Our grid is not a grid, it is bullshit, so it is likely that these connections will be made anywhere there is actually capacity. That might well be in places which make some sort of logical sense, or it might just be in places where they think EV drivers go and where they can find someplace to plug in their kit.

Yes, that's true, it's seven times higher. But the specific energy is only about a third as much. So the question then becomes one of cost of containment. And that's the real reason diesel wins. Diesel fuel is the most convenient fuel we have in terms of actually managing the fuel itself. It has all the same advantages as gasoline (as compared to hydrogen) plus the lack of volatility.

Yeah, but you pretty much have to be an asshole to want to burn hydrogen in an ICE, because it's so feasible to use it in a fuel cell.

Fuel cells have been demonstrated operating 10,000 hours without any decrease in efficiency, which is supposed to correspond to a roughly 300,000 mile lifespan. They'll have to make it at least twice that long, though, in order to get into big rig territory. On the other hand, the efficiency improvements gained by eliminating the big, complicated transmission could be significant.

The majority of people are going to take the least expensive option. If companies form to operate massive fleets of self driving cars that can reach you In a timely fashion and charge fees below the cost of owning a car, owning a car will suddenly become a luxury.

Precisely. Its cost driven. The fact of whether or not a car is self driving really isn't part of the equation one way or the other. Admittedly self driving cars DO allow potentially for the cost of using a fleet subscription to drop since its easier to get the cars to and from where you want them inexpensively -- they can now potentially drive themselves -- at least that's the dream.

And see that just it... we're much closer to self driving cars with at least a human in the backseat taking a nap "just in case" then we are to self driving cars, that shuttle about completely empty -- because if ANYTHING happens ... say a road closure and police are directing traffic, we're still miles away from self driving cars beign able to cope with that. So if it needs to pull over, wake the driver up, and say... "Hey buddy you need to drive a minute" that's fine... but that kills the "car shows up to pick me up and then then goes back to the depot after it drops me off" scenario.

This conversation reminds of one here about HDTV years ago when they were hitting the market. Most of the comments were along the lines of "my tube TV is great, those new fangled overpriced HD sets will never catch on".

I think you are mis remembering. Nobody thought HDTV wasn't going to go gangbusters. There was TONS of HDTV content available just begging for TVs to catch up. DVDs were 720p for years before the average person had an HDTV to get the most out of them. Sports networks were starting to do 720p. When 42" HDTVs dropped under 3K the writing for tube TVs was on the wall.

We shit all over 3DTV and were right about it. We're not convinced 4K is going to be a must have anytime soon. (due to relatively low gain in visuals and tv viewing distances, and the dearth of 4k content. Long term sure we'll get there... but there's no real urgency for it.

But HDTV? We all knew that was going to go big the minute it was affordable.

Last I checked, containing it was still expensive, too. That's a problem in my book.

So what's the efficiency of the electrolysers? Last I checked they were down around 40% at best. And since we don't actually have a national power grid, we can't simply ship electrical power around at will. We can only ship it for relatively short distances.

Yes, but in terms of volume, it's not notably better than Li-Ion.

Also, let us not forget replacement, which is going to have to happen at about the same time for the fuel cell as it does for batteries. Fuel cells are still very expensive, just like batteries.

Finally, the charging time for an electric vehicle may be measured in hours, but the charging time for a hydrogen vehicle is measured in years. We'll have to wait years for the fueling infrastructure. But you can plug your EV in right now. How rapidly do you really think we'll get hydrogen fueling stations anywhere but in a corridor similar to where Tesla has "supercharger" stations? Right now there's only a handful on the seaboards.

Note that Apple is not donating all the proceeds to charity, as the headline suggets ("profit portion") but in fact a portion of profits. I am not new here so I am not surprised you have not read TFA but in fact the truth is that 100% of the profits from 25 apps will be donated, while a portion of the profits from Apple retail locations will be donated. Congratulations to ZDNet, they fooled you completely with that headline. Sucker.

Nothing anyone said ever even hinted at anything that would contradict that

ORLY?

http://tech.slashdot.org/story...

"In a Self-Driving Future, We May Not Even Want To Own Cars"

This entire thread is in THAT context. The original responder was addressing THAT claim. Please re-read the thread top to bottom.

That you go there shows you are looking for a fight. Why?

