Plugging in an EV takes almost exactly as much time and effort as plugging in a cell phone. About 15 seconds.

The idea is to replace natural gas consumption with renewable electricity consumption. Induction stoves are the solution. Great temperature control and extremely efficient.

Addressing your second point:

The genius of the Cybertruck is the fact that the front and rear suspensions are dynamically controllable. To load or unload, the front struts are fully extended, lifting the nose, and the rear struts are fully retracted. The tailgate is lowered, and the ramp panels extended. Now you can just drive/roll your load in and out. While driving, the front and rear struts are nearly equally extended so the bed is level.

The changeover to EVs will happen faster than you think.

Your neighbors will stare at you and make grimacing faces when they see you driving down the street in your old ICE jalopy. They'll act like you're directly harming them and their children with the air pollution you spew out.

You'll ask yourself: "All the neighbors just plug their cars in at night in about 10 seconds, just like I plug in my cell phone. Why do I have to keep going to the damn gas station?"

You'll realize you don't like going to the dealer for oil changes and service "advisories" about flushing your transmission, and your brake fluid, and engine coolant, and replacing brake pads, and turning the rotors, and on and on.

Once you drive an electric car like the Tesla Model 3, you'll want to get one as soon as you can afford it.

Of course there are counterarguments, like "I commute 200 miles every day in the ice and snow hauling a 5 ton trailer", but those cases are few and far between.

The new desalination plant nearing completion in Carlsbad, CA is priced at about $1B and has an expected output of 50 million gallons per day. This is about 7-8% of San Diego County's usage.

Care to list some of the "all kinds of chemicals" you are talking about?

Torque "sleep" may refer to a new motor control algorithm. It would work just fine on the single motor cars. Basically apply torque until speed reaches the setpoint, then turn the motor off. Only "wake up" and apply torque when the speed drops below the setpoint. If you do it quickly enough it is unnoticeable. It increases efficiency because it automatically takes advantage of tailwinds and downslopes. The same thing could be done with an i.c.e. car as well, without as much benefit, by stopping fuel flow and ignition on a short-term (milliseconds) basis.

My dad designed, but had an architect complete the details of, the house I grew up in. We moved in in 1967. The house has plunger switches in the door jambs of the closets. Open the door, the light goes on. Close the door, it goes off. Very simple, and very effective as long as you are willing to keep the closet door closed most of the time and go without light if you go in the closet and close the door behind you.

As for X10, I was an early adopter, starting in 1979. I've thrown away many defective X10 devices (controllers, lamp modules, appliance modules), yet those closet door switches still work. Not saying automation is bad, just not robust enough yet.

The mirrors don't all have the latest version yet, so you can download here:

http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/e...

Mod this up. Indeed, MOS (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) was the maverick company that came up with the 6502, a very clever improvement over the Motorola 6800.

> Modern SDD have read limits. Every 10.000 reads or so the data has to be refreshed. The firmware will do this silent.

Please provide reference(s). I have never seen any indication of this, or at least there is no read limit for the flash memory itself. You can read from it indefinitely just like static RAM, without "refresh" as required for DRAM.

Here we go again (same discusion on Slashdot several years ago). Everyone can see 24 Hz. flicker. I seriously doubt there is anyone on earth that cannot. This problem was solved long, long ago by flashing each movie frame on the screen 2 or 3 times, then switching to the next frame. 3 x 24fps = 72 Hz. This corresponds perfectly to the fact that, for most people, a CRT refresh rate of 72 Hz. or so is comfortable. For example, the Eumig S710D Super 8mm film projector from the 1970s has a 72Hz. refresh rate due to its triple-slotted shutter.

Passage of these bills effectively bans drones and video camera guided RC (Radio Control) aircraft because cameras are used for navigation, not just taking photos of objects of interest.

Useful applications of privately-operated drones and RC aircraft with cameras include roof inspection and birds-eye view promotional shots for real-estate listings.

Making these devices illegal will cause more harm than good.

And Tracfone text messages are charged at the rate of 0.3 minutes each, so 10 of them cost you 3.0 minutes of talk time.

Thanks for the link to the energy density chart.

A couple of conclusions:

1) We should be burning poly bags in our cars.
2) Li-ion batteries are going nowhere.