Nothing is 100%, but OpenDNS will make your kid work a lot harder for her porn. Happily enough, if you get tired of advertising servers loading obnoxious animated GIFs or flash animations on your box, you can hard-block those, too.
Don't forget proxy servers -- be sure to block those.
Firefox plus Web-Of-Trust is also good -- it doesn't hurt to let your daughter be warned that some of the sites she will inevitably visit are not so good.
Kids are not always so savvy about cleaning up after themselves, so a little discreet snooping will let you know how well the filtering is going.
Every router/firewall I've used, has also had a logging feature, so you can also use that to take samples of what is being looked at, and you can tweak your blocking accordingly.
But what is the difference in the cost of the cars? That's pretty much the whole point of the article. If you drive the car for 20 years and save only $12,000 (on the one hand, gasoline could get more expensive, on the other hand, $6000 saved in years 11 through 20 is worth less than $6000 saved by buying a cheaper car now).
Sounds like near Boston, we pay $.17/kwh (sum of 3 or 4 different items) and it doesn't get that hot here (at least, not to someone who spent half their life in Florida and Texas).
Exactly so. I learned to drive in a Saab 96, with an 820cc 2-stroke engine. I think it had about 45HP. It had a top speed of around 75mph. I drove it from Tampa to Houston and back again when I was 17. The car weighed about 2000 lbs, yet was relatively durable in an accident (my brother tested this, twice, once in a roll, once rear-ended by a drunk).
The 2-stroke engine was incredibly filthy, but other than that, it was a great little car. The engine was small enough that I could pull it without a hoist (strapped to a pallet, it was 185lbs, if I recall correctly).
I have a really bad track record with work and options, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
First, this requires a lawyer, if you are serious. If nothing else, 10% of shares seems like a lot (seriously, it does -- I'd put it in "too good to be true, so probably isn't" territory). But there's an obvious risk of dilution, which happens All The Time in these situations. Anytime they get money from outside (by selling stock), bang, dilution, and as a minority not-even-shareholder (because until you buy them, they are just options to buy, not even real shares) you don't get to say squat. And understand, if it's a private company, your ability to convert shares to cash are limited.
Second, it does sound like she is trying to find a buyer. Some places I've worked, had "shares-vest-on-acquisition" clauses on their option grants. (Talk to a lawyer.) This would matter, if she finds a buyer. Maybe you can get accelerated vesting if there is dilution. There are things that they "can't do" -- for instance, it's really unusual for your shares to be dilution-proof (automatically multiplying to prevent it), because how could they raise more money? Other investors would not be happy if your shares magically increased to eat into their share. But accelerated vesting is not that big a deal -- your vesting was going to happen anyway, in the same time frame that the investors are likely to get their cash out. It does not substantially change your handcuff equation, either, since if the company is looking for money, the shares are likely neither tradeable nor especially valuable. But, it's the thought that counts.
Third, non-competes? Just curious, I hate them, seriously qualified lawyer friends I've talked to say that they're generally unenforceable (and they're almost totally unenforceable if there is any California in the equation), but consideration (e.g., this agreement you might be entering into) can affect their enforceability.
The economy is whacked right now -- it's hard to imagine an acquisition going through, there's also something to be said for the stable devil that you know. On the other hand, as other posters have noted, 6 years in a job nowadays is a long time, and 11 is even more. But that might be the best choice, and you might need strategies to help you cope if the job goes sour and there are no other choices. Is there room for any other growth there? Do they give you spare time to fiddle with other interesting stuff? Do you enjoy your hobbies?
The tax paperwork consequences can be annoying, once the you buy the shares, if this is an LLC or Subchapter S (guess how I know), especially if the company is profitable, especially if it is active in multiple states. Each state may be after you for their share of your share of the company's profits. You may need an accountant -- I don't, but that's because the company I own a scrap of, is not profitable enough to matter, otherwise I might be filing in MA, NY, CO, LA, NJ, and CA.
