I've only ever owned manual transmission cars. I've always liked the ability to feather the engine or disconnect it from the wheels entirely. Even today, the clutch and manual transmission are almost always mechanical assemblies, not fly-by-wire. When Toyota was having all those issues with unintended acceleration, I'll admit that I felt smug, knowing that I had the ability to disconnect the engine, coupled with decades of experience that makes depressing the clutch instinctual.
For various reasons, my next car is likely to be a plug-in hybrid or pure electric. I'm going to miss that capability.
A foreign language has been creeping into many of the presentations I hear and the memos I read. It adds nothing to a message but noise, and I want your help in stamping it out. It's called gobbledygook. There's no shortage of examples. Nothing seems to get finished anymore it gets "finalized." Things don't happen at the same time but "coincident with this action." Believe it or not, people will talk about taking a "commitment position" and then because of the "volatility of schedule changes" they will "decommit" so that our "posture vis-à-vis some data base that needs a sizing will be able to enhance competitive positions." That's gobbledygook. (February 19, 1970)
Beacon Powertried to commercialize that concept 5-10 years ago. Their flywheels were cylinders of spun carbon fiber, in vacuum chambers, and levitated on magnetic bearings. These were sunk into concrete silos - in case any one of them flew apart. The technology was used not so much for bulk storage, but rather for peak-shaving and arbitrage.
The company went bankrupt a couple of years ago after building their first 20 MW storage plant. They're now owned by a private equity firm and making another go of it, so there's hope yet.
Actually, storing cold is an entirely viable strategy. Back in the 1800s, ice would be harvested from frozen ponds in New England, then packed in sawdust and stored in warehouses. That ice was later shipped to many place - the Carribean, the American West, even to India. Keeping ice cold and frozen is just a matter of proper insulation.
More recently, there are plenty of sizeable buildings that use ice storage as part of their HVAC system. During the night, when ambient temperatures are colder, building loads are minimized, and electricity is cheap, power is used to create tons of ice. The ice is then used to cool the building the following day.
It wasn't like DEKA and Johnson & Johnson were making a killing on the original iBot. The market price (north of $20k in 2005) reflected the fact that, compared to other powered wheelchairs, it was really expensive to develop and build. J&J lost tens of millions on the iBot program.
Another difficulty the original iBot faced was that, although it provided exceptional mobility and independence for its users, Medicare reimbursed it at the same rate as any other powered wheelchair - $5-10k, depending on configuration and options. In other words, the added features did not receive added reimbursement. So anyone who wanted one faced significant out-of-pocket expenses. To use a car analogy: let's say there was a government program that would purchase a $15k Honda Civic for everyone that needed to commute to work. Lots of people live at the end of dirt roads, for which a $25k 4x4 pickup would be necessary. The government wouldn't buy the pickup at that price, despite its utility, figuring that a Civic is good enough for everyone.
I wonder how much the original FDA certification added to the cost of an iBot
A lot - you can be sure. It was a device with no predicate, and provided ample opportunity to injure or kill the person using it. Satisfying the FDA that it was safe under all conditions (even to the point of having dual-everything, for fail-operative redundancy) probably took years.
This brings back into my mind the photo-stitching work done by the Chudnovsky brothers about 15 years ago. Photo-stitching large mosaics has been around for a long time, but the work by these two mathematicians on the Unicorn Hunt tapestries rises to a much higher level.
The tapestries has been hanging for a very long time. During a restoration they were taken down, soaked clean, and photographed on both sides. (The back side, being against the wall and with a fabric backing on it, had much more vivid color.) But the resulting images were completely un-stitchable by conventional techniques - nothing lined up! The tapestry, being a textile, had relaxed and subtly distorted by being laid horizontal and cleaned. The tapestry was not a static image, but rather a dynamic, breathing object. The Chudnovskys applied serious math and computing power to subtly distort each image in the mosaic, cross-referencing the front and back sides, in order to get the threads to line up.
