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Comment Re:Needs functionality (Score 2) 381

"I guess if you didn't turn it on, and I'm calling BS."

I had a laptop of that era that lasted me days between charges at times, and the battery on it was old, I could easily see it going weeks with light use and a fresh battery.

It had a low power monochrome display, and was mostly solid state. The only moving disk was the 3.5" floppy, the OS was built in on ROM, it had 2mb RAM so there was plenty for ramdisk. The only thing that really hit the battery at all was the floppy, and with the ramdisk that didnt need to be hit very often.

Just because it isnt part of your experience does not mean it didnt exist.

Comment Re:Ted Postol very bias opinion. (Score 4, Insightful) 379

Actually, the key thing for them is "cheap". They need to keep costing sub-$1k missiles in the ballpark of these Iron dome systems - the more, the better. They might as well just omit the warheads to save money and increase range. Every $50k shot Israel fires with those systems costs 25 Israelis' annual tax contribution to the IDF. Every $55m system they deploy costs 27.500 Israelis' IDF tax contributions.

Palestinians are poor, but they're not *that* poor that they can't leverage those kind of lopsided financial ratios.

Comment Re:Subject bait (Score 5, Insightful) 379

No, in the case of Iron Dome, that's only PR too. They're shooting $50k+ missiles at $800 rockets. Even after factoring in that Israel's per-capita GDP is 20 times that of Palestine's, that's still a losing proposition, even *if* they had a 100% hit rate (which this article is suggesting it's anything-but) and assuming that you get the launcher, radar, etc for free instead of the actual $55 million per unit. It's in Palestine's best interests that Israel deploy as many of them as possible and try to shoot down every last rocket, because every shekel they spend on Iron Domes and missiles is a shekel they don't spend on jets, tanks, and bombs.

Comment That said... (Score 4, Informative) 60

... the greater your capacity, the less cycle life matters. If you want an EV that battery that will run a 250Wh/mi vehicle for an average 20 miles a day for 15 years, then you want it to cycle through about 30MWh. If you use a 100 mile (25kWh) battery pack, then that's 1100 cycles. If you use a 200 mile (50kWh) battery pack, then that's 550 cycles. If you use a 400 mile (100kWh) battery pack, then that's a mere 275 cycles. Actually, the improvement is even better than that in the real world, because the greater your capacity vs. how far you're actually driving, the more you can cycle the cells through a less destructive state of charge range rather than doing deep discharges.

A lot of people picture battery packs in EVs backwards, they think that things like hybrids stress the packs the least, PHEVs moderately, and EVs the worst. But it's reversed. If you look at how big hybrid packs are vs. how much electric range they hold, you'll see that they're disproportionately large, even after you factor in any differences in Wh/kg. The reason is that because hybrid packs get cycled so much, they have to keep the cycling in a very narrow state of charge range, only allowing shallow discharges. So if you only have a narrow discharge range, you have to make your pack bigger to make up for it. EVs can discharge through much more of their pack because they need fewer total cycles and only rarely go down toward the lower end of their allowable discharge range. Some EVs also let you limit the max that your pack charges up to to further extend lifespan (it's usually destructive both to use the very top end and the bottom end of the discharge range).

Comment Re:Correct me if I'm wrong, but... (Score 4, Informative) 60

1024 mAhg1 is excellent capacity even vs. brand new graphite or amorphous carbon, about 3x as much as graphite's maximum. Silicon's theoretical max is 8-10x that of graphite, but the main problem with it is durability, it tends to tear itself apart on loading. There are silicon anodes in some newer li-ion cells on the market, but the tech is in its infancy.

That said, the real papers you want to be on the lookout for are cathode improvements, there's a lot more potential for volume/mass reduction there than in the anode. But it seems to be a more difficult challenge. Getting a 3x improvement in anode density is absolutely not the same a getting a 3x improvement in battery life.

Comment Re:Little Bit of History Repeating. (Score 5, Insightful) 60

Commercial li-ion battery energy densities have continued to improve during that time period, including the commercial introduction of cells with silicon anodes. Of course, silicon anodes are a new tech, so there's a great deal of room for improvement, which probably won't come close to "maxing out" for a decade or more.

Of course, that said, this article is your typical fluff piece following the guidelines of fluff science reporting.

1. Present an oversimplified version of one technology challenge that may or may not address the biggest issue and certainly doesn't address all of them - but don't mention that.
2. Introduce an outside-the-establishment loner with a passion - or at least someone you can try to present as "outside the establishment" and glaze over anyone who helped him.
3. Loner gets a "vision" based on some everyday activity
4. Present their solution and make it out to be a huge revolution that will certainly solve all our problems - if they can only get corporate backing / funding!

