there is a possibility of neurological and eye problems from putting something like this into the field of vision. I wonder if the FDA has looked into these issues and might consider regulations, perhaps a warning label
If, in 86 years, these nuclear plants are at risk, I think I would be more concerned about the fact that they're in operation for a length of time that is approximately 3x what they were initially supposed to be used for more so than them getting flooded.
They don't have to still be operating 86 years from now for there to still be significant risk. The decommissioning plans for a nuclear power plant extends into decades, and there are risks and vulnerabilities all during that time. The plans call for leaving the spent fuel there for years or decades after the operational lifetime of the plant. At the rate the U.S. is dealing with the problem of radioactive waste (that is, not at all), I wouldn't be surprised if some decommissioned plants still had spent fuel hanging around 86 years from now. Any nuclear facility that hasn't been decommissioned back to a green field state, and gets inundated in a flood, presents a risk that's worth looking into.
It is not as though the intervening 85 years are free from risk, either - rising sea level and a serious storm could flood a nuclear plant in the next decade. There is a risk today, and the risk will increase gradually and inexorably for decades.
The/. article links to an article in the Huffington Post
That was the first problem.
I kid, I kid. But, really, we should have skipped HuffPo and linked directly to the NOAA article. If I want data, I'll go to the source. If I want spin, snark, and misinterpretation, I'll go to the media.
That and the massive amounts of regulation that works directly against the "evil capitalist profit incentive". You picked a really bad industry. Try something with fewer regulations - pogs or Justin Bieber CDs or something.
My cousin was killed by a Justin Bieber pog, you insensitive clod!
I decided to let the road panel have a 15% PV efficiency as well as a 100% solar panel coverage (neither of which is likely to be realistic for a road tile thing, but again this is in favor of the roadway panel)
Where do you suppose the other 85% of the incoming solar radiation goes? A small fraction of it is reflected back out (solar cells are not perfect black bodies, after all), but most of it just gets absorbed and turned into heat. So, in that sense, these tiles would be largely the same as blacktop.
What is more, the tiles are grid-tied (the proposal includes trenches alongside the roadway for power distribution, telecommunications, and storm runoff), meaning that the active heating elements (which will be most needed at night when it is cold, and when the sun isn't shining) can pull from the grid. During the day and over the year, the tiles should generate surplus energy. So the calculation should really be: how much supplemental electrical energy input would you need to clear snow and ice, and compare that to the total energy collected over the course of a year. I think you'll find that the numbers are more favorable, and probably comes out a net surplus. It depends a lot on location, obviously - some places would require more heating than others, and those places probably have less insolation to boot. Then you start considering the lowered ancillary costs of reduced plow, salt, and sand usage; the reduced incidence of potholes, etc.
Only getting 100,000 miles out of one because the battery charge cycles are exhausted wouldn't be a terribly good deal unless the car cost significantly less than gasoline or diesel powered models or had something particularly special to offer for the same price.
You neglect the ongoing costs of owning each type of car. The biggest difference between is the cost of fuel: gasoline/diesel versus electricity. On a per mile basis, the fuel for EVs is much less expensive. A more appropriate way to judge between the two is the total cost of ownership for 100k miles, or 200k miles, and then determine the TCO/mile. I expect that, even with a battery replacement at 100k miles, the TCO/mile for an EV is not all that bad, and will only become more favorable in the future.
The banner at the top of the Acquisition Research page linked in the summary includes this juicy tidbit:
Creating Synergy for Informed Change
I'm not sure if they are trying to poke fun at themselves, or if they are completely serious with that statement. Pretty much any time I hear corporate buzz-word speak like "synergy", I immediately tune out, and assume the speaker is hiding their ineptitude behind a veil of gobbledegook. I suppose they will also try to tell us that government acquisition needs to "optimize", "think outside the box", "close the loop", "strategize", be "pro-active, not reactive", and "ideate". I'll get right on that, soon as I finish the coversheet for the latest TPS report.
