I don't think they can just wait out the shutdown of the low-margin producers, then bump the prices back up. Or at least, they can't bump them back up very far, because the technology used by the low-margin producers will not be lost. It will likely get a little bit better. So they'll have to keep the price low enough that the low-margin producers can't re-enter the market.

It's even possible that tires get a little more longevity due to regenerative braking, which tends to be smoother and gentler than friction braking. The limited battery capacities of current EVs probably help as well, since they encourage efficient driving, which means no hard braking or acceleration.

I'm not sure if these factors make a measurable difference in tire wear, but it's plausible.

Lack of adapters has never been my problem.

This is arguably a dupe of Tumblr Co-Founder: Apple's Software Is In a Nosedive, but what the hey, it's still true.

Yes, they did. Both of them.

Okay, not scrum, powerpoints or con-calls, obviously, but both of them deeply relied on collaboration with others. Einstein relied heavily on chats with various friends, especially Besso, Solovine, Habicht and even to some extent his wife (during his early work, before they separated) to refine his ideas. There's no doubt that he was the ultimate source of the core elements of his theories, nor that he did nearly all of the work to elaborate them, but bouncing ideas off of others was critical to his method of work. Turing I know less about, but I know that he also worked as part of a team, and many of his brilliant ideas built upon the work of those around him.

I do think your examples are well-chosen, though, because I think they're examples of the sorts of people who least benefit from teamwork. For everyone else, it's even more important.

That I can't agree with. The beauty of a long-range wireless charger isn't eliminating the effort of having to walk to another room to plug in, and it isn't even to eliminate the effort of having to plug the cord into the device. The real value is in eliminating the effort of paying attention to charge state or making decisions about when to plug in. Given an effective long-range wireless charger of the sort that these researchers are attempting to build, your devices would just always be fully charged whenever you spend significant time at home or in the office.

I see a lot of value in a good solution to this problem.

Also, it's worth noting that more efficient devices and/or more energy density in batteries don't solve the problem, and in fact some ways they make it worse, at least for me. I had much more trouble with my phone battery dying when I needed it back when a charge lasted for a week than I do now that it only lasts a day, precisely because with a week-long battery I had to put more thought into when to charge it. With a day-long charge the thought required is limited to remembering to plug it in when I go to bed.

Phone-sized PV cells, when provided broad-frequency light of typical ambient intensities, even full sunlight, produce very little output. That wouldn't charge your phone very quickly. With, for example, LTE radios on, it's unlikely it would even maintain the charge.

If this system works, it's because they're aiming light of an intensity and frequency optimized for getting maximum power out of the PV cells. That's also the only way they could hope to get efficiencies anywhere near that of wired charging, even considering the rather low efficiency of your typical wall wart.

Unlocking the bootloader will erase the data partition.

(Android security engineer here)

Mod parent up.

This is the only way to be sure of what you're getting. The various rootkits (almost?) all include some closed-source binary which gets uploaded and run as root. Rather than using some hack to exploit some defect in your device's security and upload some random binary which does unknown things to your device, buy a device with a legitimately-unlockable bootloader. All Nexus devices meet this requirement. There are some Motorola devices that do, too, and there may be a few others from other manufacturers. Then unlock your device, install your new ROM (ideally, build it from source, but that's optional) and re-lock your device.

That will give you the control you want without exposing yourself to unnecessary risks.

I'm not saying this approach doesn't expose your data to risks, it does. The various third-party ROMs intentionally subvert various aspects of the Android security model. To really understand the risks, you need to understand Android security (I recommend "Android Security Internals" by Nikolay Elenkov), understand how your chosen ROM alters it, and understand how that will impact your usage. But it does put you in control, rather than the author of some random rootkit.

Oh, and note that it is important to re-lock your device. If you don't, anyone who gets your device can install their own custom ROM and get access to all of your data. Locking the bootloader ensures that the data partition gets erased before a new system is installed.

(Disclaimer: I work for Google, but this is not an official statement of any sort. It's purely my own opinion.)

I agree, as I pointed out. But it doesn't change the fact that the poster to whom I replied missed the whole point.

And when the lawfully signed and delivered warrant results in the obtaining of encrypted data of which the authorities can make no use, what then? I disagree with the idea that we should compromise our security infrastructure in order to enable government access on demand, but this is what Obama et al are really concerned about: the development of a world in which warrants are useless because the data itself is protected in transit, end to end, and at rest, with keys available only to the parties communicating.

