61367129
submission
cartechboy writes:
You own a smartphone and a laptop, and you've likely experienced your device's lithium-ion battery performance degrading over time after repeated charging cycles. Why? The simple answer is each time you charge and discharge the batteries they lose a little capacity. While you won't notice this every day, you will after a year or two. The technical reasoning behind this has to do with how the ions move through the battery change the physical structure of the electrodes. In a lithium-ion battery, lithium ions move from the anode to cathode through a non-aqueous electrolyte. As they do, the physical structures of the electrodes are very slightly altered at an atomic level. During discharge, they wear at irregularities on its surface in a non-uniform way. In the future, there might be a way to possibly coat the cathodes with elements that resist crystallization, but a commercially-realistic timescale for such advances will be years away.
61303353
submission
cartechboy writes:
It's no secret that the National Automobile Dealers Association has been trying to block Tesla from selling cars directly from consumers, but to date, it has been defeated countless times in many states. Now NADA put out a release and promotional video touting the benefits of dealer franchises, something Tesla has shunned. NADA mentions price competition, consumer safety, local economic benefits, and added value. While NADA argues its points, there's no question that Tesla could easily turn around and argue right back with valid counter points. There may be some truth to NADA's claims, but there are some gaping holes in the arguments that can't be ignored, and I'm sure Tesla won't. Hey NADA, you scared?
61268635
submission
Daniel_Stuckey writes:
It hopefully doesn't come as a surprise that your friends shape who you are. But we tend to think of that on a micro level: If your close circle of friends tends to have tattoos, wear polo shirts, or say "chill" a lot, it's quite possible that you'll emulate them over time—and they'll emulate you too.
But what happens on a macro scale, when your friend circle doesn't just include the dozen people you actually hang out with regularly, but also the hundreds or thousands of acquaintances you have online? All of those feeds may seem filled with frivolities from random people (and they are!) but that steady stream of life updates—photos, rants, slang—are probably shaping you more than you think.
A massive Facebook study recently published in PNAS found solid evidence of so-called emotional contagion—emotional states spreading socially, like a virus made of emoji—on the social network.
61268615
submission
cartechboy writes:
Come on, you didn't think Google was going to let Apple take over your car without a fight, did you? Of course not. Now that automakers are taking Apple's CarPlay system seriously, and starting to put it into production, Google's set to unveil its own automotive operating system known internally as Google Auto Link. The search giant plans to unveil its system at a software developer conference this month. Interestingly, Auto Link is the first production developed in conjunction with the Open Automotive Alliance, a group of companies including Audi, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, NVIDIA, and Google itself. Like CarPlay, Auto Link won't be an "embedded" system, rather, a "projected" one--an operating system that uses a driver's own smartphone operating system. We'll obviously learn details soon enough, but for now, we are left to wonder whether it'll be Apple or Google that ends up owning the automotive market.
61268177
submission
cartechboy writes:
"Made In China." It's a sticker we all know too well here in the U.S., and yet, it seems not everything we buy is made in China. To date, there haven't been Chinese-built cars in the U.S., but we keep hearing they are coming. Now it seems it's about to become a reality, as Chinese-built Volvos will be arriving in the U.S. as early as 2015. The first model to arrive will be the S60L. The payoff for Volvo if it manages to convince buyers that its cars built in China are just as good as those currently built in Europe is vast. Not only will it save on production costs, but it will help buffer against exchange rate fluctuations. Volvo's planning to make China a manufacturing hub, and that makes sense since it's now owned by Chinese parent company Geely. But will Chinese-built cars be just as good as European-built cars, and will consumers be able to tell the difference?
61237039
submission
cartechboy writes:
The Toyota Prius is pretty darn popular, especially in California. One might think that hybrid sales are on the rise as gas prices continue to fluctuate, but it seems hybrid sales in the U.S. might be peaking. Researchers at IHS Automotive found that U.S. hybrid sales haven't kept pace with the rest of the market. In the automotive world, conventional wisdom states that adding a model to a brand or segment will increase sales--but that hasn't happened with hybrids. The number of hybrid offerings has almost doubled from 24 in 2009 to 47 in 2014--but U.S. hybrid sales haven't dramatically increased. In fact, hybrid market share actually declined from 2009 to 2010, and then again from 2013 to 2014. So if consumers aren't buying hybrids, what are they buying? It seems some hybrid early adopters are now switching to plug-in hybrids or electric cars stating that these models are just nicer to drive. Is this already the beginning of the end in some way for hybrids, or is it merely a blip on the sales chart?
