That doesn't help either, but even for non-native stuff, the Haswells are about on par with Cortex-A15s (if Chromebooks are any indication) - and the Cortex-A15s are pretty much non-starters in the "small device" category, which is why Qualcomm's Krait architecture has become so dominant even in devices that are wifi-only. (See Nexus 7 2013 version)

Dual Cortex-A7s seem to be the "go-to" for wearables nowadays, providing similar performance (at greatly reduced power consumption) compared to the dual Cortex-A9s of the OMAP4. There are very few dual-A7 solutions out there, so the go-to seems to be to disable two of the four cores of a Snapdragon 400 (quad-A7). Nearly every Android Wear device except the Moto 360 is using a "crippled" Snap400, and the Moto360 keeps getting slammed for battery life due to being an older OMAP3. (One of its updates greatly improved that, but the "crippled" S400s still win as even on the same manufacturing process, Cortex-A7 is much more efficient than A9, and the A9 is more efficient than the A8 in an OMAP3. Add to that the S400s being on a 28nm manufacturing process instead of, if I recall correctly, 45nm for OMAP3/OMAP4.)

"People actually drove reasonably well and there weren't any major issues with it. "

Except for leading the nation in deaths per highway mile...yeah, I suppose?

Funny how the only person I know to be killed in a traffic collision was, in fact, killed by a drunk driver in Montana.

People don't drive "reasonably well" - ever. People have poorly maintained vehicles, especially in a by-and-large poor state like Montana with very little vehicle inspection. People stare at their cell phones, don't keep their windshields clean, don't use sunglasses, drink, spend too much time fiddling with the radio, get distracted by passengers. Our nation devotes virtually zero resources to any enforcement of traffic laws except speeding. Unless Montana starts doing roadside spot vehicle inspections when they are caught breaking some other law...

Guess who picks up the tab for the millions of dollars in medical care when Joe Cowboy slams his pickup truck into a family of four because he was doing 90mph and his bald tires couldn't stop him in time? The federal government, aka You and Me.

The raw performance of the OMAP4 wasn't the issue, BUT the fact that it's an EOL architecture no longer supported by TI is showing in the current software quality of Glass. Ever since Google deployed KitKat to Glass (which has not been deployed in production to ANY other OMAP4 device), Glass has been unreliable and suffered from wildly inconsistent battery life. XE19.1 was a big improvement, but it was still a significant backwards step from pre-KitKat Glass. Then Google went and fucked it up again with XE21 - Twice in one week I had Glass run out of battery in only 8 hours with effectively zero usage other than sitting on my head idle. (1-2 notifications/hour, no Navigation, etc.)

Even before KitKat, the OMAP4 was a woefully inefficient CPU due to its age. A Snapdragon 400 with half the cores disabled would provide a MUCH better experience - more efficient/capable GPU, more efficient video encoding/decoding engine (no burning your head when recording), more efficient CPU.

I haven't worn Glass in nearly two months now. It's in desperate need of a hardware refresh to improve power management and stability, but Intel is the LAST thing Glass needs. Intel's mobile SoCs are worse than even Cortex-A15 in terms of power efficiency, which is why you see a number of Intel-based tablets and settop boxes, but next to no Intel-based phones (there are about as many Intel-based phones as Exynos5-based phones, another SoC that's woefully unsuitable to phones due to power consumption.)

Like basketball, which will suddenly explode in popularity. Or you'll have an elite rowing team picking on freshmen. Perhaps a thug squad of a lacrosse team.

If football were to go away tomorrow, I promise you something would replace it, and quickly.

"Troll" is Slashdot moderator-ese for "I don't agree with you and think no reasonable person could hold that opinion, so you must be trolling". It's far too overused; personally, I think it should be abolished entirely.

That part of the Voting Rights Act wasn't struck down.

Did they take into account the Voting Rights Act provision that requires that minority voters be concentrated into districts that they have a good likelihood of winning? That alone has the effect of diluting minority strength elsewhere.

Step one: put barely-thawed turkey breast in crock pot.
Step two: turn it to medium and walk away for 8 hours
Step three: eat a ridiculously moist and tender bird

There are tastier methods, but the marginal gain per effort exerted isn't worth it to me.

This has always been my opinion. We NEED another generation of modernized nuke plants to bridge us until renewables are more mature.

Trying to mass-deploy renewables now WILL fail. We simply don't have the energy storage technology to do it.

One more generation of nuclear will bridge the gap. And ideally, during that time, in addition to renewables, work will be done on next-generation nuclear plants that can use the current generation's waste as fuel.

If I recall correctly, the IFR reactor design in the 1990s had the potential, if it had continued development, to be able to supply 100% of the US energy demand for 100 years, using only the existing reactor waste at that time as fuel. The resultant waste from an IFR fuel cycle would only remain hazardous for 500 years (as the longest-lived waste products from LWRs can actually be used as IFR fuel)

Not entirely true, if anything, it's MORE dangerous if you're changing power levels to match load.

There's a reason France (along with nuclear-powered ships) are the only ones that do such a thing. (In both cases because they have to - those communities have gotten VERY good at doing so, but it's still NOT an optimal way to run a nuke plant and does introduce new ways for the plant to have an accident.)

Nuclear reactors have properties that cause delayed reactions to control inputs, if you don't handle these properly, Bad Things happen. (And in fact, such Bad Things DID happen in an extreme case at Chernobyl. They tried to restart a xenon-poisoned reactor too quickly, and when the xenon finally burned off, there was a massive power transient.)

I think you're really grasping at straws. Note that Apple is donating all of the proceeds to charity. It's kind of hard to make a profit in volume when you're losing money on each individual sale.

Why would you get a tax writeoff for buying something? They're the one donating their part of the transaction, not you.

"They're much like normal biles otherwise and I presume exactly as comfortable."

Comfort comes almost entirely from the tire size and pressure relative to rider weight and road conditions. The frame is largely irrelevant, at least for anything made in the last few decades by any half-competent company.

"Getting the bearings and power transmission were apparently the harddest bits."

Getting alignment on these items is the hardest bit. Bicycles require an incredible degree of proper alignment of a couple of key components in order for things to work right, mostly shifting, but also handling-wise.

"I'd guess that yet another disadvantage of a wooden bicycle, at least when sharing the road with motor vehicles, is that it's impossible to trigger a green traffic signal without enough metal surface to disturb the flux in the induction loop beneath the approach to the intersection."

1)Inductive loop sensors are much better than they used to be, and many can detect aluminum bike frames, metal in the wheels (almost all spokes are metal - carbon fiber spokes are very rare; many rims are still aluminum), or the metal in the drivetrain (chain, cables, derailleurs.)

2)A large percentage of bicycle frames are made from carbon fiber; even many wheels these days. No different from wood.

3)Many traffic lights now use camera-bases systems. They're cheaper and easier to set up/maintain, and can quantify the number of vehicles for better decisions regarding prioritization, etc. I think some can detect emergency vehicles, provide traffic statistics, and record video if there's a crash.

Some, but not all states, allow cyclists to go through a light if it doesn't change for them after X minutes. Idaho allows cyclists to treat red lights as stop signs, a law groups are trying to get passed here.

I'd take your post more seriously if you didn't make absurd generalizations like "steel is very stiff and wood is very flexible." From that alone it's obvious you understand nothing about materials.