... if waymo's plan (And they clearly have a plan) might not be to sample various markets to learn enough to assemble a formidable patent and marketable technology portfolio. You want to build an automated lumber, or grocery, or people, or anything else delivery business. You can do it. Maybe you'll succeed. And maybe you won't. Either way, you'll be sending money to Waymo.

I know next to nothing about quantum computing. The concept makes my head hurt. But I do know something about press releases. Could some one who does understand quantum computing (assuming any such people exist) take a look and see if there is anything they'd expect to see in this Press Release that is missing? That'll likely be where the problems -- if any -- are.

"The real question is how the results Google have correlate to breaking cryptography, because that informs how we need to change systems starting right now."

Actually, it tells us how we needed to change systems starting two or three decades ago. Unless of course, none of your encrypted files and messages from years past contain anything you'd prefer not to be seen by others. In which case, why did you bother to encrypt them?

"One would think that tenants have the fundamental right to privacy in their home,"

You've never spent any time in Texas (Austin excepted) have you? Yes, you have made a reasonable assumption. But, no, it's not true. The authentic Texan answer would be to buy a gun and shoot something that needs killing. Your door lock perhaps. Or maybe your landlord.

Expecting logic to apply to anything involving cryptocurrency is probably a waste of your time. Come to think of it, pegging to actual currencies often doesn't work all that well in the long run.

I am a bit curious what the OpenLibra folks are up to. It seems a safe bet that whatever they are doing, it is more likely to benefit them than those who actually use Libra or OpenLibra.

The Douglas DC-7 had a cruising speed of 580kph (360mph) whereas a Boeing 737 has a cruising speed around 900kph. Even assuming that a modern design will be a bit faster than an aircraft designed in the 1950s it seems likely that electric powered aircraft will be a bit slower than we're used to. Not a big deal I think even on transcontinental or transatlantic flights. Transpacific and other really long flights would presumably be even more tedious than they are now.

Caveat1: I'm in no way, shape or form an aeronautical engineer. Maybe they they can do better than I assume with propellers nowadays.

Caveat2: I'm a bit dubious about battery energy density(technically "specific energy"?). IIRC, Lithium-ion batteries are not all that far from their theoretical energy density limits. And Current Li-ion batteries are pretty heavy. That's why a Tesla Model3 weighs more than a Toyota Camry despite the latter lugging around a fairly massive ICE and transmission. I'm told that on paper, some battery chemistries -- especially those that use atmospheric Oxygen as one of the reactants -- can approach fossil fuel energy densities. But I'm pretty sure that we can't build them today even in the laboratory and there's no guarantee that fossil fuel energy density batteries won't come with fossil fuel explosion potential or other drawbacks.

"Human's ability to fly, not as a special occasion, but on a regular basis — like to work and back — is long overdue."

Patience grasshopper. If we gave average humans flying cars, no structure or living entity on the surface of the planet would be safe. Before you can have your flying car, "they" have to solve all the problems of navigating autonomous cars. Then they have to solve them again along with a few additional problems in three dimensions. And we'd probably need a new -- much enhanced -- Air Traffic Control infrastructure. Not impossible. But it'll probably take a few decades, ... at least.

If you bought a flying vehicle today that could take off and land in your driveway and at your job, it'd cost a fortune, would require a pilot's license, the cost of the insurance policy would be eye watering, and you wouldn't be allowed to fly it anywhere near critical infrastructure -- which would effectively ground most us. A nifty inverter isn't going to solve any of those problems.

" It will be interesting to see if they deploy over China."

Given that satellites pretty much have to go round ... and round ... and round ..., any configuration that covers the US (including Alaska?) is of necessity going to cover China about equally well. Blame Newton, Kepler, et al for that. OTOH whether the Chinese give these things user-to-satellite bandwidth or allow ground stations on China's soil. That's a different issue. If the Chinese allow ground stations, they can presumably filter traffic at the ground station. Should they desire. Which I expect they likely would.

