Tell that to the families of people killed when a large airplane crashes because some idiot flew his drone in the flight path. It's only a matter of time. I'm sure it will comfort them when the idiot is arrested, if they can find out who was piloting it. While there are plenty of responsible people flying drones, there are also plenty of idiots who ignore the existing laws.
I ran into a similar issue. I work on bootloaders for my company's 64-bit MIPS processors and due to size constraints disabled the normally enabled exception code (my bootloader has an exception handler). Anyway, it is usually easy to find the fault since the result is -1. It took me a while to figure that one out. If it were zero I probably never would have found the problem.
My lawn is turning brown. A lot of grass is grown for the beef industry which is one of the biggest wastes of water in the state. It takes something like 6,000 gallons of water for each pound of beef. Almonds don't really grow anywhere else in the country and California produces a majority of the world's supply and 99% of the almonds grown in the US. Almonds are native to the Mediterranean climate of the Middle East. The funny thing is that wild almonds are highly toxic and contain an enzyme which creates cyanide. Each wild almond can contain 4-9mg of cyanide. Sweet almonds contain a small fraction of that since they lack the enzyme. Almonds are considered a cash crop due to the high prices they demand. With the drought, though, a lot of farmers are cutting back on their water usage, though last weekend when I drove along highway 120 I saw at least one orchard running their sprinklers in the middle of the day with pools of water around the trees.
99% of the walnuts grown in the US are grown in California. The Persian and English walnuts are the most common for eating and like almonds like a Mediterranean climate. The black walnut is much less popular and there are varieties native to both the eastern North America and California and some other places.
Before the major drought, growing these was not a major issue in California. Unlike other crops, though, it takes years until a tree can produce and they don't do well in other areas of the country.
Hops, barley, wheat, etc. needed for beer can be grown just about anywhere and don't necessarily have to be grown in the state for the brewers.
Except that Apple tends to do even that in a non-standard way. In Apple's design, for example, they swap ground and the mic hookup compared to everyone else. Also, at least one set of Apple headphones would refuse to work unless they were given a 30v pulse to enable them according to someone I know who designed some non-Apple hardware and had to reverse engineer why the Apple headphones wouldn't work with it.
More and more of the treated wastewater is being reused now though only a few places recycle it back into the main drinking water supply. Most ends up for agricultural use and for things like golf courses, parks, etc.
Actually, residential usage has remained flat even though the population has doubled. Residential usage per-person has dropped significantly, otherwise the percentage used by the cities would have gone up and agriculture would have gone down. 80% of the water is used by agriculture and the most profitable crops tend to be water intensive, i.e. almonds. California grows most of the almonds in the world and 99% of the almonds in the US due to the climate. They don't grow well elsewhere. Most of the fresh fruit in the country is grown in California. We should just stop exporting to the rest of the country. Agriculture is only a small fraction of the state's GDP and are overly represented in the state government and tend to be very conservative (i.e. republican).
There's very little fracking occurring in California. From what I understand, the geology doesn't work well for it since much of the geology is already rather fractured unlike the geology of where fracking is common.
Agriculture, despite being so big in California is only around 6% of the domestic product since the state's economy is so diversified.
California uses very little coal. Most power is generated by natural gas, renewable sources (hydroelectric, solar, wind, geothermal, biomass) with very little coal power generation in the state. Electricity in California is also about the most expensive electricity in the country, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me other than the fact that the California Public Utilities Commission is corrupt and gives utilities cart blanche to raise rates whenever they want.
The problem is that 3 tons of water per minute is only a drop in the bucket compared to what's needed. People don't realize just how much agriculture there is in California, no other state comes anywhere close.
My only PC that always boots Windows 7 is my home theater PC since I use the Windows Media Center to record broadcasts and use it as a DVR. As far as I know, Linux is not a solution because some of the channels I record are set not to copy and MythTV will not support that. I also have a Ceton Echo which lets me view the content in my bedroom. This also only works with Windows 7. None of the other packages I see out there can handle the protected content.
Actually that's false. Most compressors are AC motors though some applications are moving towards DC. Brushless AC motors are fairly easy to make and don't require any electronics to control them, though high power ones will use a capacitor since 3-phase power is not generally available for residential use in the US. Most fans, blowers and compressors are AC motors. Some higher-end blowers use DC when full variable speed motors are needed.
DC actually works quite well over long hauls. One nice thing about using HVDC instead of AC is that you can carry more current over the same wire since you no longer have to deal with the skin effect. It also makes it easier when it comes to synchronization. With HVDC they still have to periodically switch the direction of the DC current throught he lines.