This Google camera, I'm sure, has very sophisticated stitching algorithms. But in the end, it is probably assuming that it is capturing images of a static object. I wonder how it would handle a similar challenge.
The contrast that I find most interesting is to look at the Death Star attack briefings from EpIV, then look at VI. It's the same rebels, same epoch, and yet the holographic display Ackbar references looks awesome compared to the crude dot matrix and vector graphics seen on Yavin. It's a substantial change in the Star Wars universe brought about by technological advances here on our own world.
One can also look at the appearance of technology in the original Star Trek and compare it to The Next Generation. Sure, they take place about 100 years apart, but the appearance of technology in the ToS is a reflection of what was available to the producers of that show in the 1960s, not necessarily what they realistically thought would be available in the 23rd century. Even more interesting is to look at the appearance of technology in the JJ Abrams reboots, and contrast that to ToS. If you can see past the lens flare, that is.
Does the lower density of NH3 mean it will disperse faster? Are you a whole lot worse off after being nearly killed by NH3 than after being nearly killed by CO2
With death by CO2, it'll probably be fairly unpleasant, because your body's breathing regulation is governed largely by the concentration of CO2 in the blood. If there is too much CO2 in the ambient air, the CO2 in your blood can't be expelled through the lungs, and eventually you'll become acidotic and die. If you are lucky, you'll lose consciousness first. If you are unlucky, you'll have a period of time where you'll feel like drowning.
With death by ammonia, you'll still be able to expel CO2 from your blood just fine, so you'll probably avoid the drowning sensation, but the ammonia in the air will be absorbed into any wet surface it comes into contact with: eyes, nose, mouth, throat, and especially lungs. This will drastically increase the pH of these surfaces, like bleach or ammonia-based cleaners. It will burn and be terribly painful. Oh, and you'll die.
The one saving grace is that ammonia smells quite distinctively, and at levels well below serious risk, so you'll at least know that there's a problem. CO2 is odorless, so you may not know that you are having a problem until your vision starts to cloud and your chest gets tight.
If I had to choose, I'd prefer death by nitrogen. (I used to work around equipment cooled by large dewars of liquid nitrogen, and had to go through all manner of safety courses.) Since it makes up so much of the atmosphere, you're body doesn't even notice it. Your breathing will be just fine, but the lack of oxygen will cause you to relatively quickly lose consciousness and die. Other than some mild shortness of breath and a mild panic as you black out, your body probably won't feel a thing.
This is simply a heat pump, which as you say must be powered by the local electrical source which, in Alaska, is often fossil.
However, these new-fangled transcritical CO2 heat pumps tend to have a higher coefficient of performance than older ones based on ammonia or other HCFC-based working fluids. So, while you still need to supply (fossil fuel-based electrical) energy to get the thing to run, you need less of it with this machine. So, I call that progress and won't harangue them for an attention-grabbing, modestly misleading headline. The information in the article is correct.
A "dirty bomb" only spreads radioactive material in the area where it explodes. So it is easier to just rely upon shrapnel and the explosion. Any radioactive material they could get probably wouldn't do more damage than that. Most of it just isn't that damaging. Except in large quantities over many years.
The article is unclear what material they were seeking, specifically. It hints at radioisotopes that are used in medical diagnostics. These are unsuitable for use in a dirty bomb, because they tend to be short-lived isotopes with half-lives measures in hours. In other words, any radioactivity would dissipate to below background levels in the space of a few days at most.
On the other hand, it could have been that they were after colbalt-60, which is used in some radiation therapies or for gamma-sterilization of equipment and food. That shit's nasty, and could definitely make an area uninhabitable for decades.
Of course, without further information, it is difficult to know the magnitude or credibility of the threat. Typical for journalism when dealing with terrorism and/or radiation - plenty of hype, but little genuine information, context, or proper appraisal of the risk.
What happened to been efficient?? That just adds complexity.
Meh, one could argue that doing all those calculations to encrypt something in the first place adds complexity and is a detriment to efficiency. It comes down to what's acceptable at a system level.
