in Law. So, if such a definition has not been codified, the politicians have no business requesting powers to do such things as "punish those who praise or do not readily condemn terrorism" --after all, the person you want to punish might be using a different definition than YOU used (the one YOU used was specifically intended to help you steal political power, see?).
Look up "Washoe". Being able to communicate, even if only by sign language, is important. The average chimp doesn't communicate much better than other ordinary animals, like dogs. And humans can fail to be communicative, look up "feral child". The point here is that humans are naturally prejudiced in favor of themselves, thinking that characteristics associated with personhood (like communicative-ness) are automatically/naturally associated with biological growth. But the fact is (at least here on Earth), communicative-ness at the person-class level is a result of Nurture, not Nature. As a result, if certain other organisms also receive appropriate Nurture (like Washoe did), then those organisms are as likely as a human to qualify for personhood. So now look up Koko the Gorilla and Chantek the Orangutan. Equally logically, any organisms that don't receive appropriate Nurture, including humans, are going to qualify more as ordinary animals than as persons. (The default Natural condition, per biological development only, for a human is to be just a clever animal.)
Just draw lines from the North Pole to places where countries border each other, and each country gets that slice of the Arctic. For example, in-between the Bering Strait one line would be drawn between USA and Russia, toward the Pole. Where Alaska borders Canada. another line is drawn toward the Pole. That slice becomes claimable by the USA. Another line between Canada and Greenland would yield the Canadian slice. And so on.
It is known that some planets migrate closer to their stars during the early stages of star-system formation. So, a planet that forms outside the habitable zone, but migrate into the habitable zone after the intense-heat period, could still be a good prospect for life.
Slashdot Mirror
That 95-99% efficiency is really good, and if accurate I would be glad to replace the suggested flywheel with a higher-energy-efficient battery, for quick acceleration. I would still want a fuel cell though, for long range, and less total weight (because of not carrying lots of oxidizer around inside the batteries).
Regarding "well to wheel" efficiency, thanks for the extra data to consider. Note that when ordinary coal-fired power plants generate the electricity for electric cars, we still have energy invested in digging and transporting coal. Charging batteries (or making fuel-cell fuel) from renewable resources is the best long-term way to go.
Color me slightly embarrassed. After posting the first of the two very-similar messages, it disappeared, and I thought maybe I hadn't actually posted it, but I most certainly had done a full-page-refresh. I didn't notice that the page had more than 250 comments, and that comment was one of the later ones, and therefore not part of the default display. So I ended up writing the message all over again...
Apparently the other guy didn't read all of what I wrote. I DID end up talking about using a flywheel in conjunction with a fuel cell. The fuel cell would provide steady low-level power (20 HP or less); the flywheel would accommodate rapid acceleration (and store energy from regenerative braking). There is no need for the flywheel to be so big/dangerous as one which is built to provide for significant-distance driving. And the main reason for using a flywheel instead of a battery is that 95% energy-conversion efficiency of motor-generators.
Yes, the danger of a broken flywheel has always been a concern. The recommended solution was to put it inside a shell that can "take it" --which is much easier to do if the flywheel is made of carbon fiber instead of steel. Also, the shell can be somewhat evacuated, to reduce air-resistance losses.
I specified "motor/generator" --that's how you spin up the flywheel, and that's how you get energy out of it (95% efficiency both ways). Are you deliberately ignoring things I wrote? Do you think there is a problem running wires along gimbal-frames and through holes in gimbal-axes?
You are sounding like a zealot. I did do significant research quite a few years ago, and back then the energy efficiency for charging/discharging electric batteries was only about 2/3, not the 3/4 I estimated in the prior post. I was aware that there have been improvements over the years, but there are still efficiency losses due to electrical resistance inside batteries. Why else do laptop batteries overheat!? If today's battery efficiency is about 90% instead of the 75% I estimated, GOOD. But you still have to "whack it down twice" because you have to charge the battery to make it usable, and you have to discharge the battery to actually use it, and there are internal resistance losses both ways. SO: 50% power-plant efficiency, and 90% twice for the batteries, and 95% for the electric drive motor get us to about 38% (add some for regenerative braking).
