Except in the 80s in the Soviet union, where many of their "civilian" reactors were designed to allow for use as weapons production plants.

Such as Chernobyl... So many things went wrong there, but one of the major contributing factors was a fundamentally unsafe reactor design.

Gas is not the best option. It may burn clean, but the process of extracting it is NOT clean.

The problem is that the contamination is much more diffuse/widespread, so you can't say "OMG LOOK THREE MILE ISLAND! BAD!" - even though TMI led to less negative health effects for the environment than gas drilling in just a single town (Dimock, PA).

Solar and wind won't be able to meet our needs for another few decades as we don't have sufficient energy storage technology to make them viable yet (Tesla's making great strides here, but one has to wonder - what might the hidden environmental costs here be? For example, the permanent magnet motors used in nearly all electric and hybrid vehicles use rare earth magnets - http://www.bbc.com/future/stor...

We need one more generation of nuclear to bridge the gap, using modernized reactors with improved safety. (Ideally, research into improved reactors/fuel cycles like the IFR wouldn't have been killed 2 decades ago and they'd be ready for construction now... If I recall one calculation, the IFR could've met our energy needs for 100 years using only the stockpiles of LWR waste we had in the mid-late 1990s.)

Vitrification may be OK for the high-level short-lived (approx. 200 years to decay to safe levels) stuff that would have come out of the IFR's integrated fuel cycle, but I'm fairly certain it's not OK for long-lived transuranics...

IIRC, wasn't that in partnership with Altera?

Intel and Altera have been partnering on things for quite a while, including Altera being one of the first companies to be allowed access to spare Intel fab production capacity.

Yup. Cyngn could have been a positive thing for the Android community, but the complete lack of ethics of those involved is scary... Cyngn has been bad news since the beginning (Focal)...

Two options:
1) The "workaround" of installing GMS from an alternative source. (In theory, the only legal option is installing gapps backed up from your own phone, but Google appears to be willing to let the "separate gapps packages" slide...)
2) The approach Cyngn has gone, which is to go through Google's official GMS licensing scheme.

Interesting question. It looks like it isn't air-in-magnesium - it's hollow air-filled SiC beads inside magnesium.

(TFA doesn't mention the SiC part directly, but you can find more info in the linked research paper from TFA.)

There's also: "Since one of the chief selling points of autonomous cars is their relative safety over cars piloted by humans, the lack of official transparency is troubling."

No it is NOT a selling point, because NO ONE is selling these cars yet. It is EXPECTED to be a selling point once development is complete - WHICH IT IS NOT.

That said, it would be interesting to hear the details of Google's two autonomous accidents.

Also, the headline is misleading... While a car may be capable of self-driving, if a human is in control when an accident occurs, then the car was not a self-driving one as far as the accident goes.

As far as the national statistics (0.3 accidents per 100,000 miles) - those are national statistics, averaged across the entire country. Google's accidents all occurred with mileage racked up in the Bay Area, which is probably one of the worst places in the country to drive as far as hitting other vehicles.

Body cameras will help a little, but they won't solve the problem.

Expect body cameras worn by corrupt cops to have serious reliability issues.

It sounds like not all states have the kind of public records disclosure laws that Washington has.

Tesla's vehicles charge to only 80% capacity by default, because this GREATLY improves the number of charge/discharge cycles you can get from the battery. (Li-Ion/LiPo batteries get "stressed" out the most at full charge.) Tesla gives owners the option to charge that last 20% if they expect to need the range.

Are the 7/10 kWh ratings of these units the raw rating of the batteries in the pack, or have they already been derated to the 80% level?

If they've already been derated to the 80% level, that resolves some of the potential conflicts in terms of lifetime indicated in the article. (1000 cycle "rule of thumb" vs. Tesla's warranty.)

Which makes me wonder - is the real reason Pepsi is doing this neotame?

Neotame is, I believe, about as expensive per unit volume as aspartame to produce, BUT it requires far less volume as it's 7-10 THOUSAND times sweeter than sucrose instead of 200 times in the case of aspartame.

The patent for neotame expires on July 8 of this year - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...

So could this actually just be a cost-cutting measure that they're trying to market as "being good for you"?

One thing to keep in mind is:

Standalone products sold for use as a human-usable sweetener are going to be different than industrial uses.

The majority of artificial sweeteners happen to be significantly more potent by weight than normal sugar. As a result, nearly all of them are mixed with some sort of filler (usually dextrose in my experience) when sold as a "table sweetener". This is to allow the consumer to have any hope whatsoever of measuring them out in a consistent manner. Even with the fillers, they're significantly reduced in calories compared to sugar.

Splenda, Stevia, NutraSweet, they're all mixed with fillers when sold as a consumer-usable sweetener. These fillers aren't present in "industrially-produced" products that don't need the fillers, like soda off the shelf.

As another example - aspartame has as many calories per unit of weight as sucrose. However, it's 200 times sweeter than sucrose, so the amount used is so little that the caloric content of a product with the same sweetness is negligible. Think of a 12 ounce can of Coke - normally 33g of sugar, but only requires 0.16 grams of aspartame. For Coke, this isn't a problem sine they mix hundreds if not thousands of liters at a time, so the amount of aspartame used is easier to measure out - but imagine trying to measure out 0.16 grams of aspartame as a user!

First what?

First time you'll ever see me actually root for Verizon? If so, yes. First.

Have you seen a doctor about that?

Aspartame is known to cause health problems in a small subset of the population - those with PKU.