America has overwhelming military superiority today. But what about a decade from now? China is investing heavily in AI, and doing so without the moral hand wringing occurring in the West.
We need to invest in AI, and stop wasting money on manned weapons like the F-35 and CVNs. We also need to prepare diplomatically for living in a world of military parity. China wants all the rocks in the South China Sea. Should we be willing to go to war to stop them? I don't think so.
None of these things can be said of solar. Solar has no "decommissioning cost". There is no "long term storage" of waste from solar. And solar does not rely on subsidized insurance.
The cost of solar is declining steadily. The cost of nuclear has been rising for decades.
We need more cases like these to incentivize big corps to get behind patent reform. They still feel like the current system works to their benefit, since the ability to shut down upstart competitors is more important to them than the occasional troll payout.
Those batteries degrade with charge-discharge cycle
That is true whether the batteries are in a car on in a Powerwall. Normal day-to-day cycling in the 20%-80% range does not cause much degradation.
a regressive tax when we have enough electric cars
Umm... I think you are missing something. You charge when power is cheap, and feedback to the grid at a higher price. So this is income, not tax.
distributed batteries are the kind of fancy talk people sell to uneducated laymen
Indeed. Drawing peak power from cars makes some sense since the cars will already exist, as long as the peaks are not too common, long, or deep. Otherwise the storage should be done by the power company, not end users. "Powerwalls" don't make much sense for most people.
Regular use does not cause much degradation. Just try to avoid going below 20% charge and over 80%. Also avoid parking in the hot sun, especially when the battery is nearly empty or nearly full.
My charger is programmed to stop at 80%. I only go over that when I am going on a long trip, and then I top-off for the last hour before I leave, to minimize the fully charged time.
The Powerwall costs extra money, but you will already have your car battery, so there is no additional capital cost other than an inverter.
My wife has a Tesla with a 240 mile range, and on 95% of days she uses less than 20% of the capacity. The rest could be available for energy price arbitrage.
The car starts charging at 2 am, when electricity prices are lowest. The power companies need to fill the gap from 4pm to 7pm when power use peaks, but solar is fading.
How much do they cost and how much energy can they produce?
Thermal solar is expensive, and the falling cost of PV solar is pricing it out of the market. The "storage" feature of thermal solar is mostly pointless since daytime electricity is generally worth MORE than nighttime electricity. So it is more cost effective to just feed power into the grid rather than store it.
the intuitive belief that it is better to have ten guilty men go free than to send one innocent man to prison. Effectively, we have a very strong belief that people should never be sent to prison unless they are actually guilty.
When DNA sequencing first became admissible, the Innocence Project used DNA to show that about 10% of people convicted couldn't possibly have committed the crimes. That doesn't mean the other 90% were all guilty, just that the floor on false convictions was 10%. There is little reason to believe that we are doing much better today. Plenty of innocent people go to prison, and Americans accept and tolerate that.
Upon failure to convict, the government returns the physical property, but is under no obligation to "make restitution". They can return the computers with their drives wiped, or even disassembled. The do not pay for, or repair, anything damaged in seizure or storage. Plenty of innocent people have their businesses and lives destroyed in spite of acquittals.
So where is the first amendment protection exactly?
The first amendment has never applied much to commercial speech. There are laws against false advertising, restrictions on advertising cigarettes and booze, etc.
the basic idea that you own your body,
Self ownership has never been part of American law. We have always had laws against prostitution, and have long had drug laws, laws against suicide, laws against self-harm, restrictions on informed consent, etc. The AMA is trying to ban people from sequencing their own DNA. Congress unanimously banned human cloning, even though the constitution gives them no authority to do so.
Money laundering is "bad" only if the money came from harmful sources. Otherwise it is just another tool of government oppression.
Child sex trafficking: bad
"Child sex" and "trafficking" are very frequently appended as additional charges, even when there is no plausible justification. They carry severe penalties, so can be used to coerce plea deals when the government otherwise has a weak case, and they mean extra federal dollars targeted at these crimes, even when there are no convictions. So your tax dollars are paying for malicious prosecutions.
Prostitution: not bad. Get with the times USA, It's legal elsewhere.
It is also legal in some American jurisdictions, such as some counties in Nevada. So I am surprised that "facilitating prostitution" is a federal crime. I thought the feds stayed out of prostitution enforcement.
Cheaper still for dead battery and bottom of hill?
Possibly. In China, shared-bikes are sometimes cheaper or free if you are going from an area where they have accumulated to an area where they are scarce.
It's a glorious Chinese invention that is now being copies by the west, much like paper or compass once.
99% of the shared-bikes in China are not electric. They are pedal powered.
There are some battery powered e-bikes, but I have no idea how they get charged. I have never seen one in a "dock", and have never even seen a dock for them. They are just parked randomly on the street like the pedal powered Ofo and Mobikes. Maybe someone comes in the middle of the night to charge them.
The pedal powered bikes seem way more popular, most likely because of the price. One RMB (15 cents) for 30 minutes. You use your phone to scan the QR-code sticker on the bike, and then your phone displays a four digit code that unlocks the bike. You ride it anywhere, get off, re-engage the lock, and walk away.
