already have been observed?

Metric might be, if we assume a linear decay. Is that for every 10,000 miles there is a 1% loss in battery range. This would, in fact, a person who has a commute to work, for instance, would lose about 8 percent of their range in 5 years or a full 10% in the average of 7 years that people keep cars.

So a 40,000 dollar model three will have a range of closer to 200 miles that 300 miles in 7 years, given the real world test put the new range well below 300 miles. This is likely not an issue if you can charge the car every day, like you have to do with your phone, but it does mean that you are only going to be able to drive 3 hours between charges on the highway. And it takes an hour to charge best case scenario

Let's see hours of actual usage and number of charge-discharge cycles.

Plus how much of their maximum achievable charge/discharge you charge/discharge them.

So it gets 100% of the 25% max efficiency for a combustion engine? Not much to brag about. And pro-tip: you're not getting anywhere near 100% of new-vehicle efficiency after 7 years.

Exactly. Is the argument "it can't be perfect, so don't even try"? That's a very poor excuse not to do better. In the immortal words of Paul Simon about Chernobyl: "I can't run but I can walk much faster than this."

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Uber's system could in principle have been pretty good, had anyone in the chain from driver to CEO given a shit about it.

Well... color me mildly surprised! I'd figure these EV batteries would have deteriorated by at least 20-30% if they are at least 4 years old, similar to current smartphone batteries.

Perhaps there is some hope for EVs in extreme conditions.

You can tune an IC engine and not need to replace it. Also, the overall range of an IC engine does not plummet like a Tesla does in cold weather. I have had many cars go from new to 150 to 180k with only a few percent drop in fuel efficiency. Perhaps you need a better mechanic?

You could get a hybrid Pacifica. That's not an EV, but it is a plug-in. It's really more of a station wagon than a minivan. I saw one on the PCH recently and was struck (not literally) by how small it is, but it can carry a full sheet of plywood with all the seats removed or folded or whatever it is.

More and more, I'm starting to think a giant spinning spacecraft may be the best way forward if we are to travel to Mars.

Stasis isn't going to cut it if these health effects are directly the result of extended zero-g exposure.

This is gonna get expensive...

if it has an 8' bed, it's not a short bed. That's a standard ("long") bed. You can carry 8' stuff if you fold down the tailgate, but then you need to put a strap on it (or something) to keep it secure.

Problem can be solved by regularly timed exercise to ensure proper blood flow, how often is the question, bending and stretching every fifteen minutes, sleep of course presents a different problem, two hour power naps with exercise between. The fluids must flow and it is designed to be just good enough to breed, based upon pretty regular movement and flexing of the body.

Nuclear costs more than wind or solar + battery. It has the highest lifetime cost in dollars. Your insults are misplaced, as usual.

Remember that satellites are only visible at dawn and dusk, when the sky is dark from the ground but you're still near the terminator, and can still see reflected sunlight if it's high enough. Later at night, any satellites will be fully within the Earth's shadow cone and will be practically invisible.

With that many satellites you might spot the occasional occultation, and telescopes still have real problems, but for you and I and migratory animals the night sky will be unchanged for nearly the entire night.

Fire was discovered, not invented. It existed before life on earth evolved---long before any of mankind's attempts at astronomy.

Saturns were basically GM-built Nissans, plus the plastic doors, and that was a time when Nissan designed cars extremely well. I'd rather have a Nissan from the 90s than literally any other marque. Granted, there's a rat's nest of vacuum hoses under the hood of the sexiest Nissan of that era (The Z32 300ZX TT) but it's no more fiddly than anything else from that time, because emissions. And what I'd choose specifically would be a 1991-ish 240SX fastback, which has a sweet DOHC 2.4l four banger that will do around 300HP on stock internals with a turbo kit — the same output as a 300ZX, only much lighter (2700lb instead of 3400.) And the five lug models will take 300ZX wheels, though I'd want some aftermarket ones. Despite the MacPherson front suspension, the 240SX is one of the best-handling cars ever made, with its 51% front weight distribution and multilink rear... and optional limited slip. It's trendy to swap the rear diff and the front end group from the S15, as the stock diff is 4.08:1 with a viscous limited slip if any, while the S15 had a helical limited slip at 3.73:1. S13 top speed is gear-limited to 124MPH.

Er, where was I? Anyway, Saturns were built for keeps, if you did the maintenance. And if you got one with a four banger, there's ridiculous amounts of room under the hood. The battery is damned near as big as the engine. I'd rather have a real Nissan though :)

Go weep about your failure of a generation some more, while making my fries. ^^

Simple solution. Just launch two crafts at the same time -- but be sure to keep them separated by an appropriate distance. One carries the astronauts, the other carries a black hole. Problem solved! (Although, I'll bet Musk has already tweeted this solution so I'm probably late to the game).

