1172681
submission
smellsofbikes writes:
Multiple companies are developing glider submarines, designed for multiple-week or -month autonomous voyages. The subs have very few moving components, relying on deriving thrust from airfoils as they change their buoyancy. As a result, they're extremely quiet and efficient, albeit very slow. I have this great vision of the future of sub warfare, where almost perfectly silent robot subs hunt each other, firing supersonic supercavitating torpedoes.
816981
submission
smellsofbikes writes:
This week's New Yorker magazine has a financial article, "The Permission Problem", discussing the hidden cost of patent, trademark and copyright laws. It's a subject anyone here already knows well, but he brings up two interesting points.
1. He uses the term "tragedy of the anticommons". Instead of depletion of a shared resource, this describes under-use of hoarded resources: areas that can't be explored because they're encumbered by patent/copyright issues. As he points out, the result of this is an invisible loss: drugs not made, software not written. The loss is impossible to quantify and difficult to see. I like the term 'tragedy of the anticommons' because it encapsulates a long-winded explanation into a pithy, memorable phrase that will stick with people unfamiliar with the topic.
2. He also cites a study by Ben Depoorter and Sven Vanneste that discusses why anticommons effects are seen, beyond mere competition. Individual right holders value their contribution to the overall project as a significant fraction of the project value, so if there are more than three or four right holders, their perceived value can far exceed the total value of the project, making it uneconomical.
88808
submission
smellsofbikes writes:
The FAA is attempting to develop a legal process that will allow them to release data about vintage aircraft designs that have obviously been abandoned. But existing laws restrict the FAA's ability to release this data because it is deemed to be intellectual property even though the owner of record has long since ceased to exist. This is fundamentally the same problem with copyright that people looking for books out of print have to deal with, but in the case of vintage aircraft, the owners are legally required to maintain them to manufacturer specifications that the owners cannot legally obtain: an expensive and potentially lethal dilemma. An obscure situation for this solution to be applied, but if the FAA, notoriously slow and conservative, is willing to do this, maybe the idea will catch on in other places.
7922
submission
smellsofbikes writes:
New Scientist is reporting a motor designed by aeronautical engineer Roger Shawyer, that fires microwave radiation into closed, conic tubes, yielding thrust with no emissions whatsoever, not even radiation, relying on unequal force distribution within the conic section. He reports current incarnations produce thrust similar to solar wind but proposed supercooled varieties would yield orders of magnitude more. Spacecraft wouldn't have to carry any propellant, just solar cells. Can this possibly work?
