There wouldn't be so many injuries if such a large chunk of the people setting them off weren't drunk ;)

My fundamental objection to these devices is that there isn't enough of a UI change to fit the form factor they're on.

One of the reasons Windows Mobile was kinda lousy was because they tried to shrink a desktop OS down onto a phone (and now they're making the same weird mistake by scaling a mobile OS up to the desktop). Fundamentally, these are different things, so they need different ways to interact.

These watches seem similar. A mobile OS that's been massaged a bit, but realistically makes more sense on your phone than on your wrist. Watches were (are) great for the amount of information they deliver in the time they deliver it. That is, a small snippet of info, delivered incredibly quickly. Your interaction with it is minimal. For a few things, like meeting notifications, maybe these smart watches make sense. But for emails or texts, they fall down a bit in my mind because you need more information than is readily absorbed at a glance.

One of my other problems with them is that except for notifications, they don't really make you any faster. Assume that you get an email, and your watch lets you know. From the demo slides I've seen, the watches let you see some information, delete the email, open the email on your phone, or start composing a reply--also on your phone.

For the last two operations, you have to pull the phone out anyway; I'm not sure what you get by starting to open them while you're still staring at your wrist. Deleting the email from your watch is potentially useful, but that's a bit of a stretch; I don't think I've ever seen an email that it's urgent to delete.

So, yeah. The problem isn't with any of the things you mentioned, the problem is that I think we're still trying to figure out exactly what the watch could possibly be used for, and basing the operation on the operation of a completely different device with a wholly different interaction model and parameters.

If there's was any country with that special combination of whale-hunting and pyromania to do it, it'd be Iceland ;)

WE don't lack the will.

We lack the power.

The ones with the power lack the will (or desire) - because their power depends on control of generation of energy through resources they control; namely fossil fuels. They're not going to give up that power while they have it. Not voluntarily.

The reason thorium never hurt anybody, is because it is complete fantasy. Nobody has ever built one that has demonstrated any degree of industrial reliability and usefulness. Thorium is up there with Fusion, as far as being a demonstrated technology.

??? I don't see that all. The links are just google image searches on "reykjavík fireworks", "brenna gamlárskvöldið", and "jóðhátíð í eyjum". Oh, hmm.... I'm betting that because I'm searching from Iceland I get differently biased results. I know that my regular google searches at least bias towards Icelandic sites. Okay, well, basically picture this for an hour while several dozen of these are ongoing, or summer festivals like this.

We kinda like fire.

I use the eWon, and MBConnect devices all the time, one or the other goes in to every machine we build. They are VPN gateways with secure login so we can remotely work on a machine instead of having to immediately travel to it to check the slightest thing.

None of our customers leave the internet side of the device plugged in. Unless we are on the phone with them, and they are by the machine, it is unplugged. As an additional level of security, the device has a keyswitch connected to it that must be turned on to allow it to connect to the internet, just in case it gets plugged in.

Most devices are managed through the respective manufacturers applications via the cloud, so we just have to download their application, and log in, and it handles getting the keys, and establishing the secure VPN tunnel. It is possible to manage your own infrastructure, but I don't know of anyone who is large enough, or chooses to do it.

I put the eWon app on my brand new work PC, now I have to check if I got pwned the first day got my new Lappy:( The remote access apps are one of the few things that does not get installed on the VM. Connecting to the VPN, through the VM can really be a pain!

The MBConnect devices are really cool, they can even verify the entire system, and reload anything that does not match what is stored inside itself. Besides providing a huge obstacle for anyone wanting to Stuxnet the system, they allow a customer to replace a PLC with a spare, reboot, and have everything come back to normal, and they allow for easier updating of a whole system by passing the program to the MBConnect device, and having it apply the update locally.

Nothing more scary than flashing a PLC remotely, and rebooting it. If it doesn't come back online, you might have to take your Lappy, and leave on an immediate road trip!

Hmm, interesting, they actually limit how many can be shot off?

Yes, your description of size, wind, etc are accurate. Also it's a rather moist climate, not much fire risk. And most buildings are concrete. And the city is half surrounded by ocean. And since the money goes to support the rescue services, the incentive is to encourage people to shoot off as many as possible, rather than the other way around.

Whoops, included the wrong link for the "The whole city looks like this" part - it was supposed to be this link. The first one is a link to just a small festival display.

What's the actual price there?

I think a lot of people spend so much here because the profits go to the rescue services. Also, I guess since we have no military we've got to blow something up ;)

Irrelevant. You're still limited by supply rates and feed wire heating.

LOL. No, you most certainly are not. Supply for the vehicle is from local storage, charged slowly over time, ready for fast discharge when needed

LOL yourself. You were crediting ultracapacitors with fast charging. Now your "counter" is saying that no, you're talking about slow charging. Well, make up your damned mind.

As for feed wire heating, that's absurd. At these lengths, and these voltages, it's simply not a problem.

