> you have to use some kind of non-water fluid

Not necessarily. You can also have the panels drain into a reservoir overnight, with the circulating pump only turning on again in the morning once the panels have gotten warmer than the reservoir. Why have fluid in the panels when there's no heat to be collected?

A DIY system I've occasionally considered building: https://www.builditsolar.com/P...

Officer: So... Jimmy... I cant help but notice you just got yourself a new 200ft radio antenna in your yard that looks suspiciously like the one that mysteriously vanished from the local radio station...

Oh? What evidence do you have that the development has been compromised?

Potentially chasing away people who can't be bothered to understand the topic they're arguing about compromises nothing, and greatly reduces the amount of time people who actually understand the subject have to waste arguing against it *again* - which increases the amount of time they can spend doing something useful.

Some people genuinely bring negative net value to the table. And the greater the expertise at the table, the easier that is to do. Especially if it's not shown proper respect by people who lack it. If such people leave, both quality and productivity improves.

I'm not so sure about that "I'm not an idiot" bit - are you sure you didn't misphrase something there?

Because I'd take you up on that deal in a heartbeat - it's win-win for me.

Either the rapture happens, and I don't need the money, or it doesn't happen, and I keep the money.

You *can* download the whole thing - there's just no reason to actually do so unless you want to either determine how much BTC is actually in a very old wallet, or to trace the flow of payments to find out who actually paid for those drugs/weapons/slaves/etc.

Which basically means miners and intelligence agencies. There's no need for a normal BTC user to ever look at the blockchain unless they've forgotten how much is in their wallet. Any more than there's a need for traditional banking customers to go through the complete financial records of their bank.

Extending this - there are still big concrete markers scattered around the US, left over from when they were used as "trail markers" for airplanes - telling you where you were and which way to go to get to where you were going.

A bit disingenuous a claim.

If you don't get paid for excess power generated, because you're generating too much, then you paid for solar panels whose power is either charging the car or going to waste - and the cost of those excess solar panels (plus any financing costs) is the price you're paying to charge your car.

Here's a better idea - ban *anyone* other than the person it's about from selling sensitive personal information of any kind. Ever. There is ZERO legitimate use for such invasive surveillance in a nominally free society.

Of course, that would mean cops and intelligence agencies would have to get warrants and do their job, instead of just buying the info they want from someone else, but honestly I'd consider that an added bonus.

Queue the wave of videos of actors appearing to say horrendously offensive things that someone goaded a game AI into saying, and then overdubbed onto an unrelated lip-syncable video in 3...2...1...

Honestly though that's nothing new, other than maybe the degree of hype. It's *always* been true that the public's expectation of ANY new science or cutting-edge technology they hear about should be, "Maybe something useful will come of this in 20+ years, if it ends up being real".

Science news follows the cutting edge of science. Which means that 90+% of the time it's later proved wrong - that's just the nature of science. The whole point of scientific publishing is to get other scientists interested in trying to prove you wrong - which they usually succeed at. Peer review can't happen until your peers know what you think you've accomplished. And that has little to do with the "peer review" (reputable) scientific journals do - which is basically lenient arm-chair quarterbacking by other people in the field, who are just looking for really glaringly obvious problems in your write-up or methodology.

And technology news isn't much better - since it's generally a mix of cutting edge science (like this one - we haven't gotten it working yet, but believe we can), and "we got this working in the lab, and believe we can scale it up to production levels", which usually proves far more challenging than anyone expected.

If a layman likes following science news, that's great - but they need to recognize that they're watching the sausage being made, and almost everything they hear will later be proven wrong. And of course, the popular science media doesn't like drawing attention to that, since why would their audience pay good money to hear about bad science? Which means you'll only hear about the "Cool new thing discovered!", and almost never the follow up years later that "Cool new thing proven to be nonsense."

You misspelled "the military"

Sounds like a problem of poor terminology to me.

A driverless car can't drive, at most it can roll until it hits something. It makes sense that it can't be ticketed for traffic violations, because it can't commit them.

However, what we're actually dealing with is a car with an robotic driver - a robot that's doing EXACTLY what it was told to by its manufacturer.

As such, the reasonable outcome would be to ticket the driver that is in full control of the car - a.k.a. the manufacturer.

Yeah, only far less bulky.

Loved that show, especially the early seasons.

Could always have a protective cover over them, like a projector screen. Picture a titanium tube "candybar phone", with only a minimal "eWatch" screen, if that. Then you pull a full-sized tablet out of the side.

I'm inclined to agree.

I can see *rollable* screens having some serious potential, but nobody seems interested, maybe it's just too expensive? Give me a dry erase marker sized "candybar" phone that lets me pull out a an ipad-sized screen, and then they'd have something.

No hinges. No sharp folds in the screen. No need for extremely tight fits that make dirt a problem. And you could have it all gently roll up inside a titanium tube that would let busses drive over it harmlessly.

Stiffening it could be an interesting challenge, I doubt it'd survive long flexing free. Maybe start by mounting it on something like a giant "slap strap" bracelet?