Having experimented with analog dimming (on a sidewall-driven system, not the same thing), it only sorta-works. Their dimming range is sort of three segment linear -- two flat on and off sections at the ends (to make TTL and classic 555s happy for on/off) and a linear bit in the middle. You could do it, but it would take some fiddling. Also, at low power, things get temperature-sensitive and fiddly; the diode knee moves around a little.
"A" zener is not enough. I built a voltage shunt using a 22-volt Zener to switch on a 10W (but inadequately heat-sinked) power transistor wired as a 350 mA constant current source. I cooked the transistor -- charred some epoxy, even. Not sure if this was an intermittent fault, I hooked up a power LED as an indicator (that's the 350mA constant current source rationale), and saw it flicker on at 10 mph, get lit bright at 15, and hard on around 17-18 mph. Right now I'm using a string of power LEDs as a power dump, but it's really ugly.
According to the physicist, no. White LEDs (the ones, I buy, certainly) are based on a blue/violet/UV emitter, combined with frequency-halving phosphors. According to physicist, it's the same game as is used in fluorescent lighting, but because the basic LED emitter is not a single frequency, and is instead centered around a frequency, you get a nicer distribution when you do the halving.
I will verify this experimentally when I get home; I have diffraction gratings, I have "pure" (amber and orange-red) power LEDs available. If you're lucky, I'll get a picture.
I am still at the phucking around stage -- which is to say, as an engineer, it is mighty embarrassing to learn that you are just as vague about expressing your design goals as anyone else who asks you to build something.
The dimming would come from a BuckPuck, you can control the output current from about 0mA up to 1000mA. So PWM is possible, it's even possible to PWM between brighter/dimmer (might get you a wider apparent spectrum). Controlling the PWM, either a 555 clone, or a PIC.
My suspicion is that I only want PWM for very-dim; going from 350 to 1000mA, you get a slightly sublinear increase (which is to say, 35% on of 1000mA is dimmer than 100% on of 350mA). I normally run them at 350mA (CREE XRE, 100 lumens, dadgum bright) so they come on at low speeds, but at high speeds, I am looking for places to dump power (from a hub alternator, which seems to spit out 9 or more watts at 20mph. and which will inflict component-cooking voltages if you do not use all the power it provides). PWM would give me even better low-speed performance without annoying flicker.
I also have amber low beams -- do not aim white power LEDs at pedestrian's remaining eye.
Explain, please. I'm this close to putting a PWM dimmer on my bike light. Are you suggesting that causing epileptic seizures in oncoming traffic would be unsafe? How can we be sure if we don't test it first?:-)
"Modern", meaning "at least 30 years old".
We were using triacs in a dorm-made theater-light-board back then. And before triacs, it was big-ass variable transformers.
I cannot imagine regulating dozens of kilowatts resistively; that would be one heck of a hair-dryer.
Not so for LEDs; their peaks are substantially less sharp. I verified this both with a physicist, and with a diffraction grating. I took pictures, too.
One problem you get, is that the "highest lumen" LEDs have a spectrum similar to an arc-welder, and it's not so nice. I used some good-quality neutral-white CREE LEDs for kitchen counter lighting, and it is quite nice.
Murders are in the 30K/yr range; auto deaths are more nearly 40k/year, flu is closer to 90k, and diseases of the smoking and/or unfit are in the hundreds of thousands per year. Guns carry their own substantial risks (when compared to the murder rate) of use in suicide.
So I just don't see where you're going with this. If the police did a perfect job (compared to how well they do now -- and "perfect" = preventing murders from even occurring), they'd reduce the general risk of death only 1/3rd as much as comprehensive flu immunization. Whoopee. The risk of death from unfitness is huge and underappreciated -- if you include heart disease, stroke, and diabetes in your "dangers", a BICYCLE is 10x safer (for the operator -- this "safety" ignores the anyone the bike/car might hit) than the average car, unprotected crashes and all.