I spent a few months living in Arizona some years back. I lived in an apartment complex where most of the space between the buildings was the carpark. The most coveted spaces were the ones that had a sort of awning or overhang, so that the car was out of direct sunlight. It made a huge difference in how hot the car got.
As an engineer, seeing this vast swath of paved-over space (more than an acre all told), some of which was itself covered with structures specifically intended to block the sun, I thought to myself: why in the hell don't they just cover the entire carpark, and cover it with solar panels, to boot? The complex could advertise itself as having all-shaded parking (and commensurate higher rent) and reduce its net electricity consumption. In sunny Arizona, such a project could have paid for itself in less than a decade; today, the economics are even more favorable.
My question is: why isn't this (grid-tied, solar panel-shaded parking lots) done by every piece of commercial real estate in sunny climes? You make greater use of a resource (land area), the tenants' cars end up cooler (you can charge higher rent for that), it has a more or less guaranteed return in a reasonable time span, and reduces operating expenses (lowered electric bills). See, for instance, the western parking lot at the Googleplex headquarters. Why isn't this done everywhere?
If there were ever a satellite network that would deliver sports only (ESPN, FS. etc), it would rip the fabric of the cable TV world
That sure would be great. Not because I actually want an all-sports cable package, but for the disruption it might cause. On the other hand, no cable (and I include satellite here, too) distributor is going to be able to offer an all-sports package without having 100 other channels bundled in - the networks simply won't permit it. "Oh, you want ESPN? So does everyone else. But, ya know, ESPN is owned by Disney, which also owns ABC and about 25 other networks. You must bundle all of our other networks to your customers, and pay for them, if you want to offer ESPN." It is sad how much that one channel dictates the landscape for TV distribution. It's a large part of the reason why I don't have cable anymore.
Well they're clearly a bunch of moron rednecks but they're still right. What if the watch runs out of batteries? What if somehow the signal is disrupted? What if you take the weapon off someone who's robbing a bank and now it won't fire? Guns do what they do and there's no need to cripple them in this way.
People can bitch about the technical merits or deficits of the technology all day long. But making personal threats against someone for trying to sell a product? That's fucking asinine and should not be accepted. Threatening to boycott a store that wants to stock and sell it? That's pretty stupid, too, since if the product is so fraught with shortcomings, people won't buy it.
I don't see anyone personally threatening to attack people at Samsung, or boycotting Best Buy, because they've released half-baked products.
And as for the "what if this is the only gun you can buy" counterargument: there are a few hundred million guns in the USofA, and the people that make them have considerable clout. The notion that suddenly all those other, conventional firearms will disappear, and that gun manufacturers will be forced to make only this type of gun, is delusional.
Its got a gasoline engine that powers a generator that powers an electric motor that powers the wheels
Under certain driving circumstances, the Volt can also couple the ICE to the wheels. For some reason, when people first found out about this, and realized that the Volt isn't always a series hybrid, they got their knickers all in a twist.
Did you look at the video? Each unit has two pistons, horizontally opposed, and they form either end of the combustion chamber. The combustion forces the pistons in opposite directions, so there should be no net force that would cause vibration. However, this assumes that, for instance, the friction for each piston is equal, and that the power electronics extract power from each linear generator at the same rate. These are tricky things to guarantee in practice. Even if there is some mechanical imbalance, it may be possible to damp some of that out on-the-fly by, for instance, extracting more power from one linear generator over the other. The article mentions a firing rate of 50-60 Hz, which is sufficiently slow enough that a control system of, say, 10 kHz bandwidth ought to be able to handle it.
Wouldn't Antarctica just be canned food. As the locals are only there temporary
It depends a bit on where on the continent you are, and during what time of year. All the (sizable) bases have cooking facilities, mess halls, and full-time cooking staff. There are fridges and freezers, so the cooking can be a lot more sophisticated than opening a can and heating over a flame. During the summer, fresh produce comes in with just about every flight - even to the South Pole station. Some places grow their own greens year-round. Some more details can be found in Werner Herzog's documentary Encounters at the End of the World.