Not to add to conspiracy theories, but sacrificing some information in order to believably insert a double agent who might accomplish a greater mission seems like a rational plan to me.

You believe a power and emergence are inferior to cumbersome limitedness and simpleness.

That a powerful, fully scriptable interface to configurable modular software is inferior to a uselessly minimalistic monolothic colorful clickable appliance-equivalent that misses the point of having a computer.

You do not even realize that you can just get a pre-packaged set of what he described, and alter the defaults to your liking. Because you literally cannot even imagine having an independent will and preferences of your own anymore. (Yes, I have actually asked people like you to do that, and watched them fail miserably.)

More realistically, they do not know much and mostly it is about Hong Kong, which means those agents talked about are technically counter intelligence operatives, so secret police not spies. As for operations in Australia, yeah well, everyone already knows about them, Chinese companies seeking greater political influence to promote their bottom line, standard modern corporate operating procedures and do not even touch the level of corrupt USA influence which has managed to drag Australians diplomatic reputation into the gutter with the USA.

Calling counter intelligence operations spying, will not go down well and Hong Kong is a part of China so, what are they even claiming. It is illegal for the government of China to hunt down USA and UK spies in China, hmm, OK then just stop pretending and let the nukes fly.

There are mainland China operation in Hong Kong, to root out USA and UK espionage agents and collaborators and to make the Hong Kong government strike/protest/riots as bad as possible to last as long as possible to pay back the Hong Kong government and the UK and US governments are helping.

A useful defectors has digital keys and they keep that bit of info quite. This is of course a low level propaganda event, hence publicity. Note the key to influence is to gain control of corporations who gain control of government, stopping that ends the problem. Corporations should clearly have zero influence over government, as clearly that is the core source of espionage operations, interesting thing that, all about the benjamins apparently, the dollar speaks the loudest in espionage circles.

I recommend a government managed public usable, anonymous forum, where registered citizens can share the opinions, a matter of public record. This to replace the current corrupt state of affairs of corporate for profit run forums, a core part of foreign espionage operations, which can then be ignored because the public forum, hosted and protected, and only accessible by legally registered users, listed as citizen of that country or as foreign, hosted by https://www.aph.gov.au/About_P... and held as a matter of public record, the opinions of citizens on all matters of government. No more paid political ads. Politicians can give their speeches which and they distributed by the Parliamentary library for comment by registered users. The end of lobbyists.

For a moment I thought maybe they'd seen the Alien in there.

No, and to make it more localized: your neighbor has no expectation of privacy when she picks up her newspaper out of her driveway in the morning. But if you're photographing her doing it every morning and she sees you, then she's got every right to ask you "Just what the fuck do you think you're doing!?".

Oh OK non-boomer:
Step #1: Don't install Microsoft products on your computer.
Step #2: Don't install Oracle products on your computer, either.

I knew you had a Ford when you said super cab. I used to have a 1992 F250 super cab longbed xlt 4x4, which was before they had the short suicide doors. Extended cabs are cool if you need space for groceries, but for carrying humans, a 4 door (whatever the particular manufacturer calls it) is better.

Interesting...

So wherever you have high concentrations of the protophobic force you might not find many atoms.

Perhaps this force dominates the actual vast free space of nothingness between galaxies.

An imbalance in the concentration of this force could force atoms to clump together and actually form galaxies.

Then everything in between the galaxies would have a high concentration of the protophobic force that would continuously accelerate the galaxies apart causing the universe to keep expanding faster.

No it doesn't. Your engine is wearing as it runs and your efficiency numbers are dropping. At some point it will have to be rebuilt or swapped out. Granted most people buy a new vehicle before the repair bill comes due.

He may phrase it however he likes, but the bottom-line is that he is promoting censorship.

And we say China is bad because of that...

Something is checked out and used by everyone because everyone thinks it is checked out and used by everyone, until it is.

*Everyone* is wondering why everyone else is giving it attention. If people knew there was nobody who actually card for it, it would be dead in a minute. Hence Flappy Bird being dead in a minute.
But often, nobody dares to admit they are "out of the loop" too. In which case it stabilizes, like a foam becoming a mattress. Everbody wants to get out. Yet nobody can.
Until they get a chance. Im which case the whole thing collapses.
This is where Slack is currently in.
And WhatsApp will be too, hopefully soon.