At the *thousands of amps* needed to surpass the charge rate capacity of li-ions, yes, you bloody well are talking about wire heating problems.

I know that with multiple high energy motors, motor peak current demands can be very high, particularly in the case of high power motors that batteries aren't good for, and that semiconductors can be arranged for very high parallelism.

Oh, please, get real. The supercar-performance Tesla Roadster uses a 215kW motor peak, max 100kW sustained. To drain the whole pack with the pedal to the floor constantly (which, as noted, the car doesn't support) would take over 15 minutes. The fastest you can actually drain it without overheating the car is about 45 minutes. And this is for a car that does 0-100 in 3,7 seconds.

Learn to admit when you make a mistake and move on. The concept that there's sort of car performance limitation from not being able to instantly discharge the whole pack is utterly absurd.

Oh heck no, not even close.

Then follow the instructions in the very next sentence that you ignored. But given that few car parts last longer than 10 years, and most ultracapacitors don't last that long, I think that's an unreasonable demand.

Montana's not a great environment for batteries at times. I'd have to rig a cover for it all, probably lose 6 inches of depth in the bed. Hmmm. :)

Montana? You did see that one of the supercap info sheets linked showed that they're only rated down to -25C, right? Why would you choose that over good li-ions which go down to -40C (some varieties go even lower)? Are you fond of getting stuck out in the cold?

It's only when they are unused for long periods of times that they don't.

In fantasyland, perhaps. Check the specsheets for actual real-world ultracaps, like the ones I linked. They explicitly state that capacity declines from having energy stored in them. So unless your plan is to fully discharge your car after every use, yeah, good luck with that.

The idea that their lifespan in use is ten years is a complete myth.

Yeah, what do those stupid nuthead supercap manufacturers know about their own products? fyngyrz, you tell them what's what!

Yes, yes, of course you can break them if you misuse them

You can break them by precisely the same method you said that you can't, as per the spec sheets of the manufacturers.

UC won't overcharge if a continuous supply is applied to them that is under their rated voltage.

The spec sheets explicitly contradict that.

Show me one in continuous, low cycle rate use that needs to be.

The spec sheets all explicitly describe the exact same internal resistance rise with time. There's tons and tons of peer-reviewed research on it. But no, no, we have fyngyrz here to correct all those stupid boffins!

According to all manufacturer information out there, the primary loss mechanism is not cycling but energy storage. You can cycle them tons without problem, but each second you leave them charged raises their internal resistance. The higher you charge them and the further the ambient temperature is from the optimal, the faster they die.

Look on EBay. Search for them. Look at all the used ones pulled from equipment. Why do you think that is?

For the exact same reason I can do that for batteries?

All of mine are; my initial curiosity resulted in a buying spree, and that eventually turned into the DC supply for my radio station, which requires about a kilowatt and a half when fully dialed up. I get a solid hour of runtime there, more without the linear running. Not a battery in sight. That's been working flawlessly since it was put into service just before 2000.

Whoopee. Because I'm sure you're storing full power in them continuously when you're not using your station, right, and they're operating and being stored at outdoor temperatures? Surely that's the case, because otherwise you'd be making a stupid analogy, and I know you wouldn't do that!

Well, you can say anything you want, but I don't think you've demonstrated any of this

Yeah, damn the manufacturer spec sheets!

Yes, that's exactly what I was talking about. Are you actually ignorant of the rate of technological disruptions we've seen pop up in tech after tech?

And your reason for presuming that they'll apply to supercaps but not to batteries, when the trend is precisely the opposite, is...?

I don't get why American fireworks displays are so small. I'd love to see this copter fly through fireworks in Reykjavík on New Years Eve. The Macy's 4th of july fireworks display in New York shoots off about 10 tons of fireworks. Iceland (most of the population being in Reykjavík and its adjacent municipalities, about 250k people) shoots off about 600 tons of fireworks on New Years, the weight of about 5 adult blue whales. The whole city looks like this for literally about an hour. It's not organized, it's just everyone shooting off an average of about 9 kilograms / 20 pounds per family - some more, some less. You see fireworks like the stuff that copter flew through in little towns of 1-2 thousand people. Even if you only count organized displays, it just seems to be so disproportionately little in the US. Pretty much every festival that does fireworks here shoots off several tons. Or otherwise just burns pretty much everything that's not nailed down. Or as more often is the case, both at the same time.

Standard denialist garbage. What amount of fact is enough to convince you?

How about peer-reviewed data with a peer-reviewed statistical correlation?

Is that really that unfair of a requirement?

I've never seen any studies of aluminum or titanium rebar. That'd be pretty darned costly, though, especially titanium.

Carbon fiber rebar seems to outperform bassalt rebar, though it's a lot more expensive. They're both very similar in form and how you work with them.

More common than either of them is fiberglass rebar. But the performance benefit of basalt rebar is a lot better than glass rebar, and it's not that much more expensive. Also, fiberglass can suffer slow degradation from moisture - not as fast as steel-rebar concrete degrades, but it's a known issue. Both carbon and basalt fiber are very resistant to this, and experience little to no degradation with time.