If you want people to do something, make it profitable for them to do so and that's the end of it. No need to beg, lecture, etc.
Inversely, and a necessary component of any environmental policy, is this: if you want people to not do something, make it expensive for them to do it. Then the mash-up converse policy: if you want people to do something, make it too expensive for them not to do it.
One potential countermeasure is to have the phone and receiver send back and forth lots of additional, random, and irrelevant chatter across the channel. This decreases the signal-to-noise ratio, and makes it harder for the potential attacker to figure out what the real key in all that communication and what is chaff.
They have wrung concession after concession out of the rest of the world. If Kim negotiated calmly, no one would cave in to his demands. But by issuing threats, and using bizarre behavior, he has been able to get his opponents to accept any deal this is even halfway sane.
That statement becomes amusing, in a grim sort of way, if you realize that the same could be said of Donald Trump.
The real deterrent they have is the massed conventional artillery pointed at Seuol.
I disagree. North Korea's real deterrent is their hungry and oppressed population of 25 million. The crazies-that-be in North Korea know that China will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid having to deal with the chaos that will ensue if and when the N.K. government collapses (or is overthrown). N.K. would have essentially no trade, and a whole lot more famine, without China. China could probably put a stop to N.K.'s nuclear and rocket program if it chose to, but doing so would probably also result in hordes of Koreans ditching their basketcase country and overrunning the boarder...into China.
What confuses me, though, is why China doesn't just bite the bullet and allow that to happen. For a country of over 1.3 billion people, which builds brand new multi-million-person cities on a routine basis, cleaning up the mess of a collapsed North Korea wouldn't be unmanageable.
It's a curious thing, but the U.S. Constitution is rather vague about a "right to privacy." There is no explicit right to privacy to be found anywhere in the Constitution or amendments. However, there's a long judicial history of interpretations and precedents that, in aggregate, creates something like a right to privacy. But, again, it is an implied right, not an explicit right, which is partly why we found ourselves in the present situation. A fun way to get a bunch of first-year law students in a twist is to propose a privacy amendment for the Constitution, then have them argue about what it actually means.
Would it make much difference? Could the things that Snowden revealed have taken place if an explicit privacy amendment had existed? (Many here would argue that the 4th amendment ought to have prevented it, so what good would another amendment do?) Would the FBI have much of an argument against Apple if such an amendment existed? Could Google do what it does and not run afoul of violating citizens' privacy rights, a la the "right to be forgotten" rulings in Europe? Could Roe v. Wade, which hinged heavily on an implied right to privacy, ever be overturned?
I am guessing you are making a joke. However, if keeping the roads clear of snow were a major priority in road construction, then I would advocate using waste steam from the electrical plants that are used to produce the electricity for the (plugged in) vehicles. This energy is usually wasted through a cooling tower. However, it is still useful as process heat for various purposes, like snow melting, and making some use of it increases the overall (chemical or nuclear potential energy input to electrical output) efficiency of generator plants.
You may well be right - but I think the idea is to be able to charge while you drive. Even if it is wildly inefficient and almost certainly can't give you continuous driving (at least no time soon) - it could likely extend the range of an electric vehicle by a good 30% or so, which many people would value. The cost of the infrastructure will be high but since it's value is spread over so many beneficiaries it's cost-per-user is actually quite low.
"Wildly inefficient" is the key thing. Stationary charging (e.g., cellphones) is, if you believe manufacturer's claims, up to 85% efficient. In my experience (I integrated Qi charging into a product that required no cable ports), it is more like 50-80% efficient. That much waste isn't a big deal if you are charging a phone at 5-10 W. Some things will get warm, but not too bad. It's another thing entirely when you are talking about charging an electric vehicle at 10's of kW. Even a 90% efficient inductive charger will be wasting several kW of power - comparable to an electric stovetop. (I'll note that, as far as I know, no one has demonstrated charging a vehicle in motion at anything close to 90% efficiency - so even this is a stretch.)