That said, the facilities are run by subcontractors, not restaurateurs. So it's probably a lot like base food you would find anywhere. Hunting the local wildlife (such as it is) is banned, and there isn't local vegetation to speak of.
If everyone in the world switched from eating meat to eating vegan substitutes (which is more environmentally friendly), you're going to end up with a massive animal welfare crisis on your hands
Correction: if everyone immediately switched to vegan substitutes. But in the real world that simply isn't going to happen. Instead you would see a gradual decrease in demand, with a commensurate decrease in production. Cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens - these are not capital investments that last for years and years. If there isn't enough demand for them, they aren't let loose - they just aren't replaced with new ones when the previous ones are slaughtered. Most of these animals have a (human-dictated) life span measured in months, which is short enough to keep pace (up and down) with consumer fashion.
And even if meat consumption dropped by 90% - a rather unlikely proposition at the moment - that would still leave a very sizable population of domesticated animals (tens of millions of chickens, millions of cattle, pigs, and sheep, and hundreds of thousands of other species), and people who know how to raise and process them. I posit that the real losers would be the largest producers - the meat monoculture - and the small herds with greatest diversity would continue to exist. We won't have lost anything.
Liquid pressure exists entirely independent from atmospheric pressure. This can be demonstrated from first principles. A siphon can be operated just fine in a total vacuum, although not with water, which would boil like mad.
One can also make a perfectly workable siphon using two immiscible fluids - e.g., oil and water.
For that distance this lift would save around a whole 5-6 seconds (not counting acceleration time)
If you were comparing constant 30 mph to 45 mph, sure, but us puny humans need to be gently accelerated to and from such speeds, which account for a significant portion of the time - you can't just wave it away.
ride a suicidal 45mph elevator with 'made in china' engraved on it, i'll take the stairs.
That would interesting to see: a troll complaining his way up 95 flights of stairs. I'll point out that these high speed elevators are made by Hitachi, a Japanese company.
Indeed - Aereo is delivering my eyeballs to broadcasters I couldn't access before. I live in an area where there are 4 channels available over the air, and only one of the major networks (without resorting to directional, amplified antennas). About 70 miles away is a major metro area with tens of channels available. I can sign up for Aereo and access those channels that just don't reach out here.
(I haven't, because I don't watch enough broadcast TV to justify even having Aereo. I don't have cable, either. So maybe I'm not the target demographic. It works in the hypothetical, though, which means it's totally good in a court of law!)
Slashdot Mirror
Reminds me of The Jerk .
They don't have to still be operating 86 years from now for there to still be significant risk. The decommissioning plans for a nuclear power plant extends into decades, and there are risks and vulnerabilities all during that time. The plans call for leaving the spent fuel there for years or decades after the operational lifetime of the plant. At the rate the U.S. is dealing with the problem of radioactive waste (that is, not at all), I wouldn't be surprised if some decommissioned plants still had spent fuel hanging around 86 years from now. Any nuclear facility that hasn't been decommissioned back to a green field state, and gets inundated in a flood, presents a risk that's worth looking into.
It is not as though the intervening 85 years are free from risk, either - rising sea level and a serious storm could flood a nuclear plant in the next decade. There is a risk today, and the risk will increase gradually and inexorably for decades.
That was the first problem.
I kid, I kid. But, really, we should have skipped HuffPo and linked directly to the NOAA article. If I want data, I'll go to the source. If I want spin, snark, and misinterpretation, I'll go to the media.
My cousin was killed by a Justin Bieber pog, you insensitive clod!
Where do you suppose the other 85% of the incoming solar radiation goes? A small fraction of it is reflected back out (solar cells are not perfect black bodies, after all), but most of it just gets absorbed and turned into heat. So, in that sense, these tiles would be largely the same as blacktop.
