Slashdot Mirror


User: virtual_mps

virtual_mps's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
434
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 434

  1. Re:NOT EVEN POSSIBLE!!! on NASA's Journey To Mars May Use Nuclear Rockets (blastingnews.com) · · Score: 1

    And there have been other failures in space based nuclear programs which have caused detectable leaks. The RTGs themselves are pretty safe, but that's because they have a pretty small amount of material (and generate very little power). Reiterating the point a couple of posts up, yes, there are current systems using RTGs--but that says pretty much nothing about the safety of, or tolerance for, nuclear propulsion.

  2. Re:NOT EVEN POSSIBLE!!! on NASA's Journey To Mars May Use Nuclear Rockets (blastingnews.com) · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure what they have to do with deep space probes or with nuclear propulsion (they were used for electrical generation just like RTGs, but at a much higher power output and with much greater weight.) But yes, they do exist and are a good example of why there's so much skepticism about nuclear power in LEO.

  3. Re:NOT EVEN POSSIBLE!!! on NASA's Journey To Mars May Use Nuclear Rockets (blastingnews.com) · · Score: 1

    There's a little bit of a difference between thermal decay generators and nuclear propulsion. All deep space probes have an RTG, solar panels don't work when you're far from the sun. Even with the RTGs there's been concern about what to do if there's a launch accident. But direct nuclear propulsion is inherently dirty--in Project Pluto it was actually considered a feature that in addition to dropping nukes the platform could just be flown around irradiating the target. AFAIK nuclear propulsion is only envisioned for extra-atmospheric use, but even getting the fuel up there is a tricky question if every launch runs a risk of dirty bombing a launch facility.

  4. Re:How many autonomous crashes were overridden? on Google Self-Driving Car Might Have Caused First Crash In Autonomous Mode (roboticstrends.com) · · Score: 1

    I'm a big believer in autonomous cars, but when I see

    Google said its car's safety driver thought the bus would yield.

    it makes me wonder how many crashes we would have had in autonomous mode, if there weren't an attentive driver who was fully aware he was sitting in an experimental vehicle.

    Probably 1. The research suggests that having a human doing nothing except watching and waiting to override a failing autonomous system basically never works--so it probably isn't a big factor in how many accidents google has.

  5. An unsafe lane change would make it the Google cars fault.

    And a safe lane change (signaling, plenty of room) followed by a distracted driver not noticing that there was a car in front would be the bus driver's fault. Now that we've established the basics, we'll have to see what actually happened instead of speculating wildly.

  6. Re:Samsung vs Nexus on Samsung Unveils Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge and Gear 360 VR Camera (hothardware.com) · · Score: 1

    Well, when I said "just apps" I meant "apps and their associated data, everything except pictures, music, podcasts, etc." (which I keep on the SD). So on my current 16G system I lose upward of 6G to the OS. Then there's about 6.5G "used", 1.5G "cached" and a little under a gig "misc". That leaves about a gig free, and I just deleted 512M worth of samsung text to speech bloatware yesterday. So it's not completely full, but it's at the point where I'll occasionally have a large application update fail because of low disk space--and I'd rather just not ever deal with that. And all that is without much in the way of games or movies or other really big space hogs. It's possible to get by with less space but at some point I guess you'd kinda just be better off with a dumbphone if you don't want to do anything on the smartphone.

    My wife's 32G 5x has something like 26G available after the OS, so I'd assume a 16G 5x would also have about 10G after the OS. More than enough for her, but the kids these days burn through storage like I can't even fathom.

  7. Re:Samsung vs Nexus on Samsung Unveils Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge and Gear 360 VR Camera (hothardware.com) · · Score: 1

    My current phone fills up 16G just with apps (to the point I have to delete some to manage space). And I've got a 64G SD card for podcasts & pictures & maps & such. (I spend time in places with poor or metered connectivity, and having a local cache is extremely useful.) But everyone has their own needs, and if you don't need the space the 5x is a great choice. I'm mostly just annoyed when manufacturers 1) charge so much for memory, 2) use memory sizes as a way to artificially segment their product lines, and 3) don't offer SD or other removal expansion options.

  8. Re:Samsung vs Nexus on Samsung Unveils Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge and Gear 360 VR Camera (hothardware.com) · · Score: 1

    The 5x would be just about perfect except that it doesn't have an SD card and they artificially limited the internal memory options to segment their market. It's a shame. If 32GB is enough, I agree it's a great value.

  9. I've stood behind an 87 tercel and I've stood behind a new toyota. There is a difference you can smell. 1975 was one inflection point in emissions with the addition of catalytic converters, 81 was another point with the addition of three way converters, 94 was another with the Phase 1 standards, etc. The high mileage tercels were still carburetted, and there's a reason nobody tries to meet current emission standards with a carb. The new cars are definitely cleaner, and most of the emissions controls reduce MPG. (Other things have improved MPG, like aerodynamics, variable displacement engines, etc., so it's not a straight line downward.)

  10. The only pi the beaglebone is over twice the price of is the zero, which I don't consider in the same class. (No network or storage.) Unless you're seeing pi 1 or 2s for $25? (The beaglebone black is $50.)

  11. If you're looking for open why on earth are you looking at the raspberry pi instead of the beaglebone? Graphics are basically the only advantage the pi has over the bone, so if you take that away you've basically got a bone with fewer I/O options and a lousy network interface. I don't get it.

  12. Re:What is the significance? on Raspberry Pi's Raspbian OS Finally Ships With Open-Source OpenGL Support (phoronix.com) · · Score: 1

    Note: it looks like ass

  13. Why on earth would you do that? These devices are not exactly memory starved.

  14. Old imports got incredible fuel economy. They also weighed as much as a go-kart, had zero safety features, and spewed emissions like they were going out of style (which, in fact, they were). Apples and oranges.