Lol, because "Someone on the internet was wrong!" ;-)

Every job I've had for at least 10 years is in competition with people in low cost of living areas. Even so, I remain employed, and well paid. There's value in working local, and there's value in being good at what you do, so there's some premium to be had vs the cheapest place available.

Meanwhile, home prices in Bangalore are higher than rural America now - I would expect other factors of cost of living to follow.

You can certainly compete in a global market, if you're talented. If, however, you're doing some mindless job that anyone who can fog a mirror can do equally well, from any place in the world, then there's just no valid moral reason for the job to stay here. Further, it's only a matter of time before no one, will have that job. Technology means automation, and automation is why technology improves everyone's standard of living. The future is bleak for unskilled labor, worldwide, but that's not an outsourcing issue.

No, as it stands now, we are effectively jerking off, because none of us are in a position to claim ownership of rocks in space. Only the first person to set up camp there will be in that position, not least because they will have a ready supply of said rocks.

You won't have to. They will be taken from you, just as easily as they were granted. Assuming you even think they were granted, which they actually weren't.

The question that needs to be asked though is if any country would be stupid enough to risk throwing nukes when the response is going to come from space. Once you're actually in a position to mine asteroids, you're also in a position to bombard the Earth with rocks.

Maybe there is no Sears near you.
Maybe they are out of stock.
Maybe their service sucks.
etc..

Maybe. But then why should Wards price match for you?

You clearly can't or won't go to Sears, so if you want a mattress you'll pay Ward's asking price.

chicken egg

pot kettle black

things are worth what people will pay for them

Too Short, Didn't Read? Allow me to elaborate. There's not much use for people here on Earth, mostly we stink up the place. Space is maybe not the next frontier (seems like we should finish exploring the oceans first) but it's coming up. We are curious monkeys, and we want to know what's out there. So we're going, sooner or later, if we don't drown in our own waste first. And in order to do that, we're going to have to mine asteroids, because of the externalities involved in lifting sufficient mass from Earth.

If you don't want us to go to space, I submit that this is not the site for you

Confidential perhaps, but public data. We paid for them.

There is value in them, when is it's just historical data.

What? Who told you that?

The citric acid in the lemon juice is sufficient once you've pasteurized the eggs. What it won't do is keep for years, which is why Hellman's mayo contains Disodium EDTA.

I agree with you about what we evolved to eat. But I don't agree with you about cows being environmentally friendly. Everywhere in the world they mostly graze land which used to be forest. Here in the USA that is definitely true. And I have a great example, in fact. I live in Kelseyville, which is in Lake County. It's named for a guy who enslaved, raped, and murdered the locals — it's a bit living in Hitlerville or Santa Torquemada. This town has a whole bunch of walnut trees, and indeed it used to be one of the biggest walnut producers in California. The US government paid people to plant these trees, and so they did. But first, they cut down whichever oaks hadn't already been cut down to make room for cattle ranching. Part of the idea, of course, was to eliminate the natives' food source. They ate acorns. You can live on those, but you can't live on walnuts alone.

So yeah, in places which naturally tend to pasture, grazing cattle is perfectly environmentally friendly. Problem is, those places are in the minority. Most places tend towards forest, if you give them enough time. And most of the places where cows now stand, trees once stood. Many of them have been recently slashed and burned.

I love me some meat, and I eat as much as I can, but let's not pretend that it's more environmentally friendly than vegetarianism. And sadly, cows are pretty much the worst. The methane of their flatulence is a significant greenhouse gas and the deforestation their existence implies is part of the problem with global climate today.

That's why it isn't useful. You can't use it for anything interesting to anyone but you. So why would anyone do that? There's no real point to moving at near-relativistic speeds because your civilization will be gone by the time you get home from anywhere worth going. After poking around your own solar system, you really need to be able to travel faster than light to achieve anything meaningful by going anyplace. Sending out probes to other places might still be worth it, but if everyone you ever knew will be dead by the time you get home, what's the point?

Now, if you could move a whole planet through the universe at those speeds, that might be useful. You could move your whole civilization, and everything it needed to survive (assuming you're not dependent on a star.) And if you are still dependent on a star, obviously by choice at that point, I suppose you'll need to take your whole system.

So, what would a star moving at near-C look like to the rest of us?