Comment Dupe... (Score 4, Informative) 110
Posted by samzenpus on Thursday May 29, 2014 @10:04PM from the how-do-you-stack-up? dept.
Posted by samzenpus on Thursday May 29, 2014 @10:04PM from the how-do-you-stack-up? dept.
128GB - $129.99 USD ($1.02/GB)
256GB - $199.99 USD ($0.78/GB)
512GB - $399.99 USD ($0.78/GB)
1TB - $699.99 USD ($0.68/GB)
But what wouldn't a benevolent progressive government pay for the ability to collect more data? Especially from the phones voluntarily plugged-in by unsuspecting residents?
From TFA:
The benches also connect wirelessly, using Verizon’s network, to the Internet to upload location-based environmental information, such as air quality and noise-level data.
I don't think they're trying to upload data through your phone without your knowledge, I believe the "cell phone charging" and "connects to the cell network" are unrelated, aside from the fact that both are supposedly powered via the solar panels.
The impetus for the study was an age-old complaint of some Facebook users: That going on Facebook and seeing all the great and wonderful things other people are doing makes people feel bad about their own lives.
So although conventional wisdom might say that seeing positive things makes you happier, here there have been accusations to the contrary -- positive things about other people makes you feel lousy about yourself. This study ostensibly looked at that (and I think it found something along the lines of conventional wisdom: happy posts make you post happy stuff, a [dubious!] proxy for your own happines...).
If Facebook knew (and how would they?) that X makes you depressed, then yes...there might be some moral issues with that. But it seems that Facebook asked a legitimate question -- especially so given that it was published in PNAS.
That said, yeah...it feels a little shady. But then, when I log onto Facebook, I am certainly not expecting any aspect of the website to be designed with my best interests in mind!
...pumped hydro...has an input-to-output efficiency of about 65 percent.
I think that's a pretty low number, perhaps typical of older designs. Newer designs can have efficiencies upwards of 80%:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
http://people.duke.edu/~cy42/P...
http://www.colorado.edu/engine...
...and nuclear generation doesn't need storage to be useful and meet demand...
I believe nuclear tends to be quite bad at load following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Of course, it is excellent for always-on power, but not ideal for surges or lulls. In certain cases -- L.A. in the summer, for instance -- solar power, although intermittent on the whole, is intermittent in the most useful way: on a nice clear hot day, there's the biggest demand for A/C and the best solar power production.
...but no-one ever adds the cost of storage to the cost of renewables when comparing prices.
Well...staunch proponents with an ax to grind may not include such costs, but then, staunch proponents of coal with an ax to grind will ignore any externalities related to airborne toxins. Any legitimate study of renewable energy should really include storage costs.
With all that said, I really think Germany did the wrong thing with the whole anti-nuclear energy thing. To paraphrase that quote about democracy, nuclear is the most dangerous form of energy generation, except for all those other sources we've tried ( http://physics.kenyon.edu/peop... ).
Yeah, don't really care. The cost of heating/cooling doesn't bother me...
I think that's where others will disagree -- heating/cooling costs in the colder/hotter cities (in the US, at least) can be well into the hundreds of dollars per month. (And that doesn't include any environmental aspect, which it sounds like you don't care about either.) For some, a) saving money and b) running at a lower energy footprint is worth having an internet-connected thermostat.
Plus, there could be small advantages to it, as well -- driving back from the airport on a winter night, you could turn on the heat so it's nice and toasty when you get back. Sure, if this thing ends up being a security nightmare, I agree -- not worth it. But everyone's assuming this thing will be hacked instantly and cause nothing but trouble when, AFAIK, that's just speculation.
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things. -- Doug Gwyn