  15. Re:Why roads? on France To Pave 1000km of Road With Solar Panels (solarcrunch.org) · · Score: 1

    They even said that the solar roads would be easier to repair - have a busted hexagonal panel? Pull up with a truck that has a robot arm that automatically unbolts and lifts the damaged panel and locks a replacement in. Each panel is supposed to be cheap because it's made in an automated factory.

    This kind of thing comes up a lot, and seems to come from people with no clue how roads work. Repairing the surface is the easy part. Repairing the subsurface is hard, and putting some glass on top isn't going to change the fact that you've got a major repair involving a lot of earth moving equipment if the subsurface of a road is compromised. Just throwing a new piece of glass over a sinkhole isn't an option.

  16. Re:What could go wrong on France To Pave 1000km of Road With Solar Panels (solarcrunch.org) · · Score: 1

    The problem with roof mounted solar is that people get upset when the government lends people money to pay for it, and each installation is unique. With a road the government (or in France's case often a private company) owns the road, and can lay large stretches of it using a standard process in a well understood and mapped environment.

    Real estate management companies can do to the same thing for enormous square footage of basically identical industrial flat roofs, and already are.

  17. Re:What could go wrong on France To Pave 1000km of Road With Solar Panels (solarcrunch.org) · · Score: 1

    Maybe in the US it does, but here it definitely does not. Possibly because we use an earth leakage system with three cables for AC. Earth leakage is much safer - almost all electrocutions have the ground as the return part of the circuit so an earth leakage system means those are virtually impossible. The US I understand uses fuse boxes but we use circuit-breakers and earth leakage. On the other hand, our home power is twice the voltage of US systems so that is probably what justifies using more expensive safety systems - the risk when you get shocked is much higher at 220V.

    The US has used circuit breakers for decades. You may be thinking of "earth leakage circuit breakers" (ELCB) but those are pretty obsolete at this point. Current US code requires ground fault circuit interrupters (GFCI) extensively, which are equivalent to the residual current devices (RCD) which replaced ELCBs and have been required for quite some time in most countries, regardless of how the circuits are wired. (And arc fault circuit interrupters (AFCI) are increasingly required in habitable locations.)

    None of that has anything to do with power distribution. In the US (and most places) AC is typically distributed multi-wire. Single wire is used in very isolated areas (especially, e.g., Australia). Single wire in the context of this thread refers to distribution, not household service. (Pretty much every place in the world now uses a hot/neutral/ground scheme for lighting service, with additional phases possibly utilized for high-power applications.) The economics of AC vs DC for long distance transmission have more to do with power loss and equipment costs than number of conductors.

  18. Re:Why not a roof? on France To Pave 1000km of Road With Solar Panels (solarcrunch.org) · · Score: 1

    Wouldn't it be more effective to build a "solar roof" over the highway, shading motorists during the hottest parts of the day, angling the panels to maximize insolation at the latitude, and for f's sake: not having to make them sturdy enough and grippy enough to safely drive trucks on them?

    And wouldn't it be even more effective to build solar panels on all of the "roofs" that already exist, before building new roofs just for solar panels? There are a whole heck of a lot of really big buildings with flat roofs around the world, only a small fraction of which have panels at this point. Pick the low hanging fruit before trying the kool-aid.

  19. Oh, my, it's not even routing. The script just tries a speedtest service without concern for whatever else might be competing with the Pi for transfer.

    The usefulness and appropriateness of complaining like this can be debated, but when he connects to a big torrent and his Pi starts complaining that Comcast is being slow - well, that's just an asshole move.

    Yeah, it seems pretty pointless/lame. Using a speed test at all for this is kinda sketchy. A better implementation would watch for signs of network congestion (retransmits, etc) and look at the bandwidth consumption at that time, preferably checking that there are multiple congested destinations. (To try to avoid blaming the ISP for a problem on the remote side.)

  20. Re:Yeah, automated tweeting to PR mouthpiece... on How the Raspberry Pi Can Automatically Tweet Complaints About Your Slow Internet (ibtimes.co.uk) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yes, and there are better tools for the job. If you're doing something network intensive, the beaglebone black has capabilities similar to the pi, but an ethernet interface that doesn't go through USB and which can max out 100Mbps for about the same price as the pi. (It's also more open, but the pi is better for graphics-intensive applications. Pick the right tool for the job.)

  21. Re:Familiarity with IPv4 is hindering adoption on IPv6 Turns 20, Reaches 10 Percent Deployment (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Yup. Why there are people who think that all of the sudden the magic box their ISP gives them won't default deny in an IPv6 world continues to mystify me.

  22. Dryers have to be 30A. If you have some kind of older circuit with a higher rating, it should be downrated (with a lower breaker). I think the biggest reason the cord isn't included is so that the warehouse store can charge an extra $20.

  23. Re:Why should? on Why Self-Driving Cars Should Never Be Fully Autonomous (roboticstrends.com) · · Score: 1

    well, hopefully we'll get to a point where the idiot who didn't stop will pay for the treatment and never be allowed to drive a car again

  24. Re:Why should? on Why Self-Driving Cars Should Never Be Fully Autonomous (roboticstrends.com) · · Score: 1

    usually not until after they've killed someone

  25. Re:Why should? on Why Self-Driving Cars Should Never Be Fully Autonomous (roboticstrends.com) · · Score: 1

    if everyone on the road stopped when they didn't know wtf they were doing, we'd have a lot fewer dead people. the real problem is that people are asshats, so they speed up and drive worse when they're confused or upset. it may not be as emotionally satisfying to stop and think, but it's actually the most sensible thing to do.