I think these sort of articles hurt the image of science because people read them, think "OMG, all our problems are solved!", then when everything's not solved afterward, fail to trust science in the future. For example, in this case, the most important element to improve is the cathode, not the anode. And cathode improvements are less common and usually less major than anode improvements. There's also tons of different anode improvements out there in various stages of research. Pretty much all of the silicon ones get way better than graphite or amorphous carbon.

That doesn't mean that this isnt an important paper - actually, from looking at it, it looks pretty good. It's just not "all that".

BTW, anyone know how credible this journal is? I see it's hosted on Nature.com but not part of Nature, and I tried to find an impact rating for it but couldn't.

Comment Re:self-correcting (Score 0) 30

Sure.

Which is why I do not in any way defer to their judgements, but make my own.

"To draw truths from reading for yourself."

Drawing truths from the book with the longest continuous editorial history known to man, one that warns you it has been tampered with by scribes with lying pens (Jeremiah 8:8) is not an easy thing, it is a puzzle. But our creator gave us rational minds to solve puzzles with.

Comment Re:self-correcting (Score 1) 30

No, I am sorry but you are wrong. They were certainly not part of the original Bible. They were *added* to some Greek translations of the Scripture, somewhere around 100bc, but no one considered them Canonical until centuries later. We are talking the 4th century AD on the "Christian" side and perhaps a couple of centuries earlier on the Rabbinate side, but in each case it was a multi-generational project to ultimately *add* these books, to elevate the works of men to the status of scripture.

Comment Re:self-correcting (Score 1) 30

That may be a matter of opinion and perspective as well.

Those are late compositions in Greek and clearly not part of the original Hebrew Bible (properly called the Tanakh.)

The books you mention, along with the so-called New Testament books, both those declared 'canonical' by the Imperial Roman authorities and the other books that were banned instead, along with the Talmud, are all in my mind defensible and even in cases valuable, as Midrash, as Commentary, as a record of what men at the time thought on some important subjects - but NOT as scripture to be elevated to stand with the Tanakh, let alone to actually be set ON TOP of the Bible proper as so many do.

Comment Re:self-correcting (Score 0) 30

"What was the last time there was a retraction of inaccurate or harmful material from the Bible?"

It's actually a good question if refined a bit.

I would propose to you that what you see as 'inaccurate or harmful material from the Bible' is better defined as 'inaccurate or harmful interpretations of the Bible' and while retractions of those are not unheard of, they are certainly relatively rare.

I think the deeper point here is simply that the theoretical bright-line between science and religion has a worrying tendency to evaporate in practice, and simply pointing out that tel-evangelists are even worse is not much of a defense.

There's a huge difference between appreciating the scientific method and having faith in whatever the 'scientist' says - in fact they are mutually incompatible.

Comment Re:To what end? (Score 1) 219

"My impression, also from German newspapers etc., is that most germans including politicians are truely mad and are seriously considering to cool down relations with the USA."

As they should be, frankly the reaction seems inexplicably mild.

Can you imagine the reaction if the shoe was on the other foot? If this was a BD spy caught infiltrating the CIA?

A 'cool down' in relations would be a serious understatement.

Comment Re: haven't we learned from the last 25 exploits? (Score 1) 68

"Over the years, I've done a lot of work with games and simulations for training."

OK. That really doesnt have anything to do with the web, however. Sure, the web can be used to deliver the project - that doesnt mean it has to actually run inside the browser. There is a HUGE difference.

"We could not have produced this educational game with just HTML."

I get where you are coming from but I still think it's far off the mark. The web is not a game platform, that is not it's purpose, so 'we could not do games this way' is not a very telling criticism.

You can use better tools to make the games, and use the web merely to deliver the game. Where is the problem with that?

It would NOT be slower, clunkier, or more prone to error. It could be done using exactly the same technologies in virtually exactly the same way - the only difference would be very slightly less easy to get it started, and in return for that, your browser is no longer a malware vector.

Or, it could be done using technologies better suited for the purpose, in which case I would expect the results to be less clunky, faster, and more stable - but the development process would be more expensive as well.

I get why you would want to use RAD to lower costs, just not why you see the tiny convenience of running in the browser automatically as worth the cost of turning the web into a malware distribution network.

Submission + - Maldives Denies Russian Claims That Secret Service Kidnapped A Politician's Son

Rei writes: As was previously reported here, the Russian government has accused the US Secret Service of kidnapping the son of ultranationalist LDPR MP Valery Seleznev in the Maldives. The son, Roman Seleznev, stands accused of running one of the world's largest carding operations, with others charged in the affair having already been convicted; however, Roman had until recently been considered out of reach in Russia. Now the Maldives has struck back against these claims, insisting that they arrested him on an Interpol Red Notice and transferred him to the US, as they are legally required as an Interpol member state to do. “No outsider came here to conduct an operation,” president Abdulla Yameen stated. “No officials from another country can come here to arrest anyone. The government has the necessary documentation to prove it.”

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