The EPA lists the Nissan Leaf at 30 kWh per 100 miles. This is energy stored in the battery. Getting the energy into the battery involves a charging efficiency of about 80% (i.e. only 80% of the electricity coming out the wall socket makes it into the battery, the other 20% becomes waste heat).
First, your charging efficiency of 80% is too low. 90% is a better estimate. More importantly for your calculations though, the EPA fuel economy estimates already include the charging losses: "The recharge energy includes any losses due to inefficiencies of the manufacturer’s charger." (Source)
This means that you need to remove the first step of your efficiency calculation.
Furthermore, Momentum Dynamics claim that their losses are lower than with a wired charger (only 4% compared to 7%). If that were true, the consumption figure should be less than the 30 kWh per 100 miles.
Perhaps you want to look on a map of germany. The "open pits" are not in densely populated areas.
I'm sorry to say this but what are you smoking? Hambach is 15 km West of the city limits of Cologne (the fourth largest city in Germany). The other open pit mines in the Rhineland are also close to densely populated areas. This is a bit less the case in Eastern Germany.
Electric heating, especially if electricity comes from CO2 producing power plants, make [no] sense at all.
I presume you are not familiar with heat pumps? In many cases, they are much more efficient than burning gas for heating even if fossil fuels are used to produce the electricity.
Of course there is a difference. It depends on the molecules the energy comes from. Some molecules contain more carbon atoms per J of energy stored, so will produce more CO2. Some specific CO2 emissions I googled (in kg CO2 per GJ):
Lignite: 100 to 115 Bituminous coal: 95 Diesel: 74 Petrol: 69 Natural gas (mostly Methane): 56
As you can see, it is much better to burn natural gas than coal or lignite if you want to minimise CO2 emissions per kWh electricity produced.
Both are still way more than we will need in the foreseeable future. And as I said, due to the negative correlations between the two, it makes sense to utilise them both as storage is very expensive. Regarding your earlier comment on higher maintenance costs for wind - this is probably correct, but on average at current costs, wind power is significantly less costly than solar power.
You are not wrong, but the available wind power is still plenty. Relying on solar only has the big problem that power production in winter is very low once you get to latitudes >30-40 (of course there is no clear cut-off). This means that you either need massive amounts of capacity so that enough is produced even in winter, or even more massive seasonal storage, for which there are ideas (power-to-gas) but they are nowhere near ready for large-scale use (and it is not clear they will ever be).
Agree with you on geothermal, but wind is actually a very good source. The most important property of wind is that its availability tends to be negatively correlated with solar irradiation. This means that by combining wind and photo-voltaic power generation, you will get a much more reliable source of power, and the requirements for storage will go down massively. In my opinion, storage is really the main issue, so one should try to increase the size of the electricity networks as much as possible - this way at most times there will be generation of power by wind and solar in some places at least.
I don't understand the outcry about the lack of a headphone jack. You just leave the small adapter on your old headphones. For new headphones, digital output should be superior anyway as you can place the DAC in the headphones, away from the electronics; and if you buy a good set of headphones, the DAC can be much better than the ones integrated in a phone with headphone jack. That leaves the problem of charging at the same time as using headphones. This can be solved with a simple adapter, which should be supported by the phone. That said, my Pixel 2 does not seem to support such chargers, which is a pain (only very occasionally, I need to charge and want to listen to music or watch a video, but when I do, the lack of an adapter is very annoying). Personally, I would prefer if they would put a USB-C socket on the top, and another one on the bottom. This would increase the flexibility for cabling, and you could easily charge and use a headset (or other USB device) at the same time.
This is not correct. First, it is only a proposal currently and has not been decided. Secondly, if the proposal were to go ahead, DST would be abolished for all EU countries. Each country could then decide which time zone it wants to be in, but no more DST allowed. I'd prefer the same time zone across all of the EU but this is unlikely to happen. At least I hope that there will be a logical distribution of time zones.
I'd like to hear Waymo's side of the story as I could imagine that the vehicle may have stopped during a right turn because it detected a hazard that was real (maybe a child running towards the road) or not real (paperbag flying towards the road). I also find the wording "the vans don't understand basic road features, such as metered red and green lights that regulate the pace of cars merging onto freeways" strange. Surely metered lights are not a basic road feature but something quite rare. I'm not saying that Waymo should not be able to handle those (surely they should!) but it does not seem to be a major failure either.
Yes, it is a problem. My wife has a work iPhone (Lightning) and a personal Android phone (still with Micro-USB as it is a bit older). I have a new Android phone with USB-C. Our car supports Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. But depending on who is driving (and in the case of my wife which phone she is using), we need to unplug the connector cable, and select the correct one to use. It's just an unnecessary PITA. Looking forward to USB-C for all phones and laptops. You can even charge a laptop with the 18 W phone charger, it just takes a lot longer.