Next, you ignored the fact that there are a lot of Diesel cars on the road, that run at greater efficiency than gasoline engines, even if the production-car efficiency is less than the ideal. But that's why the cost of Diesel fuel is no longer less than the cost of ordinary gasoline, like it was before all those cars hit the road (and with turbocharging, they are as quick to accelerate as most ordinary cars). The cost of Diesel fuel, relative to gasoline, has prevented wider adoption. You can expect Diesel-car owners to be among the last to switch to electrics, if the efficiency isn't improved. Not to mention one other factor: as more people do switch to electrics, the demand for gasoline will drop, and its cost will also drop (has famously dropped months ago because of an increase in supply, but the Law of Supply and Demand isn't done with it yet). Cheap gas will keep those cars on the road longer.
Next, you are not making sense, talking about "Fuel cell storage efficiency", because fuel cells don't do storage; fuel is stored separately from the cells (and I specified that with sunlight production, the efficiency of fuel generation can be ignored). Since internally they work basically like batteries, if batteries can work with 10% internal electric-resistance losses, fuel cells should be able to do the same. It is just a matter of design. That's why I estimated 75% for fuel cells, just like I did for batteries. I am aware that hydrogen fuel tanks are bulky, but electric-car batteries are bulky, too, and weigh more, because of the oxidizer they store along with the fuel.
Finally you need to do some research about flywheels. They are NOT necessarily heavy, because the energy they can store goes up as the square of the rotation speed; if Flywheel A rotates twice as fast as B, then A stores 4 times the energy of B. Modern use of carbon fiber can allow the construction of flywheels that spin many times faster than heavy steel, so weigh considerably less while storing more energy. This was known back in 1970! Not to mention, you ignored what I wrote about only using flywheel energy-storage for rapid car-acceleration, no need for even a 50-mile range.
Thanks, but you are sounding somewhat like a zealot. I first researched the data quite a few years ago, but hadn't known what recent improvements have done for electric battery charging/discharging. I DO know that electrical resistance inside batteries can be a source of significant energy loss; in the old days efficiency was only about 2/3, not the 3/4 I estimated in the prior post --and that is why I asked for better numbers! What I didn't know was how much those resistance losses have been overcome, and if the overall efficiency is more like 90% than 75%, that's cool. Next, you ignored the fact that a lot of cars have Diesel engines, which are more efficient than gasoline engines, even if the production-car efficiency numbers are less than the ideal numbers. NEXT, I "whacked it down twice" because you have to charge the battery, and then you have to discharge the battery to use it. Both ways have internal-electrical-resistance energy losses!
Your talk about "fuel cell storage efficiency" is meaningless. A fuel cell works very much like a battery, converting chemical energy to electrical energy. So if a battery can be 90% efficient, a fuel cell should be able to have that efficiency, too. There is no "storage" inside a fuel cell; the fuel is stored in a separate tank. I do know that hydrogen fuel-storage tanks are bulky, but electric-car batteries are bulky too, and weigh more (because of also storing the oxidizer). You do know that overall automobile weight is a factor relating to how big/powerful its drive system has to be?
Flywheels are NOT necessarily super-heavy, especially when they don't have to store energy for a long travel range. Kinetic energy stored goes up with the square of the rotation speed. So if flywheel A spins twice as fast as B, and both weigh the same, A will be storing 4 times the energy. Modern use of carbon fiber can allow construction of flywheels that spin many times faster than ordinary heavy steel flywheels, for greater energy storage with less weight. This was known back in 1970. Do some research! (Not to mention, you appeared to ignore what I wrote about only using a flywheel for rapid acceleration, no 50-mile range needed).
I wasn't sure, but thought the question had to be asked. There are about as many cars as people in the USA, and if all the cars were electric, getting charged at night....
Have you not heard of "gimbals"?
Can the electric grid handle charging that many cars every night? Not to mention that there can exist a better way, in terms of overall efficiency. If someone has better numbers than the ones I present here, let's see them! .5*.95*.95*.95= about 43% overall efficiency, and regenerative braking increases that number.
It is known that hydrocarbon powered cars typically turn chemical energy into mechanical motion at about 35% efficiency (45% for Diesels). It is known that large power plants generate electricity from fuel at about 50% efficiency. The process of charging a battery is about 75% efficient, turning electrical energy into chemical energy. The reverse is also true, for battery discharge (75%), and the electric motors of an electric car are about 95% efficient. We multiply these numbers to get the overall efficiency of conversion of original fuel energy into mechanical motion for the car: about 27%. Even allowing for regenerative braking energy-recovery, it looks like ordinary cars win the efficiency thing here. We need better than that!