Two attempts to deal with rebar rust have been plastic coated rebar and stainless steel rebar. By and large, plastic coated rebar has proven to be a failure - in some places it's even shortened the concrete's lifespan. Stainless rebar usually offers some increased lifespan, but not as much as you might expect, and it's really expensive.

I mentioned earlier that how you work with composites versus metals is different. With metals, they're very heavy; the composites are light and easy to transport. Metals need tools to bend; the composites you can bend by hand. However, composites can't do sharp corners like metals can; you have to cut them and then bind the cut pieces together, or purchase premade corner pieces. But thankfully composites are much easier to cut than metals. The metals handle much higher temperatures than composites, due to the plastic binding. However in practice it doesn't affect fire resistance much, the huge thermal mass of the concrete and the fact that it outgasses generally prevents excessive fiber delamination. The biggest problem is experience. Few construction crews have experience working with non-ferrous rebar. Fiberglass has been researched the longest, nearly half a century, and while it's proven itself, the construction industry is generally very slow to take up new technology. Basalt fiber rebar has only been in pilot projects for a 20-30 years. While by all standards it appears to be more long-term durable than fiberglass (in addition to being stronger to begin with), it'll probably be even longer before you start seeing it in widespread use.

Not only do I like the stats it presents, especially versus its price point, but I also like helping promote new technology that I like. Also, there just seems to be something fitting about a home built in Iceland being with basalt rebar, basalt dust pozzolan, with basalt sand and gravel, and built on basalt bedrock ;)

Near-instant charging.

Irrelevant. You're still limited by supply rates and feed wire heating. Top end li-ion cells can charge in a matter of minutes on the small scale. In practice it's supply rate and cooling that limits you.

Much higher discharge rates

Irrelevant. What, you think cars have multi-megawatt inverters and motors? And again, top-end li-ions can have couple minut discharges.

and that without developing significant heat, because their series resistance is negligible

Slow charge and discharge of li-ions (normal usage) is usually over 99% efficiency. Fast charge is usually 94-97%. Fast discharge is irrelevant because the rest of the car can't handle using multiple megawatts at once (what, you think the car's going to get 0-100 times measured in milliseconds?) Older supercaps are less efficient than older li-ions due to an increase in the internal resistance (more in this in a minute)

Enormously more charge/discharge cycles than anything in battery tech

10 years-ish isn't good enough for you? Fine, reduce the depth of discharge to get 15-20 years. You'll still be an order of magnitude higher energy density than ultracaps.

you could will ultracaps used in a vehicle context to your children

You've been way overstating (and repeating a common mythology) about ultracaps. They don't actually last that long. Here's an info sheet from an ultracap manufacturer. Scroll down to "Life Expectancy".

The life expectancy of supercapacitors is identical to aluminum electrolytic capacitors ... Supercapacitors operated at room temperature can have life expectancies of several years

It's pure nonsense that they last forever. Some are rated for longer. For example Ioxus rates theirs at 10 years. But 10 years is pretty common for higher end EV battery packs, too.

This concept that ultracapacitors are something that you can "gift to your children" is just bull. They degrade, too. Following an exponential degradation curve dominated by increasing internal resistance.. So please stop with this nonsense.

Much wider range of usable performance over temperature; much colder, much hotter.

As per the above, operating out of the ideal temperature range cuts your ultracap lifespan. Commercial ultracaps aren't generally rated for wider temperature operating ranges than high-end li-ions, as you'll see from the various linked caps in this post, which are just a random sampling (for example, the Cooper Bussmann aerogel caps are only rated down to -25C, which is not impressive at all). And there's only a rather small range that's necessary for human-operated vehicles on the surface of the Earth. The ambient temperature outside isn't going to reach cold enough to liquify oxygen or melt zinc.

Much less need for recycling

Show me a single type of ultracap which can be recycled at all.

They can't be overcharged at their rated voltage

Overheating of the supercapacitor can occur from continuous overcurrent or overvoltage charging. Overheating can lead to increased ESR, gas generation, decreased lifetime, leakage, venting or rupture. .... General Safety Considerations: Supercapacitors may vent or rupture if overcharged, reverse charged, incinerated or heated above 150C

They have completely predictable, and 100% stable, discharge curves , so a five year old ultracap performs just as well as a brand new one,

False, as pointed out above, internal resistance rises with time.

In short, please stop with the standard BS mythology of what ultracapacitors are, because it's just not in accordance with reality.

The show-stopper is insufficient energy density

1 1/2 orders of magnitude worse volumetric energy density and 1 1/2 orders of magnitude worse gravimetric energy density, and even worse ratios on price and falling further behind... no, surely they're right around the corner from taking over! Let's ignore the fact that in the lab supercaps are struggling to reach the energy density of lead-acid while batteries are working on beating *gasoline*.... no, clearly the foreseeable future will be supercaps!