The bikes are everywhere. There are dozens or even hundreds on every block in Shanghai.
So how do the bike companies make money renting the bikes for so little, while dealing with theft, damage, maintenance, etc? Anwer: They don't. Both Ofo and Mobike are losing millions trying to crush each other out of the market. Once one of them goes out of business, or (more likely) they merge, the price will go up.
The big difference is not people shopping online, but the change in technology. Computers used to have hackable buses, parallel ports that were basically just pins on a TTL chip, and serial ports that were easy to bit-bang. You could go to Weirdstuff and buy some weird stuff that you could actually rig up to your Linux or DOS box and get working.
Today, I am afraid to even open the case on my Macbook. I need a microscope to see the traces on the PCB. Everything is BGA.
I still have my oscilloscope and a reflow oven, but haven't used them in a while. I am trying to get my kids interested in breadboarding some circuits for a Raspberry Pi, but it is hard to pry them away from their phones. It is a lot easier to get them interested in coding, because they can still see the point in that. But home hardware hacking is dying.
You still have to wait till they are old enough to microwave their own food.
Here is a great life hack to avoid killing your kid in a hot car: When you buckle the kid into the car seat, toss your cell phone and wallet onto the floor in front of the seat. When you reach your destination and reach into your pocket to check your Facebook status... the phone isn't there. Then you remember the kid is asleep in the backseat!
The "deep learning" currently done by AI researchers, and the type of "strong-AI" in the Terminator, really have little to do with each other. Hollywoodesque strong-AI is still science fiction, and will be for a while.
Slashdot Mirror
America has overwhelming military superiority today. But what about a decade from now? China is investing heavily in AI, and doing so without the moral hand wringing occurring in the West.
We need to invest in AI, and stop wasting money on manned weapons like the F-35 and CVNs. We also need to prepare diplomatically for living in a world of military parity. China wants all the rocks in the South China Sea. Should we be willing to go to war to stop them? I don't think so.
All the same things can be said of solar.
None of these things can be said of solar. Solar has no "decommissioning cost". There is no "long term storage" of waste from solar. And solar does not rely on subsidized insurance.
The cost of solar is declining steadily. The cost of nuclear has been rising for decades.
We need more cases like these to incentivize big corps to get behind patent reform. They still feel like the current system works to their benefit, since the ability to shut down upstart competitors is more important to them than the occasional troll payout.
Those batteries degrade with charge-discharge cycle
That is true whether the batteries are in a car on in a Powerwall. Normal day-to-day cycling in the 20%-80% range does not cause much degradation.
a regressive tax when we have enough electric cars
Umm ... I think you are missing something. You charge when power is cheap, and feedback to the grid at a higher price. So this is income, not tax.
distributed batteries are the kind of fancy talk people sell to uneducated laymen
Indeed. Drawing peak power from cars makes some sense since the cars will already exist, as long as the peaks are not too common, long, or deep. Otherwise the storage should be done by the power company, not end users. "Powerwalls" don't make much sense for most people.
Regular use does not cause much degradation. Just try to avoid going below 20% charge and over 80%. Also avoid parking in the hot sun, especially when the battery is nearly empty or nearly full.
My charger is programmed to stop at 80%. I only go over that when I am going on a long trip, and then I top-off for the last hour before I leave, to minimize the fully charged time.
Employers' parking lots with plugs are going to be a big deal in the future.
They are already common. Many lots have at least a few spaces with chargers.
Costco and Walmart also have chargers. My local mall has about a dozen parking spaces with chargers.
The Powerwall costs extra money, but you will already have your car battery, so there is no additional capital cost other than an inverter.
My wife has a Tesla with a 240 mile range, and on 95% of days she uses less than 20% of the capacity. The rest could be available for energy price arbitrage.
The car starts charging at 2 am, when electricity prices are lowest. The power companies need to fill the gap from 4pm to 7pm when power use peaks, but solar is fading.
So you're saying China is at fault for not conforming to the Kyoto protocol and Paris climate agreement?
China has 85GW of solar power installed. That is far more than any other country.
Solar power by country
That's nice. I'm sure those solar plants are in fact running well in sunny Arizona, Spain, and India. What about us here in snowy Midwestern America?
HVDC
How much do they cost and how much energy can they produce?
Thermal solar is expensive, and the falling cost of PV solar is pricing it out of the market. The "storage" feature of thermal solar is mostly pointless since daytime electricity is generally worth MORE than nighttime electricity. So it is more cost effective to just feed power into the grid rather than store it.
... but with 93-counts ...
93 counts for things that should have never been illegal in the first place.
the intuitive belief that it is better to have ten guilty men go free than to send one innocent man to prison. Effectively, we have a very strong belief that people should never be sent to prison unless they are actually guilty.
