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Comment Re:Not so fast, Thermodynamic laws are pesky thing (Score 1) 174

Wrong.

Guess what? BMW turbocharges practically every engine they make, so I'm guessing their engineers know more about this than you. I have one that actually has two turbos - specifically the 3.0L inline 6 twin turbo N54.

They aren't close to the engine for heat reasons - they are close to the engine because the turbo needs to be close to the air intake and exhaust at the same time, and that only happens at the engine. A turbocharger works by having the exhaust gases coming out of the engine at pressure (not heat, still mechanical work) spin a turbine which is connected to an air pump in the intake by a shaft. This spins VERY fast (150k RPM) so they also need to use a fluid bearing, so being close to the engine allows the use of engine oil as well.

It has nothing to do with heat, and everything to do with not having oil, air, and exhaust lines crisscrossing the whole fucking car.

Comment Re:power cars? technically no (Score 1) 174

Those are above several thousand feet of water, usually hundreds of miles away from any population. If they get hit, they are contained by the ocean they just sank into.

A land vehicle powered by an RTG has an incredibly higher chance of contaminating a piece of land that someone cares about, or having a fire put radioactive particles into the air that someone might be breathing.

Comment Re:RAID? (Score 5, Informative) 256

I was shocked when we got one of the MacPro6 units in, and I ran a disk benchmark on it. It was sustaining 950MB/sec, which is good enough to write 10-bit YUV 4:2:2 2k video at 117fps.

That is a realm you could only really get to with fiber channel previously, or a ridiculously expensive PCI-E card with SLC flash.

Comment Re:Not so fast, Thermodynamic laws are pesky thing (Score 1) 174

We're talking about cars here, right? At least, TFA is.

Currently, cars dump hot exhaust gases out the back end without doing anything with the heat, because it's a byproduct of the mechanical force created through ignition of fuel. IC engines don't use the heat very much - they use the expansion of gases to create mechanical work, and the "waste heat" blows out the tailpipe as, you know, waste.

If you could harness that heat in some way to create electrical or mechanical power, you're more efficient than today where that heat (read: energy) is used for NOTHING. I don't know why you seem to think that it wouldn't work, because auto manufacturers seem to think that it will (BMW, Honda - links in a previous post from someone else), and are engineering systems to do exactly that.

Comment Re:Nonsense (Score 5, Insightful) 294

It should also have a method of implementing a "standard change" - meaning a change that repeatedly happens, and has a good track record of being successful with minimal fallout. Implement a WSUS test server for having a patch test environment, and point some less critical systems at it. Should anything go wrong there, you'll then know what patches to NOT apply automatically to the critical infrastructure.

Change management and review is there to help you, not be a pain in the ass. Remember - if they sign off on your documented change, they share the responsibility should something go sideways.

Comment Re:Revolt? (Score 1) 818

The amendment process is the closest that the US Constitution comes to a legal path to revolt. However, there's only two ways to legally do that - having the so-called Representatives of the people pass it with a 66% majority, then having the Senate do the same, then having 38 states (presently) ratify it; or calling together a Constitutional Convention which requires 66% of the states to agree to (which has never happened outside of the original Constitutional Convention where the US Constitution was written).

You can't get 33 states to agree on the merits of motorcycle helmets, much less a reconfiguration of the entire legal system. And besides, you'd be depending on the current oligarchy to vote themselves less power either at the Federal or State level in either scenario.

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