And terrorists? Feh. Total lightweights, compared to the flu virus and tobacco companies.
I'm really, really tired of "ooh-scary" logic. When in doubt, check the body count.
I can't have a personal nuke, so I don't think the English is as plain as you claim. It appears that there's a line drawn between the arms that I can and cannot have, and the location of that line seems to be the tricky part.
Correct on the advances, but sandbagging on the state of LEDs right now. The "most efficient" LEDs are all blue-ish, but slightly less "efficient" ones (here, efficiency is measured in lumens, which is a biological unit, not a physical one) are not so blue. I use 9 CREE XRE neutral-whites in my kitchen, they look great (and number 10, for the discount, is in my bike helmet spot lamp).
The power LEDs, both CREE and Luxeon, are available in a Lambertian pattern, which is not tightly focused, but can be tightly focused. My helmet has a 6-degree spot on it, it looks great. My bike is set up with two CREEs forward (one spot, one dispersed) and one plain Lambertian Luxeon red-orange to the rear (lights up everything behind me). Imagine, if you will, the delightful treatment these lights get on my bike, riding outdoors, in rain, in snow, etc.
I get all my parts (lights, lenses, current regulators) from ledsupply.com. I bought enough stuff from them this year that they sent me a Christmas card:-).
CFLs are little wonkier than that. Have a look at one through a diffraction grating, compare to an incandescent or an LED. All the light energy is loaded into about a half-dozen exact frequencies.
For example: http://dr2chase.wordpress.com/2008/05/08/spectrum-led-vs-fluorescent/
So a 250lb bicycle+cyclist traveling 15mph, damages roads at 1/40000 the rate of a 2500 lb car traveling at 30mph. I guess I am totally fine with taxing bikes at a rate proportional to road damage. Does tire pressure matter much?
Add to that, the effects of rain/ice. Roads around here (Boston) seem to age overnight when it rains hard, and there are constantly-wet places (often caused by homeowners pumping out their basements) where one-year-old roads are already falling apart.
I did not say "completed unregulated", nor did I intend it, so perhaps I did not write clearly enough. My main point is that we should be more concerned with actual numbers of dead bodies, than with the potential danger of extremely rare activities.
(Increased) Regulation cannot prevent deaths that do not occur, so there is a limit to its effectiveness. I haven't heard of EVEN ONE person being killed by a hobbyist chemist in recent years, which means that stronger regulation cannot be effective, and that the oppressed hobbyist chemists can make a plausible claim that they are overregulated -- perhaps with less regulation, the number of deaths would remain zero, yet the hobbyists could have more fun (and if the rate is not zero, it is very small. I am not counting meth labs, or home distillers, as "hobbyist chemists".)
As effective as auto regulation is, it kills 40,000 people each year. That's a large number of people, and perhaps some thoughtful additional regulation could save more lives. Even a tiny improvement in the auto death rate would dwarf a complete elimination of home-chemistry deaths. For example, it has been shown that driving with headlights on whenever the car is on, saves lives (this was shown in Scandinavia, decades ago). In some states, there is a law that requires that headlights be on whenever windshield wipers are on -- these are two different ways of ensuring that lights are on when visibility is reduced. These are two things that could not only be made into laws, they could also be made completely automatic -- no driver inconvenience at all, yet likely it would save lives -- more lives than could be saved by enhanced regulation of the hobbyist chemists.
If it we had a hundred million hobbyist chemists, we would surely need more regulation of their activities. But we don't have that many, so existing regulations appear adequate, and might even be excessive.
Hobbyist chemists are rare -- how many people do they kill every year? That's an upper bound on how many lives could be saved by stricter regulation.
Automobiles are very common, and despite all the safety standards, licensing, testing, what have you, still manage to kill 30 to 40 thousand people per year in accidents, and cause a large number of early deaths due to pollution and lack of exercise.
Most of my miles are non-highway, over 1/3 of them are on a bicycle.
