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User: Albinoman

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  1. Re: LOL Tesla on Third Tesla Fire Means Feds To Begin Review · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Go to Youtube and watch the video of him taking a camera crew on a tour of SpaceX. He litterally walks through saying what components are and what their function is in the big picture. I doubt any other CEO or the head of NASA could do that. Best part is none of it is patented. So yeah, he probably knows more than you about hydrogen. Besides, you'd still have to get around the problem of hydrogen making steel brittle.

  2. Re:Sorry, But He's a Douche on Tesla CEO Elon Musk: Fuel Cells Are 'So Bull@%!#' · · Score: 1

    "In reference to the Texas fiasco, no - it would be undeniably good if he was trying to get the law changed because it's wrong, but that's not the case - he was trying to get a special exception made for his company, and fuck everyone else."

    Cause you know the dealerships should be the one's deciding how cars are sold, and fuck (literally) everyone else, not just a couple car salesmen. That's like WalMart lobbying to not allow you to shop online. You really think if the law allows him direct sales then no one else would be allowed? The exception is for him cause the big players don't want an exception at all.

  3. Re:Sorry, But He's a Douche on Tesla CEO Elon Musk: Fuel Cells Are 'So Bull@%!#' · · Score: 2

    He may well be a douch,

    Oh, he is.

    but he's not the only one out there,

    No, but the fact there are other douche-bags on the planet is no excuse for being one.

    and he is doing something that will push us in the right direction.

    According to you. Me, I fail to see the merit in the concept of having everyone drive around in what is, essentially, a big-ass pile of heavily polluting blood minerals that won't get you to your destination without taking a minimum hour break every couple hundred miles.

    Not to mention, even if electric cars are "the right direction," Elon Musk doesn't give half a fuck about that - he's a capitalist, therefore he's in it for the money. If altruistic progress was his goal he'd be selling Teslas at a loss just to get them in the hands of the people who would benefit the most.

    Also, it takes considerable effort to get hydrogen gas from dihydrogen monoxide. Perhaps he knows this already?

    Uh, that was a dig, not a comparison or question of science. I figured it was obvious.

    Lithium does not have to be mined for blood money (and there's probably lithium in the screen you're looking at, so you're a murderous hypocrite). The new chargers will work in twenty minutes from empty.

    Now go watch a video of him being interviewed or giving a tour of SpaceX. He literally walks around naming all the parts off the top of his head and knows what they do. Name any CEO capable of that. First, the man really is a genius. Second, he's actually quite down to earth. Saw him get very emotional about the "perversion of democracy" that other automakers are going to to try to stop him. His college education is specifically for designing batteries, not what you pursue to get filthy rich, he's just good at what he does (and very lucky). They actually don't patent any of the the SpaceX technology, that greedy bastard. And lastly, no one said he's trying to be altruistic. And altruism isn't also suicidal.

    Course, I actually know what I'm talking about instead of just spreading ICE automaker FUD.

  4. Re:Wait... on Tesla CEO Elon Musk: Fuel Cells Are 'So Bull@%!#' · · Score: 1

    True, but in this type of accident the gasoline tends to pool up under the vehicle and incinerate the entire thing.

  5. Re:That All Depends... on Tesla CEO Elon Musk: Fuel Cells Are 'So Bull@%!#' · · Score: 1

    Smelled funny to me too. Technically I don't see at as impossible if you aren't shooting for the perpetual motion thing. But, why would anyone build was is essentially a hybrid the other way around?

    Worked with a guy once that insisted that he was gonna build this revolutionary new car that had a few extra alternators hooked to the wheels(?) so it could switch over to electric when it generating enough electricity. I tried going from the perpetual motion angle, to explaining how alternators work, to just the lack of power coming from one. It was one of the most frustrating conversation I've had. Worse than any creation/evolution debate anyway.

  6. Re:Is Hydrogen more dangerous than other gasses? on Tesla CEO Elon Musk: Fuel Cells Are 'So Bull@%!#' · · Score: 1

    It wasn't exactly a campfire. The problem isn't the amount of energy it has but how fast it can release it. Sugar has more energy than dynamite.

  7. Re:Other kinds of fuel cells on Tesla CEO Elon Musk: Fuel Cells Are 'So Bull@%!#' · · Score: 2

    Must not have really caught on then. I've worked in a few factories and have never seen one. Lots of electrics and the rest propane.

