Yes and no-- Depends on what the ISS's orbit is. If it has a circumpolar orbit, (crosses the polar region), then it will pass through the magnetic field lines that funnel cosmic particles into the atmosphere that cause the northern lights. EG-- it would get beamed pretty intensely with concentrated cosmic particles.
If it does not have that kind of orbit, and instead stays around the equator, then no so much. Mostly radiation free, compared to outside the magnetosphere.
What we need to do, is send a lander to the moon loaded with some microbial and planktonic colonies, where it can get beamed by high intensity, raw solar wind radiation, (And more importantly, where we can keep close tabs on it easily) and measure how the colonies do over time.
Last I checked, we have pretty much definitively determined that the moon is devoid of native flora or fauna. "Contamination" of the moon is a silly prospect.
If we decide not to land the experiment ON the moon, we could just as easily place it in orbit around the moon, and still conduct the experiment. the moon just provides a nice stable gravity well to moor the experiment so we dont have to send oodles of fuel to keep station, which is conveniently close by, and outside the magnetosphere of the planet.
I am actually surprised that there are so few experiments geared at empirically testing terrestrial microorganisms against the "Inhospitable environment" of space.
I strongly suspect it has more to do with the politics of not having to contemplate panspermia as a probable/reasonable factor in scientific debate than anything else.
Integer overflow has absolutely nothing to do with security
Integer overflow has been in the top five causes of CVEs for several years running. Buffer overflows, sadly, are still at the top.
Strange that europeans find those homes fiscaly efficient.
I've traveled the world a bit, you might not believe it but homes in the USA normally compare quite well insulation wise against the rest of the world. Yes, you hear about problems with poorly built homes, but that's because we like talking about them.
What I was talking about for an 'energy neutral home' is one that's been designed such that it needs little to no supplemental heating or cooling. Not even homes in most of Europe are built to this level because the costs are so high in order to do so. Many more homes are built to my more relaxed standard - highly insulated with enough mass inside that heating/cooling aren't necessary every hour of the day.
Except that there's points, especially with tornados that 'not destroyed completely' is not any better, such as when the repair costs exceed the cost of just building a new home of standard construction. For example, just consider the expense involved with a few broken windows letting in sleets of water.
I like the idea of energy efficient homes, I just know there are points where said homes are not fiscally efficient.
Given that I used Model S batteries, 'greater range vehicles' would account for it rather easily.
Recreating my work:
60 kwh (Smaller Model S battery)
29.7 kwh/day from 10,837 kwh/year
If you assume a 60 kwh battery will be retired to grid storage when it hits 70%, then recycled when it reaches ~40%, then assuming 50% average life remaining gives you ~30kwh to cover that ~29.7 kwh.
actual figures can vary wildly, of course. It might be 'worth it' to keep the pack even when it's only at 20% capacity. You might replace them when they reach 80%. But I figure that 30% degradation during EV use would be about the same time period as 30% degradation during fixed use, making battery durability not a significant factor so long as you're not losing batteries completely to failures too often.
Given the average of 2.28 vehicles per household..., you have enough for 1 day of homes if half of vehicles are electric, if 2 are(leaving ~12% of vehicles as something else) that should be enough to cover the commercial side as well, given that 37% of current electricity production is used by households, 34% commercial, 26% industrial. Some would be made up by batteries from pure commercial vehicles that don't belong to any household. Of course, if 88% of vehicles are electric that would significantly change electricity usage - my estimate was that the 2.28 vehicles would increase the average use of electricity by 50% going by averages for vehicles per household, miles driven per vehicle, miles per kwh, etc...
But I figure step 1 of any storage scheme would be to not charge EVs during a power shortage...
One note that I'm sure you'll love is that in a scenario where most of this electricity is generated with solar panels you'd logically want to charge all these EVs during the day as well. Would make for an interesting mechanic if it became a 'standard' benefit to provide charge for your employee's cars. I'm picturing solar car ports and shades...
a currency with zero transaction fees.
Except that there are generally transaction fees unless you're willing to set up and maintain quite a bit of your own infrastructure.
As for the theft rate for credit cards, I'd note that it's mostly fraud, not theft. Only a slight distinction, but still there.
The thing to worry about is the rate of theft/fraud. As somebody who's aware of bitcoin but not invested in it, I have to point out that it's my impression that my money is more at risk if stored as bitcoins than as US Dollars invested in a bank. That's a real problem, real statistics aside.
The problem I see is that the wacko isn't likely to be calmed down by a robot, even with a person talking on a screen with it.
A tossed cell phone probably does as well as a really expensive robot. You just have the wacko exit the building/shelter without the weapon.
I just don't agree with him. Bitcoins have some serious issues.
Indeed, I'd rate all the thefts of bitcoins to be killing it's credibility more than anything else. If it's seen as substantially less safe than traditional investments...
I might participate in the bitcoin market, but it'd be strictly transitional - buy bitcoins, use them to pay. I'd actually 'own' them for as short of a period as possible.
When I figured it out I came up with a day, but I don't remember all my estimates/assumptions. That's approaching 100% penetration though.
I'd argue that staggering appliances as described would be a form of storage anyways. For the most part we're talking about thermal storage here - hot water heaters, house temperature, etc...
It's quite possible to build a house that will remain comfortable with minimal power expenditure in most areas, but this is extremely expensive in terms of money and resources. A halfway point would be to use construction techniques involving having lots of mass inside the insulation to help maintain temperatures even while the HVAC system is offline. But at that point you're putting thermal storage systems into all the homes, even if it's dual purpose.
Keep saving those AA's. Your gonna need them.
Heh, I laughed at this because one of my ideas is to use old but still viable EV batteries as grid storage devices, and the Model S, with the biggest batteries, uses the Lithium-Ion equivalent of a AA.
If you figure that the battery is retired from the car at 70% capacity and kept as a grid device until it's around 40% capacity this would give you massive storage capacity if only 10% of people drive a Tesla type car.
Of course, this would be a 30 year solution - 5-10 years for the batteries to degrade to the point they're no longer useful in a car, plus 20 years for EVs to actually penetrate the market enough to provide enough batteries.
Except that I checked the NSN number and found that I was correct.
Walled gardens like AOL and CompuServe failed because they had to compete with everyone else. In the early '90s, there was a lot of content that was exclusive to AOL or CompuServe. There were a load of small BBS that had their own unique content. And then there was the Internet. Anyone could put something on the Internet and when web browsers started to be easy to install anyone could put up a web page. Individuals would put things up on their ISPs' web space or somewhere like Geocities, big companies would buy their own servers. Small individual ISPs started to spring up, because the cost of entry was low: a rack of modems, a leased line, and a load of phone lines and you could be an ISP. Local ISPs competed by differentiating themselves in various ways (free email, free web space, static IPs, whatever).
Meanwhile, AOL and CompuServe (OSPs - Online Service Providers) were trying to sell access but also be responsible for all of the content. The parallel with Facebook isn't quite there, because they're only selling the content. The problem is that, while there is some content on Facebook, anyone who can access Facebook can also access the whole of the web. They need to somehow justify putting content on Facebook (where only Facebook users can see it) rather than just putting it on a web site. Their argument for this is that they can collect lots of data about potential customers if you do, but it's not clear that this is a good long-term alternative.
Quantity is no substitute for quality, but its the only one we've got.