61236731
submission
cartechboy writes:
For the most part, you probably have a simple understanding of how your car's brakes work. But a race car, that's a whole different beast. Brembo's the biggest name in the brake industry, and it just released a video explaining the technology that goes into the brakes on a Formula 1 race car from pedal to caliper. Obviously it starts with every component being beefed up from a normal braking system, but there's also aluminum monoblock calipers, carbon rotors and pads, a brake-by-wire system with a redundancy in case of an electronic failure, and a kinetic energy recovery system (KERS). Of course, KERS is the most interesting bit as the it allows for smaller rear calipers than before which of course reduces mass. Believe it or not, all of this stuff ends up trickling down to mass-market cars eventually, it's just a matter of time. So the next time you tap your brakes, remember, that technology was likely proven on a race car at some point.
61235477
submission
mrspoonsi writes:
The Skunk, built by Desert Wolf, is designed to "control unruly crowds without endangering the lives of security staff," and is reportedly already being adopted by South African mine owners. Equipped with a 4,000-strong clip and four paintball gun barrels, the Skunk can fire up to 80 projectiles in a single second. It can carry dye markers, pepper spray bullets or even solid plastic balls, which somewhat stretches the definition of "non lethal." The hardware also carries strobe lights and on-board speakers to disorientate and warn the crowd, as well as a FLIR thermal camera for night vision operations.
61235319
submission
waderoush writes:
To corrupt the old Churchill quote, e-mail is the worst form of communications, except for all the others; it's one of the only pervasive, non-proprietary standards for communicating across organizational boundaries. But that doesn’t mean we’re stuck forever with our overloaded Gmail and Outlook inboxes. For the first time in a couple of decades, it’s possible to imagine workplaces where teams coordinate their work not primarily over e-mail, but instead using alternatives like task management systems (e.g., Asana), file sharing systems (Box), advanced calendar systems (Tempo), or Facebook-style social feeds (Yammer). A deep-dive article in Xconomy today looks at such attempts to redefine the atomic unit of work, and at startups like Handle that aim to make old-fashioned e-mail more productive and pleasurable. Big, successful companies like Facebook, Apple, and Google have stopped depending on e-mail alone to get things done, argues Dustin Moskovitz, the Facebook co-founder who now helps to lead Asana. ‘The secret sauce of why these organizations do so well and grow so quickly,’ he says, is that ‘they have figured out the way groups should organize.’
61233425
submission
jfruh writes:
The scene was a little surreal. Bill Gates, who became one of the world's richest men by ruthlessly making Microsoft one of the word's most profitable companies, was giving a commencement address at Stanford, the elite university at the heart of Silicon Valley whose graduates go on to the endless tech startups bubbling up looking for Facebook-style riches. But the theme of Gates's speech was that the pursuit of profit cannot solve the world's problems.
61096361
submission
cartechboy writes:
You know that time you were driving along and suddenly remember that you forgot to shut your garage door, or turn the lights off? Soon that will be a thing of the past because you'll be able to control your home from behind the wheel of your car. New technology is being developed by Japanese firms Toyota and Panasonic that will allow you to contact an existing cloud-based Toyota Smart Center which then links with Panasonic's cloud system. An example scenario would be an application linked to a vehicle's GPS data can remind the user to turn off the air-conditioning before leaving home, and then enable them to turn it on remotely before returning. The two firms began working on the technology a year ago. This is the future, and it's all controlled via the cloud.
61060045
submission
cartechboy writes:
Remember back in the day when we all thought we'd be driving flying cars in the future? Well that clearly didn't happen, though it still might in the future. But somewhere inside Toyota there's a team of engineers who think hover cars might be a thing, and apparently there's a project underway at one of Toyota's "most advanced' research and development areas. We aren't talking Jetson's flying car, more like a car that merely hovers "a little bit away" from the road. Probably a few inches with the aim to reduce road friction. With no wings or ridiculous speed, this is probably no simple process. No one really knows how long Toyota has been working on the idea, or how far along it is. Basically, don't expect flying Priuses any time soon...
61053723
submission
cartechboy writes:
A while back, Local Motors said it was going to 3D print a car at this year's International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago in the fall. The design of the car was crowdsourced and the contest attracted over 200 entrants. The winning design was just announced and it was submitted by Michele Anoe of Italy. His Strati impressed the judges with its combination of strong character--expressed through complex 3D surfacing--and practical design that would work well with 3D printing. The printed car will use electric power, and it's intended to demonstrate 3D printing's potential as a manufacturing process for lighter, more efficient vehicles. It'll be interesting to see Local Motors take this design and 3D print it later this fall.
61052257
submission
garymortimer writes:
A DJI Phantom Vision owner lost sight of his drone and the return to home feature kicked in. The only snag, the stadium was in the way. Its owner knows its there as he attached a GPS pet tracker for unexpected events. A different spin on the boy next door asking for his ball back.
