I don't see why you doubt a priori that there is a cost saving here. A high pole is likely much more expensive than a low one since it needs a much higher stiffness in order to prevent it from swinging all the time. High poles may be a costly necessity to allow the use of high-efficiency, high-power HPS lamps and to prevent dazzling road users with bright light sources close to the horizon.

LED lamps are much easier to design for a specific light distribution than HPS lamps, so they could have kept the same number of high poles if that had been cheaper. I'm sure that the road planners actually do a cost analysis.

According to TFA, it's about the TLD: something censored from google.fr, .de is not censored from google.com, even if requested from an EU IP address. It's not about censoring search results on google.com for a for a user located in the US. It is not about where the data centers serving those TLDs are located and whether they are owned by a EU-based subsidiary or not. Google could easily serve all those TLDs from the same ip address and data center if they wanted, but that is not the point.

We can agree or not about whether the right to be forgotten is a good thing or not, but let's make sure that we understand the actual conflict between G and France. I think the French have a point here.

"As far as efficiency goes there doesn't look to be much difference at the moment between sodium vapor lights and LED lights."

Strangely your reference actually states: "For example, a 30W LED street light can often replace an 80W High Pressure Sodium lamp. The reason for this is directionality. LED street lamps are very directional and the light output is much more even then by other street lamps."

Apart from that, I suspect that HPS lights are difficult to make efficient at low light outputs, such as what you need for narrow streets and footpaths where a high-power lamp mounted high up would spill too much light outside the road.

"With charge times measured in hours, what are all the people who rent or park on a street going to do?"

In Netherlands, many municipalities offer to install a charging station (about the size of an old, coin-operated parking meter), on the street, close to your home, along with two parking spots that are reserved for electrical cars. Together with the tax breaks, this makes e-cars quite popular. You don't get a personal spot, but this way the risk of not being able to recharge is limited.

Note that the electricity isn't free: you have to use a smart card to activate the charging pole. I'm not sure what they charge per kWh. Probably a bit more than the residential rate (0.21 EUR/kWh).

a non-profit organization would be the best route.

If you want people to fund such an NPO, you'll need to describe how the NPO is going to be governed and what safeguards you have to prevent/deal with mismanagement or lack of consensus on how to run the business.

This is what they say on the Kickstarter page:

Isn't the Smithsonian federally funded? Good question! Federal appropriations provide the foundation of the Smithsonian's operating budget and support core functions, such as building operations and maintenance, research, and safeguarding the collections. Projects like Reboot the Suit aren't covered by our federal appropriations, which means we can only undertake them if we can fund them some other way. In other words, we won't be able to do this project without the participation of Kickstarter backers.

Actually I wonder why 'piquancy' or 'pungency' (like in pepper) is not considered a sixth taste. It is sensed by a specific receptor and it is triggered by a variety of compounds: various capsainoids from peppers and compuonds in black pepper, mustard/wasabi, raw garlic, and so on.

"miniscule compared to the toxic stuff released during the generation of the extra electricity required for the incandescent bulb."

That depends on the type of exhaust scrubbers fitted to the coal power plant and the type of coal used. I'd wager that technology exists and is actually being used to make the exhaust pretty much free of toxic stuff. The sulfur is converted to gypsum (used in drywall), the ashes are an additive to concrete, etc..

What cannot be suppressed is the (nontoxic) CO2 emission. It would be good to quantify things beyond "a lot" and "much more". Electricity can be converted to electricity to electricity at 1 to 2 kWh/kg depending on who you believe (can't be bothered to find out why different values exist). Assumie a CFK lasts 3000 h (actually they should last 6x longer, but it seems to be too optimistic for many use cases) and an incandescent 1000 h. A 60 W incandescent will use 180 kWh over 3000 h, i.e. 90 to 180 kg of coal. The CO2 emission is about 3.5 times that weight.

$200 for an 80x80 FLIR camera? Which model is that? I'm looking at the FLIR selection, but the only one that comes close is an IR plugin for an iPhone, 80x60 pixels. At a 9 Hz frame rate, I don't think that sensor would be suitable for analyzing road obstacles while driving, never mind the resolution.

You don't use high-resolution cameras for this job. You use a highly sensitive normal camera and then you use the thermo camera right next to it for object detection and for gain control on the primary camera.

That would sound plausible, except that the image that they show in the video clip (0:28) is a fairly high-resolution fully thermal image without blending with a visible-light image.

It's thermal infrared cameras. The color of the clothes doesn't matter. Except maybe if they cover themselves in aluminum foil, which would appear to be very close to the temperature of the environment.

I was going to rant about how this thing is going to dazzle pedestrians, but fortunately, the video shows that it will mainly lighten up their legs. Wheelchair riders beware, though.

Anyway, the system as described uses thermal IR cameras. I'd say that technology is way too expensive even for high end cars. Thermographic cameras capable of around 200x150 pixels are commercially available for around 5 kEUR and I suspect that that resolution is still too low to recognize a pedestrian at 50 m distance and at the same time have a reasonably wide field of view. You can get 80x80-resolution systems for around 1 kEUR, but those will definitely be useless for the present purpose.

"no real attempt to move the launch platform up to 80,000 feet or so using gas balloon technology. I would have thought this would be feasible, and could result in a substantial fuel saving."

The fuel cost of a launch to low orbits is not for the altitude, but for gaining enough speed to stay in orbit, i.e. about 8 km/s. The gravitational energy becomes significant if you need altitudes comparable to the earth radius (6400 km).