What is more, the tiles are grid-tied (the proposal includes trenches alongside the roadway for power distribution, telecommunications, and storm runoff), meaning that the active heating elements (which will be most needed at night when it is cold, and when the sun isn't shining) can pull from the grid. During the day and over the year, the tiles should generate surplus energy. So the calculation should really be: how much supplemental electrical energy input would you need to clear snow and ice, and compare that to the total energy collected over the course of a year. I think you'll find that the numbers are more favorable, and probably comes out a net surplus. It depends a lot on location, obviously - some places would require more heating than others, and those places probably have less insolation to boot. Then you start considering the lowered ancillary costs of reduced plow, salt, and sand usage; the reduced incidence of potholes, etc.
No, fool, I is Gains Atomic. [sounds like an great stage name]
You neglect the ongoing costs of owning each type of car. The biggest difference between is the cost of fuel: gasoline/diesel versus electricity. On a per mile basis, the fuel for EVs is much less expensive. A more appropriate way to judge between the two is the total cost of ownership for 100k miles, or 200k miles, and then determine the TCO/mile. I expect that, even with a battery replacement at 100k miles, the TCO/mile for an EV is not all that bad, and will only become more favorable in the future.
I'm not sure if they are trying to poke fun at themselves, or if they are completely serious with that statement. Pretty much any time I hear corporate buzz-word speak like "synergy", I immediately tune out, and assume the speaker is hiding their ineptitude behind a veil of gobbledegook. I suppose they will also try to tell us that government acquisition needs to "optimize", "think outside the box", "close the loop", "strategize", be "pro-active, not reactive", and "ideate". I'll get right on that, soon as I finish the coversheet for the latest TPS report.
I spent a few months living in Arizona some years back. I lived in an apartment complex where most of the space between the buildings was the carpark. The most coveted spaces were the ones that had a sort of awning or overhang, so that the car was out of direct sunlight. It made a huge difference in how hot the car got.
As an engineer, seeing this vast swath of paved-over space (more than an acre all told), some of which was itself covered with structures specifically intended to block the sun, I thought to myself: why in the hell don't they just cover the entire carpark, and cover it with solar panels, to boot? The complex could advertise itself as having all-shaded parking (and commensurate higher rent) and reduce its net electricity consumption. In sunny Arizona, such a project could have paid for itself in less than a decade; today, the economics are even more favorable.
My question is: why isn't this (grid-tied, solar panel-shaded parking lots) done by every piece of commercial real estate in sunny climes? You make greater use of a resource (land area), the tenants' cars end up cooler (you can charge higher rent for that), it has a more or less guaranteed return in a reasonable time span, and reduces operating expenses (lowered electric bills). See, for instance, the western parking lot at the Googleplex headquarters. Why isn't this done everywhere?
What is the price for internet only service? Are you sure that the bundle is really worth it?
That sure would be great. Not because I actually want an all-sports cable package, but for the disruption it might cause. On the other hand, no cable (and I include satellite here, too) distributor is going to be able to offer an all-sports package without having 100 other channels bundled in - the networks simply won't permit it. "Oh, you want ESPN? So does everyone else. But, ya know, ESPN is owned by Disney, which also owns ABC and about 25 other networks. You must bundle all of our other networks to your customers, and pay for them, if you want to offer ESPN." It is sad how much that one channel dictates the landscape for TV distribution. It's a large part of the reason why I don't have cable anymore.
Not if I first pistol-whip him with his own gun, or beat him to death with his own shoes.
People can bitch about the technical merits or deficits of the technology all day long. But making personal threats against someone for trying to sell a product? That's fucking asinine and should not be accepted. Threatening to boycott a store that wants to stock and sell it? That's pretty stupid, too, since if the product is so fraught with shortcomings, people won't buy it.
I don't see anyone personally threatening to attack people at Samsung, or boycotting Best Buy, because they've released half-baked products.
