Comment Re:CLEAN, SAFE, (Score 1) 343
"Too cheap to meter" is the best example of a straw man argument I've ever heard. Absolutely no one believes nuclear energy is too cheap to meter.
Comment It's borderline disingenuous... (Score 1) 343
...to put those big scary "$4.4 billion" numbers in there without context. It sounds like a lot of money (especially to people unfamiliar with the industry) but that number is the retail value of approximately 18 months of electrical generation for units 2 & 3 at San Onofre.
Comment Re:First.... (Score 1) 288
$608 million decommissioning seem less ridiculous, this still seems much more expensive then it ought to be.
For perspective, that plant likely produced on the order of a quarter-million dollars worth of electricity EVERY HOUR, round the clock, for decades, so $608 million is not a very exciting figure, even if true.
This is actually great news. It means that decommissioning only costs the equivalent of 3 months worth of full-production output--a bargain.
Comment Re:Nuclear power is too expensive (Score 1) 288
Rowe was constructed before there were widespread protests against nuclear power, and it was still too expensive.
If 1960s technology wasn't good enough, we may as well give up. That's what I always say.
Comment Re:They're just avoiding liability (Score 2) 332
All it would take is one kid getting sick
Urine is sterile. It literally can't make you sick at the concentrations in question. Case dismissed.
Mercedes Pooh-Poohs Tesla, Says It Has "Limited Potential" 360
cartechboy (2660665) writes "They say you shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you. Maybe it should go you shouldn't trash talk the company you partner with. U.S. head of Mercedes-Benz Steve Cannon was just quoted as saying future service of Tesla's vehicles could be 'limited,' and that while it's great, the market could be more attracted to other luxury automakers once their products hit the market. Cannon also suggests that the current infrastructure isn't up to maintaining and fueling electric vehicles, in particularly Tesla's stores and go-to servicing can't handle high demands. Naturally he said Mercedes has the 'whole network' to put customers minds' at ease. Sounds like fighting words to me. Hey Mercedes, where's your Model S competitor?"
There is a reason that Jim Rogers drove around the world in a Mercedes.
Comment posterity (Score 2) 127
it will lose or gain only one second every 300 million years
Can't they just leave a note to the future people to click it forward/back at the right time?
If the clock in question supports 9-digit years, they could even set an alarm...
Comment Re:No thanks (Score 1) 218
You could have a secret number on a scratch card that needs to be transmitted to the phone for it to "suicide".
If the premise is that I can't even avoid losing my phone, how am I, as its sole curator, expected to keep track of this number?
Comment I can save Americans $4.3B/year (Score 3, Insightful) 218
Americans currently spend around $580 million replacing stolen phones each year and $4.8 billion paying for handset insurance.
At that factor of 8, folks, is why insurance is a bad investment. Americans could save $4.3B per year by not buying insurance with a poor ROI.
Are DVDs Inconvenient On Purpose? 490
Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes:
"Why do Netflix and a few other companies keep the DVD format alive, when streaming is more convenient for almost all users? The answer is not obvious, but my best theory is that it has to do with what economists call price discrimination. Netflix is still the cheapest legal way to watch a dozen recent releases every month — but only if you're willing to put up with those clunky DVDs."
Read on for the rest of Bennett's thoughts.
Ask Slashdot: Can an Old Programmer Learn New Tricks? 306
An anonymous reader writes "I have been programming in some fashion, for the last 18 years. I got my first job programming 15 years ago and have advanced my career programming, leading programmers and bringing my technical skill sets into operations and other areas of the business where problems can be solved with logical solutions. I learned to program on the Internet in the 90s.. scouring information where ever I could and reading the code others wrote. I learned to program in a very simple fashion, write a script and work your way to the desired outcome in a straight forward logical way. If I needed to save or reuse code, I created include files with functions. I could program my way through any problem, with limited bugs, but I never learned to use a framework or write modular, DRY code. Flash forward to today, there are hundreds of frameworks and thousands of online tutorials, but I just can't seem to take the tutorials and grasp the concepts and utilize them in a practical manner. Am I just too old and too set in my ways to learn something new? Does anyone have any recommendations for tutorials or books that could help a 'hacker' like me? Also, I originally learned to program in Perl, but moved onto C and eventually PHP and Python."
Comment Re: Cool (Score 1) 94
What do you imagine a replacement battery pack will cost for a school bus?
On the order of $0.10/Wh, by the time it matters. Modern Li cells are outlasting anyone's expectations in traction applications; they're not the weak link that you imply.
Comment Re: Add a range-extender engine, perhaps PV too (Score 1) 94
Unless you want to take kids on a field trip...
It doesn't make any sense to optimize for outlier trips like that, unless you have money to burn. Rather, you keep a few diesel buses around.
PV is better (economically, for efficiency, and for the grid) when it's stationary and grid-connected, and range extenders negate the benefits of the simple electric powertrain (bringing back ICE maintenance). A "range extended" EV embodies the complexity of both a full-power EV and a convention internal combustion powetrain.
Comment Re:Add a range-extender engine, perhaps PV too (Score 1) 94
PV could be installed, to also help with range
It doesn't need any "help with range". Fleet vehicles (like school buses) are already a near-ideal case for electrification; they follow well established routes and schedules. Range is either sufficient or not, and once sufficient, the marginal value of additional range is zero.
Comment Re:Economic problems with hydrogen power (Score 1) 551
Basically you have to get charging time down below about 10 minutes for at least 200 miles of range.
That's only required to make electrics practical for the last 3-4% of transportation needs. Several standard deviations of our driving can be met with existing technology. Overnight charging at 6-12 kW is ideal because it's cheapest, and it happens while you do other things (like sleep), and it's when the grid is the cleanest.