When DNA sequencing first became admissible, the Innocence Project used DNA to show that about 10% of people convicted couldn't possibly have committed the crimes. That doesn't mean the other 90% were all guilty, just that the floor on false convictions was 10%. There is little reason to believe that we are doing much better today. Plenty of innocent people go to prison, and Americans accept and tolerate that.
the government would need to make restitution
Upon failure to convict, the government returns the physical property, but is under no obligation to "make restitution". They can return the computers with their drives wiped, or even disassembled. The do not pay for, or repair, anything damaged in seizure or storage. Plenty of innocent people have their businesses and lives destroyed in spite of acquittals.
Remember when Americans used to *value* freedom? I do...
When was that?
So where is the first amendment protection exactly?
The first amendment has never applied much to commercial speech. There are laws against false advertising, restrictions on advertising cigarettes and booze, etc.
the basic idea that you own your body,
Self ownership has never been part of American law. We have always had laws against prostitution, and have long had drug laws, laws against suicide, laws against self-harm, restrictions on informed consent, etc. The AMA is trying to ban people from sequencing their own DNA. Congress unanimously banned human cloning, even though the constitution gives them no authority to do so.
Money laundering: bad
Money laundering is "bad" only if the money came from harmful sources. Otherwise it is just another tool of government oppression.
Child sex trafficking: bad
"Child sex" and "trafficking" are very frequently appended as additional charges, even when there is no plausible justification. They carry severe penalties, so can be used to coerce plea deals when the government otherwise has a weak case, and they mean extra federal dollars targeted at these crimes, even when there are no convictions. So your tax dollars are paying for malicious prosecutions.
Prostitution: not bad. Get with the times USA, It's legal elsewhere.
It is also legal in some American jurisdictions, such as some counties in Nevada. So I am surprised that "facilitating prostitution" is a federal crime. I thought the feds stayed out of prostitution enforcement.
Is Stormy Daniels on Backpage?
Cheaper rate for one with a dead battery?
Cheaper still for dead battery and bottom of hill?
Possibly. In China, shared-bikes are sometimes cheaper or free if you are going from an area where they have accumulated to an area where they are scarce.
The "Uber for" moniker is used to describe gig economy stuff where you're workers are paid piecemeal instead of in wages & benefits.
There is no "gig worker" for a bike rental. The company owns the bikes, and they are serviced by W-2 employees.
It's a glorious Chinese invention that is now being copies by the west, much like paper or compass once.
99% of the shared-bikes in China are not electric. They are pedal powered.
There are some battery powered e-bikes, but I have no idea how they get charged. I have never seen one in a "dock", and have never even seen a dock for them. They are just parked randomly on the street like the pedal powered Ofo and Mobikes. Maybe someone comes in the middle of the night to charge them.
The pedal powered bikes seem way more popular, most likely because of the price. One RMB (15 cents) for 30 minutes. You use your phone to scan the QR-code sticker on the bike, and then your phone displays a four digit code that unlocks the bike. You ride it anywhere, get off, re-engage the lock, and walk away.
The bikes are everywhere. There are dozens or even hundreds on every block in Shanghai.
So how do the bike companies make money renting the bikes for so little, while dealing with theft, damage, maintenance, etc? Anwer: They don't. Both Ofo and Mobike are losing millions trying to crush each other out of the market. Once one of them goes out of business, or (more likely) they merge, the price will go up.
Sunnyvale sucks, it's a Mexican barrio.
Sunnyvale is too expensive for many Latinos. It is mostly Asian (41%) and white (35%).
Sunnyvale demographics
The big difference is not people shopping online, but the change in technology. Computers used to have hackable buses, parallel ports that were basically just pins on a TTL chip, and serial ports that were easy to bit-bang. You could go to Weirdstuff and buy some weird stuff that you could actually rig up to your Linux or DOS box and get working.
Today, I am afraid to even open the case on my Macbook. I need a microscope to see the traces on the PCB. Everything is BGA.
I still have my oscilloscope and a reflow oven, but haven't used them in a while. I am trying to get my kids interested in breadboarding some circuits for a Raspberry Pi, but it is hard to pry them away from their phones. It is a lot easier to get them interested in coding, because they can still see the point in that. But home hardware hacking is dying.
I've never created a Facebook account but Facebook created one for me and leaked out all my personal info to the World?
If they created a profile without you giving them the data, then they didn't "leak" anything that wasn't already out there.
The problem is it's the kids who die when the parents fail.
They have the same DNA, so in the long run the result is the same.
If the parents died, then the problem would solve itself
Evolution doesn't work that way.
Now we no longer need to pay any attention to our kids when they're near a swimming pool.
Do you also think we shouldn't have seat belts, since parents don't need to drive as carefully?
I won't have to think about my kid ever again.
You still have to wait till they are old enough to microwave their own food.
Here is a great life hack to avoid killing your kid in a hot car: When you buckle the kid into the car seat, toss your cell phone and wallet onto the floor in front of the seat. When you reach your destination and reach into your pocket to check your Facebook status ... the phone isn't there. Then you remember the kid is asleep in the backseat!
The "deep learning" currently done by AI researchers, and the type of "strong-AI" in the Terminator, really have little to do with each other. Hollywoodesque strong-AI is still science fiction, and will be for a while.
Here's some good advice about what to worry about: https://xkcd.com/1968