I'd say Musk relies far less on tax dollars than Jobs did. Apple, despite all their billions, pays virtually no taxes. Tesla got a government loan and paid it off early with interest. There's a tax subsidy for buying an electric car, but it's no different if you buy a Leaf or a Model S. The carbon tax credits Tesla gets are not a major source of revenue and they don't come out of your taxes, but from companies that pollute.
Unlike Jobs, Elon is an engineer. He doesn't go around suing everyone over stupid patents either (he makes them available free of charge to everyone, using them for protection only).
As it is, there have been more Volt fires than Tesla fires. In three separate tests the Volts tested by the NTSB caught fire. There was at least one Volt that have caught fire, one after it was rear-ended and the 12v battery caused it to burn up, completely burning up the interior of the car. None of the Tesla fires affected the passenger compartment.
Since Tesla's change there has not been a single new fire in the Tesla. Tesla is losing money, but they're doing what they need to do. All that money is being spent on growth which is required. They're making a 28% profit on every car sold and that money is being folded back into the company. The money is being spent on designing and tooling up the model X and model 3, which is exactly what they should be doing, as well as the gigafactory and building out their charging network, building service centers, etc. Given the demand for the model X (over 26,000 pre-orders) and their grid storage (sold out for the next year within a week), it looks like they're making the right choices.
The company is in a rapid growth phase. It would kill them to stop and try and be profitable now (which is what a short-sighted Wall Street CEO would do), since they need to look ahead to the future. Their future looks fairly bright given the high demand and customer satisfaction, especially given that they're doing virtually no advertising.
GM's Volt, while popular with Volt owners, has not been flying off the lots. It has been outsold by the Leaf, BMW i3 and Model S recently.
As for Ontario, I would not be surprised if they build out there in time. They're prioritizing their network based on need, building out the routes most owners need before building out less common routes. Their map of proposed chargers seems to be constantly changing, where I see superchargers popping up in places or along routes that were not previously shown. As far as cold climates, given it's one of the most popular cars in Norway my guess is that it does quite well in cold climates.
While the chemistry may be similar to laptop batteries, the batteries are NOT laptop batteries. There are many differences in order to increase the longevity and reliability and to reduce costs. Fires are a non-issue. There were a few and Tesla went back and addressed the problem and there have been none since. The risk of fire is much lower than for a gasoline powered car. The instances that caused the fires were rather extreme when you consider one of them was due to the car plowing through a concrete wall at 110MPH. Everyone walked away from that, I don't know that you could say the same thing if that happened with a Volt, if it could even reach 110MPH. The other was from running over a heavy duty trailer hitch which stuck up like a lance. Given where it hit, it would have seriously injured the driver of a Volt if it had happened since it would have gone right through the sheetmetal floor and into the driver's legs. In all cases, the fires did not affect the passenger compartment and they were rather slow burning. The one with the trailer hitch was made much worse by the fire department, who cut a hole in the top of the battery pack.
As for shaky companies, one of those companies recently declared bankruptcy and had a massive recall over a problem that was known for years that killed and injured a lot of people. When the model 3 comes out I don't think there will be much comparison between the Bolt and the model 3. Tesla will have a huge advantage over GM since their cost of batteries will be significantly lower and their batteries will be smaller and more energy dense. Tesla's electric motors are also less expensive since induction motors do not contain any rare-earth magnets. With the skateboard design Tesla uses the handling should also be better and it should have more space inside. It also wouldn't surprise me if Tesla offered all wheel drive for the M3 and incorporated other technologies from the Model S like self-driving support. Tesla also manufactures much more of their own stuff than GM. GM outsources a lot of stuff that Tesla does in-house, like the infotainment system (which runs on Linux and uses the Qt toolkit for the GUI), injection molding of plastic and more. It allows them to be much more nimble than a traditional car company and gives them tighter control on quality and to address problems more quickly.
It's also cheaper to drive a Tesla on a road trip than a Volt. The Superchargers are free for Tesla owners to use for the life of the car, though for the 60 and 70KWh battery it's a $2000 option to enable the support. It doesn't cost Tesla much in electricity to do a full charge, especially for those charging stations with Solar. Tesla is also using their batteries for grid storage to even out the load.
As for time added to a trip? I just drove from the Bay Area to Reno and back. I stopped to charge and eat dinner. My car was fully charged long before I was done with dinner. On the return trip I stopped at a fast food place to eat lunch. My car was charged before I finished my lunch. After visiting some friends along the way I stopped at another place for dinner, again, the car was fully charged long before I finished dinner. Hell, I had to make a pit stop in Truckee. I added another 40 miles of range during that, and I didn't need to charge my car. In the end, I spent zero time waiting for my car to charge. My car spent more time waiting for me. If I do need to wait, I don't have to wait at my car. My phone will alert me when I have enough charge to continue on.
"Ninety percent of baseball is half mental." -- Yogi Berra