  8. Re:Well, he's not wrong on Tesla CEO Elon Musk: Fuel Cells Are 'So Bull@%!#' · · Score: 1

    Part of his reasoning with electricity goes hand in hand with another project he's involved in, Solar City. You can charge it at home with essentially free, easy to generate, electricity. Charging a fuel cell is something I would definitely not trust the average joe to do. Also, some of the new charging station can get you from 0 to 300 miles in 20 minutes of charging.

  9. Re:...yet was put out with water on Owner of Battery Fire Tesla Vehicle: Car 'Performed Very Well, Will Buy Again' · · Score: 2

    Seriously, you really should read the correspondence linked at the bottom of the summary. It really is quite informative. I'll just copy and paste the next two paragraphs, the pertinent stuff anyway.

    "It is important to note that the fire in the battery was contained to a small section near the front by the internal firewalls built into the pack structure. At no point did fire enter the passenger compartment.
     
    ...the combustion energy of our battery pack is only about 10% of the energy contained in a gasoline tank and is divided into 16 modules with firewalls in between. As a consequence, the effective combustion potential is only about 1% that of the fuel in a comparable gasoline sedan."

    You're probably smart, but more-than-the-entire-development-staff-at-Tesla smart? They were thinking of all these crazy scenarios long before you decided not to give them a fair try. Remember, these were the guys that offered to help Boeing with their battery problem. Tesla is really a battery and charging company more than an electric car company considering where all their innovation lies. If you are smart than people generally will believe what you say. You kinda have a responsibility to get it right. Besides, it sucks being called out when you've understood something as completely wrong as you have here. People will start thinking you're that guy that makes shit up a lot.

  10. ...yet was put out with water on Owner of Battery Fire Tesla Vehicle: Car 'Performed Very Well, Will Buy Again' · · Score: 3, Informative

    The article linked to a letter from Elon Musk. In it he wrote:

    "When the fire department arrived, they observed standard procedure, which was to gain access to the source of the fire by puncturing holes in the top of the battery's protective metal plate and applying water. For the Model S lithium-ion battery, it was correct to apply water (vs. dry chemical extinguisher), but not to puncture the metal firewall, as the newly created holes allowed the flames to then vent upwards into the front trunk section of the Model S. Nonetheless, a combination of water followed by dry chemical extinguisher quickly brought the fire to an end."

    You should probably know what you're talking about before stating that as fact.

  11. Re:Please give me "get off the left-lane stupid" m on US To Standardize Car App/communication Device Components · · Score: 2

    That's some of the dumbest advice I've ever read on the internet. Let's cause and accident at highway speeds!
    I think I speak for all of us when I say please swerve into a pylon next time you try it so the guy behind you doesn't have to.

  12. No, only to non-English native speakers on Fighting TSA Harassment of Disabled Travelers · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually, the accent Americans speak today is actually mush closer to real (old) English than what the English speak. Around the time when the US was just some colonies, French influence on language had become popular among the upper classes. Never really understood the the English/French love/hate thing they have going on.

    That being said, I watch shows off BBC (love QI) and they refer to us as "America" all the time.

  13. Re:Petroleum bias on Norwegian Study: Global Warming Less Severe Than Feared · · Score: 0

    Climate science does not do "scientific methodology" though. Where is your control, and where is your experiment? Because both warming and cooling is being attributed to global warming it is not falsifiable. How often do we see news articles that say about models being revised? What gets glossed over is the fact that it means previous models are wrong. Its also not as simple as 1 + 2 = "hot planet" either, so saying its either right or wrong means that it is without out a doubt, wrong. You can argue that its just innacurate, but its still very certainly still wrong.

    When quantum physics does the math, they also have been finding ways to prove it (LHC).

  14. Re:...alternatively on West Antarctica Warming Faster Than Thought · · Score: 1

    You argue that subtle changes can have no large effect, but I bet you'd be the first to argue that a few degrees can cause a tipping point in global warming, right? Pick one. As far as precession goes, no one "notices" this, as if we wake up one day and the Earth shifted a few degrees. We know it happens about a degree every 72 years, full cycle every 26,000. And no, GPS satellites would not be affected because their measurements are relative to Earth, whereas precession is measured relative to stars.

    Also if the ocean currents had changed, we knew that already. Ever looked at a nautic map? Ever heard of El Niño? Ocean currents shift all the time.

    Eyjafjallajökull? Maybe not massive, but we noticed its effects and it didn't have to be massive.

