Give a couple years and energy density of batteries will be on par with kerosene.

A: Has to be at least double. The mass of the fuel drops as you use it up, the mass of a battery does not. So for the fuel/battery power actually used (the bulk of it) you have twice the weight/distance load for batteries vs. fuel at the same energy density.

That's a scientific fact any science aware person is already aware of.

B: ORLY? Citation please.

Seems to me this will drive the state-of-the-art on GPS spoofing, to the point that it becomes accessible and inexpensive enough for individual developers to arrange a test cell for not much more than the price of a laptop.

This, of course, would have all sorts of problems, as it would also make it accessible to common criminals and self-funded terrorist cells.

DNA is expensive to maintain, from a biological stand point. Why would nature select for simple pairs chromosomes but fill them with 90%+ junk. Why not "spend" your DNA budget on tetra+ chromosome groups and less junk?

Because such clean-up requires a mechanism, which doesn't exist until it gets evolved. Carrying along some broken-and-disabled junk in long-term program storage doesn't cost enough to be a strong selection pressure, so under just mutate-and-select it can hang around for a long time.

Also, if it is the remnant of a functional subsystem, until it drifts too far it might again come in useful, randomly get turned on again, and provide an advantage. After it drifts into doing something somewhat different, it might get turned on again, prove adventitious, and become the basis of a new system.

Lifeforms don't have to be built to superb standards. They only have to be good enough to work, and to work well enough to not get squeezed out by something that works better.

So it's entirely plausible that a lot of DNA junk might be present.

Which is not to say that there ISN'T one or more DNA-cleanup mechanisms currently in place in some branches of life. (Probably evolved from old retroviruses, like several known mechanisms for DNA alteration.)

But it's a hard problem. (How does the mechanism know not to take out something necessary? If there's something it avoids chopping out, what's to keep junk DNA from masquerading as good DNA to hide from it? Junk DNA subsequences are still subject to evolution and hiding from a DNA cleanup mechanism is advantageous to the DNA.)

I remember hearing scientists saying most of DNA was junk left over from evolutionary processes.

I recall, back in the sixties, a co-worker speculating that, considering the genome as a program and presuming a creator (or creation engineering team), the non-coding DNA might be the program's comments.

And wondering whether, if so, they should be considered "holy writ".

The cytoplasm of the Ovum contains a LOT more RNA machinery than does that of the sperm. What does this imply about heritable traits?

My take: That they are in fine control of the allocation of precious resources.

The sperm is a messenger, trying to deliver its copy of the plans to an ovum (the only one, or one of a very few, within reach) in competition with hundreds of millions of others, not all necessarily from the same male (or to bias the race toward others that have versions of the plans more like its own). So it's stripped down like a greyhound, both so it can run faster/better and so the male can make more of them to improve it's own odds of getting one through.

The ovum is a factory for building a new being. It has a whole bunch of machinery set up and ready to go, so it can get on with the task as soon as the other half of the plans arrive. Only one or a very few are in operation at a time, so plenty of resources can be spent on each one, both on initial inventory of construction material and ready-to-run machinery, all of which will eventually be needed.

Tariff typos:
* Aluminum/steel: From 7.5% to 25% in 2924... 2024 of course.
* Lithium batteries and battery components... 206 for others (e.g. Solar system storage).... 2026

Meanwhile, as of last Tuesday, Biden has imposed or raised tariffs on solar panels, aluminum and steel for them, batteries, electronics, etc..

  * Solar cells and panels: Raised from 25% to 50% in 2024
  * Aluminum/steel: From 7.5% to 25% in 2924
  * Lithium batteries and battery components (e.g. Battery Management Systems.) From 7.5% to 25%: in 2024 for EV batteries, 206 for others (e.g. Solar system storage). Of course some cell types are dual-use so bare cells will be assumed to be "for EVs" and solar equipment manufacturing them will have to move to China to prove they're not really being used for cars.
  * "computer chips" - including semiconductors used in inverters, BMSes, solar charge controllers, etc.: From 25% to 50% by 2025.

I could go on.

Make that: I wonder if we'll see anti-SLAPP actions by Trump, Giuliani, or Fox News if they win an anti-defamation suit or appeal of one?

On Thursday, in a unanimous decision, a four-judge New York Supreme Court appellate panel ordered the case to continue, keeping the Dendrite issue alive and also allowing us to proceed in seeking damages based on New York's anti-SLAPP law, which prohibits "strategic lawsuits against public participation."

Hmmm...

