Just what mission control wants to deal with. A cramped can more inhospitable and treacherous than the planet they're heading for.

And thus you have describe electric vehicle "fast" chargers. Multiple conductors going to different regions of the pack.

Regardless, I'm still puzzling why everyone is assuming that Tesla is the bar at which electric vehicle battery capacity is set. Tesla is presently the show off for the affluent crowd. The everyman finds their battery pack installed in a Nissan Leaf or similar. Then we're talking about ~20-25kWh and then numbers start to make a bit more sense. I seriously doubt anyone putting this stuff together thinks they're going to get 60kWh in 2 minutes. Even if you could get 60kWh in 2 minutes, you wouldn't need to.

Where ever did you get the idea that for the purpose of electric vehicles we were dealing with 12 volts? Tesla battery pack has a nominal voltage of 375V, the Nissan Leaf's is 360V.

Sure it is. Average ICE efficiency is about 20%. So with that additional bit of calculation done, the effective energy density is about 8MJ/kg.

How would there be any increase in heat? If they can stuff power into the battery in less time wouldn't that suggest that there's an increase in efficiency, i.e. lower resistance?

This is Slashdot. So... wishful thinking, or did you forget to yourself?

Network topology isn't that straight forward. From your ISP's routing center to different portions of the Internet can be faster or slower than others. Check out network peering topic to understand why YouTube may be slow, while other sites are not.

I wonder if you might be prone to road rage...

Are you from Texas?

No the argument is that everyone is unfairly ganging up on mobile use to the exclusion of all the other ways a driver can be placed in a sub-optimal position of operating a vehicle. Cheeseburger guy is going to be more likely to cause an accident than the hands-free mobile guy, but nonetheless everyone is picking on the latter and forgetting about the former.

A person having a hands-free mobile conversation isn't going to be listening to the radio, isn't likely to be chatting with other occupants, isn't likely to be eating a cheeseburger, etc.. It isn't an additional distraction, it's just a different one. In many cases a smaller distraction relative to other activities that no one seems to give a second thought to.

Phone use while driving is a distraction, fine. What about cheeseburger eating? What about makeup application? What about conversing with a passenger? What about listening to the radio? What about adjusting the temperature? The blonde standing on the side of the road? ...

Where does the phone in its various modes of use stack up against the myriad ways in which a driver might be distracted? I have never heard of any such studies. Regardless of distraction, what is the overall competence of the driver for each of these myriad alternatives to full attention, hands on 10 and 2 (or 9 and 3)? The dumba** with a cheeseburger isn't going to use a turn signal any more than the one with his hand glued to his ear. The bimbo turned around yelling at her brats is just as unlikely to notice the evolving situation in front of her as the one updating her Facebook page.

Until these studies incorporate other forms of distraction for comparison these studies are pointless. Stick the conversants in the same car, measure the driving competence; use a hands free, measure competence; have them hold the phone, measure competence; have them eat a cheeseburger, measure competence. No one does. They all seem to start from a foundation of bias against mobile usage.

I'm not sure whether the person sitting next to you vs. hands-free phone call would be worse--though I suspect the person sitting next to you would result in poorer vehicle operation since there's also a visual distraction. However, the fool with his hand cemented to his ear is definitely going to drive poorer than the other two scenarios. Distracted or not, I guarantee the dumba** with only one free hand is going to not bother using turn signals. The cheeseburger guy in comparison will be a nightmare to everyone else on the road.

I guess Elon has his work cut out for him...

There are a lot of assumptions going on here. First, that anyone in the first world would even seriously consider living the "mud hut" life in the name of climate change. Second, that the ruling class in the first world would ever permit the rest of the world entry into the first world. Third, that energy consumption must be severely restricted since there are no safe ways to produce first world quantities of power absent carbon-based fuels.

The world's present energy mix, and consumption practices are built on a history of cheap, readily available fossil fuels. Properly incentivized (read: the external costs of carbon-based fuels captured), the world's production would quite naturally swing towards "green energy." Any gaps in technology would be researched and quickly filled. Efficiency can and would be found. There's no reason we can't do things differently and yet maintain a high standard of living except that entrenched interests on the production side like it the way it is.

Actually, you will find many Windows deployments via virtual machines configured to those kinds of specs. They run well for the purposes they were created. Also, your order of "true" system requirements is off. Vista was the largest resource hog between it and Windows 7 and 8 with 8 using the fewest resources. The OS has continued to back off on resource requirements. This cannot necessarily be said for the applications running on them, however, Microsoft isn't writing specs for those applications, it's writing them for the OS.