Slashdot Mirror


User: Smidge204

Smidge204's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
2,715
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 2,715

  1. Re:Which has multiple benefits on Electric Vehicles Might Not Benefit the Environment After All · · Score: 2

    Will will not find an internal combustion engine with an efficiency over 20% anywhere on a road vehicle. If you want that 35-40% you're only gonna get it on a massive container ship engine - and then you're likely burning bunker oil anyway so any environmental benefits from the increased efficiency are completely overshadowed.

    And it takes one gallon equivalent of energy to deliver four gallons of gas to your car in the first place - well-to-pump efficiency (pumping, refining, transportation losses) is roughly 83%.

    Meanwhile, electric motor efficiency is almost independent of physical size, except in the extremely small where material and geometry limits start to become a big deal. There is no reason the electricity HAS to come from a powerplant either - you can put solar panels or cogeneration systems at your own home or business and generate the power locally. Most people will not have the "luxury" of having an oil well and refinery in their back yard.
    =Smidge=

  2. Re:What could possibly go wrong? on Robotic Kiosk Stores Digital Copies of Physical Keys · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Crowbar marks, splintered door jams and broken glass are evidence of forced entry.

    Using a key leaves no evidence and may not even raise suspicion should anyone see you do it.
    =Smidge=

  3. Re:Good on Have We Hit Peak HFT? · · Score: 1

    Sorry, still not seeing what the contention is here.

    Premise 1: Reckless pursuit of profit may not be in the interests of long-term stability and sustainability

    Premise 2: HFT is a perfect example of reckless and harmful pursuit of profit

    Conclusion: Given Premises 1 and 2, HFT is not in the interest of long-term stability and sustainability.

    So yes, if you want to advocate an economy based on "long term stewardship," you need to include HFT as one of the problems that stand in the way.
    =Smidge=

  4. Re:Good on Have We Hit Peak HFT? · · Score: 1

    I don't see anything erroneous with the link.

    HFT is implemented by people. It is not autonomous and it didn't pop into existence by itself. It was created by humans with the short-sighted goal of maximizing profit with no consideration of the long-term stability of the system it's interfaced with.

    You are right that humans can't make rational judgements in milliseconds - that's why humans create machines to do it for them. Although I'd argue that humans have great difficulty making rational judgements no matter how much time you give them; there's been quite a bit of study showing that people will make poor decisions especially when money is involved. Creating automated systems that operate faster than their caretakers can react, for example...
    =Smidge=

  5. Re:Bullshit Prevarication on USPS Discriminates Against 'Atheist' Merchandise · · Score: 1

    The key word here is "unauthorized."

    =Smidge=

  6. Re:Bullshit Prevarication on USPS Discriminates Against 'Atheist' Merchandise · · Score: 2

    "Unauthorized markings not designating price, class, address, handling, content, or extra service are not permitted."

    Seems pretty clear to me. Yes, they ALSO require that any old labels or markings on reused boxes be obliterated or removed, but explicitly so that any legible markings accurately reflect the contents and service required. Basically ANY marking on the box which is not approved is subject to fuckwittery by postal workers. Since these guys want to use custom decorative boxes for their wares, maybe they should talk to someone at the USPS about it or just put the decorative box inside a plain box for shipment.
    =Smidge=

  7. Cover up or black out any old labels and markings on USPS Discriminates Against 'Atheist' Merchandise · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Anyone who's ever actually sent a package through USPS should know that they explicitly recommend you destroy or cover any non-USPS related markings or labels, explaining that it may lead to delays or failure to deliver.

    =Smidge=

  8. Re:Unprofitable on Bosch Finds Solar Business Unprofitable, Exits · · Score: 1

    3) is total bullshit. There is price-point that cannot be crossed in a given neighbourhood and that's the average selling price of all your neighbours.

    I don't know where you live, but that's certainly not true around here. I suppose it's true if you live in a particularly shitty area that nobody would want to live in you might have problems selling in general, but then again you're only talking about *maybe* +$10k to +$15k of added value which is %10 or less of the average home price in this country.
    =Smidge=

  9. Re:Unprofitable on Bosch Finds Solar Business Unprofitable, Exits · · Score: 1

    Consider leasing the system, then. Let a company (who DOES have tax liability) pay for the installation, and your utility bill is replaced with a somewhat smaller lease payment. You end up saving money with little or no out of pocket cost, and most agreements include annual maintenance.

    Also, most (all?) lease agreements will transfer to the new owner if you sell your home, so it's still added value.
    =Smidge=

  10. Re:Unprofitable on Bosch Finds Solar Business Unprofitable, Exits · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The payoff on the system I looked at was something well over 10 years - who stays in a home that long? I do and have but we're now talking 1- MORE years!

    1) Half of home owners stay in their home at least 10 years. Buying a new home is a good time to do remodeling and renovations, so it's also a good time to install PV solar.

    2) Roughly a third of home owners stay in their home at least 20 years.

