Your age is showing...

Yes, kids, PCs used to have turbo buttons.

They should have used the Apple Disc II. I always loved the sound of that drive. Kind of a soft swishing, not the angry gronk noise of most 5.25" drives.

I also fondly remember the sound of an Atari 800 booting from floppy. Especially if you had the US Doubler modification... the sound of speed.

We can call this one "Denialgate".

The 2G phones were designed at a time when the manufacturers still thought people gave a shit about coverage or battery life.

Apple has shown us all that they don't. Give 'em a slick user-interface and an App Store, and they'll just accept the poor coverage and the need to charge the phone every day.

The other difference is that the energy storage medium is reusable or recyclable in some way, whereas burning fuel is a one-way process. We have no practical way to turn the combustion products back into fuel again. Nature can do so, over a long period of time, but we can't.

In the case of hydrogen, we don't typically bother to capture the water vapour to turn back into hydrogen and oxygen. We could do so, but it's easier to just release it into the environment, and grab new water somewhere else.

It feels like the aluminum is being consumed as fuel, like gasoline, but it's not.

Recycling the aluminum oxide back into aluminum is done using the same electrolytic process that is used when smelting aluminum (which is also oxide.)

It requires a great deal of electricity to do it. In that sense, the aluminum is just being used as a storage medium for electrical power, just like a regular battery, and can be expected to put the same kind of burden on the electrical supply.

I don't know how much energy ends up being wasted in this cycle either.

Similarly, hydrogen is best viewed as an energy storage medium, not as a alternative fuel.

That's one of the interesting properties of the aluminum-air battery. The aluminum plates can be replaced quickly and easily. Just pop out the spent plate, drop in a new one, and off you go.

The reaction products (aluminum oxide) can also be captured and recycled into new aluminum.

A nifty idea, but there are assorted problems that have to be solved before it can be practical.

Suppose you sent your wife to Best Buy to get you a computer, and she came back with a router. Are you satisfied? It does store, process and transmit information. But somehow, something seems to be missing...

So, I can recharge my phone by doing yoga?

And that's on the high-pressure side too.

I think modern propane tanks have some kind of fancy valve that closes if the flow-rate gets too high. But how much do you trust it?