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Comment Re: Let me clarify (Score 1) 222

Gingrich served four years as speaker, to Clinton's eight.

it's 94-96, the end of Clinton's terms, and the beginning of Gingrich, when they were competing that produced the deals that actually balanced it. It did *not* happen while Clinton had Democratic majorities, nor did it happen later with Republican majorities under Bush.

Comment Re:Need emulation for drivers! (Score 1) 147

On the bright side, we have a whole new round of entertainment coming, with the ongoing stream of, "we're as good as apple now" . . . "well, *this* time we are" . . . "no, we mean it this time" . . . "ok, we've said it a few times now, but *this* time" . . . a veritable treasure trove of nostalgia to be!

Comment Re:Likely not even using real floppy anymore (Score 1) 113

The first hard disk I met for a microcomputer was a 5meg drive for the apple ][.

It presented itself to the computer as 35 or so 143k floppies on the same controller card, so it could use the regular DOS at the time. (there might have been a patch, but I don't think so).

And, iirc, the drive was an 8" drive.

That was 1981; the following year, I had a 10meg drive assigned to me for development on an Osborne. It appeared as a single CP/M drive!

[but you could specify about 14 "users" on CP/M, and only see those--but that didn't stop you from overwriting files you couldn't see if you used the same name!]

Submission + - New charger could double the service-life of Li-Ion batteries 1

NewtonsLaw writes: Lithium-Ion (LI) batteries are the backbone of much of our modern technology. They're in our phones, our laptops, our smartwatches and even the EVs that are increasingly appearing on our roads. One of the problems with LI technolgy however, is the very finite life of those batteries.

In the case of an EV, the battery pack represents a very significant portion of the total price you pay when buying one. Right now, the life of EV batteries is generally considered to be at least eight years, under normal use. But what if that could be doubled — simply by changing the way those batteries are charged?

This announcement by researchers in Europe indicates that the service life (ie: the number of charg/discharge cycles) of LI batteries could be as much as doubled, through the use of a pulsed current charging technology.

The standard charge method for LI cells is to deliver a constant direct current (DC) until the voltage of the cell rises to around 4.2 volts, at which time the voltage is maintained at a constant level and the charge current allowed to fall off. Once the charge current reaches a predefined minimum level, the cell is considered charged.

The new pulsed current method does not use DC but instead opts to recharge by way of intermittent pulses of current. This is not a new charging technology although it's not the norm for LI cells. Pulsed current chargers have been used on older chemistries such as nickel-cadmium in order to reduce/eliminate the formation of dendrites that would otherwise create short-circuits or significantly increase the self-discharge rate. Applying this tech to recharging LI cells seems to be a significant game-changer, if the lab results are duplicated in "the real world (TM)"

Doubling the life of your EV's battery or even your smartphone's battery is no small thing.

Comment Re:Why not decades sooner? (Score 1) 99

>It looks like the cars have some steerability

some?

*full*

that's a restraining rail, not a track. It stops you from leading the road.

It does have the practical effect of forcing the car to go the right general direction if you *don't* steer, but in normal operation, you're not even touching it.

Comment Re:Why on earth do they need a roadmap? (Score 1) 99

>given that they run on a track.

but they're *not* on a track, the way some other rides are.

There is a road, and a limiter for how far the car can go. The car isn't usually in contact with the limiter.

To use it as an electric source would require some kind of flexible arm, which would make it a much more complicated system.

Comment Re:Subsidies? (Score 1) 85

Note, though, the two year limit to military appropriations.

Then again, this doesn't apply to *naval* expenditures.

[the Founding Fathers viewed a standing army as a threat, but not a standing navy].

The *existence* of domestic capacity can reasonably be seen as necessary to either force (and can also be reasonably argued].

Comment Re:It's interesting (Score 1) 77

I was surprised, after tolerating an underground hive of honeybees for years, to find that they don't pollinate tomatoes. [now they're gone; a punk kid ran through several yards, and the county paid to kill the hive so that the police could look for the gun, having narrowed where he dropped the murder weapon to three yards. {it was such a nice neighborhood when I moved in 30 someodd years ago . . .}{they don't even test here; they presume africanization}]

bumblebees, however, do. [and apparently, it's more about shaking the plant than transfer, knocking the pollen loose. Tomatoes self pollinate, but wind & insects can improve yield]

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