This would be a huge step backwards, if the goal of adopting electric vehicles is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Depending on whose numbers you use and how the electricity is generated, a battery electric vehicle is, emissions-wise, comparable to or a bit better than a decent gas-electric hybrid. If suddenly you slap a 50% efficiency "tax" on charging an electric vehicle, we'll not be making any progress towards reducing overall emissions.
Slashdot Mirror
I've only ever owned manual transmission cars. I've always liked the ability to feather the engine or disconnect it from the wheels entirely. Even today, the clutch and manual transmission are almost always mechanical assemblies, not fly-by-wire. When Toyota was having all those issues with unintended acceleration, I'll admit that I felt smug, knowing that I had the ability to disconnect the engine, coupled with decades of experience that makes depressing the clutch instinctual.
For various reasons, my next car is likely to be a plug-in hybrid or pure electric. I'm going to miss that capability.
A foreign language has been creeping into many of the presentations I hear and the memos I read. It adds nothing to a message but noise, and I want your help in stamping it out. It's called gobbledygook. There's no shortage of examples. Nothing seems to get finished anymore it gets "finalized." Things don't happen at the same time but "coincident with this action." Believe it or not, people will talk about taking a "commitment position" and then because of the "volatility of schedule changes" they will "decommit" so that our "posture vis-à-vis some data base that needs a sizing will be able to enhance competitive positions." That's gobbledygook. (February 19, 1970)
Also on topic: the turbo encabulator.
This is not a new phenomenon, unfortunately.
Beacon Power tried to commercialize that concept 5-10 years ago. Their flywheels were cylinders of spun carbon fiber, in vacuum chambers, and levitated on magnetic bearings. These were sunk into concrete silos - in case any one of them flew apart. The technology was used not so much for bulk storage, but rather for peak-shaving and arbitrage.
The company went bankrupt a couple of years ago after building their first 20 MW storage plant. They're now owned by a private equity firm and making another go of it, so there's hope yet.
Actually, storing cold is an entirely viable strategy. Back in the 1800s, ice would be harvested from frozen ponds in New England, then packed in sawdust and stored in warehouses. That ice was later shipped to many place - the Carribean, the American West, even to India. Keeping ice cold and frozen is just a matter of proper insulation.
More recently, there are plenty of sizeable buildings that use ice storage as part of their HVAC system. During the night, when ambient temperatures are colder, building loads are minimized, and electricity is cheap, power is used to create tons of ice. The ice is then used to cool the building the following day.
It took some digging, but there was a video released as part of the announcement.
Not rick-rolling - it actually does have Dean Kamen sitting in the new chair.
It wasn't like DEKA and Johnson & Johnson were making a killing on the original iBot. The market price (north of $20k in 2005) reflected the fact that, compared to other powered wheelchairs, it was really expensive to develop and build. J&J lost tens of millions on the iBot program.
Another difficulty the original iBot faced was that, although it provided exceptional mobility and independence for its users, Medicare reimbursed it at the same rate as any other powered wheelchair - $5-10k, depending on configuration and options. In other words, the added features did not receive added reimbursement. So anyone who wanted one faced significant out-of-pocket expenses. To use a car analogy: let's say there was a government program that would purchase a $15k Honda Civic for everyone that needed to commute to work. Lots of people live at the end of dirt roads, for which a $25k 4x4 pickup would be necessary. The government wouldn't buy the pickup at that price, despite its utility, figuring that a Civic is good enough for everyone.
A lot - you can be sure. It was a device with no predicate, and provided ample opportunity to injure or kill the person using it. Satisfying the FDA that it was safe under all conditions (even to the point of having dual-everything, for fail-operative redundancy) probably took years.
This brings back into my mind the photo-stitching work done by the Chudnovsky brothers about 15 years ago. Photo-stitching large mosaics has been around for a long time, but the work by these two mathematicians on the Unicorn Hunt tapestries rises to a much higher level.