And as for the "what if this is the only gun you can buy" counterargument: there are a few hundred million guns in the USofA, and the people that make them have considerable clout. The notion that suddenly all those other, conventional firearms will disappear, and that gun manufacturers will be forced to make only this type of gun, is delusional.
Under certain driving circumstances, the Volt can also couple the ICE to the wheels. For some reason, when people first found out about this, and realized that the Volt isn't always a series hybrid, they got their knickers all in a twist.
Did you look at the video? Each unit has two pistons, horizontally opposed, and they form either end of the combustion chamber. The combustion forces the pistons in opposite directions, so there should be no net force that would cause vibration. However, this assumes that, for instance, the friction for each piston is equal, and that the power electronics extract power from each linear generator at the same rate. These are tricky things to guarantee in practice. Even if there is some mechanical imbalance, it may be possible to damp some of that out on-the-fly by, for instance, extracting more power from one linear generator over the other. The article mentions a firing rate of 50-60 Hz, which is sufficiently slow enough that a control system of, say, 10 kHz bandwidth ought to be able to handle it.
It depends a bit on where on the continent you are, and during what time of year. All the (sizable) bases have cooking facilities, mess halls, and full-time cooking staff. There are fridges and freezers, so the cooking can be a lot more sophisticated than opening a can and heating over a flame. During the summer, fresh produce comes in with just about every flight - even to the South Pole station. Some places grow their own greens year-round. Some more details can be found in Werner Herzog's documentary Encounters at the End of the World .
That said, the facilities are run by subcontractors, not restaurateurs. So it's probably a lot like base food you would find anywhere. Hunting the local wildlife (such as it is) is banned, and there isn't local vegetation to speak of.
And yet the companies that own and operate nuclear power plants, and the regulators that oversee them, can't even get that right.
Correction: if everyone immediately switched to vegan substitutes. But in the real world that simply isn't going to happen. Instead you would see a gradual decrease in demand, with a commensurate decrease in production. Cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens - these are not capital investments that last for years and years. If there isn't enough demand for them, they aren't let loose - they just aren't replaced with new ones when the previous ones are slaughtered. Most of these animals have a (human-dictated) life span measured in months, which is short enough to keep pace (up and down) with consumer fashion.
And even if meat consumption dropped by 90% - a rather unlikely proposition at the moment - that would still leave a very sizable population of domesticated animals (tens of millions of chickens, millions of cattle, pigs, and sheep, and hundreds of thousands of other species), and people who know how to raise and process them. I posit that the real losers would be the largest producers - the meat monoculture - and the small herds with greatest diversity would continue to exist. We won't have lost anything.
Good fun on a Monday. Well played.
Liquid pressure exists entirely independent from atmospheric pressure. This can be demonstrated from first principles. A siphon can be operated just fine in a total vacuum, although not with water, which would boil like mad.
One can also make a perfectly workable siphon using two immiscible fluids - e.g., oil and water.
Oh, well, if you meant that the occupants ought to be sitting down and belted into the elevator, then sure.
If you were comparing constant 30 mph to 45 mph, sure, but us puny humans need to be gently accelerated to and from such speeds, which account for a significant portion of the time - you can't just wave it away.
That would interesting to see: a troll complaining his way up 95 flights of stairs. I'll point out that these high speed elevators are made by Hitachi, a Japanese company.
Indeed - Aereo is delivering my eyeballs to broadcasters I couldn't access before. I live in an area where there are 4 channels available over the air, and only one of the major networks (without resorting to directional, amplified antennas). About 70 miles away is a major metro area with tens of channels available. I can sign up for Aereo and access those channels that just don't reach out here.
(I haven't, because I don't watch enough broadcast TV to justify even having Aereo. I don't have cable, either. So maybe I'm not the target demographic. It works in the hypothetical, though, which means it's totally good in a court of law!)
I'm just waiting to hear Arnold Schwarzeneggar say that on screen. [relevance]