I wouldn't have normally bothered, but the distinction is relevant given TFA. The switch to an acellular version of the pertussis inoculation is what reduced the duration and efficacy of protection. It's not that the old pertussis vaccine was ineffective, it's that we've been using a different vaccine for the last 20 years, give or take, and the new vaccine ended up losing a lot more efficacy than they expected.

I agree that a good shared standard might allow for efficient production of batteries by removing the market fragmentation that dissuades people from starting up "gigafactories".

That said, Tesla hasn't demonstrated a superior battery technology. The 2013 Leaf's range was rated lower than it really should have been. It offered a "Long life" charging setting, where it would stop charging at 80% instead of 100% to extend battery life. The EPA decided to base the estimated range on a 90% charge to split the difference between the two options, because the 80% charge was "recommended". Tesla allows you to stop charging at any 10% increment between 50% and 100%, but because lower charges aren't "recommended" the EPA assigned a range based on a 100% charge.

Factoring that in, at 100% charge, the 2013 Leaf should have a range of ~84-85 miles. Assuming 84, on a 24 kWh battery pack, that's 3.5 mi/kWh. The Tesla gets ~3.1 mi/kWh. The Tesla is heavier thanks to all those extra batteries, which is a big part of the difference; I suspect that if you made a Tesla with a 24 kWh pack, it would have similar efficiency to the Leaf. Battery tech is hard to improve; Tesla and Nissan are using the same basic tech.

TL;DR: Stacking more batteries is hardly a demonstration of superior technology.

Not according to Nissan's website. The base S model has a 3.6 kW charger. You can add a charge package for $1250 that upgrades it to a 6.6 kW charger and adds a Quick Charge port, but the base model doesn't support 6.6 kW charging or a Quick Charge port by default (similarly, the mid-level SV model comes with a 6.6 kW charger, but requires an add-on package to get Quick Charge). Might be hard to find a completely base S model without the charge package, but Nissan claims it's an option.

Nissan doesn't have problems with charge times (at least, no more than Tesla). The base model takes 8 hours to charge from empty, but they offer a 4 hour charge option (that runs off the same Level 2 charging stations) and a Quick Charge option that gets an 80% charge in 30 minutes. Pretty similar to Tesla.

The "ap" part of "Tdap" stands for "acellular pertussis", not just "and pertussis". The acellular variant of the vaccine has fewer side-effects, but also provides less protection, and less long lasting protection.

The WaPo story includes the strips over the course of the article.

It's not about gas vs. diesel (or electric). It's about variant designs sold in the U.S. vs. Europe. They don't sell exactly the same car. Even with the same fuel type (though they might beef up the U.S. engine to handle the extra weight), U.S. cars tend to do a little more poorly on mileage due to the weight of the extra safety features.

I suspect most of the remaining difference is in the weight of the various crash safety features. Cars in the U.S. are expected to provide protection in a crash with the tanks they now market under the name "SUV"; in Europe, this isn't as much of a consideration.

A short key right now is 512 bits (0.5 KB). A longish key right now is 4096 bits (4 KB); many sites use shorter keys because high traffic sites can't afford the bandwidth and CPU required to transmit and process even a 4096 bit key for thousands of connections per second. Squaring even the short end of that range would produce a 262144 bit key (256KB). That's a ridiculous amount of data overhead just to initiate a connection, and performing math in a space that large would tax the CPU of individual computers; if a web server is performing that much math for every connection, you'd dramatically increase the overhead to serve web pages.

TL;DR: Squaring key length make math hard, hurt computer.

That's not how big-O notation works. O() is not a function, you can't just rearrange the components. There isn't even a constant factor involved in either version of what you wrote. Who modded this informative?

Three decades, not four, but your point is valid. I'm not really trying to defend them. I do think the location and era (largely Jim Crow) influenced this more than a general lack of medical ethics; it's a lot easier to justify atrocities when you don't see your subjects as truly human. Think less "conspiracy of unscrupulous doctors" and more "complete inability to see members of another race as people".

You're confusing the Tuskegee airmen with the Tuskegee syphilis experiments. They have nothing in common besides being trained (the airmen) and conducted (the experiments) in proximity to Tuskegee, AL. Tuskegee is an almost exclusively Black/African American city, so most things that are associated with Tuskegee are also associated with black people.

If you read another sentence or two, you'd note that there was no verified treatment for syphilis for the first decade of the experiments. Providing palliative care to those with incurable diseases is a net good; there are legitimate philosophical arguments over how much information a doctor should provide when the information cannot be understood or acted upon in a meaningful way.

Clearly this was unethical, but recall, this was Jim Crow era. A lot of people considered black people sub-human. Sure, the doctors didn't tell them they had syphilis. But the South made it nigh impossible for them to vote, hold elected office, get a meaningful education, buy property, use public services, receive a fair trial, etc. We were kind of awful in general; the Tuskegee experiments weren't that much more awful when compared to everything else we did.

They weren't deliberately infected, they weren't soldiers, (they were sharecroppers, and they were provided with free medical cares, meals and burial insurance as compensation), and for the first decade of the study, there was no verified cure for syphilis (the efficacy of penicillin wasn't verified until the 1940s; the study began in 1932). It's hard to blame the architects of the study for studying an incurable disease to chart its progress, though obviously their successors lacked any moral compass.

The facts of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment were bad enough, but you're making it seem even worse. This is the part of the problem. Actual malfeasance gets exaggerated even further; it changes from failure to take action (treat patients like they should have) to deliberate malevolence (intentionally infecting patients). If you reinterpret the world as one in which everything is explained by deliberate malice, of course you'll believe in conspiracy theories.

Sadly, in this particular case, despite being completely off base about Tuskegee, there were in fact acts of active evil perpetrated in Guatemala. Unlike Tuskegee, the experiments weren't on U.S. citizens, only lasted three years, not forty, and the subjects were treated for the conditions they were infected with (though some still died). Doesn't excuse it, but again, it's not a good basis for proving the existence of long term, actively malevolent policies.

The profitable first class mail business has been decimated by email over the past decade, thanks in no small part to the contributions of Steve Jobs and Apple

Huh? What the hell did Apple do for e-mail (beyond what every OS/application developer has done)? "OMG, they make computers, therefore, all things done on computers are their responsibility!"

Yes, because when it comes to the state taking someone's life, we shouldn't make absolutely sure it's warranted...