Non-highway, the name of the game is to figure out if you're likely to be slowing down ahead, and if so, immediately take your foot off the gas. The only time accelerating pays off much is if you make a light that you would otherwise miss. I have not yet done the turn-the-engine-off at stop-lights experiment, but my understanding is that if you are stopped for more than a few seconds, you win. However, since my starter might not have been designed for that sort of use....
I'm little surprised to read of higher efficiency at much higher speeds, because wind resistance is a bear. To shave 10% off my bicycle commuting time, I must put out 30% more power (but for 10% less time, consuming 20% more energy). When the power is coming out of your own hide, you do notice, and don't need some silly magazine to tell you that you're working harder. The difference between 55mph and 80mph is a factor of TWO in the energy expended -- is the engine really designed to be that much more efficient at the 80mph RPMs?
Not using lead costs me roughly nothing, and I don't have to take special precautions installing electronics and working in a kitchen above and beyond gathering up stray bits of solder. The way I see it, unless I have a specific reason to worry about "tin whiskers", the old ways are not better.
"Eutectic" is a materials science word; it means (more or less, and I'm refreshing my memory from Wikipedia) a mixture (alloy) that does not separate/segregate into its original metals when it freezes; it has the lowest melting point, and passes immediately from liquid to solid phase. If, say, you have a solder that has more lead than the eutectic mix, when it freezes, it will segregate into (tiny) bits of lead and a eutectic remainder as it cools.
The advantage of a eutectic mix is that the melting point is lower, and when it is melted, it is all melted, and flows nicely. There are probably some caveats and quid-pro-quos for how it behaves in contact with other metals, which will certainly go ever-so-slightly into solution and change things.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget proxy servers -- be sure to block those.
Firefox plus Web-Of-Trust is also good -- it doesn't hurt to let your daughter be warned that some of the sites she will inevitably visit are not so good.
Kids are not always so savvy about cleaning up after themselves, so a little discreet snooping will let you know how well the filtering is going.
Every router/firewall I've used, has also had a logging feature, so you can also use that to take samples of what is being looked at, and you can tweak your blocking accordingly.
Computer in the living room is a fine idea.
But what is the difference in the cost of the cars? That's pretty much the whole point of the article. If you drive the car for 20 years and save only $12,000 (on the one hand, gasoline could get more expensive, on the other hand, $6000 saved in years 11 through 20 is worth less than $6000 saved by buying a cheaper car now).
Sounds like near Boston, we pay $.17/kwh (sum of 3 or 4 different items) and it doesn't get that hot here (at least, not to someone who spent half their life in Florida and Texas).
Exactly so. I learned to drive in a Saab 96, with an 820cc 2-stroke engine. I think it had about 45HP. It had a top speed of around 75mph. I drove it from Tampa to Houston and back again when I was 17. The car weighed about 2000 lbs, yet was relatively durable in an accident (my brother tested this, twice, once in a roll, once rear-ended by a drunk). The 2-stroke engine was incredibly filthy, but other than that, it was a great little car. The engine was small enough that I could pull it without a hoist (strapped to a pallet, it was 185lbs, if I recall correctly).
Who are the "legitimate" vendors who mail servers don't implement the protocol? It would be a public service if you could help people avoid them.
If I were the leech, I'd sue his ass. The leech fulfilled his end of the bargain, why shouldn't he get to enjoy that income stream?
But I agree, this does make me wonder about the boss. Perhaps she is desperate?
I have a really bad track record with work and options, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
First, this requires a lawyer, if you are serious. If nothing else, 10% of shares seems like a lot (seriously, it does -- I'd put it in "too good to be true, so probably isn't" territory). But there's an obvious risk of dilution, which happens All The Time in these situations. Anytime they get money from outside (by selling stock), bang, dilution, and as a minority not-even-shareholder (because until you buy them, they are just options to buy, not even real shares) you don't get to say squat. And understand, if it's a private company, your ability to convert shares to cash are limited.