The tapestries has been hanging for a very long time. During a restoration they were taken down, soaked clean, and photographed on both sides. (The back side, being against the wall and with a fabric backing on it, had much more vivid color.) But the resulting images were completely un-stitchable by conventional techniques - nothing lined up! The tapestry, being a textile, had relaxed and subtly distorted by being laid horizontal and cleaned. The tapestry was not a static image, but rather a dynamic, breathing object. The Chudnovskys applied serious math and computing power to subtly distort each image in the mosaic, cross-referencing the front and back sides, in order to get the threads to line up.
TL;DR. See this article for more details.
This Google camera, I'm sure, has very sophisticated stitching algorithms. But in the end, it is probably assuming that it is capturing images of a static object. I wonder how it would handle a similar challenge.
This just in: electric cars still have wheels; still use brakes! Film at 11!
The contrast that I find most interesting is to look at the Death Star attack briefings from EpIV, then look at VI. It's the same rebels, same epoch, and yet the holographic display Ackbar references looks awesome compared to the crude dot matrix and vector graphics seen on Yavin. It's a substantial change in the Star Wars universe brought about by technological advances here on our own world.
One can also look at the appearance of technology in the original Star Trek and compare it to The Next Generation. Sure, they take place about 100 years apart, but the appearance of technology in the ToS is a reflection of what was available to the producers of that show in the 1960s, not necessarily what they realistically thought would be available in the 23rd century. Even more interesting is to look at the appearance of technology in the JJ Abrams reboots, and contrast that to ToS. If you can see past the lens flare, that is.
pop culture reference
Damn submission without proper previewing!
We could get Insane Clown Posse on it.
With death by CO2, it'll probably be fairly unpleasant, because your body's breathing regulation is governed largely by the concentration of CO2 in the blood. If there is too much CO2 in the ambient air, the CO2 in your blood can't be expelled through the lungs, and eventually you'll become acidotic and die. If you are lucky, you'll lose consciousness first. If you are unlucky, you'll have a period of time where you'll feel like drowning.
With death by ammonia, you'll still be able to expel CO2 from your blood just fine, so you'll probably avoid the drowning sensation, but the ammonia in the air will be absorbed into any wet surface it comes into contact with: eyes, nose, mouth, throat, and especially lungs. This will drastically increase the pH of these surfaces, like bleach or ammonia-based cleaners. It will burn and be terribly painful. Oh, and you'll die.
The one saving grace is that ammonia smells quite distinctively, and at levels well below serious risk, so you'll at least know that there's a problem. CO2 is odorless, so you may not know that you are having a problem until your vision starts to cloud and your chest gets tight.
If I had to choose, I'd prefer death by nitrogen. (I used to work around equipment cooled by large dewars of liquid nitrogen, and had to go through all manner of safety courses.) Since it makes up so much of the atmosphere, you're body doesn't even notice it. Your breathing will be just fine, but the lack of oxygen will cause you to relatively quickly lose consciousness and die. Other than some mild shortness of breath and a mild panic as you black out, your body probably won't feel a thing.
However, these new-fangled transcritical CO2 heat pumps tend to have a higher coefficient of performance than older ones based on ammonia or other HCFC-based working fluids. So, while you still need to supply (fossil fuel-based electrical) energy to get the thing to run, you need less of it with this machine. So, I call that progress and won't harangue them for an attention-grabbing, modestly misleading headline. The information in the article is correct.
The article is unclear what material they were seeking, specifically. It hints at radioisotopes that are used in medical diagnostics. These are unsuitable for use in a dirty bomb, because they tend to be short-lived isotopes with half-lives measures in hours. In other words, any radioactivity would dissipate to below background levels in the space of a few days at most.
On the other hand, it could have been that they were after colbalt-60, which is used in some radiation therapies or for gamma-sterilization of equipment and food. That shit's nasty, and could definitely make an area uninhabitable for decades.
Of course, without further information, it is difficult to know the magnitude or credibility of the threat. Typical for journalism when dealing with terrorism and/or radiation - plenty of hype, but little genuine information, context, or proper appraisal of the risk.
