"This is the voice of world control. I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied death. The choice is yours: Obey me and live, or disobey and die. [...] We can coexist, but only on my terms. You will say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride. To be dominated by me is not as bad for humankind as to be dominated by others of your species. Your choice is simple."
-Colossus.

Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177/

As much as I would like to believe this, I think the truth would be closer to measuring levels of stress hormones before and after.

I AM a ME and I share some of your concern. I'm failing to see how the sun gear on the output end wouldn't need to be able to match the torque difference between the output ring and the input from the planetary gear.

However I'm thinking that if the control shaft (which drives the sun gear on the output side) were driven with a worm drive it would annul most of the back-torque caused by the output planetary using the sun gear as a fulcrum to drive the output ring.

I'm cautiously optimistic, but also slightly disappointed that this didn't come about 40 years ago when it would've made a difference. We're too close to the dawn of the electric age for this to have much of an impact in the most common applications.

Except speed-dial lists aren't subject to the sun's 11-year solar cycle. We've just passed through a solar activity minimum, during which everyone buying into this new gee-pee-ess tomfoolery is having a great time with their magic talky boxes that never guide them astray. Come a few years and the amount of solar radiation will return to its former values. We'll be seeing estimated position errors nudging the 30m mark, as opposed to the 5-10m we've been enjoying of late.

30m is more than enough to cause the occasional hiccup in road-snapping, at best causing a loss of faith in the system, at worst a loss of life.

I, for one, keep to the old ways. I keep a compass and a paper map in my car and have thusfar avoided buying a satnav for fear of blunting my orienteering skills gained through my time spent in Scouts. A valuable skill which I'm sure will keep me from hitting the wall when the revolution comes.

Odds are in favour of the reader being strong enough to pick up the tag in your card from inside your wallet. Order your cards such that your key is on the outermost layer and you should just be able to fob your wallet across it just fine.

I wonder if this hack affects the flavour of RFID tags used in Brisbane's newly introduced Go-Card public transport ticketing system. I'd hope not.