There are two factors to battery life, the first is the number of charge cycles and the second is the age of the battery. Over time the battery pack will lose capacity. For Prius owners, this process would be gradual and they likely wouldn't notice right away simply because the Prius is a hybrid.

I'm willing to bet that an analysis of older Prius vehicles would show that the battery pack has much less capacity that it did as it was new. Does this mean that it "needs" to be replaced? With a hybrid, it's less of a concern. What if it was an EV? I'm willing to bet that most owners would be demanding a battery replacement because their range would have dropped dramatically.

In the case of the Prius, the battery is used within a certain power/speed ranges (up to about 15 mph), then it switches to gas. This means that the battery pack is under much less stress than the battery pack on an EV. So, while a Prius might go more than 150K miles without having to replace the battery, most of that will be using the gas engine and not the battery pack. Plus, since the battery pack is only used during certain situations, a loss of capacity would be relatively minor with the exception of lower gas mileage. For an EV, a loss of capacity would be very noticeable as range would decrease by a lot.

Battery tech has not improved that much over the last 20 years. Yes, we now have Lithium batteries with no memory and advanced charging systems, but the amount of energy that a battery holds hasn't improved much. So, why do tablets, laptops, and phones last much longer? For two reasons, the first is that the electronics have become smaller which allows a bigger battery to be fitted in the same case. The second is that we have learned how to improve the energy efficiency of electronic components. Perhaps there will be battery capacity breakthroughs, but so far we have just seen gradual improvements.

I would be comfortable with most people on here changing their brakes. After all, most of us would research the components that are needed and select upgraded parts that work better with our cars, research the process through youtube videos, repair manuals, experts in forums, etc. and then take the time to ensure that everything was completed to specification. We would then test it and make any necessary fixes.

How is that any more scary than the mechanic in the shop, usually the least experienced guy, rushing to get 4 cars out the door on a Friday afternoon?

Most geeks would make excellent mechanics... In fact, most cars are now just rolling computers and thus the EFF efforts...

Did you zoom in?

I agree that from a high level view it looks pretty barren, but if you zoom out quite a ways you will see that it seems to be an area of China that is quite arid, so you won't see a lot of greenery. They have modern buildings, streets, athletic fields, etc. Zoom in and you can see this.

If you want a comparison, take a look at Phoenix Arizona on the map. It looks pretty barren and ugly too on satellite. One difference is that most home owners in Phoenix landscape around their houses so when you zoom in you see trees, lawns, cacti gardens, etc....

Better yet, how about a nice set of 5.1 surround sound headphones. You get a fun new gadget and she gets a good nights sleep... Win-win....

Most Mensa members are just like everyone else, the only difference is that they can solve puzzles a bit better. It doesn't make then any less susceptible to being conned by a good story.

However, If you don't want to learn how to drive. That's up to you. Deliberately limiting yourself seems silly to me....

That's like saying that you don't want to learn how to tie shoe laces. Maybe you don't need that skill today as you could just buy Velco shoes, but it would severely limit your choices and you might need it in the future. Not being able to drive will severely limit your job opportunities. Throughout time it has been proven that the people with the largest toolbox of skills are usually the most successful. Learn as many skills as you can!!!

The rest of us prefer to grow, learn new skills, explore, etc. Personally, I'm an explorer at heart and like going to new places that are not a stop on a public transportation line....

The answer here is to rent out space at a local shared workspace facility. That removes the distraction from working at home, gives you social interaction with other professionals, and reduces the need for the company to own or lease large buildings.

Amazon.ca does have some stuff that is cheaper. The problem is that Amazon.ca has next to nothing in comparison to Amazon.com. For example, my sister bought a high end ASUS laptop a few years back for about $200 cheaper on Amazon.ca than it was on Amazon.com. Also, my Dad bought some replacement batteries for his portable battery packs with free shipping for a better price than he could get them anywhere local and for a price similar to the Amazon.com prices. For the most part, though, it seems that Amazon.ca is a placeholder. It doesn't look like Amazon is serious yet about growing in Canada.

Canadian Tire still exists, is still popular, and has been growing revenue. I don't know where you live, but most Canadians still shop at Canadian Tire. I'm thinking that you're a bit out of touch.

I go home to NB during the summer for a couple of weeks and always end up having to go to Canadian Tire for something for the boat, camp, etc.

It sounds like this is something would would be noticed shortly after they were locked out. If so, then why not just recover from nightly backups to the point prior to being locked out. You shouldn't lose much data, if any, assuming that it was caught right after being locked out.

Of course, this all falls down if they weren't doing proper backups.

My preference is the Kensington Expert Mouse trackball for FPS games (billiard sized trackball). I find it to be more precise than a regular mouse and requires less desktop space. I tend to use the keyboard for programmable buttons and just use the two standard mouse buttons.

Julius Caesar

Yes, yes, he wasn't a Julian per se, but I stand by my answer.... (grin)

The article talks about synchronization of time between systems and processes, not accurate time, as in my watch is 5 minutes fast.

If a self driving car is seeing something in front of it and launches an app to determine what that object is, then that app needs to return an answer before the car hits the object and in time to brake to a stop, if necessary. It needs a time signal to understand how much time it has left. The problem, in this situation, is that without some sort of accurate time signal and time synchronization, the object recognition app could take more than the remaining time to develop an answer. Of course, you could launch a second app that acts as an emergency braking program that will hit the brakes in time, even if the object recognition app hasn't returned a result. The problem here is that you still don't know within a rigid level of certainty that the emergency baking app will complete in time.

In many ways you can see this exact same problem with inexperienced drivers. It takes them longer to process what's in front of them and decide to hit the brakes or not. An experienced driver almost has an automatic awareness ("muscle memory") that gives them an advantage when reacting to situations that they have encountered before.

My thought is that as these scenarios become "learned", they can be moved to "muscle memory". For example, most firewall devices rely on application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for real-time firewall rule evaluation. It seems to me that self-driving cars will require their own version of ASICs that contain "rules of the road" and evaluation shortcuts to handle real-time events without having to rely on time signaling.

A number of animals do not have plurals, they have a group name:

Deer --> herd
Fox--> skulk
Rabbits --> warren
Sheep --> Flock

http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/abou...

Any more than that leads to trouble...