I don't see why this is news. For example, Belgian cinema chain UGC offers an unlimited subscription for 19 Euros a month, which you can use to see as many films as you want. I think this offer existed 15 years ago already. In contrast, Moviepass is new in that it is a service that covers more than a single chain.
I think the reasoning is the zero and one can be read as O or I (or L), so words can still occur with common number->letter substitutions. But as I said, I'm not sure this is a sufficient reason to invent a completely new system.
Can you elaborate? Canadian Postal Codes seem to work the same way as postal codes in other countries. For example, if I want to specify a specific point somewhere in a large forest, there would not be a postal code for this. I don't think there would is a simple algorithm that transforms longitude and latitude to Canadian Postal Codes. In a nutshell, not at all like the open location codes.
No, Google think this would be a useful system in parts in developing countries with less formal address systems. For example, there are 1 million inhabitants in Kathmandu, but the majority of the roads have no names and there are also no street numbers. So when you send a parcel, you don't need to describe it as "past the ABC Hostel, then third street on the right; the house next to the large birch tree". I think the criteria they set are quite sensible, but many of them are indeed fulfilled by the Maidenhead Locator System already. Whether it is worth it to create a new system just for the few additional criteria (e.g. "does not spell words"), I am not sure.
Yes, and a few other location coding systems are similar as well. However, Google have their reasons for creating a new system. You can find their evaluation of the various systems explained here:
Disagree. What3Words is proprietary. Something like this needs to be open source really. And whilst w3w may have the advantage of being easily remembered, you cannot tell whether two addresses are close-by. I also don't think it works well across languages as every location has a different name in different languages - the words are not translated but completely different words are used in different languages.
No, an expired certificate does not mean your code no longer runs as long as the certificate contains a signed timestamp from a third party that shows that the certificate was valid at the time of the signing of the code. For some reason, the current runtime does not have such a signed timestamp.
Slashdot Mirror
The EPA lists the Nissan Leaf at 30 kWh per 100 miles. This is energy stored in the battery. Getting the energy into the battery involves a charging efficiency of about 80% (i.e. only 80% of the electricity coming out the wall socket makes it into the battery, the other 20% becomes waste heat).
First, your charging efficiency of 80% is too low. 90% is a better estimate. More importantly for your calculations though, the EPA fuel economy estimates already include the charging losses: "The recharge energy includes any losses due to inefficiencies of the manufacturer’s charger." (Source)
This means that you need to remove the first step of your efficiency calculation.
Furthermore, Momentum Dynamics claim that their losses are lower than with a wired charger (only 4% compared to 7%). If that were true, the consumption figure should be less than the 30 kWh per 100 miles.
Perhaps you want to look on a map of germany. The "open pits" are not in densely populated areas.
I'm sorry to say this but what are you smoking? Hambach is 15 km West of the city limits of Cologne (the fourth largest city in Germany). The other open pit mines in the Rhineland are also close to densely populated areas. This is a bit less the case in Eastern Germany.
Electric heating, especially if electricity comes from CO2 producing power plants, make [no] sense at all.
I presume you are not familiar with heat pumps? In many cases, they are much more efficient than burning gas for heating even if fossil fuels are used to produce the electricity.
Of course there is a difference. It depends on the molecules the energy comes from. Some molecules contain more carbon atoms per J of energy stored, so will produce more CO2. Some specific CO2 emissions I googled (in kg CO2 per GJ):
Lignite: 100 to 115
Bituminous coal: 95
Diesel: 74
Petrol: 69
Natural gas (mostly Methane): 56
As you can see, it is much better to burn natural gas than coal or lignite if you want to minimise CO2 emissions per kWh electricity produced.
Both are still way more than we will need in the foreseeable future. And as I said, due to the negative correlations between the two, it makes sense to utilise them both as storage is very expensive. Regarding your earlier comment on higher maintenance costs for wind - this is probably correct, but on average at current costs, wind power is significantly less costly than solar power.
You are not wrong, but the available wind power is still plenty. Relying on solar only has the big problem that power production in winter is very low once you get to latitudes >30-40 (of course there is no clear cut-off). This means that you either need massive amounts of capacity so that enough is produced even in winter, or even more massive seasonal storage, for which there are ideas (power-to-gas) but they are nowhere near ready for large-scale use (and it is not clear they will ever be).
Agree with you on geothermal, but wind is actually a very good source. The most important property of wind is that its availability tends to be negatively correlated with solar irradiation. This means that by combining wind and photo-voltaic power generation, you will get a much more reliable source of power, and the requirements for storage will go down massively. In my opinion, storage is really the main issue, so one should try to increase the size of the electricity networks as much as possible - this way at most times there will be generation of power by wind and solar in some places at least.
