Or changes in air pressure, humidity, and Lord knows how many other environmental changes (cosmic rays? 100 other cellphones looking for their towers at 100% broadcast power? static electricity?).
In particular, I know that capacitive touch screens are affected by humidity, and airplanes have notoriously low humidity... like under 10%. Capacitive touch screen specs typically call for at least 5% humidity to work at all, so you might have been just experiencing very low humidity or <ahem> a touchy screen.
Is having a silent car really worth the increase in pedestrian injuries? Both drivers and pedestrians could stand to pay more attention, but taking minor steps to avoid injury seems pretty pragmatic to me.
You have it completely wrong. The linked study showed that pedestrians are not injured when cars are going straight ahead. The injuries occurred when cars are parking, turning, and making other low-speed passes through pedestrian areas. In all likelihood, it is just as much the driver not paying attention as it is the pedestrian.
This study found that pedestrian and bicyclist crashes involving both HEVs and ICE vehicles commonly occurred on roadways, in zones with low speed limits, during daytime and in clear weather, with higher incidence rates for HEVs when compared to ICE vehicles. A variety of crash factors were examined to determine the relative incidence rates of HEVs versus ICE vehicles in a range of crash scenarios. For one group of scenarios, those in which a vehicle is slowing or stopping, backing up, or entering or leaving a parking space, a statistically significant effect was found due to engine type. The HEV was two times more likely to be involved in a pedestrian crash in these situations than was an ICE vehicle. Vehicle maneuvers such as slowing or stopping, backing up, or entering or leaving a parking space, were grouped in one category based on that these maneuvers are potentially have occurred at very low speeds where the difference between the sound levels produced by the hybrid versus ICE vehicle is the greatest. In future analysis with a larger sample size, it would be ideal to investigate each of these maneuvers individually. Incidence rate of pedestrian crashes in scenarios when vehicles make a turn was significantly higher for HEVs when compared to ICE vehicles. There was no statistically significant difference in incidence rate of pedestrian crashes involving HEVs when compared to ICE vehicles when both type of vehicles were going straight.
My interpretation is that when the cars are going straight ahead there is enough noise (tire, wind?) such that pedestrians don't get whacked - but when a car is creeping along, like a turn or parking maneuver, pedestrians can't always hear them. I don't think a car making some noise when at low speed would be a terrible contribution to noise pollution. It doesn't have to be the "BEEP BEEP BEEP" that trucks make when backing up.
And they regularly don't comply with the minimum speed limit regulations creating an unsafe situation for everybody involved when people have to drive along at a crawl and figure out how to pass.
In my state (PA - well, commonwealth), we only have a speed limit except on some highways. True, no "motor vehicle" is allowed to "impede" traffic, but that is a very ambiguous, and certainly does not apply to non-motorized bicycles.
The polite thing for a bicycle rider to do is pull over to the side when safe so that the backed up traffic can pass. You can't expect this of them when there is no shoulder, though - I'm afraid you just have to be patient for a while. This can be very trying on a upward slope when you are late for work, but really your fat ass should be on that bike anyway:) I'd love to bike to work, but I judge it too dangerous. The frustrating thing is that there are bike paths here, but they are not connected in any useful way. That and, while the 10 miles takes about 15 minutes in my car, it would take closer to an hour by bike when you factor in the shower I'd need at work. Since I'm paid hourly, that makes the bike ride very expensive - something close to all the gas I use every month paid for in a single day of driving.
Money may be an abstraction for barter, but it still gets you things like food. The amount of "money" is indeed infinite, but the resources available to us are not.
And of course you can just skim the soil off of the worst areas and put it in a big pile with a "do not touch until 2100" sign. Expensive for farmland, but definitely within the scope of human endeavor. Hell, Cesium-137 even has industrial uses - maybe there is a way to extract it.
Ploughing, and some fertilisers can help farmers reduce plants' uptake of the dangerous elements, and binding agents can be added to animal feed to reduce their uptake from the gut, he added.
Oh, no! How will humanity survive???
BTW Cesium-137 half life is about 30 years, so "uninhabitable for generations" is a bit of a stretch. The only way that statement could be true is in the area immediately surrounding the plant, and only If they do absolutely nothing at all - no treatment, no cleanup, nothing. Then, yeah, it would take 90 years to get down to the limit.
Depends which TFA we're talking about. The first link does not mention the "bulge", nor does the summary. The second link mentions the strange width of the phone, but again, no mention from the first link. You have to go to the iFixit teardown to see the dimensions of the bulge.