Consider replacing the electric commuter-car battery with a flywheel. We have the tech to do this for ranges of 50 miles or so. Since the flywheel is a motor-generator, it operates at about 95% efficiency, storing and producing energy. The car still has a separate electric drive motor, also 95%. The numbers are multiplied as before:
There is another factor to consider. To cruise the road at highway speed, a car only needs about 15 horsepower to fight wind resistance. All the rest of the horsepower in a car is needed for related to fast acceleration. A flywheel system can easily provide the power for fast acceleration; it could be accompanied by a small engine that generates 15-20 HP for cruising, and charging the flywheel (plus add regenerative braking). Also, a fuel tank gives the car lots of range (the flywheel doesn't have to be so big, to store energy for even a 5-mile range). Total system weight could be significantly less than today's hydrocarbon engines, and total system energy efficiency will probably be around 40% (an engine designed to run at a particular constant speed, for generating say 20 HP, is more efficient than one that revs at different rates).
And here is one more major factor: chemical reactions usually involve two things that we can call here "fuel" and "oxidizer". This is as true for a battery as it is true for a gasoline engine. The difference is that in the battery, both the fuel and the oxidizer are permanently stored; the total weight of chemicals always has to be carried around. The fuel-burning engine is associated with only carrying the fuel around; the reaction products (mostly CO2 and H2O) are dumped and their weight is never carried around. Now you know why electric-car batteries weigh so much!
We should be thinking about replacing batteries with "fuel cells", because, like hydrocarbon engines, only fuel (most agree hydrogen is best) needs to be carried around, and the waste (H2O) can be dumped. Methods of generating hydrogen are improving --can do it straight from sunlight; no need burn hydrocarbon fuel in a large power plant! That changes the efficiency situation drastically! The hydrogen fuel becomes almost free after the infrastructure is paid for (must be maintained, though); the energy efficiency of generating the hydrogen can be ignored. So we have maybe 75% efficiency for running a hydrogen fuel cell to produce 20 HP, plus three sets of 95% efficiency for the flywheel and the car's electric drive motor(s): about 64% total efficiency, increased a by by regenerative braking.
Thanks to the both of you; I had not known. Getting into the specs of Internet protocols is not my normal "thing". For me this protocol notion was simply a daydream, not something I was in any position to pursue, and here seemed to be a good place to describe it.
For some time I've been wondering if we should create some sort of "Internet Broadcast Protocol" (IBP). It could be based on the fact that there are usually a lot of network-node-computers in-between the source of a broadcast, and the recipients. The broadcaster would only output single streams of data to its nearest nodes, and each node would duplicate the data as many times as needed to pass on the data to some farther-away nodes, and so on, until each ISP duplicates the data for all its own customers that happen to be receiving the broadcast. The overall effect is a huge savings of bandwidth usage, because the broadcaster doesn't have to send out ten million separate streams for ten million recipients. There are only single streams between nodes, until the ISPs are reached.
Of course that wouldn't directly apply to Netflix, either, because it receives feedback from its subscribers, to pause streams. and different customers are going to pause streams at different moments in the overall flow. Perhaps an IBP can distinguish between a live feed and a recording, such that at the ISP-level of recipients, the ISP server would store the whole stream of recordings only, and it would respond to pause/resume requests. The ISP server retains the stored stream only as long as there are overlapping requests from its customers, for that recording/stream. A fair number of details for an IBP would still need to be worked out, such as ensuring one node doesn't receive the same stream from a multiplicity of other nodes, and places like Netflix get informed when an ISP is responding "in lieu of" Netflix, because some customer requested a stream that is currently being stored on an ISP server because other customers of both the ISP and Neflix are also receiving that stream. Netflix would need to know in order to properly deal with copyright royalties.
Either on Earth or Mars you need an evacuated tunnel for the train. That's because the plan on Earth is to remove 99.9% of atmospheric pressure, while in mars the pressure is only 99.4% less than that of Earth. So you still need to remove some of Mars' natural air pressure to let the hyperloop run as fast as they want it to run on Earth. Meanwhile there is a problem that might have a solution, in either case. That is the pressure build-up in front of the hyperloop vehicle. It defines a maximum speed --but note that because it is a pressure build-up, it should be possible for the vehicle to partly evacuate that pressure, and store it on-board ---and then dump it to the exterior of the tunnel when the vehicle docks at the passenger boarding/disembarking station. After enough vehicles in the tunnel have done that simple thing, pressure should no longer be a barrier to speed in the tunnel, either on Earth or Mars.