    3) A PV system adds value to the home which can be used as a potential selling point and increase the asking price if you decide to move, so it's not like the entire unrecovered cost of the installation is lost.
    =Smidge=

  11. Re:Clearly, the US is at fault here on As US Cleans Its Energy Mix, It Ships Coal Problems Overseas · · Score: 1

    China has a lower Gini coefficient than the US? They're actually about the same. Not that this point matters because you said some adjustments would need to be made, yet you did not make any. Instead all you did was recite numbers from two tables and acted like that proves a point somehow. You're simply rehashed the same argument but thrown in GDP/Capita instead.

    The question of how the CO2 emissions of the "middle class" in China vs the US compare still remains unanswered. To answer this we will need information such as how much the "middle class" consumes in each case. A good definition of "middle class" would also be very helpful here...
    =Smidge=

  12. Re:Clearly, the US is at fault here on As US Cleans Its Energy Mix, It Ships Coal Problems Overseas · · Score: 1

    True – but I think it is a reasonable assumption. Factor in that China’s middle class earns about a 1/3 of developed nations – that implies lower energy usage and lower CO2 emissions.

    Factor in that the US's population is about a 1/4 of China's population - that implies lower energy usage and lower CO2 emissions... right?

    Wishful thinking and bad logic is not a substitute for data.
    =Smidge=

  13. Re:Clearly, the US is at fault here on As US Cleans Its Energy Mix, It Ships Coal Problems Overseas · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The middle class in China still emit a fraction of the GHG per capita that the middle class in the US does.

    All the per-capita data I've ever seen does not break out the data by "class" / income bracket. Where are you getting this information from?
    =Smidge=

  14. Where Have All the Gadgets Gone? on Where Have All the Gadgets Gone? · · Score: 5, Funny

    Where have all the gadgets gone?
    Long time charging
    Where have all the gadgets gone?
    Long time ago
    Where have all the gadgets gone?
    Gone to smartphones, every one
    When will they ever learn?
    When will they ever learn?

  15. Re:Gee, on Tesla Motors To Pay Off Government Loan 5 Years Early · · Score: 2

    I Learned two things about you from reading this post.

    1) You have no idea how the tiered tax rate structure in the US works.

    2) You are a shortsighted idiot.

    The evidence of (1) is that you appear to believe that if you are making, say, $32K/yr (15% marginal income tax rate), that working a bit harder and getting that raise to $33K/yr (25% marginal tax rate) would mean your tax bill would go from $4,800/yr to $8250/yr. This is nonsense since you still pay 15% on the first $32K and the 25% rate only applies to anything in excess of that, i.e. $1K. So you get $1000/yr increase in salary and pay an extra $250/yr in taxes for a net increase in-your-pocket of $750/yr.

    (2) Is evidenced by the notion that, despite the amount of money you put in your pocket ALWAYS increasing with increasing salary, you honestly think it's not worth the extra effort. Of course, your whole argument seems to be predicated on the notion that someone making $300M/yr is working ten thousand times harder than someone making $30K/yr, and that's clearly bullshit.
    =Smidge=

  16. Re:Gee, on Tesla Motors To Pay Off Government Loan 5 Years Early · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Do you suppose the money just up and vanishes when the government spends it?

    That money goes to individuals or companies, and if to companies then ultimately to individuals via salaries. The point of discussion should not be if government spending is good or bad since, economically, government spending is indistinguishable from any other entity spending the same amount of money on the same things... being "government" does not do anything magical to the money. Rather, the discussion should focus on if the money is spent wisely, for the maximal benefit of the country and its citizens. Obstinately the government is a product of the people collectively organizing their resources for the purpose of serving the public.

    Defense spending, as an example, does not appear to have maximal benefit at the amount we are spending. Building battle tanks certainly employs many thousands of people, but we don't need or want battle tanks. Therefore building tanks the army explicitly said they do not want is the military-industrial complex equivalent of paying people to dig holes and fill them in again; money and resources are spent but nothing of real value is created.

    On the other hand, spending public money on basic research has extremely high value. Just about everything we enjoy in a technological society has the fundamental principles rooted in government funded research. The DoE should get more funding, not less.

    Incidentally, Sandia National Laboratories, like ALL national labs, are part of the Department of Energy. DARPA, on the other hand, is part of the Department of Defense. Just thought you might want that clarified...

    So I, for one, have no problem using public money to help a new business developing a new technology with a loan. In the long run, if successful, such a business will pay massive returns in economic activity long after the loan itself is repaid. And even if the loan is never repaid, most of that money ends up right back in the economy anyway since it would have been used to buy materials and pay workers. Unless there was some kind of scam going on, even the worst case is still not that bad economically... and if someone did try to walk off with the cash in their pocket, I'd fully support stringing them up by their entrails in a public square as a cautionary example :)
    =Smidge=

  17. Re:Which is the best 3d printer? on 83-Year-Old Inventor Wins $40,000 3D Printing Competition · · Score: 2

    In addition to having an idea of what you'd use it for, I'd like to offer the following advice regarding how much to spend / what to buy:

    How much work are you willing and able to do yourself?

    The more effort you're willing to put into making the machine, the less expensive it's likely to be. Right now, the cheapest machine I'm aware of that's not total junk is the Prusa i3 ("Box frame" version) which you can stick together for under US$500 if you're savvy about where you buy parts from and you're handy with basic tools.