I wonder if we'll see SLAPP actions by Trump, Giuliani, or Fox News if they win an anti-defamation suit or appeal of one?

Most states and towns in the USA do not have building codes for residential off-grid battery storage.

I thought that was in the National Electrical Code (NEC) section on solar, at least if they're on the 2017 version (or some earlier versions). Most jurisdictions adopt some version of the NEC (and occasionally move to a later version - my county is on 2017 as of a year or so ago) and then maybe add a few changes, rather than write their own electrical code.

Main remaining downsides, if you want to keep your fire insurance, are finding listed (by an NRTL such as UL) systems (there are a few, even some that are rated for elevations over 1,500 meters - about 79 feet short of 5,000) and that the code now requires a cert for solar systems installers, so if you want to install it all yourself you have to drop a couple hunderd bux on a short online course or hire a pro to make the major connections and maybe do some of the design for your install.

Problem is that gas is often byproduct of oil extraction, and very difficult to transport since it's a gas and disperses, unlike oil that is a liquid and can be stored in a simple container.

So use a thermoacoustic liquefier. Bunch of plumbing and a burner regulator on a par with a water heater, which contains the only moving part. Burn off 30% of it and use the heat energy to turn the rest as liquefied propane (LP) Gas, ready to haul away. One model, about the right size to haul in on a flatbed semi, can output 500 gal per day at that efficiency.

Buybacks signal there is nothing better you can think of doing with all your cash.

Or that you have a lot of cash and other assets and a market mob madness has depressed your stock price to where it's a really good deal to spend some of the cash to take some of the stock out of circulation and concentrate the company's value in the rest of it.

Possibly it's even such a good deal that some rich outsiders could buy up controlling interest, sell off the non-money assets, take that and the cash pile, and come out ahead. That leaves the current employees out of a job and with their unvested options worthless. Better to spend the hostile-takeover bait making the rest of your stock more valueable now, and keep the company running, than wait until the hostiles are buying and screw up the company and its stockholders with poison pills and the like.

Anything that goes slow enough to be captured into an orbit will eventually spiral inwards.

Well, most of it (when we're talking matter not already in another black hole). Ordinary stuff orbiting near a black hole gets torn apart by the enormous tides and forms a disk-like structure similar to a gas giant's rings. Interactions among it and with the black hole's magnetic and gravitic fields can eject a bit of it in a pair of jets out along the axis of the disk, powered apparently by the rest of the stuff falling in.

These two black holes wouldn't stick to each other, but start swirling around each other and eventually merge together.

This is partly because of friction with and among other stuff in orbit around the black holes in their "accretion disks". (Black holes experience friction by eating the stuff in the other hole's disk of debris, with the momentum of the black-hole-plus-dinner thus being different from the black-hole-before-dinner.)

It's also partly because the rapid acceleration of things passing near a black hole or orbiting it causes the emission of gravity waves to be strong enough that it carries off substantial energy. (In less extreme environments, like suns and planets, the waves are not detectable by current instruments. In the case of two black holes,orbiting each other, they're detectable from across pretty much the whole universe.) This loss of energy amounts to "friction" that eventually causes co-orbiting pairs of black holes to spiral in and combine.

This reminds me of the sentencing of the "January 6 insurrection" guilty pleas. As I (a non-lawyer) understand it...

Regardless of whether you consider it an insurrection or a protest march petitioning the government for redress of grievances...

In the wake of the events, the fed busted a bunch of the participants and left them rotting in prison for months (over a year), with no end in sight. In many cases this left families with no breadwinner, enormous legal costs, and expectations of losing all their property as part of some eventual conviction.

Then the prosecutors offered some of the defendants a plea deal; Plead guilty to a misdemeanor or short-sentence felony and we'll drop any other charges.

Rule of thumb: a misdemeanor generally is a crime with a max sentence of no more than a year in prison, a felony more than a year - which is why you see "year and a day" max sentences on some crimes. An accused person already in prison for over the max sentence would expect that accepting the deal would result in immediate release with "credit for time served" (and others near the max might expect release much sooner). So some of them went for it.

Came the sentencing some judges applied a two-year sentence enhancements for "substantial interference with the 'administration of justice.'" OOPS! No release for you.

I'd expect them to pull the same sort of thing on Assange if he were foolish enough to plead guilty to anything, no matter how minor.

(By the way: This particular form of the practice, as used on the Jan6 participants, was just recently struck down. But the decision was based on Congress' certification of the presidential election not qualifying as "administration of justice.'" So this wouldn't apply to whatever enhancement trick they might pull on Julian.