Just because all humans are animals, and some humans are also persons, that doesn't mean all humans are persons. Stories about Artificial Intelligence researchers trying to create persons prove that the English language allows personhood to be entirely independent of animal-ness. So we must make distinctions here for the sake of accuracy, if nothing else. Here is a little table (could be expanded enormously when thinking about the whole Universe): .x. .| . x .| . x .x. .| . ? .| . . . .| .x. .| .x. .| .x. .|
Entity . . . . . . . . . . | animal | person
typical human. . . . . . . | .
True A.I. (when perfected) | . . .
. . . . dolphin. . . . . . | .
human hydatidiform mole .
brain-dead human . . . . . | .
. . . . . . dog. . . . . . | .
human womb-occupant. . . . | .
(Note, while each cell in a hydatidiform mole is a human animal organism, the mole as a whole is as disorganized as a "bacterial mat"; it is not an animal.) The concepts are "human" and "person", are proved to be independent of each other when the language allows non-humans to be called persons (even if, so far, only in terms of religion or mythology or fiction) --and when we know of cases where humans most certainly are not persons. Like brain-dead adult humans on full life-support. The whole reason the legal system allows the "plug" to be pulled is because the person-aspect of the human is dead. Only a living human animal body remains, with no essence-of-personhood present. And with one example, others become possible, too. Like unborn human womb-occupants, whiare also totally animal, and even just before birth have measurably far less of personhood than adult dogs, to say nothing of the personhood of adult dolphins (which in turn is a magnitude still being debated; on what basis could womb-occupants qualify as persons if dogs can't possibly qualify?).
The proposal is an invitation for bad science to get publicized before it is refuted.
"The permanent confrontation with a verifiable truth will turn us into overly cautious, calculating, and suspicious people." Maybe this is the answer to the Fermi Paradox. It makes cultures too cautious to go explore the Universe. Christopher Columbus, for example did not lie when he told Isabella that the Earth was 18,000 miles in circumference; he simply had bad data. But the ancient Greeks had good data that could have been replicated in the time of Columbus. If it had been suspected that the distance to India, sailing west from Spain, was an extra 7000 miles, the mission would have been "no go".
Perhaps they should be asking for a ".google" gTLD, for that purpose, instead of trying to monopolize a generic identifier.
Here is a link to a PCMCIA ethernet adapter (out of stock, but the page is informative). Perhaps a used one could be obtained (borrowed?)
If the code is written in JavaScript, and if "anywhere" involves a compiler, not just an interpreter, then the performance of the software should be nearly optimal anywhere. And, somewhere along the years, I got the impression that JavaScript compilers were becoming rather popular. I might be mistaken about that, but the notion should still be true, that if every platform included a JavaScript compiler, write-once/run-anywhere could work.
Nature evolved legs for dealing with rough terrain. NASA needs to start using walking rovers, not rolling rovers.
The word "terrorism!" can be mis-used, much like the word "treason!", if it is not formally defined in Law. So, if such a definition has not been codified, the politicians have no business requesting powers to do such things as "punish those who praise or do not readily condemn terrorism" --after all, the person you want to punish might be using a different definition than YOU used (the one YOU used was specifically intended to help you steal political power, see?).
Here's an article about a USB-to-Ethernet adapter. Then maybe all you need is a printer with an Ethernet port.
Look up "Washoe". Being able to communicate, even if only by sign language, is important. The average chimp doesn't communicate much better than other ordinary animals, like dogs. And humans can fail to be communicative, look up "feral child". The point here is that humans are naturally prejudiced in favor of themselves, thinking that characteristics associated with personhood (like communicative-ness) are automatically/naturally associated with biological growth. But the fact is (at least here on Earth), communicative-ness at the person-class level is a result of Nurture, not Nature. As a result, if certain other organisms also receive appropriate Nurture (like Washoe did), then those organisms are as likely as a human to qualify for personhood. So now look up Koko the Gorilla and Chantek the Orangutan. Equally logically, any organisms that don't receive appropriate Nurture, including humans, are going to qualify more as ordinary animals than as persons. (The default Natural condition, per biological development only, for a human is to be just a clever animal.)
Just draw lines from the North Pole to places where countries border each other, and each country gets that slice of the Arctic. For example, in-between the Bering Strait one line would be drawn between USA and Russia, toward the Pole. Where Alaska borders Canada. another line is drawn toward the Pole. That slice becomes claimable by the USA. Another line between Canada and Greenland would yield the Canadian slice. And so on.
It is known that some planets migrate closer to their stars during the early stages of star-system formation. So, a planet that forms outside the habitable zone, but migrate into the habitable zone after the intense-heat period, could still be a good prospect for life.