Meh, one could argue that doing all those calculations to encrypt something in the first place adds complexity and is a detriment to efficiency. It comes down to what's acceptable at a system level.
Inversely, and a necessary component of any environmental policy, is this: if you want people to not do something, make it expensive for them to do it. Then the mash-up converse policy: if you want people to do something, make it too expensive for them not to do it.
One potential countermeasure is to have the phone and receiver send back and forth lots of additional, random, and irrelevant chatter across the channel. This decreases the signal-to-noise ratio, and makes it harder for the potential attacker to figure out what the real key in all that communication and what is chaff.
That statement becomes amusing, in a grim sort of way, if you realize that the same could be said of Donald Trump.
I disagree. North Korea's real deterrent is their hungry and oppressed population of 25 million. The crazies-that-be in North Korea know that China will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid having to deal with the chaos that will ensue if and when the N.K. government collapses (or is overthrown). N.K. would have essentially no trade, and a whole lot more famine, without China. China could probably put a stop to N.K.'s nuclear and rocket program if it chose to, but doing so would probably also result in hordes of Koreans ditching their basketcase country and overrunning the boarder...into China.
What confuses me, though, is why China doesn't just bite the bullet and allow that to happen. For a country of over 1.3 billion people, which builds brand new multi-million-person cities on a routine basis, cleaning up the mess of a collapsed North Korea wouldn't be unmanageable.
It's a curious thing, but the U.S. Constitution is rather vague about a "right to privacy." There is no explicit right to privacy to be found anywhere in the Constitution or amendments. However, there's a long judicial history of interpretations and precedents that, in aggregate, creates something like a right to privacy. But, again, it is an implied right, not an explicit right, which is partly why we found ourselves in the present situation. A fun way to get a bunch of first-year law students in a twist is to propose a privacy amendment for the Constitution, then have them argue about what it actually means.
Would it make much difference? Could the things that Snowden revealed have taken place if an explicit privacy amendment had existed? (Many here would argue that the 4th amendment ought to have prevented it, so what good would another amendment do?) Would the FBI have much of an argument against Apple if such an amendment existed? Could Google do what it does and not run afoul of violating citizens' privacy rights, a la the "right to be forgotten" rulings in Europe? Could Roe v. Wade, which hinged heavily on an implied right to privacy, ever be overturned?
And when they finally do decrypt it, all they'll find is a grocery list. [ref]
But these buttons would be on a touchscreen, and there'd be some sort of computer algorithm running behind the scenes. So, like, tooootally novel.
I am guessing you are making a joke. However, if keeping the roads clear of snow were a major priority in road construction, then I would advocate using waste steam from the electrical plants that are used to produce the electricity for the (plugged in) vehicles. This energy is usually wasted through a cooling tower. However, it is still useful as process heat for various purposes, like snow melting, and making some use of it increases the overall (chemical or nuclear potential energy input to electrical output) efficiency of generator plants.
Perhaps, but inductive chargers are going to be havens for vagrants and the homeless - just think of how warm and toasty they'll be!
"Wildly inefficient" is the key thing. Stationary charging (e.g., cellphones) is, if you believe manufacturer's claims, up to 85% efficient. In my experience (I integrated Qi charging into a product that required no cable ports), it is more like 50-80% efficient. That much waste isn't a big deal if you are charging a phone at 5-10 W. Some things will get warm, but not too bad. It's another thing entirely when you are talking about charging an electric vehicle at 10's of kW. Even a 90% efficient inductive charger will be wasting several kW of power - comparable to an electric stovetop. (I'll note that, as far as I know, no one has demonstrated charging a vehicle in motion at anything close to 90% efficiency - so even this is a stretch.)
This would be a huge step backwards, if the goal of adopting electric vehicles is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Depending on whose numbers you use and how the electricity is generated, a battery electric vehicle is, emissions-wise, comparable to or a bit better than a decent gas-electric hybrid. If suddenly you slap a 50% efficiency "tax" on charging an electric vehicle, we'll not be making any progress towards reducing overall emissions.