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Comment Re: They're obsolete. (Score 2) 185

There is no conceivable scenario today in which a modern automatic transmission will be outperformed by a manual.

Well, there is one, but it's been a long time since I needed it. If you get your vehicle semi-stuck in a deeply rutted road (or off-road), with a manual transmission you can often "rock" it free: let out the clutch to start moving forward, push it in to roll back and up the other side, repeat to go forward again, increasing the travel each time until you get up and out of the rut. This can work well when you're stuck in a gravity well without enough friction to pull yourself out or even to build the momentum at the bottom to get yourself to the top. But it's not common to need this, and careful drivers can usually avoid it.

Comment Re: Yes, we should be concerned about these things (Score 4, Insightful) 151

All seems really short sighted. It's like squeezing a balloon... doesn't work unless it's universally applied.

If you think the Pope should refrain from offering moral advice because some people may not follow it, I think you may have misunderstood how the Catholic Church works.

Comment Re: Think of the school children (Score 1) 141

I really don't understand all the moaning and groaning about daylight saving time. People naturally wake up earlier in the summer and later in the winter, and DST is the most straightforward way to adapt our work schedule to that. We get 6 months of better sleep/work alignment in exchange for adjusting our sleep schedule by an hour twice a year. It's a big reward for not much effort, especially considering most of us adjust our sleep schedule ant the start and end of every weekend anyway, i.e., around 100 times a year.

Comment Re: Software Cloning (Score 1) 125

Can it clone proprietary software and turn it into an open source project?

I think the answer is no if you don't have clean access to the proprietary software, e.g., if you decompile or reverse engineer it in violation of a license agreement that you agreed to. That taints the spec, which taints the clean room reimplementation. I think this also applies to leaked software - if you know it's someone's trade secret, but you use it anyway to create a competing product, you can be sued.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Is there majority support for any DST alternative? (nbcsandiego.com) 4

superposed writes: Daylight Saving Time (DST) starts Saturday night in the U.S. This is a perennial cause of complaint in Slashdot, but there may not be majority support for replacing it with either permanent summer time (more light in evenings, less in mornings) or permanent winter time (more light in mornings, less in evenings). This poll will determine if a majority would support either over DST. If votes for D are higher than A, then there is majority support for ending DST and replacing it with the greater of B or C. But if A > D, there is not majority support for a switch to either setting permanently.

Which would you prefer?

A. DST is better than both permanent summer and permanent winter time
B. summer time > DST > winter time
C. winter time > DST > summer time
D. either permanent winter or summer time would be better than DST

Comment Re: Do We Have Quantum Computers For this? (Score 2) 21

Is it still theoretical and prophylactic, or does this stuff exist today and have real world possibility now?

Theoretical and prophylactic are not the same thing. Quantum decryption is indeed still a future threat, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't protect yourself now. Various parties are already using a technique called "harvest now, decrypt later" to record web traffic today that they may be able to decrypt and read with quantum computers later. So using non-quantum-resistant encryption today is as risky as using plain text, just with a delay before the consequences appear.

Comment Re: First Hand Experience? (Score 3, Interesting) 167

I've ridden in one. It was just like riding in any car, but a little disconcerting to have the driver's seat empty while the car did its thing. Maybe a little smoother and more predictable than the average Uber.

Given how many Waymos there are on the road and how little trouble weâ(TM)ve heard about - despite breathless coverage of every incident, - Iâ(TM)d say they seem to be doing better than human drivers.

Comment Re: EVs are nice and all (Score 1) 122

If you want to migrate away from fossil fuels you will need to replace the plastics/hydrocarbons that are in clothing, shoes, tires, food packaging, medical supplies, roads, aircraft, wind turbines, and utility side electrical equipment

This is a fallacy. To halt climate change, we don't need to move away from extracting hyrdrocarbons, just from burning them. It would be a huge step forward to convert hydrocarbons to plastics using renewable electricity, then eventually recycle or bury those plastics. Using fossil hydrocarbons as a feedstock is potentially a zero-emission process, unlike using them as fuels.

Comment Re: Don't fear the batteries! (Score 1) 122

what can we do about all of those ICE-powered vehicles that are (and will be) in daily use?

I love the idea of e-fuels. But it would be cheaper to replace most of those cars with new EVs than to fill them with e-gasoline at $0.60 (extra) per mile, i.e., $600/mo. for the average car.

At the quoted costs, e-gasoline is about $1600/tCO2 avoided (say $15 extra per gallon of gasoline, which avoids 9 kg of CO2 emissions). Unfortunately, thatâ(TM)s around 8 times higher than the harm done by CO2, so even serious environmental economists would say itâ(TM)s not worth using unless costs can be brought way down.

As a starting point, consider using just the CO2 part of this system to sequester CO2 from aircraft. Or switch the grid to 95% renewable power and use the CO2 collector to sequester the remaining CO2 emissions.

Comment Donâ(TM)t fear the batteries! (Score 2) 122

Iâ(TM)m so tired of tech people coming up with new, unnecessary, overpriced solutions to renewable power variability or car range anxiety. Just stick in some batteries! This thing costs $15,000-$20,000, which means a $300/mo payment to get 30 gals of gasoline. Thatâ(TM)s $10/gal just for the equipment. Then theyâ(TM)re using 75 kWh of electricity per gallon, which costs around $30 retail or $10 from a home solar system. All to get you about 9 kWh of propulsion (after the 75% losses in the car engine). You could replace all of this for $1.35-$4.00/gal equivalent with an EV.

Comment All the companies can't be above average (Score 1) 42

The summary says

"Just 30% [of chief executives] feel strongly optimistic about revenue growth over the next 12 months, down from 38% last year and nowhere near the 56% who felt that way in 2022."

This implies that in a rosier world, a majority of the companies would be optimistic about revenue growth. But raising revenue for most or all of the companies is not possible unless the customers (a.k.a. all the companies' employees) have more to spend, and no one is talking about raising wages as a result of AI. So where is all the extra revenue supposed to come from?

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