    Be forewarned that 3D printing is a proper hobby - the kind of thing you can throw embarrassing amounts of money and time at, and the only people who will understand are those who are also part of the hobby. I do not know what kind of quality you can get with a Solidoodle. In my experience the machine itself is a relatively minor part of the equation: Endless tinkering and calibration, along with quality filament, are far more important to print quality. It's only when you get into machines that have been stripped down so much to reduce costs that quality gets impacted... see: Printrbot and it's unsupported vertical axis.
    =Smidge=

  18. Genetic vs. Cultural Diversity on Nature Vs. Nurture: Waging War Over the Soul of Science · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It seems to me that genetic diversity and cultural diversity would be related. In other words, cultural isolation and genetic isolation tend to go hand-in-hand.

    Therefore, if the argument is that economic development is correlated to genetic diversity, then it is also necessarily correlated to cultural diversity. This now frames the issue in a more intuitive way; The more ideas and ways of looking at the world you bring to the table, the more diverse your solutions and creativity, and the more developed your economy becomes. This seems to be broadly supported by history as well, since the most prosperous trade often occurred when and where cultures mingled freely.

    And now that the genetic element has been effectively abated, the controversy evaporates. You're welcome.
    =Smidge=

  19. Re:Holywood PR agents will tell you. on NY Times' Broder Responds To Tesla's Elon Musk · · Score: 1

    I dunno, I'd rather nobody ever heard of my product than think my product was shit... people who don't know about my product don't talk about it, but people who think it's shit will spread their opinion to others. "Q Score" includes metrics like favorability, not knowledge of existence.
    =Smidge=

  20. Re:Welp on NASA: Huge Freshwater Loss In the Middle East · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There's not an oil well or refinery within a thousand miles from me.

    Somehow I doubt that. Where do you live?

    Not that it matters. For the US, water usage is over twenty thousand times greater than oil usage. Oil, not gasoline, which accounts for only a fraction of oil usage. That ratio is probably higher for areas that use less gasoline per capita (which is nearly everywhere outside the US).

    Do you think there would be plenty of gasoline if everyone used even a hundred times more, let alone twenty thousand times more? Could you imagine the infrastructure that would be required? Do you honestly think that there are enough sources of fresh water to import from, assuming you had all the infrastructure and all the energy you needed to distribute it?

    Do you know what the term "false equivalence" means?
    =Smidge=

  21. Re:Welp on NASA: Huge Freshwater Loss In the Middle East · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Doesn't rain much in the middle of a desert and there are these things called "droughts" you have to worry about...

    If you use fresh water faster than nature can replenish it, you're going to have a shortage. The fact that fresh water reservoirs are decreasing is a sure sign that water is being used faster than it is being replenished... so you either reduce usage (start with waste), supplement supply (desalinization, massive aqueduct construction, etc), or suffer drought.
    =Smidge=

  22. Re:Crap on Swiss Federal Lab Claims New World Record For Solar Cell Efficiency · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Please stop perpetuating the myth that "most" of our electricity - at least in the US - comes from coal. Coal has been the source for less than 50% of our electrical supply for nearly a decade now and is still declining (Currently around 40%). Even in the worst-case scenario (Colorado, where the local electricity mix is the "dirtiest" in the country) an EV like the Nissan LEAF has the same carbon footprint as a Toyota Prius. It only improves from there.

    Also, electricity is fungible. Putting solar panels on your roof to generate electricity during the daytime peak hours even if your car isn't home charging more than offsets the electricity you consume during off-peak hours at night, both in quantity and quality. If anything you are doing more good by putting PV power into the grid than by using it, since you are offsetting peak-generating capacity which is virtually always fossil-fuel based and adding load to soak up off-peak spinning reserve, improving efficiency and reducing energy waste.
    =Smidge=

  23. Re:Nylon? on The 3D Un-Printer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The people that tested it did not use an independent lab (or ANY lab, really...), and they also sell it. Grain of salt required here.

    That said, cyanide offgassing is more of a problem when nylon is burning or severely overheated. Either way, caution is required.
    =Smidge=

  24. Re:Clip on 3D Printable Ammo Clip Skirts New Proposed Gun Laws · · Score: 1

    Yes, a misnomer... though some engine manufacturers do use actual gears.

    =Smidge=

  25. Re:Clip on 3D Printable Ammo Clip Skirts New Proposed Gun Laws · · Score: 4, Informative

    A sprocket is a wheel with projections that meshes with a chain or toothed/perforated belt. A gear is a wheel with projections that mesh with other gears. A cog is the projection in either case, although sometimes "cog" is used as shorthand for "cogwheel" which would be a gear. A pinion is the smallest gear in a set, or the gear that drives a rack (which is a gear of infinite diameter, ie flat)

    A clip holds multiple bullets together so they can be more easily loaded into the gun's magazine. Once this happens the clip is removed. A magazine is the container that holds the bullets and can either be an integral part of the weapon (such as some rifles, or revolver pistol) or detachable.
    =Smidge=