Second, it does sound like she is trying to find a buyer. Some places I've worked, had "shares-vest-on-acquisition" clauses on their option grants. (Talk to a lawyer.) This would matter, if she finds a buyer. Maybe you can get accelerated vesting if there is dilution. There are things that they "can't do" -- for instance, it's really unusual for your shares to be dilution-proof (automatically multiplying to prevent it), because how could they raise more money? Other investors would not be happy if your shares magically increased to eat into their share. But accelerated vesting is not that big a deal -- your vesting was going to happen anyway, in the same time frame that the investors are likely to get their cash out. It does not substantially change your handcuff equation, either, since if the company is looking for money, the shares are likely neither tradeable nor especially valuable. But, it's the thought that counts.
Third, non-competes? Just curious, I hate them, seriously qualified lawyer friends I've talked to say that they're generally unenforceable (and they're almost totally unenforceable if there is any California in the equation), but consideration (e.g., this agreement you might be entering into) can affect their enforceability.
The economy is whacked right now -- it's hard to imagine an acquisition going through, there's also something to be said for the stable devil that you know. On the other hand, as other posters have noted, 6 years in a job nowadays is a long time, and 11 is even more. But that might be the best choice, and you might need strategies to help you cope if the job goes sour and there are no other choices. Is there room for any other growth there? Do they give you spare time to fiddle with other interesting stuff? Do you enjoy your hobbies?
The tax paperwork consequences can be annoying, once the you buy the shares, if this is an LLC or Subchapter S (guess how I know), especially if the company is profitable, especially if it is active in multiple states. Each state may be after you for their share of your share of the company's profits. You may need an accountant -- I don't, but that's because the company I own a scrap of, is not profitable enough to matter, otherwise I might be filing in MA, NY, CO, LA, NJ, and CA.
Having experimented with analog dimming (on a sidewall-driven system, not the same thing), it only sorta-works. Their dimming range is sort of three segment linear -- two flat on and off sections at the ends (to make TTL and classic 555s happy for on/off) and a linear bit in the middle. You could do it, but it would take some fiddling. Also, at low power, things get temperature-sensitive and fiddly; the diode knee moves around a little.
"A" zener is not enough. I built a voltage shunt using a 22-volt Zener to switch on a 10W (but inadequately heat-sinked) power transistor wired as a 350 mA constant current source. I cooked the transistor -- charred some epoxy, even. Not sure if this was an intermittent fault, I hooked up a power LED as an indicator (that's the 350mA constant current source rationale), and saw it flicker on at 10 mph, get lit bright at 15, and hard on around 17-18 mph. Right now I'm using a string of power LEDs as a power dump, but it's really ugly.
I will verify this experimentally when I get home; I have diffraction gratings, I have "pure" (amber and orange-red) power LEDs available. If you're lucky, I'll get a picture.
I am still at the phucking around stage -- which is to say, as an engineer, it is mighty embarrassing to learn that you are just as vague about expressing your design goals as anyone else who asks you to build something.
The dimming would come from a BuckPuck, you can control the output current from about 0mA up to 1000mA. So PWM is possible, it's even possible to PWM between brighter/dimmer (might get you a wider apparent spectrum). Controlling the PWM, either a 555 clone, or a PIC.
My suspicion is that I only want PWM for very-dim; going from 350 to 1000mA, you get a slightly sublinear increase (which is to say, 35% on of 1000mA is dimmer than 100% on of 350mA). I normally run them at 350mA (CREE XRE, 100 lumens, dadgum bright) so they come on at low speeds, but at high speeds, I am looking for places to dump power (from a hub alternator, which seems to spit out 9 or more watts at 20mph. and which will inflict component-cooking voltages if you do not use all the power it provides). PWM would give me even better low-speed performance without annoying flicker.
I also have amber low beams -- do not aim white power LEDs at pedestrian's remaining eye.