All traffic between browser and Google is encrypted. I don't see a real security risk here.
I don't understand the outcry about the lack of a headphone jack. You just leave the small adapter on your old headphones. For new headphones, digital output should be superior anyway as you can place the DAC in the headphones, away from the electronics; and if you buy a good set of headphones, the DAC can be much better than the ones integrated in a phone with headphone jack. That leaves the problem of charging at the same time as using headphones. This can be solved with a simple adapter, which should be supported by the phone. That said, my Pixel 2 does not seem to support such chargers, which is a pain (only very occasionally, I need to charge and want to listen to music or watch a video, but when I do, the lack of an adapter is very annoying). Personally, I would prefer if they would put a USB-C socket on the top, and another one on the bottom. This would increase the flexibility for cabling, and you could easily charge and use a headset (or other USB device) at the same time.
This is not correct. First, it is only a proposal currently and has not been decided. Secondly, if the proposal were to go ahead, DST would be abolished for all EU countries. Each country could then decide which time zone it wants to be in, but no more DST allowed. I'd prefer the same time zone across all of the EU but this is unlikely to happen. At least I hope that there will be a logical distribution of time zones.
Had an external law firm written the memo, it would have been privileged and Google could not even have been obliged by a court to provide it.
The paper I linked to without any "goatse guy" but just some maths.
I'm afraid the real link will disappoint you.
And a better quality video:
https://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org/blog/video/lecture-monday-september-24-2018-sir-michael-francis-atiyah/
And here is a (poor-quality) video of Atiyah's presentation:
https://twitter.com/HLForum/status/1044131411723264000
Here is the paper with the alleged proof:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=17NBICP6OcUSucrXKNWvzLmrQpfUrEKuY
I never took proper mathematics at university so cannot begin to claim to understand any of it, but maybe someone else can.
I'd like to hear Waymo's side of the story as I could imagine that the vehicle may have stopped during a right turn because it detected a hazard that was real (maybe a child running towards the road) or not real (paperbag flying towards the road). I also find the wording "the vans don't understand basic road features, such as metered red and green lights that regulate the pace of cars merging onto freeways" strange. Surely metered lights are not a basic road feature but something quite rare. I'm not saying that Waymo should not be able to handle those (surely they should!) but it does not seem to be a major failure either.
Yes, it is a problem. My wife has a work iPhone (Lightning) and a personal Android phone (still with Micro-USB as it is a bit older). I have a new Android phone with USB-C. Our car supports Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. But depending on who is driving (and in the case of my wife which phone she is using), we need to unplug the connector cable, and select the correct one to use. It's just an unnecessary PITA. Looking forward to USB-C for all phones and laptops. You can even charge a laptop with the 18 W phone charger, it just takes a lot longer.
I don't see why this is news. For example, Belgian cinema chain UGC offers an unlimited subscription for 19 Euros a month, which you can use to see as many films as you want. I think this offer existed 15 years ago already. In contrast, Moviepass is new in that it is a service that covers more than a single chain.
I think the reasoning is the zero and one can be read as O or I (or L), so words can still occur with common number->letter substitutions. But as I said, I'm not sure this is a sufficient reason to invent a completely new system.
Can you elaborate? Canadian Postal Codes seem to work the same way as postal codes in other countries. For example, if I want to specify a specific point somewhere in a large forest, there would not be a postal code for this. I don't think there would is a simple algorithm that transforms longitude and latitude to Canadian Postal Codes. In a nutshell, not at all like the open location codes.
No, Google think this would be a useful system in parts in developing countries with less formal address systems. For example, there are 1 million inhabitants in Kathmandu, but the majority of the roads have no names and there are also no street numbers. So when you send a parcel, you don't need to describe it as "past the ABC Hostel, then third street on the right; the house next to the large birch tree". I think the criteria they set are quite sensible, but many of them are indeed fulfilled by the Maidenhead Locator System already. Whether it is worth it to create a new system just for the few additional criteria (e.g. "does not spell words"), I am not sure.
Yes, and a few other location coding systems are similar as well. However, Google have their reasons for creating a new system. You can find their evaluation of the various systems explained here:
https://github.com/google/open...
Disagree. What3Words is proprietary. Something like this needs to be open source really. And whilst w3w may have the advantage of being easily remembered, you cannot tell whether two addresses are close-by. I also don't think it works well across languages as every location has a different name in different languages - the words are not translated but completely different words are used in different languages.
No, an expired certificate does not mean your code no longer runs as long as the certificate contains a signed timestamp from a third party that shows that the certificate was valid at the time of the signing of the code. For some reason, the current runtime does not have such a signed timestamp.