  15. Re:Make all school districts use Windows! on Virus Eats School District's Homework · · Score: 1

    You can really believe that hiring 5 *temporary* employees to clean up a mess and give some advice costs more than the price difference between a mac (which wouldn't have necessarily fixed this, and mac techs probably cost more) and pc times, what, thousands of laptops?

  16. Re:Around here on 26 Nuclear Power Plants In Hurricane Sandy's Path · · Score: 1

    Well, that and the giant, structure rattling earthquake.

  17. Re:Sysiphus on Laser Strikes On Aircraft Becoming Epidemic · · Score: 1

    I grammar geeked it and found that "epidemic" can indeed be used as an adjective. So it's correct, even if it sounds awkward.

    I admit I did too. To be honest I didn't know that that "endemic" meant a problem concentrated to an single area. Seemed more synonymous with "intrinsic". It's used in all ways in the article itself. The "epidemic" is the noun in the summary, if it reached "epidemic" proportions then it would make sense, since it would describe the proportions. The article by Orwell in the other reply, while dated, it actually spot on. It seems the author is guilty of the same thing most are (including me), sacrificing clarity for sounding eloquent and intelligent.

  18. Re:Sysiphus on Laser Strikes On Aircraft Becoming Epidemic · · Score: 2

    It should at least be "becoming an epidemic", though as a noun it only refers to disease. Endemic is just wrong as it's the antonym to epidemic. Endemic would be more proper if people shined lasers at planes only in Detroit or something. Why can't they just use "widespread" or something like that?

  19. You're still wrong, read it a 3rd time on No Bomb Powerful Enough To Destroy an On-Rushing Asteroid, Sorry Bruce Willis · · Score: 1

    So, what part of "the asteroid would need to be split" are you not understanding? They've stated that the movie's scenario, especially is distance, would need a massive explosion. They're giving the distance that the movie's bomb would need to work. If you read the actual paper linked in the article they say:

    "The distance from the Earth at which the bomb is detonated is taken as 63,000 miles (101000km) [2]."

  20. Kim Dotcom on Ask Slashdot: Simple Way To Backup 24TB of Data Onto USB HDDs ? · · Score: 1

    It's a little late to be asking that now.

  21. Re:not about destroying on No Bomb Powerful Enough To Destroy an On-Rushing Asteroid, Sorry Bruce Willis · · Score: 1

    Read it again. The article is actually for a distance of the radius of the Earth plus 400 miles, which is just under a total of 3,500 miles out. Pretty much the putting a paper bag over our head distance. The article states it would have to be 8 billion miles out to work.

  22. Re:I, Caveman on Meat the Food of the Future · · Score: 1

    You're certainly right. I only use the word natural in this case because without modern advances, it really was the only way to be healthy. I personally have no moral issues with eating meat (I grew up on a farm and did lots of hunting). That doesn't mean I have no feelings regarding people torturing animals, even if they're about to die. Not real big on trapping or netting either.

    I actually think there's one very major reason that it's a good thing that people have vegetarian diets, hashing out any problems, especially the more elusive long term ones, that could arise. While overpopulation should be the reason, it's space travel. The first off world inhabitants will likely not have anything more than chickens and their eggs for animal protein for a very long time, and that's if they're lucky.

  23. Re:I, Caveman on Meat the Food of the Future · · Score: 2

    Actually, that's wrong too. Sure, we can't read them, but that doesn't make them not writings.

    I would think evolutionary science alone should be enough to show that we need meat. The fact that we evolved to eat it and that you have to eat a wide variety of plants which are not all found in the same area to replace it should be enough to show that you need meat to survive on a healthy, natural diet. The Aztec had lots of problems surviving on a nearly vegetarian diet. Their bones were yellow from eating mostly maize. The agricultural revolution made people shorter, grow smaller brains, live shorter lives, and have more problems with their teeth and diseases than their hunter/gatherer ancestors. How about how people who regularly consume fish, especially when young, are smarter than those that don't? It isn't impossible to be healthy without meat, but you're using modern science and agriculture to get around something you actually do need. Maybe it won't (immediately) kill you, but to say it's unneeded, or has no negative effects is certainly erroneous.

  24. To quote Roger Bacon on Political Science Prof Asks: Is Algebra Necessary? · · Score: 1

    "If in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics."

  25. Now if we just had our own space program... on NASA's First New Spacesuit In 20 Years Is Its Own Airlock · · Score: 1

    This is an old idea. I believe the old Apollo missions' suits were designed this way to prevent the fine (and very sharp) dust of the moon from contaminating the lunar module. Can't believe we've regressed so far.