I think the company, link, and first article are misleading.
It's not as thin as the summary (or article) would imply - there is a big-ass bulge at the top of the device that apparently holds the speakers and camera. I don't know how they get away with selling as 7.1mm thick. They also made the unit wider than other phones with the same size screen, presumably because they needed the space. I haven't used one, but unless you have large hands, one-handed operation is supposedly difficult because of the width.
Yes, there is always the benevolent dictator path - though you get the good (like a string of economic growth) with the bad (almost constant rioting and general human rights abuses). Though China is far more complicated than a simple dictatorship - there is actually quite a bit of conflict behind the scenes - it's just that at the end of the day there is only one party.
Three points: 1. A cottage industry of odometer tamperers would spring up - they could just set the odo to whatever you want for a nice discount. If they can mod an XBox, they can probably work something out for the "tamper-proof" odometers. 2. You can change the gear ratio at the transmission such that the speedo still works, but gives you significantly fewer miles - if you use a ratio that is about 2/3 you can save 1/3 on taxes and the speedometer is still usable because you can use the kilometer markings as miles. Even if they somehow make that tamper-proof, you can always just put bigger diameter tires on your car for a discount. 3. You can always just disconnect the odo for half the year - perhaps at every oil change you can alternate it.
I think that automatic toll collection is probably the way forward. Easy to catch non-payers and spot checking for spoofed RFID transmitters is easy as well (if such a thing were to become a problem) - just cross-check either the license plate or the VIN, or make it a standard thing to check during traffic stops with a receiver in the cop car.
This test wasn't carried out in space - it was carried out on a test stand on the ground. Air isn't "sucked in" to the combustion chamber, but the flame and exhaust are exposed to the atmosphere, and it is still quite hot at that boundary. Many nitrogen byproducts result. Shooting the exhaust at a waterfall helps to mitigate this.
If people can chip an XBox for a hundred bucks, I'm pretty sure any monitoring device will have a whole cottage industry spring up around it. Giving people financial advantages like this is asking for trouble.
Rolling them back is difficult, since they are tamper-resistant. But disconnecting them from the little plastic gear in the transmission is easy - or at least it was easy the last time I had to change out the gear when my tire size changed.
That's the thing - even just increasing your tire size without changing out the gear would cheat the system. Conversely, you could put the wrong size gear in there purposely to give yourself a discount on taxes. Yeah, your speedo would be inaccurate by xx%, but cruise control would still work and you could easily figure out where the new 60MPH was by timing mile markers.
Slashdot Mirror
Or changes in air pressure, humidity, and Lord knows how many other environmental changes (cosmic rays? 100 other cellphones looking for their towers at 100% broadcast power? static electricity?).
In particular, I know that capacitive touch screens are affected by humidity, and airplanes have notoriously low humidity... like under 10%. Capacitive touch screen specs typically call for at least 5% humidity to work at all, so you might have been just experiencing very low humidity or <ahem> a touchy screen.
Pressure also changes dramatically.
Studies show that aggressive driving is what improves traffic flow, not hypermiling.
Is having a silent car really worth the increase in pedestrian injuries? Both drivers and pedestrians could stand to pay more attention, but taking minor steps to avoid injury seems pretty pragmatic to me.
You have it completely wrong. The linked study showed that pedestrians are not injured when cars are going straight ahead. The injuries occurred when cars are parking, turning, and making other low-speed passes through pedestrian areas. In all likelihood, it is just as much the driver not paying attention as it is the pedestrian.
From the linked study's abstract:
My interpretation is that when the cars are going straight ahead there is enough noise (tire, wind?) such that pedestrians don't get whacked - but when a car is creeping along, like a turn or parking maneuver, pedestrians can't always hear them. I don't think a car making some noise when at low speed would be a terrible contribution to noise pollution. It doesn't have to be the "BEEP BEEP BEEP" that trucks make when backing up.
And they regularly don't comply with the minimum speed limit regulations creating an unsafe situation for everybody involved when people have to drive along at a crawl and figure out how to pass.
In my state (PA - well, commonwealth), we only have a speed limit except on some highways. True, no "motor vehicle" is allowed to "impede" traffic, but that is a very ambiguous, and certainly does not apply to non-motorized bicycles.
