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Comment Google should talk with Tesla (Score 4, Insightful) 236

As Google expands beyond Web search and seeks a foothold in the automotive market, the company's eagerness has begun to reek of arrogance to some in Detroit, who see danger as well as promise in Silicon Valley.

Danger to their present business models, you mean.

Personally, I think that Tesla would be an excellent company to talk with. Elon Musk speaks their language.

Comment Re:ummm...nope (Score 4, Interesting) 73

Which would be odd, seeing as how in US parlance 'fridge magnet' does indeed mean a magnet intended to attach to your fridge, typically containing advertising or cute sayings, or holding things like sheets of your kid's art up.

Per wiki a typical fridge magnet is 5 mt, or .005 Tesla. So this experiment is more like 3000X as strong as a fridge magnet.

This thing is 10X as strong as most of my 'fridge' magnets, but then I like to play with neodymium ones.

Going by my experience, their 'fridge magnets' would hold to a fridge very well without requiring excessive strength to pull off. Most of mine you have to think about it a bit.

Oh, and 16T is enough to levitate a frog.

Comment Re:So....far more than guns (Score 1) 454

For example: for the first year after purchasing your first handgun, that's the single most likely cause of death in your life, approaching almost 50% of deaths.

Wouldn't that be the cart leading the horse? If you're committing suicide with a gun in 'under a year' my first thought is that there's a very good chance you bought the gun specifically contemplating suicide.

The suicide problem is huge, and we're not actually losing all that many young adults to anything else. Disease is down, car fatalities are down, other accidental deaths are down, etc...

I feel like it would be extraordinarily intellectually dishonest of me to accept handguns as public health issue, and not alcohol. They are both serious concerns and need to be acknowledged as they are, not stewed in pots of rhetoric.

I agree. Heck, my proposals of fixing schools and our mental healthcare system would actually address suicide as well as violence and other crimes, so bonus.

Comment Re:Red flag facts (Score 1) 135

As I understand relevant statutes, such as the corresponding US statute (17 USC 512), protections like "common carrier" and "safe harbor" stop applying once there exist "red flag" facts that reasonably should alert a provider to a subscriber's wrongdoing.

Well, a solution to that is that once notified of legal proceedings, you shut off your anonymous AP.

Comment Re:Shill (Score 5, Insightful) 534

The problem with suing them is that you can only target the corp's assets. Structuring it in such a way that the 'company' doesn't actually have any is pretty standard.

I'm thinking that the BATFE needs to come inspect them to make sure they're in full compliance with the NFA. The regulations are completely different between being a government agency like a police department and a commercial company like a 501(c)(3). I'm also willing to bet that they use government letterhead to purchase restricted stuff.

BATFE: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives
NFA: National Firearms Act. Federal law regul

Comment Re:Far-fetched? (Score 3, Informative) 104

For comparison, an RFID reader has the same FCC-imposed limits as WiFi, an EIRP of 4W (or put another way, a 1W transmitter with a typical 6dBi antenna).

RFID readers are also generally bigger than a cell phone, utilize a protocol developed specifically for low power(Bluetooth is incredibly complex and high-powered in comparison, actually doing handshakes and stuff), don't do any more than transmit a number(essentially), and work at ranges a whole lot less than 200 meters.

If we could build a wireless power receiver that doesn't need a specific power transmitter that can transmit powerfully enough to be heard at a couple hundred meters into something the size of a dime ALL small consumer devices would be looking to use it. Bye-bye chargers for the most part would only be the first step.

Comment Re: better idea (Score 1) 501

Personally, I'm thinking about experiments in tsunami protection which involves rods/posts set up in such a way it creates a resonance effect that disrupts the whole thing, reflecting the energy back upon itself. Neat stuff, but I'm not an expert and am probably not using the right words.

Still, setting up some massive wind turbines in the correct patterns should have the same effect at massively less cost, and actually provide power to boot.

Comment Re:and paying the price too (Score 1) 461

but as the day approaches and the reality of replacing the German nuclear base load supply with Russian gas, gigawatts of domestic coal expansion and French nuclear exports sets in the policy will probably be set aside.

Especially with the prospect that Russia might turn off the gas again... It's done it before.

Comment Re:How about some numbers? (Score 1) 461

According to this article, wholesale electric power contract prices in Germany and neighboring countries peaked last November at 50.50 Euro/MWh, which I believe works out to just under 7 cents/KWh. Ask folks in California whether that's "outrageously expensive".

That's wholesale price. Consumers never see that.

Even better, due to regulations requiring grid participants to purchase renewable energy when it's available, the price of non-renewable power is sometimes actually dropping to or below zero [businessinsider.com]. That's right, there were apparently brief intervals where nuclear and coal plants were paying customers to draw power from them.

It's not exactly a free market then, is it? How would you like to walk into a store for product X - and be told that you can't buy Brand A at $y, because you're required to buy Brand B at 10x $y? Because B is green. Let's say that $y > $100

Comment Re:Most interesting part... (Score 1) 461

At this moment the US has choosen to increase the oil production, which means that it will take longer to get your ROI on solar panels.

Natural gas production, you mean. The amount of oil burned for electricity is insignificant for the cost of electricity. Meanwhile cheap NG generators burning cheap NG producing electricity is keeping the cost of utility electricity low, increasing your ROI.

Comment Numbers don't look right (Score 3, Interesting) 461

Every licensed installer in my state charges 6-10x the wholesale panel price and will only do a fixed bid install that is about 4x the T+M labor cost.

Citation? Which state? My Anecdote: I walked into the solar place in my town and the first thing they proposed when I laid out my situation was that I do the install myself. About the only labor I couldn't do myself would be the final hookup. They'd provide the plans and instructions.

I'm not seeing any requirements to use a licensed installer here. It might be a state/city requirement.

In effect I can put up the 100 or so pannels to meet my current needs for 30k including skilled labor yet the cheapest installer it looking for 100+ with the government programs taking it back down to 80 meaning they are making 70+k on whats quoted as a 2 day job with a 5 man crew.

100 panels? How much electricity do you use? 25 would cover the average household in the USA(10,837 kWh/year, each panel producing 437 kWh/year, even in the middle of the country). Standard panels today are 250-300 watts each. Even the cheapest pallet of 20 300 watt modules will run you $5,270, or $26,350 in panels alone, without racking or inverters(~$4.5k). Checking other online sites shows similar pricing.

As such, wanting it done for $30k means the workers would be doing it for free. The $70k worth of 'labor' does seem inappropriate.

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