You're surprised because you misunderstand the situation, because you've dramatically oversimplified it. Big corporations have influence but they do not "control" the government. They do attempt to influence its actions, particularly whenever government interferes with their business operations and sometimes when they think they can get government to interfere with the operations of their competitors, and they meet with some degree of success.

However, politicians still understand that corporations can't vote, and that they can't even contribute anywhere near as much money as private citizens can, assuming said citizens choose to make the effort. This anti-terrorist agenda is not a corporate agenda, by and large. Oh, there are a few corporations in the military-industrial complex who like the military side of it because it enables them to sell lots of expensive gear. But the spying, insofar as it works (which it mostly doesn't), reduces their business opportunities.

No, the anti-terrorist agenda is driven by masses of fearful individual citizens. Few of them hang out on slashdot, or work in IT organizations, so they don't have a loud voice here, but there are a lot of them, as is clearly evidenced by the utter lack of major political figures campaigning loudly for putting the NSA out of business. Said political figures understand where their votes come from, and aren't going to rock that boat. Now, if major corporate lobbying dollars started pushing one side or another of this agenda, they might do something, but outside of a few tech companies which are being hurt by their users' fear of spying (especially overseas), the corporate world doesn't care.

True, but irrelevant. Spying or the lack thereof has no effect on their security problems, which are mostly about their failure to properly secure information needed to do business with their customers. Communications encryption wouldn't have any impact on them, because this is data that you voluntarily give them in order to do business with them anyway. It's entirely unrelated to the question of government spying. Again, the only ones who care are the tech companies, and they by themselves simply don't have enough pull to override the politicians' healthy regard for the fears of their voting constituencies.

Wow. You sure can read a lot into a simple statement. Dude, chill.

I wasn't claiming brilliance, just explaining (in brief and at a very high level) my rationale for leasing an EV rather than purchasing one, as a suggestion that others looking at getting into an EV may wish to consider it.

Interesting analogy, because the "accuracy" in Interstellar actually was somewhat distracting to me because it made the areas that weren't accurate stand out more.

OK, so there are magic space aliens driving the plot at some point. That I didn't have a problem with. Magic space aliens doing magic, whatever, it drives the movie, willful suspension of disbelief and all that.

Infinite fuel space-planes and the magical spaceship that somehow carried enough supplies for a multi-year mission while looking way too small to do that, on the other hand - those annoyed me. If they hadn't gone for the "realistic" initial spaceship launch I probably could have binned those into the "magic space aliens" "suspension of disbelief" category and just ignored them, but when you go for "realism" you need to go for "realism" everywhere.

Sounds like it's the same with this movie. OK, so the hacking is super realistic, great. Too bad the rest of the movie isn't, making the contrast just that much more jarring.

(That being said, I enjoyed Interstellar. It's a good movie. The science stuff is still a bit bogus, but the core movie is good. Sounds like the same can't be said for Blackhat based on the reviews I've seen.)

LOL

The history of moderations on my comment is rather fascinating. It received over a dozen moderations, up and down, 40% insightful, 40% overrated (which is slashdot mod-speak for "I don't like what you said but it's not actually deserving of a legitimate downvote") and 20% flamebait. Apparently I hit on a rather contentious point.

IMO, the reaction says more about slashdot than it does about me... this is a forum that largely doesn't like to admit that racism is still a real issue. Not as much in Maryland as in the deep south, but Maryland was a slave state, though one which opted to stay with the union.

I also find it interesting that the AC I replied to didn't come back to disagree with my interpretation. That may, of course, be because he simply didn't see it. It may also be because I was right.

It's worth pointing out that Silver Spring has a much higher percentage of African Americans than Montgomery County as a whole, and that is the area the AC pointed to as being "very bad" in the perception of the rest of the county. He further pointed to the downtown area, which in many cities tends to be more heavily minority. Obviously, there's a strong correlation between race and poverty, and another between poverty and violence, so it could well be that he was referring to economic diversity. But there's a significant probability that he wasn't, or that his (and others' in the mostly-white county) interpretation of the "badness" of an area was colored by racial stereotyping.

Sorting out the truth in situations where there is a confluence of stereotypical biases is hard, but I strongly doubt that my somewhat tongue-in-cheek comment entirely missed the mark.

Your final comment is rather intriguing to me. Do you often recommend suicide to people you disagree with? That's a rather violently negative reaction, don't you think? Anyway, have a nice day, schivvers, and stay well away from the guard rails so you don't fall off the bridge.