My question is whether there can possibly be enough bandwidth available to allow these extremely costly flying cell phone towers to provide anything other than pretty expensive voice and text messaging. I could, with some difficulty, envision them providing internet service to the Canadian Arctic, Great Basin, the Australian outback, Pacific islands, Sahara, and Central Asia and other thinly populated areas at marginally affordable rates. The huddled masses in the world's great cities would probably be better off financially with their local cell phone towers or landlines.

I expect most Americans will have to deal with Comcast and the like for all eternity. May the Lord have mercy on their souls.

let the chips fall where they may

Hopefully not an unfortunate choice of phraseology.

How does this happen? Well, one possibility is that current solar panels only convert on the order of 15-20% of the incoming solar radiation to electricity. The rest is either reflected of becomes heat. Take a big sheet of black material, put it out in the sun and make sure that it gets maximal sunlight, it's likely going to get pretty warm around the time of the Summer Solstice. Ordinarily, you'd expect the panels to be designed such that convection will keep them and their mounts from combusting. But maybe if you work at it, you can screw up the mechanical installation sufficiently to set either the panel, it's mounts, or maybe even the roof, on fire.

I think the ultimate source may be at https://techxplore.com/news/20... And, yes, it's mostly BS I think. Radiative cooling can work and was used in times past to make ice on near freezing nights in desert areas of Iran and India. But I'm having trouble figuring out how their proposed "system" -- a bunch of 40 cm high 25 cm on a side boxes covered with a magic polymer film can generate more than token cooling. IIRC solar radiation has a large IR component. That's why solar hot water which uses IR is much more efficient than solar PV which doesn't use IR. If the magic film doesn't reflect IR, I'd kind of expect the box to warm rather than cool if the sun gets to it. Anyway, my take is maybe OK for a Science Fair project if the humidity is low and the box can be placed outdoors in the shade. Practical utility -- probably none.

"Heat is the vibration of molecules rubbing against other molecules."

Sort of and close enough for many purposes. Strictly speaking heat is said to be the sum of all the energy of molecular motion in a substance. Vibration in solids and sometimes liquids. Kinetic energy in gases and sometimes liquids. And I believe that rotational energy in gases and liquids counts as heat as well.

I think the "vibration of molecules rubbing against other molecules" is closer to temperature (average molecular energy) than heat (total molecular energy) But I could be wrong about that. I'm lousy at physics.

Feel free to look it up. You'll find about as many definitions/descriptions as there are people trying to define it.

Not a lens? I think that if you want to focus IR, you can do that with a parabolic mirror? Maybe more like a "mechanical filter" in radio work that "stacks" a bunch of narrowband resonators to end up with a bandpass filter with a tailored bandwidth? You construct a bunch of filters with different center frequencies? And you follow each filter with a photovoltaic cell tuned to its center frequency?

Yeah. Maybe that would work ... maybe ... I'd anticipate a few annoying problems actually getting the pieces to play together. But maybe it can be done.

One thing though. Photon energy is directly proportional to frequency. IR photons are low frequency and therefore not very energetic. Do they have enough oomph to operate a photovoltaic cell? Probably a simple calculation, but beyond my pay grade.

I RTFA yesterday and I'm as confused as you are. I don't think the article author understood what the scientists told him or her. My best **GUESS** is that "they" take "waste heat" which is basically non-coherent, broadband IR radiation and pass it through the nanotubes which act as a bandpass filter that emits only a narrow band of IR frequencies on the far side? That filtered signal can then (conceptually) be converted to electricity with 80% efficiency by a suitably designed cell? What happens to the rest of the IR which is rejected(?) by the filter? I have no clue. Reflected? Absorbed and re-emitted? Transported through a wormhole to a galaxy far, far away? I would think that almost all the energy in the IR would be in the portion that has been disappeared, not the portion that is passed through and converted to electricity. i.e -- the overall conversion efficiency -- total_IR_in to electricity_out would likely be **VERY** low?

Anyway, this sounds like it might have practical uses -- perhaps in sensors or communications. But it's far from clear to me that converting "waste heat" to electric power is one of the potential practical uses.

"sometimes that do anomalies Temporal .guys go to Way"

or should that be

".semitemos taht od seilamona laropmeT .syug og ot yaW"

?