Economics. Drivers don't go out when they can't make any money. Painful way to limit capacity, but it will happen eventually.

Cummins at least is dealing with particulate in the cylinder, and using after-treatment to deal with NOx. This eliminates the problem with PM2 generated by PM10 particulate filters. It is a pretty elegant solution and generally makes sense (although the DEF is a pain to need in addition to fuel.

It sounds more like a jobs program to disadvantage German cars though.

Belgium might not be the best example. Do they have a government yet?

Depends on the environment. In Hawaii, underground lines have approximately half the life of aerial cables in general, and one third the life of aerial cables on steel poles. From a cost, reliability, and time-to-repair perspective you can't beat aerial there.

The biggest problem in general with the sub-distribution grid though is over-subscription. You have infrastructure designed pre-air conditioning that is now carrying 2-3x it's design load in many places. Transformers don't get replaced until they fail catastrophically, insulators aren't cleaned, and the right-of-way is not properly protected from trees, cars, etc.

A lot of the buildings in the area date back to the 1950's, so limited sprinklers is reasonable.

If there isn't grounds for a trial, the grand jury isn't supposed to pass the buck. That is their job. It prevents an undue burden of defense.

The prosecutor is going to publish all data; it will be interesting to see what comes out. I think it is likely that the officer had a bias in the incident leading up to the shooting. However, that isn't something that can be prosecuted.

I find the claims of "hands up surrender" a little hard to believe personally, but that is my bias based on the fact that he was high, possibly had a knife, was quite large, and had just stolen something. The "surrender" pose seems suspicious. The evidence will be interesting to peruse.

Yes, the government fsck'd up the helium market, but for applications like this it isn't that big of a deal. You can use hydrogen instead, although the flight time will likely be half due to leaks. For a while there was a good bit of research into using hydrogen as a deep diving gas in place of helium, but pesky safety issues got in the way.

Los Angeles has made significant progress over the past two decades with mass transit; they have 87 miles of track, and the system is expanding. Unfortunately, geography doesn't help them as much as it does for the SF Bay Area (BART has 104 miles of track).

Los Angeles is a failure of metropolitan planning, especially in the late 70‘s through the 80‘s where several outlying cities popped up. This isn't sustainable, and the solutions you outline are important to making things work well. Unfortunately, it isn't that uncommon to need to drive 50 miles in a day each way given economic realities. As the manufacturing base declines it will be interesting to see what happens to the area. Me, I live close enough to work that I can ride my bike in and not own a car. Not realistic for most people though.

Yes, it lasts forever. Just don't try to run it through an engine after 3 months. If you are lucky it just clogs the filters.

Regular diesel is good for 6-12 months before a polishing is needed. Polishing completely at 3-4x the frequency has its own problems.

I used to think the same thing, until I ran the numbers. The simplification in system architecture alone justifies the change, and once you throw in NFPA 70E distributed backup of a local dc bus quickly makes more sense.

  It doesn't work for all applications, and you need the IT staff (rather than facilities staff) to make it work, but it can simplify things tremendously.

LiIon is great when you just want 30-60 seconds backup, and is economical there. Knowing Facebook, they likely load balance to charge the racks on off-peak energy and discharge during peak period, even if it is just a minute x15kW per rack for the trivial savings.

"Pure lead" batteries are likely more cost effective, but they are larger and heavier.

Biodiesel has a very short shelf life-- 3 months max. You need to use it if you make it. The best strategy I have seen is basically having segregated tanks, with the one at 2-2.5 months being used for fleet vehicles. Aside from this being illegal in the US, it is a lot of fuel to need for the fleet of a hospital. An average hospital in California has 30-40,000 gallons of diesel; 10,000 gallons per month is a lot to use in other ways.

That said, the answer is energy storage in whatever forms are viable. The "Cold Winter Night" scenario is fully manageable between candles and fires residentially and diesel generators commercially, assuming you still have or can import 10-20% of your peak demand. The real problem is an arctic front that lingers for a week with far below normal temperatures.

As long as there is no reference to the password being emailed separately, it is fairly reasonable basic level of security. If someone cares, the zip password protection is weak enough that it won't keep a secret long from the boogeyman.

$20MM per year in rent for an airfield, golf course, and of course the hangars! Google got a steal; they likely paid more for parking rights for their planes.

You might be underestimating the cost benefit ratio for wireline service. Incremental cost to provide service to a customer in the coverage area with fiber ranges from $700-10,000. For satellite you are looking at $300-500 worst-case, anywhere in the world (you are able to provide service).

The advantage of wireline (especially fiber) is you can realistically recapture your investment over 20-50 years. Satellite is more like 5-10 years.