I think you have confused it with Francium.
Explain, please. I'm this close to putting a PWM dimmer on my bike light. Are you suggesting that causing epileptic seizures in oncoming traffic would be unsafe? How can we be sure if we don't test it first? :-)
"Modern", meaning "at least 30 years old". We were using triacs in a dorm-made theater-light-board back then. And before triacs, it was big-ass variable transformers. I cannot imagine regulating dozens of kilowatts resistively; that would be one heck of a hair-dryer.
Not so for LEDs; their peaks are substantially less sharp. I verified this both with a physicist, and with a diffraction grating. I took pictures, too. One problem you get, is that the "highest lumen" LEDs have a spectrum similar to an arc-welder, and it's not so nice. I used some good-quality neutral-white CREE LEDs for kitchen counter lighting, and it is quite nice.
I'm afraid I'm not following your "logic".
Murders are in the 30K/yr range; auto deaths are more nearly 40k/year, flu is closer to 90k, and diseases of the smoking and/or unfit are in the hundreds of thousands per year. Guns carry their own substantial risks (when compared to the murder rate) of use in suicide.
So I just don't see where you're going with this. If the police did a perfect job (compared to how well they do now -- and "perfect" = preventing murders from even occurring), they'd reduce the general risk of death only 1/3rd as much as comprehensive flu immunization. Whoopee. The risk of death from unfitness is huge and underappreciated -- if you include heart disease, stroke, and diabetes in your "dangers", a BICYCLE is 10x safer (for the operator -- this "safety" ignores the anyone the bike/car might hit) than the average car, unprotected crashes and all.
And terrorists? Feh. Total lightweights, compared to the flu virus and tobacco companies.
I'm really, really tired of "ooh-scary" logic. When in doubt, check the body count.
I can't have a personal nuke, so I don't think the English is as plain as you claim. It appears that there's a line drawn between the arms that I can and cannot have, and the location of that line seems to be the tricky part.
Terrorist attacks are extremely rare. Letting rare things determine policy/law is generally not such a good idea.
Or to put it another way, have you had your flu shot? Do you get 2-3 hours of aerobic exercise each week?
Correct on the advances, but sandbagging on the state of LEDs right now. The "most efficient" LEDs are all blue-ish, but slightly less "efficient" ones (here, efficiency is measured in lumens, which is a biological unit, not a physical one) are not so blue. I use 9 CREE XRE neutral-whites in my kitchen, they look great (and number 10, for the discount, is in my bike helmet spot lamp).
The power LEDs, both CREE and Luxeon, are available in a Lambertian pattern, which is not tightly focused, but can be tightly focused. My helmet has a 6-degree spot on it, it looks great. My bike is set up with two CREEs forward (one spot, one dispersed) and one plain Lambertian Luxeon red-orange to the rear (lights up everything behind me). Imagine, if you will, the delightful treatment these lights get on my bike, riding outdoors, in rain, in snow, etc.
I get all my parts (lights, lenses, current regulators) from ledsupply.com. I bought enough stuff from them this year that they sent me a Christmas card :-).
Self-promotion (and information):
Undercabinet lights: http://dr2chase.wordpress.com/2008/10/19/more-undercabinet-lights/
Bike lights: http://dr2chase.wordpress.com/2008/10/26/converging-on-a-design-for-cheap-bright-bike-lights/
Helmet (showing focus and Lambertian): http://gallery.mac.com/dr2chase/100060/IMG_0679/web.jpg
CFLs are little wonkier than that. Have a look at one through a diffraction grating, compare to an incandescent or an LED. All the light energy is loaded into about a half-dozen exact frequencies. For example: http://dr2chase.wordpress.com/2008/05/08/spectrum-led-vs-fluorescent/
So a 250lb bicycle+cyclist traveling 15mph, damages roads at 1/40000 the rate of a 2500 lb car traveling at 30mph. I guess I am totally fine with taxing bikes at a rate proportional to road damage. Does tire pressure matter much? Add to that, the effects of rain/ice. Roads around here (Boston) seem to age overnight when it rains hard, and there are constantly-wet places (often caused by homeowners pumping out their basements) where one-year-old roads are already falling apart.