The polite thing for a bicycle rider to do is pull over to the side when safe so that the backed up traffic can pass. You can't expect this of them when there is no shoulder, though - I'm afraid you just have to be patient for a while. This can be very trying on a upward slope when you are late for work, but really your fat ass should be on that bike anyway :) I'd love to bike to work, but I judge it too dangerous. The frustrating thing is that there are bike paths here, but they are not connected in any useful way. That and, while the 10 miles takes about 15 minutes in my car, it would take closer to an hour by bike when you factor in the shower I'd need at work. Since I'm paid hourly, that makes the bike ride very expensive - something close to all the gas I use every month paid for in a single day of driving.
Silver if he remembers it after watching it with a girl?
Geek badge is if he typed it from memory.
Money may be an abstraction for barter, but it still gets you things like food. The amount of "money" is indeed infinite, but the resources available to us are not.
Fortunately, Japan is more or less free, so studies like this can run around taking measurements and publishing them.
And of course you can just skim the soil off of the worst areas and put it in a big pile with a "do not touch until 2100" sign. Expensive for farmland, but definitely within the scope of human endeavor. Hell, Cesium-137 even has industrial uses - maybe there is a way to extract it.
Oh, no! How will humanity survive???
BTW Cesium-137 half life is about 30 years, so "uninhabitable for generations" is a bit of a stretch. The only way that statement could be true is in the area immediately surrounding the plant, and only If they do absolutely nothing at all - no treatment, no cleanup, nothing. Then, yeah, it would take 90 years to get down to the limit.
Depends which TFA we're talking about. The first link does not mention the "bulge", nor does the summary. The second link mentions the strange width of the phone, but again, no mention from the first link. You have to go to the iFixit teardown to see the dimensions of the bulge.
I think the company, link, and first article are misleading.
+1 Interesting... thanks!
It's not as thin as the summary (or article) would imply - there is a big-ass bulge at the top of the device that apparently holds the speakers and camera. I don't know how they get away with selling as 7.1mm thick. They also made the unit wider than other phones with the same size screen, presumably because they needed the space. I haven't used one, but unless you have large hands, one-handed operation is supposedly difficult because of the width.
Could you be convinced to open source that? :)
Heck, the Mail app isn't that much different from the old Next Mail app... maybe it would still work on Mac?
Yes, there is always the benevolent dictator path - though you get the good (like a string of economic growth) with the bad (almost constant rioting and general human rights abuses). Though China is far more complicated than a simple dictatorship - there is actually quite a bit of conflict behind the scenes - it's just that at the end of the day there is only one party.
Three points:
1. A cottage industry of odometer tamperers would spring up - they could just set the odo to whatever you want for a nice discount. If they can mod an XBox, they can probably work something out for the "tamper-proof" odometers.
2. You can change the gear ratio at the transmission such that the speedo still works, but gives you significantly fewer miles - if you use a ratio that is about 2/3 you can save 1/3 on taxes and the speedometer is still usable because you can use the kilometer markings as miles. Even if they somehow make that tamper-proof, you can always just put bigger diameter tires on your car for a discount.
3. You can always just disconnect the odo for half the year - perhaps at every oil change you can alternate it.
I think that automatic toll collection is probably the way forward. Easy to catch non-payers and spot checking for spoofed RFID transmitters is easy as well (if such a thing were to become a problem) - just cross-check either the license plate or the VIN, or make it a standard thing to check during traffic stops with a receiver in the cop car.
This test wasn't carried out in space - it was carried out on a test stand on the ground. Air isn't "sucked in" to the combustion chamber, but the flame and exhaust are exposed to the atmosphere, and it is still quite hot at that boundary. Many nitrogen byproducts result. Shooting the exhaust at a waterfall helps to mitigate this.
Eliminate squabbling and you have rule by consensus. There is no way rule by consensus would produce a moon base.
They don't have "close links with Aldi" on a corporate level, but the guys that run the two chains are brothers IIRC.
If people can chip an XBox for a hundred bucks, I'm pretty sure any monitoring device will have a whole cottage industry spring up around it. Giving people financial advantages like this is asking for trouble.
Rolling them back is difficult, since they are tamper-resistant. But disconnecting them from the little plastic gear in the transmission is easy - or at least it was easy the last time I had to change out the gear when my tire size changed.
That's the thing - even just increasing your tire size without changing out the gear would cheat the system. Conversely, you could put the wrong size gear in there purposely to give yourself a discount on taxes. Yeah, your speedo would be inaccurate by xx%, but cruise control would still work and you could easily figure out where the new 60MPH was by timing mile markers.
I think you might have found a solution for Detroit.