I did not say "completed unregulated", nor did I intend it, so perhaps I did not write clearly enough. My main point is that we should be more concerned with actual numbers of dead bodies, than with the potential danger of extremely rare activities.
(Increased) Regulation cannot prevent deaths that do not occur, so there is a limit to its effectiveness. I haven't heard of EVEN ONE person being killed by a hobbyist chemist in recent years, which means that stronger regulation cannot be effective, and that the oppressed hobbyist chemists can make a plausible claim that they are overregulated -- perhaps with less regulation, the number of deaths would remain zero, yet the hobbyists could have more fun (and if the rate is not zero, it is very small. I am not counting meth labs, or home distillers, as "hobbyist chemists".)
As effective as auto regulation is, it kills 40,000 people each year. That's a large number of people, and perhaps some thoughtful additional regulation could save more lives. Even a tiny improvement in the auto death rate would dwarf a complete elimination of home-chemistry deaths. For example, it has been shown that driving with headlights on whenever the car is on, saves lives (this was shown in Scandinavia, decades ago). In some states, there is a law that requires that headlights be on whenever windshield wipers are on -- these are two different ways of ensuring that lights are on when visibility is reduced. These are two things that could not only be made into laws, they could also be made completely automatic -- no driver inconvenience at all, yet likely it would save lives -- more lives than could be saved by enhanced regulation of the hobbyist chemists.
If it we had a hundred million hobbyist chemists, we would surely need more regulation of their activities. But we don't have that many, so existing regulations appear adequate, and might even be excessive.
Hobbyist chemists are rare -- how many people do they kill every year? That's an upper bound on how many lives could be saved by stricter regulation. Automobiles are very common, and despite all the safety standards, licensing, testing, what have you, still manage to kill 30 to 40 thousand people per year in accidents, and cause a large number of early deaths due to pollution and lack of exercise.
Most of my miles are non-highway, over 1/3 of them are on a bicycle.
Non-highway, the name of the game is to figure out if you're likely to be slowing down ahead, and if so, immediately take your foot off the gas. The only time accelerating pays off much is if you make a light that you would otherwise miss. I have not yet done the turn-the-engine-off at stop-lights experiment, but my understanding is that if you are stopped for more than a few seconds, you win. However, since my starter might not have been designed for that sort of use....
I'm little surprised to read of higher efficiency at much higher speeds, because wind resistance is a bear. To shave 10% off my bicycle commuting time, I must put out 30% more power (but for 10% less time, consuming 20% more energy). When the power is coming out of your own hide, you do notice, and don't need some silly magazine to tell you that you're working harder. The difference between 55mph and 80mph is a factor of TWO in the energy expended -- is the engine really designed to be that much more efficient at the 80mph RPMs?
Not using lead costs me roughly nothing, and I don't have to take special precautions installing electronics and working in a kitchen above and beyond gathering up stray bits of solder. The way I see it, unless I have a specific reason to worry about "tin whiskers", the old ways are not better.
I do miss the smell of rosin flux :-)
"Eutectic" is a materials science word; it means (more or less, and I'm refreshing my memory from Wikipedia) a mixture (alloy) that does not separate/segregate into its original metals when it freezes; it has the lowest melting point, and passes immediately from liquid to solid phase. If, say, you have a solder that has more lead than the eutectic mix, when it freezes, it will segregate into (tiny) bits of lead and a eutectic remainder as it cools.
The advantage of a eutectic mix is that the melting point is lower, and when it is melted, it is all melted, and flows nicely. There are probably some caveats and quid-pro-quos for how it behaves in contact with other metals, which will certainly go ever-so-slightly into solution and change things.